Russian invasion of Ukraine

ChicagoBlue said:
The scary part is how badly does it have to be going before he decides if he can’t have it, nobody is going to want it…and starts obliterating it?

Fingers and toes crossed it never gets that bad and common sense prevails.

He has a way out, but it’s a propaganda nightmare…

Declare the emergency action to protect Russians in Ukraine a success and turn around and leave the country, while holding onto the Donbas & Crimea. Declare victory and heap praise on the brave forces that helped protect Russians.

Does he have it in him to de-escalate, ir does he only understand escalation to secure his goals, even if it cuts his nose off to spite his face?
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I hope that after piling on the pressure, the western powers will offer him a diplomatic way out.
 
Chippy_boy said:
That in itself is a very worrying hope though isn't it. What does a somewhat mad, power-crazy despot do prior to being overthrown? A man who has killed or had killed tens of thousands of people without so much as a sigh.
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Worrying? Possibly.

The man is just a man, and the system that gives him his power is designed to ensure the success of the entity (Mother Russia) not the individual.

Once the tipping point is reached, the man who thought he had the power often finds out it was borrowed, not owned.

Whether that’s the case with Putin, we don’t know yet.
 
does anyone know how the weapons are going to get to the conflict zones as most of the cities seem surrounded or at least part surrounded and how soon would they have access to them,that Russian convoy wants taking out asap
 
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Chippy_boy said:
Well I hope the politicians and diplomats have some ideas up their sleeves because Putin withdrawing all his forces and just saying "Oops, sorry about all that", is just NEVER happening.

There has to be a way for him to sell this as being at least somewhat successful, or else this is going to end as badly as anyone could imagine it ending.

Maybe throw him Ukraine not joining Nato for the next 25 years or something. Anything he can portray as a success. But he needs something.
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I know what you are saying but I cannot agree with the solution you suggested. Ukraine are a free Sovereign state and are able ( or should be able) to manage their own affairs as they see fit. Giving in to Russian demands undermines everything they stand for, and I hope they hold there own in these discussions and tell Russia to do one
 
Bill Walker said:
I'm not up for a debate about this (I'm not knowledgeable enough) but I think if this resolves peacefully Britain should re-join the EU and take a leading role in massively building up EU military conventional defenses.

I didnt have a vote but I tended towards Brexit. I've completely changed my mind after this.
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Why ?
NATO is made up of the EU and the UK plus the yanks and seem to be doing just fine.
 
ChicagoBlue said:
2% of GDP was supposed to be a requirement of being a NATO member!
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Just a guideline that was introduced in 2006 by the look of it. if they were under 2% they needed to be moving towards that.

Funding NATO

Allies make direct and indirect contributions to the costs of running NATO and implementing its policies and activities. NATO common-funded budgets and programmes are funded by direct contributions and equate to only 0.3% of total Allied defence spending, an equivalent of around EUR 2.5 billion...
www.nato.int www.nato.int
 
petrusha said:
Don't know if anyone watched those stage meetings with the Security Counsel and the one with the oligarchs last week, but one very striking thing was that basically everyone seemed scared stiff of him. That's quite frightening in itself given that P***n is making nuclear threats now.

In other news from here this morning:

1. I just composed a letter in English at a colleague's behest and had to refer to the “special operation … to protect the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic”. Made me sick to have to write that, but it's a direct quote from guidance from the State Prosecutor's Office that people assisting the enemy, including with finance, are guilty of an offence and will be prosecuted (the client is a multinational that wants to transfer money to its Ukrainian branch office).

2. I did that just after speaking with a Moscow-based colleague who has relatives in Tchernigov (Ukr - Chernihiv), a city of just under 300,000 people in northern Ukraine. They're cowering, terrified, in their basement and say that large parts of the city have been destroyed (the home above them has been hit by something and will need to be rebuilt). These are ethnic Russians, incidentally, whom the "special operation" is meant to protect.

3. Been widely deleted now, but last night various Russian state media outlets published an essay that had obviously been written beforehand predicated on the assumption of an easy win for Russia in this war. In it, the writer gloated that "Putin has solved the Ukrainian issue forever". It's nauseating, nationalistic crap. Don't have time to translate bits for you, but this tweet reproduces some of it in English:



4. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultra-nationalist who featured in a clip posted on here what seems like years ago but is actually a few days, is in intensive care with Covid. (The clip actually dated from December.) Rumours are flying round that he may actually be dead, though they're completely unconfirmed at present.

5. In terms of a compromise, P***n made that much more difficult for himself to row back with those unhinged speeches last week screened to the whole Russian nation on prime-time TV, firstly about Ukraine having no right to exist and later about its leading politicians being degenerate Nazi drug-addicts. Much harder to broker a deal that the Ukrainians could agree to while not being regarded in Russia as a humiliation for the President than if he'd just stuck to the line of defending Russians in Donbass. Hope someone has the skill to do so.
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Ta for the updates from the ‘other side’
 
petrusha said:
Don't know if anyone watched those stage meetings with the Security Counsel and the one with the oligarchs last week, but one very striking thing was that basically everyone seemed scared stiff of him. That's quite frightening in itself given that P***n is making nuclear threats now.

In other news from here this morning:

1. I just composed a letter in English at a colleague's behest and had to refer to the “special operation … to protect the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic”. Made me sick to have to write that, but it's a direct quote from guidance from the State Prosecutor's Office that people assisting the enemy, including with finance, are guilty of an offence and will be prosecuted (the client is a multinational that wants to transfer money to its Ukrainian branch office).

2. I did that just after speaking with a Moscow-based colleague who has relatives in Tchernigov (Ukr - Chernihiv), a city of just under 300,000 people in northern Ukraine. They're cowering, terrified, in their basement and say that large parts of the city have been destroyed (the home above them has been hit by something and will need to be rebuilt). These are ethnic Russians, incidentally, whom the "special operation" is meant to protect.

3. Been widely deleted now, but last night various Russian state media outlets published an essay that had obviously been written beforehand predicated on the assumption of an easy win for Russia in this war. In it, the writer gloated that "Putin has solved the Ukrainian issue forever". It's nauseating, nationalistic crap. Don't have time to translate bits for you, but this tweet reproduces some of it in English:



4. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultra-nationalist who featured in a clip posted on here what seems like years ago but is actually a few days, is in intensive care with Covid. (The clip actually dated from December.) Rumours are flying round that he may actually be dead, though they're completely unconfirmed at present.

5. In terms of a compromise, P***n made that much more difficult for himself to row back with those unhinged speeches last week screened to the whole Russian nation on prime-time TV, firstly about Ukraine having no right to exist and later about its leading politicians being degenerate Nazi drug-addicts. Much harder to broker a deal that the Ukrainians could agree to while not being regarded in Russia as a humiliation for the President than if he'd just stuck to the line of defending Russians in Donbass. Hope someone has the skill to do so.
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On point 5 the Ukrainians being Nazi drug addicts, isn’t the president of Ukraine Jewish which kinda debunks that theory. What’s the feeling on the inside of Russia being removed from Swift, it must have got Putin’s attention if he is putting the nukes on standby.
 
Can someone explain to me why the Russians seem to keep running out of petrol? Seen videos of farmers stealing armoured vehicles that had been abandoned because they had run out. Two Russian lads captured because they knocked on a police station asking for fuel and a Georgian tanker telling a Russian ship to go fuck themselves when they asked if they could have some fuel. Is it bad luck, supply lines being cut or are the Russian army not the elite force they've been telling us.
 
mosssideblue said:
I know what you are saying but I cannot agree with the solution you suggested. Ukraine are a free Sovereign state and are able ( or should be able) to manage their own affairs as they see fit. Giving in to Russian demands undermines everything they stand for, and I hope they hold there own in these discussions and tell Russia to do one
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I also hear what you are saying. However ...

For the past 40 years, I have always believed - and I still do in principle - is that the way to deal with Russia is to stand up to them. They respect strength but prey upon weakness. You look them straight in the eye and refuse to flinch. That's exactly what Kennedy did - and rightly so - in the Cuban missile crisis.

But this all depends upon dealing with someone on the other side who is not bonkers, and who is ultimately unwilling to do terrible things rather than back down. And I am very worried that we are not dealing with such a man. If he pulls out of Ukraine in humiliated defeat, it is the end for him. And the end in the dog-eat-dog environment he's risen through, probably means him being killed. Faced with that, who knows what he might be capable of. We simply must find a way for him to be able to sell this whole nightmare as have been worth it.
 
Chippy_boy said:
You're dreaming mate. At least I hope so, because any nuclear retaliation from the UK - or the US or France or whovever - against Russia, and it's the end of the world as we know it.

We'd have very little (if any?) ability to intercept a nuke launched towards us from western Russia, and were that to happen - with a nuke aimed at the North Sea - the very best thing that could happen would be that we did nothing. Anything else would - literally - be suicide.
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This isn’t the movies mate. It would take some massive balls of steel for the UK to wait to see where an inbound missile would land/exploded as it approached the UK - it will be considered extreme aggression and that would trigger a response. Likely from NATO as a whole.

We know he has nuclear weapons and we have no desire to have a conflict with Russia. It is far more likely that if he wanted to go nuclear it would be tactical and in Ukraine - and I don’t think it is that likely.

I hope the talks can bring an end to this, they need to be able to give Putin something he can sell - such as joint governance of the disputed eastern regions - not great but sometimes you have to be pragmatic. The west/NATO needs to look at their relationship with Russia and find common ground and work from there. Putin won’t last forever and doesn’t represent the Russian people, we just need to swallow deeply, hold our noses, smile sweetly at him and be nice once the fighting stops and an agreement that is acceptable to Ukraine is found. In the meantime we need to continue to support Ukraine and not pay any attention to Putins rantings, honestly if he wanted to make a nuclear strike he wouldn’t have broadcast it on TV - he sees the west as weak (or did until a couple of days ago) and it’s for the benefit of the flappers to try and create disunity.
 
uweuweuwe said:
Can someone explain to me why the Russians seem to keep running out of petrol? Seen videos of farmers stealing armoured vehicles that had been abandoned because they had run out. Two Russian lads captured because they knocked on a police station asking for fuel and a Georgian tanker telling a Russian ship to go fuck themselves when they asked if they could have some fuel. Is it bad luck, supply lines being cut or are the Russian army not the elite force they've been telling us.
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There was a post a few pages back with a link from December describing how various strategic scenarios regarding Russian aggression on their western flank will play out and the logistic issues Russia faced, due to their unique country geography and military thinking on artillery and ground based air defences. Well worth a long read
 
Chippy_boy said:
I also hear what you are saying. However ...

For the past 40 years, I have always believed - and I still do in principle - is that the way to deal with Russia is to stand up to them. They respect strength but prey upon weakness. You look them straight in the eye and refuse to flinch. That's exactly what Kennedy did - and rightly so - in the Cuban missile crisis.

But this all depends upon dealing with someone on the other side who is not bonkers, and who is ultimately unwilling to do terrible things rather than back down. And I am very worried that we are not dealing with such a man. If he pulls out of Ukraine in humiliated defeat, it is the end for him. And the end in the dog-eat-dog environment he's risen through, probably means him being killed. Faced with that, who knows what he might be capable of. We simply must find a way for him to be able to sell this whole nightmare as have been worth it.
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I would suggest he is already humiliated and defeated insofar as Russia's standing in the world
 
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