Ukraine - Catalyst For Ww3

Discussion in 'Politics 2.0' started by AndrewH63, Feb 11, 2022.

  1. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    Yes.
     
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  2. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    The West could be said to have been provoking Russia by steadily seeking to extend the EU and NATO further east for years
     
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  3. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Sure, that's definitely part of Putin's case. But then Russia could simply have made itself a more desirable country for the Eastern block to hitch their wagons to. Given the choice it's no wonder almost the whole lot decided to do one and join NATO and/or the EU.
     
  4. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    As opposed to Putin openly stating the fall of the USSR (with all its associated imperial hegemony over not just those now independent former constituent republics, but also most of Eastern Europe) was a ‘disaster’ and needed to be reversed. Not forgetting his clearly stated view that Ukraine has no right to exist as an independent entity. I wonder why so many of those countries that used to ‘enjoy’ life under the ‘benevolent control’ of Mother Russia are so keen to move ever closer to the West. But go on believing it’s all the fault of NATO and EU.
    Why should Putin have control over which group independent countries wish to join?
     
  5. miked2006

    miked2006 Premiership Prediction League Proprietor

    What does Russia have to fear if nearby sovereign states join a defensive alliance/ economic union?

    Not much, unless its stated aim and actions are to take away the independence of sovereign states to become a larger imperial Russia. Or if it’s scared that its oligarchy will perform war worse economically than nearby states, increasing the wish for greater freedoms and prosperity from within.

    Looked what happened to neighbouring Ukraine and Georgia vs other neighbouring states like Latvia and Estonia.
     
  6. BeersThen

    BeersThen Reservist

    Looks like Ukraine have fired the first of the US missiles into Russia.
     
  7. NathWFC

    NathWFC First Team

    Putin has apparently lowered the threshold for what now potentially warrants a nuclear response.
     
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  8. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Yeah but China won't let him use nukes unless Russia was literally facing an existential invasion. Which it isn't.

    My bet is Russia's response will be more asymmetric warfare. Things like this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9dl4vxw501o
     
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  9. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

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  10. Bubble

    Bubble Wise Oracle

    Also replacing Ukraine's previous regime, that was friendly with Russia, installing a puppet like Zelensky that's sympathetic towards the west, was also probably quite a big red flag for Putin!
     
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  11. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    'The West' demanded (true, not 'asked') that Russia withdraw back to its internationally-recognised border with Ukraine the very day that Putin's invasion was launched. (Maybe you accept Putin's depiction of it as a 'Special Military Operation'; I don't know). They asked Russia to stop, then & there. What 'negotiated peace settlement' would have been needed then? But Putin does not WANT any such settlement; in fact, his need to maintain his domestic posture as 'the strong man who is always correct and who always wins' militates very strongly against that possibility.

    Even were he to agree to enter into 'negotiations', what would the fair & equitable basis of any such negotiations be? That Ukraine willingly cedes its own territory to an aggressor that has taken possession of it by force? Is that 'fair & equitable'? Clearly not. What do you think would be the fate of those Ukrainians living in any such ceded territories? I'd suggest they'd have 2 options: forced Russification or imprisonment/torture/death. Would that be sufficiently 'fair & equitable' for you? You have to accept that Putin & the coterie that keeps him in power have nothing but contempt for 'Ukraine' (which they claim should not exist) & Ukrainians (whom they view as a backward bunch of sub-Russian yokels). ANY negotiated peace would not be worth the paper it would be written on. Who would police it? Who would (could?) stop Putin's next 'Special Military Operation' being launched from the territories ceded to him under any such putative 'reasonable settlement'? Because you can bet your bottom dollar that within a surprisingly short period of time he'd start spouting all sorts of fabricated justification, stating that 'our brother Russians only kilometres from our ancestral lands (sic) in the Donbass are daily being subjected to violence anf discrimination by Ukrainian fascists. We must act to protect and save them.' Sudetenland>>full occupation of Czechoslovakia, anyone?

    Imagine if Trump decided that the solution to the issue of immigrant influx across the USA-Mexico border were to launch such a 'Special Military Operation' aimed at annexing a buffer zone in Northern Mexico. If that were to lead to armed resistance and bloodshed, what sort of 'negotiated peace settlement' would you consider acceptable for the Mexicans to agree to?

    It really is nothing to do with 'bravado & flag waving'. I'm sickened at the innocent Ukrainian citizens being killed in their own homes in their own homeland because a dangerous megalomaniac is p155ed off that they prefer 'the West' to his own warped view of what they should accept. I'm sickened by the numbers of forced recruits from the poorest areas of Putin's fiefdom being sacrificed by a military employing what are similar to WW1 tactics because they are viewed as 'dispensable cannon-fodder'. I'm sorry for those North Korean troops being sent into battle against Ukraine- just let that sink in for a while- in a conflict thousands miles away from their homes because their own 'glorious leader' views them the same way as Putin views his own conscripts. Unfortunately, the real human empathy most decent people feel in these situations is EXACTLY what such as Putin rely on to achieve their goals. The rest of the world will be guided by decency and humanity allowing him to continue in his strategy of recreating the Russian Empire as exhibited by the USSR at the height of its power. (With all the benefits flowing back to Mother Russia, of course).

    How would you propose such a mentality is confronted?
     
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  12. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    It's just Cold War politics continuing. Both sides have been playing these games since WW2, so I don't think anyone from the West or Moscow has the right to clutch pearls and pretend to be horrified by the ways things have turned out. The whole point of the protests in 2013 was because the Ukraine Parliament had voted for closer ties with the EU but the Russian stooge in charge vetoed it. Nothing changes - the people typically want one thing, Moscow wants another because it wants Ukraine as a buffer zone and play thing.

    Zelenskyy wasn't 'installed' either. He was elected by 13.5m people. And that was in 2019, 5 years after the Russian-friendly chap (who is now back in Russia) was binned off.
     
  13. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    'Installing a puppet like Zelensky'? Jeez. I suggest you might like to read up on the Orange Revolution of 2004 and all the 5h1t that went down after that before talking about puppets being installed. And Zelensky only got 73% of the vote in 2019, that being a democratic election as laid down in Ukraine's constitution.
    Clearly it was a red flag to Putin, but wherein lies the blame and fault?
     
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  14. miked2006

    miked2006 Premiership Prediction League Proprietor

    Terrifying that people parrot words straight out of what I assume is a Russian bot farm.

    The Ukrainian population had land taken from them by Putin and decided through a democratic vote that they wanted to move away from an imperialist who saw their land as his own.

    We know how this ends if you appease such people. And it’s not peace and rainbows.
     
  15. Steve Leo Beleck

    Steve Leo Beleck Squad Player

    Putin apologists are a weird coalition. Obviously you have the old leftists who carry over some of the Cold War sympathies for the USSR, despite the fact that there is nothing remotely socialist about the current kleptocracy but at least it's not the bad ol' USA, eh? Then you have the "I hate the woke/liberals/EU" bunch who think it's all a price worth paying and respect a "strong man" leader.

    Then you have the appeasers and apologists. Poor old Putin, what's he supposed to do when other countries that offer zero threat to Russia's territorial integrity look to the west and see better living standards so want to join their multinational organisations? Obviously he needs to repeatedly invade them and annex their territory, there's simply no other option. And then if he can't win the war outright straightaway, he should just be given the land he has grabbed and we can all hope that will satisfy him, unlike the previous 5/6 times where he's come back for more.
     
  16. NathWFC

    NathWFC First Team

    Let's hope that's about as far as it goes! Russia certainly talking an aggressive, threatening game... Again.
     
  17. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn First Team

    Not a good analogy: Latvia has a population of 1.8M and over 50% live in the capital (Riga) and Estonia's is just over 1.2M. When I lived in Lithuania, the published ethnic Russian populations for those two was hovering around 50%: Latvia just over and Estonia just under. Both of these countries treated their Russian populations really poorly - it was only EU accession that caused them to change how they dealt with them.
     
  18. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn First Team

    I wonder what they will do - when Turkey blew one of their planes out the sky for invading Turkish airspace and around a week later an ultra-nationalist Turk assassinated the Russian ambassador live on TV they did ****-all...
     
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  19. miked2006

    miked2006 Premiership Prediction League Proprietor

    They will respond appropriately apparently…

    To Western weapons given to Ukraine being allowed to hit a very specific region of Russia. When Russia use foreign weapons and men to attack Ukraine every night.

    To respond appropriately, they should fire three quarters of their weapons on their own supermarkets and power stations.
     
  20. miked2006

    miked2006 Premiership Prediction League Proprietor

    Interesting, but I’m confused about your point?

    I was just saying that there are two bordering countries, which are in NATO/ the EU, which haven’t had serious skirmishes or a significant portion of their land annexed by Russia.

    Ukraine has. Georgia has. Even non bordering Moldova has.

    But very geographically important neighbouring Estonia has not. And it’s not because of their treatment of ethnic Russians.
     
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  21. NathWFC

    NathWFC First Team

    Apparently Russian state TV has called for Britain to be sunk with a radioactive tsunami by underwater, nuclear capable drones.

    That sounds fun.
     
  22. Bubble

    Bubble Wise Oracle

    They said this ages ago. Nuclear weapon named 'poseidon'.
     
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  23. Bubble

    Bubble Wise Oracle

    Allegedly all Russian officials have left Moscow.....


    Something is going down!
     
  24. lm_wfc

    lm_wfc First Team

    Russia has fired an ICBM at Ukraine.

    As far as I know, no one has ever used an ICBM in war before.

    I don't think there's any military benefit of doing this. This is just an escalation for the sake of escalation. Does anyone here still think that it's the west escalating this?
     
  25. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Marginal military benefit in that presumably the warheads will come in so fast they can't be stopped by conventional air defences. But at a massive cost given it's designed for longer distances.
     
  26. miked2006

    miked2006 Premiership Prediction League Proprietor

    True, but you’d get the same result at much less cost (and with a lot more backup ammo) by firing simultaneous kalibr missiles.

    It’s just a way of responding by pretending they’re escalating without actually escalating.
     
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  27. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    According to what source?
     
  28. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Yup. It's from the same old playbook. But they're not completely silly - they know the ICBM chatter will be exploited by their shills on social media to whip up hysteria and anti-Ukraine sentiment.
     
  29. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    Hahaha yes of course!

    24 hours ago, posters on here were chortling along with Gwant Shapps about how launching British missiles into Russia and deploying land mines was a great idea because Putin hadn't responded to past provocations and wouldn't do this time either.
     
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  30. lm_wfc

    lm_wfc First Team


    The west are at fault for their escalating

    The west are at fault for Russia escalating
     
  31. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Yep. Sounds scary to uninformed people, but meaningless in practice. Just another ratchet in their misinformation war.

    But remember: Russia invading another country, calling in allied troops to the meatgrinder and using foreign sourced weapons in Ukraine = fine, but Ukraine firing foreign sourced weapons back at their aggressor = escalation.
     
  32. Clive literally is "of the Kremlin".
    n'est-ce pas? So many old commies have this lingering affection for Mother Russia when the current iteration is about as far from the communist ideal as could be imagined. It's more like a feudal dictatorship than an egalitarian utopia.
     
  33. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    That's just what I thought they'd do.
     
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  34. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    As we edge closer to WW3 who would be your preferred wartime leader?
    Flip-flopping phoney Sir Keir
    Enchanting Kemi Badenoch
    Ed 'Twerp' Davey
    Don's mate Nigel Farrage
    None of the above
     
  35. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    Is there a clue in the list?
     

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