Russian invasion of Ukraine

Chippy_boy said:
Is it not obvious? Because if we were adequately able to listen to and understand his concerns, we may have been able to find the necessary reassurances or compromises which both sides could have lived with, which might have prevented this in the first place. Is it so inconceivable that had - for example - Ukraine agreed to not join Nato for say 10 years, we could have averted this for perhaps 10 years? Maybe Putin would not be around by then.

Anyway that ship has sailed, massively to everyone's detriment. But I keep being told by those who seem to think they know everything that his next step is Poland or some other non-Nato country. I don't believe it is any more, if indeed it ever was. But it might be a bloody good idea try to figure that out, rather than just assume that he's bonkers and that's all there is to it.
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But you wanted Ukraine to surrender on day one just give up their sovereign territory so you could feel safe tucked up in bed.
 
Metal Biker said:
What the hell is jingoistic about Rambo shooting a gun in the air with the caption "just get it done!"?

How does your mind get to that stage? Its a gif to imply frustration, not warmongering jingoism, but that's as I say, your narrative to twist things.
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If you say so.

And BTW I am not twisting ANYTHING.
 
The full read out from the call between Macron and Putin is scary.

Sadly, the only way this is ending is with the full scale destruction of Ukranian cities and/or Putin is ousted - which is unlikely.
 
grunge said:
Moldova just applied for EU membership and is applying for fast track NATO membership.
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That's them and Georgia.

Looking forward to reading how it's their fault when they get invaded, and the EU's/NATO's for spreading onto Putinland
 
kaz7 said:
Mad maria took offence at sky asking her about dead and injured ukranians , she said he shouldnt be a journo and accused him of being a member of the uk goverment

Being paranoid is catching it seems
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Did Boris learn the dead cat tactics from these politicians
 
hello said:
But you wanted Ukraine to surrender on day one just give up their sovereign territory so you could feel safe tucked up in bed.
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I'll put the ridiculous insult to one side and just say that is absolute nonsense.

I said that the longer this goes on, the more lives will be lost. At no point did I say Ukraine should surrender, and even if I did think that (I don't) then that is a matter entirely up to them.
 
Vester said:
Not sure I understand whats your question is, but I will try to answer it from my point of view. If I went down the wrong path, hope its okay!
What matters for Russia is USA, thats who they fear. Russia dont care about the other Nato members in particular, they dont care much about the UK or France since neither of these countries is a major threat to them. USA is. Thats the big difference here, USA is a part of Nato, not EU. I dont think Russias concerns about Nato expanding to Ukraine would be even comparable to what they are now if USA wasn't a part of Nato.

Again this is just me speculating and giving my opining, not facts in any way. I am open to be hear about other ways of thinking if you want to convince me I'm wrong=)
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The premise of your response is that they fear the U.S alone due to their military might - An EU army would have :-

1. Nuclear deterrents
2. A budget that will easily surpass Russia's defence spending based upon Germany's commitment to spend up to 100Bn alone not including the other 26 member states
3. 2016 consensus has the EU active army personnel alone at 1.4 million
4. Superior military hardware

Not sure why you think Putin would be so dismissive of this on his doorstep just because the U.S. would not be officially involved, as I am fairly certain NATO bases, logistics and planning would be completely interchangeable with the EU equivalent.

Georgia applied for emergency EU membership 2 days ago, Ukraine president is trying to get fast tracked into the EU as we speak and you think that's just because they want to access the EU's free market - there is a link right there for you on why these applications are trying to be fast tracked at this very moment.
 
tolmie's hairdoo said:
Well, it's official.

This **** Putin is bat-shit crazy enough to do anything.

Every word from his mouth is a lie.
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Don't think we learned anything new from this did we? He wants control of Ukraine and will not stop unless/until his demands are met. We knew that already.
 
BlueMoonAcrossThePond said:
Putin is an evil, ambitious, despotic, narcissistic asshole. Who wants nothing more than to expand Russia's power.

And so I put this to you.

How does a NATO-aligned Ukraine pose any sort of threat to Russia? At all. Putin claims that it's an existential threat. Outline why this is so if you think that this is true.

Russia is an aggressive nation led by an ex-KGB man.

As such, Putin very much desires the heyday past - Soviet Russia's prominence and influence on the world stage. Putin is a ruthless thug who oversaw the bombings of Russian apartments simply to gain power and prestige.

In Putin you have an intrinsically immoral adversary who cares nothing at all except for personal and national gain. And Putin isn't an idiot. He realizes that it's very much to his advantage to sow discord, confusion, and wherever possible, support for his actions among his adversaries.

And so, unfortunately, some sort of Putin propaganda has struck a cord with you - that some how, some way, Russian invasion of the Ukraine is justified if only The West could see things through Russian eyes.
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Well, you're right. If we could see things through Putin's eyes - the invasion would certainly be reasonable and justified.

And too, if we could see things through Hitler's eyes the killing of approximately 6 million jews during WWII is justified.
===
Wake up!
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You then more or less suggest I said the Russian invasion is justified and think its reasonable it becomes obvious you are just a lying piece of shit. I said the exact opposite on several occasions, I dont know if its just your low IQ, or if you purposely are lying trying to make it seems like I somehow think Russia has ANY right to do what they are doing. Just because we disagree in our belief on why Russia is doing this, we dont disagree in our belief that they shouldn't be doing this. Like I said, quite clearly on several occasions, I think what Russia is doing is wrong, I think Putin is a maniac with no respect for human life, and I hope Russia gets punished for their crimes.

For all your ramblings about Putin being a horrible human being, yes I know. I think most of the people in the world (outside of Russia at least) knows. You seem to think you need to convince me on this fact, if you read my post its quite obvious I think he is a horrible human being. Not sure how its even possible to not understand this if you read what I wrote.

What you fail to realise is that in Russia, they see themselves as the good guys (Note to idiot, this does not mean I think they are the good guys). I know it might seem insane, but in their deranged world, USA is the real villain of the world, the military death machine who is responsible for more murders in war than all the other countries in the world combined, the country who is involved or is responsible in the majority of the worlds wars since WWII. And now they are expanding closer and closer to Russia, its only a matter of time before they will try to invade them too. This is how Russia sees USA. And this is why he sees USA moving closer to them as an existential threat, Russia might be next! Again, since you obviously have a hard time understanding what I write, this is NOT what I think, this is what Russia think.

´
 
domalino said:
This is long but it's hard to respond to a 16 minute video with brevity.


I actually watched this entire thing in the spirit of open mindedness that Russell Brand would no doubt endorse, so I'm going to take the time to just pull apart a few things. You may or may not bother taking it in, but maybe someone else will and we'll have saved another from thinking he's some sort of intellectual.

Firstly the premise of the video "WE CAN'T TALK ABOUT THIS" aka "Did NATO expansionism cause this" not the forbidden topic that Russell Brand tries to portray it as. For example, you don't need to go to some "non-mainstream" website to find this opinion like Brand has, this article was published in the guardian. It was also debated pretty freely in this thread for the first few hundred pages.

It has however been comprehensively disproven as a theory and only exists as a Kremlin propaganda line to justify the war, so while you're certainly allowed to say it, you might get judged.

Reasons it's bullshit.


1) Ukraine was no closer to joining NATO now than it was 10 years ago, in fact NATO rules actually meant Ukraine couldn't join since 2014 due to the ongoing conflict in Donbass, so Russia did not think it was going to join.

2) Russia has infact had NATO garrisons on its border since 1949, so what Brand describes as "antagonistic" is actually just how things have been for 75 years.

3)In 1975 Soviet leader Leonard Brezhnev willingly signed on to the Helsinki Accords, which stipulated every country is free to choose it's own alliances. So the USSR/Russia explicitly endorses every countries right to join NATO if they want and has done for 50 years.

4)The fable of "not 1 inch east". This quote by the US Secretary of State was made during negotiations about Germany. They were trying to come to an agreement about how to reunify Germany and Russia wanted assurances that the massive NATO forces still garrisoned in West Germany weren't going to rush to the new Eastern Border with Poland.

However this was not actually possible because NATO wouldn't have been able to defend Germany under Article 5 of NATO, so it was resolved and made no appearance in the 2-plus-4 agreement that the USSR agreed to.

5) Russia has the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world. That makes them absolutely invulnerable to attack, because (as they so often threaten) it risks nuclear apocalypse. No NATO troops on the border changes that.

So now I come onto why Brand is a fucking moron (in this video in particular.)

1) He goes on a rant about how "The West wants Ukraine to be in NATO" and "Russia wants Ukraine to be an ally" and no one ever asks the poor old Ukrainians, and isn't it always that way?

This is just incredibly ignorant. Ukrainians decided. They rebelled against the Pro-Russian government in 2014, and elected a pro-EU government, and then did it again in 2019 when Zelensky was elected. Ukrainians overwhelming want to be in the EU and NATO.

2) He several times during reading Freedland's article disregards Putins stated beliefs as Freedlands opinion, which is dishonest.

He also sums up the objective of Freedland's article as persuading us "We must support our government's actions" which is not a reasonable interpretation of an article titled "We're appalled by Putin but the west gave him the green light, the article is really clearly arguing that prior refusal to act has lead to this war.

That was weird, but what's really weird and where the lying kicks in is that he then claims this article that explicitly criticises our governments lack of action in the past as propaganda that "Asks you to support the existing power structures in your set of systems or nation".

So at this point he's not even arguing against the Freedland article, but something else.

3) He gets upset that Freedland considers democracy a good thing and a better system of government than Russia's dictatorship...

The irony in this section is that he's too ignorant to realise that the problems we've had with our democracies lately - Trump, Republican's trying to steal an election, mask protests, anti-vaxxers vs normal people, Brexit....

Half of them don't exist in Russia because Putin detains and arrests and kills those people. The others - Brexit and Trump - were funded by Russia to cause disharmony.

There's a lot of "all people are people" in this video, but at no point does Brand consider that's not true in Putin's Russia, is it?



The problem with Russell Brand is that he is so desperate to define himself as against "the man" or government, or "the mainstream" that he will elevate whatever those establishments oppose to be an equally valid point of view, and unfortunately for him it shows how out of his depth he is debating these topics, because sometimes there is actually a clear right and wrong.
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Thank you for saving me from having to listen to Russell Brand, one of the many modern "celebrities" that seem to have no reason for existing.
 
The worry just now is politicians are back slapping each other because they are United and coordinating their sanctions. The facts remain the poor old Ukrainia’s are fighting a huge army alone, citizens are running for cover and being indiscriminately targeted, i don’t see much to back slap and whilst the sanctions are more robust than we could have expected they will take time to be effective - and Ukraine will be under Russian control by the end of the month. The Wests intelligence services told us this war was coming but today we are trying to arm Ukraine- maybe we should have done this a few months ago. Getting arms and humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian population will only get more difficult.
I saw the UK security minister on Sky earlier Damian Hinds. He was utterly hopeless - promising help to refugees in theory but not in practice (said we’d work out a process over the next couple of weeks!) - in the midst of a crisis this is shameful, people will be dead before they have a practical scheme in place.
 
Vester said:
You then more or less suggest I said the Russian invasion is justified and think its reasonable it becomes obvious you are just a lying piece of shit. I said the exact opposite on several occasions, I dont know if its just your low IQ, or if you purposely are lying trying to make it seems like I somehow think Russia has ANY right to do what they are doing. Just because we disagree in our belief on why Russia is doing this, we dont disagree in our belief that they shouldn't be doing this. Like I said, quite clearly on several occasions, I think what Russia is doing is wrong, I think Putin is a maniac with no respect for human life, and I hope Russia gets punished for their crimes.

For all your ramblings about Putin being a horrible human being, yes I know. I think most of the people in the world (outside of Russia at least) knows. You seem to think you need to convince me on this fact, if you read my post its quite obvious I think he is a horrible human being. Not sure how its even possible to not understand this if you read what I wrote.

What you fail to realise is that in Russia, they see themselves as the good guys (Note to idiot, this does not mean I think they are the good guys). I know it might seem insane, but in their deranged world, USA is the real villain of the world, the military death machine who is responsible for more murders in war than all the other countries in the world combined, the country who is involved or is responsible in the majority of the worlds wars since WWII. And now they are expanding closer and closer to Russia, its only a matter of time before they will try to invade them too. This is how Russia sees USA. And this is why he sees USA moving closer to them as an existential threat, Russia might be next! Again, since you obviously have a hard time understanding what I write, this is NOT what I think, this is what Russia think.

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I completely share your frustration!
 
hilts said:
A goose tried to finger me once, dark days.
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nintchdbpict000410031893.jpg
 
Chippy_boy said:
I've said similar. No-one in the UK is under any (non-war) circumstances going to have to suffer even 1% as much as the poor Ukrainians, no matter what happens to our petrol prices and heating bills.

And the government can subsidize for as long as it takes, things like heating bills for the poorest who genuinely cannot afford it.

We cannot expect to get out of this unholy mess completely unscathed and whilst none of us want to be poorer, or see our savings take a hit, or even lose our jobs... in the scheme of things, that is getting off lightly. We should be turning up the sanctions wick to 11 IMO. Anything and everything that can be done short of all out war, should be done. No trade with Russia whatsoever should be allowed, despite the very obvious adverse consequences to ourselves.

I would also consider sanctioning countries which refuse to apply sanctions themselves.

Whilst I am posting, I might also add that I hope we are engaged in one enormous charm offensive with China. They are not our enemy. They sell us half the things we buy and half the things we want, they make for us. The language started by Trump in particular about China being our enemy (principally because American manufacturing the rust belt is shite and China make better goods, cheaper) was a ridiculous and counter-productive move.

China has FAR more to gain from increased collaboration and closer relations with the US and the EU, than it does with Russia - an economy roughly the size of Italy.

Get China on board and Putin's empire building aspirations are finished.
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Very well put.
China really just wants to trade.
I think they are the necessary ace in this poker game.
 
bobmcfc said:

Bitch 1


Bitch 2
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So he's just claimed there's thousands of Indian and Chinese hostages in Ukraine.

...China and India are going to come out and say that's not true...why would he chose the 2 world powers who are remaining neutral?
 
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