Once again, how many people have to die before you get it through your thick skull they don't want you there? If they wanted you there, they wouldn't be retooling their breweries from beer to molotovs.
Printable View
NATO already clearly declared, what this is not NATO's conflict. And even told to Poland not to send old Russian aircrafts MIG-29 to Ukraine.
Matt, you are living in dreams. Ukraine isn't subject but is object in this conflict. I wrote that even before military operation. There will be a lot of propaganda from both sides, but at the end nobody will stay for Ukraine.
Russia wants neutral "finlandizied" country on own border, without Nazi and NATO's bases, where all minors groups have freedom to use own languages. EU wants resources from Russia. These 2 factors will be main for final results in the conflict. Rest is just words.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tcUMsD4uO8
Too bad I'm blind, because those photos sound cool.
Hey Moses, this is not how people who want to be liberated from Nazis act!
I can’t see any advantages to Russia being cut off from world trade and with the Rubel currently bordering on worthlessness. 25 years of economic gain, wiped away in such a short period of time. Militarily, Russia has suffered so much loss for so little gain. And now, because Putin’s big ego is on the line, there is little room for a gracious exit strategy. Bombing hospitals isn’t helping his cause any. And with big international business pulling out of Russia, it sends a message to Russians, cut off from anything but State News, that what’s happening in the Ukraine is bigger than what they are being told by the State. Sad that diplomacy and dialogue weren’t able to avoid, what appears to have been completely avoidable.
Surfcrest
this picture isn't real reflection of how is going here...
for example most of Western companies not "puling out" but postpone operations till the end of military conflict - they will have huge losses if they will really pull out - factories, property and so on...
but yes, conflict was easy avoidable if Ukraine canceled "language law" and just implemented Minsk protocol which was signed and ratified by Ukraine in 2014... Russia waited for that 8 years.
The best we can hope for is the Russian people rise up, and kick Putin to the curb. A whole lot easier said than done, but that's what needs to happen now. Putin started this shit, but I'm absolutely certain the West will not rest until he's removed from power.
It's sad to see, you know? So much pain and sufferring on all sides, and all for no reason. I guess it breathed new life into the resolve of the West and NATO which is cool to see, but not at this cost.
I don’t think anyone in the West is under the illusion that these businesses are going to come back or that sanctions will be lessened any, no matter what happens. The damage has been done. Steps are already being taken to wean Europe from Russian energy…and that’s not likely to be reversed, once the ball starts rolling with that. NATO was a stupid reason to start a war…or invasion…or whatever it’s being labeled as, but we’re long past that now. The world will never be the same and no where is that going to be more evident than in Russia from now into the foreseeable future.
Surfcrest
Yeah, there wil be no victors in this war. Very sad, and completely unnecessary. I always like to look for the silver lining in things, and all I came come up with are:
1. Various European countries have announced they will vastly bolster their defense spending making EU a world super power in terms of military might.
2. The West has shown its resolve, which will hopefully give China pause before they start any of the bullshit we all know they have planned.
3. Once the dust settles, hopefully Ukraine will get fast tracked into EU and NATO membership giving Ukrainians the peace and security the deserve.
4. If we get really lucky, maybe Russians will wake the fuck up, have a revolution and kick cleptocrats like Putin to the curb.
This whole war is just stupid. I wish NATO would go ahead and call Russia's bluff, and just go in to secure Ukraine and give it back to the people. Fuck Putin, and his delusional desires.
This is a bit of a canard
The failure of the Minsk II process was not purely a stubborn refusal by Ukraine to accept a fair deal from Russia. Although France and Germany tried for several years to get the Minsk instruments to work, they came up against what has been referred to as the “Minsk conundrum.”
This is how Al Jazeera explains the problem. I’m just using Al Jazeera here as example of a news website that wouldn’t necessarily be pro-Western.
“Ukraine sees the 2015 agreement as an instrument to re-establish control over the rebel territories.It wants a ceasefire, control of the Russia-Ukraine border, elections in the Donbas, and a limited devolution of power to the separatists – in that order. Russia views the deal as obliging Ukraine to grant rebel authorities in Donbas comprehensive autonomy and representation in the central government, effectively giving Moscow the power to veto Kyiv’s foreign policy choices. Only then would Russia return the Russia-Ukraine border to Kyiv’s control”
Full article here: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/...t-relevant-now
The real stumbling block was that Putins real aim was never rights of self-government for Donbas, but instead his demand that the terms of the agreement would result in the Donbas region having a veto in international treaties and agreements by Ukraine, which would result in Ukraine being prevented joining NATO or the EU, even if a huge majority of the rest of country wanted to.
(If you think the above points are a bit familiar, it is probably because it is a slightly reworked version of a post I made Gayguides Forums, where I post as Forrestreid)
First and only thing what you have to know about Minsk protocol - Russia isn't the part of agreement. There is no one word "Russia"
Full text is here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements scroll down till Minsk II
Now there's reporting about how Putin may unleash chemical weapons.
I really hope NATO steps in and stops this shit before it gets any worse.
The Russian Consulate in Surat Thani says there are 3,200 Russian tourists on Koh Samui and nearby islands. Many cannot use their credit cards or transfer money and so cannot pay for their accommodation
I think we should raise Vlad the Impaler from the grave so he can impale Putin. That'd make for a nice PPV event.
BTW... what the fuck is going on with that 40 mile long armored column outside of Kiev? They've been sitting there for about a week like a bunch of idiots. I'm assuming the soldiers must be getting pretty bored now.
It'd take about 24 hours for NATO airstrikes to put that thing into the history books.
Bombing a children's hospital.......war crime of the worst order, utterly despicable. The threat of chemical weapons now, how much lower can the Russian forces go?
When guests used to visit Vladimir Putin in his office in the Kremlin’s Senate Palace, he’d point at the bookshelves and ask them to choose a book from Joseph Stalin’s library. Half of Stalin’s books – usually marked up by the Soviet leader himself with red or green crayons – remain in Putin’s office. As one of his ministers told me, Putin would ask the visitor to open the book and they would look together at whatever marginalia Stalin had written: sometimes it was a grim laugh: “xa-xa-xa!”; sometimes a snort of disdain: “green steam!”; at others it was just a word: “teacher” was written on the biography of Ivan the Terrible.
Across the world today, people are asking if Putin is a new Stalin. Karl Marx joked that “history repeats itself twice, first as tragedy then as farce”. It doesn’t, but any ruler of the Russian state faces some of the same issues as earlier Romanov tsars and Communist general secretaries. Most Russian leaders have aspired to emulate the achievements of the two pre-eminent modern rulers, Peter the Great and Stalin, both revolutionary tsars, both brutal killers. One day, hopefully, Russia will be governed by someone who admires neither. Yet Putin is not Stalin. Stalin was a Marxist; Putin is a 21st-century tyrant, who, while co-opting elements of Romanov and Soviet imperialism, is a populist and nationalist, a practitioner of 21st-century identity politics who deploys both old-fashioned military heavy metal and the new hi-tech weaponry of social media.
Yet Stalin could not be more relevant. Stalin’s influence is imprinted everywhere in the state structure of Russia; he remains omnipresent. Putin’s repression at home increasingly resembles Stalinist tyranny – in its cult of fear, rallying of patriotic displays, crushing of protests, brazen lies and total control of media – although without the mass deportations and mass shootings. So far.
https://www.newstatesman.com/long-re...stalins-legacy
The writer is a prominent British and Jewish historian so not a fan you would think of any truly Nazi State which is how Putin characterises Ukraine
As the film The Death of Stalin reminds us, Stalin’s world view was that of the “Western “ - goodies vs. baddies. Then there’s those wonderful scenes where Marshall Zhukov having planned his coup against Beria executes him on the basis of his moral turpitude including pedophilia - always a useful accusation to deploy against an enemy. Zhukov is one of my favourite characters in that film. And then there’s the scenes of cleaning up by Beria after Staliin’s death - all the household servants, the guards and doctors all summarily shot. I imagine it will be the same after Putin although we will never know. The same sort of thing apparently happened during the reign of King George III after he recovered from his first bout of “madness” - the servants and soldiers who had witnessed it were exiled rather than executed. I wonder where Yeltsin’s former servants are. I must remember to research that
As the English poet John Dryden wrote about “wits” “Great wits are to madness near allied
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.”― John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel
Fine, when the news reports start surfacing about Ukrainians having severe muscle spasms and foaming at the mouth, we'll just call it rabies.
WTF is NATO waiting for? Are we really going to sit around and wait for Russia to invade Poland before acting? If Putin is bat shit insane enough to actually fire nukes, then it's totally irrevelant whether he fires them now or in two years from now. It's better to just stop him in his tracks now, so fuck it, if he wants a war, let's give him one.
To emphasize the point you’re making; One of the major tasks involved when moving a Company or Organization from one country to another is coordination of global supply-chain management which is a very costly and time-consuming process.
This was undoubtedly the most important topic discussed by these Company’s prior to finalizing a decision to pull up roots in Russia due to the large capital investment and thousands of man-hours required to facilitate and manage this type of international relocation.
Just a few of the common tasks involved in a move like this includes; formal risk management, new global supply-chain development, lead times, delays, cash flow, data management, accountability and compliance, quality assurance, language barriers, time zones, exchange rate and foreign transaction costs, and statutory and regulatory compliance concerns, etc., etc., etc. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Once a western Company or Organization closes its doors in Russia and moves its operations to another country the chances of it returning to Russia at some point in the future would be extremely doubtful for these reasons.
What I just described is “Globalization”, and what we’re seeing now is Russia being isolated from the global business network piece-by-piece. Being isolated from this Global Business Network will inevitably suffocate Russia’s economy (it’s already started) and place them back in the Stone Age. Why Putin refuses to halt his invasion into Ukraine before things get worse will go down in the history books as the mystery of the modern epoch.
Sanctions are going to make it extremely complicated and risky to continue doing business in Russia. Look at Chelsea’a famous football club and the complicated web of sanctions they’re caught up in now!
Surfcrest
Below is an incredibly insightful article written by a news anchor who's been in Moscow covering Putin from the very beginning:
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/11/e...cmd/index.html
"Children hospital"? Do you mean empty building of children hospital taken as a base of Nazi battalion Azov? Well, why not? Should empty building of hospital to protect Nazi by default?
What threat do you mean? These 26 bacteriological laboratories, existence of which Nuland denied at past and confirmed just 2 days ago, because “The U.S. government is concerned about preventing any of these research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.” ?
https://youtu.be/Y39veTO7kF4
You guys see Lavrov earlier today? They were in Turkey for "peace negotiations". This guy actually had the nerve to tell the cameras that Russia hasn't invaded Ukraine.
Same bullshit as how Moses says Russia has no desire to occupy Ukraine. Really? Could have fooled us, because the 190,000 soldiers you sent in sure seem like you want to occupy the place.
Here's fuck face saying Russia hasn't invaded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP-7-dNdbyI
Do you actually believe these claims you are parroting? First Lavrov made this claim(no evidence), but subsequently your Ministry of Defence admitted that this wasn't the case but that the bombing of the Children's Hospital was actually a staged provocation by Ukraine. That is that it was an active Children's Hospital that the Ukrainians themselves had blown up, as if they weren't busy enough fighting the invaders, in order to make the Russians look bad(they need help with that?!) Again no evidence provided.
Even without these contradictory statements it seems that, as in Syria, there is a clear Russian strategy to target Hospitals in civilian areas to weaken the morale of the civilian population. It is indefensible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia...mbing_campaign