Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

Water Melon said:
I am very likely to have lost 6-7 friends of mine in Ukraine in the last 4-5 days. Will call the fecker all names. They were innocent great people with families. Feck him.
Click to expand...

I have several who aren't responding (obviously understandable given the circumstances) and don't know their status. One of particular concern in Kherson.
 
Rightnr said:
I've also seen Lilliputin which I thought was quite funny and apt.
Click to expand...
Lilliputin is another one too. I just do not know what I will tell to those 13 children of the friends of mine. I will miss their fathers forever.
 
Water Melon said:
I am very likely to have lost 6-7 friends of mine in Ukraine in the last 4-5 days. Will call the fecker all names. They were innocent great people with families. Feck him.
Click to expand...
Well unlike your "very likely" I for certain have lost two friends in Ukraine so does that trump your "I'll call him whatever I want" card or is it actually a pretty pointless comparison to make and does incredible injustice to their memories?

Call him what you want, but I have a right not to like it. And playing the fecking "I have dead friends" card as a reason to defend it is a load of shit.
 
Mr Pigeon said:
Well unlike your "very likely" I for certain have lost two friends in Ukraine so does that trump your "I'll call him whatever I want" card or is it actually a pretty pointless comparison to make and does incredible injustice to their memories?

Call him what you want, but I have a right not to like it. And playing the fecking "I have dead friends" card as a reason to defend it is a load of shit.
Click to expand...
It was you who asked to stop calling him putler, which he is. You do not like it is okay. You are as free as a bird after all. I am not playing the card, I call him putler for the atrocities he has committed. The one and only cnut in recent years who invaded countries, killed people, eradicated opposition and is now playing a nukes card. Putler he is and that is how he will be remembered. By the way Putler has been in use for years now.
 
MoskvaRed said:
That’s not a helpful comparison. Britain is an island with, needless to say, fixed borders, and, within that, England is just about the oldest nation state in Europe. Ukraine has existed an independent entity since 1991 and only for very brief periods before then. It is a separate nation rather than an appendage to Russia or Poland but I don’t see the reason for an absolutist view of its territorial scope when the price is so high. If they emerge without Crimea and potentially without the Donbass but with a meaningful NATO security guarantee and a roadmap to EU integration (and without their country being razed while we cheer them on from armchairs in Western Europe), that is a big strategic win in the grander scheme of things.
Click to expand...
Sorry, but that’s a very diminishing view of Ukrainian history. It’s like arguing the Scottish people cannot be precious about wanting independence and there’s been no Scotland since 1707. The Soviet Union was after all a supposed union of different republic states.

Further back than that it gets messy, but so does the storytelling behind the nation building of many big “permanent” states. Italy and Germany as we know them have only existed in a similar fashion to what they do now for 150-odd years. Ukraine in this regard is no different tracing its history all the way back to the Kyivan Rus’ and Ruthenia.

I actually agree with your wider sentiment though that NATO and/or EU membership is just a big factor as keeping Donbas and Crimea, but Russia is not gonna be keen on any of that.
 
Winrar said:
Click to expand...


I don't know where it was and when (really hard to know these day) but the fact that we keep seeing fire for a while after the blast would indicate it hit something flamable on the ground.
 
Just talked to someone in Odessa

Was told its calm at the moment, but there are 6 ships with 4,000 troops loitering offshore. Beaches have been heavily mined, apparently.
 
LDUred said:
There are questions over the legalities of wars in Syria and Iraq, but those regions were exceptionally volatile and conflict-ridden anyway. Just as a footnote, there are 250 mass graves in Iraq that are dating from 1979-2003, the time of Saddam's rule. I don't know how that can be blamed upon the West. Anyone who is of the Shiite faith or who is Kurdish will be glad that the world was rid of Saddam. As a hardline Sunni, Saddam did not view them as being Iraqi, so he felt that he could do with them what he wished.

Regardless of how you feel about Ukraine under its current rule, Iraq was a country where in a single year literally tens of thousands of kurds were killed using chemicals, and that is verified by independent human rights groups. I don't know how this can be compared to the situation in the Ukraine, which despite having problems with separatists, has nothing approaching that level of outright genocide of people on ethnic grounds.

Assad was arguably far worse than even Saddam. It was the world's responsibility to get rid of them and had the west done nothing, people still would have died unjustly. Again, this is not comparable to the situation in the Ukraine. Atrocities were happening in the region and would have gone on happening without intervention.

The Ukrainian conflict is an entirely different proposition and is about a hostile invading force taking over a peaceful country that has long been concerned for its safety since Soviet rule broke down.

I really don't think we do ourselves any favours by comparing like-for-like with ME wars. It merely fudges a very complex issue. In saying that, I do believe that opposition towards Western intervention often manifests as unwitting tacit support for blood-lust dictators, and their right to hold entire ethnic groups under their anvil.
Click to expand...
Well said.
 
TMDaines said:
As the Kenyan delegate to the UN noted the other day, it serves no good in a post-colonial world to continually resurrect these arguments, when former empire or former colony.

Click to expand...


Unfortunately many African nations didn't actually do what he just said.

He is right though.
 
Raoul said:
Just talked to someone in Odessa

Was told its calm at the moment, but there are 6 ships with 4,000 troops loitering offshore. Beaches have been heavily mined, apparently.
Click to expand...

Stupid question perhaps but are mines permissible warfare? Always thought they were outlawed for some reason.
 
VorZakone said:
What I don't get about these "we thought we were doing exercises" stories is...were they told they were doing exercises in Ukraine? Or were they suddenly told behind the border that hey this isn't an exercise, you're going to Ukraine. But then why would they be surprised it isn't an exercise when they were literally on Ukrainian ground?

In other words, when they entered Ukraine, did some still think it was an exercise?
Click to expand...
Did the actual rank and file know they were in Ukraine?
 
Water Melon said:
It was you who asked to stop calling him putler, which he is. You do not like it is okay. You are as free as a bird after all. I am not playing the card, I call him putler for the atrocities he has committed. The one and only cnut in recent years who invaded countries, killed people, eradicated opposition and is now playing a nukes card. Putler he is and that is how he will be remembered. By the way Putler has been in use for years now.
Click to expand...
He's an absolute cnut of the highest order without a doubt. What even is his end game here?

For years he's been placated by the West that he hates so much, and still he runs around throwing his toys out of his pram. And for what? So he can kill innocent Ukrainians and send Russian kids to their deaths? An absolute bastard.

I get the Putler name and the comparisons but, really, he deserves to own his surname. He's Putin; the maniac who commited warcrimes in Ukraine. But I get it.
 
Smores said:
Stupid question perhaps but are mines permissible warfare? Always thought they were outlawed for some reason.
Click to expand...

I believe the Ottawa Treaty governs the use of mines internationally. There are a few dozen countries that never signed it (including the US, Russia, China, India, Israel and others). Ukraine is a signatory, although I doubt anyone would begrudge them attempting to defend themselves against a foreign invasion.
 
rpitroda said:
The important matter, rather than debating whether to call him Putin or Putler.
Click to expand...
Sure mate. Can't say I am okay. Have been sleeping for 2-3 hours a day this past week. Can not watch the videos of explosions. Just camped in this thread praying fof good news. When you see the streets you know in ruins, the people you know to be dead, it kills something inside. Hope the cnut dies the most painful death possible. Or may he live for a long time in an excruciating pain. Feck him.
 
Aren't there legal differences between the use of landmines and naval mines?
 
Russia will want at least the river to flow into Crimea and control that wider region so they can make the big money from it. Difficult to see how Ukraine can hold onto the sections that Russia is really interested in.

It could've been so different for Ukraine, a big opportunity for continental Europe a decade ago but maybe it's a country too far for the trouble.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.