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Russia/Ukraine (Read 64728 times)

DAVETHOMAS90

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#25 Re: Re: Politics 2020
February 24, 2022, 01:23:02 am
Spiders, it's not that he's completely unaware, it's that the gravity of any situation is measured largely - or primarily in terms of his position.

It isn't something that comes down to a binary decision of send in troops/don't send in troops, but that different crises are simply a different stage.

My worry is the impact that that has over better strategic choices.

The message is quite clear in many leading stories, emphasising dangerous/damaging rhetoric, across many issues. That rhetoric also compromises the best advice from other advisers.


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#26 Re: Re: Politics 2020
February 24, 2022, 05:59:50 am
All rather a moot point this morning.

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#27 Re: Re: Politics 2020
February 24, 2022, 07:18:20 am
All rather a moot point this morning.

Hungary, 56. Poland, 80.

He knows what he’s doing, he has a well established playbook. After over a decade of systematically sponsoring anti-eastern European sentiment across Western Europe and some quiet and quite effective moves to destabilise both the EU and NATO, he must have wet his pants in excitement when Covid popped up and advanced his ambitions on by five years or so. Romania still has oil fields, worth a few days of shelling to acquire and some lovely arable land on the Danube plains.
For “The West” to oppose him or even slow him, would require such a huge amount of backtracking by all those nationalist, chauvinistic, political movements and general zeitgeist that has swept most (really very small and weak) European nations over the last 20 years; that it seems unlikely to happen.
Frankly, it’s probably too late. He’s spent twenty years getting ready. Western Europe no longer possesses the sort of equipment to resist him, militarily. We’ve only prepped and equipped for anti-insurgency since the fall of the Berlin wall.
Too many people thought that era of European conflict, passed.
Lots of Historians and Military leaders shaking their heads this morning and screaming into their coffee “I fucking said this would happen!”

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#28 Re: Re: Politics 2020
February 24, 2022, 07:21:02 am
All rather a moot point this morning.

Indeed. Not a lot restricting the assets of Russians in London will do now.

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#29 Re: Re: Politics 2020
February 24, 2022, 07:34:42 am
What a horrible situation :(

DAVETHOMAS90

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#30 Re: Re: Politics 2020
February 24, 2022, 07:41:34 am
All rather a moot point this morning.

Indeed. Not a lot restricting the assets of Russians in London will do now.

I don't know. It's far more worrying of course, and that Boris will still look to be seen apparently saying the right thing for anyone offering a nod of approval.

Yes, a horrible situation.

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#31 Re: Re: Politics 2020
February 24, 2022, 08:01:44 am
Dave, what?

Putin invades a European country and you're worried that Boris might be seen "saying the right thing". If Johnson says Putin should fail and be seen to fail then I can't but completely agree. He can fail from a great height onto a big spike for all I care.

For what it's worth I don't think there will be any UK military intervention. War with Russia is the last thing on the electorate's mind and, as much as liberal-minded UKB might despair, Ukraine is not a country that the electorate feels any particular kinship with.

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#32 Re: Re: Politics 2020
February 24, 2022, 08:21:37 am
Dave, it’s not about ‘Boris’, ‘Starmer’, or any other British politician who you may have a caricature of in your imagination. How can you be so stupid, crass and inward-looking.

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#33 Re: Re: Politics 2020
February 24, 2022, 08:42:11 am
Dave, what?

Putin invades a European country and you're worried that Boris might be seen "saying the right thing". If Johnson says Putin should fail and be seen to fail then I can't but completely agree. He can fail from a great height onto a big spike for all I care.

For what it's worth I don't think there will be any UK military intervention. War with Russia is the last thing on the electorate's mind and, as much as liberal-minded UKB might despair, Ukraine is not a country that the electorate feels any particular kinship with.
This is true and as I said, I think that has been actively encouraged.

But, I think our world is about to change, again. Revert, in many ways.

I think the next few months will see a build up of US personnel across WEurope. Over the next 12-24 months those temporary encampments becoming ever more solid. WEuropean nations will begin rearmament and within three years life will resemble the Cold War era in many ways. How much of EEurope is lost to Russia during that time, being the biggest question.

If you look at defence spending, I think WEurope actually began rearmament around a decade (or more) ago. So, I don’t actually think we’re entirely caught out by this, though I think huge swathes of the general population are yet to realise what’s happening, along with a substantial block within various western political systems. I guess the obvious Russian influence in American politics recently, was sufficient for many European countries to begin making preparations for the collapse of NATO (I reckon, though, it’s about to come roaring back).
The US suddenly has a surfeit of fighting men/women and veterans, which appear to be becoming agitated and politicised; so they could probably do with something to distract/point them at, too (a bit like depression era Americans finding a bogeyman on both coasts at the end of the ‘30s). I may be overly cynical.

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#34 Re: Re: Politics 2020
February 24, 2022, 08:50:39 am
And a lot of the US was brought up thinking of "those darned Soviets / Russkis"  as being the big bad enemy, so won't take much to reignite that.

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#35 Re: Re: Politics 2020
February 24, 2022, 08:59:25 am
Dave, what?

Putin invades a European country and you're worried that Boris might be seen "saying the right thing". If Johnson says Putin should fail and be seen to fail then I can't but completely agree. He can fail from a great height onto a big spike for all I care.

For what it's worth I don't think there will be any UK military intervention. War with Russia is the last thing on the electorate's mind and, as much as liberal-minded UKB might despair, Ukraine is not a country that the electorate feels any particular kinship with.

I think Ukraine is pretty fucked in the short term. Russian occupation of Russian speaking majority areas, complete disruption to infrastructure from airstrikes... the Russian aim will be to leave Ukraine a toothless, weak nation without allies and without a prospect of economic success or security on their doorstep to interfere with as they see fit.

Pretty disgusting as we'd all agree. I don't think there's a NATO option to really do much about it mind you. An intervention is simply too risky.

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#36 Re: Re: Politics 2020
February 24, 2022, 08:59:46 am
Dave, it’s not about ‘Boris’, ‘Starmer’, or any other British politician who you may have a caricature of in your imagination. How can you be so stupid, crass and inward-looking.

I don’t think Dave is either Stupid or Crass. I think inward looking is understandable and not unjustified. We have a lot of shit to deal with “at home” and it hasn’t stopped being important.
I do think a few stitches, in time (five-ten years ago) when the extent of Russian interference in the West became obvious, might have saved the several times nine stitches we”re going to have to make now.
Unfortunately, military spending and overt geopolitical posturing, are hard sells in peace time. Easy to ignore any justification for them as “old fashioned thinking” or “clinging to past glory” etc.

Boris will probably be quietly replaced. Scandal not being a welcome distraction right now but his, likely very Slavic skeletons in his financial closet, probably mean a bit of a power shift in the Tory party, right now.
If there had been more sympathetic (to Putin) rhetoric coming from the Cons, maybe not, but I think Russia has been branded the enemy, so…

For context, our “establishment” once quietly shuffled off an entire King, because he was a bit too cozy with some ideology that was rather popular across Europe at the time.
(It’s an opinion, but I don’t believe wanting to marry a divorced American was a socially insurmountable problem, given some the juggling acts accomplished by earlier iterations of royals Europe wide. Not as if we asked some (almost) random Dutch fella to take over, for instance etc etc).
« Last Edit: February 24, 2022, 09:07:54 am by Oldmanmatt »

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#37 Re: Re: Politics 2020
February 24, 2022, 09:22:30 am
Maybe a topic split? Russia/Ukraine might derail any other political chat in this thread for a while - it doesn't sound like it'll be disappearing any time soon  :(

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#38 Re: Re: Politics 2020
February 24, 2022, 09:37:32 am
Maybe a topic split? Russia/Ukraine might derail any other political chat in this thread for a while - it doesn't sound like it'll be disappearing any time soon  :(
I don’t know, just because many people are suddenly remembering that our politics and political priorities don’t actually stop at Dover, doesn’t seem like a reasonable argument for separating aspects of reality that will certainly have huge bearing on each other.

Our politics, internally, will be shaped by this to an inordinate degree.

Possibly, I missed the bit where the last Labour government, in power for a decade or so, eliminated poverty, homelessness and at no point got dragged into international conflict/war. Though I don’t think I did. I have bumped my head a few times, but I think I would have remembered. I think the outside world might have a greater influence on our internal politics than we like to admit.

For instance:

Will we shift West? Is “the 51st State” looming in our future?
Will we quietly, in back rooms, sheepishly shake hands with the neighbours we’ve been feuding with for petty reasons, in order to deal with the sewage plant that we’ve discovered is being built at the edge of the estate?
Will we cave to an increasingly Russian dominated “Europe” as the world is divided up between Russia, China and the US?

These thing are far more likely to shape our political leadership than any amount of parties or fantasy bridges.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2022, 09:43:14 am by Oldmanmatt »

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#39 Re: Russia/Ukraine
February 24, 2022, 09:52:42 am
Just catching up on the news, mad that the UN Security Council was actually sitting when it officially kicked off!

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#40 Re: Russia/Ukraine
February 24, 2022, 10:12:02 am
I feel like the end game here is for Russia to annex another small portion of Ukraine, I’m not so sure they’ll attempt a full annexation of the country due to difficulty’s similar to Afghanistan (west arming rebels and the army) - on top of this there’s been lots of murmurs of Russian officers abandoning posts and defecting so we’ll see if this ends up becoming a bigger thing.

My guess is that we won’t see anything other than strict sanctions against energy and banking for Russia and continuation of arms supplies via back channels to the Ukrainian army.

It’s actually incredible that Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics includes a section on Ukraine that reads “ Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics". Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is cordon sanitaire, which would be inadmissible.[9]”

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#41 Re: Russia/Ukraine
February 24, 2022, 10:23:16 am
A twitter thread here documenting some of the violence at the start of the Russia-Ukranian War of 2022. There will be many more threads like this. Devastating.

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#42 Re: Russia/Ukraine
February 24, 2022, 10:32:40 am
I feel like the end game here is for Russia to annex another small portion of Ukraine, I’m not so sure they’ll attempt a full annexation of the country due to difficulty’s similar to Afghanistan (west arming rebels and the army) - on top of this there’s been lots of murmurs of Russian officers abandoning posts and defecting so we’ll see if this ends up becoming a bigger thing.

My guess is that we won’t see anything other than strict sanctions against energy and banking for Russia and continuation of arms supplies via back channels to the Ukrainian army.

It’s actually incredible that Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics includes a section on Ukraine that reads “ Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics". Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is cordon sanitaire, which would be inadmissible.[9]”

Not sure that it is either less Ethnically exclusive, nor geographically so, than most modern European nations (not least, the UK”s of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, who have actually been killing each other over this notion, for a century or more, even if it’s gone quiet lately).

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ethnolingusitic_map_of_ukraine.png

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#43 Re: Russia/Ukraine
February 24, 2022, 10:33:55 am
A twitter thread here documenting some of the violence at the start of the Russia-Ukranian War of 2022. There will be many more threads like this. Devastating.

Not a big fan of these accounts, a lot of them are detailing movements of Ukrainian troops etc which is a big no no.

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#44 Re: Russia/Ukraine
February 24, 2022, 10:49:03 am
A twitter thread here documenting some of the violence at the start of the Russia-Ukranian War of 2022. There will be many more threads like this. Devastating.

Not a big fan of these accounts, a lot of them are detailing movements of Ukrainian troops etc which is a big no no.

Inevitable though.

Putin might be facing a “Vietnam” under the glare of modern communications. Ukraine being relatively developed in comms and tech terms compared to other recent battle grounds and bordered by similar. Difficult for either side to operate without being extensively observed.
He must be feeling a bit Caesar too, because he’s far from universally popular at home, so idle strolling through the senate is out and probably some ‘iding of his personal schedule is in order…

Edit.
Ha! And we’re just about to enter March. I hear Calphurnia calling in her sleep.
Well, it would simplify things, wouldn’t it.

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#45 Re: Russia/Ukraine
February 24, 2022, 10:55:24 am
I feel like the end game here is for Russia to annex another small portion of Ukraine, I’m not so sure they’ll attempt a full annexation of the country due to difficulty’s similar to Afghanistan (west arming rebels and the army) - on top of this there’s been lots of murmurs of Russian officers abandoning posts and defecting so we’ll see if this ends up becoming a bigger thing.

My guess is that we won’t see anything other than strict sanctions against energy and banking for Russia and continuation of arms supplies via back channels to the Ukrainian army.

It’s actually incredible that Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics includes a section on Ukraine that reads “ Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics". Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is cordon sanitaire, which would be inadmissible.[9]”

Classic irredentism isn't it. You even had Lavrov recently saying the only reason Ukraine as a nation exists is because of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk which was basically a joke, and therefore Ukraine is essentially a mistake, it should never have happened

I think that there's an element of "security concerns" as people say, but there's also a strong element of good old fashion Russian imperialist chauvinism i.e Ukraine is Russian and belongs to Russia, so get back in line

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#46 Re: Russia/Ukraine
February 24, 2022, 11:27:38 am
I think there's more to it than naked neo-Imperialism on Putin's part tbh. If you frame it from the perspective of a nation which suffered from a catastrophic but ultimately unsuccessful invasion, which took the lives of tens of millions of citizens, perhaps having a buffer zone might seem more reasonable.

The trouble is, for NATO to have allowed Russia to join, or at least to have guaranteed its security, Russia itself would have needed to have changed and become truly democratic rather than an unruly and potentially hostile neighbour. The Western powers majorly ballsed up by not understanding that without those guarantees, eventually someone like Putin would seek to ensure them by force. A real danger is what happens with the Baltic NATO members. Belarus is a buffer state, but what does Putin do about Estonia etc for example? The stakes are far higher now they are members of NATO but by Putin's logic they are a threat which should be neutralised.

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#47 Re: Russia/Ukraine
February 24, 2022, 11:42:22 am
I think its a distinct stretch to give much credence to the idea that Russia fears invasion and that explains this action. That paranoia is obviously part of it but by far the biggest element is Putin's own imperialist mindset. He uses that paranoia as a pretext and we should see it as such. See the ludicrous claim that Ukraine was created by Lenin; even Lenin himself wouldn't have claimed this!

Putin is the one who has chosen to take Russia down this anti-democratic path. We saw how relations between Russia and the west potentially might have changed in the Medvedev interlude, but as soon as Putin took the reins again its been one way traffic and the democratic element has withered even further.

I think its fair to say Belarus is already under the control of a puppet government under Lukashenko so its status as a buffer, let alone a neutral buffer, is very questionable. in that respect, not a lot will have changed in terms of a NATO/Russia border. That said, its a very scary time to be living in the east of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, or Poland.

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#48 Re: Russia/Ukraine
February 24, 2022, 11:54:31 am
I don't agree with the posts calling Ukraine a mistake. I don't think the people of Ukraine would agree with this sentiment either.

https://www.netflix.com/search?q=winter%20on%20fire&jbv=80031666

How else would they have been able to live in a democratic nation ?

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#49 Re: Russia/Ukraine
February 24, 2022, 12:05:50 pm
I don't agree with the posts calling Ukraine a mistake. I don't think the people of Ukraine would agree with this sentiment either.

https://www.netflix.com/search?q=winter%20on%20fire&jbv=80031666

How else would they have been able to live in a democratic nation ?

Honestly, you might as well brand France a “mistake” (because it has one of the least cohesive histories in Europe, though it it primarily representative of a fairly typically evolution of a European country).

Some aside reading, I’ve always been amazed at the language variation across France and the distinction various regions still claim from their “French” overlords.
https://www.macmillanlearning.co.uk/resources/sample-chapters/9781137300157_sample.pdf

Anyway, Putin has promised some dire consequences on everyone else if they dare to interfere, so I should imagine there are some stressed teams trying to work out where he’s hidden the nukes in various Western capitals…


 

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