Ukraine/Russian Conflict

[Palfy]

27 minutes ago, Palfy said:

It would, not completely sure but I thought Turkey was one of the first country’s to support them from years ago, I’ll be honest I haven’t checked just something in the back of my memory. 

Seen what the connection was with Turkey now they signed a trade agreement at the beginning of the month, not what I initially thought but I new something had happened between them. 

[Matt]

10 minutes ago, Palfy said:

Seen what the connection was with Turkey now they signed a trade agreement at the beginning of the month, not what I initially thought but I new something had happened between them. 

Plus their leader has been quite pally with Putin in the past. Guess he values his NATO links more. 

[Sir McGiven]

13 hours ago, Palfy said:

It would, not completely sure but I thought Turkey was one of the first country’s to support them from years ago, I’ll be honest I haven’t checked just something in the back of my memory. 

it is true but our so-called “über leader” also jerks russia off time-by-time. they still don’t want to be a side on this as they fear the wrath of putin. they really do…

still, we have sold them military uav’s before the conflict. according to their military account, they are using them pretty much to destroy russian convoys.

as I said above, our own “supreme leader” fears putin and don’t wanna be a side on this until the last minute but we are NATO force after all, and one of the biggest man-force in NATO army. if things escalates, our side is obvious. that decision is beyond erdogan’s craziness.

[MikeO]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/28/vladimir-putin-war-russia-ukraine

[MikeO]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/60560567

[dunlopp9987]

Fuck this guy

 

[Sibdane]

23 minutes ago, dunlopp9987 said:

Fuck this guy

 

Narrator's voice: "He did not choose his words carefully"

[Matt]

53 minutes ago, dunlopp9987 said:

Fuck this guy

 

Bye bye career

[dunlopp9987]

And as someone mentioned in the twitter comments, this was him choosing his words carefully! Can you imagine what racist shit he's spouting when he's not on air??

[Matt]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-60582327?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=621fb7ab980bea49f4b7ac9a%26Abramovich to sell Chelsea and 'donate proceeds to war victims'%262022-03-02T18%3A32%3A39.697Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:ce7e6e61-7a53-4c54-8cad-bb98bee0cdbb&pinned_post_asset_id=621fb7ab980bea49f4b7ac9a&pinned_post_type=share

 

[MikeO]

Astounding that Putin is now saying that sanctions are "akin to a declaration of war," while his actual act of war is just a "special military operation".

[Palfy]

2 minutes ago, MikeO said:

Astounding that Putin is now saying that sanctions are "akin to a declaration of war," while his actual act of war is just a "special military operation".

I wish he would declare war on the rest of Europe or all of NATO countries, so we can finish him off once and for all. 

[MikeO]

Long read this but I found it interesting (it's behind a paywall so I've copied/pasted)...

The war has woken the West to its own decay. Let’s pray it’s not too late

Self-obsession has blinded us to the poison seeping into our democracies. No wonder we feel guilty

Matthew Syed
Sunday March 06 2022, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

Perhaps what will confound future historians the most is how dramatically the alarm bells have been ringing these past three decades. After five centuries of growing self-confidence and rising prosperity across the West, built upon a steady accretion of norms and values suffused by liberty and law, and then the great leap forward of the Industrial Revolution, we became lost in our own dream world.

This has happened before, of course. In Rome, in Egypt, and the other great empires of the past, success led to complacency, then decadence, then an inability to notice the danger until it was too late. “It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption,” Edward Gibbon wrote in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. His point is simple: insiders are typically the worst at spotting the rot.

This is perhaps why so many failed to notice the indicators blinking red in recent years. Democracy — the system of government that supposedly represented the end of history — has been in retreat. At the time of the French Revolution, only 4 per cent of the world’s nations were engaged in the experiment of representative government, a number that rose through various waves, not least after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Then there was a turning point with a steady decline in the percentage of the world’s population living in what we like to call the free world.

At the same time, and intimately related, was a profound cultural retreat. The political scientist Robert Putnam has documented a dizzying array of data that reveals growing polarisation, individualism and narcissism across western societies. Perhaps the most intuitive finding is a survey question asked to students. Do you agree with the following statement: I am a very important person. In 1950, 12 per cent agreed. By 1990, this had exploded to 80 per cent and continues to rise.

Putnam’s point is that we have become more vain and self-obsessed, more focused on rights than responsibilities, more likely to seek fame as an end in itself rather than achieving something worthy of fame. We are also more likely to heatedly disagree on trivial matters such as whether the word curry amounts to cultural appropriation — a classic case of what the British anthropologist Ernest Crawley called “the narcissism of small differences”.

While Xi Jinping was resetting the world order through his Belt and Road initiative and Vladimir Putin was recreating the Russian empire by annexing Georgia and Crimea, we were arguing over gender-neutral toilets.

This is not a cheap rhetorical point, by the way. The index of political polarisation — which measures the intensity of our internal squabbles — is at its highest for a century. In the United States, partisan disputes became so feverish that the Congress became incapable of passing legislation that everyone knew was in the national interest. Research by Yale found that only 15 per cent of Americans would punish a politician for engaging in electoral malpractice such as gerrymandering so long as it benefited their own side. In other words, a majority are so eager to shaft political opponents that they are willing to fatally weaken the constitutional struts of the citadel in which they collectively live.

It perhaps goes without saying that the policy advisers surrounding Xi and Putin noticed all this and more (as can be seen from leaked policy documents), sending their bots in their hundreds of thousands to inflame these pseudo-disputes and coax us ever deeper into the self-indulgent echo chambers that dominate the online world. I guess I am not alone in fearing that the metaverse, with its virtual ecospheres and fictional identities, will accelerate these trends, pushing us deeper into the metaphysical wormhole of digital escapism – and away from empirical and moral reality.

Some have wondered why China has prevaricated when it comes to an amphibious assault on the island of Taiwan, but the answer has been in front of our noses. They delayed not because they feared short-term military defeat but because they believed they had time on their side. They were resetting the world through stealth and increment and with western complicity. Why send a warning shot that might wake up a sleeping adversary? Better to put Taiwan on the back burner until it could be presented to an even more enfeebled West as a fait accompli.

Everything changed on February 24 when Putin sent his tanks into Ukraine, a gambit that (I am convinced) horrified the Chinese Communist Party. It will benefit in the short term from a client state dependent on its purchases of gas but this is of relatively minor significance in the great power competition that will determine the next 100 years. They know that the West has finally noticed what Gibbon called “the poison introduced into the vitals of the system”: the torrent of dirty money in our financial centres, the infiltration of universities and think tanks, and the broader corrosion of our values.

Some pundits described last week as a “reset” for western policy, but what we are seeing is, I think, infinitely more consequential. This is a reawakening of the West. It has been stunning over recent days to see politicians talking about problems that many of us have been warning about for a decade: inadequate defence spending, the imperative of traditional alliances, the dangers of strategic dependence on autocracies, whether for gas or anything else. A Tory spokesman even conceded that Russian cash in party coffers might have compromised the integrity of policy. Well, yes.

But as I watch the courage of Ukrainians, my dominant emotion is guilt. Guilt that we didn’t stand up to the autocrats earlier. Guilt that our self-indulgence blinded us to the dangers. Guilt that Ukrainians are, even now, dying for the freedoms we forgot how to defend. At the very least, we must extend sanctions to all Russian banks, freeze the assets of oligarchs and stop reloading the Kremlin cash machine by purchasing Russian hydrocarbons. We will suffer a drop in living standards but this is a fight for our way of life.

There is a famous phenomenon in optics called “perceptual reversal”. You know the kind of thing: you look at an image of a young woman, long eyelashes projecting across the left contour of her face, before it suddenly flips. You are now confronted by an older, hooded woman with a large nose, your senses startled. In Berlin, Paris, London, Washington and beyond over the past week, we have witnessed the political equivalent of perceptual reversal. We owe it to ourselves and all Ukrainians never to allow our senses to become so distorted again.

[Palfy]

1 hour ago, MikeO said:

Long read this but I found it interesting (it's behind a paywall so I've copied/pasted)...

The war has woken the West to its own decay. Let’s pray it’s not too late

Self-obsession has blinded us to the poison seeping into our democracies. No wonder we feel guilty

Matthew Syed
Sunday March 06 2022, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

Perhaps what will confound future historians the most is how dramatically the alarm bells have been ringing these past three decades. After five centuries of growing self-confidence and rising prosperity across the West, built upon a steady accretion of norms and values suffused by liberty and law, and then the great leap forward of the Industrial Revolution, we became lost in our own dream world.

This has happened before, of course. In Rome, in Egypt, and the other great empires of the past, success led to complacency, then decadence, then an inability to notice the danger until it was too late. “It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption,” Edward Gibbon wrote in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. His point is simple: insiders are typically the worst at spotting the rot.

This is perhaps why so many failed to notice the indicators blinking red in recent years. Democracy — the system of government that supposedly represented the end of history — has been in retreat. At the time of the French Revolution, only 4 per cent of the world’s nations were engaged in the experiment of representative government, a number that rose through various waves, not least after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Then there was a turning point with a steady decline in the percentage of the world’s population living in what we like to call the free world.

At the same time, and intimately related, was a profound cultural retreat. The political scientist Robert Putnam has documented a dizzying array of data that reveals growing polarisation, individualism and narcissism across western societies. Perhaps the most intuitive finding is a survey question asked to students. Do you agree with the following statement: I am a very important person. In 1950, 12 per cent agreed. By 1990, this had exploded to 80 per cent and continues to rise.

Putnam’s point is that we have become more vain and self-obsessed, more focused on rights than responsibilities, more likely to seek fame as an end in itself rather than achieving something worthy of fame. We are also more likely to heatedly disagree on trivial matters such as whether the word curry amounts to cultural appropriation — a classic case of what the British anthropologist Ernest Crawley called “the narcissism of small differences”.

While Xi Jinping was resetting the world order through his Belt and Road initiative and Vladimir Putin was recreating the Russian empire by annexing Georgia and Crimea, we were arguing over gender-neutral toilets.

This is not a cheap rhetorical point, by the way. The index of political polarisation — which measures the intensity of our internal squabbles — is at its highest for a century. In the United States, partisan disputes became so feverish that the Congress became incapable of passing legislation that everyone knew was in the national interest. Research by Yale found that only 15 per cent of Americans would punish a politician for engaging in electoral malpractice such as gerrymandering so long as it benefited their own side. In other words, a majority are so eager to shaft political opponents that they are willing to fatally weaken the constitutional struts of the citadel in which they collectively live.

It perhaps goes without saying that the policy advisers surrounding Xi and Putin noticed all this and more (as can be seen from leaked policy documents), sending their bots in their hundreds of thousands to inflame these pseudo-disputes and coax us ever deeper into the self-indulgent echo chambers that dominate the online world. I guess I am not alone in fearing that the metaverse, with its virtual ecospheres and fictional identities, will accelerate these trends, pushing us deeper into the metaphysical wormhole of digital escapism – and away from empirical and moral reality.

Some have wondered why China has prevaricated when it comes to an amphibious assault on the island of Taiwan, but the answer has been in front of our noses. They delayed not because they feared short-term military defeat but because they believed they had time on their side. They were resetting the world through stealth and increment and with western complicity. Why send a warning shot that might wake up a sleeping adversary? Better to put Taiwan on the back burner until it could be presented to an even more enfeebled West as a fait accompli.

Everything changed on February 24 when Putin sent his tanks into Ukraine, a gambit that (I am convinced) horrified the Chinese Communist Party. It will benefit in the short term from a client state dependent on its purchases of gas but this is of relatively minor significance in the great power competition that will determine the next 100 years. They know that the West has finally noticed what Gibbon called “the poison introduced into the vitals of the system”: the torrent of dirty money in our financial centres, the infiltration of universities and think tanks, and the broader corrosion of our values.

Some pundits described last week as a “reset” for western policy, but what we are seeing is, I think, infinitely more consequential. This is a reawakening of the West. It has been stunning over recent days to see politicians talking about problems that many of us have been warning about for a decade: inadequate defence spending, the imperative of traditional alliances, the dangers of strategic dependence on autocracies, whether for gas or anything else. A Tory spokesman even conceded that Russian cash in party coffers might have compromised the integrity of policy. Well, yes.

But as I watch the courage of Ukrainians, my dominant emotion is guilt. Guilt that we didn’t stand up to the autocrats earlier. Guilt that our self-indulgence blinded us to the dangers. Guilt that Ukrainians are, even now, dying for the freedoms we forgot how to defend. At the very least, we must extend sanctions to all Russian banks, freeze the assets of oligarchs and stop reloading the Kremlin cash machine by purchasing Russian hydrocarbons. We will suffer a drop in living standards but this is a fight for our way of life.

There is a famous phenomenon in optics called “perceptual reversal”. You know the kind of thing: you look at an image of a young woman, long eyelashes projecting across the left contour of her face, before it suddenly flips. You are now confronted by an older, hooded woman with a large nose, your senses startled. In Berlin, Paris, London, Washington and beyond over the past week, we have witnessed the political equivalent of perceptual reversal. We owe it to ourselves and all Ukrainians never to allow our senses to become so distorted again.

Very interesting read, I find the “but as I watch the courage of the Ukrainians”and onwards the most important piece in this, we and others have not done anywhere near enough to help the Ukrainians and in doing so help ourselves, the fact government’s in Europe are still trading with Russia is a disgrace as the author says this may impact our standard of living, but to carry on contributing to their economy will in the end destroy our freedom and way of life, I know what I would find worse. 

[Ghoat]

Russia and Ukraine have a very long, complicated history, like 1100 years worth. I am by no means a Russian expert, just someone who has been fascinated by Russian history and read a good deal of books on it's history. Both Ukrainian and Russian's lineage traces back to the Rus, and the Kievian Rus of the 900's. The Russian Orthodox Church was founded in Kiev, in the late 10th century. The Mongal invasion separated Kievian Rus and Muscovy for about 250 years. During that time Moscow and it's influence over the Slavs grew, and Kiev's fell. In the 1600 the Cossacks moved away from Poland and swore allegiance to the Tsar, which effectively brought what we know as the Ukraine into the Russian Empire until the end of WW1. 1922, Ukraine was a founding member of the USSR where it remained until 1991. The Russian have considered the Ukrainians to be ethnic Russians "Little Russians", due to language, religion, culture for a long time. Despite the close and historical ties, most Ukrainians consider themselves Ukrainian, aside from swaths along the Russian boarder - Donbass (hello Don Cossacks) etc. 

Peter the Great was obsessed with taking Azov from the Ottomans, to give Russian an ice-free port on the Sea of Azov, and thereby the Black Sea, which is dominated on the northern side by the Crimea. The Azov region is still the only ice-free port that gives Russia access to the world that doesn't require going thru the Artic, or the Pacific, and the Russian Navy has been intent on dominating the Black Sea since the early 1700's. Then there is the famine in the early 30's when Stalin starved 3+ million Ukrainians - that Ukraine recognizes as a genocide against Ukrainians at the hands of the Soviet Union. The relationship is complicated, but there is some validity to the Russia feeling Ukraine is culturally important to Russia. Not unlike Kosovo to Serbia, but that's for a different day. chy 

Now you have a Cold War era KGB spook in charge of Russia, who is nuts and still pissed about the dissolution of the USSR and hyper nationalistic. In his mind, it's part of Russia, and having it be part of NATO moves the Iron Curtain from Eastern Europe, puts it on his doorstep, as well as puts the most wide open indefensible part of the Russian territory on a NATO border. Oh, and Ukraine has enough resources, that if tapped, could rival Russia as a petrol state. 

 

I would agree with the Russian/Strongman leader thing, they have been "governed" by an autocrat since Ivan The Terrible in the 1500's. There was a symbiotic relationship with the Tsars and the boyars that keep each in power/rich and the people had zero say in anything. It was replaced by the Soviet General Secretary and the Party Hierarchy, and now it's Putin and the Oligarchs. It simply has never changed for the Russian people. Democracy in Russia lasted from about 1993 until Putin took office around 2000. So one thousand years of history, with less than 7 years of a democracy. It's a foreign concept by and large to the Russian conscious.  Which in no way means the "deserve" to be oppressed or brutalized - nor does Ukraine deserve to be invaded in a war of civilian annihilation.

[MikeO]

Banksy..

 

[MikeO]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rishi-sunak-family-infosys-russia-putin-b2042885.html

[MikeO]

"Ukraine war: Putin warns against foreign intervention."

Er.....OK then, you're on sound moral ground to demand that aren't you Vladimir?

[Matt]

7 hours ago, RPG said:

Given today's announcement of 'partial mobilisation' of Russian Reserves by Putin (up to 300,000 Reservists) I thought it was worth bumping this thread back into play. I think Putin is getting desperate. His front line troops are poorly trained, have no kit (or have abandoned what kit they had) and are retreating. What can Putin expect from Reserves? The Russian stock market is down 10% in a single day, the price of a flight to get out of Russia is now prohibitively expensive (unless you are a 'pro Putin' oligarch of course), Kazakhstan has started impounding Russian convoys in accordance with Western Sanctions, Armenia is now starting to politically distance itself from Russia and awkward questions for Putin are now being asked fairly openly on Russian TV channels.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end for Putin but he remains very dangerous until detained or taken out by his own side I think. We are now entering a dangerous and decisive phase and I fear it will get worse before it gets better.

I saw the cannon fodder is being mobilised. After all the proclamations of strength and superiority, his trained professional army is being outdone because of Cold War tech and tactics. I feel for a lot of the Russian people too in a way, they're about to become a meatshield as with Stalin. Not to mention all those that will be imprisoned.

[Matt]

5 hours ago, RPG said:

Very sad state of affairs but Putin has to be stopped. Hopefully his own side will take care of matters. I think that once he is unable to hide all the body bags from Russian MSM and he realises that Europe can withstand any effects of lack of Russian gas over the winter, then he will bluster and bluff about use of nuclear weapons but will ultimately cave in or, more likely, be taken out by his own side.

Very tense times though.

The winter really is the key to his tactics at this point. We need our MSM to not make a bigger deal out of it as they are doing.

Russian MSM means nothing in Russia since they're state controlled. But the population over there aren't stupid. A quick decisive victory announced 8-9 months ago, lead by the self-proclaimed best miltiarty, doesn't require 300k+ civvies to bolster numbers. 

He will have to be taken out by his own else its nuclear war. But all those close to him have been carefully cultivated for decades now. Some arguably are worse than him too. 

[Matt]

This is why I've always had a problem with media describing it as Russias invasion.  It's Putins invasion.

[Hafnia]

33 minutes ago, Matt said:

This is why I've always had a problem with media describing it as Russias invasion.  It's Putins invasion.

Agreed. Surely there must be things happening behind the scenes that make his position somewhat shaky with his own generals.  The ominous thing is that he will know this and paranoia isn’t a good ingredient in this. 
 

it’s like gladiator isn’t it? The emperor knows he’s wrong, he knows he has people pretending to like him and the paranoia makes him increasingly hostile and irrational. The question is who is maximus in a this? 

[Palfy]

5 hours ago, Hafnia said:

Agreed. Surely there must be things happening behind the scenes that make his position somewhat shaky with his own generals.  The ominous thing is that he will know this and paranoia isn’t a good ingredient in this. 
 

it’s like gladiator isn’t it? The emperor knows he’s wrong, he knows he has people pretending to like him and the paranoia makes him increasingly hostile and irrational. The question is who is maximus in a this? 

The Generals they control the army, they will ultimately tell him it’s the end even though he may not accept it, in the same way Johnson had to go, and if he tries to use nuclear weapons they will just remove him, they won’t want a nuclear war to destroy everything they know and hold dear. He’s getting very close to the end of his control over Russia.  

[Matt]

1 hour ago, Palfy said:

The Generals they control the army, they will ultimately tell him it’s the end even though he may not accept it, in the same way Johnson had to go, and if he tries to use nuclear weapons they will just remove him, they won’t want a nuclear war to destroy everything they know and hold dear. He’s getting very close to the end of his control over Russia.  

We can hope. 

[Hafnia]

1 hour ago, Palfy said:

The Generals they control the army, they will ultimately tell him it’s the end even though he may not accept it, in the same way Johnson had to go, and if he tries to use nuclear weapons they will just remove him, they won’t want a nuclear war to destroy everything they know and hold dear. He’s getting very close to the end of his control over Russia.  

You reckon his end is nigh? 

[Palfy]

3 hours ago, Hafnia said:

You reckon his end is nigh? 

I think it’s getting close, his regular troops are surrendering or running from the fight, he’s now trying to mobilise a civilian army who don’t want to fight. He is again threatening nuclear weapons to try and stop the support of weapons to Ukraine, for me the signs are starting show his back is up against the wall and his authority is being questioned by more and more Russians every day. 

[Palfy]

1 minute ago, RPG said:

I agree but it also makes Putin more dangerous until he is taken out by his own side.

It does make him more dangerous and that will be his ultimate down fall, if he was to withdraw and say special operations have been completed he will keep his Presidency and live to fight another day. 

[Hafnia]

56 minutes ago, RPG said:

Interesting find in one of Usmanov's mansions.

 

If they are real why were they not locked up in a vault? Worth an absolute fortune. 

[MikeO]

2 hours ago, Hafnia said:

If they are real why were they not locked up in a vault? Worth an absolute fortune. 

Possibly he thought the villa itself was secure enough?

[Hafnia]

34 minutes ago, MikeO said:

Possibly he thought the villa itself was secure enough?

Clearly not!  Aren’t they worth £40m a piece?  This is the sort of stuff that is kept in vaults and you get sophisticated robbers to steal. Then again if you are worth billions it’s like us leaving a Rolex watch in the underpants draw.