Russia - threadbanned users in OP

It helps tie the Rouble in to a tangible asset that is rising in price.

There is talk that they might accept gold.

Russia and especially China have very large stores of gold and commodities built up.

I imagine he was referring to those 2 lobotomised fúcknuts who "represent" us in Europe.

No fun having a 7 star hotel on the water if you can't dock in the prestigious places you are used to.

TBH he has a point. We have weapons gathering dust that will never be used in anger (hopefully!) that would aid their efforts against the Russians. We're not neutral in this fight. We are squarely on the Ukraines side. We should give them everything they need to defend themselves because the reality is they are also defending Europe and Ireland from the biggest threat to our peaceful existence Putin's Russia.

Do you honestly think the Russians are going to treat use differently because we only supported Ukraine with non-military aid, bollix we're in with everyone else who have provided any aid at all to the Ukrainians. We need to stop this pearl clutching and go all in here.

Ugh your posting the alt-right sex tourist again?

I agree, my wife and I have been helping out the Ukrainian refugees in the town here as much as possible since they arrived. She probably put a good 30-40 hrs in last week organising with them, signing up for medical card, finding schools to take the kids etc. So I feel we are helping as much as we can, but I wouldn't begrudge him the swipe at Ireland with respect to the military supplies, especially given the situation he is in. We can and should do more.

American volunteer fighting in Ukraine

I think they'll have severe difficulty going any further than Kherson, I would expect the Russians to blow the bridges at Kherson and Nova Khakova if they lost control of the north western bank.

I don't know why the Ukrainians hadn't the bridges mined and blow them when this all kicked off. Apart from a railway bridge, the next road bridge across the Dnieper is Zaporizhzhia, 350km upstream.

He's not talking about military supplies (of which we have bugger-all anyway, even if we were constitutionally in a position to offer them, which we're not).

He's talking about help with fastracking their EU membership.

I mean people still bang on about the no-fly zone which has been categorically shot down by everyone and their dog; whereas what Ukraine badly needs is anti-air capabilities:

• Slovakia has been given two or three Patriot systems by NATO and still don't seem willing to hand over their soviet stuff to Ukraine.
• The likes of Finland, Egypt, and Greece have systems which Ukraine could immediately use but there doesn't seem to any movement there even though Egypt were allocated a bunch of fighter orders recently.
• We're a month in and NATO/EU could have been training Ukrainian crews on one or more NATO systems but I guarantee that hasn't been done either.

The "best" we've seen from the West in terms of further anti-air support is the Starstreak system but that is both short range and only available in very limited quantities; and from what I've seen they have only just started training Ukrainians to use this system in Poland.

And the latest thing is we're hearing about anti-ship missiles which I don't believe the Ukrainians have ever asked for...

I am delighted to read that the russian "rabble mob" has chosen to "dig-in" defensively

This is another in a litany of stupid decisions and the Ukrainian Military will have no problem (with satellite assistance) routing them out

It ought to be noted though that Zelensky has been very direct and outspoken in his live address to nearly every Parliament and is not someone afraid to speak his mind. His attitude is 'We're at war and we're being bombed every day, it's no time for niceties'.