WTF? Ben Wallace accused of concealing Russian ‘act of war’ against RAF plane Senior Tory Tobias Ellwood says details of ‘near-shoot down’ revealed in Pentagon leaks should have been publicised The party of our defence...
New Russian recruitment video - interesting that it's aimed at demobilised conscripts/soldiers: https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1648766924027748354
Ukraine to become NATO member once the war ends. https://news.sky.com/story/nato-allies-agree-ukraine-will-become-member-12862389
They need to do the same video but with their WW2 surplus uniforms and rifles and T60 rust buckets tanks.
Obviously this is some kind of WEF conspiracy or something because we know it was the west that did it https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65461401
We're sending Ukraine some kind of super-missile that can, apparently, hit a fly's eyebrows 15o miles away, Germany have pledged to put 3bn worth of extra weapons into Ukraine - no doubt other Nato members will be doing similar. God knows how many young men have been killed from both sides - not to mention women and children - but nobody seems to be doing anything to bring an end to the slaughter. The longer this goes on the more we appear to be just making the most of the chance to give the Ivans a kicking by proxy. Where's the diplomacy?
Diplomacy doesn't sell papers. There's plenty going on, sanctions being the main part. How would you suggest that we bring an end to the slaughter that doesn't trigger a round of red button pressing?
If Russia is gifted control of the annexed areas of Ukraine through diplomacy there's nothing to stop it (a) making many hundreds of thousands of people left there who don't fit 'disappear', thereby slaughtering people in a different way and (b) resting for a bit and then kicking on from there in 5-10 years time to take the next tranche of Ukraine or the Baltics etc. There was lots of talk when it first started about giving Putin an off ramp, a way to save face while not getting his main aims, but it's clear that isn't something he's interested in.
They had some retired field Marshall or whatever on the radio this morning who was adamant that Ukraine won't be able to drive the Russians out unless they have fighter aircraft - which we aren't prepared to give them. So, it seems to me that neither side is likely to claim a decisive victory - they'll just keep on blowing each other to bits. Terrific Let Russia keep the bits of Ukraine they've had for years anyway and get the rest of Ukraine into Nato double quick. Park as much hardware as we can scrape together on Ukrainian turf pointing in the general direction of Moscow to make Putin think again about any future adventures. Problem solved.
Those bits of Ukraine you speak of used to be 59% ethnically Ukrainian. They are probably not now, which means settling on the current situation is ethnic cleansing. Where do the displaced millions live? Who gets their farms, their businesses, their homes? If they resisted the Russians and stay there who protects them from a polonium cuppa or a bullet going forward? Who protects their culture and heritage? This is the difficulty with imagining a solution from without. It may seem like peace to us, but it’s not really.
Any peace that allows Russia to keep illegally occupied parts of Ukraine will just be an admission that such aggression works and will encourage others to attempt it in their own disputes. If someone had invaded and occupied the Channel Islands, Isle of Wight, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire for example, would your view be the same?
Why doesn't Zelenskyy put a suit and tie on when meeting other world leaders? We get that your country is in a war mate so you can stop dressing like an Action Man doll now
Yeah, not the hottest take on a war that’s killed approx 150,000 of his fellow citizens and made several million flee m8. If he turned up in a suit, I’m some would take the opportunity to say it’s clearly not so bad if the dry cleaners are still working.
I'm certain Biden would have let him have the planes he's been asking for for ages much sooner if he'd only taken the time to have a shave and put on a nice blazer and a pair of slacks. Going around looking like Che Guevara is bound to ring alarm bells.
TBF - that was the 'Old Fraud' trying to find a 'look' that 'landed' that landed. Throughout his first (pre & per-WWI) spell in government he dressed like a 'toff' (silk top hat and cane). After the Dardanelles fiasco when he went to the trenches (for 10 weeks) he pranced about in his officers uniform topped off with a French helmet. Returning to the parliament we went back to the toff's uniform. Cometh WWII, cometh a new dressing up box - he was renowned for donning 'uniforms' plastered with various, spurious, 'decorations'. The Old-Harrovian 'man of the people' in a boiler suit got numerous airings as did a Homburg hat until the cigar finally 'hit' the public's imagination of made the image of a bald, morbidly obese old man 'memorable'. The 'cigar thing' is really odd as Harold Wilson was told he needed a visual 'hook' during his rise to power. Wilson was a inveterate cigar smoker but his 'image' people thought that this wouldn't do for a horny-anded spokesperson for the oppressed working classes... So they gave him a pipe (which, apparently, he detested).
Is that the famous USA ‘business casual’? I always used to wear a suit with my most old-style tie just to p155 them off…
He was so in touch with the mores of the common man, he had to have it explained to him why it was necessary to turn round the fingers when making his ‘V for Victory’ gesture.
The war appears to now be fought on Russian territory, including by Russian rebels. Fighting reported around the town of Grayvoron, near Belgorod which has been a base for Russian attacks into Ukrainian territory. Many potential game changing dimensions to this, not least of all that Russia is now genuinely under attack, not just in the minds of its leadership. https://twitter.com/warmonitor3/status/1660609384185995264?s=46&t=oqOMSJXE_g7J5C7kNPG9LA
Little green men at it again. I guess these things happen. No one can be sure who's behind it. It doesn't make sense for Russia to defend that territory anyway - they really should withdraw from the Belgorod region in the name of peace.
A series of sophisticated explosive drones hit residential tower blocks in Moscow. Others are downed by the Russkies before they can reach their targets. Who could have sent them? Not us! says Ukraine. Not guilty. So we must look elsewhere. We know Ukraine is the good guy and never lies. Did the drone strikes even exist? Maybe not. Nothing has been verified as yet, despite videos of the drones flying along, big explosions going off and video of the damage done to buildings in Moscow. Could all be an invention though couldn't it? Manipulated footage. Fake news. "I did hear what sounded like an explosion and my hotel windows did rattle" concedes the Beeb's man on the ground. But that could be anything. Car backfiring maybe. Who knows. It might be something entirely different. Who can say whether there were actually explosions or not? The voice of common sense, Foreign Secretary Tom...sorry I mean James Cleverly, is interviewed on the roof of what looks like the local gasworks for the 10 o'clock news. He opens with an antipodean interrogative in the style of a teenage girl. "Ukraine does have the legitimate right to defend itself?" he asks. Hang on, why are you talking about Ukraine? They already said they didn't do it. You don't believe them? You think they might be lying? And that's leaving aside the fact that nobody would consider blowing up bombs on suburban residential blocks of flats as "defending yourself". Ah but hang on, Sunny Jimmy C has more. It seems that Ukraine also has the legitimate right to, ahem, errr <cough>...project force...outside its borders. If that force is projected of course in order to prevent Russia from err projecting force. Yes. That's what it might have been. Only might. Just a little very mild force projection in a limited and specific way. If blowing up people's homes with buzz bombs is the sort of force projection we need in order to defeat the Russkies, bring down Putin and ensure peace in the region, then I reckon there are quite a few mansions round the UK and especially North London that are well overdue a flying bomb down the chimney. Half the owners are pals of Putin too by all accounts. And it's all legitimate outside borders stuff according to clever Jim. He won't mind at all. In fact, if it happens, we won't even be able to verify if it was a bomb or not. Might have been. Might not. Who knows. Yer mansion might just have collapsed in on itself and got sucked into the ancient Indian burial ground below, like in that horror film. But certainly, if anything did happen to your house, it wasn't Ukraine.
Russia did this to Kyiv the day before with fatal consequences. Over the last year, it had destroyed tens of thousands of Ukrainian homes killing tens of thousands of Ukrainians. I’m surprised you don’t mention that more and only raise objections when Ukraine targets a bit of Moscow (mostly targeted on an area where the Russian elite live). Attacks on civilians are not good though and we shouldn’t support Ukraine to do it. But we can’t be naive about its need to strike at Russia though. It needs to deter deadly attacks on its citizens. The very obvious duplicity of Ukraine arises from the constraints of the war. The rules, dictated by all the other countries, are that Russia may level Ukraine and kill at will. Ukraine must not touch Russia and the war must remain inside Ukraine. That cannot hold and unless Russia backs down, the war will come home to Russia.
