"We're all told to suffer consequences and freeze due to someone annexing a rogue state. Yet during the former wars during the 90's and 00's everything ran smoothly"
@bad2thebone yet you made this statement two pages ago. Ukraine a rogue state indeed... you're full of it.
Yes pretty much exactly the same was said back when the war started and air space was being shut: get out while you can
No, they were questioning what good is a musician or hairdresser (parikmaher) to the army, and why govermnet isnt drafting security guards. According to Simonyan, they have about 5 mil security guards in Russia.
Putin gone is not an exit strategy for anyone. He is actually a moderate compared to some of the utter loons surrounding him. Everyone wants to see him gone and yeah that's great but there is an awful lot more people needed to fall out a window at the same time or else removing him could increase the danger for Ukraine and indeed all of Europe.
Well considering Russia effectively stole their western airliners it wouldn't shock me. Now they would argue that the West stole their overseas assets too and that's fine. However if they had a quarter of the brains to many of their people and bots think they could have played clever. They could have not touched the air fleet and continued on with leasing agreements and worked the angle of "look whatever you think of us, we don't and won't welsh on deals". That would have left the corporate west far more open to them and the corporate west losing money would have been far more open to pressurising their own governments. They could have also pulled the angle of international air safety which like medicines wouldn't have been hit by sanctions, or certainly would have looked bad on on the part of their enemies if they had tried.
But no, instead by that action alone - and IMHO one of the stupidest of this whole conflict - they cut themselves off from international insurance, leasing, air travel, spares, for the foreseeable future.
I'd still say give any Russian doubters a week ( or two, for serial doubters) of NATO /US "conventional" weapons, and all doubts would be removed. And as an added bonus, Nato / US could claim the moral high ground for not going nuclear.
But people are to blame for their leadership. If they didn’t agree with Putin, there would be mass protests regardless of the costs. Dictators can only get away with it until the population say they have had enough.
Absolutely. With any luck Putin walks past an open window soon and someone with a few more brain cells pushes him out of it. It is the only exit strategy for Russia.
Rural folks used to less, don't notice the sanctions to the same degree(or economic booms for that matter). In other news; water is wet.
And yer man goes to meet Lars Agerbak, the ex leader of the Danish far right National Front. Oul Lars got weapons training in Mother Russia, then when caught and charged by the Danes for firearm offences legged it from Denmark to be welcomed into the arms of Mother Russia. Well the nationalist, anti Jew, sorry anti "corporate interests", anti gay, anti feminist, "christian traditionalism" appeals to such as him and Mother Russia gets a few hotheads to add to their own homegrown types that they can use both inside Mother Russia and beyond.
For sure, all this hi-grade info that the Ukrainians are getting ( and which is a major contributor to the their successes' ) is coming from somewhere....🙂
Well perhaps the people at the top who are making decisions are more concerned about their immediate survival rather than the long-term international future interaction aspect
It is also destroying any future trade with Russia post Putin/ war. Who is going to work with a country that does that to their customers?
It's just plain stupid move to make, whoever did it... Other than some minor fringe terror group that is just trying to be noticed. Any of the parties involved in the current situation even vaguely would be idiots to blow the pipe.
Im no bot. I just think it's a bit much blaming people because of their leadership. All good calling people name's from a smartphone or laptop whatever. But I'm alright Jack.
In February
Unfortunately the thread has become unreadable with the amount of propaganda.
US Military going around Kalingrad…
I twigged when she supposedly said 'meat grinder'.
Have such messages not previously been issues for US citizens?
Not sure if this has previously been posted.
...
Yes, but they cut a far better deal and get virgins.
my favourite bit was about prioritising street musicians and perverts to draft to the frontline
😂😂😂
Its the same crack the Red Army did in WW2 and in the latter years of Afghanistan. Recruits sent to Chechnya were often only given 2 weeks training and very basic at that.
It may be a softer version of the Soviet Union but this Regime is still cold and brutal.
It's hard to know what effect the sanctions might have.
Really, you won't probably know one way or the other for many years. As has been stated by many experts, these sanctions were designed to cause long term damage to Russia. They weren't really designed as a short term solution. But it is debatable just how effective they may prove to be.
Right now, it seems like a bit of a mixed bag. Some things are certainly getting expensive, while other things are largely staying the same or in some cases even dropping in price.
This video is quite interesting with regard to the effects from the first 6 months in rural Russia:
A lot divides the world's religions. One thing unites them: stupidity, and false promises to the gullible and desperate
That reconfirms my opinion that the end to this can't and won't be a magic moment when some platinum tongued fan of 'diplomacy' convinces Putin to stop or Ukrainians to reward Putin's agression and to give large chunks of their land to him, but that Russia is in deep financial distress and this will end like the USSR, with a catastrophic financial collapse and a complete inability of Russia to function.
The sanctions are working and should be doubled down on.
That's an opinion piece .....
"Opinion"
Where is your lack of knowledge of Ukraine and the war in Ukraine is not opinion
Oh I'm sure there were no doubt other issues of concern. But the "it's Russia" angle (while simplistic), should not be discounted either.
And as I stated to @Gatling, it is incorrect to suggest that Putin only started to talk in this manner very recently. It pre-dates the tensions with the separatists in the east, and even the annexation of Crimea.
This aggressive rhetoric seems to have become more prevalent towards the end of the Bush administration.
At the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, Vladimir Putin told a surprised George W. Bush, “You have to understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a country. Part of its territory is in Eastern Europe and the greater part was given to us.”
It's interesting (although not particularly surprising), that Clinton seemed to be doing a decent job of keeping Russia on side while still actively expanding NATO. But then Bush gets into power, and towards the end of his second term everything seems to turn to sh!t with regard to Putin and Russia.
While I'm not a fan of everything his administration did, there is no doubt to me that Clinton had vastly superior diplomatic skills when compared to George Bush.
lol did we not pay them to clean it up ?
Here, I dont have 15 rubles to give you, will you take 1,5 EUR money from damn west?
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