Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Iran regrets they forgot how much grain they import from Ukraine and thought Russia would give them a slam dunk better deal once they had taken over the place, but now victory doesn't look so certain, they are wondering where they are going to get their grain from now. When they discretely asked Australia for a good deal, they were shocked that They hadn't forgotten the several Australian women they had held hostage for years, like they did with Nazanin Ratcliff, and that no special price would be forthcoming.

Joking aside, I find it particularly sinister that Iran seems to target Australian women who are reasonably attractive.

The jury is still out on that but with Russian units being beaten back and being reinforced by a rabble of half-trained, ill-equipped, unmotivated replacements, so it's not looking too good. The Russians must be praying for their best US asset to get back into the White House. Russia is only influencing Ukraine in the military sense; Russia attacked and Ukraine had to respond, but even military action has failed to make the Ukrainians roll over and accept Putin's will, it's failed to make them change their minds about joining NATO or the EU, and it's failed to make them stop seeking and receiving support from the west. So in truth, the Russians have influenced bugger all on the other side of the front line. What Russia has influenced, and in a far more negative way, is its own economy and its own standing in the world. When your new best buddy is North Korea, you're not in a good place internationally, and you have no influence.

Im sure for your average Russian the same could be said for Zelensky and his regime. Why have they not targeted him?

Just speculating here, but my wife (a nurse) says she loves working with Australians because they always speak their minds and don't beat around the bush. These traits, combined with physical attractiveness and probably also self-confidence strike me as being precisely the kind of traits that would trigger the authorities in a pathologically theocratic, misogynistic, patriarchal society like Iran's.

The gullibility of some people here would be truly comical if the circumstances weren't so tragic.

And the usual suspects actually WANT these things to be true just to reinforce their narrative

I wonder tho...if this was an alternative world with the USA in place of Russia doing the invading I think you'd be saying what they have suffered so far in Ukraine is quite a catastrophic strategic defeat. Esp. given your distaste for the US/"West", and general contempt you display for wishy washy & weak ideas like democracy and leaders chosen by all us silly joe soaps voting, rather than perhaps selected by or drawn from ranks of the "smart lads" (people like Putin)....! This idea (about effectiveness of autocracy) seems to have been a constantly recurring one in the thread (recalling past posts many moons ago).

I'm fairly sure you'd be saying it was a new failure/epic misjudgement on level of Iraq war (edit: well beyond that really). Putin just refuses to recognise it, and he can defy gravity, try to double down + avoid the consequences of what he has done for now because he is pretty much a despot and accountable to nobody!

I don't think that actually shows anything impressive or admirable or even effective/efficient about dictatorships/autocracies vs democracies.

How many years will it take for Russia to completely collapse ? Surely now it is going to happen sooner or later ? Who would want to live there now other then the elderly who are so conditioned.

Armenia are playing Ukraine right now in a Nation's League match (in Ireland's group, as it happens).

It's hard to think of a match that seems so insignificant compared to the existential issues that both of these countries are facing right now.

That as may be, a Ukrainian academic living in Paris, an expert on Ukrainian/Russian relations, said on France24 that Russia had a hit list of at least 2 million names of people she described as comprising Ukrainian civil society, complete with their addresses, places of employment, phone numbers... This was before Russia invaded and was still rattling sabres at the border.

The list comprised those people who were active in making Ukraine what it is - journalists, activists, politicians, civil rights and other prominent lawyers, academics, writers, senior and middling civil servants of import, etc, etc - and that Putin's intent was to exterminate these people in order to snuff out the core of Ukrainness, so the rest could more easily be subdued and transformed into loyal Russians. I believe Putin has referred to culling wolves so that you are left with easily controlled sheep. Only the wolves really matter.

She was right, we have since had a large number of reports that where Russia took control of places, they then go to certain known addresses and ask for specific individuals, and if found, they are disappeared. In the last week I saw an interview of a group in Izium who said Russians came looking for certain people, took them away, and they had not been heard from since. It's a large part of what those filtration camps have been for, as we heard of in connection with depopulating Mariupol. The SS and Gestapo are alive and well.

The scale of this particular war crime has not been really reported on that I have seen. The media have focussed on the more sensational atrocities, quite rightly, but not this very sinister sub-current of Pol pot/Chinese cultural extermination that has been happening, which should get coverage.

As exaggerated as it may sound, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Putin had expanded that list by an order of magnitude so as to remove the Ukrainian problem, once and for all, having realised there were a lot more wolves than he had originally thought. Get right what Stalin failed to.

I think the stakes are unimaginably high.

Ah but it's obvious, unlike Ukraine there's obviously not enough Nazis in Azeri to justify any special military operation.

@run_Forrest_run

China's at the apex of that alliance. Russia's not got the economic muscle to be an equal partner. It's not even that strong of an alliance because China is very much not a vocal supporter of Russia's military effort in Ukraine. They'll take the cheap oil, though, if it's going.