Russia

This may be the worst case of shooting oneself in the foot with sanctions against another. 
SWIFT

Cutting Russia from the SWIFT system will, I believe, speed the demise of the US$ as the world currency. Our status as the world's reserve currency has been as determinative for the maintenance of American power as has our military. 

Putin, Russia, China and India (at a minimum) are prepared for this. Cutting Russia from SWIFT will, perforce, create (at the minimum) a two polar financial world.  This will decrease the amount of money flowing through the Globalist financial centers of New York, London and Frankfurt. To my mind, this will have a tremendously negative effect on the Globalist World Economic Forum's plan to take over the world economically. 

Short term, Americans are now guaranteed much higher energy prices. Europeans will likely have much of their energy turned off. Although Russian gas is still flowing to Europe through the pipes beneath Ukrainian soil, I don't know how much longer this can last. Germany gets 57% of its natural gas from Russia. 

The USA, and the EU, have been living in a type of Never-Never-Land since the fall of the Soviet Union. The screed which announced this was Francis Fukayama's idiotic essay, expanded to a book, "The End of History." Sadly, too many fools and ignoramuses believed him. The Globalists and their march to the New World Order seemed to. They tried to take humanity, most of whom knew better that to believe in a dream, with them.  Putin has rudely announced a return to reality and the old multi-polar world of history. 

We can see the results of our elites denying reality by the tremendous decline in American power, prestige and honor. We push insane policies on economics, sex, racism and feminism and we expect the world to accept them as gospel. We ignore geography, history and culture and demand the rest of the world to do the same. 

On the one hand, we have the fools in government.  On the other Putin. Our fools are like some young kid ordering fried chicken at KFC who doesn't have the slightest idea of what a chicken looks like. He wonders if it has batter for skin. Putin is the guy who owns the chicken farm and slaughter house. That young kid is about to learn what really goes on behind that eight piece fried chicken dinner. Why did we let it come to this? Perhaps our people have been living in virtual reality too long to remember what the real thing is like. 

The Conservative Tree House has an interesting piece which expands on my belief that our government has gone some way in provoking this situation. Hint: It was not done for the good of the US of A. 

Biden is run by the most fanatical Obamites  

I think I'll call this group Osodomites. 

It is not possible to know exactly what is happening, but I think there is a huge amount of disinformation being cranked out from the "pro-Ukrainian" side.

Already on Friday, I heard that the Russian forces are moving very cautiously in the Ukraine in order to minimize harm to civilians and infrastructure. I have watched video of a couple of different people, I believe they were Americans from the way they spoke, who live in the Ukraine and their reports are very different from what we are hearing.  One of these guys lives in Kharkov, but is stuck in a Kiev hotel. He is able to communicate with his family and friends around the Ukraine because the communications infrastructure has not been destroyed.  As a result, he is able to get numerous other eye-witness reports of what is actually happening in the Ukraine. Most of what he is hearing appears to be from the Eastern half of the Ukraine.

He says that the Russian military has surrounded Kharkov and it is expected that it will be in the center of the city in 48-72 hours. He also reported that people expect the Russian military to reach Dnipro on the Dnieper river in the next couple of days. These are the second and third largest cities, respectively, in the Ukraine.  It is reported that the Russians are using old weapons and "green"troops, as well as the militias from the Donbas region to spearhead this invasion.  I don't know if this is true or not, but it would make perfect sense to let the militias take the casualties and hold the elite troops for a time they might be required.  To those who question the reports on the use of old weapons, just recall that the USA used old ordinance from the Vietnam War during the Gulf War. In fact, something less than 10% of bombs dropped on Iraq were "precision-guided."

It appears the Russian military is encircling towns and cities and cutting them off from outside help. It sounds something like the old siege method used throughout history. It appears that the Russians are trying to avoid civilian deaths and that they don't want to destroy the Ukrainian military so much as co-opt it.

Much of the nonsense we hear about the great Ukrainian air forces racking up great victories can only be lies. In the first day of the invasion, the Russians apparently destroyed over 70 military bases and ammo dumps. They wiped out the vast majority of Ukrainian armor.  They have either taken over Ukrainian airports or are fighting to take them over. As such, Ukrainian planes are not taking off and landing from these airports. This information is from Ukrainians and others inside the Ukraine. So I find it reasonable to believe it is more accurate than the garbage I am seeing in the British and American media. 

Here is an excellent piece on what is happening in the Ukraine and why. Quite different from the propaganda Americans, and others, are hearing on a constant basis. As I mentioned to a German friend last week, Europe is going to lose the most from this conflict. He agreed. 

Europe is screwed

I believe the first thing I wrote upon Russia's invasion was "truth is the first casualty of war," so I am sure the Ruskies are spreading there own disinformation. However, I have not seen anything positive about the Russian invasion on any major media outlet. So if the Russians are spreading disinformation about their military prowess, it is not getting through to the public in the West. 

In fact, given the ridiculous propaganda being spread by our media about this war, one would think American soldiers were in the fight. I am sure this is what our corrupt media and politicians want people to feel, but I pray we never send troops into the Ukraine. It is not our fight. 
I am pretty sure those who expect Putin to be deposed or something like that will be disappointed. I seriously doubt Putin ordered this invasion without deep-seated support from the elites in Russia, particularly the military. Russia lost something like 15,000 troops in Chechnya and Putin survived. In the overall scheme of things, the Ukraine is much more important to Russia than Chechnya.  Furthermore, you can be sure that the Russians have a very good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the Ukrainian military. No doubt, some of the top commanders or just retired commanders went to Soviet military academies with their Russian counterparts. 
We had better be careful what we wish for. Stirring up trouble via surrogates is a two way street. Working with China, Russia could create a lot of problems for the West across the world. The old Cold Warriors knew and experienced this. Our present Western leaders, maybe not so much. 

I have not seen much support for the Ukraine outside of the USA and the EU.  Surprisingly, even Israel has not said a word to condemn the invasion. Brazil, China, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Pakistan and all of Southeast Asia appear to be staying neutral. 

Many believe that the complete lack of a response by Western leaders to Zelensky's statement is what convinced Putin to commence the invasion.  I can't understand the stupidity of all involved in this. Make- Believe aside, one cannot simply continue to tweek a much stronger neighboring country and expect to get away with it for ever.  

Ukraine may pursue nukes  

100% agree. I still have some of my old political science texts on the workings of both the Soviet and Red Chinese government structures. These made clear that what was truly known was minimal and everyone was making a lot of conjectures on how things worked. 

War is always the result of people making stupid mistakes. And then adding to them by refusing to admit the mistake.

Fox is reporting that Ukraine is claiming 4,000 Russian KIA. While that seems an extreme number, half of that I could easily believe. Initial reports are the invasion force was about 100,000 so 2,000 KIA represents 2% loss. There are no reports on WIA for the Russians but if you take a 3-1 ratio that make total casualties to somewhere in the neighborhood of 6-8,000, a figure I could believe until better information comes up. This in 5 days of combat should have the Russian general staff very concerned, even if they don't say anything.

If the reports are true and there are 4,000 KIA that equates to 12,000 WIA and total casualties of 16,000 a 16% figure over 5 days. If that continues the Russians are going to need a lot of body bags. 

This in AT pretty much answers many of your questions

www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/its_ukraine_gaslighting_time_.html

The piece's content is a very good argument for staying out of this mess in the Ukraine. The writer states very clearly that he has no idea about the Ukraine, Russia and what is happening now. This pretty much typifies the average American's position on anything to do with foreign policy, i.e. it is the three monkey's stance, hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil. This being the case, we should finally learn to keep our noses out of areas about which we have zero understanding.  But the military-media-security-state-financial-foreign-policy-industrial complex will do everything it can to keep Americans stirred up, fearful and angry, in order to further its own ends, of which the two most important are to keep power and make money. 

As we have discussed this is not a problem just reserved for Biden or even Trump. It is the result of 30 years of failure to do realpolitik by Republicans and Democrats. There is not going to be an easy solution or an appeasement treaty. It has global consequences for millions and there is a good chance millions are going to die.