Russia - threadbanned users in OP

The German President and that delegation could be a security risk to Zelensky.

Could you guarantee that locations, meeting places etc would not be sent to their friends in Moscow before they even left Berlin.

The German President has been very open about his pro Russia position and his pride in Germany remaining aloof of helping Ukraine.

Not much gets past those Ukrainians.

"The Ukrainian Embassy in Ireland has called for a ban on the "Z" symbol, Ukraine's ambassador to Ireland after a pro-Russian rally in Dublin this weekend called for a ban on the "Z" symbol associated with support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Sharing the video of the action on Twitter, the Ukrainian Embassy in Ireland called it disgusting that Russians living in Ireland show their complete disrespect for the country of residence and the Irish who oppose Russia's war in Ukraine.

"Z," a symbol of murder and atrocities, must be banned by law in every democratic state," the embassy said in a statement."

There we go politics at its finest.

The Ukrainians will fight to the death in the east and the south.

Biggest problem is logistics and getting them the weapons and munitions they need.

Could the EU not set up a "humanitarian enclave" in the west of Ukraine and serendipitously use this as a pretext get arms to east Ukraine quicker.

It would maybe get more medical supplies to those who remain in west Ukraine

Mad thought I know, but Mad Vlad is clearly getting ready to overwhelm the east and south without concerns about how much men and weapons he will lose.

He doesn't give a flying fook about his army or his population as the sanctions won't affect him directly,

It will effect his people but then again he doesn't really care what they think

This is standard Russian infowars, they release videos of troop movements, and then people share them. Now they're doing it because Finland is joining Nato.

A lot of it is just scare tactics, any bigger buildup won't go unnoticed.

Remember the Posters telling us how Badly dived the whole of Ukraine was and how all of the east of the country wanted to rejoin Russia and the west wanted to join the EU,

And yet no one in Ukraine seems to support the Russian liberation

A two-front war...bound to work. He can't lose.

😁

Putin may have thought his forces would be welcomed or that, at a push, resistance would quickly fall apart. It has long been speculated that Putin has grown detached from reality for various possible reasons like simple isolation or he's dying and has desperate need to be remembered as a great leader or to buoy flagging approval ratings. In a sense, the real reason doesn't matter because any reason to invade a country and indiscriminately slaughter, and loot and rape, and threaten loads of other countries while you're at it, is inherently invalid.

It was/is one man's war, and that man wanted Zelenskyy's head on a plate - probably literally.

Putin's commanders were just carrying out the objectives that Putin wanted to attain and maybe hoping to get the right side of a multitude of variables that didn't end up going their way. These include, but are not limited to, hoping the West's response would be confused, hoping their own troops would be motivated, hoping to knock out vital Ukrainian military infrastructure quickly, hoping their own army wasn't subject to decades of endemic corruption and poor maintenance.

I'm sure there's a good reason why there haven't been more Russian planes in the skies of Ukraine. After all, if they could get them up there, they would be up there. Stingers obviously play their part, but I would say there is more to the story that we'll only learn in retrospect.

Ukraine can count itself unfortunate that it has been invaded by a large army, but in that unfortunateness, there is at least a lesser good fortune that this army is mostly incompetent. It at least gives more hope than if the reverse were true.

Has there been any Russian POW's? How are they being treated?

Yes, a few thousand I believe. Treated well I gather, no suggestion of wrongdoing or breaches of the Geneva Convention (if there were, the Kremlin press and the legions of Putin fanboys on social media would be shrieking it from the rooftops).

You have to wonder if Putin is simply willfully taking another extraordinary gamble yet again with another big offensive in the east of the country, knowing this could get even worse, or if he genuinely believes Ukraine is on the brink of defeat.

The loss rates are already catastrophic. Oryx says Russia has lost almost 500 tanks, and we can safely assume a lot more lost that haven't been documented. That has to be a huge percentage of their actual "real" tank force - as in their overall tank force, not just exactly what was assembled for operations in Ukraine.

Let's say they had 3 thousand combat-ready tanks in actual decent shape back in February.....they realistically have probably lost 6-700 of them at least in two months and made pretty negligible gains.

It seems to me Putin is simply embarrassed and humiliated and wants to just punish Ukraine for resisting and daring to destroy his grand vision of conquest. I don't see how it could even be about legacy at this point given he will obviously know history books will inevitably record it as the time Russia was humiliated by its comparatively tiny neighbour and transformed itself into a total pariah state. That is literally the legacy he will leave behind and it's already cemented no matter what happens next. It can only get worse for him, not better, going forward.

Apart from all that, things are good with him!🤣