I could not believe Putin really would invade Ukraine, because I could see no sensible outcome for him. I still cannot. Initiating a war on this scale has no legal justification, and no moral justification either. Russian troops are in areas which have no wish to be ruled by Russia.
Those of us who opposed the illegal invasion of Iraq must also oppose the illegal invasion of Ukraine. Whether the Ukrainian government is obnoxious or not is as irrelevant now, as the obnoxiousness of Saddam Hussein was irrelevant then. I am as fed up now with being asked if I support Ukrainian Nazis as I was then with being asked if I supported Saddam Hussein.
It is simply illegal to wage a war for regime change, without the endorsement of the UN security council.
I have great sympathy for Russian security concerns about encirclement by NATO and forward missile deployments. But seeking regime change by invasion in Ukraine could not possibly be the answer. I still have not the slightest idea what Putin seeks to achieve. It is simply impossible – and has been since the annexation of Crimea – that a democratic Ukraine is voluntarily going to elect a pro-Russian government. After this invasion, the only way a pro-Putin regime could be maintained in Ukraine would be by extreme authoritarianism, going well beyond the prevailing system in Russia itself.
Let me put it starkly. This can only finish with a government in Kiev which absolutely hates Putin as now do the Ukrainian people, or with Russia maintaining a puppet regime by extreme repression. There isn’t a way out with a peaceful, neutral Ukraine. Once you try to resolve matters by pure force, you lose that option. If I were Ukrainian, there is no way now I would be agreeing to the demilitarisation of my country.
As for denazification – which certainly is needed in Ukraine – Putin has given the “heroic anti-Russian nationalist” meme of the Ukrainian nazi groups a massive boost. While labelling the entire nation and government as Nazi is just wrong.
I did not think Putin would invade, for all those reasons. I did not even think he would acknowledge moving troops into the Donbass. I was unsure what to argue about that if he did. The Kosovo parallel with the newly acknowledged Donetsk and Lughansk republics is arguable. As a supporter of Scottish Independence, I am open to arguments from self-determination, and you can read Murder in Samarkand on the capriciousness of former internal Soviet borders. But this has gone far beyond that.
Yet we have seen nothing like the simply massive civilian casualties the West inflicted on Libya, Iraq or Afghanistan. Not anything like the same order of magnitude. In the town of Sirte, Libya alone NATO bombing killed 15,000 people. Casualty figures being given for the whole of the Ukraine so far are still in the hundreds, and thank God for that.
Sirte, Libya, after NATO bombing
Either Putin has not entirely willed the means, or his armed forces are resisting obeying his wishes. Russia has not unleashed anything like the kind of firepower that would need to be unleashed to subdue Ukraine. Western media has gone into full war porn mode, but the extent of real fighting is uncertain. There seems to be a great deal of shadow boxing.
I do not know the explanation for this. It seems very possible Putin has underestimated Ukrainian morale, and really believed Ukraine would crumble. In fact, Zelensky is playing a blinder in terms of maintaining morale, however staged his photo-ops. The more pressing question is whether Putin overestimated the willingness of his own military to kill Ukrainians, or whether Putin himself lacks the will. In Grozny, he was directly responsible for civilian casualties on a truly terrible scale, but is he like the West in putting much less value on Muslim lives?
Grozny Destroyed by Russia
To date, Kiev has faced nothing like what Sirte faced from NATO or Grozny faced from Russia – but not because Russia lacks the capacity to do it.
If Putin is himself ready for massive Ukrainian deaths, is his military pulling its punches? I am reminded of the War of Slovenian Independence, where the soldiers of the massively superior Yugoslav army just refused to kill Slovenes. In that case, many of the Yugoslav troops were initially told it was just a live fire exercise, which lends credibility to the idea the same is happening with Russian troops here.
Putin has not improved his negotiating position. My own friends and allies on the left are suggesting that the answer is for there to be a ceasefire and Western agreement to no further expansion of NATO, and a new arms control treaty governing missile deployments. That would certainly be ideal but it is not going to happen.
You have to understand the realpolitik of the Western elite. They will never damage their own interests. That is why the sanctions that would really hurt Putin, targeting companies like BP and Shell over their Russian interests or the real oligarchs like Usmanov, Deripaska and Abramovic, will never happen because they would damage the interests of the British elite. It is why the UK government fly Ukrainian flags but will not let Ukrainians come without visas. They don’t really care about the ordinary people at all.
The NATO leadership now see Putin in a position where he either has to back down and retreat, or inflict massive casualties on the Ukraine and get bogged down there for decades. If they wanted to save the Ukrainian people, this would indeed be the time for West to negotiate. But the lives of ordinary Ukrainians mean nothing to them.
So rather than find Putin a ladder to climb down, they will strike heroic poses, wave Ukrainian flags and send more weapons. I fear Putin will go for the mass deaths scenario. Macho is his entire brand, and his speech last Sunday was worryingly fundamentalist. I do wonder if he is losing the room at home – he spoke of the end of the Soviet Union as a calamity, but Russians under forty cannot even remember the Soviet Union at all. Nobody under 50 can remember it in any kind of functioning order.
One final thought for now. I applaud those brave people in Russia who have demonstrated for peace. Almost 2,000 have been arrested. But remember this – under the Tory government’s new policing bill, taking part in a demonstration in England and Wales not approved in advance by the police could bring up to ten years in prison. Just one example of the rife hypocrisy submerging us all at present.
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Many great comments but some people do not understand couple of things.
We in the west use mantra about “appeasement” of Hitler so much that everyone knows what we are talking about.
Russia can use (rightly so) same argument with justification about WW2 and NATO not ever being “appeased ” .NATO is expanding
year after year. Does NATO really needs Ukraine or could make concession? Diplomacy has faild due to stubbornness .
The “great” US war “hero” John McCain was shot down trying to bomb a Vietnamese Power Station. Russias invasion of Ukraine is targeting Military Infrastructure and Neo Nazis battalions. The EU will not grant Ukraine membership, nor Nato. They have just used and screwed the Ukrainian people to get at Russia. If Zelensky tries to have peace with Russia and agree on Neutrality, he will be killed by the Nazis on orders from their European American Masters.
The 1945 Victory Parade in Moscow had the banners of the German Legions, their Eagles and Swastikas thrown to the ground, each representing the barbarick murderous hoards who came to the outskirts of Moscow and lay siege to Stalingrad. Now their decendants are rearing their ugly supremacist scull and crossbones again on Russias borders. We in Anglo Saxon Europe and America still deny Russia is European. The country of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky. The African students in Ukraine prevented at the Polish border by gun point from entering illustrates the neo Nazi cancer growth. Russia will Not Apease the Collective West and bear all the seiges as it endured in the Great Patriotic War. I hope the Ukrainian people revolt against their Nazi collaborators.
The new ddos protection is protecting the site from my reading it from anything but a cell phone. The software seems to just block off access by older browsers
this seems to have fixed itself.
Hungary has announced it will not allow munitions to be transited through her sovereign territory in support of UK. It kinda got me thinking about the battle of the North Atlantic during WW2.
Can the Russians legitimately target the ships, planes etc of Nations that are supplying munitions to the Ukrainians according to the laws of war?
good question. is it ‘legal’ to hand out guns to the general public on presentation of a passport?
The irony is that Orban behaves the most responsibly among all the NATO clowns. We experienced the financial, ethnic, military spillovers of the bombing of Yugoslavia. Thanks but no thanks. Liz Truss can play war in the UK. Given her level of ignorance, she might even confuse Hungary with Russia and starts bombing us.
if you include with Hungary the Transnistra, and Moldova which has a pro Russian element that formed the government until recently, the potential window of entry for arms shipments must be fairly easily surveilled by the Russian forces ?
Then there’s the issue of the EU closing its airspace to Russian aerospace. One would have to imagine conversely that Ukrainian airspace is effectively closed to aircraft of the EU, or anyone else for that matter.
With what seems to be the world and his wife declaring that they will send arms to the Ukraine, one does have to wonder if its all just posturing. Certainly it would be interesting to know just how delivery will be achieved.
Well, these criminally irresponsible Western politicians are also urging their citizens and all sorts of shady elements around the world to volunteer and fight in Ukraine. They want to turn our region into a European Idlib province. You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to understand why Hungary has no interest in that. This has already happened on a smaller scale during the Yugoslav war. It took us a decade to get rid of the arm and gasoline smuggling mafias spawned by that conflict.
The violent shite that went down in Hungary in the 90s was of course completely unreported in the West. Car bombs, assassinations, people being placed on the train tracks to be cut in half, what not. Real Mexican drug cartel style violence. There was genuine fear that Hungary would become like Columbia or Mexico, the gasoline mafia was so rich and strong.
Wow, it makes Hungary sound like a country in Central America. I wonder why that is?
It was when NATO conducted a war in our neighborhood in the 90s. I hope it answers your wondering.
” Can the Russians legitimately target the ships, planes etc of Nations that are supplying munitions to the Ukrainians according to the laws of war? “
Bearing in mind, as Craig points out, that the war is illegal anyway any action against ships or aircraft of other nations could be interpreted as an act of war or piracy.
“Bearing in mind, as Craig points out, that the war is illegal anyway any action against ships or aircraft of other nations could be interpreted as an act of war or piracy.”
Any action against ships or aircraft of other nations will always be interpreted as an act of war or piracy unless it is carried out by the US or NATO, in which case it is a legitimate activity.
quiet little portugal has sent guns and presumably required first aid, while spain, less optimistic, has just sent first aid. presumably nudged by the all embracing eu. how different their engagement was in the second great war.
the ft reports ‘A major shift occurred in the past two days, with nearly all western European nations (notably Germany and France but also the Nordics, Belgium and the Netherlands) announcing they will send weapons to Ukraine. And last night, so did the EU itself, with foreign ministers deciding to use €450mn in EU money for lethal aid to Ukraine, a first in the bloc’s history.
“For the first time ever, the European Union will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack,” said Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president.
‘lethal aid’ we were taught it was big brother but it’s turned out to be auntie ursula.
What use are arms, if they have no army? What they need is troops.
I’ve never seen such extensive virtue-signalling in my life before, as that on display now over pledges of support to Ukraine. The outrage at invading another country! Of course we have to economically punish the population of the aggressor! Of course all refugees from the country concerned must be welcomed! Of course Russia is 100% bad and Ukraine 100% good, only Putin’s stooges would dare even think otherwise! Of course Putin is completely evil and insane, and Zelensky the new hero of the world!
Peace talks are underway.
Trouble is, Russia will require that Ukraine no longer aims to join NATO, and that condition alone will sink negotiations. Zelensky will then get on the ‘phone to Washington and be told that this is non-negotiable. He will return to say the peace talks are off.
Now is surely the time to start flogging Ukrainian – flagged merch, and buying shares n the “defence” industry. Oh, and don’t forget to short the ruble.
The Russian economy must be destroyed. Russia must be surrounded by NATO stooges. Spending on “defence” must be increased significantly. No other outcomes will be contemplated or accepted.
How would causing chaos in the country with the largest or second largest nuclear arsenal increase the world’s security? NATO basically entered the war, which seemingly confirms the Russians’ suspicions.
Russian economy destroyed?
You may underestimated the European thirst for money 🙂 they demand Russia to be banned from the European Counsel, still paying for membership, according to
Tiny Cocks.
Sorry if I spell the name wrongly, I’m a Russian and am banned currently from any usual information service, to provide you with the ‘approved” google translation of the name in question.
No worries, I enjoy the sort of democracy you spread worldwide. I understand the higher goal is to establish the higher truth, given once and forever for all of us uneducated eastern people, so that we know how to worship our western ubermenshen in the most pleasant for them way
https://ria.ru/20220227/pase-1775406660.html
And, as I calmed down and find myself ready to speak about money, Jack, you’re welcome to bring your concerns on the impact of sanctions. Let’s only agree from the very start that in my world ‘sanctions’ means something approved by the UN. Any other unilateral steps are called ‘restrictions’, mostly illegal, as there were no court decision behind it
Should I start with the ‘sanctions from Hell’, announced for your wider public as the ‘morher of all sanctions’?
Ok, I feel it would be the most entertaining journey ever. I felt my education as a linguist together with pedagogy won’t waste a tiny bit of my parents hard earned money spent on my education 🙂
Let’s start and end at the point that Swift is the inter-banking messenger. Like WhatsApp. It allows banks connected to swiftly exchange transaction messages. Like you may type a text message to anyone in your contact list in your phone.
Do you seriously consider that making this process more time-consuming is going to create any serious obstacle for business?
If you are persuaded it is so, well, good luck my friend. I’m feeling very sorry for not seeing your face when you receive your next utility bill. Because I, as a rational business, just add the extra expense into the retail price. Just, that’s the sense of having business, it’s going to make me some profit.
Tatyana, I sympathise with your frustration and anger, you have no more control over Mr Putin than I do over what my government says and does. At the moment Mr Putin is being portrayed as some kind of madman in our media, the reports we see of how this situation is developing to me only read as propaganda, I cant read your media because google translate does not work with the Russian web pages I try to see any more, I assume to keep us in ignorance.
I try to compensate by weeding out the obvious nonsense in our media and looking at as many different viewpoints as are available to me, but I am unlikely to get a clear picture at present as to what is happening as far as casualties are concerned.
This situation can only be resolved by negotiation and to negotiate you must have some level of trust, that seems to be absent at present, I do not blame Mr Putin for not trusting the west.
“Mother of all sanctions”
?
You are right, the mighty ‘West’ which I am one of, is channeling full on Saddam!
Let us who remember, understand the great necessary breakdown we are cursed/blessed to be living through. It is Gramsci’s :
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born”
This war was declared and over before the last 5 days of unnecessary destruction. But heyho the MIC got to get their cut…
The New is Born.
Hang in there Tatyana, did I just hear right that China is to buy all of the Russian grain harvest? Some people in the West do not realise that there is a world economy beyond their own backyard.
Pete – get a copy of Yandex Browser, set it up to translate all languages into English, then go browse. You do not need Google or any other translation engine that is blocking Russian. Furthermore, if you are translating lager quantities of text then you can get a key from Yandex to integrate with any translation software you are using, and the last time I checked they were not charging for the service like Google, etc. (at least for one language pair)
Pete, you wrote
“Tatyana, I sympathise with your frustration and anger, you have no more control over Mr Putin than I do over what my government says and does”.
But if you live in a “democracy”, with lots of sooper-dooper Freedom(c), you ought to have control over your government. Whereas poor Tatyana, living as she does in a benighted dictatorship, doesn’t.
Tatyana – sanctions are legal – they do not need to be approved by the UN. The purpose of sanctions is a legal method to say we are not happy without going to war. Sanctions are no different than you choosing not to buy McDonalds for whatever reason. Nobody forces you to do business with people you don’t like or are behaving in a manner that is inconsistent with your beliefs. Perfectly legal.
Sanctions are modern day siege warfare. Just ask the Albright (what a misnomer, she is the centre of darkness) whether remotely and slowly murdering 500000 Eye-racky children via sanctions is worth it (ie. did the siege succeed).
Eye-ran and Venezuela (both unilaterally under siege by the United Snakes of Hypocrisy, even though neither are at war) are wishing to conduct mutual business. What ‘legality’ allows the United Snakes of Hypocrisy to perform high-seas piracy and seize the ship conducting said mutual business. Not only that, one of the Venezuelian diplomat conducting said mutual business has been kidnapped (in a separate country) at the behest of the United Snakes of Hypocrisy.
Your condescending attempt at an explanation is risible.
it is a type of warfare… early stage warfare… the sanction game on the part of the west has been going on for the past 8 or more years.. there was never anything russia could do, other then roll over and give in to all the wests demands, that would stop the west from sanctioning russia.. oil traded in us dollars was a byproduct of bretton woods… it was one of the many perks to the usa as it took over the reigns of imperialist power from the uk… when the us$ came off the gold standard thanks nixon in 1971 – usa was free to print funny money and all countries went along with it.. – all perfectly ‘legal’ as you say… 50 years later it is used by a bully to remain a unipolar power… sorry, but it ain’t working anymore and in spite of usa’s imperialist thinking, the world is changing whether the usa and west like it or not.. bullying only goes so far, until one is called on it..
Andrew,
I agree with you on sanctions that one can stop doing business with anyone he doesn’t like. But what about freezing assets? Isn’t it a theft?
Except when you want to sanction and boycott Israel for its 70 years of apartheid against the Palestinians, then it’s all of a sudden illegal. The Bundestag tries to criminalize the BDS movement. Mention boycotting Israel in German academia and you will find yourself fired.
If it is legal then it certainly shouldn’t be. By what right can one country and its multitude of lackeys launch what is form of aggression without even the UN being consulted. It is an act of war nearly as much as military action.
“Nobody forces you to do business with people you don’t like or are behaving in a manner that is inconsistent with your beliefs. Perfectly legal”.
Unless, of course, the target of sanctions is Israel. Obviously.
Akos Horvath
March 1, 2022 at 08:18
I haven’t knowingly bought anything from Israel in the last 60 years!
Just in on the economic front:
EU Will Wage Total Economic & Financial War Against Russia, French Finance Minister Says
https://sputniknews.com/20220301/eu-will-wage-total-economic–financial-war-against-russia-french-finance-minister-says-1093473057.html
Jeez That’s the great French Dumbass spirit of Vichy speaking.
I just read Medevedev has warned him about talking ‘war’ – it normally escalates.
Isn’t it amazing how the media have suddenly started using the word ‘refugee’ again, after years of stubbornly only ever using the word ‘migrant’?
yes, i am sure the media is using this word for the fallout in yemen, or do refugees only happen when they come from ukraine??
I especially dig how images of Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation are recaptioned and (intentionally) mislabeled as Ukrainians heroically resisting Russia.
For that matter, Sky News broadcasts instructions for making Molotov Cocktails. But children who throw rocks at Israeli soldiers are tried by special military tribunals and given long prison sentences.
The hypocrisy is stunning.
Many months gone, hypocrisy goes on…
PS glad to see you.
I cannot support condemning Russia without bringing to the fore the 2014 regime change in Ukraine by NATO and supported by the Obama administration of the U.S. Without calling the U.S. imperialists to account for their deliberate stalking Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 is inexcusable.
Two wrongs never make a right. We can and do condemn Russia for their actions today regardless of wrongs performed by others.
just like you have been condemning 81% of the total wars committed by the usa since the 2nd world war, i am sure…
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/america-has-started-81-of-the-wars-since-wwii/
Thanks James!
Andrew,
I suppose you condemned Ukraine for shelling Donbas?
How many Wrongs make a Right? Is it more than two? Is it less than ten? I cannot ‘condemn’ Russia for the demonstration of ‘realpolitik’ in action. When one is forced back to a wall what is one supposed to do? So AH you have no right to assume the authority to use ‘we’ in your statement. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
«Two wrongs never make a right»
But hypocrisy is not a matter of right or wrong, it is a matter of consistency, and precedent matters as to legality, if not to right or wrong. For example how many self-styled “progressives” screaming today were out denouncing the war of aggression and the many refugees and deaths caused by the Ukraine against the rights to autonomy and peaceful self-government in the Donbas in 2014-2015 and then its lower intensity continuation since?
“I still have not the slightest idea what Putin seeks to achieve” ? Come on, Mr. Murray! What is it that you don’t understand about “demilitarization” and “denazification” (the words used by Putin in his speeches, as you surely know) ?
Craig adheres to International Law. It’s a crime that the US does not and responsible for millions dead. Russia in my opinion is unable to counter Nato using UN, which is totally outside International Law and the UN Charter. US and Europe control nearly every International Organisation. Russia had to act now. Cut the Gordian Knot around its throat. Craig is consistent, but I suspect understands Russian dilemma and efforts.
I find the Russian president’s own explanations for his decisions articulate, rational, and compelling:
Putin’s 21 February 2022 address on recognition of Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics
[english subtitles, russian audio] (about 1 hour)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5-ZdTGLmZo
Putin’s 23 February 2022 speech on the existential threat to Russia from NATO expansion, and his duty to address it with military action
[english subtitles, russian audio] (about 30 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qS6J-WbTD8
In the second address, I notice he mentions the tragedy in Chechnya explicitly.
I wonder when the last time was, that a western head of state delivered a similarly articulate accounting for his decision to go to war.
I agree. One must assume that the Russian population has a higher national reading age than here (and the US). Here it’s nine and the proof of the pudding is the Bozo Brigade and their ‘oven ready brexit’ slogan in 2019. Platitude central: we will sanction them on the beaches, we will sanction them on the football fields, we will sanction some of their banks, we’ll send some guns and ammo for use by an untrained domestic population, we’ll refuse to receive cheap fuel and force you to sell it to the rest of Asia. Paper Tigers anyone?
Excellent tongue in cheek comment from ‘the Saker’, enjoy:
https://thesaker.is/open-letter-to-tv-watching-western-armchair-generals/
Soon to be banned I hope for the use of the ‘N-word’.
He seriously believes Putin’s claims about ‘de-nazification and de-militarisation’? Just how stupid can anyone be?
Why should he be banned? Why not ban the whole of the Western media for glorifying genocides in the last 30 years committed by the West, then claiming that Putin is Hitler now??
If you are not able to understand this, I think you need to return to primary school, reception class.
You know: the time before you are able to make any rational syntheses…..
Read my post and read what Saker wrote, or get someone to read it to you. He used the word ‘n****r’. People routinely get cancelled for that. It’s considered offensive by the wokerati regardless of context. He’s a right to say what he thinks, he just need to be careful of the language he uses.
He uses the n word ironically. Americans have long called arabs sand-n*****s and saker says the Americans think of russians as snow-n*****s.
To the wokerati, context is irrelevant.
Yes, ban every dissenting voice, in the name of democracy of course. I have heard that the Czech Republic has announced monitoring online chats and blogs like this one in order to find voices who ‘support the Russian line’, which is punishable by 1-3 year jail time. This news was on the Twitter feed of Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada, whom I find a perfectly reasonable source.
So this is the Europe which we should risk even nuclear war for. I think we soon will see post-911 style curbs on civil liberties and ‘terrorist lists’ in the EU. Most liberals will cheer for it.
Woke censor #77. You appear to believe Platitude Central, which is no indication of intellectual ability. Your inability to understand the nuances of the use of ‘white N…’ in the blog and the use of the phase ‘Just how stupid can anyone be?’ is a demonstration of the relevance of the old notion that ‘people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’.
And with regard to your reply to Rhys – read the above ;o)
Brilliant, sent it to facebook… I’m persona non grata there as it’s in English and in Sussex they don’t like the ruskies at the moment 😉
The term you refer to, “Sand Ni**er”, is offensive. It’s an Americanism coined by the US military and others to refer to Arabs. The first time I heard it was in an American Hollywood film (can’t remember which one).
Your indignation is taking the term out of the context of the article, where it is used ironically and scathingly against the NATO/US war mongers.
“Just how stupid can anyone be ?” Good point, I consider that every day.
It just struck me that Putin may have walked into a trap.
For all his words about protecting the Donbass region, as soon as it was reported that he was attacking Kiev/Kyev, then I immediately thought he was going for regime change.
What if Ukraine is part of a trap to lure Putin when the bigger picture is regime change in Russia itself? The West would be looking to install an EU/Nato/Western friendly leader.
So what I’m looking out for over the next few days is major signs of insurrection in Russia itself, the people turning against Putin and driving him out.
From what I’m seeing and reading, almost the entire world is supportive of the Ukraine and it’s going to be very difficult for the ordinary citizens of Russia to ignore that strength of feeling without joining in.
And that I suspect, may well be the plan and strategy of the USA.
Difficult to see a way out of this for Putin if I’m right.
Regime change in Russia? Not happening – nobody with money in Russia wants regime change. Putin can just withdraw if he wants, whenever he wants. He can choose to humiliate himself in any way he pleases without consequences. People in Russia are not going to drive him out one way or the other. The Russia supporters on this site will just announce it as brilliant maneuver of a genius. One day death will come as it does to all dictators, and that is when the power struggle will follow.
I am in Russia, and I disagree. The huge cost of what’s happening is going to be borne by almost every citizen. If aims of the war are not achieved, game will be over for Putin very quickly. His support base can forgive many things, but not a lost war.
I hope you are right, but investors in the west never like change (because change is uncertainty which drives markets down). My guess is that big money would prefer the devil they know rather than uncertainty. (as with Stalin there is always difficulty in choosing a replacement – again investors prefer to defer tax payments as long as possible). Little people without money rarely matter in politics – day to day struggles are all consuming and the media does the rest. Since I am not Russian and have never lived there, I am not sure that my western logic applies to Russia.
Also I am not sure of the huge cost. The drop in the Rouble is just people panicking – when they stop panicking, having lost half of their savings, the Rouble will bounce back (just like shares do here after every market dip, but please don’t take my investment advice!). The inability to travel and buy overpriced luxury goods is something that only affects a small minority of people – how many times have you been to London and Paris, when is the last time you brought some Italian whatever?
“The drop in the Rouble is just people panicking – when they stop panicking, having lost half of their savings,”
What do you mean? How can the reduction in value of the rouble against foreign currencies affect domestic savings in Russia? All it means is that the Russians can charge the same in dollars for their exports and receive far more roubles than they were getting before. As you go on to say “The inability to travel and buy overpriced luxury goods is something that only affects a small minority of people”. No-one else is going to care.
Andrew H
There are no Russia supporters here. Only truth seekers. Western broken promises have remained unchallenged all the time the West was sabotaging Russian naval interests in Libya and Syria Ukraine is Russia’s neighbour, and therefore impossible for it to ignore.
As you know, in Syria, when the West was prevented from using its naval power by Russia, Boris Johnson concocted the Skripal novichok tripe . This overgrown baby used this infantile lie instead of negotiating with Russia and bringing peace to Syria.
Then the Tories decided to admire his infantile lies and make this piece of opportunist flotsam their leader. If anybody loses their job here it’s Johnson for lying. You are lying when you say Putin has support for his invasion of Ukraine. We hate Britain’s leaders lies, yes. That does not in anyway mean that we support war.
We once crashed into a drunk driver whose carcwasvslewed across the road in a country lane. He was unable to get his gearstick to work. You have to pity his situation. But Western leaders who.pretend to be incapable at the wheel when they are in fact fully aware and fully empowered to take responsibility for international affairs such as the destruction of, and admission of failure in , Syria. Western leaders have refused to end the destruction of Syria.
These are the people who are deliberately responsible for war,. I condemn the West , especially the Ukranian hawks ike Nuland and Blinken , entirely for this current war. That still does not mean I support Putin. I support truth, a commodity that is non-existent in Western politicians.
Giyane, this site is crawling with Russia supporters. There are more Russians than Scots. I only ever come here, when I want to know what Russians are thinking. Its way better than RT. (true, most of the time I don’t even care). Whatever is happening in Syria doesn’t justify war in Ukraine. I don’t have space in my brain or my heart to know more about Syria.
It’s your right to be a genocidal animal, Andrew H, but you can’t call yourself a human being and say that the USA was a force for good the past 30 years, but Russia is the absolute evil on earth.
The line in the sand is simple: you either judge correctly that the USA has been 10 times more genocidal than Russia since 1991, or you declare yourself an animal for financial purposes.
Well, I’m a Scot and a “Russia supporter”. I have that old Scottish trait – a liking for fairness and a tendency to support the underdog.
So only Russians support Russia, do they? You really do need to get out more.
Bayard
In theory, Muslims are not supposed to start a fight. For that reason I’m not going to support anybody else starting a fight. You have to look at the situation and weigh up what good and harm can happen. If any harm can happen , you have to find another way or be patient.
The West has been fighting the now independent states in Eastern Ukraine using direct fire and Nazi proxies. That is full justification for war. But, looking at it, if they started a war there, it would never end because Ukraine can , and now has called on Nato to intervene.
I support Russia 200% in fighting Nato’s Islamist proxies in Syria, whom Nato has already destroyed after they had accomplished Nato ‘s political purposes . In that case , by being patient, all the blame is on Nato for creating Islamic State.
What seems to have happened in Ukraine is that Putin’s military advisors have advised him that they cannot win militarily in Dombas snd Donetsk without attacking main Ukraine . Soldiers are not politicians.
There are far too many ex-soldiers in the Tory Party. They should be banned.
The fact military idiots have taken over the reins in Russia tells me that Putin is 100% not a dictator. But of course the Tugentats in the Tories can’t help themselves , poor things.
I wish I could get out more. I would love to retire to Putin’s peace zone in Northern Iraq. You can’t fault the man.
[…] almost the entire world is supportive of the Ukraine […]
except the non-west as there is India, China, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia(!), and a bunch of others
So only Russians support Russia, do they? You really do need to get out more.
Sorry, that was my computer being slow, duplicate post.
The effect of sanctions is being rather overstated by many. They are not going to cause any major rupture in the Russian economy. The effect is mostly to create stagnation. Importantly, Russia inflicts far more stagnation on itself through corruption than ever the west will through sanctions. Simply take a look at Slovakia and Poland and how they have lifted themselves since the end of the soviet block. Ukraine’s desire to join the EU, is simply a desire to get on the right train and not be left behind in eternal stagnation.
The ineffectiveness of sanctions is not to the say they are not justified because they are. Indeed we should do more of them. I fully support all efforts to go after all Russian money that is outside of Russia – sitting in UK/USA bank accounts where it doesn’t belong – the only exceptions should be for Russians and multinationals whose main residence is outside of Russia (I have no problem with a Russian who lives year round in the UK having a UK bank account, but the rest should be frozen)
Andrew H
Sanctions hurt people, not politicians. As in Iraq. Western leaders refused to take responsibility for their expansionist aggression. They would rather make the population of Russia suffer than take responsibility for their own criminal behaviour.
The mindset of Western leaders is criminal. And people like you who support the Western leaders in their criminality, need to understand the concept of responsibility. In Islam , whoever lends their support, however tiny, to a cause, will be held fully responsible for the good or evil outcome of that cause.
People who vote for leaders who lie, like Johnson, are fully responsible for bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war. We are not talking about rooftop parties here. We are talking about the destruction of life on earth, caused by lying and the damage lying does to human relationships.
Your decision. I thought I would just point out the moral responsibility for voting for known liars.
If sanctions hurt, then we should do more. Perhaps the next step is to disconnect Russia from the internet. (they can have their own one with China). Or perhaps better still we should only allow access through encrypted VPN.
Boris de Piffle Johnson. Second name is lying. That’s why the Tories selected him as their leader.
I have thought that they would do that too. But it brings me back to something I saw on the BBC News the other night.
An interviewee was asked when talking about disconnecting Russia from SWIFT: “How exactly does that work? Who pulls the plug?”
Incidentally something I was wondering about and was unable to find an answer to – so was pleased when the question was asked, but I was sadly disappointed by the reply – when she (an ex-Ukrainian Finance Minister) said “The USA and the Europeans have to act in consort”. Not satisfactory, but there was no follow up question to elicit a more satisfactory response, and we moved onto the weather or something. So, I am none the wiser, but how would Russia be disconnected from SWIFT – does someone pull a plug out in a server room? As for disconnecting Russia from the Internet I would think that would be more complex an operation than pulling out a plug in a server room.
As well as being an angry, racist chauvinist, you obviously know nothing about how the Internet works.
@Andrew H, Any attempt to “disconnect Russia from the internet” will rapidly backfire by instantly dragging China into the sanctions (let’s target civilians) game, since China dominates critical raw materials supply to build internet hardware, e.g.
https://circularcomputing.com/news/raw-materials-in-a-laptop/
And Taiwan dominates the foundry market, or the outsourcing of semiconductor manufacturing.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/16/2-charts-show-how-much-the-world-depends-on-taiwan-for-semiconductors.html
As such, the 4 February China Russia Joint statement also specifically endorses Chinese claims over Taiwan.
https://scheerpost.com/2022/02/04/joint-russia-china-statement-articulates-united-opposition-to-western-alliance/
https://scheerpost.com/2022/02/04/joint-russia-china-statement-articulates-united-opposition-to-western-alliance/
So like Madeleine Albright, said of Iraq, killing a half-million children to get regime change in Russia is fine with you?
Two things that people seem to be ignoring about sanctions, firstly that there are two parties to every trade, so stopping that trade hurts both of them. One of those parties will always be in the country or part of the world organising the sanctions. Secondly, sanctions only work where a country is small and has essential imports or the need to sell its debt on foreign markets. By and large, none of these apply to Russia.
Interestingly Israel’s position on the conflict has been ambiguous, to say the least. Israel has a large Russian-speaking population and the Israeli govt must be more aware than most other govts in the West of the level of Nazi / neo-Nazi infiltration in the Ukrainian government and associated political structures, especially the security agencies, and in the armed forces.
Israel has usually supported past annual UN resolutions (initiated by Russia) to condemn the glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that encourage and promote intolerance and racial discrimination. You can view the votes here at the UN General Assembly for the year 2020. Note that the US and Ukraine voted “No”, Israel voted “Yes” and the ones who sat on the fence were mostly First World nations.
At the same time the Israeli govt has expressed support for Ukraine. What the Israeli public thinks, I do not know: the Israeli MSM may be just as full of BS as its counterparts in the First World are, and its stance may be completely at odds at what Israeli people think.
Yes, it is true that the West are attempting to foment discontent leading to insurrection in Russia; they want to turn the Russian people against Putin, but so far things are a normal in Russia.
@Mist001 do you have any data to back up “almost the entire world” … are supportive of Ukraine / NATO ?
A Joint Russia-China Statement was published on 4 February Articulating United Opposition to Western Alliance. By any measure this is an historic articulation of the major shift underway from the unipolar world that has existed since the fall of the Soviet Union.
https://scheerpost.com/2022/02/04/joint-russia-china-statement-articulates-united-opposition-to-western-alliance/
https://www.thejournal.ie/vladimir-putin-xi-jinping-meeting-opposition-nato-5674028-Feb2022/
World population 2022: Asia 60%; Africa 18%; Europe 9%; North America = 7%.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-and-projected-population-by-region?stackMode=relative
So why has this joint statement been ignored by “almost the entire world” in its reporting? Or are there some bias we need to examine in our selection methods of such reporting? Here’s some other perspectives.
https://www.voltairenet.org/article215762.html
https://niccolo.substack.com/p/fuck-it-russias-final-break-with?utm_source=url
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/24/what-putin-says-are-the-causes-aims-of-russias-military-action/
Lol. What are you drinking? Don’t try driving for a few days.
There are a lot of covers being blown – “you’re only supposed to blow da doors orff”
There is an interesting video from 2015 at the end of this article which main point is that this video always vanishes from YT and then gets re-uploaded. So this article link might be a bit more reliable than the direct YT link.
STRATFOR – George Friedman at Chicago Council on global affairs
https://www.anti-spiegel.ru/2022/was-jetzt-in-der-ukraine-passiert-war-schon-vor-jahren-absehbar/
Thanks Jordan. The http://www.anti-spiegel.ru is a very interesting website. The guy who writes, Thomas Roper, is German, living in St Petersburg. He’s been there for about 15 years. His website reports on Russian media etc but the background analysis is quite fascinating. Strongly recommend folks take a look at it. I’d be interested in Tatyana’s take.
Max Blumenthal has Professor Alfred de Zayas on The Grayzone “Washington’s “rules based” disorder w/UN expert Alfred de Zayas ” if someone could post link please.
—
[ Mod: Washington’s “rules based” disorder w/UN expert Alfred de Zayas (28 Feb 2022) – The Grayzone (YouTube, 2h 30m 15s) ]
In case you understand German, it is worth to listen to him.
There is a translate button for Thomas Roper.
I meant spoken German. He is a walking dictionary on current affairs so one can easily pick up the one or other hint for further information.
This blog tends, on average, to draw a particular social caste to its comment facility. It’s not hard and fast, but generally it’s the kind who, no matter what the non-westerner does, it’s NEVER his fault or his evil, it’s ALWAYS the US or the EU or NATO at the back of it, however convoluted the logic. I don’t know if it’s the pure, unadulterated racism that leftist politics engenders in people (foundational assumption: “blacks/Asians/Whoever are incapable of moral agency and are therefore always innocent”) or if its the product of too many people who are not intellectually suited going to university, but either way, it really doesn’t bode well for the future of the west.
Such people are committing thought crimes against our beloved leaders. Leaders who really, really care about you Atheneus,, don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise…
It does nothing of the sort, you express your own delusional racism in this pathetic comment.
Until you are prepared to punish the USA the way it deserves to be punished for its genocidal psychopathy the past 80 years, you are unfit to take place in adult discussions.
There is no place for not putting the USA in the dock and punishing it 10 times worse than you think Russia currently deserves punishing.
Nothing to do with hatred, everything to do with evidence.
Athanasius
Why do you totally igore (as Rhys pointed out) the 80 years of genocide carried out by the US and its allies? How many of our leaders have been tried for war crimes? The answer of course is none and whilst the current status quo is in place, will remain at none. There is a reason for this. The US/UK make up the rules which the rest of the World have to follow, they control the UN, they allow rogue nations to do what they want as long as it is in the US interest. They punish other nations if the do not bow down to the US. They organise coups and assasinations in order to reinforce their hegemoney over this planet.
This blog tends, on average, to draw a particular type of closed-minded bigot to its comment facility. It’s not hard and fast, but generally it’s the kind who, no matter what the other commenters write, it’s NEVER hisout of a sense of fairness or justice, it’s ALWAYS the pure and simple bias against the US or the EU or NATO at the back of it, however convoluted the logic. I don’t know if it’s the pure, unadulterated supremism that right-wing politics engenders in people (foundational assumption: “whites are incapable of moral degenracy and are therefore always innocent”) or if its the product of too many people who are not intellectually suited going to university, but either way, it really doesn’t bode well for the future of the west.
Bit near the knuckle, eh? I’m just reminding the sunshine and lollipop people here that the world isn’t all rainbows and unicorns, and not everybody sees things your way.
This blog definitely draws the attention of the security services and military units assigned by the government to monitor its citizens.
Not all bloggers are interested in honest discussion of events, some have other agendas.
“not everybody sees things your way.” Happily that is true, long may it continue, let’s discuss and learn from each other.
Sorry, I didn’t realise. Your comment made you sound like a sneering right-wing bigot. Glad you’ve put everyone straight.
No, you were almost right first time. I AM sneering and right-wing, it’s just that I’m not a bigot. If I were, I’d still be a socialist, as I was for the first 45 years of my life. Hope that clears it up.
Strawmen much?
Even if every single bad thing Russia is accused of doing were the unvarnished truth, it would pale in comparison with the War on Iraq alone. And that is but one salient example.
Look to the log in your own eye. Or rather, get a start on that lumberyard.
NEW: Keir Starmer tells PLP meeting that any Labour member will be booted out if they try to justify Putin’s invasion of Ukraine by attacking Nato.
He says: “There will be no place in this party for false equivalence between the actions of Russia and the actions of NATO.
Liberals want it made a thought crime now to suggest NATO expansion to Russia’s borders was not 100% good and well-intentioned.
I would tell Keir Starmer that until he is prepared to face trial for his role in Julian Assange’s imprisonment saga, until he declares fully the instructions he receives from Israel and the USA as their supine slave, then I wouldn’t even consider voting for his party, let alone ever becoming a member of it.
Not so much the heir to Blair as the heir to Mosley. Heil Stürmer!
And the Israelization of European politics has started. Trotting out ‘false equivalence’ is a favorite among anti-Palestinians.
T, did you just call a Trilateral Committee member a liberal? Are all those liberals in Europe and the world, who pretend that their dualism mindset makes it OK to send weapons to Ukraine’s fascists, not merely showing that their facile actions marks them out as third Reich revivalists?
It is damning that so many can be duped to think that this rescue mission is an attack on a democratic Ukraine.
It must have been a brave decision to flush out all the Nazi’s in the west in one foul swoop, by extending the rescue to all of the Ukraine. I hope that those memorials erected to the deprived simple murderous brains of the likes of S.Bandera and the current revival of the past OUN, organisation of Ukrainan Nationalist, under todays leader of Svoboda, Oleh Tyahnybok, will get their comeuppance from Putins dangerous undertaking.
The best thing to do for all peace loving/seeking Ukrainians would be to point this murderous bunch of fascists.
I also did not expect Russia to invade Ukraine. However, the most interesting thing about the effect of this invasion is that all of the activities undertaken by NATO appear intended to encourage the war to continue, and there is (as Mr Murray rightly states) no enthusiasm at all for any peace talks of any kind other than an immediate Russian surrender.
This does seem to reinforce the argument made by Russians that they had little or no choice in the matter. Little or no sensible choice, that is; obviously they could have surrendered and allowed NATO to march up to their borders while the Ukraine crushed what little remains of Russian rights in the east of their country.
It appears, incidentally, that this surrender was ultimately what the Americans expected; they appear to have been caught flatfooted by the Russian invasion (raising interesting questions about their ability to analyse Russian intentions given that this has been supposedly the biggest crisis faced by the U.S. over the past few months.
I’m very worried about the long-term consequences of all this.
The most fascinating thing about the Ukraine war is the sheer number of top strategic thinkers who warned for years that it was coming if we continued down the same path of nato enlargement and antagonism of Russia. Not only analysts like Mearshimer, Chomsky and Stephen F. Cohen but people like Kissinger, numerous US ambassadors to Moscow, even US defence secretaries.
No-one listened to them and here we are. It know it sounds incredibly radical and seditious but the only way to truly end this war and prevent future ones in the region is for NATO to disappear the same way the Warsaw Pact did. Oops, maybe I’ve gone too far and will have Atheneus after me, calling me a racist and all sorts!
T – you are of course correct. NATO serves no other purpose, than to constantly poke Russia with a big stick and to enable others to do the same.
Poking Russia with a big stick is NATO justifying its existence. It exists in the first place in order to provide a market for US arms manufacturers.
T
“No-one listened to them and here we are.”
Or everyone listened to them and here we are because this outcome suits someone’s purpose, despite them saying they didn’t want it.
Hello, happy we are alive today 🙂
Can I offer an opinion of the side, that is not involved? China.
In this strange time I cannot rely on honest Internet service, so, with your kind permission, I give the link and also copy the whole of the text here
http://en.people.cn/n3/2022/0227/c90000-9963273.html
Chinese FM elaborates on China’s basic position on Ukraine issue
(Xinhua) 10:40, February 27, 2022
BEIJING, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) — Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday elaborated on China’s basic position on the Ukraine issue.
Wang also had an in-depth exchange of views on the situation in Ukraine during his phone talks with British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell as well as Emmanuel Bonne, diplomatic counselor to French President Emmanuel Macron, respectively.
On China’s basic position on the Ukraine issue, Wang stressed the following five points.
Firstly, China stands for respecting and safeguarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and earnestly abiding by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. China’s position is consistent and clear, and it also applies to the Ukraine issue.
Secondly, China advocates the concept of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security, he said.
China believes that a country’s security cannot come at the expense of harming others’ security, and regional security cannot be guaranteed by reinforcing and even expanding military blocs. And all countries’ reasonable security concerns should be respected. The Cold War mentality should be completely abandoned.
Following the five consecutive rounds of eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia’s legitimate demands on security should be taken seriously and solved in a proper way, Wang added.
Thirdly, China has been following the evolution of the Ukraine issue, and the present situation is something China does not want to see.
It is absolutely imperative that all parties exercise necessary restraint in order to prevent the situation in Ukraine from deteriorating or even getting out of control. The safety of ordinary people’s lives and properties should be effectively safeguarded, and in particular, large-scale humanitarian crises have to be prevented.
Fourthly, the Chinese side supports and encourages all diplomatic efforts conducive to the peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian crisis. And China welcomes direct talks and negotiations between Russia and Ukraine as soon as possible.
The Ukraine issue has evolved in a complex historical context. Ukraine should be a bridge of communication between the East and the West, instead of the frontline of confrontations between major countries.
China also supports Europe and Russia in their efforts to hold dialogue on an equal footing over the European security issue, uphold the notion of indivisible security, and eventually form a balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism.
Fifthly, China believes that the UN Security Council should play a constructive role in resolving the Ukraine issue and that regional peace and stability as well as the security of all countries should be put first.
Actions taken by the Security Council should reduce the tension rather than add fuel to the flames, and should help advance the settlement of the issue through diplomatic means rather than further escalating the situation.
China is always opposed to wilfully citing the Chapter VII in Security Council resolutions to authorize the use of force and sanctions.
Wang said that China, as a permanent member of the Security Council as well as a responsible major country, has always been faithfully fulfilling its international obligations and playing a constructive role in safeguarding world peace and stability.
When it comes to the peace and security issue, China is a major country with the best record, Wang said, adding that China has never invaded other countries, launched proxy wars, sought spheres of influence or engaged in any military bloc confrontation.
China adheres to the path of peace and development, and is committed to building a community with a shared future for mankind, Wang said.
China will continue to firmly reject all hegemonies and strong powers, and firmly safeguard the legitimate and legal rights and interests of developing countries, especially small and medium-sized countries, he added.
(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Bianji)
” adding that China has never invaded other countries, “
I think the Tibetans would have something to say about that.
Is Tibet another country? It’s a question of decolonialisation, rather than invasion of another country. Tibet needs to be liberated, like the Uyghurs in XinJiang, but it was not invasion (that happened many centuries ago.
“It’s a question of decolonialisation, rather than invasion of another country. “
Tibet wasn’t anyone’s colony, until it was invaded by China and became their colony. Up until then it had been an independent country.
Tibet became a colony in 1720 according to Wiki. That was a time when the same rules as today didn’t apply. Every country we’ve ever had anything to do with or identify with, Western or Eastern, has conducted aggressive invasions since that date. The situation then is irrelevant to the current day. and I’m not sure , I would have to check, that Tibet was never conquered in the centuries before 1720. Seems unlikely.
Interesting point. If you look at Chinese history over the last two thousand or more years you will see that China has grown and shrunk and been ruled by various groups at various locations. This is really the birth pangs of the modern nation of China. However they have never really expanded outside their current area. Compare this with the western nations: the crusades, the ransacking of south america, the british/dutch/portugese empires. Very different mindset. And, China’s downfall at the hands of the west was largely because they didn’t want to trade with the west because we had nothing they wanted – until we introduced Opium …
May I also add, that Mr. Wang Yi becomes my hero! The most balanced informed approach, advocating for peace and security for everyone. I cannot express my gratitude and respect more than I’ll have Mr. Wang Yi portrait in my workshop, to always remember who stands for the values I share.
Mr. Murray, you’re standing for the freedom of speech, I think you don’t mind Mr. Wang Yi portrait placed side by side to yours 🙂
There’s hope for peace.
Some headlines at Sputnik
and so on..
It’s like every company, organization in the west now feel somehow an urge to follow the stream to tag along with targeting Russia, it is so reckless and in the end only target regular russians!
absolutely racist thing
people hurry to achieve their personal comfort by banning everything russian from everywhere
…and now RT and Sputnik can no longer be watched on Youtube in the west.
I wonder if the RT.com and Sputniknews.com domain itself will be taken down soon also, this is absurd and terrifying censorship.
Jack – you can still watch RT in the UK, not in the EU mind you. I can still get the RT.com website, although it has been having a lot of DDoS attacks the past three days. As, I might say, have thesaker.is and Mr Murray’s site here. RT.com has dropped disqus as provider of BTL commenting technology – which is a bit of pain as you now have to login to their site to actually comment. C’est la vie.
Technically I think you mean xenophobic not “racist” but yes. I heard that the provincial liquor stores in my province of Ontario Canada are pulling any Russian beverages.
Strange, we did not do this when the USA invaded Iraq. Nothing like having a lot of hypocrites in the government.
Remember ‘Freedom Fries’ ?
Also very stupid thing, as if we in the West only bought things from Russia to help the poor Russians, whereas in reality, we bought things from Russia because we wanted them. Now we can’t have them. Are we better off? Hardly!
“It’s like every company, organization in the west now feel somehow an urge to follow the stream to tag along with targeting Russia, it is so reckless and in the end only target regular russians!”
They won’t be so enthusiastic once they realise that the sanctions hurt them as much, if not more than they hurt the Russians.
I think the hysteria will reach a level where Mendeleev’s periodic table will be banned. German universities are rushing to cut all ties with Russian universities. They turned off their eRosita space telescope and the fate of the ExoMars rover is in question. Talk about self harm, throwing away the decades worth work of your own scientists. We have ‘leaders’ who are publicly cutting themselves with razor blades and scissors and expect the same from you.
The Americans are much more reasonable and pragmatic in avoiding stupid self harm. Cooperation on the ISS continues. Europe seems a hopeless place with the current dismal ‘leadership’. What a clown show. Not a single politician who would rise to this historical moment.
Yes we will see alot of that now, banning anything that could be tied to russian.
On the same topic:
Why should we call it Kyiv not Kiev?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/kyiv-kiev-ukraine-name-b2023400.html
This is another idiocy. Different nations have different names for places. What the Germans call Koln, we call Cologne, what the Italians call Firenze, we call Florence, what we call London, the French call Londres etc. So what if the Ukrainians call their capital Kyiv, the English name for it is Kiev (except the Ukrainians don’t call it Kyiv either, as they don’t use the Roman alphabet).
The childish airheads at the BBC also did that after Tiananmen Square. They had been mentioning Beijing in news bulletins for a while, but suddenly went back to Peking for a few years after the student protests were crushed.
What did we do, to be run by a pathetic establishment such as we have?
Fat Jon:
– “What did we do, to be run by a pathetic establishment such as we have?”
We let them; that’s all.
We let them because we like being able to blame someone else, and we shirk the responsibilities of power. We treat politics as a spectator sport – merely entertainment most of the time, until it threatens our lives, and when it does, well, it’s their fault, not ours.
We need to organise locally, institute people’s assemblies, learn and practice deliberative democracy.
There’s some freedom of speech in Germany, our news show Petr Bystron, AfD, speaking in Bundestag.
Don’t expect anyone in the UK dare to say a word. You now are a totalitarian state, censored speech only, in media and live speech too.
That seems to be true Tatyana. For example Keir Starmer has said that any Labour party member who expresses sympathy or understanding for the Russian position in this conflict will be thrown out .
.
only Labour? why?
I have voted Labour ever since I’ve been eligible and never been a member of the Labour Party. If I were a member of Starmer’s Labour Party now I wouldn’t need his assistance to be booted out, I leave quite willingly.
Tatyana, 10:57
– “only Labour? why?”
Because as leader of the Labour party, Starmer has power only over Labour members. I’m sure he’d throw any half-sensible Conservative, Liberal or Green members out of their parties if he could.
Starmer has already thrown most of the socialists out of labour.
Pretty soon he and his buddies will be donning their brown shirts and heading out to the book shops for a good bonfire.
Tatyana – we aren’t that bad, actually, you just need to avoid the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky. GB News was recently launched which has much more dissent possible – it actually has Nigel Farage (that evil man that campaigned for Brexit) as one of its main presenters. Then you have ukcolumn.org – a member-owned website which is very much rebellious.
As far as blogs go, dailysceptic.org, founded by Toby Young, is definitely rebellious about most things. conservativewoman.co.uk, launched by Kathy Gyngell and Laura Perrins, was absolutely dissenting on all matters Covid and certainly doesn’t censor very dissenting views on the Russia-Ukraine kerfuffle.
What is going to happen at the next General Election is that most thinking people are going to refuse to vote for any of the traditional political parties – they both proved completely treasonous during lockdown and people were absolutely spitting mad. Starmer, the leader of the Opposition, is even worse than Johnson in terms of being extreme lockdown madman. He hasn’t opposed anything in two years.
There is huge dissent amongst the little people right now, Tatyana, it’s just that those who put a big pay packet above integrity are just keeping their heads down and mouths shut.
Tatyana, 09:16
– “Don’t expect anyone in the UK dare to say a word. You now are a totalitarian state”
No, we can say whatever we like in the UK* but it won’t make any difference. The corporate media either doesn’t report what we say, or misrepresents it, or performs character assassination upon us. And we have almost no influence upon the government. And I expect you have almost no influence upon your government too; our situations are similar.
* I could get in trouble if I incited hatred or violence, but I don’t wish to say things like that anyway.
There comes a time in every endeavour when you have to cut your losses. I mean, would you want to co-operate with institution of a contry that made a threat to drop ISS on Europe or America? And why worry so much about Europe and European losses?
It was not a threat, though that is how it has been depicted by the gutter press. It was a a very sensible warning in response to Biden’s reckless boast about sanctions:
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/24/politics/russian-space-agency-us-sanctions-international-space-station/index.html
– After President Joe Biden announced new sanctions Thursday that “will degrade their (Russia’s) aerospace industry, including their space program,” Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin said on Twitter that the station’s orbit and location in space are controlled by Russian engines.
– “If you block cooperation with us, who will save the International Space Station (ISS) from an uncontrolled deorbit and fall into the United States or…Europe?” Rogozin said. “There is also the possibility of a 500-ton structure falling on India and China. Do you want to threaten them with such a prospect? The ISS does not fly over Russia, therefore all the risks are yours. Are you ready for them?”
And it is true that due to atmospheric drag the orbit of the ISS periodically requires boosting, which is supplied by uncrewed Russian cargo vessels called Progress Modules. If Russia could no longer launch them the ISS would eventually re-enter without control.
But look how Propaganda is achieved. Business Insider based an article on the CNN piece above, with a subtle but crucial change. “There is also the possibility of a 500-ton structure falling on India and China” was altered to “There is also the option of dropping a 500-ton structure to India and China”, and the rest of the warmongering gutter press went with the latter. Judge for yourself; if unable to launch Progress modules Russia would have no control over where the ISS came down, and Rogozin’s original Tweet, in Russian, is here:
https://twitter.com/Rogozin/status/1496933548372209669
Rogozin Twitter reported as banned. Can you please check?
—
[ Mod: Try https://nitter.net/Rogozin/status/1496933548372209669#m ]
Thank you for Nitter link!
Have read the Russian text, Rogozin calls it Alzheimer’s sanctions, and also says we have to fix ISS orbit to prevent it from running into trash launched by talented businessmen
Clark
I am so grateful about your (and Akos’s) clarification regarding ISS problem. Your debunking of propaganda is tragicomic!
What is tragic is that I get better information on this blog (and others) than by professional highly paid journalists/presstitutes/propagandists.
Tatyana at 12:55
– “Rogozin Twitter reported as banned…”
That was quick; I’d just accessed the Tweet for my 12:26 comment. That, or Twitter banned his Twitter stream in Russia but not in the UK.
“There comes a time in every endeavour when you have to cut your losses”.
Only if you are a congenital loser. Think about it.
You seem very ignorant about space exploration. The ISS cannot be controlled without the Russian segment, that’s where the thrusters are. Roscosmos didn’t threaten to drop it on anybody’s head. They have disagreements with NASA on how long it can safely be used. The only large space station that was dropped uncontrollably is the US Skylab.
Abandoning a superbly working instrument on a superbly working spacecraft, like eRosita on Spektr-RG, is not cutting your losses. It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face. Same goes for not launching the almost ready ExoMars rover in September.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the ESA scientists and engineers who dedicated one or two decades of their lives to see these projects launched got heart attacks or worse. Cancelling these missions are not the policies of rational people. It’s hysteria with complete disregard for the day after tomorrow.
Akos
Already Valery Gergiev is now not allowed to conduct, even though he is one of the greatest living conductors, because he will not renounce Putin in public. Soon we will have a ban on Shostakovich, Myaskovsky and Prokoviev.
Yes, just heard. Pathetic.
At least we still have the ‘showtunes’. Musicals celebrating Americas genocidal takeover of the west, kidnapping and rape all set to happy tunes with lots of frenetic dancing. Ye Haa, that’s what I call culture.
Reminds me powerfully of the way in which the “scientific consensus” on diet and weight loss changed after 1945. Until WW2 German scientists had led the way, and had pretty well explained how insulin encourages the growth of fat tissue. They understood that eating carbohydrates is the main thing that makes people fat (and eventually diabetic) and recommended low-carb diets to remedy the problem.
After WW2, German scientists (like all other Germans) were scorned and ignored – along with the very large and comprehensive German scientific literature. That gave young American scientists a wonderful opportunity to become famous by pretending to make groundbreaking discoveries. One of them was Ancel Keys, who spread the gospel of “healthy whole grains” and that eating animal fat caused heart attacks and strokes.
Probably this scientific backsliding caused more premature deaths worldwide than WW2.
See also the excellent book “Burning Beethoven”, about how American PR specialists and propagandists changed the average American’s opinion of Germans through 180 degrees in 2 or 3 years in preparation for the USA to enter WW1. Another famous name was central to that effort: Edward Bernays. That was when German Shepherd dogs became “Alsatians”, beer gardens disappeared almost overnight, and people called (e.g.) “Feuerstein” suddenly changed their name to “Firestone”. Oh, and dachshunds had to hide indoors for fear of being lynched.
People love being given someone to hate.
We do not seem to have progressed any further in this regard since the good people of Hartlepool in the North East of England hung a monkey because they thought it was a French spy.
Strange Fruit …
Yes, the Proddies and Catholics in Northern Ireland got together to gang up on Muslims building Mosques in Northern Ireland after they stopped killing each other…..
Not to mention several incidents after the Great Kanto Earthquake and the following firestorm that hit Tokyo in 1923, in which mobs of Japanese thugs lynched several Japanese individuals, mistaking them for Koreans, because the unfortunate victims happened to speak Japanese in regional dialects.
Clearly, at some point the effects of the current Russia/Ukraine imbroglio will hit the pockets of all the well meaning people donning “I Support the Ukraine” T Shirts.
Just as clearly, western governments will need to have the support of their populations to continue their supposed occupation of the moral high ground.
They’ve made a good start at gingering up the population, maybe too good a start bearing in mind that the situation will probably persist for a long time yet.
With Scholz of Germany today suggesting that the snickersnee will have to be put about the ‘Atomkraft Nein Danke’ crowd, and the realistic probability that this crisis will persist for some years, one would have to imagine that quite a few of the sacred cows that have come into being these last 30 years ought to be feeling distinctly uneasy
Ukraine says NATO countries will supply warplanes
Bulgaria, Poland, and Slovakia are said to be delivering 70+ airplanes for the Ukrainian military
https://www.rt.com/russia/550916-ukraine-receive-nato-jets/
Apparently the jets will be likely stationed in Poland for the time being before being used in the battlefield.
This move has the potential to widen the war unfortunately.
I’d take that with a large pinch of salt Jack.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44501/reports-that-ukraine-is-about-to-get-70-donated-fighter-jets-dont-add-up
Aside from timing, deliverability and interoperability issues that number would account for all of Bulgaria’s and Slovakia’s air force and a chunk of Poland’s.
You are correct however that even smaller numbers launched from a third country would have the potential to widen the war.
Dublin based AerCap, the world’s largest multi billion dollar aircraft leasing company has 200 plus aircraft leased to airlines in Russia and Ukraine. To comply with sanctions they need to sever leases and recover the aircraft. Strangely, they are struggling to recover the aircraft. You don’t say!
On a sad note, if it is true, the world’s only example of the largest aircraft ever built the iconic Antonov An-225 Mriya (NATO name Cossack), has been confirmed to be destroyed in the fighting in Ukraine, according to Ukraine Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba and satellite images posted on the internet.
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/only-example-worlds-largest-aircraft-destroyed-ukraine-fighting/
“Bulgaria, Poland, and Slovakia are said to be delivering 70+ airplanes for the Ukrainian military”.
But where will they find it?
Incidentally, the Ukrainian military what? “Military” is an adjective, not a noun. You may mean “armed forces” or “air force”.
It is being denied by all these countries and Stolenberg!
(Why Mig 29’s anyway? Are they not inferior to the Yankee toys?)
And there is a No Fly zone and the skies over Ukraine and Eastern Europe are lit up with Russian radars – NO PLANES can fly – without permission. Anything military climbing out of their airfields to attack Russian forces would be a clear act of war – not just the plane but the airfield it came from would soon be toast.
People calling for escalation of this type are revealed as mere tools of the MIC who are the only ones to benefit.
Dungroanin,
As you say, the much vaunted Russian SS300, and 400 systems likely have made the airspace of the Ukraine a no fly zone for anything except Russian approved aircraft.
Turkey has now closed the Bosphorus to All warships, and one would surmise also military cargo’s
Only leaves road transport, and it seems unlikely that the Russians would have overlooked that potential.
Its a pity none of the media are investigating the claims of arms shipments. They’ll claim that in a time of crisis such potential to debunk governments would not be helpful.
I’d be a little more worried by the comments of Ms Truss, and the articles on the BBC regarding folk who are heading to the Ukraine to help fight. It would be a reasonable assumption that eventually Russia will achieve its occupation of those parts of the Ukraine that it wishes, and whilst CM’s comments regarding their ability to enforce their writ may well be accurate, those entering the Ukraine to ‘Help’ could well find themselves on a very sticky wicket indeed. It has to be a real prospect that anybody managing to get in to the Ukraine, and found to be under arms, could be termed Unlawful Combatants. All the more so if the Russians adopt the current American definition of such ?
“… Apparently the [NATO-supplied] jets will be likely stationed in Poland for the time being before being used in the battlefield …”
The “time being” could be weeks, months, even years before these birds ever get up in the air to participate in a battle everyone will have forgotten. Unless of course someone with a horse and cart with lots of hay can be found who can take the jets over the border … in pieces to be reassembled by the Ukrainians (or sold by them on the black market as spare parts) once they can figure out how to get rid of all the hay stuck in the pieces.
As I understand the situation, the Russians have control over all airports in Ukraine. I daresay Poland is going to need a lot of parking space.
People condemn the West for feeding the conflict, instead of doing peaceful negotiations. All that was attemted by Russia to negotiate peacefully. all of these attempts was rejected by the West. And see now how they rush to the war. Hard to imagine their set of mind,
War that Russia started… And no, that West started wars is not an excuse for starting another one. Any sympathy that Russia may have had dealing with some unsavoury characters from Ukraine is lost.
Ukraine should not break her neutrality and welcome NATO, also asking for nukes.
Exactly Tatyana that was the trigger, how long would Putin have had to neutralise the threat created by that which would have been used aggressively to destroy him and destroy Russia.
I am seeing a lot of this “two wrongs don’t make a right” and “Russia must not violate international law, no matter what anyone else does” and (in response to any mention of Western wickedness) “whataboutery is not allowed”.
If you are sleeping peacefully at night, and a man breaks into your home with a knife intending to rob and possibly kill you, it may be technically illegal to hit him with a baseball bat or to shoot him. (Interestingly and rather worryingly, whether you will be found guilty of murder and sentenced to many years in prison, or feted and congratulated, depends on which jurisdiction you happen to live in).
I ask those who maintain earnestly that Russia must just lie still and suffer whatever its enemies choose to do to it, what they would do in the scenario I just described. Would you defend yourself, and risk breaking the law – and compounding the robber’s wrong with one of your own – or would you submit and hope that he spares your life while stealing your most valuable property?
Curiouslittleman, having just corrected your comment above, you do not seem very curious to me. The US and its allies have been hounding Russia for decades.
Curiouslittleman. The war started eight years ago when Ukraine had a bloody coup and started shelling its own population.
Think of the Spanish Inquisition.
There are a variety of ‘doctrines’ that the disciples choose to follow, rather than using critical thinking faculties.
One is called ‘The Grand Chessboard’ (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grand-Chessboard-American-Geostrategic-Imperatives-ebook/dp/B06XKQ473V) by a Russophobic Polish Emigre to the USA, Zbiginiew Brzezinski. His son has currently been posted to Warsaw as US Ambassador….
Brzezinski was obsessed with total US hegemony and he saw Ukraine as ‘the pivot’ to controlling Eurasia.
Another right wing nutcase called Wolfowitz wrote a ‘doctrine’ around 1992 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfowitz_Doctrine) which was leaked to the New York Times.This again was about maintaining US hegemony.
The third, in my opinion, truly repulsive document the USA produced was called ‘Project for the New American Century’, aka PNAC. I must say that when I first read it I was almost physically sick I found it so repugnant. But I guess not everyone sees the world the same way I do.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
I’m sad to say that no proper re-evaluation of a US role in a multipolar world has been formulated, suggesting that nothing like that gets formulated unless the powers that be have determined that to be the new unbending course of action.
So basically the USA is still subservient to doctrines creating 25-45 years ago.
Maybe there isn’t enough self reflection of these abhorrent idealogies and strategies because the moderate adminustratirs in the USA cannot put themselves in the shoes of the far iff countires that woukd and have been subjected to this.
Collective head in sand.
Individual voices for truth justice openness of information that would alert the public are dealt with like the way Julian Assange has been dealt with.
And even ordinary people who have no idea what is going in subjected to extraordinary rendition and tortured .., really to show us all it could be any ine of us in their shoes. Rule by terror. Theft of public funds by keeping the fear of other.
“ICC to investigate possible war crimes in Ukraine
Kiev was awarded jurisdiction of the court despite not being a member “
https://www.rt.com/news/550926-icc-investigate-warcrimes-ukraine/
Comical, considering the same ICC have been dead silent on western warcrimes in every intervention they made!
It is like every russophobe person, group, organization in the west now come out these days trying to hurt the russian in any way they can.
Jack.
It will never happen.
The US reserves the right to INVADE the ICC and rescue any US citizen or allies it deems fit to, the US also applied sanctions to ICC judges who were looking into US war crimes to have them dropped.
In such a scenario, RoS, it might be interesting if Russia declared itself the protector of the court and destroyed any invading forces. Then who would have the law on their side?
“…the US also applied sanctions to ICC judges who were looking into US war crimes to have them dropped”.
Which sanctions were, of course, wholly illegal.
Jack – here’s a copy of an email I sent to those starting this ‘initiative’ this morning:
‘Dear ICC
As an organisation with an unrivalled reputation globally as being a legal prostitute for the interests of the United States of America, it would be wholly unexpected if you were actually to be interested in justice as opposed to US justice.
The court will no doubt admit that it has scrupulously avoided the investigation of all genocidal war crimes committed by the United States of America in the 21st century. Those crimes are appalling, unrivalled by any other nation state on earth and have gone completely and utterly unpunished. To state that the ICC has any excuse for such behaviour over 20 years is like saying that a paedophilic QC in London should be prosecuting politicians who raped boys in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s. It would be a global disgrace.
The world is already aware that acts of genocide were committed during the Maidan in 2014, including the mass murder of 40 civilians in Odessa. For the ICC not to investigate such atrocities would render it to be neither a Court, nor a body investigating War Crimes. It would render it a brothel run by US pimps. I challenge you to show the world that you are free of the pimping business.
The world is also aware of 13,000 deaths in the Donbass between 2014 and early 2022, the majority of which were due to enforced ‘derussification’ policies of an administration in Kyiv which openly embraced the Nazi yobs of the Azov Battalion. You would not have any credibility as a War Crimes investigation unit if you studiously decided to ignore all of that.
You are also required to investigate the crimes of the USA creating bioweapons laboratories in Ukraine, tasked specifically to carry out development programmes previously outlawed in the USA. Creation of such weapons is a crime of war and any actions taken to destroy them benefit humanity. You will be investigating the very highest levels of the US military, the very highest levels of Ukrainian Security Services and you will be engaging with global bodies enforcing bioweapons treaties to highlight where if at all such treaties have been flagrantly breached in Ukraine. You will do this because you are not prostitutes of the USA.
Now I have very, very little confidence that you are anything BUT prostitutes of the USA. You will prove that you are prostitutes of that kind if you chose to limit your investigations to events occurring post 15th February 2022.
I am sure you are able to charge very high prices as a prostitute to the USA.
You would, however, be no longer worthy of calling yourselves lawyers.
No doubt plenty of your colleagues at the ICC have already abrogated the duties of lawyers and taken on the mantle of prostitution??
Yours Skeptically
Rhys T. Jaggar PhD MBA
London UK’
I am so disappointed that this good letter is only yours. To use slogans “Every little helps”
I like it!
Hi Rhys can I copy this please?
A neutral Ukraine would allow the country to exist peacefully. But is there now any interest in this and who could credibly start crafting such an alternative?
Peter, I feel sure that a neutral Ukraine is exactly what Russia is seeking. After all, it is what it has been asking for since 2014 – and being ignored by everyone.
The difficulty lies in making sure that Ukraine stays neutral, given that its current ruling class are a bunch of murderous fascists who lie for fun. Probably Ukraine will have to be broken up in some way, and democratic elections ensured. Real democratic elections, unlike those periodically held in NATO countries.
Well, we’re into the 6th day of the war and still no word from Tony Blair on the matter…
He must be due to appear soon.
Unlikely. He knows he couldnt be more compromised when it comes to the official British narrative of “Putin is the Devil and We ❤ the Ukranian People”. Blair played a big part in helping Putin into power back in 2000, seeing him as a reliable anti-leftist, Western puppet, and he has has backed him ever since. Most embarrassing in terms of the current crisis is Blair’s demand at the time of the Maidan coup that the West “forget the people of Ukraine and side with Putin”.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/04/23/tony-blair-ukraine-putin-_n_5196236.html
Peter Mandelson — consigliere of the current fraud leading the Labour Party — also has a long and very recent history of praising Putin to the heavens, so it’s no surprise he has also been absent from all the TV studios.
Mr Putin still has several million civilians to murder in cold blood before he could even get into the same league as Mr Blair. Although of course he won’t.
Nonetheless, among our parliamentarians and journalists, Putin is already one of history’s most notorious war criminals while Sir Tony will continue to be one of the world’s greatest and most respected statesmen.
Mercifully, amongst a large minority of the Uk populace, Tony Blair is rightly regarded as venal scum of the highest level of filth imaginable.
«Mr Putin still has several million civilians to murder in cold blood before he could even get into the same league as Mr Blair.»
But! Didn’t Putin invade and split Cyprus? What about his invasion and splitting of Yugoslavia? Putin, didn’t he also invade and split Syria and Libya? Who has forgotten Putin’s murderous invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan? What about his helping vicious autocrats to run wars of aggression against Iran and Yemen?
And yet so far nobody had sanctioned him or thrown him out of SWIFT for all the terrible consequences of his wars in Cyprus, Yugoslavia, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Yemen. Enough is enough. 🙂
When Tony Blair comes on stage it will be to blame Global Warming for the current malaise.
He will probably raise the question everybody wants answering… ‘has anybody considered the carbon footprint Russia has created, by invading in the middle of a Global Climate Emergency with all that fossil fuel guzzling hardware’
At a more serious level, Russia should have been made welcome by the free enterprise world following the implosion of the Soviet Empire, instead it was decided it was not something we “should do business with” but set out to conquer, by agreement, negotiation NATO and piece by piece.
Russia is wrong to invade, but the west has been poking its stick with a ‘orses head ‘andle in the wrong place for too long and it’s not them who are in danger of getting ‘ett ‘ole…_
Instead we “do business with” China, a country that represses its own, attempts to ethnically repress Uighurs’ and sent tanks in to Tiananmen Square. And say nothing…_
Where is The Brunosaur? He must also be due an outing.
Jeux Sans Frontiers which country with play The Joker?
Again, I would sincerely like to know what a diplomat would advise Russia to do. It has tried to negotiate for over a quarter of a century. It has proposed mutual security agreements. It has said what its red lines are. Each time it has tried, it has met with further NATO expansion. It has finally insisted that NATO will not operate in Ukraine. It has warned it will dismantle Ukraine if NATO moves in. NATO’s response has been to move in. Mr Murray has said that it is a good negotiating position for Russia to protest about this. What does he think NATO’s response will be, after over a quarter of a century? When NATO has installed missiles that take 5 minutes to reach Moscow and can easily be armed with nuclear warheads, what then is to be Russia’s negotiating position? Essentially, the lesson for Russia is that, if it continues to observe international law scrupulously, it gets f*cked like Serbia. This is the liberal world order we are shocked Russia has overturned.
On the basis of some, thankfully an ignorant and arrogant minority, of the comments on this discussion the clear answer to that question is that they are supposed to do nothing.
To sit in silence whilst they are obliterated out of existence and their country destroyed and resources plundered as was the case in Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Latin America, Indonesia, Africa etc. So that Liberal’s can get their daily kick of signalling to each other how dreadful they think this is and why doesn’t someone do something about it (as long as it does inconvenience them).
One thing you won’t get is any kind of practical solutions from such contributors. Because, for them, it is not about workable solutions, its about running with big boys in the gang as part of the mindless mob to make them feel good about themselves thinking they’ve stuck it to someone else like they are still in the school playground.
They have nothing worthwhile to contribute other than parade their ignorance as a badge. Sad little trolls, with sad little lives pissing on the sacrifice of previous generations who fought the scourge of Nazi’s and Fascists in Europe and delusionally thinking its ‘patriotism.’
Well put.
Ewan (11.18) That is well put, thank you. The Russian leadership has had to accept that the USA and its NATO gangsters are not ‘agreement capable’ and just cannot be trusted. There seems to be litte point in trying to negotiate with such people, but the Russians still kept trying.
It would have been easy for the western powers to insist that Ukraine implemented the Minsk agreement which would have brought an end to the 8-year long civil war in eastern Ukraine, close to the Russian border. The rebel Donbass republics would have reverted peacefully to Ukraine as autonomous regions. But no, Ukraine was encouraged to ignore Minsk and hold out for military reconquest of the Donbass. In the absence of any sign that the agreement would ever be implemented or that the KIew regime would end its siege of Donbass, Russia decided that action was needed to defend the Donbass and end the war. That action is now being taken. To be effective it required a full-scale invasion to outflank, isolate and neutralise the Ukrainian forces which were taking part in the siege.
It is to be hoped that this campaign will be successful and will avoid, or at least minimise casualties.
A war doesn’t start with tanks, it started long before. And I’m afraid to say that attacks on Russia’s right to voice our concerns started long ago. Banning Russian media, expelling Russian diplomats, making everything to avoid peaceful negotiations.
That all was pre-war propaganda machine. Every 77 brigade man is a soldier.
I hate war. I wish it never happened. I see the West’s united position is doing everything to fuel it.
I understand the goal is to have Ukraine into NATO. I cannot see how it is safe for me. You folks sailed your military ship along the beaches where we spend time. And you seem to love military games, launching all sorts of missiles.
All of that I can understand and even respect your right to do so, please with agreed warning, so I’m not visiting the beach at this day. But your constant stance about me being your enemy, your main threat makes it just impossible.
I, among many my Russian compatriots, support Ukraine as a state. We lived side by side for long as good neighbors and were happy.
At the same time, at seeing Ukraine became hostile, moved to NATO and even asked for nukes, I really don’t know what else could be done, when peaceful talks failed.
Hatred of everything Russian was the reason Crimea decided to leave for safer position. And Donbass I don’t know how Ukraine could seriously expect it to accept the terms? What about Muscovites must be hanged?
I don’t know what to expect, I see so many are in a hurry to take sides, so many emotional appeals. Is it again pre-war propaganda? If we are a little bit humans more than we are animals, we should advocate for peace and diplomacy, not for taking sides!
All the media hear are indulging in increasing the division, nobody wants to say calm down, understand why this is happening and how to stop this by negotiations. I watched yesterday a programme called Panorama, on the BBC. It was so biased and inaccurate. It was supposed to analyse the origins of the crisis but notably blamed Russia even for the Maidan violence; I don’t know how they reached that conclusion. Then there was no mention of the massacre in Odessa and no mention of Minsk, just an insinuation that Russia caused the whole problem. The BBC now is so biased and lacks objectivity that its programmes are worthless. Meanwhile I can no longer get RT on the internet although it is still available on the TV channel, but probably not for much longer.
I can still get rt.com (in French in my case), and you can watch the live broadcast that way, but the channel on YouTube is blocked throughout Europe.
Search for it on yandex.com.
With a little effort it’s still possible to get their foreign language services.
Panorama biased? I’m shocked. Shocked. Regarding RT, I know BBC World Service used to be broadcast on FM in Moscow and it’s likely that the TV service is now available widely. Anyone to confirm or say not? If that’s the case it likely has more influence there than RT has here and would certainly be shut down if RT was. Could even be that our government has a bit more respect for freedom of speech and information than some others. But I keep checking to see if RT is still there on channel 234. Sadly their propaganda is even more blatant than BBC and Sky News and Al Jazeera is about the best to be found.
In the UK we have politicians who don’t care about citizens here they just do what big business and America wants, they get rich or mad on it.
In 75 years of television we have had hundreds of thousands of programmes about war, WW2 and WW1 documentaries or dramas or pure propaganda.
Nobody ever looks at the reasons for WW1 because there wasn’t a good excuse for the slaughter except from those who planned it.
I don’t remember any television or films about PEACE that teach young people how to negotiate even with other young people.
Politicians don’t speak for people here they help themselves to public money and lie. They spend too much money on weapons and create terror situations to get public partial approval of more spending. Recent governtments have constructed the law in such a way that alternative opinion and action is now nearly impossible and becoming criminalised. T complicit mass media have indoctrinated the majority of people to turn on others who have a different opinion, who are rational and ignore overwhelming propaganda . Attempt are made to label a person or a world leader who question the mainstrean narrative as mentally ill. Ordinary people want peace but those who gain from war fool the public who follow them like sheep.
The sensible outcome for President Putin is of course minimum fall-out from Ukrainian civilian casualties. With minimal accurate information bleeding from Ukraine and ‘diverse’ news from Western media outlets it has been difficult, complex even delicate to access Russia’s progress in eliminating UK/US/ ‘mercenaries’ and foreign fighters in Ukraine. Much like Syria these fighters have continuous passage, here from from Poland as the West strives to prolong the war in the hope of assimilating or winning the propaganda war with evidence of mass death.
From military sources I believe there is around 20,000 foreign militants, including ex-SAS/SBS mercenaries on the ground in Ukraine who expect and demand Ukrainian soldiers battle till the last man. To counter, Russia is flooding Ukraine with armoured vehicles hoping to position them on every street, every city, every hiding place while attempting to control the airspace monitored by S400 detection. The slow progress however is the need to keep subject deaths minimal, which is in fact a directive from China to retain support for this siphoning of the terrorist swamp. I have to say the fantasy of proxy warfare that exists amongst the majority of commanders at Northwoods is aberrant.
Everyone lies now. No trusted source.
A girl on Pikabu asked for information, as her husband was a soldier on border, an island.
Zelensky in his video said 137 Ukrainian soldiers there were killed and he awards them Hero medals, post mortem.
Then on Pikabu that girl was advised to watch our defence ministry video. It appeared that Ukrainian solders were captured but alive!
“From military sources I believe there is around 20,000 foreign militants, including ex-SAS/SBS mercenaries on the ground in Ukraine who expect and demand Ukrainian soldiers battle till the last man”.
I very cordially hope that the Russians make sure that they do likewise. It would be dishonourable to run away leaving your supposed “allies” to die or be captured.
I’ve never met a Russian person in my life. I’ve met loads of people of varying nationalities, but never a Russian. I’ve never met a Ukranian person in my life either. I have no Russian or Ukranian products or goods in my home and yet here I am through no fault of my own, effectively being forced to pick sides between people that I’ve never met nor am I likely to ever do so.
Yet here I am, up to my neck in the middle of events that could lead to WWIII.
How many people must be feeling the same way?
As my friend says, ‘Leaders suck’.
A lot of their support base are no better.
Roses Have Thorns (Part 6) The Odessa Massacre (16 Jul 2014) – Watchdog Media (YouTube, 1h 18m 39s)
Burnt alive in Odessa (documentary) 27 Dec 2021 – The Saker (with embedded YouTube video, 26m 31s)
You are not obliged to pick a side, there’s no binary choice, there’s always a way out without violence. A treaty on peace and secure mechanism to keep it.
Balance is the key. It served us good for so long.
Well, I assume that you’ve seen the Western media which is almost exclusively in favour of the Ukraine, so people in the West, including myself are effectively being forced to pick a side, the side in question is the Ukrainian side.
I always see both sides of an argument and that means that I won’t pick a side because I can see right and wrong on both sides but again, effectively people are being forced to pick the Ukrainian side.
Sometimes you can choose a side when the choice is between freedom and tyranny. Ukraine was attacked unprovoked by a country run by an authoritarian regime because its people decided, democratically, not to be Russian. Putin’s goal seems to be to kill ‘fellow Russians’ in Ukraine until they agree that they are Russian too. Not going to happen. So while deterring NATO expansion to Ukraine might have made some sense – though dismembering a country into breakaway regions seems a strange way to achieve that goal, given it produces an increasingly pro-west remainder – his war objective now is basically senseless. Or insane. They amount to the same.
That’s the point. As Craig Murray pointed out, there is no rational conclusion to this war when even if Putin’s regime wins it eventually loses. Ukrainians will now never cede to Russia. Ever. The Putin government’s only option is admit defeat or go for genocide. Hence it’s easy to pick a side: economic pressure on Russia until it backs off.
President Zelensky was democratically elected only because he was promising to make peace with Russia by observing the Minsk agreement. He hadn’t made it clear when running for President that he intended to act as a puppet of DC and Brussels. He would not have been elected if he had. As nakedly fraudulent as the Sir Keir Starmer campaign to become Labour leader.
So? A viable democratic process means that he can be removed from office for failing to observe electoral promises. Or do you just then default to Invading and destroying the country and killing its government? Make up your mind what political system you actually support. Labour members can still ditch Starmer (as I would advise them to do).
It seems likely that Zelensky was elected as a big FU by the Ukrainian people to the kleptocrats that had been running the country since 91 ?
Once in office, it’s also likely that Zelensky found that the country was not so much run by elected politicians, but by the rather more thuggish element that enabled the financial rape of the country by predominantly US groups.
“Ukraine was attacked unprovoked by a country run by an authoritarian regime because its people decided, democratically, not to be Russian”.
That turns out not to be the case. Russia’s political system is very much more democratic than Ukraine’s. Also, people cannot “decide” to change their ethnic identity. Many of the people in Ukraine are ethnically Russian; many, if not most, of those are culturally Russian and feel sympathy with Russia itself.
Some Ukrainian people – mostly those in the West and centre of the country – are emphatically not Russian, and even hate Russia. Perhaps because, in WW2, the USSR attacked last and ended the war. Whether they would have preferred to remain part of the Third Reich is something only they can know. If they had, they would most likely all have been exterminated when the Germans had wrung all they could from them. The delusion of Ukrainian – and other Easter European – “Nazis” that they have anything in common with the true Nazis is extremely pathetic. Like mice dressing up with long whiskers and pretending to be cats.
Much of the problem arises from the fact that Ukraine – as its name, “borderland”, makes clear – is a hodge-podge of very different peoples all of whom have powerful grievances from the past. It has never been a homogenous or viable nation-state, and should ideally be split into the Russian regions and the rest. Perhaps down the line of the Dnieper.
Please reflect on the fact that Ukraine is historically far more a part of Russia than, say, Texas and California are part of the USA. If those states chose to secede, do you think for a moment that Washington would tolerate that? It didn’t tolerate the Confederacy 160 years ago, but instead spent over 750,000 lives suppressing it.
“should ideally be split into the Russian regions and the rest” It’s always startling and revealing to read how ‘anti-imperialists’ are so happy to adopt a colonial and imperialist mentality of dividing the countries of other people up for them. Or indeed ignoring any notion of self-determination. If Ukraine’s separatist regions, freely, democratically and peacefully, decide they want to join Russia, I can’t see any viable objection. The same applies, of course, if they later decide to return to Ukraine. But what Ukraine, as it presently stands, didn’t and doesn’t want to be Russian or divided up. Either you support self-determination and some kind of democratic system where all people get to choose their destiny collectively, or you support tyranny, political corruption and despotism. You have to make that choice everywhere, simultaneously.
“Ukraine was attacked unprovoked by a country run by an authoritarian regime because its people decided, democratically, not to be Russian.”
Ukraine was attacked when it provoked a country run by an authoritarian regime when its leaders decided, undemocratically, to apply to join an alliance run by the US.
What do you expect as an answer? You seem to be advocating victim blaming. Ukraine sought protection and was invaded because of that. We can argue about cause and effect for infinite amounts of time but the fact is the Russian did invade *and* switched its pretext from deterring NATO expansion to denying the right for Ukraine to exist as a separate entity. Personally I think Russia’s NATO ‘concerns’ were probably specious since France and especially Germany have, could and would still have vetoed expansion to Ukraine. The real objective always was expansion of Russia’s borders.
BTW will you be backing Russian attacks on Finland and Sweden if they vote to join NATO?
“Ukraine sought protection and was invaded because of that. “
Ukraine did not seek to join NATO because of a threat of invasion. It sought to join because its democratically elected government had been ousted in a coup by one aligned to the US. The treat of invasion came as a consequence of that and of much provocation since.
Whichever way you look at it, if the US hadn’t meddled in Ukraine’s affairs in 2004 and 2014, none of this would have happened.
Seriously?
Met any Palestinians?
Any Muslims?
Any body foreign?
Any Black people?
Anybody from that village down the road you never been to?
Are you only empathetic with people you have met even if they are complete currs?
What an absurd position.
US officials say they are not participating, will only use sanctions. What is absolutely strange to see is the EU rushes to war.
Looks like the prediction comes true, US will sit in a safe place, watching a war in Europe. US doesn’t need a strong uncontrolled EU or strong uncontrolled Russia, with their exceptionalism ideas. A union of Russia and EU must be their nightmare.
Thanks Theresa May with your Lockheed Martin husband and your Skripal saga. Hope you enjoy it now.
You seem to live in some strange world where a heavily armed (conventional and nuclear) Russia invading a European country isn’t felt as an existential threat by other European countries or their populations.
If the possibility or, indeed the probability of Russia invading a(nother) European country was such a surprise to these countries, why did they all join NATO in the first place? It’s not exactly a social club. NATO exists because these countries feel Russia is an existential threat and vice versa.
Sorry, I’m struggling to understand your point. They may be NATO members but NATO has ruled out any aggressive response in Ukraine, Belarus or Russia. Sending arms to Ukraine is obviously perceived as the next best option by these same European countries to counter or limit Russian advances and Ukrainian casualties. Whether that is a correct assessment is another question.
NATO was formed as an alliance of The US and European countries against a possible Russian invasion in Europe. Russia has been seen as a threat for over seventy years.
“Those of us who opposed the illegal invasion of Iraq must also oppose the illegal invasion of Ukraine”
I protested (as loudly and persistently as I was able) the invasion of Iraq primarily because, at the time, it was plain as day that the reasons given, by those conducting the invasion, were lies.
As for the present invasion, it appears to me that the reasons given by the Russian leadership are incontrovertible truths.
And I don’t think the Russian state should allow itself to be ripped to shreds by the US and its vassals, muppets and thralls.
Perhaps, even, the world is safer today, than it was a week ago, due to Russia’s present demonstration of sovereign autonomy. I think this is an idea worth considering. I suspect a lot of the tut-tutting opinionators — the sincere ones at least — underestimate how low the bar is, to beat “Safer than a week ago”.
Someone might accuse me of erasing Ukraine’s autonomy. To them I say, you must have me confused with somebody important, someone with authority, somone named Victoria Nuland.
If you look at a map (an unfamiliar procedure, I admit, to many) you will observe that Ukraine forms a long salient pointing directly at Russia’s groin.
If an agreeable young lady (or, in view of my own considerable age, even one of mature years) were to sidle close to me with her knee brushing my leg, I would be happy.
If, on the other hand, a violent criminal with a record of robbery were to do so, I would shove him away before he kneed me where it hurts. Which, of course, is exactly what Washington has long been hoping to do with Ukraine.
Ukraine was never a sovereign nation-state until 1991 – and it is rather doubtful if it should have been recognised as independent even then. It had been an integral, even a central, part of the USSR since the Russian Revolution – and of Russia for centuries before. Indeed, Kiev was the first capital of Russia, around the time when King Alfred was hiding in marshes to escape the Danes, and dreaming of a united “England” some time in the indefinite future. (For those deficient in basic history, that was about 900 years before the USA even came into existence).
To talk about it as if it were France or Spain (both of them about 500 years old in their present form) or even Germany or Italy (about 150 years old) is either absurdly ignorant or deeply malicious.
“..it is rather doubtful if it should have been recognised as independent even then..”
In politics it is those like Yeltsin whose follies last longest and have most impact. He, with assists from Bill Clinton and Harvard’s Economics Department, must be responsible for the deaths of almost as many Russians as Hitler.
GERMANY is now sending Arms to Ukraine.
Please be respectful of the Germans and listen to their advice.
They are the only Army with experience of successfully invading Ukraine. Brought their own weapons then also.
Killed approx 5,500,000 including over 1,000,000 Jews. That ought to be worth something.
Will they still leave the yellow star of David for Russians, or invent a new sign for us to pin to our clothing?
I’m asking because their Chancellor not only said that genocide in Donbass is ridiculous, but also commented on the decision to send arms, that now he feels like a true man. Apparently he ment to say ‘doing the right thing’.
I wonder how much like a “real man” he will feel if meets Mr Burevestnik or one of his colleagues. One hopes he will not have the opportunity to meet Mr Sarmat, as he might take an awful lot of German citizens – who wrongly trusted him to look after their interests – with him.
Does an inverted red triangle make your bum look big? They were very fashionable in WW2…_
I think most of the Azof battalion will have done a runner to Poland by now. If not, what Russia meant by “de Nazisification” is very chillingly explained towards the end of this long interview, the most detailed and informative in one go, given by Scott Ritter, on MintPressNews ” The Ukrainian Crisis with Dan Cohen and Scott Ritter “
It would be worth something to be a fly on the wall when the Poles greet their staunch and well-loved Nazi allies.
Seems there is now a ban on the internet RT News (‘on-air’ channel) in the UK. Connect goes to the correct page but there is the message, “Video unavailable. This video is not available in your country”
I have no idea who is at the bottom of the ban, YouTube or the UK government.
Nice to see our “liberal values” in play. It turns out Liberals are just as keen to ban, censor, cancel and close down as any other tyrant. And to lead witch hunts and lynch mobs.
“It turns out Liberals are just as keen to ban, censor, cancel and close down as any other tyrant”.
And far more so than any conservative or libertarian. The people who call themselves “liberals” nowadays are in fact something quite different: radicals. People who are stupid or naive enough to believe that nothing done by all previous generations is worth anything, and they should rip it all down and start again from scratch.
Conservatives tend to be tolerant of other views. Oddly enough, Edmund Burke, whose views now seem very conservative and libertarian, was a prominent Whig (Liberal) politician. He was right about most things, except perhaps in his enthusiastic support for the American colonial rebels.
Conservative communities understand that, even though usually only four generations are alive at one time (occasionally five and very rarely, six), those four generations will have interacted with three previous ancestral ones and three more yet to be born. That makes an unbroken link of about ten generations.
I’ve found that every generation I’ve talked to have different skills and insights. My grandparents’ generation understood the Great Depression and how to avoid financial armageddon; my parents’ generation grew up through World War II and learned much more about how post-war healing takes place; my generation understood the tussle between two competing ideologies and how they can rip societies asunder; those born around 1990 grew up with the internet, smartphones etc and have a completely different understanding of digital connectivity; who knows what those being born now will be endowed with?
I’ve found similar with every country I’ve ever visited. I’ve never failed to learn new things from every country I’ve visited, simply because they have different histories, different geographies, different customs and culture and different culinary traditions. There’s so much collective wisdom around the world it’s astonishing. Often, what’s ‘new’ in one country was old hat somewhere else years previously. Just go read ‘forty centuries of farming’ about Chinese agricultural history and you’ll see what I mean…
The EU merrily pumps in sophisticated weapons, presumably assuming people like Putin and Lukashenko will gracefully accept defeat?
What planet are these UK and EU politicians on? Lukashenko said he’d turn Ukraine into a “meat grinder” – doesn’t that give the EU pause, an insight into the mentality at play here? Assuming western political norms and morality, risks massive miscalculation.
And what the UK, EU and US hoping to achieve by sanctioning and crippling a superpower with over 6,000 nuclear warheads into a corner? Denying them their own resources is a misstep. What if they threaten us if we won’t unfreeze? Do we die to make a point of principle? Russia is 75x larger in terms of land area than the UK, any thermonuclear exchange simply doesn’t favour us. The guardian journos and BBC, Sky et al may want to feel morally superior as they’re incinerated in WW3 (if lucky), but with only 22% favouring sending UK troops in not everyone is ready to share their appetite for total destruction.
And btw. I said already I hate this war and am totally against it. But we are where we are and we need sensible European leaders willing to compromise. Bunter, Starmer, Truss, and Wallace aren’t such people. Nor are von der Leyen and Borrell and Stoltenberg. It could be about to get very scary.
What does the West stand to gain from a compromise? On any terms acceptable to Putin, they won’t be able to use Ukraine against Russia. But while the war is on, they can still do it, and with great effect. No wonder they are sending weapons.