The War in Ukraine

In shocking news, all four regions voted to join Russia in their "referendums". Putin is expected to announce their annexation this Friday. It would mean any Ukrainian attacks on those regions could be seen as attacks on Russian territory.

It's all such bullshit.
 
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I know it’s not funny, but it made me laugh that Russia are claiming more than 99% were for the annexation.

It’s just the sheer level of “we do not give a fuck”- ery that is equally astounding and worrying. They’re totally just goading the west to start a major war.
 
The real danger now is that Putin uses the referendum as a pretext to use a small, tactical Nuclear weapon on Ukraine. That’s what he seems to keep threatening with his language that an attack on ’Russian soil’ would unleash everything at his disposal.

He seems to be gambling that the West wouldn’t retaliate in kind over an attack on a non-NATO country.
 
It really puts me in mind of historical dictatorships we would study in A Level history on the assumption that this was all "the past" and would never happen in the modern day.

Particularly i remember a task where we had to identify how the Referendum on the Austrian Anschluss may have been seen as biased. (It's a toughie! :eyes:)

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Russian swallowing up pieces of Ukraine is really no different to this.
 
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Sheena said:
I know it’s not funny, but it made me laugh that Russia are claiming more than 99% were for the annexation.

It’s just the sheer level of “we do not give a fuck”- ery that is equally astounding and worrying. They’re totally just goading the west to start a major war.
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...and who do we have in charge at a time like this?

We're doomed.
 
My history A Level was on Margaret Thatcher :( I don't think this has parallels with the Falklands. Not a penguin in sight.
 

Putin claims four new regions of Russia in illegal move​

The golden doors have opened and Vladimir Putin is now on stage making his speech.
He says the people of the four Ukrainian regions he's planning to annex have made their decision. "The results are known, well known," he says. "People made their choice - the only choice." The referendums were condemned as illegal by the West and legal experts.
"I'm sure that the Federal Assembly will support the four new regions of Russia, four new subjects of the Russian Federation... because this is the will of millions of people," Putin says to huge applause.
He goes on to say the results are the "natural right" of those who voted.
Putin now goes back into history - claiming that many generations of Russian have fought for these lands.
 
Celebrating Putin's speech hours after Russian rockets killed a humanitarian convoy in Ukraine. Wow so touching.
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Ukraine are on the verge of taking Lyman a key transport hub and ammunitions dump for the Russians in the Donbas region

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I was watching an interview with a high ranking US military type who reckons that if Putin does use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, NATO will immediately declare war and mobilise ground support exclusively in Ukraine, which he believes would effectively push the Russians out within 72 hours.

That would leave Putin with a choice to either concede or push the ultimate big red button and nuke somewhere in the West, in which case we would obviously all die. You'd have to hope those around him would not be mad enough to let that happen.

It would of course also be very difficult for Putin to use even low yield nukes in Ukraine without killing a lot of Russians.
 
Russia nuking Ukraine wouldn’t help them to win Ukraine, is the thing to remember. It’d only strengthen global resolve against them. The radiation would likely leak onto NATO territory. It could only really be deployed as a suicidal fuck you..
 
Especially if the person in charge of the big red button is mentally unstable, which is really the impression I get of poo-tin nowadays. Let's just hope he's just a plain old cunt. I keep thinking one of these days someone will want to test whether "mutually assured destruction" will really happen or whether one half will chicken out.

Dunno. Live as if it's your last years, even the pandemic taught me that. We could be either miserable/starving/broken or dead, at any moment, so enjoy the heck out of life while it's good.
 
I’m fascinated by these videos from Russian state TV. The utter divorce from reality.

The end of this one with the Belarusian commentator being bluntly told that his country doesn’t exist :basil:

 
I do wonder when Ukraine regains control of all its territory and if Putin is deposed, how does Russia row back on the nationalist rhetoric? Large swathes of the population believe it and have been fed the Russian government narratives for years. How does a country rid itself of that?

It’s a potent mix of a victim complex combined with an arrogant exceptionialism. Not too dissimilar to Brexit to be honest.
 
Not just the UK government in u-turn mode this morning...





And signs that they're dialling down the nuclear rhetoric after it went down like a bucket of cold sick (shockingly!) and did nothing to extinguish Ukrainian confidence:

Here’s more from Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov’s briefing earlier, where he said Russia favours a “balanced approach” to the issue of nuclear weapons that is not based on emotion.

It comes after Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-appointed leader of the Chechnya region, said Moscow should consider using a “low-yield” nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

After Russia confirmed the loss of its stronghold of Lyman in eastern Ukraine, Kadyrov criticised top commanders for the defeat and wrote on Telegram:

In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, right up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons.
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Asked about Kadyrov’s comments, Peskov said the Chechnyan leader and Putin ally had the right to voice his opinion, but that Russia’s military approach should not be driven by emotions.

Peskov told reporters:

This is a very emotional moment. The heads of regions have the right to express their point of view. But even in difficult moments, emotions should be kept out of any kind of assessment. So we prefer to stick to balanced, objective assessments.
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The basis for any use of nuclear weapons was set down in Russia’s nuclear doctrine, he added, under which they are permitted if nuclear weapons or another weapon of mass destruction are used against Russia, or if the Russian state faces an existential threat from conventional weapons.

Peskov added:

There can be no other considerations when it comes to this,
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The way the Chechnya leader is supporting nuclear strikes on Ukraine, as long as they’re small enough not to blow onto his front lawn…
 
Sounds like they're really 'recruiting' some quality specimens with this new mobilisation drive... :eyes:

Three Russian men who were called up to fight in the war in Ukraine have died at an army training centre in Poroshino in Russia’s Yekaterinburg region, according to Novaya Gazeta.

Russian state Duma lawmaker, Maxim Ivanov, was cited by a local news outlet as saying:

Yes, I confirm that three people have died. One of the mobilised men died from a heart attack, another one committed suicide. The third one was discharged and sent home, where he died from cirrhosis of the liver.
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Jesus. They’re literally murdering their own people. So much for Mother Russia, what exactly are these people supposed to fighting for?
 
That’s what they’ve always done best; murdering their own.
 
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