There is ZERO chance Putin well ever be anything other than a pariah on the international stage (with some dishonourable exceptions, i.e NK), and by extension, Russia, while he is still in power.
He was largely on the outskirts of international diplomacy for years, there's no way back for him/Russia while Mad Vlad is in power.
If anything good came out of this is that it was done before China would have ideally liked.
Talking of which one of the largest metallurgical plants in Europe was attacked and destroyed in Mariupol yesterday. Russia again tries to bolster its own economic position
So am I. I was advocating real intervention in the first week of this as I believe it's inevitable and that Putin's bluffing. The earlier you intervene, the more lives you save and destruction you prevent. Everyones hoping for some mirracle so they don't have to, like Europe did sitting on it's hands while watching the ethnic cleansings in the Balkans, praying for a mirracle, before finally realising there weren't going to be any
I remember screaming and raging at the TV saying 'do something now'. I've been raging for weeks now for the same reason. Putin won't stop this until he has accomplished what he's set out to do. Everyone who thinks he can't possibly win is kidding themselves; serial appeasers. Putin will probably start using chemical weapons at some point. He seems aimed at absolute mass slaughter of civillians and egendering hopelessness and fear until the Ukraine government can't take any more and surrenders.
Only boots on the ground and planes in the air will stop Putin from winning via surrender, as it's only those that can allow what's necessary to prevent the use of chemical weapons.
Putin is bluffing about the use of nuclear weapons against the west. I suspect Biden knows it and is cynically using it as a justification to keep the US out of it. Europe and perhaps some others like Australia, are more than capable of turning the tide and devestating Russian air, naval and land forces in Ukraine without US involvent other than what they are already providing in terms of weapons, intelligence and asssessment.
Bypasses the firewall (great trick this archive.ph thing): https://archive.ph/Ekjwm
I agree. It's absolutely sickening. But would you be willing to risk nuclear war by using NATO plans to attack the Russians?
DO IT NOW
Sure we can. First give Palestine back to the Brits, then they can hand it over to the Turks, who will hand it over to any number of Arab kingdoms/empires(none who were Palestinians, who can then hand it back to the Greeks(Eastern Roman empire), then maybe a unified roman empire rule, then back to the Hebrews, who can in turn give back to the Phillistines. Palestinians still dont habe a state of their own
One serviceman from the combined detachment of the 331st Guards Parachute Landing Kostroma Regiment of the Occupiers, which took part in the fighting in the Kyiv direction, survived, and he is in hospital.
Glory to Ukraine!
Talking about war crimes means nothing unless someone intervenes. Until then it's just waffle that the political classes like to throw about. The only way to punish war crimes is to devastate the perpetrators. Sick of our cowardly governments sitting on the sidelines watching atrocities in Syria, Yemen and now Ukraine. They've learned nothing from the mess they made of Yugoslavia.
The legal processes required to have the funds allocated would take years, unless there were specific legislation passed to skip the legalities and award the seized funds.
The only way some of thes war criminals will ever get the justce they deserve is if Ukraine - if it survives - trains people to infiltrate Russia and track down all the military pilots, commanders and planners behind thes attacks and assassinate them.
These people will never give up.
Nice video from the Russians of the damage from the Kherson airport strike. It's seems highly likely, given the debris everywhere, that the helicpoters that appear to be in one piece are inoperable due to being hit by the debris, not mention a lot of the equipment to maintain opperability likely has been damaged or destroyed.
And here they are towing some of those intact looking damaged helicopters:
One of the most advanced manufacturing countries in the world and they can't knock up a few barrels to replace ones with hairline cracks. Sounds like total BS to me.
More like the typical, if its in our interest we'll do it, attitude that prevails in Germany.
Why would you pay more , ? For eg - shell buy a tanker of oil from rosneft , she'll deposit the agreed payment in a bank (prob in dollars ) , and the swift system automatically removes the " rebuild ukraine percentage" and if Russia don't like it they can sell to some one else ,( Mali maybe ? ) Who would then be subject to secondary sanctions - or not sell fuel / fert / food at all - but they need the foreign currency -
Australia has banned the export of alumina and bauxite to Russia.
Where I grew up, the back roads were surfaced with bauxite, which is rather retarded, because it's basically comprised of reddish/tan almost spherical 3-10mm hard nodules that act like ball bearings. When you slide, you really slide. We even had our driveway surfaced with bauxite, which is an absolut b***h to kneel on. Bauxite being aluminium ore.
He UN should immediately start compiling a list of who these people are ant tell Russia that it is responsible for their safety and none of this s!,t that they ran away into the Forrest and died from starvation
Knock yourself out.
Yes
Couldn't agree more. It will have the downside of making things more expensive, but that can be overcome with more jobs being created and ( hopefully) higher wages.
I see the cosmonauts are towing the party line this morning....... Standing with their president and their people. You couldn't bomb Moscow enough now IMO 😡
Nope , world market prices but there's a charge in the banking system- and not just Europe .swift is pretty much world wide , and secondary sanctions could force/ encourage most of the rest of the world to play ball..
Let`s not forget the same thing with China basically.
Time to rework the western economic system not just to get off Russian oil and gas but to get off Chinese rubbish. We can generate our own power and make our own goods. Literally everything necessary exists within the 'western' economies (Australia for metals for example).
Here's an indication of aircraft and missile launch activity from Belarus since March 1st; shows that the last three days have been particularly quiet:
It appears Kherson was attacked multiple times. And when aircraft where on the ground.
But it's gotten to the stage further into the war that seeing planes being shot down won't be a frequent. Even the shelling and attacks on the likes of Kiev are rare (rare for media to comment on them, but it's still happening)
There's been very little footage of ground troops fighting also, but that's not to say it isn't happening.
We've been spoilt with the cruise missile camera from the gulf war!
I think the lack of footage of Russian attacks says alot more of the situation though.
Yeah but the losses at Kherson were due to artillery hitting targets on the ground: I'm referring to the claims Ukraine have been making about shooting down aircraft. Remember too that earlier in the invasion they claimed 30 helicopters were destroyed at Kherson but satellite imagery only indicated about 6 were actually destroyed.
Also in the vast majority of cases it has been citizens and soldiers posting videos of losses and hits on aircraft; I'm really just commenting on the scarcity of footage this past week or two compared to earlier in the invasion even though Ukraine are still claiming significant numbers of aircraft downed.
And you're right about the lack of sorties and the Russians becoming much more risk averse which also makes me question how Ukraine are still shooting down as many aircraft as they're claiming.
In any case all I'm really saying is that Ukraine are probably counting any and all reported possible kills in their figures; as opposed to those which have actually been confirmed in any tangible way. Which also makes perfect sense from a morale perspective too; I'm just saying their figures should be treated as a maximum rather than an accurate figure. And they're hardly going to be sending troops into enemy fire to try and find and document wreckage either.
There has been satellite images confirming mass helicopter losses from Kherson airport.
There's been daily updates on Russian losses, but as the war drags on, they become less important (to us viewers, not for Ukraine) also, it's a lot harder for journalists to be showing Russian losses now the war is in full scale. Very hard and dangerous for them to move about.
Also Ukrainian soldiers are probably reluctant to be posting videos for fear of giving their location away.
The Russian airforce is also reluctant to be flying many sorties as they still do not have air superiority.
Add in the fact that Russian video are very scarce, either because they are scarce or they have to censor video's because of their 'special operation'
Eh if you read between the lines I think it's quite likely they were expressing support for Ukraine.
This is a picture from the press conference on March 17th the day before they left where they're wearing blue: https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/russian-cosmonauts-set-friday-launch-international-space-station-2022-03-18/
And then they somehow ended up clad in bright canary yellow when they were left alone on the capsule; yet nobody thought at any stage before-hand that it might not be the best optics given the political climate?
Added to the comments attributed to the cosmonauts themselves:
"Every crew picks a colour that looks different. It was our turn to pick a colour," he said. "The truth is, we had accumulated a lot of yellow fabric, so we needed to use it up. That's why we had to wear yellow flight suits."
I'm not really sure how you "accumulate a lot of [yellow] fabric" and then "[have] to" wear a certain colour when you're literally an astronaut. I have also been unable to find a cosmonaut wearing anything other than the primary colours of the Russian flag; although there are some turquoise suits I think that passes as close enough to blue.
Also the mouthpiece who claimed it had nothing to do with Ukraine is the same gobshite who claimed they would abandon the US astronaut on the ISS due to sanctions so yeah; not sure he's exactly the most reliable of sources.
This is kinda reinforcing my point.
The picture in the tweet you linked was taken on the 2nd of March which is now 18 days ago (https://i.postimg.cc/Zqj182jJ/987.png); there were more pictures of confirmed aircraft losses and aircraft being hit during the first couple of weeks of the war versus the last week or so even though Ukraine are claiming 10+ kills per day. That's my point.
Also you mentioned the "onboard view of it coming down" which is also incorrect; that refers to yet another different helicopter which was forced to land sometime during the first days of the war. Again reinforcing my point that we aren't seeing as many downed aircraft lately.
The first of many contracts for Russian gas that won't be renewed I suspect
Which is balanced by them delivering 20-40% less, so it wouldn't work
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://we.vanillicon.com/v2/e050b53be62f0ae2404c620976170938.svg)
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://we.vanillicon.com/v2/eedacf599b4135dfd56d6fdbddcbd867.svg)
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://w0.vanillicon.com/v2/05bfdb0bc9f81b358ccf2f55186422bb.svg)
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://we.vanillicon.com/v2/efd3dd9d0bb9a4718dd25ad32419f424.svg)
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://w6.vanillicon.com/v2/62877c35768f143f69acd7bb6cd43f3c.svg)