What part-if any-should Ireland play in the defence of Ukraine if Russia invades?

Militarily - nothing.

Diplomatically - tell people to cop on.

Offer Ukrainians asylum if it goes bad. We have nothing to offer militarily.

Close the Russian emabassy and expel the scum then invite the CIA and MI6 in to go over the premises with a fine tooth comb, given it's considered to be one of the most important Russian espionage centres in western Europe and is a base for a lot Russias anti european activities.

The Ukraine… It’s a country of 45 million people….

plus we are not exactly flush in terms of having anywhere to accommodate them, housing shortages are significant… or indeed money with which to support them…. With covid we don’t have the ability to support them financially, medically, socially or any other way….We can’t exactly get Aer Lingus to fly into a war zone to evacuate them either… imagine Captain Smith and first officer Kelly getting a shout for that gig ? “This week your roster is Dublin - Kiev !” “ there is a war there, the Russians are involved “ “yes, sorry, you’ll probably not get an overnight out of it… think of the danger pay, hey but you’ll be flying at night, safer !”

if Russia invades the Ukraine it’s World War 3…. Not the Transnistria War

Start singing 'Back in the U.S.S.R.'

Ireland should stand on the sidelines and shout "Ah hee-ar"

send in Daniel O'Donnell

While I appreciate the sentiments of the arguments about who and what to believe.... there is enough correlated OSINT floating around to come to some general conclusions:

-Russia are building up invasion strength forces on the Ukrainian boarder, on both Russian and Belarusian sides

-They have bolstered defences in Kaliningrad

-They have 4 huge landing craft in the Baltic which will possibly used as a diversionary tactic on a neutral nation (Finland/Sweden, Gotland being pitched as a likely target)

-The USAF/USN/US Army, RAF/RN, Swedish Airforce, Italian Air Force among others, don't have near continuous surveillance flights up in the Baltic and Black sea's for the craic

-At Ukraine's request, military supplies have been ferried into the country over the last few weeks

You don't even need the sensationalised/biased news reporting to find this stuff out fairly handy

That’s exactly what we’ll end up doing.

Close the Russian embassy and give all Russian diplomats 24 hrs to leave the country. Like was mentioned above, comb over the embassy grounds with a fine tooth comb to see what they had been up to. Militarily there is nothing we can do, but like another poster said, if we were in Ukraine’s position, what would we expect others to do?!

Send over the FCA. That'd learn those Russian special forces fairly lively.

(Or whatever the FCA is now)

Launch a full scale nuclear attack.

Rarely crossed - you mean like the FSB beating up foreign diplomats in Moscow whenever they feel like some exercise. Spare me this Russia is going to take on Ireland and the EU, so we need to tread lightly stuff.

There are a ridiculous number of Russian 'embassies' and 'diplomatic' missions in the US. The US got sick of that lark and revoked the status of several, and then searched them: https://newspunch.com/us-authorities-close-start-search-of-russian-trade-mission-in-washington/

"Dutch diplomat beaten in Moscow by unknown assailants" https://news.yahoo.com/dutch-diplomat-beaten-moscow-unknown-assailants-222329506.html

We should make clear to Russia that this is what we would do if they invade Ukraine. The rest of the EU should do likewise. The prospect for the Russians of having decades worth of espionage networks closed down and put under the microscope would I think be a meaningful deterrent.