Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Tbf the lack of closure into Belarusian border with Poland is pretty odd at this point. Don't you think

Possibly. But cannibalising parts will only get you so far. Unless you have an advanced home grown tech industry that can feed you the materials, skills and resources to make or fix your machines, you're pretty fcuked.

Does it hurt ?

its true that Putin has absolute control at the moment, and I've often mentioned it myself too. But how absolute is absolute? For sure its not infinite, and one of Putins biggest worries is seeing uncontrollable protests and even rioting on the streets. Family's who have lost their sons, hooking up with other families in the came situation, and that would include families from the military and police unit's too. In the past,( and even presently it seems ) when Russian conscripts had the highest rate of suicides in the world due to the practice of "Hazing" ( Dedovshchina ) It got so bad that mothers of conscripts formed a group to protest about the practice. Putin recently passed a law banning it as being under foreign influence, or in other words " Enemy of the State". None the less, those kind of family losses cannot easily be wiped away, and sooner or later they will make themself felt. At some stage a tipping point will be reached, no matter how long it will take.

A few posters are making valid comments about Germany and France to a degree.

They should have started weaning themselves off Russian gas when Putin started trying to steal territory from other countries.

What did they do since 2014 ?

They facilitated him by building a new pipeline that would allow him go even further in taking over his neighbour.

And yes I will draw equivalency with how the West are facilitating China.

We all saw what they did in Hong Kong, but the West did nothing because after all consumers want cheap shyte and the likes of Apple needs to make more untaxable billions.

Don't anyone be under any illusions, China were viewing this invasion to see how strong the West would be and if Ukraine had crumbled with the West doing nothing, then Taiwan would be in the firing line for sure.

If Putin is a throwback to yesteryear then so is Xi Jinping.

And if the West does nothing now, we will be faced with the same situation in a few years time with regards to China.

It is about time people starting learning some fooking thing from history.

Oh and I don't know why people are surprised some people are acting like muppets on internet, there have always been lots of people who are ar**holes, lots of people who are as gullible as sh** and lots of people who are as thick as pigsh**.

The internet just allows us see most of them in action.

And then companies like Kerry group and kingspan continuing to operate in Russia. Really plays into the cute Kerry hoor and hungry mean Cavan stereotypes. Couldn’t have any slide in that share price.

Yesterday, RIA Novosti published a lengthy piece titled "What Russia should do with Ukraine", which explains in detail what Russia understands by denazification. It's truly horrific: 1/6

The special operation revealed that not only the political leadership in Ukraine is Nazi, but also the majority of the population. All Ukrainians who have taken up arms must be eliminated - because they are responsible for the genocide of the Russian people. 2/6

Ukrainians disguise their Nazism by calling it a "desire for independence" and a "European way of development". Ukraine doesn't have a Nazi party, a Führer or racial laws, but because of its flexibility, Ukrainian Nazism is far more dangerous to the world than Hitler's Nazism 3/6

Denazification means de-Ukrainianisation. Ukrainians are an artificial anti-Russian construct. They should no longer have a national identity. Denazification of Ukraine also means its inevitable de-Europeanisation. 4/6

Ukraine's political elite must be eliminated as it cannot be re-educated. Ordinary Ukrainians must experience all the horrors of war and absorb the experience as a historical lesson and atonement for their guilt. 5/6

The liberated and denazified territory of the Ukrainian state should no longer be called Ukraine. Denazification should last at least one generation - 25 years. Then the author goes on to detail exactly what needs to be done

Jaysus they might as well be done with it and just rename everything Pravda.

It reads like something uncle Joe would have been proud of, getting rid of the intellectuals, the rulers, throwing in some ethnic clensing for good measure.

Soviets idea of liberation was stand back and let the Germans slaughter the locals who dared fight the Germans, then come in and mop up, slaughtering the remaining officer, educated and intellectual classes, whilst partaking in wholesale raping of anything female.

Then setup a puppet regime of quislings.

Now we know, why Ukrainians fight so hard. They know their enemy too well. It was not only fight for freedom, but fight for their lives. If they surrendered in February majority of them would be in mass graves now. They had no choice, they had to fight for physical survival. And this is a very strong motivation, much stronger than freedom. It's down to basic instincts. Some people are able to trade freedom for "easier" life, while here it's freedom or no life at all.

I think Ukraine will fight even stronger now after all those war crimes were revealed. They have nothing to lose.

What's the story with the Aughinish Alumina Plant in Limerick?Will it continue business as usual..

Do we know if the Russians have a still a 'fail deadly' launch system that automatically responds to 2nd strike attacks? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand Any retaliation to a first strike could set off their automated systems and end the world. It could even be set off accidentally if Putin arms it in advance of his own first strike, and then it gets triggered by an incidental earthquake or other false alarm.

Personally, after seeing the state of the Russian military hardware, it'd be skeptical that many of their nuclear warheads are still functional, but even if 1% were maintained, that is still 40 nuclear weapons traded between the US and Russia and whichever allies get sucked in.., enough to cause a conflagration the likes we haven't seen since the Dinos went tits up.

I would have thought that seeing the images and reporting coming out of Bucha would easily be more than enough to kick the Israelis into condemnation on it's own given their history. Bucha is only about 20km away from Babi Yar after all.

A total of 1,872 Nuclear Explosions to 1992

(I don't know whether Hiroshima & Nagasaki are included)

In total nuclear test megatonnage, from 1945 to 1992, 520 atmospheric nuclear explosions (including eight underwater) were conducted with a total yield of 545 megatons, with a peak occurring in 1961–1962, when 340 megatons were detonated in the atmosphere by the United States and Soviet Union, while the estimated number of underground nuclear tests conducted in the period from 1957 to 1992 was 1,352 explosions with a total yield of 90 Mt.

Above paragraph is from a Wikipedia page

These incidents are becoming systematic. From a BBC report:

The drone footage shows three cars speeding along an empty main road just outside the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, when they suddenly turn around and race back - all except one.

This white car turns, but then stops. A man steps out and raises his hands. Then his body falls to the ground. Moments later, Russian soldiers approach. An elderly woman and child leave the car, and a soldier walks them away.

The man on the ground was Maksim Iovenko. The 31-year-old was shot dead by Russian forces that were positioned at the roadside. His wife Ksenia, who was in the car, was also killed.

....

Then, on 7 March, they lost all power. With no electricity, heating or food, Maksim, Ksenia and other families staying in the area decided to return to Kyiv. They knew they risked running into Russian troops along the highway, but they thought they could make it through safely.

Maksim's car was third in the convoy, made up of about 50 people in total, including other children. In the windows of his car, he had put handwritten signs on white paper that read: "Children." His friend was part of the same convoy, and it was his mother who was in the car with Maksim and Ksenia, and he was able to tell Sergiy what happened.

When the shooting started, Maksim's car was hit. "The car's engine stalled," Sergiy says. "My son jumped out of the car, he raised his hands and started shouting that there was a child in the car, so that the child would be saved."

It's not clear why the rest of the convoy fell behind the first three cars, but Sergiy believes many of those driving behind turned back when they saw the cars in front turning and heard the gunshots.

After the shooting, Maksim's body was left on the highway and Ksenia's was left in the car. Maksim's son and his friend's mother were told by Russian soldiers to walk back along the road. When they got a safe distance from the Russian soldiers, she called her husband, who came to take them to safety. They returned to the dacha, and were evacuated safely to Kyiv the next day.

IMAGE SOURCE,

JEREMY BOWEN

Image caption,

A burned out car on the road where Maksim and Ksenia were killed

The boy is with his grandmother in a safe location in Ukraine but away from Kyiv, where Sergiy remains.

On Friday, Sergiy received a call informing him that the area had been re-taken by Ukrainian forces. There was more bad news.

"They burned everyone. Burned the cars as well," Sergiy says.

A team of BBC journalists taken to the same stretch of road saw many burned cars and bodies. Among them was Maksim's car, riddled with shrapnel and reduced to a shell by fire, with the burned remains of a body inside it and one on the road beside it, still wearing a wedding ring.

Full report here