Honestly even when COVID took hold I didn't feel the same sense of dread that I'm feeling now. A rambling loon living in his own delusions and reaching Stalinesque levels of paranoia is in charge of one of the biggest military powers in the world, who are butchering thousands of innocents, spinning a web of lies and projecting their own anger and insecurity onto the world around them. And as the Russian political class stare down the barrel of all of this there doesn't seem to be a backbone between them. The lunatics have really taken over the asylum.
I doubt they'll ever officially take Belarus on paper, easier to have that mess outside with (reeeeeally stretching the meaning of the next word) plausible deniability indefinitely.
Apartment blocks are shields. This is well known in Russia.
The News networks are beginning to beginning to dial back a bit now, they can sense their viewers are becoming weary after a week of 24 hour rolling coverage of the war. As public rhetorical dials back so too will the political will to do anything.
We probably won't be able to help Ukraine properly but we can do something for Moldova. I couldn't give a shite about domestic regulations, laws and alphabet rights. This needs to be done now. The rest can be worked on later. Same with Georgia.
"We are only targeting the Ukrainian military but people, nurseries, apartments, hospitals keep getting in the way"
Must try find it, but there was an expert recently on Twitter explaining the Russian version (known as Cheget I believe), IIRC it said unlike the US Putin does not have the sole power to use it and it requires the authorisation of four people, so we just need to be worried if it came to it would the other three be just as mad to make that decision.
As opposed to the proof that Putin provided of Nazis and Ukrainian citizens being used as human shields, of course.
For me it looks like he has a health issue that means he is immunosuppressed. Potentially a chronic or terminal illness. He looks like he is puffy which is a sign of steroids which could be part of his treatment. He was an evil piece of excrement before this illness but it appears to be evil X 2 now.
It's absolutely not the case that one man gives an order and its automatically carried out, no questions asked. Such a scenario is absurd.
I'm not arguing that point. You could say the same in Russia though. The only input the Chain of Command in the US get is whether or not it is a legal order. That is it. Had Bush decided "**** it" and ordered a nuclear strike of Iraq during the invasion it would have required an illegal break in the chain of command to stop it. I think that would have been likely, and perhaps that would give time for congress/cabinet to step in but that is what you are relying on.
The fundamental point underlying all this is that you do not need to follow an illegal order - but that is true the whole way up and down the chain of command in both US and Russia. The US system has absolutely terrible oversight in general and there is a reason that many are pushing to change it.
My point being something as extreme as a nuke wouldnt be necessary to cause disruption.
Anyway again its fantasy stuff. The thread is far better when facts are being discussed and there are updates from the various social media platforms
cant go in all guns blazing. We all die in that event. Have to concede, live to fight another day and develop a plant to take the bastard out somehow.
That's Georgia and Moldova for EU membership, who's next?
Sadly many Russians will believe it. According to my Russian colleagues, many Russians know their own leadership aren't angels, but they always assume the West is "just as bad" and up to the same or worse dirty tricks. There wasn't much of a gap between Soviet brainwashing and the modern brainwashing of the Putin regime.
This was the the statement delivered by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova last week regarding Sweden and Finland joining NATO.
"if Finland and Sweden join NATO, which is first of all a military organization, it will entail serious military-political consequences, which would require retaliatory steps by the Russian Federation,”
Mad how 'his people' are fleeing in their hundreds of thousands, but not to their brothers in Russia. Funny that....
If Finland & Sweden join NATO there is nothing the Russians could do to them.
Tbh all a statement like the one above does is demonstrate why a neighbour of Russia needs to join NATO.
Oliver Stone seemed quite taken with Putin. He went on the Stephen Colbert show to promote the documentary and Colbert's basically anti-Putin stance made for a pretty terse interview.
But that was all in the past. It would be one thing to try and see Putin's point of view back then, but Stone's latest Twitter post doesn't condemn Putin's actions even now, which makes it hard for me to take him seriously. Whatever you want to say about the nuance of the situation, or equivocate between what America or the West has done in the past, if you don't at least start with condemning Putin's giving a directive to go and level Ukraine, then that's pretty heartless.
"A leader of Ukraine’s Muslim community, Sheikh Said Ismagilov, made an address to Russian Muslims serving as soldiers, asking: “Why did you come to kill us?”
He said Ukraine does not need “saving” - as per Vladimir Putin’s rationale for his invasion - and asked Muslims around the world to support Ukraine’s fight for survival."
Yeah, no, we don't need any of this. Russian will immediately claim that ISIS is in Ukraine if this occurs, and use that as a pre-text for even more attacks on civilians and infrastructure.
Russia has always been one to deny what was happening even when the whole world knew the truth, remember Chernobyl (yes it's in Ukraine, but then part of the USSR and under the control of Moscow) how long did it take the Kremlin to admit what actually happened?
"I also studied at the Faculty of International Information..."
Poor lass probably did 5 years to gain a masters degree only to get wheeled out to feed the global press pure shite.
During the early 80s large numbers of Irish and British went to Germany when a building boom kicked off ,
Give it 18 months and the grandkids of those builders will be back in Germany building a large wall to keep the west out again!
I can't help but feel this is only the beginning. Russia doesn't have a viable out at this stage. There's no way back for the Putin Regime to return to the international community.
The only way this stops is if the big man in Beijing puts an end to it. But always said, China plays the long game. Russia have burned their bridges with everyone bar China, Pakistan and India. Half of the planet. Xi will see ultimate weakness on the behalf of Russia and sees opportunity.
So essentially, there is no out from this. Ukraine absolutely deleted off the map. Moldova gone. Georgia gone. Russia back to Soviet times.
The underlying gist of that little speech is that Russia (aka Putin) is saying that if either country applies for NATO membership - it's open season (a la Ukraine) for a military strike / invasion or whatever you're having yourself
The entire staff of Russian TV station "The Rain" just resigned. They end with the words "No War" and played Swan Lake as they left (Which all USSR channels did when it collapsed)
How long would it take for them to make the decision, ratify it, submit the request and for it to be accepted by NATO?
Parliament debate, referendum?, NATO process. 3 -12 months?
Haha, I lived in Finland for a while. They are nuts, they all have guns, all males aged 18 or over have to do a minimum of 165 days of military service and they've been preparing for a Russian invasion since the last time the Russians invaded in WW2. Not to mention they are E.U members. I don't Putin would be mad enough to try it.
I think your right there. For me the bigger issue was fear of democracy. Its one thing for the authoritarian dictator in Moscow to see the Baltic nations doing relatively well economically and free it would be a whole different ball game if a country the size and population of Ukraine was to develop into a relatively successful and prosperous democracy in contrast to his repressive regime and the poor economy he presides over in Russia.
As someone else recently said,
Theres already a lot of Russian soldiers in Finland, they just happen to be 6ft down.
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://we.vanillicon.com/v2/e050b53be62f0ae2404c620976170938.svg)
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://w2.vanillicon.com/v2/282101dc2976956f9dfc87f7a2ef2413.svg)
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://wb.vanillicon.com/v2/bd89cdce15309a6ec2dff928c865017a.svg)
