mykel
Perpetual Hack.
While I surmised that was your intent...
Blanket statement is still blanket statement.
Still thinking you need to put some qualifiers on to narrow the scope.
Ukraine III
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While I surmised that was your intent...
Blanket statement is still blanket statement.
Still thinking you need to put some qualifiers on to narrow the scope.
lagavullin10y
pfm Member
The first Ukrainian families have arrived in my village. I was touched to see that the few Russian families here volunteered to help with arranging things and also volunteer on the schools.
MUTTY1
Waste of bandwidth
PsB
Citizen of Nowhere™
Oooh, yes, highly suspicious that the State Dept would use someone that actually speaks one of the local languages. /s
(Although, come to think of it, how many Russian-speaking neo-cons can you actually name, spontaneously?)
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
He’s an ageing autocrat who’s become increasingly withdrawn and changed the constitution to effectively make himself El Presidente for life. He controls everything in Russia, particularly its wealth and the ability of opposition politicians to pose any real challenge. People in Russia get killed for opposing him, now thousands in Ukraine suffer the same fate. It’s a very bad picture and one seen repeatedly in history. He’s doing what Milošević did but with a far greater capacity to wage war.
His rhetoric is self contradictory- on one hand it’s the fear of NATO then it’s the re-establishment of Imperial Russia but now to the boundaries of the old USSR. He’s not afraid to use force, to destroy countries that defy him and he’s threatened implicitly to use nuclear weapons if anyone gets in his way.
I’m afraid hand wringing in the West about “maybe we should have listened to his concerns more” is futile. He’s taking a wrecking ball to Ukraine and like his use of chemical and radiological weapons on British soil, he’s saying “what are you going to do about it?”.
Yes this is why I asked repeatedly about the validity of Russian security concerns. (As I said they seem to be longstanding)
But also there was internal conflict within Ukraine and the Russians cite armed hostilities between the Kiev government using their national military and the breakaway regions in the east of Ukraine.
PsB
Citizen of Nowhere™
If you're thinking of Nuland, I don't think she qualifies as a neo-con. Served under John Kerry and was Obama's spokesperson at the State Dept. She doesn't appear on who's who lists of neo-cons. The fact she's married to Robert Kagan doesn't mean she shares all his views.
mandryka
pfm Member
Can someone who knows about the geography of the region, and NATO military capability, please deal with this point, which often comes up? Can he defend himself against NATO more easily if he has Ukraine, because he can block the route into Russia via the Great European Plain? Will NATO find it harder to attack Russia with missiles if he has Ukraine as a buffer?
MVV
pfm Member
Just a link to a friend of mine who is a young female freelance journalist who is actually on the ground in the thick of it having escaped Mariupol just before it was surrounded.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/11/life-underground-kharkiv-ukraine-russia/
She has rather a good twitter feed and tends to take a very down to earth, people focussed approach to her reporting - @liz_cookman.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/11/life-underground-kharkiv-ukraine-russia/
She has rather a good twitter feed and tends to take a very down to earth, people focussed approach to her reporting - @liz_cookman.
DimitryZ
pfm Member
There is a whole body of international law on concepts of just war and supplies to beligerents.
By your childlike "logic" helping the French Resistance during WW2 would also be viewed as interference and should be rejected on both moral and humanitarian grounds.
DimitryZ
pfm Member
You should have more than "I don't like her," since she is central "pin" in your argument that the West is responsible for war by "meddling."
PsB
Citizen of Nowhere™
There are two paradoxes:
- by launching all-out war on what he calls "Little Russians", he has ensured the long term enmity of the vast majority of the Ukrainian people, and consolidated the national identity of the country
- if he annexes Ukraine, he actually moves his border closer to NATO territory.
I'm not a military expert, but I would have thought that NATO has the capacity to vitrify most of the USSR, sorry Russia several times over. The location of the border is not material in this respect.
i simply stated my view. I sincerely hope I’m wrong
mandryka
pfm Member
Yes he's closer but it doesn't follow that the routes to attack Russia aren't easier to defend. I don't know, that's why I'm hoping that a geographer will answer. And controlling Ukraine means that no weapons targeted on Russia can be located there -- that extra distance from Russia may make it safer. Again I don't know, because I know nothing about weapons.
I'm sure he's pissed off a lot of Ukrainian people in the process.
DimitryZ
pfm Member
Armed hostilities in Donbas is a Russian operatives' engineered astroturf "uprising" that they started right after invasion of Crimea in 2014, to deflect world attention.
Led by Russian citizens of military background and with Russian weapons and Russian artillery over the border, they were successful in "starting up the flywheel of war" (their leader, Girkin, recently proudly stated that recently), but in only two locations. Everywhere else - and they tried in multiple places - "uprisings" failed. The main idea was to create a "New Russia" by essentially "fake-referendering" those regions to main Russia.
The main achievements of these Russia-looted regions are a complete impoverishing of the remaining population and shooting down an Dutch airliner and killing over 200 passengers and crew.
Please try to educate yourself
Yes for sure I do have a very heavy negative bias. That I admit for sure. The reason for my bias is that when I look at the recent US, US+coalition or US/NATO interventions/wars in various countries. Often the after picture is worse than the before picture. Libya comes to mind.
I’ll leave it there thanks for the input (sincerely)
DimitryZ
pfm Member
Wrong views can and should be re-examined with facts and historical evidence.
George J
Herefordshire member
Norway has a land border with Russia and has been in NATO since the formation of the organisation.
Just tuppence worth from George
DonQuixote99
pfm Member
Well the sceneario you posted, a person defending their home against murderous invaders, would allow self-defense under most justifiable homicide statutes. But taking the field against the same invaders is another matter. There is international law concerning rights of belligerents, that says you can kill enemy soldiers, but if they capture you they can't punish you for it, they have to treat you decently ( and vice/versa). It is a legitimate legal question whether a self-directed foreign volunteer enjoys similar belligerent rights. Your volunteer needs to be sworn into the Ukrainian military, then he's OK, as far as his status in the combat zone. Back in home country, they may have laws about such stuff....
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