Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Ah my bad, thank you for the correction. But yes, I was referring to that particular Russian marvel of ingenuity :P

,,,

Talking of rummaging for Soviet stuff, it seems the recently fleeing Russian army left behind stockpiles of munitions and lots of military vehicles. We can be sure they'll be put to good use, if they're any good.

Ukraine is a country ruled by kleptocrats since the fall of the Soviet Union. A modern military requires money and resources, are Ukraine's debts going to be written off? Is this the same culture as either Japan or Germany, who adopted substantial reforms and rebuilt after world war II? That kleptocracy is the primary reason they are weak and it pervades the country.

I'll give an example, a Russian I used to work with from Visaginas in Lithuania, his surname indicates Ukrainian heritage. His family moved from the Odessa region during the Soviet era to build and operate the nuclear plant there. They have relatives in Ukraine (Russian speaking & Ukraine nationalist, The mother called them in 2014 to see if they were ok and got an anti-Russian diatribe from their mad uncle), anyway his mother went to visit, she is elderly and has a medical condition that is stabilised with medication. While there, she went to a chemist to get the medication, except they put any old pills in the bottle and she nearly died as a result of not getting the correct medication, she had to be hospitalised. Corruption is endemic. They had the same problem in Russia with fake medication and the government addressed it.

I see Marshal plans being discussed in the context of Ukraine, unless there is a significant mindset change across Ukrainian society, then the kleptocrats benefit, the country remains poor, but this time potentially with an army that has territorial expansion ambitions of its own that goes about antagonising its neighbour.

Crimea was treated as a backwater when Ukraine ran it, the standard of living went up under Russian subsidies, albeit at a cost to the Russian exchequer. Lets suppose that Ukraine takes it, the population is actually mostly Russian. A Ukrainian government is not going to put much resources in there and that in itself is going to create instability or like what happened in Lithuania the Russians migrate abroad to find work.

Defeat of Russia, does not automatically mean Ukraine will become an upstanding member to the EU and net contributor. A more likely scenario is that it is a resource economy that ships raw materials out without adding any value and has to, to pay off its debts. Adding it to the EU, more likely means it has more in common with the Visegrád Group, which changes the dynamics of the EU. Ukrainians entry is not a given certainty, it may still end up as a buffer zone.

"And don't forget OUR Islanders and the T-13 Armadas and all those hypersonic missiles that WE can use to level Kiev. The West will be terrified we'll use our nukes and they'll blink."

Our/we???

Come on

Nobody is claiming that there are not huge problems with Ukraine but that is completely irrelevant to the current desire to support them on this invasion. EU membership is at least a decade away anyway. As for upstanding members our Balkan friends are still getting there and if there was a mechanism to dump Hungary out, the EU would have already used it.

A vodka fueled mobilization maybe.

You missed the target. I said none any of that.

I was looking at this the other night, 11 minutes history of Modova in terms of tribes, invaders and rulers who have been through that area. What is interesting about it is the cultures and peoples who live in these areas are not static, there is always some empire passing through . . . the Russians and other tribes from the Russian hinterlands have been migrating in that direction for some time.

I wasn't really talking about eligibility to join the EU or how Ukraine ran Crimea - I was talking about whether Russia could reinvade at some point if they were to quit this current attempt. Russia is known for endemic corruption, itself, with its own oligarch class and people skimming the cream. I don't think anyone should take it as read that Russia will be able to address the corruption which plagues its military, for example, and become a fighting force capable of dominating a NATO-backed Ukraine, while Ukraine won't. Especially not where Russia is led by Putin, who helped foster that situation, while Ukraine is led by Zelenskyy, who at least has ambition to change things in Ukraine. And what country, at the end of the day, has more of an incentive to change its ways? Ukraine, who face a literal existential forfeit if they don't modernise, or Russia, who can just quit the war and remain a country?

Three days before the Ukraine war started, Putin rejected a peace deal that would have granted him his public demands from Ukraine.