Topic: Russian Invasion of Ukraine[In Progress] - page 373. (Read 78223 times)

It's difficult to guess where he's going to stop, but this map shows the NATO countries. What are the chances of Finland suddenly applying for membership? The west is looking pretty powerless at the moment, and bringing Finland in is one of the few things they can do that will hurt Russia.

Belarus is effectively part of Russia at the moment, and is housing a load of Russian troops. Lukashenko has chosen his side.

If Putin takes Ukraine, this would just leave Finland and I suppose Moldova caught between NATO and "Russia". Presumably even Putin wouldn't push into the Baltic nations, but a direct link to Kaliningrad must be tempting, and with Belarus under the thumb, all he needs is a tiny chunk of Lithuania.

I don't know what news sources you're following but there are plenty of unlikely-to-be-fake reports showing Russian troops moving outside of the disputed regions, like from Crimea into southern Ukraine, and also in the north-eastern part of the country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaJCwY9YBQ0&t=143s

True, but then it suffered decades of Soviet brainwashing, moral, ethical, and physical degradation.

Soviet people have different moral and ethical values than Europeans.

As for Putin, to this day he cannot get over the loss of the USSR territories.  This is what is driving his decisions.  A shame and insecurity.

He lives in the past and wants to restore respect and dominance the Soviet Union once had.

Instead, he is going to get an international arrest warrant.  

He already arrested over 1700 Russians who went to the streets to protest this aggression.

I would say that the greatest harm to Russia was not the fall of the USSR but its establishment in the first place.  

The "invasion" of the territories that Russia already occupied since 2014 didn't surprise me; I expected them to do something like that and then stop there. But just before going to sleep last night I was shocked to see that they were apparently doing a full invasion, and I stayed up until 2AM watching the situation unfold...

The information on what's happening is very spotty. Is it possible that Russia "only" did some airstrikes, but they're not going to send in any ground troops outside of the eastern territories? I heard a rumor that Putin gave Zelenskyy an ultimatum to cede eastern Ukraine within 12 hours or else Putin would continue with a full invasion, but I don't know if this comes from a reliable source.

It'd definitely be possible for Ukraine to fight off Russia with a years-long insurgency. The West will be giving them endless supplies, so Russia would have a much harder time than the US had against Afghanistan, for example. But I don't know if the Ukrainians have the will to fight Russia for years, and I don't know that I'd even recommend that they do so, since the costs of this sort of insurgency would be so high.

This situation is so, so tragic. Ukrainians deserve to be free, but many are going to suffer and die for no reason, and the country will probably fall under an authoritarian regime. Russians will suffer a lot, as well: I see no world in which this action does anything but massively hurt the average Russian. Relations between Russia and the West will get even worse. Nothing against the people of these countries, but how does it make any sense that the US has better relations with Vietnam, Japan, and Saudi Arabia than Russia? Russia is part of Europe, their culture descended from Ancient Greece and Rome...

Russian forces took control of Chernobyl. This vis very concerning thing and danger not just for Ukraine, but for whole Europe. And they probably are going to use Chernobyl card to blackmail Europe.
Where is sanctions? These things made by EU and USA isn't sanctions, it's just attempt to show that they're doing something. And Putin probably is laughing from it. It's time to isolate Russia from world. Block them from SWIFT system, stop import to Russia, remove them from all international organizations, stop all flights to Russia. But they don't have balls for it. Best what they could is tell that they're "deeply concerned"
Cлaвa Укpaїнi!

Ok, let me rephrase a little bit - he's not rational in the European/Western understanding of a rational leader. He doesn't have to care about elections for example. But yeah he's cold and calculating, just on an entirely different scale of values. Anything the West can offer him in potential negotiations has little or no value to him. Even "don't accept Ukraine into NATO" is probably just a strawman, he's likely more excited about carving his name into history as the conqueror of ancient Russian lands or whatever he called it.

https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1496702809097527297

Tulsi Gabbard (democratic politician from United States) had a similar opinion - resolution through diplomacy. It simply does not take into account the demands Putin would want.

I too was one part of the crowd thinking Russian aggression could have been stopped with diplomacy just recently...and then Putin launches a military invasion with bombings and missile strikes. That ship has sailed. My initial thinking was an invasion could be pushed off by making concessions about NATO, and then Putin would move the goal posts later and demand more. Though now it is clear, you do not negotiate with unstable regimes, it does not work out well. See North Korea and Iran and where the U.S. has taken that diplomacy - no where. Russia will roll through Ukraine, you're right, but perhaps some resistance from Ukraine would be better than conceding their entire country to a murderous dictator that wants to see the USSR rise again.

Side note - what's particularly interesting is the repeated pattern of giving up nuclear weapons and than proceeding to be invaded because there is no way to defend a nation without weapons of mass destruction and mutually assured destruction. Some of those Soviet era nukes Ukraine had in the 90's would have been a great deterrent.

I've been wrong about Putin (including in this very thread!), so am happy to be wrong again... I'd certainly agree that he can't be negotiated with, or at least not very successfully, but for me one of the scariest things about him is that he seems very rational. It may be my misunderstanding based on his media persona and a lazy stereotype of the cold, calculating Russian, but I don't think this invasion is some hot-headed emotional action. I think he's assessed all the variables, and is confident that he will come out of this stronger than when he went in.

Everything seems to have fallen into place for him (or maybe he has been carefully manouevreing maneuovering orchestrating it all). He knows that the US won't send troops in. He has China on-side. And Russia isn't particularly dependent on the West for anything, and any sanctions that would really hurt (e.g. on gas or oil) would arguably hurt the West more by pushing up global prices.

I'm interested to find out if he seems rational to anyone else, or if it's just me seeing something that isn't there.

Time to cut off the SWIFT access may be?

NATO isn't going to step in, in fears of causing a larger scale attack towards other NATO countries. Russia's invasion isn't justifiable, more than 50 deaths have already been recorded, with multiple injuries. To be honest, I didn't expect Putin to go that far, however, it wasn't unexpected, since it has already happened in the past, with Crimea in 2014.

Unfortunately, I don't see Putin stopping anytime soon, this war will have serious consequences not only in human lives, but also financial for the whole European countries.

This Russian Inavsion of Ukraine and the forth coming war about it is getting out of hand and really serious. I don't know what is really the cause but, attacking a nation unprovoked is seriously out of place and the threat form Russia is so real. Not only limited to Ukraine but also, to other nations that dares to assist in some ways. It feels like a propaganda to see how far they could go in tempting the world power and at most, Putin isn't blinking on the threats from international communities. Do we hope to see any resolution in this, rather than a war...!

And here we're starting to see what could be the beginning of WW3. Ukraine's mistake was not joining NATO soon enough, now it can't be guaranteed anything.

I'm glad no one I've seen online so far is buying the "peacekeeping" bullshit. We all knew this is gonna happen after they invaded and annexed Crimea. Putin saw the West in disarray (thank you Rona) and struck. If you think about it, this is probably his last best chance to capture any significant amount of land before things go back to "normal".

Putin is lying to you. He was amassing military on the border for months, long before whatever excuse he came up with to justify the invasion. All those things he kept saying (it's just a military exercise; they're moving back; it's peacekeeping; etc) - all lies. Sure there will be "negotiating", once he's done bombing and invading. Perhaps he'll create a puppet government to negotiate with, just to make it go smoother, because "nazis". Maybe even run a "referendum" on how much Ukrainians love him.

No bozo,I didn't suggest Ukraine should give up its whole territory.Once we refused to listen to the russians and the ukrainian government kept shelling the eastern breakaway regions it gave putin the excuse he needed justify what he is doing now.Negotiating is the only way out of this because russia will roll ukraine over if they don't and not you nor I can do anything about it.Stop being so fucking arrogant.

This absurd notion is based on an erroneous assumption (or just plain trollfuckery) that Putin is a rational person who can be negotiated with. He isn't and he can't, unless by "concessions" you mean that Ukraine should have just given up entirely and unconditionally. Even then he'd be executing people there just because he wants to (re his comments on "de-nazification").

Originally I was predicting they'd only invade areas that already have higher Russian populations under the "peacekeeping" pretense but considering the rather spineless reactions from Western governments, anything is possible now. They might as well just roll in straight into Kyiv.

On a different note, this must probably be the very reason for the sudden 180° on the stance towards Bitcoin.

Examples: "I am not going to invade Ukraine". Then I declare that the bit of Ukraine I am going to invade is not Ukraine, thus all is as I said.
"This is just a military exercise in our border, it is just a coincidence that Ukraine is near", then the exercise becomes an attack.
"This is about the safety of Europe", and then I start a war in Europe.

I am sure you get the point. information provided by the now correctly called enemy, is not information.

As the invasion is bound to occur and a possible war set to follow suit immediately, I strongly feel the Ukrainians will be at the losing end of this saga. Quite sad to express! The over ambitious, highly aggressive and ever dictatorial Putin may eventually have his way the end. Unless world leaders take up swift actions against Russia.

However, I'm not sure if sanctions may slow Putin down. I think Putin's administration has prepared a strategy for moments as these, hence his continuous advancement and looming full fledged invasion game plan.

Dozens of dead and injured have been reported in the Russian and Ukrainian media. Basically, they are talking about the military, but peaceful citizens of Ukraine also come under fire. It's all terrible.