Ukraine (Mod Note & Threadbanned Users in OP)

Russia is not going to "win" as such, as in take over all of Ukraine, it takes them months to take one village. They are still potent, just not in an offensive way. They can grind away with masses of artillery and sending in waves of 40 year old taxi drivers who've had 1 week of training, but it's brutally slow.

Macron is using words as a chess move. No one really expects NATO troops in Ukraine, but Macron is saying it to start that discussion as a message/signal towards Putin.

How long can Russia keep going?

Is the Ukraine invading Russia now? 🤪

the keiv post on the latest us munitions supply

https://substack.com/redirect/a3557971-b519-466e-bde0-6a2d9b6ae6e4?j=eyJ1IjoiMTJzNXJrIn0.XMuxXGLIpAZR6hBysKxtUXocT1Mnx_GIssPFbfMj7c0

No one is arguing with it, Ukraine has lost a lot of people.

They may not want to highlight all their losses because national morale is key to their defense. Their survival as people and as a nation relies on it. Which is understandable.

The propaganda of their invaders comes from a completely different place. It's shocking this has to be explained.

In Russia political analysts don't seem to have too much hope that a Trump presidency will do them favours.

Before the election campaign they were carefully optimistic USA may become less antagonistic towards Russia under Trump. But they've seen too many mixed messages of late which they're not sure they're entirely owed to campaign talk. They certainly don't align with the idea Trump is in Putin's pocket and to the contrary fear that Trump may be a lot more erratic than the Biden administration. Any earlier careful optimism seems to have been rooted mostly with the idea that it could hardly get worse than the open hostility under the Democrat hawks, Who they obviously blame for the whole Ukraine thing from the very start.

In any case they don't seem to believe that Trump will 'end the war', definitely not by simply stopping US support for Ukraine. They expect some sort of 'deal' offering to come forward which is unlikely to be acceptable to Russia and then things will probably go on as before. Regardless of a Trump presidency they seem to think Russia will have to continue to take her fate in her own hands.

Who knows what can be said by anyone at face value? But they have political talkshows and stuff and they're not all like some people portrait them to be either. Obviously everything is partial and from a Russian point of view but so are politicians, analysts and shows elsewhere. Do you take what Trump or Blinken or vdL says at face value?

I mean what I read and summarised above is hardly outlandish stuff and seems a reasonable enough assessment.

Just trying to give a view different to the usual guff, more appropriate to this forum.

It will be very interesting to see if Ukraine.goes ahead and produces its own nuclear weapons. They clearly can't depend on the US going forward, and it's unlikely the EU gets off its arse to pick up the slack. An undersea detonation in the black sea would be a useful demonstration of capability, without risking escalation.

No risk in that Ukraine wouldn't be attacking Russia or detonating on land. Russia can go mad all they like, but I imagine they would be given pause in considering greater attacks knowing Ukraine could visit devastation in return

It's a country fighting desperately for its right for survival, its right not to be steamrolled into non-existence by its much larger and more powerful neighbour.

That any Irish person would disparage that, I find disgusting and profoundly ignorant.

I think we'll see more "Ukraine must nuke Moscow" posts as things get worse for Russia. It's their self defence argument for using nukes themselves.

It wasn't a coup. The previous leader lost his mandate when he ordered firing on the huge numbers of ordinary citizens who came out to protest him caving to Russian pressure on the EU treaty. The so-called Maidan revolution.
A treaty he had been elected on a mandate to sign.
He had no mandate to govern. He was then deposed by parliament.

If you want to see what fate Russia had in store for Ukraine, look at Belarus. Russian military supporting a dictator to suppress his own people.

If it was just a "post coup government" without support, it would have collapsed in the initial invasion, as we have seen other 'regimes' do. Ukraine did not. Zelensky was its legitimate leader with support.

This puts paid to Russian lie about a coup, the Russian lie about him being a US pawn.

In multiple treaties and agreements, such as Budapest and the NATO Russia Founding Act, Russia recognised Ukraine's borders, independence and sovereignty and right to join NATO if it chooses.

The responsibility for the 'horrible' 'consequences' that are happening lies squarely with Russia.
It also presumes there would not have been horrible consequences in Ukraine, for whatever extent of the country was under Russian occupation and domination. Atrocities like Bucha are a sign of the fate Russia had in store for Ukrainian opposition, in war or occupation.

Russia is the ones who launched this needless illegal war of aggression and plunder, and carried it out with atrocity.
Both the war itself and Russia's conduct of it are war crimes. Its criminal alright to assign moral culpability elsewhere than the actual aggressors and invaders.

Moscow is "ready to listen" to Trump's proposals on Ukraine

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Media: One of Trump's ideas envisages European troops in a buffer zone

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Moscow is no longer willing to listen to Trump's proposals.