Sounds like Syria Mark2. Shamina Begumski will be disowned in a few month's lol.
Either way, it was a stupid thing to do. It's incredibly bad for optics. Too much of that sort of thing and there'll be a lot of little Ukrainian flags disappearing from people's social media accounts.
I think it’s naive to believe everything will be rosy and nice on Ukraines side in the war.
Their country is under attack, the people and army are under huge stress paranoia and worry.
Even Zelensky looks a man shattered and his comments yesterday shows that.
Things like that execution if true unfortunately is to be expected.
Yes I know, the Kharkiv convoy, but is another angle of it
I saw someone earlier in the thread claim that the Russians had until today to run their campaign. Well....today's the day. Mind you, I also saw people saying they expected Kiev to fall by Tuesday, and look how that worked out. That was after a couple of nights of 'Well, looks like tonight is the night for Kiev' in reference to the expect artillery bombardment on the city centre, which still hasn't happened.
I'll be absolutely honest here- If some nation invaded Ireland unprovoked, if I was given a rifle from the state to defend myself, I wouldn't be taking prisoners- I mean, why tie up precious troops guarding POW's when they attacked us? They're going to murder us anyway- so rule book for me is out the window as a citizen.
I've no doubt, given the strong feeling of the Ukrainian people right now, at least some are probably thinking and doing the same as above. I have to say, I can't blame them - but from a leadership perspective, they'd still want to be careful how they are seen to be behaving - while it's a war, part of leading a war is to navigate the road of gaining and keeping the support from other people and other countries.
Looks like there some conflicting information there.
Both visa and mastercard have said that cards issued abroad will no longer work at businesses or ATMs in Russia.
However Russia's central bank have insisted, that all Visa and Mastercard bank cards issued by Russian banks would continue to operate normally on Russian territory.
"Cards will continue to work on Russian territory, the (Russian Central) bank said, because all payments in Russia are made through a national system and don't depend on foreign systems"
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60637429
Thousands of civilians being killed (more to come) and you think public opinion is going to dissipate over a spy being summarily executed in the middle of a war?
Nah. Glory to Ukraine! The defenders of Europe.
'Goodwill' has never been a foreign policy tactic of Russia. Russia has only ever valued strength and power, both in their leaders and in their dealings with other countries. Russia will see NATO's reluctance to impose a no-fly zone as a sign of weakness and will exploit it to the maximum. Although it would be a big risk to enforce, I think it's the only thing that will deter Putin; meeting a superior military force.
The Ukrainians have the free world on their side and I hope they don't tarnish that with any ill thought out acts. I am in awe really of their fighting spirit. All the expats going back to fight for their country is amazing. I really don't think I'd have the cajones for that at all.
It's clear they want the black sea isolated. They may of though going into Kiev was easy but they are just doing enough to keep Ukrainian troops there busy. To many fires burning at present so losses will be high. The question is how long can Ukraine sustain all the fronts. Russian will flood soldiers in along the new land bridge from Rostov.
If they close off the area over Odessa then they can chip away at that from the sea, creating a cauldron.
Nato going into Moldova might make them question the mission westwards, but thats what will happen anyway.
No need to disguise SF as mercenaries, they're already there, probably been for a while.
I know of 3 ex soldiers from Ireland who are in the process of traveling to Poland. Already signed the papers and said their goodbyes.
What do the Ukrainians in, say, Odessa, have at their disposal regarding defending against warships? Russia has quite a lot of these, and Ukraine has almost none. In the same sense as the javelin missile is effective against tanks and the stinger against aircraft, what types of mobile ordinance do Ukrainians have or possibly stand to receive that could hit a warship, if any?
Obviously, warships are orders of magnitude more massive than either tanks or airplanes, so it would be beyond naive to expect any kind of bazooka thing to sink one, but does any kind of system exist at all which the Ukrainians could use to deal strategic damage to them?
There’s an interesting Twitter thread basically saying this convoy is a giant POW camp that the Russians made themselves and that the Ukrainians don’t even have to feed. The tanks are chewing up the road surfaces, the wheeled vehicles are getting stuck in mud driving around vehicles that are broken down or out of fuel, cheap tyres are falling apart and there are indications many of them have perished due to being left in the sun without moving the vehicles for at least a year. The fuel trucks can’t move up the line to refill the trucks and tanks at the head of the line. Batteries have run out and they are having to use normal broadcast radio to communicate as a result. Food rations have or are rapidly running out. https://twitter.com/trenttelenko/status/1499894935209795594?s=21
Why would it be a war crime
Unfortunately Ukrainians aren't a homogenous entity, it's a people and military under war, over time mistakes and atrocities will happen - which Russia will capitalise on and exploit
You can dress up a war crime.. its 100% wrong regardless of sympathies.
It's a lovely story, whether true or not. I'm laughing at the army taking a lift in a building - shows them up as lazy and thick- just what did they expect 😂
Unfortunately, I think one of the comments to that is correct, this probably is the same column that was destroyed near the beginning of the conflict, only filmed from the other direction.
It couldn't be going better for NATO, just supply equipment and Russian assets slowly, but surely get depleted. The longer this exact scenario goes on the better.
But the alternative is a full-scale nuclear exchange that wipes out most life in Europe and North America. Is that better?
Is there any modern day equivalent of Mad Mike Hoare operating in Ukraine, I wonder? i.e. A notable bloodthirsty mercenary from the West who's venturing out there.
Yeah the reality is Nato don't need to fire a single bullet to **** up Russia.
I can only presume the relevant heads got to get around food/fuel shortages and figured out we have it covered (especially with the Gov here telling farmers to get back planting crops, which is probably a good thing)
What war crimes are you claiming is happening or has happened
There will be a nuclear war soon whether Putin starts it or another country.
Id rather know he gets taken out with the rest of us if he starts it.
Instead of us dying and he continues on.
If Russia nukes Ukraine, its almost certain NATO will go for launch, and hope they destroy most of Russian nuclear weapons. Its not a great plan, but being first to strike is better than second
I don't think there's been any war in the last 50 years, that hasn't had "war-crimes" attached to it- each set of atrocities worse than the previous war- given how this war was started unprovoked, I wouldn't class a Ukrainian citizen shooting an unarmed Russian soldier a war-crime in this particular war. The Russians aren't taking prisoners - they are setting out to murder the whole government and their families- and have said this. So Russia has torn up the war rule book.
BBC World News taken offline in Russia- I'm surprised this didn't happen earlier. Just announced now on BBC News
They seem to have zero tollerance for Russian sympathisers and quislings at the moment. I have a slight inkling as to why.
Oh sure, very understandable considering. However stuff like this can hurt the overly simplistic "previously peaceful sovereign nation invaded by a tyrant" narrative. They have been viciously invaded by a tyrant and twat, but Ukraine's politics before this invasion were very complex and not very twitter friendly at times either.
The Donbas was like the Troubles on steroids with internecine violence on both sides and both sides were directly supported by their supporters in the government in Kyiv and the government in Moscow. And yep including 'nazis' by the Kyiv side. The Azov battalion a good example. A hard right wing group whose founder publicly stated that Ukrainian policy should be to rid the nation of Jews and other races. They're officially part of the Ukrainian national defence. This is a good article on some of the complexities.
Now they threw out a Russian mafia puppet and voted in a Jewish TV personality whose staed aim was to reduce corruption and bring Ukraine forward so clearly the Ukrainian people want positive change and the Russian wanker doesn't like that one little bit, but there remains enough dodgy Ukrainians with extremist and murderous attitudes that gave Putin his wafer thin excuse to invade and support at home from Russians to do so.
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