Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

Our forces giving up half of our combat planes and openly letting them operate out of Poland is just recipe for disaster. We are going to be left with almost no combat planes. Maybe I am overreacting but this sounds just dumb.

You are overreacting. Russian planes will run out of fuel before they get to Poland.
 
Watching BBC news and Victoria Derbyshire has got to be the news anchor equivalent to Liz Truss.

In other news, Sergei Lapdog has just said the US should take its nuclear weapons back from countries as far away as Germany.

This is why I think sanctions should be here to stay. If Putin wants war with NATO, no logical reason will stop him, so hammer him where it hurts for his cabal - their pockets and criminal luxury.

But there are no nuclear weapons officially in any of the countries any closer to Russia?
 
Damage the roads ahead and behind and then attack them so they start to move directly into IEDs.

They should get a few Afghans to show them how to disable the convoy because they have had a lot of practice.
Time to play dirty.
Exactly. Blow a crater in the road and mine around it to either side as far as humanly possible
 
NATO ought to send you guys a loaf of F-16's to replace the Mig-29's you've given away. It should be done immediately. They should also deploy some top line fighter aircraft over Poland to defend your airspace - having said that, looking at the shit performance of the Russian airforce, you'll be fine.
if Poland is giving their MIGs to Ukraine, it almost certainly means that they are getting some F16 or better in return.

My worry is that the situations can escalate quickly, even if Putin is not planning a nuclear war. Something like:

1) Poland sends MIGs to Ukraine and allows them to use Poland's airspace and airports
2) MIGs do devastating results in the war, destroying parts of the Russian military caravan.
3) Russia throws a small tactical nuke in Poland's airport from where Ukraine starts their aircrafts. Both to destroy it, but also as a warning sign.
4) Poland invokes article 5, with US immediately retaliating by throwing a tactical nuke in Russian forces or in some Russian' base in Belarus.
5) ...

Thing is, from now to a nuclear war, we are far away. But if (3) happens, a nuclear war becomes an extremely likely scenario. if Putin orders (3), then it is essentially a tossed coin between the end of civilization and Putin getting ousted from power.
 
But there are no nuclear weapons officially in any of the countries any closer to Russia?
At this point, it's just making it as they go. Logic is really not part of the equation here.
 
Our forces giving up half of our combat planes and openly letting them operate out of Poland is just recipe for disaster. We are going to be left with almost no combat planes. Maybe I am overreacting but this sounds just dumb.

You have 32 F35As coming. A handful of those could do the job of your entire Mig 29 fleet. I wouldn't worry too much.
 
The normal course of action would be a UN authorised no fly zone - but of course due to russian veto that wont happen

Cant see nato agreeing to it as the hungarians are trying to stop wepons being sent there and Italy / Belgium insisted on still being able to sell luxury goods and diamonds to Russia to pass other sanctions.

Biden has been pretty clear about not committing us personnel to date

It would take a monumentally stupid person to commit UK jets to such a task alone... but that said we have boris and

PRI222616234.jpg


so we are certainty capable of making a stupid decision
Even with Boris and Co in charge, there is no way the UK would be sending aircraft to enforce any no fly zone.
 
You have 32 F35As coming. A handful of those could do the job of your entire Mig 29 fleet. I wouldn't worry too much.

isn't the F-35 a flop? Would have been better off with the latest generation Eurofighter i reckon.

It'll still be better than anything the Russians have. Their airforce is a shambles, their so called military might has been dangerously exposed.
 
I'm sick of the fighting rhetoric from our Govt. I don't care whether we are right or wrong...if ever there was a need for discretion being the better part of valour, it's now.
 
Probably not the time and place for the rant thats about to ensue but this sentiment frustrates me.

I feel deeply for the Ukrainian people, but I can't help but feel that their plight (through no fault of their own) has only illuminated the deeply vested racism within Europe. With refugees from Syria the sentiment was that they were all a bunch of undesirable rapists and murderers, merely economic migrants who should stay back and defend their country. Yet with Ukraine its stories of how they're blonde hair blue eyed people just like us, and suddenly Europe has found space in their hearts to welcome refugees.

I do salute nations who've embraced these Ukrainian refugees, I only hope they'd share the same compassion for others who also find themselves displaced through no fault of their own.

Priti Patel and the Tory party as a whole can go feck themselves though, the virtue signalling pricks.
As someone who has shed many tears over what has happened in Syria too and criticised the cruel visa policies of the UK Home Office for many years, I don’t get this mentality. Eastern Europeans have been “other-ed” by the West and used as a political football just as much those of other ethnicities.

How are you chiding the countries, which given the Schengen zone means essentially the entire EU, for helping people flee a war in a country that directly borders them? Syria was and still is an absolute tragedy, but the situation is not comparable in terms of the neighbouring EU just waiving visas and letting them walk across. Criticising those countries who are doing the most now makes no sense. Are you sitting there lamenting Moldova, challenging the hypocrisy of one of the poorest countries in Europe, for welcoming people who are fleeing war in a neighbouring country, because they didn’t do the same for a war in a more distant place?

We all could have done more in the past, we all should have done more in the past, but you are falling into the trap that dictators want if you let previous inaction lead to further inaction.
 
isn't the F-35 a flop? Would have been better off with the latest generation Eurofighter i reckon.

It'll still be better than anything the Russians have. Their airforce is a shambles, their so called military might has been dangerously exposed.
No. It just would lose in a dogfight against top aircrafts.

However, there would be no dogfigts. The enemy aircrafts would get destroyed without seeing F35.
 
I'm sick of the fighting rhetoric from our Govt. I don't care whether we are right or wrong...if ever there was a need for discretion being the better part of valour, it's now.
Head in the sand.
 
I had a conversation yesterday with someone who helps out with a volunteering effort I'm a part of. Always been nice to me and we have things in common like sports and art projects that whenever I see him we usually talk about. Yesterday though he went off the rails about this situation and I felt a little embarrassed and trying to not prolong the subject with other people around. Naturally it's a topic of discussion among the group but he later pulled me aside to say we're all wrong and believing lies. Asked him what he meant and he went on to he gets all his news from Russian sources like RT and he is furious at the coverage of "those poor Ukrainians dying" (said sarcastically) from western media which he calls propaganda. I made the point that what he is doing getting all his information from one side is no different just because it's the side you like and that ended that. I didn't have him down as a crank.
 
Our forces giving up half of our combat planes and openly letting them operate out of Poland is just recipe for disaster. We are going to be left with almost no combat planes. Maybe I am overreacting but this sounds just dumb.

I think the idea was that the EU would reimburse or provide newer models to the countries that supply the planes. Judging by the twitter thread below, it might prove to be too costly though.

 
I'm sick of the fighting rhetoric from our Govt. I don't care whether we are right or wrong...if ever there was a need for discretion being the better part of valour, it's now.
Everyone wants peace until you are not in a position to get it. Then it's too late.

If Putin gets away with this, who knows where he would draw the line? Sanctions is the most effective way to punish Putin.

Of course, the cynic in me is definitely thinking Johnson is loving this because he was gone in any other scenario.
 
Head in the sand.
You always wonder about those in the Second World War who thought appeasement was the right track, or then surrendering and looking for a peace deal when Nazi Germany was dominating the war.
 
You always wonder about those in the Second World War who thought appeasement was the right track, or then surrendering and looking for a peace deal when Nazi Germany was dominating the war.
I forget who said this recently but it is very accurate that there are people who wishes us to do nothing until we reach a point where they can then say 'there was nothing that could be done.'
 
I had a conversation yesterday with someone who helps out with a volunteering effort I'm a part of. Always been nice to me and we have things in common like sports and art projects that whenever I see him we usually talk about. Yesterday though he went off the rails about this situation and I felt a little embarrassed and trying to not prolong the subject with other people around. Naturally it's a topic of discussion among the group but he later pulled me aside to say we're all wrong and believing lies. Asked him what he meant and he went on to he gets all his news from Russian sources like RT and he is furious at the coverage of "those poor Ukrainians dying" (said sarcastically) from western media which he calls propaganda. I made the point that what he is doing getting all his information from one side is no different just because it's the side you like and that ended that. I didn't have him down as a crank.

Same as my Russian mate. Telling me I am listening to western propaganda.
 
It's interesting to see different explanations for the invasion.

1: NATO & Ukraine's domestic policy
  • Michel Kofman in his pre-invasion assessment of the situation never said anything about Putin's ideological problems with Ukraine at all. It was basically a geopolitical analysis focused on NATO and establishing a pro-Russian government.
  • Rob Lee had the same line of thinking as Kofman, noting that Russia saw worrying trend lines such as Turkey selling drones and involving itself in Karabakh, Ukraine's domestic policies shifting to the West. Hence, a desire to establish a pro-Russian government.
Both said nothing about controlling Ukraine's natural resources which is the 2nd 'explanation' I've seen.

2: Ukraine's resources
We've seen in this thread statistics about Ukraine's natural resources and hence the suggestion that Russia wants to control these.

3: Ideology
The third would be the ideological explanation, as in Putin having contempt for Ukrainian nationhood and wanting to wipe them off the map.
 
Gifting stuff like airplanes to Ukraine is literally borderline declaring war yourself. Giving weapons is treading close enough but seriously, part of the effort should also be to deescalate.

you’ll be giving the mad man a reason on a plate to go legitimise his actions against everyone.
 
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Britain has been accused of opening a loophole in sanctions designed to hobble the Putin regime by granting one of Moscow’s biggest banks an “absurd” month-long exemption from the enforcement of an assets freeze.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced last Thursday that the state-owned VTB Bank, which is the second-largest Russian bank and its largest investment bank, was the subject of a “full and immediate” asset freeze in the UK as part of the Government’s attempts to help derail Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine by targeting key finance houses.

But the following day the Treasury unit in charge of enforcing the UK’s sanctions quietly issued a 30-day licence granting permission for any individual or entity to “wind down any transactions” with VTB until 27 March.
 
Same as my Russian mate. Telling me I am listening to western propaganda.
Post modern politics is all about gaslighting, and proliferation of fake news causing confusion to the point where people conclude they 'don't know what to believe'. The end goal is that the public look to a 'strong leader' i.e. dictator. This pattern has been embedded in western politics via interference in elections too. See US 2016 election, French election 2017 and Vote Leave campaign.

It's not a stretch to conclude that Russia conspired to appoint liars/dishonest figures in office in leading western countries to degrade public trust in our leaders.
 
There needs to be international agreement that if Russia succeeds in their military mission of overwhelming Ukraine and holding it by force, as long as they occupy it and stake a claim over it they will be ostracised by the rest of the world, subject to the same crippling sanctions and no longer partaking in any of the benefits of the modern world. No access to flight zones, no access to international sport, no access to international finance, no western media, no western technology. Just a complete blackout and into the dark ages.
That wouldn't be possible.
 
It really is unbelievable what I am reading here. It is fooking amazing. My family lost their men during WW II. They bloody volunteered knowing full well that Hitler was just rolling over Europe and western part of USSR. They never thought nah, it is too risky. Why would we fight for Russians when we are not Russian. People being shit scared that their government could be giving their aircrafts to Ukranian pilots to fight Putin. It really is amazing. You know what? What if Germany bombed the sh!te out of Kaliningrad and told the Russian president, this is German territory and it was occupied during WW II. You touch us and we have enough capabilities within NATO to nuke you instantly from all sides?
 
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isn't the F-35 a flop? Would have been better off with the latest generation Eurofighter i reckon.

It'll still be better than anything the Russians have. Their airforce is a shambles, their so called military might has been dangerously exposed.

Far from it. The narrative has been spun that way because of the cost but it's an incredibly capable aircraft. Nothing outside the US's own air force would stand a chance against it.
 
It really is unbelievable what I am reading here. It is fooking amazing. My family lost their men during WW II. They bloody volunteered knowing full well that Hitler was just rolling over Europe and western part of USSR. They never thought nah, it is too risky. Why would we fight for Russians when we are not Russian.
What do you mean specifically? You want the West to intervene militarily?
 
What do you mean specifically? You want the West to intervene militarily?
West is already intervening. I am just really surprised that people areshit scared to be seeing their fighter aircrafts being given to Ukranian pilots to fight against cnut who has declared a war against pretty much powerless country. The cnut who if takes over Ukraine will be right next to these people's doors.