Can we keep watching what's happening in Ukraine and keep thinking "we are not going in to avoid escalation"? What would be an escalation if civilians are tied and shot in the back of the head? Raped, mutilated, burned, tortured and then driven over with a tank? It can't get any worse except the numbers going up, but they are going up anyway.
P.S. German president organised concert in his Berlin residence with Russian singers (among others) and invited Ukrainian ambasador...
P.S.S a Polish priest said during a mass in Poland today it's all fault of USA and now USA is trying to blame Russia. I can't comment on that...
This isn’t a football thread.
Why would NATO attack Russia when they have not invaded a NATO member ?
They've only waving the prospect of early lifting in order to make it obvious that Putin's only interest is land grabbing and they know he doesn't want to be seen to have been forced to negotiate. It may be so that he can't say "why negotiate, the sanctions are here for the foreseeable future?"
If anything, when word reaches Mariupol of the massacres and war crimes., something will become clear very fast. Surrender is a death sentence. Fight on.
100% agree with you.
Gadaffi didn't end up at the end of rope and there were a lot of calls for a full investigation into his exjudicial death at the hands of his captors. None for Sadam but some for the killing of his defence lawyer.
The NATO nuclear powers and Russia signed a treaty when Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons. If they wanted to respond in kind to a Russian attack on Ukraine they could cite that treaty.
"It gives signatories justification if they take action, but it does not force anyone to act in Ukraine."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances
Seems that declaration wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Symbolic international declarations without anything to back them up.
It also raises the question of whether anything that Russia signs up to actually means anything.
He ended up at the end of a stick(up his bum) when he was dragged from the storm drain and killed by the mob
They did reduce the excuse quite substantially. Also rub their greedy hands? It’s the public purse, not a company. The money goes into the exchequer and is used to fund public expenditure.
Only if it's done in Russia. The EU will just continue to tweet, as they did today, about "perpetrators of war crimes will be held responsible!" when we all know that nothing of the sort will happen.
Money talks. Here's a list of companies still operating in Russia as of the other day and they're not all Chinese or close to it.
Koch Industries. Not a shock
Société Générale. French bank.
Association Familiale Mulliez. Another French crowd with lots of different outlets.
Cloudfare. US company.
Glencore. A Swiss/British oil and gas mashup
Raiffeisen Bank International. An Austrian bank.
Plus too many western nations, Germany a perfect example, thought that bringing the Russians in through trade would calm them down and bring them into the fold. A fold they quite simply don't want to be a part of. Russia is an empire not a nation and they don't want to play back of the class status in a setup like the EU. The good business makes goodfriends and the appeasers completely missed this point. Never mind a few of them appear to have been, let's just say, not neutral. Which ex German leader is currently living in Moscow with a high up position in their biggest oil company.... The Russians played them like a fiddle, played their history like a fiddle too* and we're hearing the tune now.
*the Germans are so paranoid and apologetic about a certain Austrian corporal, a paranoia hammered into them from kindergarten over the generations since WW2 ended. After WW1 the Treaty of Versaille really didn't work, so after WW2 the keep them guilty forever approach worked so much better. Earlier in the thread someone reckoned they'd like to be like Switzerland, "neutral". IMHO it's far more about not looking like turning into the Germany of the 1930's. That out of this they're making noises and moves to rearm is huge in the face of that.
In case you didn't realise, Assad is still in power while several hundred thousands of people have died under him. So 2/4 on that list are doing just fine.
Never going to happen.
Between that and the gunshot wounds
I don't think it's anything to do with any 'Soviet' ethos, Russian armies have acted that way since forever. Read about their behaviour in the Caucasus or Manchuria and it's the very same, rape, looting and murder.
Gaddafi got a bayonet up the butt by a feral mob ,Sadamm had a respectable official execution
No argument from me, I was referring to the land grab attempt, the reason why they were sent in.
I'll make a prediction now TV - and I'm well aware that with the passions running high at the moment this will not be a popular one at all - when the dust has finally settled and historians take over and pick apart the ruins of this calamity, in western much more Ukrainian in makeup areas the war crimes will be pretty much all on Russia's bloody hands, but in areas like the Donbas and yes Mariupol too, IE anywhere with more of a mix of Russian and Ukrainian separatists/nationalists there will be war crimes on both sides of this. I'd bet the contents of my bank accounts in this(about 3 fiddy).
Like I said this won't be even close to a popular view now we're all caught up in the Them/Us positions, but read up on the back and forth in the Donbas civil war since 2014. Whataboutists were rattling on earlier in the thread about Yemen and other conflicts not getting attention, but the Donbas civil war going on for years is another war bugger all of us were even aware of until Russia invaded Ukraine proper this February. A war that displaced over a million people and killed at least 15,000, injuring at least double that. Of those displaced; over 600,000 voluntarilty went to Russia, 70,000 odd to Belarus, 800,000 voluntarily went to Ukraine(or beyond).
Yep. This fallacy that autocrats usually die screaming is dubious. The majority don't.
Nazis on parade in Berlin today. Except they are Russian, not German.
These people have access to all the reporting coming out of Ukraine. They know what is happening. They actively support genocide.
A grotesque bloodlust pollutes the minds of the Russian people. Russia needs to end as a state. It needs to be broken up.
A grotesque bloodlust pollutes the minds of the Russian people.
When anyone makes a statement like that about a people it shows they're capable of demonstrating the exact same idiocy as those they claim to be superior to and have lost any higher ground to lecture them from.
Id agree to a certain extent. Crimes may well have been committed by both sides - but for me there are several important caveats
Like i said i tend to agree with you but its not even close to black and white. Still though, your point is well made
No bloodlust, just cold premeditation and will to kill large numbers of civillians and to try and hide the evidence.
Im sure there has been crimes on both sides but it seems russia has acted the worst maybe from desperation
To be fair to the ukrainians when you are being invaded/occupied it would boil down to one thing
It's amazing how the 'both sides' arguments crop up so much. I mean, the Ukrainians were sitting there minding their own business and Russia rolled an army in, destroying cities, killing what will probably be thousands but, yup... both sides.. has to be both sides, right?!
If you get punched in the face by some psycho on the way home, you were probably asking for it I suppose too?
Seems Russia have ticked every box for what constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity
That a few are put down by Ukrainian soldiers bothers my conscience not one iota - they are fair game as an invading extremely hostile force
Still some resistance in Moscow https://twitter.com/raging545/status/1510584931092684808?s=20&t=QTIjPElBuGgVabFSRjkfZQ
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