Russia - threadbanned users in OP

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.

It would be a lot more common than people realise,

you won’t see in the likes of Chechnya or Dagestan or whatever other republics, Moscow or St Petersburg , but all those villages , towns in the east of the country , that would be pretty common.

and I presume that’s where most of the cannon fodder and animals will come from.

They're fond of the vodka alright, must be cheap and readily available. Next time you hear someone lecturing us that Irish people are the heaviest drinkers of Europe etc., think of all these East European countries and the like of Russians lashing it down. Someone wrote recently that average life of Russian males is about 67, no wonder! And the average life expectancy of Russian men about to fall even further when these lads hit the front.

At least these lads have some fight in them. Not content to go meekly to the slaughter

I remember reading a Nat Geo article about Russian men who would be flown out to Siberia to fight forest fires. One of them was smoking filtered cigarettes and cited health consciousness as the reason.

Translation: you know you're probably consuming western propaganda (and regurgitating it), but you don't really care because it's from "your side" so who cares? I'm different, I don't really have any skin in the game. I'm just interested in whatever the truth happens to be.

As far as I'm concerned, this war is not really any different to most other wars. And I'm not under any illusions that either side are perfectly good or diabolically evil. People who buy into that sort of rhetoric, really don't have 2 brain cells to rub together as far as I'm concerned.

I don't really give a toss if my opinions are unpopular, as I've never expressed opinions in order to be well liked. You can put me in whatever "cuinne dana"or box you wish, couldn't give a monkey's tbh. It actually puzzles me why so many people seem to be so terrified of holding an unpopular opinion... this is what drives so much groupthink - fear of not fitting in by agreeing to the consensus opinion on something. Is being well liked on an internet forum really that important to people? lol

He Said , putin said .

But neither ever produced these agreements ,it was raised with the state department but as far as I can see there was no high level meeting or an actual aggrement,no signed international treaties,

You would think one of the biggest international story at the time that there would cross signed agreements by both governments or in this case 28 other nato members governments.

It's like the common Heard story here when it comes to housing been built sure your man from the council promised me not a blade of grass would be touched and no housing would be built on a particular plot ,

Who in the council agreed to this your man in the council promised me ,