Russia - threadbanned users in OP

My hope is that there is a critical tipping point that Russia will eventually reach when they simply can’t maintain their positions anymore. Then it just becomes a matter of time before they must pull back.

Ukraine are still going to have a hard slogg at this, and they’re going to hurt a lot for long while yet. But their army is motivated. It is populated by men and women who know why they are fighting and in many cases are also motivated to become efficient professional soldiers. The supply of Western arms isn’t as good as you’d hope, but it is coming and it will keep coming.

The Russians are reduced to kidnapping their own troops off the street, giving them a week of firing blanks in Rostov, and then flinging them into a trench in Ukraine. Beyond some elite groups the Russian Army is now mostly made up of amature civilians wearing rotten Soviet surplus kit, and reduced to being meat-based obstacles to slow the AFU down. There is no strategy, or hope for relief. The Ukrainians are well able to kill them if they advance, and their own people may kill them if they dare retreat. Their only hope for life is to stumble into becoming a POW. This is not an “army” that can last forever, regardless of how many bodies you try to stuff in there.

A tipping point is coming. Might be this year, might be 2 years from now, but it will eventually happen.

Correct Horse Battery Staple just posted a link ( 100271 ) above, which might start the ball rolling amongst the Oligarchs'.....

Simplicity is best. Dont over complicate it. If businesses were burning all over Russia as in Ukraine there might be a change in public mood.

The mainstream media CNN, Fox and the likes are all about ratings and clicks. Some of the news they sell is of course truthful. But much of it is sensationalist nonsense. If you actually get past the headlines of the article and dig into what they actually say then the articles themselves end up disagreeing with the titles. It nonsense.

Take for example a recent article that was thrust upon us by our misery merchants on the thread.

Look at this headline. It's clearly trying to sell the alarmist idea that everything is awful. The Ukraine counter offensive is failing and Americans on the whole are getting fed up of the war and don't support Ukraine anymore.

However if you take a cursory glance at what the questions asked were this whole notion falls apart. When asked "Should we send MORE aid than we currently are?"

48% : Yes

51% : We've done enough

That is not a simple 51:48/No:Yes ratio. What they're doing is lumping in all the people who say the support for Ukraine is the correct amount with those who wish to decrease it. That is extremely disingenuous. And CNN fucken know it. But the good news headlines don't sell clicks unless the news is extremely dramatic.

Among that 51% of people polled is (and I don't have the figures admittedly , I just don't have the time in the day to be cross referencing this shite) probably again a majority who actually do support monetary and military aid to Ukraine as it stands. Even if it was only another 3%(6% of that half) that would still leave a majority of Americans supporting the current level or MORE aid to Ukraine. And it's almost certainly not gonna be as low as 3%.

But CNN can get away with it. Those with negative biases on here absolutely love soaking up the misery so they can feel vindicated. And those who support Ukraine get worried reading this travesty of reporting in their peripheral vision.

Then of course Russia absolutely love selling this muck back home as a win.

What’s a ‘tankie’ …?

Still some reports coming out of Ukraine pushing miskovytes out of their country and moving forward slowly in places from what I have seen but progress is bound to be slow with the volume of mines deployed by putin's forces. Ukraine seems to be less inclined to use its troops like cannon fodder like putin so a breakthrough is very likely to take time to find. It is a long front line that is being probed for opportunities so I would not be surprised to see news of a breakthrough by Ukraine being found at any time and then it could be a swift colaps of what is left of putin's army in Ukriane. More importantly in my opinion for the long term outcome of the war, the forces of Ukraine seem to be maintaining good levels of attrition on putin's forces which will in time leave them incapable of holding on to the territory of Ukraine that they have tried to occupy:

Russian officials doing dodgy things, well I never.

If everyone is my brother, nobody is my brother. If my brother can invade my home, steal, plunder and rape, then nobody is my brother. Nothing reasonable about it. It strips 'brother' of any meaning.

Of course Russia should be shunned, sanctioned, boycotted.

They shouldn't get to go to sporting events as Team Russia, glorifying their nation, acting as if nothing is happening.

There has to be consequences for this illegal war, for the war crimes and atrocities. Signals from the rest of the world the conduct of their country is unacceptable.

Let's not forget earlier on the thread you were making utterly false insidious both sides comparisons between the 'tactics' of Russia in actively suppressing dissent and social norms in Western societies.

Yes, you were being insidious and continue doing so here with insidious pro-Russian talking points. The 'honesty' of your clarification can be judged here where you directly contradict yourself. Obvious evidence you were spreading insidious anti-Western or pro-Russian cues in the hope it wouldn't be challenged.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120964541/#Comment_120964541

Noted that you entirely dodged the points put to you about boycotts, sporting events, etc.

Again with the insidious pro-Russian utterly false comparisons to Ireland. The IRA were an illegal organisation in the Republic. They tried to assassinate government officials. Russia, official state Russia, is waging war in Ukraine.

Let's be clear on this:

Russia as a country is inflicting war crimes, atrocities, child abuse, murders, executions, deliberate targeting of civilians, threatening Europe with nuclear weapons.

Do you accept without reservation, as a fact, that Russia has carried out those war crimes in its execution of the war?

Do you condemn without reservation such actions by Russia?

And accepting that:

Are Russians supposed to get off scot free and carry on their lives without ANY consequence for all of that?

That is not the question you were asked. Specific types of war crimes were listed.

"Russia is guilty of carrying out war crimes" does not answer that, it doesn't begin to do justice to the scale of the horrors Russia is inflicting on Ukraine.

What you asked was more specific:

Russia as a country is inflicting war crimes, atrocities, child abuse, murders, executions, deliberate targeting of civilians, threatening Europe with nuclear weapons.

Do you accept without reservation, as a fact, that Russia has carried out those war crimes in its execution of the war?

Do you condemn without reservation such actions by Russia?

And accepting that:

Are Russians supposed to get off scot free and carry on their lives without ANY consequence for all of that?

And these were some of the consequences I listed, not "kill all orcs" but:

Of course Russia should be shunned, sanctioned, boycotted.

They shouldn't get to go to sporting events as Team Russia, glorifying their nation, acting as if nothing is happening.

There has to be consequences for this illegal war, for the war crimes and atrocities. Signals from the rest of the world the conduct of their country is unacceptable.

Report from the BBC on the torture and mistreatment of Ukrainian POWs by Russian captors:

"Last September, Artem Seredniak, a senior lieutenant, had already been in Russian captivity for four months when he and about 50 other Ukrainians were transferred to Pre-Trial Detention Facility Number Two. They travelled in the back of a truck for hours, without knowing where they were going, blindfolded and tied to each other by their arms, like a "human centipede", Seredniak told me.

On their arrival in Taganrog, he recalled, an officer greeted them: "Hello boys. Do you know where you are? You'll rot here until the end of your lives." The captives remained silent. They were escorted inside the building, Seredniak said, had their fingerprints taken and clothes removed, were shaven and forced to shower.

At every step, guards at the facility, who carried black batons and metal bars, beat them in the legs, arms, or "anywhere they wanted", Seredniak said. "It's what they call 'reception'."

"Rotchuk said the captives "lived in permanent stress" in Taganrog. He recalled meeting a man, also a doctor, who had falsely admitted to removing the testicles of a Russian prisoner, desperate to put an end to the violence. "He said: 'OK, just leave me alone, I will sign the confession.' The officers then intimidated the other medics, saying: 'Ah, you helped him.'"

Guards gave Rotchuk electric shocks, he said, but he resisted. Rotchuk told me he was sent to solitary confinement for two months as punishment. The beatings happened almost every day; sometimes, several times a day, he said.

Rotchuk remembered one officer who appeared to take pleasure in kicking him in the chest, which left him with a persistent pain. He complained, but was given no help. "I had to tell myself: 'Dude, stay strong, you can't control the situation, so you need to accept it,'" Rotchuk recalled.

Not everyone had the same resilience, though. Seredniak said a fellow Azov fighter, in his late 20s, broke a small mirror that hung above his cell's sink, and used a shard to slice his throat. The man was rescued by other captives, who stopped the bleeding with their hands. Days later, Seredniak said, the prison staff removed the mirrors from all cells."