Russia - threadbanned users in OP

The Ukrainians fear that Belarusian armoured forces will invade and go towards Lviv.

If face-to-face combat goes that near the Polish border and a missile fired by Russian or Belarusian forces goes in a certain direction .....

Going back quite awhile, a poster mentioned that his Russian wife had a guaranteed and fool proof way to end the war, overnight. Her solution? Offer every soldier an EU passport......

Any apparent collapse of the Russian state, especially Russian security forces, would be a calamity. Rogue missile commanders, rogue missile sites.

Today, Lachlan visited a group of young Ukrainian cyclists who have had to flee their homes and are now being hosted by the Polish cycling federation.

etween the ages of 14 and 17, most of them have had to move there alone leaving parents and older siblings behind.

Why do they still call him "Mr. President "?

He first says former President when introducing, but then addressee him directly as Mr. President, not the first time I've seen that.

Would second that, then have another thread called Russia which could be a general Russian non invasion thread which contains 0 posts.

Sometimes we divert into opining on why Russia is the way it is and political developments in Russia. Obviously the invasion of Ukraine will dominate the thread, though. I don't think anyone's clicking on the thread expecting to find us in the middle of a discussion about the situation in the Caucuses.

The way the Russian army is behaving I'd say that even now, command and control if far from 100%. And as time goes on and things get worse for the invaders ( and get worse they will. ) Troop control will deteriorate...drunken officer's do not command respect, never mind confidence. So while I hope that Missile sites are under stricter control, I would not like to bet my life on it either even in the present time's.

There's an odd echo in there of an anecdote by George W. Bush. He said in an interview that he never saw eye to eye with Putin. When Putin visited them he scorned Bush's little pet Scottish Terrier 'Barney'. A year later Bush was in Moscow and Putin brought in this enormous hound and said 'bigger, stronger and faster than 'Barney''. Bush puts it pretty plainly, Putin has a massive chip on his shoulder. It makes you wonder if he had a hand in this himself. It's not very subtle how some of the dogs are overweight, bored, undisciplined and fighting amongst themselves while the 'Russian' dog is obedient and pristine! What a bunch of jerks behind this.

Putin must be apoplectic at the disastrous incompetence of the Russian army being broadcast day after day. I think he has clear narcissistic traits.

Does it though, in any major way? My impression is local partisans in each area are doing the bulk of the fighting for the Ukranians...

Because a medical doctor has never been a psychopath and/or broken their oaths? Not that you even need to be a psychopath to make threats like that really; honestly seems rather tame as far as the spectrum of nastiness we've seen so far in this conflict goes.

I don't really get why anyone is surprised to be honest.

Even in the West with all of the widely and freely available sources and resources at their fingertips there are large swathes of people who constantly parrot the same inaccurate talking points about "MSM" and "leftists" and "cancel culture" and "Nazis" and "far-right" and every other bloody thing.

So just imagine what it must be like when your entire country, every social media platform, every pub/workplace/whatever is just full of the same echo-chambers repeating the same crap about Russia and the West. You would actually need to go very far out of your way to find any conflicting view points.

A complete narcissist. His lack of humility would be equally disturbing and bemusing to those of us in the West because we recognise it as an pretext to a particularly pronounced kind of tyranny.

There used to be a show on a channel called NTV that was launched during the Yeltsin years. It was called Puppets and was extremely similar to Spitting Image. It sent up prominent Russian people, including Putin. Shortly after Putin came into power, he had the head of NTV thrown in jail. Supposedly, the show bothered Putin tremendously, especially its parody of him.

Even a broken clock is correct twice a day, maybe he's on to something with lowering the price of oil ???

Didn't realise he redesigned submarines and nuclear weapons, I'm both shocked and awed

Why am I thinking "Flash Gordon's father, out for the day" ?

And we've priced ourselves into a nasty little box too because the cost of living and average wage in many parts of the West is so high that to actually...

• Find land for a new warehouse/factory.
• Build the new warehouse/factory.
• Equip the new warehouse/factory.
• Bootstrap the workforce for the new warehouse/factory.

... would require vast amounts of capital investment before even a single product rolls of the production line.

It's an awful shame companies were ever allowed to build entirely proprietary devices and actively encouraged to plan for obsolescence whilst discouraging the repair of said products. We may yet come to seriously regret consistently selling to the lowest bidder and rarely if ever considering long-term consequences.