Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Sure they can, but when it comes to paying for it.....? Its not free. The Communist ethos of everything is free is long gone,,,you want something now in Putins Russia, you pay for it. Falling investment rising unemployment, shortages of imported goods, all add up to a shortage of cash. And in rural Russia, wood is the standby source of heating as the gas pipes often fail, pumps break down due to the extreme cold / bad servicing etc, and if that was not enough, you have the endemic corruption. In the apartment blocks, its a yearly battle to get the management to turn on the gas., and keep it on. Life in Russia is hard. On a balance, if I had to choose between spending the winter in Russia or Germany, I'd head for Germany...no question about it.

Be generous and assume he was very drunk when he typed that barely intelligible message

Russia is getting desperate they have pulled s300s from Syria to be redeployed in either Russia or ukraine,

The same s300s that were deployed to stop Israel bombing assad and Iranian forces, Israel has literally bombed Syria on a near weekly basis for the last few years and didn't have a single aircraft lost to Russian missiles

I guess they found the inflatable S-300's weren't that good at shooting anything down.

Does Morgan speak Russian?

NATO can always say it was little green men or NAFO, play them at their own game.

There's a high probability that if NATO rolled into Ukraine in force and pushed Russia out of all of Ukraine, there would be no blowback from Russia.

Puta can call it a special withdrawal operation and the public would lick it up.

However there's a small chance some NATO plane would mysteriously get shot down over the Atlantic or a ship sunk etc... and we enter a tit for tat game of ever increasing odds.

Easiest and possibly faster solution is arm Ukraine to the hilt and I mean western tanks and planes, yes they take a while to get trained in but ultimately in the end Ukraine will have all NATO gear as they move closer to the west. No point in delaying that.

A Malaysian passenger airline was shot down by Russia with 0 blow back. So I'd tend to agree projecting strength is the only option.

Anything else just emboldens Russia. But you still get into a tit for tat and risk the war extending beyond Russia and Ukraine and quickly escalating.

Most of Putin's red lines have been crossed. Remember his speech about any western involvement would cause a retaliation the likes the world has never seen etc... personally I'd love to see a NATO training base right inside Ukraine's border just to piss him off or a NATO peace keeping force in Lviv.

His red lines shift so much, it's just case of easing them in. The west won't supply heavy armor until they do, they wont supply aircraft until they do etc...

It's like a slow boiled frog.

Can't Russia veto the UN peacekeepers as it's down to the security council? If Turkey wavers the attack clause, can't Russia just bomb Turkey and take over the Bosporus strait and send in more and more warships? Or they just send in the warships knowing Turkey won't attack as they have no NATO defense clause?

That's all true, but vetoing a security council UN peacekeeping mission to Ukraine just takes a signature or a verbal objection? Surely they can manage that? That's your first 4d chess move, be a shame if it unraveled with just a signature or a verbal objection at a UN security council meeting from the Russians.

Who is they? The UN? A veto in the security council gets thrown down to the general assembly to debate why the veto was used. It doesn't actually nullify it and the general assembly can't veto the security council veto.

Eh Russia don't/didn't abstain, that's one issue with the UN. It says they shall abstain, but they can still veto.

That's the text from the UN charter, the shall seems to be the issue.

Your 4D chess is faltering on it's first move.

Just a quick note on Ukranian missile tech, you'll know this if you are an aviation/space nerd like me.

The press always seem surprised with Ukranian ingenuity, but forget that Ukranian rocket and aviation engineers are up there with the best. From the world's largest Antonov aircraft to Space-faring rockets, the Ukrainians are no strangers to innovation.

In fact, the 1st stage of the successful Antarres ISS resupply spacecraft was built and designed in Ukraine. They are very capable of producing ultra long-range ballistic missile systems to reach even Moscow ( which isn't that far away. It surprises me that one of the first targets on Russia's bombing list wasn't the Ukranian aerospace facilities, which are still functioning.

They even pre-programmed the coordinates of the Crimean airbase into the HARM missiles and back-engineered the launch rail to fit an SU-27, together with a simple launch interface mounted in the cockpit.

This, OSINT people are quietly whispering, is their ace up their sleeve. However, they are reluctant to strike strategic Russian targets deep inside Russia for fear of angering the fearful West.

But, if it comes down to it, and Ukraine feels cornered if the war turns in Russia's favour, I believe Moscow will be targeted.

They have the capability. Question is, what will the warhead be?