Your first paragraph seems to assume that the people disagreeing with you supported the invasion of Iraq. Stop it. That is a very bad faith move What makes you believe China will prop up the Russian economic shortfall? How can you possibly be so confident in this. Any shortfall? Any? Even if they wanted to support them financially they will have a limit. There is a chance that Western Europe don’t even need to have the stomach to directly fight Russia. Russia are busy enough with the Ukrainians. I don’t know what is so amazing about the world uniting to check the expansionist aims of a nuclear state who would happily extend it’s borders up to Berlin if it could. The fact that you find this amazing is, well, amazing in and of itself Your attempts to draw equivalencies with other wars reveal how little you understand of the situation. I don’t blame you as it is an incredibly complex one. But you seem to be falling over yourself to blame the West at least equally if not more than the person who is truly to blame here. It is seemingly the go to of both the Radical Left and the “Alt Left”. I’m not certain which you are (and that is not meant as an insult by the way) You also mention China and India staying out of this and letting this stay in “Europe” and letting the West humiliate itself. As it currently stands unless you are mistakenly including Russia as part of “the West” and “Europe” then I’m not sure what you are going on about. Because what the West is doing is introducing firm measures that has caused Putin to react in a way that a person in a position of weakness would. As I mentioned before - you don’t invoke a nuclear deterrent if you are as superior conventionally as you are trying to convince yourself that Russia are. Why would you need to? Why would you need to try and spook the west out of joining if you weren’t convinced that their sanctions really do hurt and the more involved they get the less chance you have? Always ask “why”. You don’t seem to have done that
Well there's at least more sense in this one than the last one, Ian, which seemed to be tantamount to saying "let Putin do what he wants and keep out of it", which frankly was abject lunacy (and if anything would lead to WW3 and destruction, it would be that policy). Like it or not, a liberal democracy, for all it's faults and quirks, is the best and fairest system of government we have. And yes, the autocrats are (worryingly) rising up these days. But that's not a good thing. I agree, Putin has played a patient game with the West. He's a chess master when it comes to that. But he's also right now exposed his king with a very reckless move. A predictably reckless move, because he's arrogant and has gone a bit loopy and paranoid over the past two years. Now whether you *like* the idea of putting special forces in to support a resistance to Putin, under the guise of plausible deniability, is frankly irrelevant. There's an opportunity right now, and a very, very rare one (in fact the only one we've ever really had) to potentially begin the end of the most pernicious influence on modern society, without having to go head to head in open battle with him. That's an opportunity we should take (and it looks like we are). We should absolutely leap upon it. He's an awful man, with awful intentions, who has caused untold damage, and continues to do so around the world (check out the Wagner Group and their 'work' in Africa. Check out the Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg and the influence they have and continue to have, particularly in meddling with Western election process). You hate Brexit and Trump. Well you can thank Yevgeny Prigozhin and his buddies for enabling them to become a thing. Yes, there's risk involved, but we can be rid of Putin via the Russian populace, and this is the chance to do so. It's either that, or take your policy of sitting back and watching him take over whatever he wants. I know which is the right one, personally.
"Any form of military action against Russia would be a folly and we are entering an era of appeasement until such time as the people of Russia are fed up with Putin and oust him themselves." But nobody here is advocating this, unless he invades a NATO nation (which he would be much more likely to if we just sat back and let him take Ukraine - do you not see that?) You're also massively overestimating the Russian military strength in real terms, by the way.
A piece here about the Chinese equivalent of Swift, (CIPS) that may enable the Russians to move money around by using Yuan instead of the dollar. The system is still a work in progress, but may give Putin some breathing space. https://asiatimes.com/2022/02/chinas-swift-alternative-may-undercut-us-sanctions/
Yes, there's talk of this potentially being a way around the SWIFT stuff, and it would bring China and Russia closer together. But so far, the Chinese, whilst not completely denouncing the invasion (or at least not pointedly calling it an invasion) aren't exactly enthused by it either. But the fact there's a potential get-around for Putin doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to put the pressure on, and that solution doesn't help the oligarch assets held here and in the EU etc.
The EU have been brilliant, and are a far better example than the UK. The fact is, the Ukrainian president is leading his nation in a fight for survival, and has asked for our help, so I see no problem at all with doing what we can. The war in Ukraine is happening, now, despite many weeks of diplomacy, because Putin is a madman. And on the British nationals fighting thing, this may be a pretext to quietly send in some Black Ops units to wreak havoc in an anonymous way.
Plausible deniability. They just say they’re blokes who came over from England to help the fight cos they fancied an adventure. Nothing to tie them to any military.
Another big risk is that the financial sanctions hit us as badly as they hit Russia. In 2008, Lehman bros failed with 600bn in assets and it nearly broke the system. We've just frozen assets worth a lot more than that. All of the assets are now deficits. How many defaults will that cause? What sort of economic chain reaction? It’s extremely hard to predict what will happen next.
Not just fighting to defend their homeland, but with the enormous advantage of extremely long lines of supply for their adversaries, and the spring thaw. Mud probably did more for defending Russian territorial sovereignty than any general ever has. And this has been the phase where Russia should do well. Superior weaponry will get you to the cities, but to actually win urban warfare on the offensive depends on well-trained troops, high morale, good operational command, excellent logistical support, etc. And Russia...has none of those. Russia has crazy-long convoys of heavy vehicles and tanks that are sitting ducks: It's just kinda a bad army (whole thread is worth reading):
]How would that end up working out if the Russians capture those black ops?[/QUOTE] This isn't a joking matter, so apologies if anyone finds it offensive (and I have served in the military myself) but I can't resist suggesting that they could say they were just visiting to see some cathedrals.....
I hope pressure from opposition parties and other groups force the government to ease visa rules. Report below of a 69 year old mother of a Ukrainian UK resident being refused entry by officials in France. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...ease-visa-restrictions-ukrainians-fleeing-war
Why do people defending Russia say “many people in Ukraine speak Russian”. They’d never say that if the U.K. wanted to annex Ireland. Or given Bolsanaro was the latest - if Portugal decided it wanted Brazil back (and we lived in a world where that was even remotely possible) It is probably the most ignorant talking point of them all How about if Germany wanted to annex Austria as part of their ancestral homeland? Because that both went and was generally received so well last time wasn’t it ?
