Understood, but the fighting will end one day and, hopefully, trials will begin. We can't just throw our hands up in the air because one of the beligerents thinks differently about how wars should be fought.
This has nothing to do with us, as bad as it is / sounds.
Putin should be punished economically, and not through some military adventure that could lead to nukes being fired.
In the same way, an awful war in Africa has nothing to do with us.
If Putin invades a NATO member, that's a different story. But it hasn't happened.
Pedestrian crossings are vital military targets it seems.
Here’s hoping the Russian voices opposed to this get louder and louder. He needs to be taken out by one of his own.
Any attack on Russian troops like that would be a declaration of war - not the brightest idea when the other guy has nuclear weapons coming out the rear end.
Also Russia has defacto control of Ukrainian airspace at this stage, so its not like NATO planes can roll in unopposed for strikes.
NATO/US/EU will not respond militarily. Economic sanctions are the order of the day, and they will be limited in scope due to EU being dependent on Russian oil and gas.
They can't without dramatically widening the conflict. As was said above, Ukraine isn't a NATO member and politically there doesn't seem to be any will from its members to go in with their own troops at all.
Sanctions are all that'll be used so long as Putin doesn't cross the NATO borders.
They could use drones...no need to put pilots etc in harm's way
Elements of the U.S. right have openly supported Putin, but make no mistake, the Russians have infiltrated movements on the left too. Divide and conquer.
No. They can to a certain extent give Drones to the Ukranians and teach them how to steer them. NATO can't send drones on strike missions.
They can deliver weapons to the border of Ukraine and Ukraine take possession of them but NATO can't be seen to use them.
Russia won't want to accuse NATO of being "in" the conflict because if that is the common perception then they will drop all pretence(might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb) and enter the conflict and then Russia have a bigger fight.
Ukraine has enough soldiers. It just needs a steady supply of arms.
I agree that troops are off the table, but there is a lot more that European and US militaries can do. Russia has been cyber attacking the west for years, its about time the west strikes back hard in cyberspace, in conjunction with arms supplies and full sanctions
The definition of useful idiots
You can clearly see that here as a number of our so called Left seem to be swept up in that. There’s an element of student politics level of wide eyed, well meaning gullibility on some of those fringes and a willingness to believe that everything is caused by “the west” and “the mainstream media.”
It’s just another angle on the same conspiracy theories and they appeal to certain people on completely different ends of the political spectrum for very similar reasons.
France - " cutting Russia from Swift is a last resort "
There you have it, another added to the list.
Cutting them off from swift will do feck all when tanks are rolling towards Berlin and Paris
https://twitter.com/walterlekh/status/1497132358427893797?s=20&t=xAcleQbuxH398hixxS9OnA
Useful?
Nato and the EU should be more cognisant of Russian past grievances (and yes, they exist).
Branco Milanovic spelled this out in a recent excellent essay.
Perhaps if meaningful negotiations take place with Russia, things can take a turn for the better. And it means, at a bare minimum, that Nato stops its aggressive and needless Eastward expansion.
Any negotiation should make clear the prospect of eliminating sanctions and returning Russia back to the international fold.
Complete isolation of Russia, and targeting it economically with sanctions, may only advance nationalist sentiment in the country rather than somehow lead to the overthrow of Putin. It may also further throw Putin into the arms of President Xi.
I find it comforting that this is the only avenue of attack the propagandists have to criticise the western response and suggest disunity. SWIFT, SWIFT, SWIFT. So what.
You can't really just "hide" the fact that your troops or weapons are engaging in a foreign theatre. The US can't pretend that a drone strike wasn't them any better than the Russians could pretend that they didn't shoot down MH17.
The sanctions/SWIFT issue isn't that huge a deal. Europe is blocking it for now because it would basically mean a gigantic bank guarantee would have to be put in place for Europeans with money in Russian banks. It may be that they're giving a little more time for people to move their money out of Russian banks before shutting it down.
The military aid issue is that although a NATO member could unilaterally decide to deploy troops to Ukraine, if Russia were to decide to then attack that NATO member (or another one) directly, everyone gets dragged into the conflict. This is less of a problem when you're fighting a proxy war 3,000km south of Europe. When the fighting is literally just over the border, then committing troops means you're all-in.
It's easy to sit here in neutral Ireland and ask why everyone is sitting on their hands, but for NATO members getting involved is a big ask with big consequences. There are grey channels being used to funnel support and hardware to Ukraine, but countries have to be careful not to be seen directly engaging.
Crazy footage, low level dogfight
If NATO hadn't put the Baltic States under its protection, if they had declared themselves neutral instead, right now they'd be like Belarus with Russian troops backing a puppet Russian stooge, like in the USSR days.
Russia can't tolerate a free Ukraine, whether it's in NATO or not. This has been coming since the Ukranian people threw out the last Russian puppet ruler.
He chose to act under Obama and Biden for a reason. That's a reflection on the modern Democratic party.
I know a few Russians, very very decent and kind people and very hard workers to provide for their children. I feel sorry for them in this aswell, thinking of the stigma that may be attached by some. Just know that there are some of us who absolutely don't fault the Russian people here and won't discriminate or label because of the actions of Putin.
Russia foreign minister on bbc justifying the invasion. Actually mentioned ireland as an example. “If ireland banned English language , what would England do?” (As of England would invade us for banning the language!). And then call a Jewish leader a nazi! Wtf!
Lavrov just now at a press conference "in Ireland, what would the UK think if they banned the English language '
He was referring to the Ukraine not allowing schools to teach in Russian
Though it's worth noting that a very large % of Russians support intervention / expansion.
Those turning up to protests are a tiny fringe minority.
NATO eastward expansion doesn't solve Putin's fundamental problem, that the Ukraine is no longer a Russian province.
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