Putin Annexes Two Ukrainian Regions

The UK has pledged to start a cyber war with Russia in protest. The Biden Administration still has not said how they plan to respond.

www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/put...utm_mailing=TNY_Dail

WAR........

Will Biden and Europe's sanctions force Putin to retreat?

What sanctions. Germany is still planning to complete Nord Stream 2. Once up and running Russia will have a stranglehold on the European economy (Scandinavia to lesser extent due to energy independence). Russia can then shut off the pipeline through the Ukraine any time that it desires.

UPDATE: 9 AM EST

"

Dmitry Medvedev
@MedvedevRussiaE

Russia government official
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has issued an order to halt the process of certifying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Well. Welcome to the brave new world where Europeans are very soon going to pay €2.000 for 1.000 cubic meters of natural gas!
From Twitter.com

Currently the NS-2 pipeline is still undergoing the certification process (obstructed by the Green Party). It is estimated that this will take until the Fall 2022.
The German Chancellor is all hat and no cattle.
BTW, Italy has announced that it will not impose energy sanctions on Russia.

''War is not what it used to be. War no longer need be a matter of bombing raids and blitzkriegs. Putin could certainly flatten much of Kyiv and other Ukraine cities in days, but he can render them helpless through other means: cyberattacks, false-flag operations, assaults on the electrical grid, the water supply, the banking system. Targeted information––or, better, propaganda––is often as effective in modern warfare as a surging body count. As the historian Stephen Kotkin, the author of a multivolume biography of Stalin, put it recently, “You turn a country off.” Like a light switch. And, in that sudden darkness, panic and instability ensue. This, according to the Biden Administration, is the hideous scenario, in one form or another, that confronts Ukraine.'' from the previously posted link

NOW..widen out the camera lens.....THIS scenario is accurate for ANY country who is perceived as stepping over the line.

My cousin joined the Marines last year. He has been assigned to a Cyber Warfare unit. Wonder if he is in Poland right now with a ruggedized laptop hacking Russian gas stations?

I sincerely hope that your cousin is safe and stays that way.

In the meantime Slo Joe flexes his muscles:
Instead of punishing Russia or issuing sanctions against Russia, Joe Biden signed an executive order [READ HERE] that targets the people who live in the eastern Ukraine regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Anyone from inside this DNR/LNR region of Ukraine is now blocked from any access to the U.S. financial system, banned from travel to the United States, and all U.S. assets and property of Ukrainian citizens in the disputed region are now frozen.
www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/preside...ntegrity-of-ukraine/

Now that's the way to punish Putin!

INCREMENTAL actions....u can't back someone into a corner, without an exit and NOT expect them to come out snarling.......FLASH....just classified as an INVASION.....so now, we watch and weigh the heavier, uglier
implications of sanctions..... HIT THEM IN THE POCKETBOOK,lots of loot floating around in the USA, find it FREEZE IT and wait.

Economic sanctions are an easy tool to deploy when you don't have the stomach for actual combat but often they hurt the innocent. The poor Ukrainians in the Russian annexed regions and the poor people in Russia itself. The Russian economy will contract and the poor who didn't make the decision to go to war will starve and be unable to heat their homes.