Must be starting to feel the squeeze.
And looks like a no-fly zone is completely off the cards
Sure military leaders love the permission to play their war games. That's what Aleppo was for them - think Guernica. A free shot to test their air strike capacity. War crimes without doubt. They probably also enjoyed the Donbass and Crimea 'manoeuvres'. However when they realise they have bitten off more than they can chew and the casualties mount up and/or Putin becomes increasingly unstable, they wont be shy in ousting him.
The Russian economy is being propped by Pakistan, etc. They should face harsh sanctions. Their support (albeit tacit) is sustaining the brutal killing of innocent people. Any profit that they make will be tinged with the blood of Ukrainian children. I really hope that karma gets these people
Latest from Stoltenberg
"Stoltenberg stressed that Nato is not seeking a war with Russia.
Speaking in Brussels, he said Nato is a “defensive” alliance. “Our core task is to keep our 30 nations safe,” he said.
We are not part of this conflict and we have a responsibility to ensure it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine.
That would be even more devastating anand more dangerous, with even more human suffering."
Also warning it will get worse as Russia brings in more heavy weaponry
Yes.
Still can't see a nuclear option, but, I'm sure the it will never happen stance of many (including myself) is starting to erode little by little each day, nothing thus far in this conflict fits into what we would consider conventional after all.
This is the link.
He is saying that while Lavrov is threatening nukes.
Yeah I'd agree 2 sides is easy to follow (us and them, good and evil) and that's the whole point of propaganda, to keep the natrative simple. We would probably lose interest pretty quickly of it becomes complicated with lots of sides.
I think Nato, or a collection of powers under some other banner are going to have to intervene, and its going to have to be in the next week or two.
If Ukraine is allowed to fall into Russian hands, it is only a matter of time until the next "training exercises" involving a massive buildup of troops take place again, probably at the border with Moldova, followed of course by some peacekeeping intervention, or de-nazification. Then after a few more years, another exercise at the border with Poland/Slovakia etc.
Putin wants the USSR back, it is as simple as that. Former Eastern Bloc countries have a target on their back.
Are the military that big of a power at the micro level in Russia? As per 50% of my posts on this thread this is a question rather than a correction. The FSB and their foreign operations brother will have people high up who will likely know much more than the military guys. Then there's paramilitaries and different organs of the state and whatever other parallel structures that have been set up that we know feck all about. Unless it happens very soon I'd wager that the next Russian leader will be someone that even the somewhat informed have so far never heard of.
I would also make the point that the Russia has not exactly shown efficiency in any of its previous forms. The casualties they took in WW2 and WW1 were horrendous and while they did do the bulk of the work to defeat the Germans it was not far off of throwing wave after wave of their own men into them. Plenty of tanks kamikazed themselves into their counterparts counting on the weight of numbers in their tanks. Since the start of the last century they have lost to Finland and Japan in shock defeats.
A large point of the Stalin's pact with Hitler was to rebuild the USSR army's command structure which had been crippled by Stalin's own paranoid purges on anyone he felt was a threat.
Yeah I was gonna say surely you mean final 2 roubles but that would only be equivalent to a tiny fraction of 2 cents at this stage...
Putin is in no position to be commanding anyone to commence normal relations. He’s the one who’s brutally invaded a country for no particular reason and is continuing to cause a massive humanitarian crisis, which we in Europe are cleaning up the aftermath of and will be for years and years to come.
And why are we doing that? Because they’re our neighbours, and we’re not going to let them sink into an abyss because that’s what post war Europe has been all about and that how we’ve had decades of relative peace and prosperity. It’s about values and about a common humanity and of very hard learned lessons of the past.
He’s displaced at least a million people who were having perfectly normal lives a week ago.
I’m really fed up with the attitude that you can keep attacking, trolling, cyberattacking, carrying out endless propaganda wars against “the west” and that you’ve some right to keep access to all the “goodies” like being treated as a friendly nation.
Russia had every opportunity to be a friendly neighbour. The EU in particular has bent over backwards to try to reintegrate countries that wanted to reintegrate and has also a very publicly declared objective to work towards peace, stability and prosperity in Europe - it’s an organisation that came about because of the horrors of WWII and then extended to various post war former dictatorships and the countries undoing the aftermath of the Cold War.
Russia was always welcomed as a trade partner. Endless warm hands were extended. Why do they think we were buying gas, integrating supply chains, cooperating on space missions…
He (and you can see this in the propaganda around Brexit too) see a world of fighting empires and nothing else. They’re lost in the 19th / early 20th century.
Russia has now just invaded a country that wasn’t doing anything to threaten them. They’ve made nuclear threats to neutral countries that are so neutral they are practically hippies and aren’t a threat to anyone let alone Russia and they’ve managed to basically cause the EU to have to jump to its own defence under hostile threat.
They also did this right as Europe and the world was barely recovering from what is an ongoing pandemic …
and apparently Europe is the one that needs to restore normal relationships?!
It’s like the narrative of a violent bully / abusive ex bf or something.
Countries are free to choose to join NATO.
NATO doesn't have any "designs" to invade Russia, they are no threat to Russia, only to Putin's imperialist and history rewriting plans for neighbouring countries. Of course Putin spins Russia as the victim (always) and portrays it as expansionism.
We are here because Putin invaded Ukraine and was always going to invade Ukraine, NATO or no NATO.
That should tell you that Israel will do what is necessary. If Ukrainian or indeed Russian Jews come under threat, they will take measures. Overt or covert. And they won't be offering up any apologies.
You seem nice.
Gas production from Corrib is forecast to decline over the next decade, accounting for less than 20% of demand by 2025 with supply ceasing around 2030.
Oh yeah, that's going to be one hell of a mess. You're right that if Ukraine wants to 'win back' some of its own territory, it means shelling it. I also think similar to what happened in Syria could happen in Ukraine. Initially there were two sides and it quickly became 37 sides. We could see more foreign volunteers appear in Ukraine, Belarus could gat involved. At that point the general western public will lose interest in the mess of Ukraine and it just becomes the new normal to have this low level war of attrition in a European country.
...and now he has even gone as extreme as these huge long tables.
If putin took a bottle of expensive vodka and a revolver into a bunker and did-for himself, who would take over and would they be much better? If putin is the biggest head-kicker in Russia, would the next in line just be the next biggest head-kicker or is there any real chance of genuine regime change?
Edit: @HalloweenJack addressed this a few posts ago.
Yeah of course they'll do that, and we'll downplay any civilians deaths causes by Ukranians. That's just how it works.
Wow a whole 14 thousand. Still insist those few male to get circumcise.
Thats the most positive thing I heard all week from this clown. Pressure from within.
"Corrib supplies around 60% of Ireland’s annual demand with 35% imported from the UK and the remaining 5% coming from the Kinsale"
Did the Klingons help the Borg in the great Gamma Quadrant war?
If not hYPocRisY
Average Russian infantry are paid less than their Ukrainian counterparts
Moved to Poland on the 22nd (along with their AN26 and a helicopter) and onto Stuttgart today.
I was responding to the suggestion that ukranians should start bombing Russian targets (the poster included hospitals and schools so I'm pretty sure they meant proper terrorism). EDIT: They said economic targets not civilians targets.
They are already attacking Russian military targets and that's fair game. Interesting how we would probably never think of it as shelling the own people. They pull out of area and attack the Russians who have moved in, they inevitable hit ukranian civilians and Russia Today reports they shelled their own people and we report that the Russians did it or we just say people died and imply the Russians did it.
Once they start into insurgency/terrorism, then we won't have a clue what's true and what isn't
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