What about training? Are Ukrainian pilots trained on the MiG-29?
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They are. Its one of their primary fighters.
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To be fair, I suspect that Putin would say that saying he looks like Dobby is an act of war.
You know, in the same way that invading a sovereign nation with the stated intent of making it cease to exist is somehow not, and itâs now illegal to say it is.
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I get what youâre saying. But in truth if Ukrainian pilots use Polish airfields, they become a legitimate target. No doubt.
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If Russia attacked targets on Polish territory Poland would consider it an act of war. Then it would have to decide whether to invoke Article 5.
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They currently fly mig-29s and su-27s.
Thatâs kinda why the pool of available planes is so limited. Sending them anything else is apparently 6 months of training. Along with whole new parts, support systems and munitions.
You kinda have to send them the same aircraft theyâre already running if you want them in the air right away.
And very few places besides Russia have any of these things in ready to fly shape.
Sure but that doesnât mean you say âfuck itâ and let things escalate freely or that the Poles are gonna be totally comfortable with those open, explicit threats to bomb their airfields if Ukrainian pilots take off from there.
And thereâs a very big difference between the US half a world away, and Poland for whom the Russians âaccidentallyâ dropping a few cluster bombs on the wrong side of the border is a much more present possibility.
Some of the threats are likely hollow, escalation is probably inevitable. But that doesnât make it pointless to try and slow things down and limit them. Even the Ukrainians are saying that.
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I assume that the fighters would leave the Polish airfield without any ground-attack weapons, just air-to-air weapons for self-defense, and would immediately land on a Ukrainian airfield, from which they could operate against the Russians. Additional missiles and other weapons could be transported to Ukraine using Ukrainian cargo planes and/or ground transport.
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Well, yes. Because you canât base anything on what you think Putin might say, because what heâs saying is completely divorced from reality, and everybody knows it. If anyone makes any action based on what he says, then theyâre just dignifying his Doublespeak.
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But we canât base it on the fact that they invaded a European country without justification or apparent ability to follow through?
No risk the guy who did something deeply unwise for ideological reasons wonât do it again?
They havenât already âaccidentallyâ sunk Turkish merchant ships? There werenât multiple close calls and near escalations with US planes in Syria?
Not taking Putin at face value does not equate to there being no way for it to spill over or no action by the rest of the world that can do so.
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Thanks for explaining war, disease, and the media to me so succinctly.
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We canât assume he wonât decide to try it on anyway, at this point. We canât say he will do it, and we canât say he wonât, for the same reason that if an alarm is broken, you canât use it to tell whether the thing itâs checking is actually failing or not.
The West canât base its actions on whether Putin says it would be an act of war, because heâs demonstrated that he considers being looked at sideways an act of war. What Putin says about another countryâs actions cannot be taken as a basis for action, because heâs lying, gone fully fascist, and desperate.
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The former guy has a solution. I wish there was audio of this.
What a dumb ass, now if we do this theyâll know it wasnât China.
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Or they would anyway, because I think Russian intelligence is probably smart enough to figure out that a bunch of American planes coming to and from American military bases might be American even if they have the wrong paint job and the pilots are radioing in with their attempt at Chinese accents.
Hell, by this logic you could just send stealth bombers and the Russians could only conclude they were being attacked by ghosts.
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Bread is getting expensive and circuses are not returning anytime soon. Have fun dealing with hundreds of thousands of bored, angry youth Vlad!
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There are âpatrioticâ alternatives.
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So if they fire a tactical nuke we return five-fold?
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