With regards Germany spending 100bn on refurbishment of their armed forces.
I was watching a guy the other night who made some good points about how much the west has actually DE-militarized in the last 40 years. This peace narrative has put Europe especially, in a position of pretty low competence when it comes to war or an invasion.
He said France has 250 tanks, Germany has 280 tanks, and the uk has 200 tanks
Russia - wait for it - has 12,500 tanks.
This wasn't about tanks, it was about how dumbed down European militaries have become. I know if anything like this happens again (china invades Europe for instance) you will be very glad of Germany's investment.
which was in reply to my saying:
"cnocbuiFeb 26, 2022
https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118696207#Comment_118696207
It would be rather nice if the French foreign legion turned up at the border and swapped their uniforms for the local ones - ahhhem!"
Take that, bitch.
Hi. Great question. They have used cruise missiles throughout the campaign. Mostly Kalibr cruise missiles launched from TU-22 over Belarus and also ship launched munitions from the Black Sea.
[quote]Yet Russia can quite happily invade Ukraine and other NATO members don't do a thing.[/quote]
NATO members have done a hell of a lot in the past week. They just haven't done it in NATO's name, because that would really be a red rag to a bull. They're sticking to NATO's rules - which gives them credibility - while donating military intelligence, military weapons, economic sanctions, and cyber attacks in Ukraine's aid. That's a not insignificant contribution.
Edit - can't work out quotes on stupid new boards format.
Tanks are becoming less important with the latest shoulder missile and drone technology.
Ukraine has officially brought a lawsuit against Russia to the UN International Court of Justice in Hague. We demand that Russia be held accountable for manipulating the concept of genocide to justify aggression.
Info from Polish state TV web page in English: https://tvpworld.com/
3 days ago I'd say avoid it as plague, but now the situation has changed...
So the gay bashers from Chenyna got their arses kicked. The Airforce who found that hitting undefended hospitals in Syria is not as easy as dodging determined men with stingers had their go. Now the woman beating mysoginists from Minsk are on the way. Belarussian airbourne troops on the way according to Ukrainian defence ministry.
I suspect they find that women armed to the teeth in Kiev are not the same prospect as women armed with flowers in Minsk.
Messed up the Syrian sentence 🤪
Moscow to Kaliningrad flight route:
Moscow to Athens:
The simple fact is this - the western world is so financially, culturally and militarily centred around the USA that imposing sanctions on them would be ruinous for a lot of countries attempting to do it. Or at least it would create so much pain for those countries' citizens that they just wouldn't tolerate it. The kind of sanctions that Russia faces just wouldn't be an option for a country like Ireland to impose against the USA, not that Ireland would even have the international leverage to impose them.
But what we do have is liberal democracies where we can speak out against government actions. Where we can peaceably assemble and protest and tell government administrations that we think that what they're doing is wrong, and we will vote them out if they continue to do it. We can donate money to initiatives which help victims of war. We can tell the world we don't agree with our governments' doings. We're not hypocrites. We're just individual humans trying to get by in a world where military hegemonies and alliances are going to exist and all we can do is hopefully be with the lesser of two evils.
I think that few days have shown that those Russian figures are overestimated.
How many of those Russian tanks are actually running?
How old are they? You can be guaranteed that the tanks in Germany, France and the UK are far more advanced.
A man with a modern mobile anti tank missile system turns those multiple tanks into multiple iron coffins.
Tanks are sitting ducks. slow, cumbersome, containing crew to be shot or taken hostage and consume huge amounts of fuel which is in short supply on the battlefield.
I regularly visit a military museum nearby and look at the old world war 2 tanks with holes from high calibre ammo straight through armour which is 4 or 5 inches thick.
The security of a Tank in a war where the other side has access to semi-modern weapons is an illusion.
That's the point, on a military level NATO members won't attack Russian forces.
New Turkish drones have been put good use attacking Russian convoys.
And the Ukrainians took a large delivery or air to air misssle for their combat aircraft , hopefully they can engage Russian bombers coming in
Agree. This is a war like no other in history. I assigned this weekend to study but cannot get focused on what I need to do at all.
It's almost like we can all play our part, whether not buying Russian goods, making a donation to buy arms and supplies or retweeting an important message. In a way with modern communication methods, you see the impact of the war in close to real time from the living room.
The Uk spend a third of that every year, so that's, say, €900b over the last 2 decades. So no, while I welcome the German gesture, that's really all it is, and it's the UK and French expenditure I welcome. I like almost every German I have met, but 'Germany' is a terrible and selfish country in many ways, not least of which is making Trump right on one topic. That is pretty much unforgivable.
Why would Ukraine invading Russia - two non-NATO countries - trigger a NATO response? Russia invading Ukraine hasn't triggered a NATO response.
But despite all that, it's not at all correct to say, as you did, that "Russia can quite happily invade Ukraine and other NATO members don't do a thing." NATO members have done a hell of a lot - just not in NATO's name.
Could you have a go at explaining this thought process again? There's a lot wrong in there, but it could be down to typo's, e.g.
If Ukraine were to bring any military action across the border into Russia during the curent conflict, Russia's mates in NATO would be obliged to view that as an invasion of all NATO members
NATO and Russia have signed several important agreements on cooperation. And that's why NATO won't attempt to do anything in NATOS name to Russia
Again what use is that - If their role is only to protect their own regardless?
I reckon this has shown NATO as little more than a potential big bullies club.
It's largely a defensive organisation, with loads of weapons. Who exactly are they going to bully?
youre not wrong. But propaganda is not normally completely fabricated. It’s takes the form of exaggeration, sometimes gross exaggeration. The lack of any propaganda from the Russian side, compared to the Ukrainian side, suggests to me that their successes are so limited that they don’t even have anything they can take and exaggerate
Belarusian citizens are protesting against the war.
The poster you are quoting appears to think Russia is a member of NATO I think ?????
A bit strange, but that is the only conclusion I could reach from their post
The Germans have closed their airspace as well and a flight to Athens might be academic by the end of the day!
It's almost like we can all play our part, whether not buying Russian goods
That it would be difficult to seek out and find Russian goods to buy in the first place says much about the current economy and economic reach of Russia.
Yeah, that would make the argument add up, but it's obviously not correct.
I think they're arguing that Russia has a friendly agreement with NATO which means it's governed by the same rules as if it were a NATO member, but - well, I don't know about that; a link would be handy.
And it's still not correct to say that NATO members have done nothing in all this.
Despise those who, instead of condemning Russia for invading Ukraine, wield the opportunity as an excuse to condemn the United States and Nato.
We've seen numerous examples of this ugly phenomenon throughout this thread, and its utterly sickening at this stage.
When you look at Crimea and the proxy war in the East and see how easily Vlad got what he wanted with little enough spray back on Russia. This move imo truly shows he's completely lost it.
I thought he might move in and take everything east of The Dnieper. It would have made sense (to a tyrannical mad man) similar to crimea. But this full scale invasion has a whiff of Hitler deciding to invade the Soviets. It's definitely the start of the end for Vlad.
But... but... America?
There was a very specific warning against that type of post a while back
@[Deleted User] do not post in this thread again
It also says a lot about what that country has achieved in the how many decades since communism fell?
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