Mad feckers are panicking less than people over here where when the invasion started.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
- Thread starter Wednesday at Stoke
- Start date
Mad feckers are panicking less than people over here where when the invasion started.
The coffee had burnt down to crisps at this point and he still haven’t smelled it. I wouldn’t bet on Putin behaving rationally at this point, he has already crossed the point of no-return.
Well, let's hope we don't get there.As a Russian citizen and speaker of the language, do you notice any change his manner or demeanour in the last few months? Everybody in the west is going on about how he seems crazy now compared to before, but it's really hard to tell if you don't speak the language and can't identify his tone of voice.
Nukes are the only leverage Putin still has, since as you say, his invasion hasn't been successful as of yet and the economic pain back home will far outweigh the warped glory (or lack thereof) of conquering a neighboring country.
I am pretty sure he is bluffing. The facts are that he has invaded a sovereign country, denies its citizens their national identityband sovereignity. The cnut is killing people, the west are imposing sanctions without stepping on Ukraine soil. Now he is playing his card again to lift sanctions. Not gonna happen. What if some other psycopath starts threatening with nukes too. The world is united in this crisis, you do not give bunkergnome any more ground.
Exactly my point. The West tries to overthrow Russian leading parties and Russia does the opposite. Back and forth it goes
Any political rivals ascending these days? Or even just an alternative emerging or he still has the full support of government/oligarchs?
Not really, he just doesn’t speak publicly all that often. All of this anti-historical nonsense about Ukraine was formulated by him in a few articles that he has published some time before. But it reads a bit different once you have a military invasion directly following it.
The only significant difference in his behavior was him humiliating his own goons on the Security council — it’s not a new thing per se but he had rarely lashed out on his closer circle, usually he’d act like that with less important ministers/governors after some public feck up.
Agree,this is exactly why it is the time to stand up to him. It is difficult enough to deal with a rational fecker waiving his nuclear cudgel around, it is absolutely not possible to give in to a mad one.
Mostly. The far north is mountainous, but as part of the Kurdish autonomous region didn’t pose any problems for American troops in 2003, in contrast to the many problems it posed for British troops after the First World War and for Baghdad after independence.
Most of the rest of the country to the south is dominated by the Euphrates and Tigris river valleys along which the bulk of the population live. The two rivers meet in the far south to create the Shatt al-Arab and adjacent marshes. The large tribal area between Baghdad and Basra was the heart of the revolt of 1920 which threatened British rule and has sporadically resisted central authority imposed from Baghdad, whether by the Ba’th or the Americans. However the al Qaeda/IS insurgencies of the 2000s and 2010s were largely based to the west and north of Baghdad.
I don’t think the desert terrain which lies beyond the irrigated lands astride the river valleys has posed British and American militaries in Iraq as many problems as tribally-organized resistance based in villages and towns in those irrigated areas themselves.
Iraq war has been the most consequential in that timeframe. Remains to be seen if this crisis has a greater impact.
This is the hope.
NATO should still press for talks to resolve this.
No one wins otherwise.
A single typical nuke of those deployed right now can't wipe a major city either. Also, it doesn't make areas uninhabitable for large periods- see Hiroshima. It actually depends on the way it is configured to detonate. If it is from an air blast, the shock wave impact is maximum, but the fallout is minimised. A ground blast, on the other hand, limits the blast radius but increases the fallout due to all the ground debris becoming radioactive and being launched over great distances.
Anyone watching the Klitschko brothers interview on the BBC? Brave guys, I hope they get through this.
All NATO have been doing thus far is holding talks. Those talks laster for hours and days. At the end, Putin is just going on with his plans.
Actually what's happening now is not at all Putins plan.
No. The system is built in a way that there are no potential rivals, anyone who possesses any such threat is ostracized and demoted (if not worse). Like the character assassination of Medvedev, who at some point of his “presidency” started to look like a more liberal alternative to Putin… or Sergey Ivanov, who, for a long time was seemingly groomed as a potential successor to Putin… who is now the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation on the Issues of Environmental Activities, Ecology and Transport.
The threats from without are dealt with even more efficiently. Khodorkovsky had served what, a 10 year prison sentence? Nemtsov was killed, although not likely by Putin’s direct order. Navalny was poisoned & later imprisoned with new bogus charges being invented one after another.
It puts a bad taste in my mouth if I'm honest. People like Usyk flying in and taking pictures holding guns and smiling for the Gram while the actual Ukrainian military is fighting tooth and nail. PR at its finest.
NATO need to give Putin a win which he can sell to his own insane ego. The economic pressures at this stage will only make him double down.
Haven't a clue what you're on about there.
Do you see Navalny’s call to arms having an effect? Protesting at 7pm every weekday, 2pm every weekend day, etc? It’s getting hard to read whether people are actually protesting in Russia now with media clamping down.
Not exactly breaking news and a very bad source.
But Russia do have options here, I don't buy the whole sanctions thing. The fact that Russia and China have both dramatically reduced their holdings of foreign currency/moving it to their own central banks and the increase in buying physical gold, point to both of them coming up with a way to create their own 'Eastern' economy. If they get the Gulf states, Iran, India and Brazil enrolled, the sanctions will have done more damage to the West than good.
They've gone there to fight and will do, if they haven't already. It's not just some PR opportunity.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Nah, not happening. And rightly so.
Vitali is the mayor of Kyiv. He and Vlad have been there the entire time.
Usyk has gone back to enlist and is in the equivalent of the territorial army. That means staying and defending a particular territory, maybe never fighting if the war doesn’t reach you, and not just being sent to the front lines where the professionals are.
Vitali Klitschko is one of the more prominent politicians in Ukraine and Mayor of Kyiv.
Might want to rethink that post.
The Klitschkos are somewhat different. But it's almost like other celebs have seen the praise that has rightfully been given to Vitali and now want a bit of it.
So can this be seen as China assisting russia
Well that's the least worst option IMO.
Any news on diplomatic negotiations? Supposed to be today right?
I imagine what was driving them was having no regrets about not having done their part if the worst happens, rather than IG content.
I hardly doubt people like the Sheriff Tiraspol manager wanted to follow up a historic win at Bernabeu by enhancing his brand with a spell in the territorial defences.
Funny when you think we've now got a reason to shit ourselves.
Russia's central bank reserves are the highest they have ever been and they have been building them up ever since 2014. 20% is in Gold that's worthless if nobody will buy it from you, and the rest is in money market instruments. Just under 15% of that is in China, the rest is in the West. In other words, Russia is screwed by the sanctions and can access about a third of its reserves.
Why? Is the evacuation done on humanitarian or racist grounds?
This is starting to sound like you're trying to hold civilians from other nationalities hostage for your benefit, which isn't right.
Could be seen as China capitalising on the situation maybe