Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Absolutely ridiculous to go blaming the Green party for a fall out as a result of Russian natural gas being cut off. Climate change is a different topic, and to be honest, unless this war descends into something nuclear, then preventing global warming is STILL more pressing than this conflict.

Completely short sighted and blind to think otherwise, especially considering global warming will no doubt contribute to the cause of more wars in the future.

That would be a tad silly- I have no military training or experience.

As I said you are naive or deliberately chosing to be so

Putin is banking on his threat of Nuclear Armagedon to prevent any other country doing anything while he attempts to recreate the USSR piece by piece with his claims of "historical and cultural" imperatives to excuse what he has done and will most likley try to do again.

are they really - the worst since hitler?

Maybe the families of the million iraqi dead or the parents of the deformed babies born in Fallujah as the USA (our heroic allies) used chemicals like white phosphorus would beg to differ.

Maybe the victims of ISIS may beg to differ too.

Or the people in Libya - thanks to NATO.

We aren't really exposed via our media to Putins motives . But after all this time in power he didn't wake up the other day and decided "i'll invade for the craic like..". something caused this. When we understand that , we will understand why this happened. Not to say he is right cos war is horrible. framing this in the context of goodies and baddies belongs in the movies. Russia, the Eu, NATO the US and the heroic Ukrainian President caused all this .

rest assured, what we see on our tv screens and in the news is what politics and business interests want us to see for reasons that aren't wholly clear and are being kept from us but the immediate effect is to push the narrative that Ukraine is good, russia is bad.

The only victims are the population of ukraine and the russian conscripts.

In term of Russia , they invaded. that was wrong.

In terms of the west, why are you trying to antagonise Russia by courting a nation on its doorstep? The USA didn't like similar before - see cuban missile crisis . Imagine the freak out they'd have if Mexico was a Russians ally and had all the military stuff stationed at Tijuana . But it's ok when america does it.

Mearsheimer's basic argument is the same as what Sergei Lavrov is claiming on the news just now - Ukraine is being 'dragged' into NATO and NATO being, 'Moscow's mortal enemy', is not something that Russia will tolerate the eastward expansion of. The dirty, dirty West, muscling in on someone's else's main squeeze, prodding the Russian bear without reason...

The one thing Russia never does in any of this - and this probably comes back to being a profoundly authoritarian regime led by one man for the last 20 years who could only win a judo bout when his opponents are literally throwing themselves on the floor - is look in the mirror. Instead of asking themselves how their own administration could change to be amenable to the people of Ukraine, they blame the West for leading Ukraine up the garden path. It's insulting to Ukraine to essentially talk about it like it's geopolitical equivalent of a small child that cannot make informed decisions for itself. It cannot be that the people of Ukraine perhaps see liberal democracy and western values as more attractive than what Russia offers, going forward. Oh, no. It has to be that NATO are buying Ukraine off and social engineering is taking place.

On the last two points, even assuming they are true, it's still Russia throwing a strop over losing a game it knows all too well how to play.

As far as I remember, they have their own Russian problem the Kurile Islands? And they may well be on Vlad's "unfinished business" hit list.???

She's lived in the UK for about 25 years, but told me she only watches Russian news because western news is propaganda. I was quite taken aback by how non-integrated she was. I mean on the face of it she's integrated into British life, has a job etc - but when I got really talking to her, she amazed me. Then she dropped the "we loved Stalin too". It's at that point I changed the conversation to the weather.

Again, as has been pointed out numerous times in the thread, there is a chain of command for launching nukes and not necessarily everyone in that chain may feel that Putin's political demise necessitates blowing up the world.

The west is a bit of a shambles. It can be quite hypocritical too.

But nothing, nothing can justify this onslaught on a country that did not attack Russia in any way. Ukraine were not on the verge of joining NATO. Not anywhere near it. Ukraine gave up their nukes. What more of a conciliatory sign of peace would Russia need, than its neighbour giving up their nuclear protection?

I believe the population is less than 3 million and 400,000 have taken up free Russian passports in only 8 years ,so I don't think there is massive support as made out by Russia and several people on here who seem to believe a huge part of the population of Ukraine wants to be Russian bases off their opinion only

That convoy could be wiped out pretty easily in an hour ,the further it moves into ukraine the more likely it will be targeted and one missles start hitting there is no where Run to retreat

Is anybody wondering is this a move by Putin to spread the Russians around Europe by getting Ukraine into the EU and no visa requirements

Around 10 million of Russian ethnicity are in Ukraine and will have free access around Europe now