Thread

I’m fairly skeptical about the prospects of this “M&Ms” operation to shut down all air traffic to Moscow (but let's wait and see). But for the love of Christ Almighty in heaven, get this Kremlin-planted thought-virus out of your heads: “Why do this? Now the Russians will launch retaliatory strikes.” This is nonsense -- and a complete rejection of everything we have learned from the past 4.5 years of the largest war on the continent since World War II. There is nothing behind this idea except an attempt to attribute some degree of rational prudence and respect for moral boundaries to the Kremlin (which it most certainly does not possess). It also reflects the chronic and stubborn tendency of many outside observers to underestimate the maximalism of Russia’s ultimate objective in this war: the complete and final destruction of Ukraine as a state and its total absorption. Not the achievement of some ephemeral propaganda objective such as “guarantees that Ukraine will not join NATO,” not merely the seizure of certain Ukrainian territories such as the Donbas, and certainly not the outright nonsense repeated by Russian sycophants that “Russia hasn’t even started yet.” (Apparently, for the past five years they have refrained from getting serious purely for sport, choosing instead to spend year after year beating their heads against a wall and catastrophically destroying their economy and geopolitical standing just for the love of the game, yeah). In this war, there is no functioning rule (and there never has been) that says: “If we refrain from doing X to Russia, Russia will refrain from doing X to us.” From the very first day of the full-scale invasion, Russia and Putin have used against Ukraine everything they possess, everything they consider feasible, and everything whose consequences they believe they can afford. If they could, they would have erased Kyiv from the face of the earth through carpet bombing, as in World War II --- just as they reduced, and continue to reduce, the dead cities of the Donbas and northern Kharkiv region (or Aleppo!) to Hiroshima-like ruins. The Ukrainian capital has survived all these years because of its resilience, the help of its friends, and the extraordinary heroism of its defenders since 2022. That is why Kyiv today does not look like Avdiivka, Bakhmut, Vovchansk, or Marinka -- places reached by the Russian army, sowing death and destruction. If they could, they would have destroyed the bridges across the Dnipro years ago, drastically complicating logistics between the two banks of the great river for the Ukrainian army. They could not do so because of Ukrainian air defenses. They would also have launched an offensive from Belarus into western Ukraine long ago, cutting Ukraine off, for example, from the routes to Europe through which military aid arrives from the free world. But they cannot, because for years they have lacked the necessary forces and because the resistance of the Ukrainian military has been overwhelming. Like men possessed, for the past four years they have spent every winter and every summer carrying out regular mass strikes against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, trying to plunge the country into darkness and cold. As of January 2026, they had expended more than 13,000 missiles of various types and over 140,000 attack drones. Yet, at least so far, they have failed to achieve that objective, even though they have effectively destroyed all Ukrainian electricity generation except nuclear power. If they believed they could bear the full consequences of destroying Ukraine’s nuclear power plants as well, they would do it without the slightest sentimentality if it brought them victory. They have repeatedly carried out mass attacks against Ukrainian supermarkets, oil depots, warehouses, hospitals, kindergartens, railway stations, ports, airports, factories, and plants. They have brought (and continue to bring) Ukrainian apartment buildings crashing down, killing thousands of people. They did all of this because they could, long before Ukraine finally began striking back after years of war and Putin’s propagandists and their useful idiots started squealing about “state terrorism” and “retaliation.” And it goes without saying that they would ultimately have used tactical nuclear weapons long ago -- the weapons lovingly cherished in the sweet, bloodthirsty fantasies broadcast by their propagandists -- if they believed they could bear the catastrophic global consequences, including the response from their overlord, China. The problem at this stage is that capabilities develop, diversify, and accumulate over the course of a war on both sides. By now, both Ukraine and, to an even greater extent, Russia have succeeded in dramatically scaling up the production and use of something that was previously unavailable: cheap, simple, mass-produced, and effective medium-range strike capabilities. At this stage, neither side (especially Russia) has been able to achieve a decisive victory in this protracted war. So they are trying to reach beyond the enemy’s military forces, assets, and defense production, striking ever deeper into each other’s most vulnerable and painful areas: the civilian economy, daily life, and the basic needs of a modern society. The aim is to break the morale of the broader population and make people, through deprivation and casualties, beg their government to capitulate -- since it has proved impossible to break the deadlock on the battlefield. This is precisely what Russia is doing, powerless to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield. So there is no point indulging in magical thinking and lamenting: “Why did Ukraine burn down a Wildberries facility in Russia? Now Russia has burned Ukrainian supermarket warehouses around Kyiv, Nova Poshta terminals, and the Coca-Cola plant.” Russia would have done this anyway, as soon as it had developed the capacity to strike such a large number of civilian economic targets cheaply and at scale -- even if Ukraine, in response to an open campaign of national extermination, had showered the aggressor with flowers.