Ukraine Watch...

[Default0ptions]

“ As to the sanctions not working, Russia can't even build a car with an airbag in it let alone high tech weapons. They are having to rely on replacements from their stock of 50s and 60s weaponry.”

But they have hypersonic weapons that the US haven’t?

Yet the USA has depended on them for rocket science for decades.

Russia is a huge exporter of essential commodities on a world stage. We are dependent on being consumers and financial gimmickry.

Sanctions mean severe economic and real physical suffering for us and industries are already shutting down. The future looks grim.

The western narrative won’t admit to advancing eastward to Russia’s borders or to meddling in the Maidan uprising - but we, the west, have provoked this idiotic and unnecessary conflict.

As for ‘most of the world’ being anti Russia over this: the world is bigger than the US,UK, EU and Australia. 80% of the world’s population either couldn’t care of just wish we’d stop bombing them.

[PS_RalphW]

By all means read both sides, but the "truth", or the moral position to take, is not always down the middle. Yes Europe and all Western nations are corrupt. Bur guess what? All nations are corrupt, and some are a lot more corrupt than others. Have you travelled to Russia in the last 10 years? I admit I haven't, but I have travelled enough of the world, and met people from all over the world, to have a fair Idea of the range of human philosophies and social and religious constructs that people believe in, and people who do not agree with, nor even comprehend the abstract concept of nation states or nationality.

My conclusion is that national identity is a very practical and useful concept for controlling people and preventing anarchy and from preventing competing concepts of moral behaviour, which have evolved from practical necessity in a given environment over generations, from causing constant conflict in the modern world. I have encountered societies where individuals have been taught from birth to be subservient to an ideology or a religion or a philosophy and not to question authority or the man holding the gun.

For all its faults, the Western societies we live in are dramatically better than the current Russian state. Russia, under the autocratic and self serving control of Putin, has been taught unyielding loyalty to an invented history of a people as under dog who have been robbed of their rights to the natural bounties of this planet by undeserving and less civilised peoples who do not recognise their subseviant role in life as decreed by the agents of the divine and supreme power, and need to be put in their place and punished or otherwise disposed of as seen fit by the proper authority, led by the national hero Vladimere.

Putin is a very intelligent man, but we are all mortal and our mental powers decline with age, and many powerful people fail to accept this, or recognise that they have come to believe the lies they have told to others for decades to control them.

The end result is brutal and unjust war, far too many times in human history. No side is entirely right in human conflict, but in this one Russia is objectively and morally in the wrong, and it is increasingly evident that many of the soldiers fighting are coming to realise that what they are being told to do is wrong, or even evil.

[BritDownUnder]

Reports of renewed fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia in a long term border dispute. Armenia to ask for Russian aid.

I think this is a new, small conflict that Putin is opening up that it can easily win, and fill the media with reports of victory to deflect attention away for Ukraine.

Not sure this one will be as winnable as you think. The successful Azeri use of drones against the more ''conventionally'' armed Armenians exposed some of the flaws in Russia's later strategy in Ukraine. Russia might start getting stretched.

Much as I sympathise with the Armenians they will probably get little sympathy from the West if they expect Russia to help.

Isn't Azerbaijan also supplying some gas to Europe as well?

[kenneal - lagger]

“ As to the sanctions not working, Russia can't even build a car with an airbag in it let alone high tech weapons. They are having to rely on replacements from their stock of 50s and 60s weaponry.”

But they have hypersonic weapons that the US haven’t?

The US has had hypersonic missiles for decades as have we. All ballistic missiles are hypersonic. The US has recently successfully tested non ballistic hypersonic missiles and is highly likely to out manufacture Russia in future. Russia has a small number of hypersonic missiles which it has used for testing and showing off but it is unlikely that they will have access to the electronics needed to control them as most electronic chips are manufactured in western allied countries, Taiwan predominantly. Russia's Kinzal missile and their stealth bomber are like their famous new tank; things that have been produced in prototype form but that they cannot yet produce in quantity.

Yet the USA has depended on them for rocket science for decades.

The US was dependent on Russia for heavy lift space transport for about ten years from 8th July 2011 when the last space shuttle flew so your decades is a gross exaggeration, AGAIN! The US can now rely on private enterprise and also its own new NASA built rocket. Europe has been sending satellites into orbit regularly all that time.

Russia is a huge exporter of essential commodities on a world stage. We are dependent on being consumers and financial gimmickry.

Russia is an exporter of commodities which can be sourced elsewhere. If Russia cuts off supply of those commodities not covered by sanctions they are hurting themselves as much as any one else. While they are finding alternative markets for some of their commodities they are having to sell them at a substantial discount to those new buyers like China and India. Russia is rapidly becoming China's poodle.

Sanctions mean severe economic and real physical suffering for us and industries are already shutting down. The future looks grim.

Sanctions mean a little hardship but that is something that we should accept because Ukrainians are being raped, tortured and murdered while fighting to save Europe from Putin's deranged desire to reinstate the Unholy Soviet Empire. I presume from your stance that you are quite happy to be subsumed into a Greater Russia with all the suffering that that would involve. If you want to know what that suffering involves ask anyone from Eastern Europe. I have spoken to quite a few and their hatred of Russia is universal.

The western narrative won’t admit to advancing eastward to Russia’s borders or to meddling in the Maidan uprising - but we, the west, have provoked this idiotic and unnecessary conflict.

The west wasn't advancing. The East was retreating from Russia and begging for sanctuary from the "evil empire." The west couldn't provoke Putin's desire to reinstate the Soviet Union and to give any other motivation is give credence to Putin's original lies over the reasons for the invasion. Finland and Sweden were firmly neutral until Putin started threatening them. That is no the west advancing.

As for ‘most of the world’ being anti Russia over this: the world is bigger than the US,UK, EU and Australia. 80% of the world’s population either couldn’t care of just wish we’d stop bombing them.

Again another stupid exaggeration; the west bombing 80% of the world's population! 80% of the world's population are intent on dragging themselves through life from one day to the next and have no conception of what is going on in remote Europe.

[clv101]

US dependence on the Russian space industry goes well beyond filling in for the Shuttle. For example the Russia built RD-180 rocket engine is used in the Atlas V - used mostly by the Defence Department(!) for their satellite launches.

[Vortex2]

Sanctions mean a little hardship but that is something that we should accept because Ukrainians are being raped, tortured and murdered while fighting to save Europe from Putin's deranged desire to reinstate the Unholy Soviet Empire. I presume from your stance that you are quite happy to be subsumed into a Greater Russia with all the suffering that that would involve. If you want to know what that suffering involves ask anyone from Eastern Europe. I have spoken to quite a few and their hatred of Russia is universal.

Have you looked at the backstory to this conflict?
Real life isn't generally as black-and-white as you suggest.

[kenneal - lagger]

Sanctions mean a little hardship but that is something that we should accept because Ukrainians are being raped, tortured and murdered while fighting to save Europe from Putin's deranged desire to reinstate the Unholy Soviet Empire. I presume from your stance that you are quite happy to be subsumed into a Greater Russia with all the suffering that that would involve. If you want to know what that suffering involves ask anyone from Eastern Europe. I have spoken to quite a few and their hatred of Russia is universal.

Have you looked at the backstory to this conflict?
Real life isn't generally as black-and-white as you suggest.

Life is complicated but when a deranged, murdering psychopath sends his troops into a peaceful, none threatening country you have to make decisions about right and wrong. And when that psychopath and his supporters start making threats to use nuclear weapons if they don't get their way my decisions have been confirmed.

[Default0ptions]

Once someone starts basing their argument on such extreme emotional language discussion becomes pointless.

[invalid]

Life is complicated but when a deranged, murdering psychopath sends his troops into a peaceful, none threatening country you have to make decisions about right and wrong.

Okay, so I guess you haven't looked at the backstory...

And what do you mean with all this psychopath business, apart from that you don't like the guy? A murderer? He's a very bad evilly evil man, I see. Unfortunately, you still seem to be stuck in the binary.

[kenneal - lagger]

An academic view of the battlefield situation can be found here:- https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/ ... 2C2022.png

The background as I see it is that a pro Russian dictator, similar to Lukashenko in Belorus, was ousted in a popular revolt. There followed an election after which a government was formed. Russia then fomented a rebellion against the new government in the Donbas using a mixture of local dissidents and it's own troops. They then stole/annexed Crimea while the Ukrainian forces were concentrated on the Donbas conflict and were still operating largely according to Russian military tactics.

There was another election in which an anti corruption party, headed by Zelenski, was elected. Meanwhile, western countries had begun covertly training the Ukrainian forces. Then Russia invaded under the pretext of de-Nazifying a country run by a government with a good proportion of Jews running it. Then the reason was to protect Russian speaking people from Ukrainianisation when the President and a good proportion of the government were Russian speakers from the eastern, supposedly Russian part of the country. Then it turns out that Ukraine is not a country after all and should be wiped from the face of the earth and that the former brothers and sisters were no longer that close after all.

Then Putin finally came out with the truth that the invasion was the first part of his plan to restore the Soviet Empire to its former "glory" whether the inhabitants of the countries to be recolonised like it or not. And you wonder why I think that the man who is organising this and who had arranged the attempted killing of two opponents in this country and the attempted killing of Navalny is a murdering psychopath?

What is your version of the back story then? I'm all ears or should that be eyes?

[clv101]

Yes, Ken, but you must realise you're only telling part of the story there? I really hope you realise that!

One of the tricky things about this conflict is how few people are willing to recognise the whole, muddy, shades of grey picture. Almost everyone is bending over backwards to present the situation and black and white - it isn't, the world very rarely is. This is a shame as in this situation Russia is clearly the much greater evil here but painting the situation as B&W like you have devalues the analysis and paradoxically *opens the door* for Russian propaganda.

[PS_RalphW]

It now seems that Russia is beginning to move on to bombing civilian infrastructure now, both electricity supply, and a hydro electric dam in the south, with a view to flooding an area that might impede a Ukrainian counter attack in the south.

[adam2]

Recently saw an interesting short video from Ukraine.
A boy was playing with a toy gun, when a young man walked up to him and gave him a real handgun and a box of ammunition. The child threw the toy gun away and carefully examined the new weapon. They appeared to know the basics of firearms safety, pointing the weapon in a safe direction whilst confirming it to be empty. after a bit more examination, they loaded it and fired just one round, must not waste the ammunition.

I do not approve of children handling guns under normal conditions, but this is a war and things are different in wartime.

[Vortex2]

I do not approve of children handling guns under normal conditions,

In a gun-rich world, I feel that everyone should know how to recognise and even operate them.

[kenneal - lagger]

Yes, Ken, but you must realise you're only telling part of the story there? I really hope you realise that!

One of the tricky things about this conflict is how few people are willing to recognise the whole, muddy, shades of grey picture. Almost everyone is bending over backwards to present the situation and black and white - it isn't, the world very rarely is. This is a shame as in this situation Russia is clearly the much greater evil here but painting the situation as B&W like you have devalues the analysis and paradoxically *opens the door* for Russian propaganda.

People are telling me that the situation is muddy or shades of grey but no one has told me why. Where is my "analysis" above wrong or not wholly correct? Which bits should be greyed or muddied or have I left anything out?

That great bit of Russian kit, a Kinzhal hypersonic missile crashed in Stavropol, Russia on its way to kill someone in Ukraine. Apparently they haven't got many so they have saved them for things like attacking civilian targets in Zelenski's home town in revenge for the huge gains the Ukrainians have made in the last week or so.
https://gagadget.com/en/167307-the-newe ... and-is-no/