Russia - threadbanned users in OP

i think Russia is okay with UK joining EU...as EU will rebuild it. NATO is a different matter.

Strange that it's February and there is not a trace or hint of snow anywhere. It must have been cold in that cockpit with what looks like a gap in the panels under the co-pilots position and with a wind-whistle so massive it drowns out the sound of a helicopter engine so it's barely audible.

Have a look at this yoke, with the price tag still hanging on it https://twitter.com/sniper_by_heart/status/1515738989013127185?s=20&t=kDtsVBWQU89BRfl3hK5UOA

Nobody is winning. Russia haven't won... not yet, maybe not ever. The most important point is that Ukraine hasn't lost yet, but have suffered horrific civilian casualties as a result of Russian war crimes and atrocities, infrastructure devastated.

It could have easily gone otherwise with Kyiv falling, either to the initial coup d'etat type assault with paratroops or the second wave of massive armoured columns.

Ukraine have been immense in defence, aided by anti tank and anti aircraft weaponry supplied by NATO but trying to retake territory Russia has seized is a different prospect entirely.

(The assistance from outside would be for naught without Ukranian troops to wield them with skill and bravery and supplied by a functioning government - see Afghanistan)

The focus now has shifted to the south east, will Russia be able to encircle the Ukrainian forces there and seize the entire Donbas region, or will they be confined to a coastal strip.

What happens next all depends on the outcomes of those battles.

@Joebobs

Ukraine are.

Russia's initial objective was to topple the government of Ukraine and take major urban centres, or at the very least Kyiv. Ukraine's objective was to prevent this and drive Russian forces from Ukrainian land.

Russia have very much failed their initial objective and today, as I write this, Ukraine still holds the vast majority of its recognised territory, and Ukraine has also inflicted heavy disproportionate losses on Russian forces, even killing a handful of top generals. Russia getting boots to Kyiv looks less likely than it did in late Feb when half the people here were saying that Kyiv had a week.

For the love of the giraffe god! That video effect makes it completely un-watchable. What IQ-minus moron dreamed that up??

Nonsense?, like the Bushmaster being made and designed in Ireland, rather than Australia, the range of a JDAM being less released from a Reaper because the release height would be too low, when it's service ceiling is 15,200m, the US being unwilling to risk an RQ-180 over the most important and critical conflict since WW2, given the WW3 criticality risk, when this is a prime example of a situation justifying why the US spends so much on stealth tech, and so on.

This bellend has bots upping his google reviews again. Take the time to drop him a 1 star and poor review.

Yes, they made numerous miscalculations. They thought Ukraine would fall in 72 hours and there would be a victory parade through Kyiv. They felt the West and NATO would be bitterly divided on what to do and within months would have to accept that a pro-Russia regime in Ukraine was the new reality and they would just have to deal with this. They also thought sanctions would be pretty severe initially, but would also be perfectly manageable.

I don't know who was advising Putin or whether he was simply overruling everyone, but he has made a series of catastrophic blunders. It's on a par with Hitler's invasion of Russia and later declaration of war on the US in 1941, which eventually led to the collapse of the regime.

I see some echoes of the Russo-Japanese war and also the winter war with Finland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War

At a football match in Poland today

Today?????

Will you get up the yard.

Johnson is up to his absolute ears in Russian money. He's drowning in it. Did you miss him taking yearly multiple holidays to a Russian oligarchs son's house in Italy and multiple others around the world. He's dropped his security team multiple times when he was foreign secretary to go off to meet the guy and then made him a lord. An actual lord. The Tory party is swimming in Russian donations. Enough of this sanctimonious shite now they're buying their way out of the crap they created. The Tory's probably actually had to run their actions by the donors first. The donors are probably thinking Putin is 'now' bad for business. When he wasn't before.

There's some level of revisionism going on in your post there horse. Ireland are here taking 40k plus refugee's and making it easy for them to get here with a welcome. The Brits pulled up all the draw bridges.