Russian invasion of Ukraine

I don't think this is going to happen. As the world gets more and more connected including key things like trade the benefit of invading one country just doesn't seem worth the battering the Russian economy would take and the sanctions it would face.

Russia does a fair bit of trade with the EU (think it might be around 40% of their exports and imports) so if that stops they will lose a lot financially.

I get the feeling they're content with their current position in the world but don't want the west to encroach any nearer their borders aka Ukraine joining NATO.

Militarily I believe they could take a good chunk of Ukraine quickly. Their ground forces are extremely powerful with massive amounts of firepower from their many tanks, self propelled artillery and rocket launchers. The issue comes when Ukraine digs in, in urban areas where taking land becomes a bloody slog. This would be at a heavy cost to Russian lives and you wonder how well this would go down with the Russian people.

So I believe they could take a make a decent land grab with relatively small losses but I don't think a full takeover is possible unless they're prepared to lose a lot of lives.

And if they do pull off such a land grab what's the gain from it? As mentioned before the loss of trade and sanctions imposed don't seem worth it. I'm gonna say this military buildup is just a bluff.
 
mat said:
The Germans are the quiet partner in all this. Not much western media coverage about their current stance. Only sensationalist warmongering from the media big boys.


There won't be any conflict.

NATO will always see Russia as their enemy otherwise they cease to exist.

Their leader is backtracking about any potential invasion. Whilst Biden is preening there will be.

It's all about looking tough whilst distracting from issues at home.
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Unfortunately (and I mean that because war is always shit) other countries don’t agree with you. Sweden (whose PM may or may not have domestic issues) is not a member of NATO, not generally renowned for being warmongers, but they have sent troops, jets and land weapons to the strategically important Gotland island - you don’t do that if you don’t think there is a real risk of conflict being advised by your intelligence and security services.

Germany has a conflict of interest when it comes to Russia and is at a political crossroads. One example of their quagmire is that Estonia has asked German permission to send defensive weapons to Ukraine that were manufactured in Germany - still no response - I’m not entirely sure such niceties would survive the first shots mind.

Russia has a well trodden path to negotiate with the west. Demand something, give ultimatums, do not budge because someone in the west will always offer you something you didn’t previously have… so let’s see how that playbook goes. If the west don’t offer something more than transparency on military exercises then Russia has to think again about its negotiating techniques or show they aren’t bluffing so when they do this next time the west will give them something. So our outcomes are; the west back down and offer something tangible around NATO expansion, Putin looks weak by giving up and sending his troops home, or the shooting starts. Of course this isn’t the first time they’ve marched a reported 100k troops up to the Ukraine border, but the rationale is different this time and Putin has, on the surface, miscalculated it (mostly Biden) with the west are calling his hand by saying they expect an invasion and sending weapons to support Ukraine.

I sincerely hope you are right and that everyone goes home without a shot being fired. Why we can’t just invite Russia to join NATO (disband it and call it something else) I don’t know - would save us all a lot of time, effort and money - we ended up here by ignoring Russia and they’ve become somewhat more inward looking and patriotic as a result.
 
inbetween said:
There is a lot of point because they do it too. The Russians constantly send bomber aircraft very close to our airspace and their carriers have passed through the Channel many times.

You could argue well it's international waters/airspace and it's fine but we can argue the same. It's not about antagonising, it's about deterrence and letting them know you're there.

The reason for putting carrier groups into the South China Sea is because China is taking land in the region and making noise about invading Taiwan. There is currently no deterrent to that except the west.

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It's been going on for decades, going back to the cold war years. It's posturing. We used to let American pilots fly our Canberra jets over Russia until a diplomat had a chat over dinner one night with his British counterpart and was told it had to stop because they had developed a missile that could shoot them down.

I remember listening to an air raid siren in the early 60's when I was 5 or 6 years old at infant school. We were told it was a history lesson as Britain had been bombed by the Germans and the air raid siren was the sound people had to listen to as it was a warning enemy planes were coming over to bomb them and they had to retreat into their air raid shelters, and we should know what it sounded like.

I had no idea at the time the Cuban missile crises was happening but it was to check they worked and I remember for years afterwards seeing where the siren was placed. I was too young at the time to know what was happening, but the deal was Russia would withdraw it's missiles if the USA would withdraw it's missiles from Turkey, and, hey ho, that happened.

Mate, there isn't going to be world war 3 any time soon. It's mutually assured destruction. Putin is having a laugh, the Chinese know it, and we are just as culpable in asserting our presence as they are.

It's just games that have been played for as long as I have been alive that didn't worry me decades ago, and don't bother me today.
 
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Len Rum said:
Has BoJo had his phone call with Vlad yet?
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Nope.

He's currently talking bollocks with the Ukraine leader.

"Thank you for the invite to Ukraine...One of your biggest exports is Slag. Which I why I'm here..."
 
mat said:
Nope.

He's currently talking bollocks with the Ukraine leader.

"Thank you for the invite to Ukraine...One of your biggest exports is Slag. Which I why I'm here..."
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According to the BBC website Bo Jo has given 88M to the Ukranian government to reduce their dependence on Russian energy AND ..... wait for it.....to help them deal with corruption!
YCNMIU Jeff.
 
Sky reporter " Ukrainian trenches are defensive " - no shit Sherlock - no Army ever advanced by digging a trench then digging forward with said trench - where do they get these experts from?
 
metalblue said:
Unfortunately (and I mean that because war is always shit) other countries don’t agree with you. Sweden (whose PM may or may not have domestic issues) is not a member of NATO, not generally renowned for being warmongers, but they have sent troops, jets and land weapons to the strategically important Gotland island - you don’t do that if you don’t think there is a real risk of conflict being advised by your intelligence and security services.

Germany has a conflict of interest when it comes to Russia and is at a political crossroads. One example of their quagmire is that Estonia has asked German permission to send defensive weapons to Ukraine that were manufactured in Germany - still no response - I’m not entirely sure such niceties would survive the first shots mind.

Russia has a well trodden path to negotiate with the west. Demand something, give ultimatums, do not budge because someone in the west will always offer you something you didn’t previously have… so let’s see how that playbook goes. If the west don’t offer something more than transparency on military exercises then Russia has to think again about its negotiating techniques or show they aren’t bluffing so when they do this next time the west will give them something. So our outcomes are; the west back down and offer something tangible around NATO expansion, Putin looks weak by giving up and sending his troops home, or the shooting starts. Of course this isn’t the first time they’ve marched a reported 100k troops up to the Ukraine border, but the rationale is different this time and Putin has, on the surface, miscalculated it (mostly Biden) with the west are calling his hand by saying they expect an invasion and sending weapons to support Ukraine.

I sincerely hope you are right and that everyone goes home without a shot being fired. Why we can’t just invite Russia to join NATO (disband it and call it something else) I don’t know - would save us all a lot of time, effort and money - we ended up here by ignoring Russia and they’ve become somewhat more inward looking and patriotic as a result.
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It's impossible for Russia to join NATO, the reason why is NATO criteria isn't just about military, it also requires a country to be a functioning democracy amongst other things and Russia is not certainly not one of them. In terms of their democratic index, Russia is 124th out of 167 countries with North Korea sitting rock bottom.

NATO itself is a democracy and can decide military action based upon UN security resolutions, I can hardly see Russian foreign policy being hampered by the UN.

This is also a block for Ukraine who whilst somewhat aligned to the west they still have a highly dysfunctional and corrupt political system. Any idea of Ukraine joining NATO is used only as a tool for the west to put pressure on Putin, there's no chance of it happening though.
 
inbetween said:
It's impossible for Russia to join NATO, the reason why is NATO criteria isn't just about military, it also requires a country to be a functioning democracy amongst other things and Russia is not certainly not one of them. In terms of their democratic index, Russia is 124th out of 167 countries with North Korea sitting rock bottom.

NATO itself is a democracy and can decide military action based upon UN security resolutions, I can hardly see Russian foreign policy being hampered by the UN.

This is also a block for Ukraine who whilst somewhat aligned to the west they still have a highly dysfunctional and corrupt political system. Any idea of Ukraine joining NATO is used only as a tool for the west to put pressure on Putin, there's no chance of it happening though.
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Difficult yes, impossible no.

Unfortunately that ship has sailed at least for the time being - as Bush said of the London Declaration to Gorbachev “in our invitation to you to come in NATO” which indicates an acceptance on all sides that it was possible. Of course NATO was looking for a new purpose after the Cold War, it was about to become less about military cooperation and more about political cooperation. Russia, a key participant in the CSCE conferences, was engaged and through the Partnership for Peace it was considered by both Washington and Moscow as the most likely venue for security integration within Europe.

Yeltsin tried to take this further via the G8 and wanted a US-Russian partnership on European and global security. He offered that the CSCE retains the key role for security in Europe and he wanted a model that worked more naturally between the various organisations - basically he wanted closer cooperation within any structure other than NATO, for obvious reasons.

Yeltsin went on to lose his shit with a Clinton due to concerns over NATO expansion that Washington had completely misread the rune stones on. They managed to bring it back when Russia signed it to the PfP but in all honesty pretty much everything that went wrong with the hope the world had after the end of the Cold War lays at the doorstep of the White House, where angels feared to tread Washington went in with both feet. There was no malice intended but poor judgement of the reaction from Russia and Putin is a product of those failures.
 
My opinion is that Putin thought that he could bully the USA and Europe into concessions by making it appear that Russia was about to invade The Ukraine - this has backfired.

Unfortunately, Putin is all-in. I don't think he wants to invade, but he cannot simply back away without having first secured some sort of face saving concessions from The West. He's painted himself into a corner.
 
BlueMoonAcrossThePond said:
My opinion is that Putin thought that he could bully the USA and Europe into concessions by making it appear that Russia was about to invade The Ukraine - this has backfired.

Unfortunately, Putin is all-in. I don't think he wants to invade, but he cannot simply back away without having first secured some sort of face saving concessions from The West. He's painted himself into a corner.
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How would you feel if your home was surrounded by hostile forces. Getting your neighbours to install equipment to threaten you?

I'm getting sick to fuck of the US geopolitical attitude of were right and everyone else is wrong.

The arrogance of politicians and military whom in world history who are still teenager in years is staggering.

Why is it so consumed by finding ways to go to war around the world? Safely in the knowledge that being where it's geographically positioned the people can happily go about their business without being affected.

9/11 was a point where the message was consequences have actions. Yet the same old John Wayne attitude kicked in. It was an horrific event and had it happened in other countries would have been a humbling experience.

Naturally ourselves and France will go along with whatever the US decide thanks to some misconstrued loyalty about WW2.

Newsflash! Russia turned that war around. But that doesn't fit the narrative of the land of the free.

I have plenty of time for the US and states I've visited . I've always found each state friendly and hospitable. However they are let down by warmongering cunts in power. Be it Republican or Democrat. They both need wars and conflict to keep the status quo together.

I feel there won't be a conflict.

They'll be walk backs spun as a win by all sides involved.
 
mat said:
How would you feel if your home was surrounded by hostile forces. Getting your neighbours to install equipment to threaten you?

I'm getting sick to fuck of the US geopolitical attitude of were right and everyone else is wrong.

The arrogance of politicians and military whom in world history who are still teenager in years is staggering.

Why is it so consumed by finding ways to go to war around the world? Safely in the knowledge that being where it's geographically positioned the people can happily go about their business without being affected.

9/11 was a point where the message was consequences have actions. Yet the same old John Wayne attitude kicked in. It was an horrific event and had it happened in other countries would have been a humbling experience.

Naturally ourselves and France will go along with whatever the US decide thanks to some misconstrued loyalty about WW2.

Newsflash! Russia turned that war around. But that doesn't fit the narrative of the land of the free.

I have plenty of time for the US and states I've visited . I've always found each state friendly and hospitable. However they are let down by warmongering cunts in power. Be it Republican or Democrat. They both need wars and conflict to keep the status quo together.

I feel there won't be a conflict.

They'll be walk backs spun as a win by all sides involved.
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Makes perfect sense.

It's 100% OK for Russia to invade Ukraine. Once Ukraine is under Russian control, turns out that Poland borders the Ukraine. Obviously it's not OK for forces hostile to Russia to be on the new Russian borders - so Russia will have to invade Poland too.

And that's A-OK as well.

Only this sort of thing lead to WWI (arguably) and WWII (certainly).
 
Indaparkside said:
Let's send the mibs over
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Remember one derby outside the Main Stand about 5 to 3 really late. No fucker about .. I was late and came from the Parkside ...saw a mob of mibs (mib mob) Shouting come on then City.

Load of old pensioners looking at them bemused. Never laughed as much.
 
mancityvstoke said:
Remember one derby outside the Main Stand about 5 to 3 really late. No fucker about .. I was late and came from the Parkside ...saw a mob of mibs (mib mob) Shouting come on then City.

Load of old pensioners looking at them bemused. Never laughed as much.
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And women and children probably
 
BlueMoonAcrossThePond said:
Makes perfect sense.

It's 100% OK for Russia to invade Ukraine. Once Ukraine is under Russian control, turns out that Poland borders the Ukraine. Obviously it's not OK for forces hostile to Russia to be on the new Russian borders - so Russia will have to invade Poland too.

And that's A-OK as well.

Only this sort of thing lead to WWI (arguably) and WWII (certainly).
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If Russia were to invade Poland it would automatically trigger WW3.
Poland is a NATO member.
 
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