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No, I returned to the UK on the 16th. I am in the UK but I have friends in Ukraine. It's very sad what the tyrant from Moscow is doing.

So I thought I had posted that I had fixed the issue but turns out I didn't. I fixed the issue. If it happens again, let me know.

This. By all accounts, Putin doesn't care about the economy and the oligarchs that face sanctions by the West are still much better off on his side than putting pressure on him to get their sanctions lifted. I'd love to be wrong but if Putin gets away with this it probably marks the end of the West being able to cow the less liberal and democratic superpowers. If we're being honest, Russia and China can pretty much walk all over the US and Europe now. To believe that we have any power to tell them to back off or else is now a pretence. Just got to hope Putin doesn't go on to test the waters with the NATO countries on his doorstep because then it either will be WW3 or there will be no military response which will be an acceptance of effective powerlessness from the Western nations.

So they have just discriminated against all Russians even those that may not support this at all. Got to love liberal cognitive dissonance.

Loads of chili. Gotta start them young.

Because it's a war in Europe?

Theoretically.

NATO is a defensive alliance so it's essentially "attack one of us and you're attacking all of us". That's the theory anyway. There was another agreement called the Minsk Agreement which saw Ukraine give up their nuclear weapons on the understanding that Russia would fully acknowledge its independence as a state, but here we are. Putin got away with Crimea in 2014 and he'll essentially get away with this too.

I'm glad to see mass protests from Russians despite Russia considering it an act of treason and arresting protestors.

Some European countries are still resisting some sanctions due to their impact on their own energy supply etc. Understandable but do they think it's going to be easier if they wait longer to pull the plug? Putin isn't going to respond to more warnings. He probably isn't going to respond to heavy sanctions either but if this is how he wants it to be, there's no point waiting longer to sever ties with him.

Should all have been agreed in advance ready to implement at the drop of a hat in case of this happening. Western intelligence has been saying for weeks this was on the cards. It's staggering that all this haggling that seems to be going on between European leaders at the moment wasn't resolved urgently.

One of the richest most powerful familes in a nation know for being corrupt taking advantage of the citizens? Surely not. Mate your owners literally support a military-state party.

The 90s look now a decade of lost opportunities. It was the one chance to make Russia a stable and prosper democracy. A shame. Instead of an Adenauer, what the russians got was financial crisis, humiliation and a drunken Yeltsin. (Later, I´ll post a reading list, with the names of some books that can help us understand this crisis).

Artful Dodger needed to tell us how every other living thing on the planet would be better off if we got wiped out.

My daughter loves a whiskey too!

I've been stressed all day following this as well. If the Ukrainians have won back that airfield that is positive news. As predicted they won't go down without a hell of a fight. I feel really sorry though for all the innocent civilians and families in Ukraine.

Happy birthday @Spike! Have a good one!

Fuck me those kids are gonna be shitting themselves all day

Happy Birthday @Spike all the best mate...

Happy Birthday mate

Happy birthday, Spike!

Happy Birthday, @Spike

This is a country that's recently been talked about potentially being in the EU and possibly joining NATO. It's also a conflict that's really flaring up after 8 years of fighting after Russia invaded Ukraine the last time around.

Remember when war was a viable form of diplomacy? Boy, nukes really put a stop to that. England declared war on Napoleon several times a year, bet they wouldn’t have is Naps had a WMD. We live in an age of unprecedented peace, I really hope this doesn’t escalate to a much larger war.

It depends if NATO gets involved militarily. Right now the West will probably be targeting Russia's finances - the EU's putting it's harshest ever sanctions in history on Russia, BoJo the clown and the Czech president have called for Russia to be kicked off the SWIFT banking system. War is expensive and I think people are thinking targeting Russia's ability to fund its war machine could cause Putin to stop this. But who knows if waging economic war is enough to stop Russia's aggression here.

Putin proper needs given a good hiding doesn’t he.

As promissed, the reading list: Russian and Ukrainian History: - The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine - Serhii Plokhy - Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine - Anna Reid - Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin - Timothy Snyder - Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine - Anne Applebaum - Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation - Serhii Plokhy - From Peoples Into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe - John Connelly - Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia - Orlando Figes - The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union - Serhii Plokhy - Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis - Serhii Plokhy Present-Day Russia and Ukraine: - Man Without A Face - The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin - Masha Gessen - It Was a Long Time Ago, and it Never Happened Anyway – Russia and the Communist Past - David Satter - Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? - Karen Dawisha -Ukraine and Russia: From Civilied Divorce to Uncivil - Paul D´Anieri - Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism - Paul Klebnikov - One Soldier's War In Chechnya - Arkady Babchenko - Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin - Ben Judah - Russia Without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War: Power, Politics and the Making of Post-Soviet Society - Tony Wood - Babylon - Victor Pelevin. * (The only fiction book on this list. This looks like a very interesting read of post-soviet Russia society).

From what media has gathered this seems to be roughly reported areas of conflict...

This seems pretty much like pre-WW2 scenario. A defeated power, humiliated and in crisis at its lowest and perhaps embarrassed too much by victorious powers. A competent but dangerous man rises to power entering a period of resurgence but then goes on an expansion agenda while former victorious states are too disunited within themselves, and lack credible leadership.

Western politics has become overweight and complacent after years of peace and comfortably being the largest power base in the world. UK and US politics are little more than a game to the most powerful because we've had a generation of privilege and comfort where we've never faced a true crisis. The UK even got so bored and decadent that we created our own crisis in Brexit. And it left us with Trump and Johnson in charge of the worst pandemic in a lifetime and now this. Biden I think is a better and more serious man but like you say, he's ancient and has little room for manoeuvre. Obama's mistakes overseas and Trump's administration driving US conversation towards an isolationist approach mean his hands are tied. We all know about the direction of traffic away from the traditional Western superpowers as well. Another difference between Putin and our leaders isn't just his competence but his motivation. He has always wanted more, while the West look to delay the inevitable and try to appear to cling on to supremacy until the next election cycle. It has bred reactive leaders on our side while Putin has been putting things in place to achieve his goals for years. Now we have a crisis in Europe while China sit back and observe just how impotent the US-European axis has become. Some people have been warning about this for years as well. Highly qualified experts shouted down by right wing media moguls so that the public are left thinking politics doesn't really matter and I'll vote for Boris/Nigel because I'd go for a pint with them, or I'll vote for Trump because he says the intolerant things that "everyone's thinking". People who claim to be patriots and in touch with ordinary people, accelerating the painful decay of Western leadership from within. My thoughts are with everyone in Ukraine. You almost hope for a swift seizure of control for the Russian army to minimise the bloodshed because that seems to be the only likely eventual outcome. I dread to think what comes next though. Imagine using a post in this thread, of all threads, to try and score points for some anti-liberal agenda.

Just think about the backgrounds too. Bush was a daddys pet puppet of a former regime. Biden is a demented old man WAY past his prime Trump was a shit businessman daddys boy. BJ was a journalist (scum) then a shit mayor. Scomo failed at every job he had, falling up a ladder to politics and eventually prime minister. Putin was an intelligence officer, then he was head of intelligence. He coerced the Russian oligarchy to support him as president, led the nation through several international embarrassments with determination, dodged the GFC in 2008, and has done wonders for the Russian economy. Yes, he's a conservative asshole. Yes, if hell exists he's written himself a ticket. But hes clearly a competent and capable leader, and was well before he ever led the nation. The same just can't be said of the wests leaders.

I agree, one of the advantages that Putin has is the tendency for liberal democracy to drive the standard of public discourse down almost indefinitely. It allows him to look like a geopolitical mastermind in comparison. In the West, there is a kind of consensual amnesia where political advancement basically requires that nobody think too deeply about the past. Things are continually brushed under the carpet, re-written, or just forgotten, and showing any kind of ideological consistency is basically a political death-sentence. Putin doesn't need to worry about swinging with the times. He can talk about his world view and historical grievances with absolute self-assurance, and he can show a 20+ year record of actions which are mostly consistent with what he says. Even if ultimately he is just cynically serving a small power base (and I think Putin is part cynical and part sincere about his nationalism) he has a public rationale which is broadly consistent with its own internal logic. There is basically nobody in Western politics who could possibly match that, because systematically it just shouldn't be possible for such a person to rise to the top and stay there.

Not for the first time, Sebastian Vettel demonstrating moral leadership in F1 while the authorities twiddle their thumbs.

Wtf?

This whole thing is just insanity.... I feel for those innocent people getting caught up in all this..

From the range and scope of the initial missile attacks, I thought at first they were going to make a rush for Kiev along with an all out push from the Kharkov direction. But the lack of word about major combat in the north seems to suggest maybe not. Given the relatively short distances involved I thought more would have happened by now if the Russians really wanted to get into Kiev. Some are suggesting the Russians might be trying to create an impression of threat everywhere as cover for a more limited push in the Donbass.

https://www.reddit.com/live/18hnzysb1elcs/

Noice

Lol

Yes, there's love if you want it

They don't pay you enough pal...

In a matter of 2 hours they had missiles dropping in the whole of Ukraine, seem frighteningly organized. Probably prepared months ago. Think Merkel was low ley keeping Putin in check, seemed to be the only one he respected.