Russian invasion of Ukraine

marco said:
just been watching a docu on youtube some professor saying its over even if either Russia or NATO couldnt reply to a strike, people may live a few months but would certainly starve as a nuclear winter sets in and food could not be grown the west could get by for 60 days without any other food entering the chain and Russia around a week
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The Russians know this as much as we do.

It’s to be avoided at all costs by everyone.
 
marco said:
just been watching a docu on youtube some professor saying its over even if either Russia or NATO couldnt reply to a strike, people may live a few months but would certainly starve as a nuclear winter sets in and food could not be grown the west could get by for 60 days without any other food entering the chain and Russia around a week
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I have enough tinned food for 5 years. I am going to be Omega Man.
 
Octavian said:
It won’t be Biden or Putin.

It will be some sort of high ranking military commanders I imagine.

They’ll be able to instantly calm down the other side if something is spotted out of the ordinary.
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In the first instance it would be a snco with direct codeworded protocols to jsoc & ruskie equivalent, but yes you’re right that it won’t be Putin ranting and raving whilst denying he’s launched an icbm whilst tracking the fucking thing whilst sprouting historical shit about the great ussr.
 
Vester said:
You say Nato is no threat to Russia, I agree. Thats why I said I think Putin is deranged/paranoid to think so. Russia strongly disagree, as their invasion to Ukraine shows.
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No no no. It absolutely doesn’t show that. Russia’s attack on Ukraine shows only that they have attacked Ukraine. It doesn’t, in and of itself, show motive.

Now the Russia experts say it’s because, as per Putin’s own words in a 5,000 word essay last year, Putin wants to rebuild the Russian Empire, but there are useful idiots that simply parrot Putin’s latest excuse which is they don’t want NATO on its border (which doesn’t make sense as they already have 5 NATO countries bordering them AND would have another two if they succeed in subjugating Ukraine). Your theory stands absolute zero scrutiny.
 
F
hello said:
In the first instance it would be a snco with direct codeworded protocols to jsoc & ruskie equivalent, but yes you’re right that it won’t be Putin ranting and raving whilst denying he’s launched an icbm whilst tracking the fucking thing whilst sprouting historical shit about the great ussr.
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History boys. If it’s not rags or dippers spouting history shite, it’s Putin.
 
Corky said:
I have enough tinned food for 5 years. I am going to be Omega Man.
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You are channelling your inner my late mum.......when she passed away my Dad had no idea about cooking etc so we went through the cupboards in the kitchen - she was thorough and ordered I'll give her that but there were piles of tins of beans in a neat pile then peas then soups - some were rusty but it could be we may end up ruing our actions ( this was 15 years ago lol )
 
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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Having read your riposte (thanks for subjecting yourself to Brand for the good of the thread) I’d be pretty embarrassed to have watched it and believed it made good points.
 
SWP's back said:
That’s what I can’t get. Posters are presumably posting in good faith but just completely unable to understand cause and effect. NATO aren’t expanding to threaten Russia. Russia is well aware that they have nukes and any attack on them is the end of the world. They aren’t remotely worried about that as seen by the fact NATO are doing fuck all militarily to help Ukraine.
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Part of me wants to be the "call his bluff" route and militarily help out the Ukrainians, but Putin is so far gone it's not just a viable risk anymore.

It is such a frustrating situation to be in knowing Ukraine is asking for help, wants our involvement, we've promised it in the past, we cannot allow Ukraine to fall knowing for sure that other nations will follow, we have to get more involved but what do we do? Is Putin genuinely prepared to see the end of the world if he doesn't get his way? Is he willing to risk Russia's future and his people rendering all his efforts fruitless anyway?

The only way I see out of this is a coup where he's removed from power and we start a dialogue with a new regime, but how likely is that?
 
bluethrunthru said:
You are channelling your inner my late mum.......when she passed away my Dad had no idea about cooking etc so we went through the cupboards in the kitchen - she was thorough and ordered I'll give her that but there were piles of tins of beans in a neat pile then peas then soups - some were rusty but it could be we may end up ruing our actions ( this was 15 years ago lol )
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Haha that was my old fellas kitchen cupboard when he died, 15 yr old tins of patels curry, beans and sausage and pea and ham soup!! (Not all in one tin!!)
 
SWP's back said:
Because…. Twatbanana.
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As much as I love the resurrection of twatbanana when overthinking the true meaning/context of the phase I am thinking twatapple woubetter suffice for Putin.
My interpretation of twatbanana in a literal sense woukd be a banana that’s been wedged up a twat so long it’s gone rotten, and therefore rather insulting when directed at a person. However using the same fucked up analogy for other fruit decaying and festering up a twat I just think the rotten core element in addition the decayed twat juice soaked rotten fruit make a twatapple a better description of Putin.

And with that overthought process I am off for a drink.
 
Vester said:
From my point of view, they dont see EU as an existential threat for them today. If EU countries would up their defense budgets by a large percentage that could certainly change in the future, but today Natos military strength is completely dependent on USA. Nato is basically just an alliance of nations USA protect today. That could of course change in the future, the power balance of the world shift over time. But for Nato to have the same military strength without USA as with USA, most members would basically have to up their defense budget with 500-1000%. As of today Russia knows that no EU country would be foolish enough to attack them, unless they have USA backing them up. They would perhaps think EU might have enough military strength to defend themselves from an attack from them, or at least enough to make it not worth while. But not the strength needed to attack them, making them a existential threat to Russia. USA (or perhaps China) are the only ones who have that strength.

Again just my opinion. What do you agree and disagree with from what I said?
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I agree with you that it’s just your opinion, I disagree with all the other words.

Seriously, who the fuck is this Russian propagandist?
 
Metal Biker said:
Part of me wants to be the "call his bluff" route and militarily help out the Ukrainians, but Putin is so far gone it's not just a viable risk anymore.

It is such a frustrating situation to be in knowing Ukraine is asking for help, wants our involvement, we've promised it in the past, we cannot allow Ukraine to fall knowing for sure that other nations will follow, we have to get more involved but what do we do? Is Putin genuinely prepared to see the end of the world if he doesn't get his way? Is he willing to risk Russia's future and his people rendering all his efforts fruitless anyway?

The only way I see out of this is a coup where he's removed from power and we start a dialogue with a new regime, but how likely is that?
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Thats the thing that gets me too - call his bluff - Ukraine says " its ok we no longer want to join NATO or the EU" ....... then what does the fucker do? I mean they can revisit that decision and say "hey we changed our minds" having bought shit loads of drones etc - in the meantime what does Putin do? Realistically he would try and hang on to what he has "won" but it could be argued he has got his concessions so he should retreat..........assuming he can get the trucks started that is.....
 
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