Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Not even close at this stage and probably never

Hard to see China completely cutting off Russia for now if Russia prostrates itself to China in terms of natural resources. China will be sternly warned, I expect, by USA on Monday about offering military aid to Russia, and I don't think China is going to break its back in that regard, but my feeling is that they may at least offer Russia enough rope to continue hanging itself.

I've heard that there was a tactic of 'holding your enemy close'. Especially if they have better artillary and air support. Mixing it with the Russians inside Kyiv would mean that they can't deploy mass bombings/barrage as it would kill many of their own.

Nope, like yourself I can view my notifications :-) but for sure I had your post in mind because I thought it was very pessimistic going by the experience of the disasterous Russian ground campaign so far. Kyiv will be a graveyard for Russian soldiers be of no doubt of that

China abstained on the UN vote. If I remember correctly Syria, Belarus, North Korea and someone else backed the Russians so North Korea might be a better bet for them to head to with the begging bowl.

Edit: the other country was Eritrea.

An interesting article here on the current situation with Russia in an interview with the former NATO Secretary-General

Putin won't stop in Ukraine:

This article claims that the pro-Russian region of Moldova - Transnistria - is taking a neutral stance on the conflict for now because the quasi-state also has links to Ukraine. Interesting situation in Moldova, but I don't see Russia pushing into it in any meaningful way. Maybe Transnistria would elect to join the Russian federation if Russia could carve out a swathe of territory along the south of Ukraine and geographically link up, I don't know, just a thought, but if it were to occur, it wouldn't even necessarily require an incursion as Transnistria de facto controls its own territory. As for going into the rest of Moldova, it's more culturally aligned to Romania, as far as I know. It wouldn't line up with Mad Vlad's current idea of uniting the Russian peoples of Great Russia (Russian Federation), White Russia (Belarus) and Little Russia (Ukraine).

As for why they don't move planes through Moldova, if they could they probably would. I'm sure there are reasons and not that those of us on boards have considered something they haven't. 😉

I don't think the West can afford to go to heavy on sanctions against China if China elects to help Russia. So much of what we use on a daily basis is made in China. Diplomacy is a particularly fine balancing act in a globalised supply chain.

Yep seen that, if there is one person more traitorous and evil to his own people that Putin it's that cnuk , lets hope he has a "glorious" death

They launched missles Into Ukraine in support of Russia

No. But they could park them in the sheds and then if the Russians start acting the bollix, they could accept a few Ukrainian refugees that happen to be qualified pilots.

It would give the Russians some "excuse" to invade Moldova as well, but I don't think that that would be as important a consideration given what they have already done.

I'm being overly simplistic of course, but I'm sure there might be some way.

That is a grim prospect of how life might be under a Russian puppet regime. And some people here question why the Ukrainians would want to fight against that.