If Putin is hell-bent on vaporising everyone west of Warsaw I'm not sure any of them will be much cop. And your mate's worries about his parents' farm, inheritance tax and his plans to create a golf course will pale into insignificance.
I have no affection for either Russia or Ukraine. Firstly Russia treated Cuba like a colony in 1962 - making deals with the USA about missiles on national territory without even involving Cuba in the discussions. Cuba was treated like the old days of colonialist masters negotiating different lands in their possession. That did not sit well. Worse still was in 1991. Trade deals and formal agreements signed under COMECON were just abandoned overnight. Cuba could not buy at any price the spare parts and replacements needed for Russian equipment and infrastructure that had been installed with assurances and guarantees. Cuba was abandoned entirely and even punished by the new russian masters. There is no love for Russia in Cuba I can assure you. When they showed their awful russian children's cartoons on Cuban TV, the joke was that parents threatened their children to behave or they would make them watch russian cartoons. There are also many rude Cuban jokes about russians which involve the addition of "-ski" to the end of every word. Like fackski offski and such. Also there is no love for Ukraine. A very corrupt country in every area. I hear some of the shiploads of weapons sent over there are ending up on middle eastern black markets, contributing to even more deaths and suffering around the world. If anyone has a misty-eyed view it is the Ukraine backers. Right from the start it has been a simplistic onslaught in the media based on the old cowboy films. White hat Ukrainians - 100% good brave heroic. Black hat Russians - 100% bad, evil in fact, murderous, snow on their boots. Almost comical in it's innocence. I wrote about this aspect way earlier in this thread. Well now the Russian ambassador says the UK is "involved" in that distant bloody war, in a place most Brits couldn't even point out on a map. Great.
Where did you hear this? The only source for this claim I can find is Putin and his defence minister and it seems to have first been made just after the Hamas attack in Israel.
I am under no illusion that any country is totally good or totally bad. But it boils down a simple fact to me. A country has invaded another country's territory....twice. There is absolutely no justification for that. The UN was set up specifically to ensure that any territorial disputes were resolved without armed conflict but Russia choose to ignore that. So, until Russia stop military activities and seek a negotiated settlement then they are rightly international pariahs and Ukraine are justified in resisting them with all means possible. And it would not surprise me one bit if some of the international aid was being diverted to the benefit of corrupt individuals. I don't think it's a big issue though and the UK is in no position to lecture other nations about corruption when we have the ongoing PPE scandal.
To be fair, there is definitely some corruption in Ukraine. It’s something like 100th/180 countries on the corruption index so in the middle third. No where near as much as in Russia (~140th), and they’ve been actively trying to clamp down on it (sacking/ arresting a number of people in prominent positions) but it does take a while to change governance and culture. Still, it’s clear the vast majority of weapons delivered make it to the front line. And it’s even more clear that you don’t let a more-corrupt imperialist destroy, invade and commit war crimes in neighbouring countries which are not attacking you/ causing atrocities, just because there’s some corruption.
True but up until the war they were making steady progress, tracking upwards from a low of about 150th... when they had a pro-Putin head of state.
Yes, absolutely. Geographically and politically moving towards the EU, where there is greater oversight over corruption/ specific rules for joining, will significantly decrease their levels of corruption. Definitely true. But I imagine in actual politics today, this is mostly due to Russia actively funding these candidates and their causes, because they’re useless but harmful idiots. Corbyn and Marjorie Green have very little in common, style or policy, bar the fact Russia clearly wanted/ wants them both to succeed.
Well, the tension and aggression definitely seems to be rising each and every day at the moment. Becoming difficult to see how this all ends in anything other than a very bad way for everyone.
I agree it’s all pretty concerning. This must be as close to how it felt to be alive in the Cuban missile crisis. You almost wonder if you are not going to be woken up by your regular alarm but a government siren on your phone telling you that a nuke is on the way.
I mean, if that's not just a jokey aside and you're genuinely wondering that I'd consider taking some time off social media. Almost all that talk is only coming from one side, in whose interests it is to whip up nonsense worries in the West.
Surely though there is an understandable element that says we're dealing with someone/a country that is seemingly becoming increasingly angry, desperate and volatile - and who has a genuine, growing hatred for both us and the US in particular - and that, considering that and the events of the past week, it's not surprising that people are becoming concerned that this could end up escalating beyond the borders of Ukraine/Russia?
Correct. Takes one minor miscalculation from someone and this spirals very quickly! The quicker Trump is in the WH the better!
I’m sure the people of the Baltic states are extremely concerned about it escalating beyond the borders of Ukraine, and have been for many years. And as a Brit I wouldn’t be going on my holidays to Moscow any time soon. But other than that I just don’t see the extreme scenarios playing out, largely because the consequences would be considerably worse for Russia and because while he’s many things, I don’t think Putin is suicidal. It’s very possible Trump might be able to buy 3-4 years of ‘peace’ by sacrificing Ukraine. But Russia will be back again, emboldened and looking to gobble up another bit of Eastern Europe it believes it has a right to soon enough. The US can afford to take an isolationist line on this because they’re a superpower. We’re not.
Well, I think my first suggestion would be we (me, you, Nath… normal people) don’t get in too much of a flap about it. This one isn’t winnable - I’m no starry eyed idealist - but for relatively little financial cost, and no manpower costs, we can degrade a malign Russia for the foreseeable future. Putin’s acting like a bully and that shouldn’t sit well with us. It doesn’t with me. And he’s not nuking London or Washington over this, nor provoking a NATO response which would shred what’s left of Russia’s military. If Russia attacked, say RAF Akrotiri, we’d probably flatten two of their air bases. It’s not a game he wants to get into. And while I agree it’s not really America’s problem, so Trump can pick up their ball and go home, it is our problem, because it’s in our back yard. We’re not big enough to stand alone and if Europe’s unstable we’ll be badly affected too. We can’t turn a blind eye to this. At this point, if Putin grabs a good chunk of Ukraine he’ll inherit millions of people who not only hate him, they might just hate the West more for abandoning them. That could make things a bit spicy in a few years time! So I think we should do what it takes to avoid that betrayal. That probably looks like a couple of things. While the costs are relatively low we should stick with it for a couple more years. Try to get Ukraine into the strongest negotiating position possible. Ideally Putin/Russia needs to be dissuaded from launching an invasion like this for at least a generation. That’s probably the best chance to avoid a proper regional war.
Even if Trump and Putin come to some sort of agreement on a ceasefire/peace deal using 'new' borders it'll only be a short-term solution. Putin will use the next couple of years to restock their missiles, retrain their soldiers, modernise their equipment and try to take more control/influence over Belarus and their military before launching another invasion with the aim of taking Kiev before the next US election.
I can't see anything other than a Russian revolution or Putin popping his clogs naturally ending this. Any negotiated treaty, more likely under Trump would by a pause at best.
Slightly ironically, the "Great Bear" sinks in the Mediterranean Sea...... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c627n83ezlwo