That would be beautiful karma.
He should have watched that Netflix documentary, Winter on Fire. It may have shown him just how hard Ukrainians fight for their future.
Worrying if accurate
For me, I'll hold on to my moral outrage over what Russia is doing when I see the West introduce much stronger financial sanctions on Russia and Russian elites. Otherwise it feels a bit hypocritical to claim to care so much about the plight of Ukraine while our leaders don't put their money where their mouth is. Cutting off the money will act the same as cutting off the head of a snake. Until we see such actions taken, I find it hard to get behind the tut tutting of our EU leaders.
There are reports of Belarusian volunteers fighting for the Ukraine side. My new wish: the war Putin started toppling Lukashenko and Putin in one go!
Oh yeah I would say so big time.
Them and the other NATO members seem to be doing anything they can without actually crossing into Ukraine
Why did read that in Mark from Peep Show voice.
Plausible. Historians will tell us, I guess. (In wildly differing accounts.)
In the here and now, it just seems crazy.. the negligence in the Russian military must be massive.
Amazing watching coverage there seems to be no shortage of Ukrainians with perfect or decent English to be interviewed. So not a case of them just doing it at school but then using it day to day or now and again. In my wife's case (not Ukrainian but not far away) when she was at home was downloading torrents of US tv shows like the simpsons and friends ot chatting on line like here on Boards.
I would like to propose uranium be renamed Ukraineum.
I was reading that the Russians were relying on mass panic across Ukraine and thought that Zelensky would flee Kyiv as soon as the Russians approached the city. They weren't counting on massive resistance and Zelensky staying to lead the fight against them.
The Americans are providing intelligence and targeting information, a commodity far more precious than bullets, given how vital situational awareness is. I would say this has been an unsung vital reason as to why the Ukranians are being so effective. Those downed Ilushin-76s were very likely hit because of a warning they were coming and precise targeting information being supplied in advance, allowing AA resources to be ready.
Stinger and other anti aircraft weaponry arriving way to late. Never mind the bollocks just fight the war instead of a proxy war like so many others in history. This pretend we are not at war nonsense is ridiculous.
I don't know about that. Most experts were saying beforehand that Russia would start with a massive and overwhelming aerial bombardment, a la Baghdad. That clearly has not happened. (I hope it never does, obviously.)
You also need to remember none of what we are seeing is been seen by russians. Moscow has censored internet traffic due to western propaganda.
Quotes from a senior US official on turning Russia into a "global economic and financial pariah"
“We’ll go after their yachts, their luxury apartments their money and their ability to send their kids to fancy colleges in the west. We will also engage other governments, so as to detect and disrupt the movement of ill-gotten gains, and deny these individuals their ability to hide their assets in jurisdictions across the world,”
“Russia’s government borrowing costs have more than doubled to almost 17%. The S&P credit rating agency has downgraded Russia to junk status. Within 24 hours of our actions the demand for cash in Russia spiked 58 fold, according to reports, and the Russian government scrambled to deplete its own resources to try and shore up its banks and its currency. In short, Russia has become a global economic and financial pariah.”
“You heard about fortress Russia, the war chest of $630bn of foreign reserves,” they said.
“It’s impressive, but it’s only impressive if Russia can use those reserves. And that means Russia has to be able to sell those reserves and buy rubles to support its currency. And so what we’re committing to do here is to disarm the central bank. And the way we can do that, for example, is by banning US, EU UK, persons from selling rubles to the Central Bank of Russia. That means very simply, the Russian Central Bank can’t support the ruble, full stop, and that means our sanctions will have much greater force.”
Well, according to Russia it's a limited special operation in the Donbas, so they can't really show them taking over Chernobyl or an airport in Kiev.
Or maybe they haven't managed to achieve anything worth filming yet. 🙂
1) seems the most likely. By all accounts, Putin thought he could launch a 'shock and awe' attack on Ukraine and topple their government in a few short days.
1) is very possible
Related to 2) they don't have half as much modern warfare hardware and tech as they have made out...a lot of the hardware seen has been seriously old and in poor condition.
Azerbaijan are a muslim country, and they hate Armenia who practically have a military alliance with Russia. So their main ally is Turkey.
What are the chances of any of the follow?
1) Putin is genuinely surprised by the resistance and thought that Russia had much more support in Ukraine itself
2) No-one is telling the truth and the Russian army is far smaller/less trained than assumed.
3) Considering the corruption in industry in Russia, what are the chances that they've ripped themselves off and are worse off weapons-wise because of it?
You're probably right. Those Russians who are well used to temperatures below -20 in their normal winter probably never came across those problems before. They should have used some fella from Athlone, or wherever you are, as a consultant to explain it to them beforehand.
All plausible and inclined to agree with the gist, but what about the hundreds of people, not close to Putin, in the Russian miiltary whose job it is to think about logistics? What have they been doing the past few months? I'd love to think that they have sabotaged the mission deliberately. Maybe other posters are right and Russia is a paper tiger, militarily speaking.
True and I would say they are providing a serious amount of intelligence, satellite imaging etc. Germany sending weapons is hugely significant imo
Ukrainian volunteers
You have seen the Russian Military in action in winter ( or summer time ) Donald, have you?? Even here, there are reports of vehs running out of fuel, and breaking down. And you can be damn sure that there has been "gelling or waxing" problems too. Well what ever about Napoleon, it was the Russian winter which played a massive part in the German defeat.....and they knew very well how to manage cold weather and vehicles too, even back then.
Putin just wants a Russian puppet in Ukraine to keep Ukraine close to Russia. This invasion is a result of Zvelnyy basically blocking the pro Russian opposition (Putins friend). With Zvelnyy, he has no authority or influence in Ukraine. And Zvelnyy put sanctions on the chairman of the pro Russian opposition which started this whole troops along the border thing.
One encouraging thing is that even though there are no NATO soldiers(at least none that we know of) in Ukraine there is a shed load of weaponry and munitions going in plus turkey and others ate closing off the black sea. And BTW if I haven't said it before fcuck putin!
This this conflict is also showing the changing face of war. Seems to be a real use of the ordinary soldier with a Jav or Stinger, etc. Tanks seem to be not very effective at all or just I'm only seeing a very limited footage from one side of a conflict. Which is also odd....
Russia does not seem to be showing much of its own footage, like it did in Syria. Odd behaviour.
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