I think if Putin is convinced that Ukraine won't join NATO soon, and he can keep the Crimea and Donbas, he will negotiate a way out. Id like to call his bluff and bring them into NATO now, essentially it's happening now step by step.
Russia Tests Cutting Off Access to Global Web, and VPNs Can't Get Around It Russia reportedly blocks some areas of its country from the global web for a day as it continues to develop its own 'sovereign internet.' https://www.pcmag.com/news/russia-tests-cutting-off-access-to-global-web-and-vpns-cant-get-around
Russia's communications authority, Roskomnadzor, blocked residents in Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia, which have majority-Muslim populations, ISW says. The three regions are in southwest Russia near its borders with Georgia and Azerbaijan. People in those areas couldn't access Google, YouTube, Telegram, WhatsApp, or other foreign websites or apps—even if they used VPNs, according to a local Russian news site. Russian digital rights NGO Roskomsvoboda told TechRadar that most VPNs didn't work during the shutdown, but some apparently did. It's unclear which ones or how many actually worked, though. Russia has been increasingly blocking VPNs more broadly, and Apple has helped the country's censorship efforts by taking down VPN apps on its Russian App Store. At least 197 VPNs are currently blocked in Russia, according to Russian news agency Interfax. These latest partial internet blocks are because Russia is testing its own sovereign internet it can fully control. Russia already tested blocking or throttling sites like YouTube this year by slowing down speeds so much that sites are virtually unusable. Russia has reportedly poured $648 million into its national internet and tech that can power restrictions and has been seemingly working on this since at least 2019.
Russia tells its citizens: avoid travel to the WestReutershttps://www.reuters.com › world › russia-tells-its-citizen...
SHOCK: Ukraine Kills Senior Russian General in Moscow Scooter Bombing... Chief of nuclear, biological, chemical weapons... Rare high-profile assassination in capital... VIDEO...
This is shocking to Russia because they can't conceive of a successful attack on a major military target.
On Christmas Morning, russia attacked Ukraine with 170 drones and missiles, mostly focusing on heating and electrical infrastructure, hoping to demoralize Ukrainian people. This will never happen. Here is something from our old friend Igor Girkin, who you might remember commanded russian para-military forces in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and has been indicted for downing of that Malaysian airplane. He has been imprisoned for over a year now for speaking out against Putin but he still keeps talking and actually has quite a following in russia. He is one of the few russians who will admit that they are losing the war.
Ukraine has apparently used some new kind of electronic warfare suppression to ground all russian drones. This is a big surprise for the russians and also for me. Didn't think Ukraine had the resources for this. russians are paranoid that Ukraine may be breaking across the northern border in other areas and Ukraine may be feeding that paranoia but I doubt that it's happening. It's amazing that russia, with 60,000 troops in this area, wasn't able to stop the breakthrough.
