Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Russian convoy repelled advancing to Brovary a couple of days ago. Russian general killed. Russian tank convoy fleeing with tail between their legs.

Russians unable to take any area of note.

How many energy bars to sustain a Ukrainian fighter for 1 year?

That's the weirdest response I've every heard.

It's simple in my mind: politicians are sold to the highest bidder, and US Energy companies have the most money. Buy the politicians, buy the country.

Likewise with the rise of ultra-rich tech companies, lots of politicians are owned by them as well.

Their crowning achievement was the Citizens United decision, which until undone will affect American society forever.

It's been very refreshing to live in an EU country like Ireland after growing up in the US and seeing what it's like to deal with a society and infrastructure that are not wholly corporate owned. Just got back from a trip to London, no problems or surprise charges on my Vodafone phone. A trip to the US a few years pre-Covid, I couldn't use one phone throughout the freaking Seattle area because it was always 'roaming.' And, here I have a phone, 20 euros/month and I get more than enough data and texts and calls. In the US I doubt there are any plans like that, at all.

I could go on and on; certainly since GWB the US has been wholly corporate owned and it impacts daily lives.

That's actually how they work at the troll farm in St. Petersburg. They work in pods of three in the same discussions.

https://www.rferl.org/a/how-to-guide-russian-trolling-trolls/26919999.html

Burkhard: Our department commented on posts. Every city and village in Russia has its own municipal website with its own comments forum. People would write something on the forum -- some kind of news -- and our task was to comment on it. We did it by dividing into teams of three. One of us would be the "villain," the person who disagrees with the forum and criticizes the authorities, in order to bring a feeling of authenticity to what we're doing. The other two enter into a debate with him -- "No, you're not right; everything here is totally correct." One of them should provide some kind of graphic or image that fits in the context, and the other has to post a link to some content that supports his argument. You see? Villain, picture, link.

RFE/RL: So all three of you sit together, agreeing on who's going to do what in this performance?

Burkhard: Yeah, that's the kind of absurdity that goes on. We don't talk too much, because everyone is busy. A single comment isn't supposed to be less than 200 characters. You have to just sit there and type and type, endlessly. We don't talk, because we can see for ourselves what the others are writing, but in fact you don't even have to really read it, because it's all nonsense. The news gets written, someone else comments on it, but I think real people don't bother reading any of it at all.

So in this way, our little threesome traverses the country, stopping at every forum, starting with Kaliningrad and ending in Vladivostok. We create the illusion of actual activity on these forums. We write something, we answer each other. There are keywords, tags, that are needed for search engines. We're given five keywords -- for example, "Shoigu," "defense minister," "Russian army." All three of us have to make sure these keywords appear all over the place in our comments. They can't even be conjugated or declined. Sometimes it's very hard to write when you can't use any declensions!

Interestingly enough the dissemination of misinformation by the Russian Embassy in the UK is firing away and has already come under scrutiny with Twitter having to delete their content for contravening Twitter rules.

Their efforts to paint the pregnant woman injured in the Russian bombing of the maternity hospital as being a 'fake' is possibly some of the single most cowardly and pathetic efforts at trolling on that platform I've seen to date.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ukraine-linda-thomasgreenfield-twitter-instagram-london-b2034234.html

Yeah it's the Ukraine thread in Politics that's gone to pot, totally overrun with trolls banned from this one

For those pushing for a Major intervention with Russia, be careful what you wish for. Nato are playing the long game, because it's crucial in order to save many, many more citizens, countries and societies. It's the most dangerous tightrope they've ever walked. One wrong move and the Chernobyl disaster ( and most of us remember the fear that caused across Europe over those horrendous weeks and months) will look like child's play.

If the West are afraid of Russia blowing up chernobyl or launching Nukes, then they have lost this war to Russia. I don't agree with NATO playing the long game. I think the longer this war goes on the more NATO will have to get stuck in, it may soon escalate to that and they may have no option when Putin comes knocking on Polands door or Baltic states. I worry for Moldova and Georgia after this war on Ukraine. They are on their own and they know it.

It happens to most international threads, the mods have been doing a good job on this one.