Russia - threadbanned users in OP

My take on the Russian is that they are not bad people at all (apart from the hawkish pro-Putin, pro war loons with Zs on their cars etc). But they have become very sheep like and docile, it seems there is virtually nothing that can rise them out of their slumber. It's not a normal society in any shape or form. Everyone keeping their head down, nobody going against authority, nobody organising demonstrations or active resistance to the regime. Even the Belarussians seem to have far more spark and fire in them.

Nobody in Europe or the western world wants to push on towards astrakhan. Just want Ukraine to be left in peace.

Talk about bad design. The ammo storage in Russian tanks is pathetic. It appears they will go off with nearly every hit. This is the most violent one I've seen so far.

It's in the Kremlin's interests to build Johnson up as an "anti-Russian" element in an attempt to eclipse how useful he and the Tory government in general have been to them. If he gets outed as a Russian asset, especially now, there might be a focus on getting to the UK to hurry up and cut off the UK's local Russian oligarchs instead of hiding behind "legal delays" that have been bying those oligarchs time to sell up and leave.

He's been by far their most useful idiot in Europe, but getting them to come out and call him the most active "anti-Russian leader", might be a little too on-the-nose.

It's like when they decided to mount the fuel tanks for their BTR armoured personal carriers on it's back doors where troops had to disembark ,one hit and everyone inside went up

From the Guardian:

The Biden administration and European Union are expected to announce a major initiative to direct shipments of liquefied natural gas to Europe during the US president’s visit to Brussels this week, according to US officials familiar with the plan.

The announcement would come as European officials have asked the US to do more to help them cut their dependence on Russian energy sources.

President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said an agreement would be announced as soon as Friday. According to one US official, it is intended to ensure supplies of American natural gas and hydrogen for Europe.

Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One on Wednesday:

A major priority for both the president and his European allies is to reduce the dependence of Europe on Russian gas, full stop, and the practical road map for how to do that -- what steps have to be taken, what the United States can contribute, what Europe has to do itself.

Speaking to EU lawmakers in Brussels on Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said all EU members “can contribute in reducing our dependency on Russian gas”.

But...but...but I thought Johnson was a Russian "asset"

Terrible English, should have reorganised the sentence thus:

The Biden administration and European Union are expected to announce a major initiative during the US president’s visit to Brussels this week to direct shipments of liquefied natural gas to Europe, according to US officials familiar with the plan.

Unless all these shipments are genuinely going to be carried out this week, in which case, as you were.

The problem with making statements like "we aren't being given the whole picture" is technically accurate; but more often than not used by people to take one of those "both sides" stances. It's also used by people who are indeed supporters of Russia to imply the West is lying or being deliberately deceptive or whatever else they want to claim.

The reality is that much of what is being reported in the Western media is fairly accurate; or at least is an accurate reporting of what various defence and intelligence officials are saying. Is it often biased to some degree? I mean sure; because for just about anyone without an anti-US or anti-Western viewpoint there are a number of truths about the current situation which are fairly self evident and it is clear the West is broadly supportive of Ukraine. Hardly anything overly surprising there.

We're also getting a fairly accurate picture of the types of things being broadcast by Russian state media to its citizens. Plenty of clips can be found which corroborate that.

So which exact part of the picture are you claiming we're not being given?

I'm not assuming that but Tomalak was positing a situation of all-out (but short of nuclear) war between NATO and Russia, however things escalated to that point, and talking about Russian military planners preparing for tanks rolling east across the steppes in that scenario. I was pointing out that would not be such a war would unfold, and the Russian generals know this.

To be fair it's also possible it was a self-inflicted wound; none of the footage is really consistent with a ballistic missile strike.

Ukraine unfortunately have very little control of the air, land, or sea in the south.