I don't think it will particularly help them with the offensive, in fact they didn't try to enter it at first and went around it further to the West, but they had to cross the Dnieper river and the Ukrainians kept attacking the bridge from Kherson to interrupt their advance, so the forces made a U-turn and came back to take Kherson. And I'm pretty sure the mayor/Ukrainians in Kherson made a deal with the Russians to hand over the city, because it was taken pretty much without a bullet fired in the end.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Wasn't Kherson shelled and bombed for days?
As far as I get, the plane has been located but the crash site is hard to reach due to weather conditions. Search-and-find helicopter also crashed, killing all five on board, this was after they were told to return to base due to bad weather conditions, so might be a tragic accident instead of anyone shooting them down.
So MachoMan is actually Xi's little bitch...
Does anybody know the current thinking in Moldova about this? Do they not consider themselves likely to be entirely to come under threat from Russian and Transnistrian forces? I am assuming there is no appetite for them to go on the offensive?
Especially when it's a Mig21. Flying coffin essentially.
You’d be hard pressed to find a European military that has tanks to spare*, and the logistics to get any meaningful number of tanks from the US would be incredibly daunting and time consuming.
*unless any of those Leopard 1s are still operational that Germany mothballed. But then you’d still need trained crews.
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If Putin gains control over Ukraine, taking Moldova would be a walk in the park, especially if he already has troops there. He's also been agitating to disrupt Moldova from within for years, so they would surely be an easy pick up for him.
Crimea, Donbas, Belarus, Ukraine, Transnistria, Moldova…
I meant on the day it was stormed. Probably the mayor or the forces there saw it was a lost cause and gave up in the end. The first scenes of the Russians entering it was literally a few Russians walking on the streets without armor and without any shooting or resistance.
That would be beautiful
He has no intention of stopping there. The next phase will be to foment trouble within former eastern block countries to flip a few of them through revolutions, then use the new puppet governments there as a way to expand further. The only way to stop him will be through war or by suffocating him from within through protracted, long term nuclear option sanctions.
Yeah, seems the military largely gave it up for the time being. I guess the locals can only engage in minor resistance and need to keep their powder dry until the Russians are a bit more stretched.
Yeah, I’m with Kasparov on this. Not going to pretend to know what the best solution is though.
Really good video posted here the other day and explains quite a lot including Moldova.
Mariupol under constant shelling for 14 hours straight, also residential areas, according to their mayor.
If he wants Moldova he has to go through Ukraine. He could take both and stop knowing that NATO and the West won't get involved in fear of starting a nuclear war. He's called our bluff ultimately.
The Russians have control over it and have put a marital law type policy into effect. The mayor there has apparently negotiated this with the Russians to prevent more fighting. Bizarrely, the Russians have agreed and are allowing the Ukrainian flag to continue to be flown over the city.
Can only host 24 people apparently…What a waste.
Yes the mayor confirmed no Ukrainian soldiers there so assume a retreat sometime yesterday at the latest.
Kofman’s prediction was moving through Kherson to then assault Odessa so I guess we’ll see if he’s right.
A chef I used to work with had a stint on Deripaska’s super yacht when it was in Ibiza. He said it was the most grotesque thing he’s ever done. They have all the ingredients helicopter’d in from all over Europe. When they were out of the harbour the deckhands would throw all the waste over the side - plastic, metal, the lot. They’d do buffets which had lobster, caviar, truffles etc etc and nobody would eat it and it would just end up over the side.
On the plus side he did bring back a few large jam jars of caviar which would have cost about £2K each and after service we made some blinis and scoffed a whole jar with some crème fraiche and a bottle of champagne that went in the book as spillage.
Can see Russia taking Moldova and then Ukraine split along the river like East/West Germany. Russia will want the buffer from NATO
What bluff? The West wasn't gonna intervene militarily for either Ukraine or Moldova. I think most people knew this already.
Exactly. Other countries managed it.
Hypothetically speaking, and if Moldova was cool with it, why not bring NATO troops there before the conflict? So it wouldn't be NATO interfering in an ongoing conflict, Putin would have to start a conflict with NATO
If Russia takes Ukraine, it will already have direct borders with 4 NATO countries to worry about Moldova being a buffer.
Mariupol is gonna be a bloodbath. Putin has been largely restrained in bombing Ukrainian cities (no bombing is good but if you compare it to how Russia bombed in Syria you get my point), I guess because he doesn't want to antagonize the Ukrainian people, but in Mariupol there will be no mercy in the fight, because that's where the Azov battalion (which Russia and the DPR really really hate) is situated. They will take very few prisoners from Mariupol and the Azov battalion knows that, and they will surely fight to the last man and the last bullet.
What buffer? He already has a border with NATO with Estonia and Latvia, as well as Kaliningrad sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland and Turkey across the Black Sea from the occupied Crimea.
Be so funny if after Putin took Ukraine and say Moldova, he then went after Belarus. Would teach those scumbags a lesson.
Sadly, would not be good for Europe.
It's not like this caught the West by surprise, we've had intel that the Russians were planning this for weeks if not (by the sounds of it) months and yet ultimately we've sat on our hands and done very little. We knew this was happening and yet we weren't prepared to hit out with sanctions immediately. Instead its taking far too long. I honestly think we could and should be doing more. That's just my opinion. Don't ask me what, as I don't get paid to think that, but clearly we could be doing more and more importantly being faster and being more prepared.
Belarus is already a puppet state, he doesn’t need to do anything to take it.
Belarus have sort of flown under the radar a bit over the last couple of days. Does anyone know if the sanctions on Russia have also been applied on Belarus?
Would be a convenient loophole if they're escaping sanctions.
Some expert on Sky was mentioning how flat Ukraine/Poland is and that would be the direction NATO would take as their main attack (never going to attack but how Putin would sell it back home)