Russian armor is moving into civilian areas. As we've seen they have zero problem targeting and killing civilians, nuclear reactors, humanitarian columns.
Defeat for Russia is a failure to achieve thier goals. All of the options above are defeats for Russia except for the one you see as the most attractive
Germans investigating war crimes
omg - i can never forget that footage of the elderly couple in a car. Utter disgrace and war crime
Tbf the US have been meddling with the governments of probably half the countries in central and southern America for the last 50 years. They've never fully invaded but a lot of those governments have been the CIAs playground. Us War on Drugs has been a pretty good way to feck Mexico in the last 30/40 years too.
Pure war crime - no ambiguity - appalling
Couple of known posters working hard to validate Russian attacks on civilians. Have watched a lot of nasty footage in the past days, have no time for that kind of behavior
So, what's your plan. Do you think you'll still get paid once Putin is deposed?
CNN put up a piece about a Ukrainian hotline that Russians are calling, looking for information on the whereabouts of soldier family members.
Ukrainians starting to use some interesting tactics
Can you think of reasons why single, male refugees would tend to make it further from the warzone, and thus make an increasinly large proportion of the population as you get further along the stream?
So you're saying all Russian soldiers and equipment are perfectly entitled to open fire on any and all civilians without any regard for the situation? Are you for real?
You really need to identify what's a win and what's a loss in this war.
It'll become much clearer once you look at this war from a macroscopic point of view.
Ukraine is just a battlefield, the real war is between Russia (and the camp it belongs to) and US/Europe.
From the get go, Russia has the upper hand simply because Autocratic regimes have almost nothing to worry about except how the war progresses, while democracies got lots to consider before participating in such war.
Add to that the fact that Putin seem determined to win in Ukraine as it's a strategic interest to him and with every day passing it appears that his objective is to turn the country to rubble leaving it less and less relevant to the west to invest in rather than occupying it and he's willing to sacrifice the already drafted troops for it.
One the other hand from a western perspective, we're fighting a proxy war - that alone is a proof who Ukraine really matters to more.
Now if you pay attention to how americans handle proxy conflicts eventually they're going to pull the plug and abandon whoever is fighting, the last 2 examples for this were the Kurds in Syria and the Afghan army in Afghanistan.
if you keep an eye around the world today, this is what you see happening:
keeping the above in mind, and with all the implications on world economy, the Russians are putting up a show in Ukraine while blackmailing the west coming to the negotiations table. <-- this is the only relevant negotiation table, and not the one in Belarus.
The real question in Putin's and everyone's mind is, how long can world economies survive before they pull the plug and abandon the Ukrainians to their doom and come to the negotiation table to save their economies.
what is worrying here is that if those negotiations fail, then direct military conflict will be unavoidable.
1994 agreement between Ukraine, Russia, USA and UK would oblige USA and UK to intervene.
Yes. I understand the excuses often given. Which is why I pre-empted this point by saying it was legitimate to ask why the women and children are able to take a pit-stop on the way.
You should at least acknowledge that there would be people who claim to fleeing war who really just want to be given status to remain in Europe.
Lets be honest, we had a huge amount of people come into this country in the late 90's and early 00's who were all fleeing for their lives. Out of those there are examples who, once they got status here and eventually got their passports, now travel back and forth for family events, seemingly oblivious to the life-threatening dangers they must obviously remain in. Nobody is claiming that about Ukrainians or actual Syrians.
The Russian troll farm element seems to have calmed down on this thread.
Looks like US is going to go ahead on the ban Russian oil imports (just for the US)
Putin is using the alleged breaking of an alleged verbal assurance given to Gorbachev that NATO wouldn't expand eastward in order to give himself the moral impetus to break an agreement with Ukraine which was actually signed, sealed and delivered.
Putin is bluffing and is unlikely to use nukes - that comes from someone far more expert than anyone posting on Boards and most of the commentators online.
I therefore think getting some non-nato countries to put boots on the ground and provide air cover with a clear rule not to engage any targets within Russia, is what the west should do.
Europe needs to follow ASAP.
No more excuses or deliberations!
that agreement is null and void now, it was supposed to protect the "independence and sovereignty" of ukraine, i did neither
Embassy van man is exactly how I pictured him.
Russia is doomed. I'm of the opinion that we just need to accept the inevitable price hikes in petrol/gas and cut Russia oil/gas for Europe off completely. Let the revolution begin in Russia when everything closes.
I think just claiming it was Chernobyl is a tat simplistic.
The Afghanistan war had huge ramifications and was very costly.
What Chernobyl highlighted was the poor standard of Soviet technology.
They tried to keep a lid on it like they did with their often very dangerous or even failing subs, but they just couldn't.
Added to that US military technology was getting more and more hitech and the Soviets just could not financially compete even if they stealing the tech.
Sovert defense budget spending in 1980s was estimated to be 15-17% of GNP whereas the US as around 7% of GDP.
Considering what they are doing in the Ukraine they think a fella reversing a truck into a gate is ' barbaric ' !? NURSE !!!!!
State shouldn't pay a cent... the state didn't do it and they have insurance...
Please explain to me what the neo-nazis in the Azov regiment have done that is worse than what the Russians have done to Ukraine?
The whole thing is utterly absurd. Talk about whataboutery and deflection.
There was a reasonably compelling debunking of "Russian tank crushes car" by a fact-checking group affiliated with France24.
https://observers.france24.com/en/europe/20220301-video-debunked-russian-tank-crush-civilian-car-kyiv
They believe it was a Ukrainian Strela-10 that accidentally ran over the car due to confusion nearby. The have only done one or two debunkings related to the conflict so I don't think they are part of any pro-Russia conspiracy.
This video was originally accepted without question by many posters.
Right, and I addressed the point about why families and single women might be more conservative (and have more opportunities) when settling for 'acceptable' safe haven. Personally, I can well understand why - having been driven out of my home by war, and losing everything - I might as well risk going further to get to somewhere with (what I perceive as) more opportunity.
So we aren't debating whether it is acceptable for a male to be a refugee (although another poster took issue with that). We are just debating how incovenient it is when they turn up near us.
Edit: to clarify, I accept that there will be a proportion of young males in that population who are neer do wells. It would be the same if, by some misfortune, a couple of million Irish people had to become refugees.
Indeed! Very little spoken about that agreement. Instead of repeatedly asking NATO for no fly zone, if I was Ukraine I would be focusing on highlighting the content of that agreement!
Disparaging comments on a person's looks.
Smig git!
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