Russia - threadbanned users in OP

The problem with that video of Ukrainian soldiers shooting Russian soldiers in the legs is now the Russian propaganda machine will use it to prove to Russians that the Nazis need to be stopped. It will also be shared among Russian troops who are guarding Ukrainian POWs so if they werent getting tortured before this then they more than likely are after that video. The Ukrainian soldiers who filmed and uploaded it to the internet have now put their own POWs in a lot more danger. Like in the video you can see at least one Russian soldier is close to death from bleeding, its unlikely he survived much longer. So the Russians will see that and say its an eye for an eye. The video also thrashes the idea of any Russian soldiers surrendering for the $10k payment, they will see it as a trick now after that so its completely counter productive to Ukraines war effort.

In terms of the information war the video being released is after giving Russia a gift that they will use. Its good that the Ukrainian authorities are going to investigate but its really damaging for those soldiers to release it, their own POWs are going to face the backlash now.

I can't believe it either, as Putrid has never done anything so uncivilised before. Unless of course you are so uncharitable and uncouth as to mention poisoning another Ukrainian president - Yushchenko - with dioxin, Litvinenko with Polonium, Boris Nemtsov with bullets, the Skripals with novichok and Nevalny with novichok.

No prior form whatsoever, totally unbelieveable.

Think again: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2014/07/elliott-argentina-debt/

I'd say it also indicates that at least in America news outlets have decided the "novelty" of the war is wearing off and people want distraction from something else.

I considered that it might be staged but now a Ukrainian govt official has come out and said they are investigating it would seem to suggest it is real and not Russian disinformation

yeah for sure they will make up propaganda. Not all people will believe it though. But a video like that showing torture of POWs is just giving the Russians what they want. Their propaganda is that Ukrainians are nazis and now they have video footage to back that up by showing the video on State tv, thats the way they will spin it for their domestic audience. The video is not helpful at all to Ukraines war effort and Id fear for their POWs after it came out.

Well they said they would investigate, all that means is they will try to determine if it is real or not. It might be real, I really don't know. What I do know is that the Russians would have form with staging these types of things, they benefit from it, there is no benefit to the Ukrainians in filming and posting it. So, I would think in this case Cui Bono?

There is clear precedent for this. The US Supreme court ruled in favour of using Iranian frozen funds to compensate victims of it's actions. If you can't see similarities or applicability, then that's fine. I'm sure we will be reading about compensation cases against Russia for some time, so we will see how it pans out.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/120-nations-accuse-us-top-court-of-violating-law-over-iran-1403333

The Sochi Olyppics was probably Putins most public display of corruption. By the time all was said and done that Olympics cost $51bn to stage. To put the scale of corruption into perspective the previous Winter Olympics in Vancouver cost $9bn to stage. In the summer edition London (2012) cost £15bn and Tokyo last year cost $13bn. So Putin spending $51bn on a winter Olympics was just pure gravy for him and his crony oligarchs, the scale of the theft of Russian public money was off the charts with that Olympics. Even at a conservative estimate somewhere in the order of $35bn got siphoned off to oligarchs with Putin taking a nice wedge of it for himself.

Sochi was also where Russian state sponsored doping began to come to light. At that Olympics (as with all Olympics) the host country has to build a laboratory for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to operate from during the Games. Its where all the samples from the athletes are tested and analysed for steroids and other PEDs. The Russians built the laboratory but unknown to WADA they also built an underground tunnel connecting it to a non descript office building up the road. At night time KGB agents used the tunnel to get into the doping laboratory and swap urine samples of doped Russian athletes with clean ones. There was even a tamper proof seal on the samples which was developed by a Swiss company who were specialists in them and it has security features on it and was supposed to be fool proof. But the KGB replicated the tamper proof seal so well that at the time none of the scientists in the anti doping lab opening them up copped it, even though they were told to be on the lookout for fakes.

And then the scale of the actual doping they were doing, it was at an industrial level with hundreds of athletes involved. If a Russian athlete refused to dope they were just dropped from the team so it was ether dope or give up your career. But despite all that was later found out about Sochi Olympics and Putin using the states resources to for mass scale cheating the IOC barely gave him a slap on the wrist.

They're really doing a great job, if the plan is to make sure no-one will want to travel to Russia (now or in the future).

I heard Carlsberg will be changing their slogan to 'Probably the best lager that Russia can no longer access.'.