Happy Tues! ☀️ Just remember UK govt COVID decisions are now driven by catching headlines & not in the interests of the health & well-being of the population. We can both recognize need to open up economy & society using vaccines/testing and seriousness of COVID as a disease.
It will be the correct approach once Nicola advocates it, until then this “independent” (sic) “expert” (sic) will continue taking pot shots at the U.K. government, unlike any of her peers in the rest of the U.K.
No answer to her hypocrisy. She’s just an SNP shill now.
Blackford's fury in the HOC at the thought HMG will not continue funding Scotland (and Wales) testing regime confirmed just how dependent they have been on the Treasury and they now realise they will need to find their own funding if they want to continue their own restrictions
If Blackford is one of the leading lights in the SNP then they have a real dearth of talent. He was ranting and raving, almost incoherent. His face was beetroot red. He looked like an angry landowner who’d discovered people camping on his land and was demanding they leave.
The Dildo Knapper's Gazette wants to send me write about flintwork in some corner of Europe, Australia or north America that they feel has been unjustly neglected by travellers
Does anyone have any ideas?
I've just been looking at the list of national parks in Europe for some inspiration. There are 500 or more, most of which I've barely or never heard of
And so much more. Has anyone got a favourite secret corner of Europe?
Barnsley. I'm sure the average Torygraph reader would be fascinated by your tales of adventures in Wombwell.
Jamund is beautiful, as is the rest of Rügen, amazing beaches, fascinating Nazi holiday architecture in Prora etc. But it is not exactly neglected, it's one of the most popular holiday destinations for Germans. Not many foreigners apart from Scandinavians, Poles and Russians. No Brits, it's true.
Less visited are Meck-Pomm's Hanseatic towns, I recommend Stralsund and Wismar.
I'm in Gdańsk in June and was looking for a way of making it a longer trip. But one option is German Pomerania, then entering Poland at Swinoujscie and maybe looking for V2 launch sites and U boat pens.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
We're in agreement then. Covid makes people sick, they take time off. The good news is that Omicron doesn't make you very sick, so it isn't for weeks.
This isn't being done for the nation's health but so that Johnson keeps his right wingers happy. They're more interested in freedom at any cost, including poor people's lives. = Capitalism.
As for Russia, I suspect Putin will stop with these incursions into eastern Ukraine but we shall see. The fact that he waited until the Olympics closed is not a coincidence imho. The new world axis is Putin-Xi and in many ways this kind of incursion is VERY much in the style of China.
Didn't you say it was all scaremongering and this wouldn't happen?
I don't see what is left-wing about granting the state the power to put people under house arrest if they are infected by a virus that widespread vaccination renders only about as deadly as seasonal influenza. As a left-winger I'm opposed to such authoritarianism - why aren't you?
The basis of left-wing support for state power has always been to use it against the strong in order to protect the weak. In this context that would mean things like imposing laws on minimum sick pay rates on large companies, to cover employees on zero-hour contracts, for example, and not imprisoning those workers in their own homes.
Power (and heating) back yesterday after Eunice. Still no tinterwebs but at least there’s now the usual patchy cell coverage again and functioning traffic lights. Some around me lost water too as the pumping station lost its power. Strikes me that the London metros running the country have little idea what’s going on outside the M25.
On topic, it feels quaint to me that anyone is even still talking about covid anymore, much less recommending statutes and criminal sanctions to contain it. HM ERII has it at 95 and it barely warrants a mention. Should tell you everything.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
@A1istair·8m Nothing to offer but blood sweat and toil. God save Ukraine. 🙏
They need all that spirit, and even more.
The Ukrainians clearly have right on their side in this case, but it has to be said that the World War II history of Ukraine is rather different from that. I'm not sure that ahistorical connections will help deter Putin from going further, in this case.
In his own mind, he imagines himself as the WWII-aliied USSR against the Nazi-sympathetic parts of Ukraine, that acquiesced in the Nazi's plans for the Russians. This, too, is exaggerated and ahistorical, but convenient for him.
In Galicia, the Ukrainians were encouraged to see themselves as ethnically different by the Nazis, and joined the SS. This is one reason not previously mentioned here why a modern centre-left German politician like Scholz, keeps a noticeable distance from some of the stronger rhetoric coming from the Ukrainian Right.
Some Ukrainians certainly see themselves as Europeans, and the Russians as Asiatics.
But, inasmuch as any white European can be a different ethnicity from another, the Ukrainians are different to the Russians. As different as the Poles, for example. Different language, and completely different history. Lviv, for example, was Polish, then Austrian, then Polish again, then only Russian since 1945. It used to be a Polish-majority city, until Stalin ethnically cleansed it and sent the Poles to live in Breslau which he had just conquered.
The war in the East was incredibly brutal, and incredibly messy, and people had to choose between Nazism and Stalin. They had no other option. We would rather they had sided with our ally rather than our enemy, but I see little difference between the two.
I don’t think any sane person would suggest that WWII as it occurred in Eastern Europe didn’t involve incredibly difficult decisions, ones that we with our arses planted in comfortable armchairs can barely comprehend. However it’s modern Ukrainians dressing up in SS Galician Division uniforms and proudly commemorating said division’s activities that are more problematic. To be clear I think anyone who enjoys dressing up in SS uniforms is well dodgy, but at least our UK gimps have to pretend they’re only there for the reenactment and not massively getting off on it.
Actually none of the other reenactors like them. They tend to get tripped over, beer spilled etc. We didn't mind people dressing as Wehrmacht, after all you need an enemy, but SS seemed beyond the pale, especially as it is still living memory. And they all took it rather too seriously.
Most countries have their right-wing nutters, Russia more than most.
If Nord Stream 2 isn't 100% dead then the Germans have sold their souls.
Genuine question - how easy will it be for European countries to stop using Russian gas and find alternative sources? Just wondering how on the tit we are despite the posturing towards the gas man...
There were quite a few stories about the US organising contingencies for LNG deliveries to plug the gap a few weeks ago, and spring is starting to get into its stride - so I would hope that they would be quite well covered for the rest of this winter (albeit at a special price).
Then it's a matter of doing whatever it takes to prepare for next winter.
Happy Tues! ☀️ Just remember UK govt COVID decisions are now driven by catching headlines & not in the interests of the health & well-being of the population. We can both recognize need to open up economy & society using vaccines/testing and seriousness of COVID as a disease.
It will be the correct approach once Nicola advocates it, until then this “independent” (sic) “expert” (sic) will continue taking pot shots at the U.K. government, unlike any of her peers in the rest of the U.K.
No answer to her hypocrisy. She’s just an SNP shill now.
Blackford's fury in the HOC at the thought HMG will not continue funding Scotland (and Wales) testing regime confirmed just how dependent they have been on the Treasury and they now realise they will need to find their own funding if they want to continue their own restrictions
If Blackford is one of the leading lights in the SNP then they have a real dearth of talent. He was ranting and raving, almost incoherent. His face was beetroot red. He looked like an angry landowner who’d discovered people camping on his land and was demanding they leave.
I think he is rather good. Whether I agree with him or not he always makes an impact on me. He is passionate and often gets a point over much better than the rest of the house.
That's why all the hype about lifting of restrictions.
Because many of those people who really dislike the government, are trying to frame any good news as purely a distraction from the only thing we should be talking about - whether the PM’s office birthday cake from two years ago constituted a “party”.
Mr. Pioneers, be a lot easier if Merkel hadn't binned nuclear just in case Germany started suffering earthquakes and tsunamis...
The bit that I liked were politicians in Germany who literally went
- Natural gas is a sensible intermediate step to a green future - Nothing wrong with Nordstream2 - LNG import terminals for ships are the Devil's work! insanely dangerous! and must be banned! From neighbouring countries, even.
Happy Tues! ☀️ Just remember UK govt COVID decisions are now driven by catching headlines & not in the interests of the health & well-being of the population. We can both recognize need to open up economy & society using vaccines/testing and seriousness of COVID as a disease.
It will be the correct approach once Nicola advocates it, until then this “independent” (sic) “expert” (sic) will continue taking pot shots at the U.K. government, unlike any of her peers in the rest of the U.K.
No answer to her hypocrisy. She’s just an SNP shill now.
Blackford's fury in the HOC at the thought HMG will not continue funding Scotland (and Wales) testing regime confirmed just how dependent they have been on the Treasury and they now realise they will need to find their own funding if they want to continue their own restrictions
My impression is that Scotland has been testing at a lower rate than England throughout the pandemic (and consequently has had a higher positivity rate). That would imply that they've managed to use some of the money they received as Barnett-consequentials of England's Covid testing to spend on other things. I'd suspect that the end of that gravy train is the real cause of their displeasure.
If Nord Stream 2 isn't 100% dead then the Germans have sold their souls.
Genuine question - how easy will it be for European countries to stop using Russian gas and find alternative sources? Just wondering how on the tit we are despite the posturing towards the gas man...
There is plenty of gas in other parts of the world and underground. The well funded green lobby will be doing their best to ensure we don’t access it. We should be pushing for more renewables but we need fossil fuels for the time being.
Yeah, I think the harsh reality is that Russian gas is cheap so we liked it. There is plenty of oil and gas we can still get, but it is increasingly remote and increasingly hard to reach. Which makes it expensive. I know there have been a lot of smaller exploration companies in UK waters who have found deposits but its isn't commercially viable to get it. So unless heightened gas and oil prices change the equations, we may need other solutions.
With so much profit still being made by the energy giants I am not suggesting public subsidy. But a regulatory framework where partnerships between the little companies exploring and the mega giants who can pay for it may be needed.
We also need to tone down the abuse hurled at the industry. Yes we need to transition to renewables. But we still need oil and gas and that isn't about to change. Branding Shell etc evil because they sell stuff we need has always felt counter-productive.
It’s far from a great question. Restrictions being lifted now are fine. In line with other nations.
The great questions are
- should they ever have been imposed in the first place, given how illiberal, counter-productive, ineffective and hypocrtical they are? - why are we keeping so many travel restrictions, the most counter-productive and least effective of the lot?
Yes, they are, but unlikely to ever be asked. The first one especially in light of the party so called scandal.
The big question that needs answering in any enquiry is whether the Swedes called this right, and we called it wrong. In hindsight, it seems so.
But I expect all any enquiry (and the media reporting of it especially) will focus on was whether lockdown was called "too late" as opposed to whether it should have even been called in the first place.
Lockdowns are always a failure of more conventional disease control methods. The Swedes didn't ignore it though, they took quite extensive measures short of lockdown.
South Korea has rather a lot of Omicron now but has perhaps the most effective covid record amongst mid sised nations, despite being hit quite early on. They never had a true lockdown either, though did close some nightclubs etc.
Societies with trust in government and in each other seemed to cope better.
I had two good friends who identified as Yugoslav.
One was from Vojvodina, and was part Croat, part Serb. He told me confidently that war will not happen in Yugoslavia. Everyone has much more in common than separates them. After the Way, he was very sad, and he still calls himself a Yugoslav. It was a good country, he said, I was proud of it as a nation of all the Slavs. He now lives in Edinburgh.
The second friend was part Serb, part Hungarian, part Jewish. He told me confidently that there is no difference between these peoples, they speak mutually intelligible versions of the same language. There will not be a war. He now lives in Montreal, Canada.
The lesson is that the forces of nationalism in these multi-ethnic Eastern European countries are just incredibly powerful.
Yugoslavia could not withstand them, and it had a much longer history as a stable, independent, multi-ethnic country than the present-day Ukraine.
The other lesson is that people who think like my friends leave. They did not stay in Yugoslavia. Like-minded people will not stay in the present-day Ukraine. Because both sides are now increasingly controlled by extremists.
I am not sure whether there ever was a time that Stalin's boundaries of the Ukraine could be saved, but that time is long past.
The boundaries of a new Ukraine need to be sorted.
I wanted them sorted through plebiscites. They will now be sorted through force.
If Nord Stream 2 isn't 100% dead then the Germans have sold their souls.
Genuine question - how easy will it be for European countries to stop using Russian gas and find alternative sources? Just wondering how on the tit we are despite the posturing towards the gas man...
There were quite a few stories about the US organising contingencies for LNG deliveries to plug the gap a few weeks ago, and spring is starting to get into its stride - so I would hope that they would be quite well covered for the rest of this winter (albeit at a special price).
Then it's a matter of doing whatever it takes to prepare for next winter.
The considered view of industry is that energy sanctions remain highly unlikely. And they will be the ones advising policy makers on the impact of doing so.
I would think it’s highly unlikely that Putin would pull the plug himself. So we’ll see Russia formalise its earlier bites out of the Ukrainian peach, perhaps another clumsy nibble on top. And then business as usual between the kleptocrats and British politicians in time for party conference season.
@A1istair·8m Nothing to offer but blood sweat and toil. God save Ukraine. 🙏
They need all that spirit, and even more.
The Ukrainians clearly have right on their side in this case, but it has to be said that the World War II history of Ukraine is rather different from that. I'm not sure that ahistorical connections will help deter Putin from going further, in this case.
In his own mind, he imagines himself as the WWII-aliied USSR against the Nazi-sympathetic parts of Ukraine, that acquiesced in the Nazi's plans for the Russians. This, too, is exaggerated and ahistorical, but convenient for him.
In Galicia, the Ukrainians were encouraged to see themselves as ethnically different by the Nazis, and joined the SS. This is one reason not previously mentioned here why a modern centre-left German politician like Scholz, keeps a noticeable distance from some of the stronger rhetoric coming from the Ukrainian Right.
Some Ukrainians certainly see themselves as Europeans, and the Russians as Asiatics.
But, inasmuch as any white European can be a different ethnicity from another, the Ukrainians are different to the Russians. As different as the Poles, for example. Different language, and completely different history. Lviv, for example, was Polish, then Austrian, then Polish again, then only Russian since 1945. It used to be a Polish-majority city, until Stalin ethnically cleansed it and sent the Poles to live in Breslau which he had just conquered.
The war in the East was incredibly brutal, and incredibly messy, and people had to choose between Nazism and Stalin. They had no other option. We would rather they had sided with our ally rather than our enemy, but I see little difference between the two.
Yes, but some did rather enthusiastically. The genocide at Babi Yar was by Ukranian collaborators.
I am greatly sympathetic to the Ukranian plight, but history is very messy, and within living memory in these parts.
Ukrainian Auxiliary Police certainly took part at Babyn Yar but it was led by Sonderkommando death squads.
A chilling place. The fact that it's quite a nice park, and on the Metro, somehow brings it home.
One striking thing about Sobibor was that it was run by a couple of dozen Germans. Most of the guards were Ukranian. Similar in the massacres in the Baltic States.
Happy Tues! ☀️ Just remember UK govt COVID decisions are now driven by catching headlines & not in the interests of the health & well-being of the population. We can both recognize need to open up economy & society using vaccines/testing and seriousness of COVID as a disease.
It will be the correct approach once Nicola advocates it, until then this “independent” (sic) “expert” (sic) will continue taking pot shots at the U.K. government, unlike any of her peers in the rest of the U.K.
No answer to her hypocrisy. She’s just an SNP shill now.
Blackford's fury in the HOC at the thought HMG will not continue funding Scotland (and Wales) testing regime confirmed just how dependent they have been on the Treasury and they now realise they will need to find their own funding if they want to continue their own restrictions
My impression is that Scotland has been testing at a lower rate than England throughout the pandemic (and consequently has had a higher positivity rate). That would imply that they've managed to use some of the money they received as Barnett-consequentials of England's Covid testing to spend on other things. I'd suspect that the end of that gravy train is the real cause of their displeasure.
Golly, that’s a lot of ‘my impression’, ‘that would imply’ and ‘I’d suspect’. Anything more concrete?
As the Russian army marches into Ukraine, I hope the PB scum that accused everyone demanding more serious ultimatums of warmongering see what they have done. You are all human filth.
I've been called worse. Problem for you is that 4 years in local government hardened me to not care one little bit about jibes thrown by people I don't respect. And I still don't see what point there is in NATO sabre-rattling. We will stop him financially and diplomatically, not by war.
We have had sanctions on Russia and Russian individuals for years. They have not stopped the aggression. What makes you so certain that stronger sanctions will stop Russian aggression?
Yes, but you haven't described what you would do differently. Would you dispatch our armoured division there?
If Nord Stream 2 isn't 100% dead then the Germans have sold their souls.
Genuine question - how easy will it be for European countries to stop using Russian gas and find alternative sources? Just wondering how on the tit we are despite the posturing towards the gas man...
There were quite a few stories about the US organising contingencies for LNG deliveries to plug the gap a few weeks ago, and spring is starting to get into its stride - so I would hope that they would be quite well covered for the rest of this winter (albeit at a special price).
Then it's a matter of doing whatever it takes to prepare for next winter.
The considered view of industry is that energy sanctions remain highly unlikely. And they will be the ones advising policy makers on the impact of doing so.
I would think it’s highly unlikely that Putin would pull the plug himself. So we’ll see Russia formalise its earlier bites out of the Ukrainian peach, perhaps another clumsy nibble on top. And then business as usual between the kleptocrats and British politicians in time for party conference season.
The Tories won't give up their Russian money, why should they? Its not like taking donations from Russian oligarchs has anything to do with sanctioning Russian oligarchs is it?
Meanwhile we're heading into the new F1 season with a team whose cars are parading round draped in the Russian flag with Russian Oligarch company branding and the son of said Oligarch crashing randomly into things. Should not F1 ban all of this?
As the Russian army marches into Ukraine, I hope the PB scum that accused everyone demanding more serious ultimatums of warmongering see what they have done. You are all human filth.
I've been called worse. Problem for you is that 4 years in local government hardened me to not care one little bit about jibes thrown by people I don't respect. And I still don't see what point there is in NATO sabre-rattling. We will stop him financially and diplomatically, not by war.
We have had sanctions on Russia and Russian individuals for years. They have not stopped the aggression. What makes you so certain that stronger sanctions will stop Russian aggression?
Yes, but you haven't described what you would do differently. Would you dispatch our armoured division there?
The division of bellicose armchair generals on pb.com should be despatched to the Dnieper immediately.
Happy Tues! ☀️ Just remember UK govt COVID decisions are now driven by catching headlines & not in the interests of the health & well-being of the population. We can both recognize need to open up economy & society using vaccines/testing and seriousness of COVID as a disease.
It will be the correct approach once Nicola advocates it, until then this “independent” (sic) “expert” (sic) will continue taking pot shots at the U.K. government, unlike any of her peers in the rest of the U.K.
No answer to her hypocrisy. She’s just an SNP shill now.
Blackford's fury in the HOC at the thought HMG will not continue funding Scotland (and Wales) testing regime confirmed just how dependent they have been on the Treasury and they now realise they will need to find their own funding if they want to continue their own restrictions
My impression is that Scotland has been testing at a lower rate than England throughout the pandemic (and consequently has had a higher positivity rate). That would imply that they've managed to use some of the money they received as Barnett-consequentials of England's Covid testing to spend on other things. I'd suspect that the end of that gravy train is the real cause of their displeasure.
Golly, that’s a lot of ‘my impression’, ‘that would imply’ and ‘I’d suspect’. Anything more concrete?
I think your snide reaction shows a palpable hit was scored....
This isn't being done for the nation's health but so that Johnson keeps his right wingers happy. They're more interested in freedom at any cost, including poor people's lives. = Capitalism.
As for Russia, I suspect Putin will stop with these incursions into eastern Ukraine but we shall see. The fact that he waited until the Olympics closed is not a coincidence imho. The new world axis is Putin-Xi and in many ways this kind of incursion is VERY much in the style of China.
Didn't you say it was all scaremongering and this wouldn't happen?
I think the US-UK have been overplaying it, yes.
I still don't think Putin will invade the rest of Ukraine. His 'peacekeeping' operation in the separatist states is pure State China of course.
He will keep the troops there for quite some time, he has the west where he wants them, he has a close alliance now with China, he has done enough not to lose face. For Putin this is a big win.
If he did invade the rest of Ukraine I think it would be a very different story.
Meanwhile expect masses of overhyped rhetoric and war talk from Johnson today. Lots of talk of 'invasion' (it isn't really). Anything to channel the ghost of Winston and desperately re-invoke the tory tabloids into Falklands spirit.
It won't work because whilst this is really grim and Putin stinks, it's not at the moment going to draw in UK citizens.
N.B. I dislike Vladimir Putin as much as I dislike Jeremy Corbyn. I'm an anti-state anti-capitalist person who believes in wilding. I accept this makes me unconventional to the left-right simplistic categories on here but spare me the 'you're in love with Vladimir' guff, ta.
As the Russian army marches into Ukraine, I hope the PB scum that accused everyone demanding more serious ultimatums of warmongering see what they have done. You are all human filth.
I've been called worse. Problem for you is that 4 years in local government hardened me to not care one little bit about jibes thrown by people I don't respect. And I still don't see what point there is in NATO sabre-rattling. We will stop him financially and diplomatically, not by war.
We have had sanctions on Russia and Russian individuals for years. They have not stopped the aggression. What makes you so certain that stronger sanctions will stop Russian aggression?
Yes, but you haven't described what you would do differently. Would you dispatch our armoured division there?
Yebbut if we *theaten* to deploy them that means Putin needs to consider that his aggression could trigger a war with the west.
Except that it doesn't. NATO is not going to engage in WWIII over Ukraine. We know it. Putin knows it. Even the Ukranians know it. So our postured deployment would just be waved off by Putin.
This isn't being done for the nation's health but so that Johnson keeps his right wingers happy. They're more interested in freedom at any cost, including poor people's lives. = Capitalism.
As for Russia, I suspect Putin will stop with these incursions into eastern Ukraine but we shall see. The fact that he waited until the Olympics closed is not a coincidence imho. The new world axis is Putin-Xi and in many ways this kind of incursion is VERY much in the style of China.
Didn't you say it was all scaremongering and this wouldn't happen?
I don't see what is left-wing about granting the state the power to put people under house arrest if they are infected by a virus that widespread vaccination renders only about as deadly as seasonal influenza. As a left-winger I'm opposed to such authoritarianism - why aren't you?
The basis of left-wing support for state power has always been to use it against the strong in order to protect the weak. In this context that would mean things like imposing laws on minimum sick pay rates on large companies, to cover employees on zero-hour contracts, for example, and not imprisoning those workers in their own homes.
I find the faith that the Power of The State will only be used for Good by the Good Guys, charming.
I attended a business conference at a hotel in Tallinn last night, and afterwards we were having a coffee in the hotel lobby when the Putin speech came on CNN.
The Estonians and Georgians in our party were very grim faced indeed. This is no longer about Ukraine.
Essentially Putin´s angry and rambling discourse showed that Putin demands that all places previously under Soviet rule should return to the the Kremlin. In his demented world view, any resistance will be proof that NATO is protecting their "puppets" and therefore Russia has the right to unleash attacks directly against any NATO state, and not just the eastern members.
The spectacle of the tyrant lecturing his henchmen (at a 10 metre distance) was so sinister as to be almost comical, but not one of us was laughing. It is as we feared, the demands of the Kremlin regime can only lead to war.
I was talking to a friend, the editor of one of the major newspapers here. Putin is serious, but he is also mad. He will use all the resources at his disposal, including nuclear in order to recreate the disaster of the past, which in his mind is "Soviet glory". A fair estimate of the victims of Communist terror is over 20 million dead, and the tortured and maimed in body and spirit includes more or less anyone who endured Soviet power, including, of course runty little mad Vova from the wrong side of the tracks in Leningrad. In Estonia the population fell by a third from the beginning of the Soviet occupation in 1940 until the 1960s. Women and children in their thousands were put on cattle carts and sent to the camps, many of the men were simply shot. My friend like others whose family were taken, was very shaken. There is no ambiguity about what the tyrant now wants, and thousands and even millions of people are going to die because of it.
This is no longer about sanctions. If we are to stop this, we actually have to fight. Economic sanctions, no matter how crippling, will not work. We must now recognise that the defeat of Ukraine must be prevented by all means possible. The war is coming to us, whatever we do, so far better that the Russian forces are defeated in Donetsk than Dresden or Dover. The Russian naval exercise off Ireland is to cut the subsea communications cables, an attack that could cost trillions. Kremlin planning includes this, and this is NOT about just Ukraine.
The diplomats amongst us pointed out that both the UK and France, the current EU President, have been playing a well coodinated good cop/bad cop process, but, as they said, that only works when dealing with the sane. The calls for restraint made by China were greeted with some approval, "at least the Chinese are rational".
Neverthless we were a very sombre party. I have not slept well.
We are very scared, but determined. My friends in the Militia are expecting call ups and if it comes to it, the Baltic will fight to defend themselves, together with the NATO allies based here.
Will he voluntarily hand over the millions in donations to the police? Or even clearly state that the party centrally and its MPs / Lords will not take another penny from Russia?
If Nord Stream 2 isn't 100% dead then the Germans have sold their souls.
Genuine question - how easy will it be for European countries to stop using Russian gas and find alternative sources? Just wondering how on the tit we are despite the posturing towards the gas man...
There is plenty of gas in other parts of the world and underground. The well funded green lobby will be doing their best to ensure we don’t access it. We should be pushing for more renewables but we need fossil fuels for the time being.
Yeah, I think the harsh reality is that Russian gas is cheap so we liked it. There is plenty of oil and gas we can still get, but it is increasingly remote and increasingly hard to reach. Which makes it expensive. I know there have been a lot of smaller exploration companies in UK waters who have found deposits but its isn't commercially viable to get it. So unless heightened gas and oil prices change the equations, we may need other solutions.
With so much profit still being made by the energy giants I am not suggesting public subsidy. But a regulatory framework where partnerships between the little companies exploring and the mega giants who can pay for it may be needed.
We also need to tone down the abuse hurled at the industry. Yes we need to transition to renewables. But we still need oil and gas and that isn't about to change. Branding Shell etc evil because they sell stuff we need has always felt counter-productive.
Well the energy companies are making great profits at the moment but go back 12 months and they were making thumping losses. Labours windfall,tax idea may be good politics but it’s stupid and doesn’t help their claims to be the party of business.
Shell and BP, as well as other oils and gas businesses, are at the forefront of the switch to renewables. They have to be for their long term future. Demonising them is pointless.
As for Russian gas, it’s not cheap now. Our policy on gas has been incredibly short sighted.
I had two good friends who identified as Yugoslav.
One was from Vojvodina, and was part Croat, part Serb. He told me confidently that war will not happen in Yugoslavia. Everyone has much more in common than separates them. After the Way, he was very sad, and he still calls himself a Yugoslav. It was a good country, he said, I was proud of it as a nation of all the Slavs. He now lives in Edinburgh.
The second friend was part Serb, part Hungarian, part Jewish. He told me confidently that there is no difference between these peoples, they speak mutually intelligible versions of the same language. There will not be a war. He now lives in Montreal, Canada.
The lesson is that the forces of nationalism in these multi-ethnic Eastern European countries are just incredibly powerful.
Yugoslavia could not withstand them, and it had a much longer history as a stable, independent, multi-ethnic country than the present-day Ukraine.
The other lesson is that people who think like my friends leave. They did not stay in Yugoslavia. Like-minded people will not stay in the present-day Ukraine. Because both sides are now increasingly controlled by extremists.
I am not sure whether there ever was a time that Stalin's boundaries of the Ukraine could be saved, but that time is long past.
The boundaries of a new Ukraine need to be sorted.
I wanted them sorted through plebiscites. They will now be sorted through force.
Your points about Yugoslavia are well made, but to suggest that plebiscites were in any way possible since the annexation of Crimea is, I think, unrealistic.
And I don't think you can so simply equate Ukraine with Yugoslavia.
@A1istair·8m Nothing to offer but blood sweat and toil. God save Ukraine. 🙏
They need all that spirit, and even more.
The Ukrainians clearly have right on their side in this case, but it has to be said that the World War II history of Ukraine is rather different from that. I'm not sure that ahistorical connections will help deter Putin from going further, in this case.
In his own mind, he imagines himself as the WWII-aliied USSR against the Nazi-sympathetic parts of Ukraine, that acquiesced in the Nazi's plans for the Russians. This, too, is exaggerated and ahistorical, but convenient for him.
In Galicia, the Ukrainians were encouraged to see themselves as ethnically different by the Nazis, and joined the SS. This is one reason not previously mentioned here why a modern centre-left German politician like Scholz, keeps a noticeable distance from some of the stronger rhetoric coming from the Ukrainian Right.
Some Ukrainians certainly see themselves as Europeans, and the Russians as Asiatics.
But, inasmuch as any white European can be a different ethnicity from another, the Ukrainians are different to the Russians. As different as the Poles, for example. Different language, and completely different history. Lviv, for example, was Polish, then Austrian, then Polish again, then only Russian since 1945. It used to be a Polish-majority city, until Stalin ethnically cleansed it and sent the Poles to live in Breslau which he had just conquered.
The war in the East was incredibly brutal, and incredibly messy, and people had to choose between Nazism and Stalin. They had no other option. We would rather they had sided with our ally rather than our enemy, but I see little difference between the two.
Breslau, of course, is now known as Wroclow and the descendants of the German speakers/ ethnic Germans who lived there prior to 1945 now live, primarily, in what was West Germany.
The sanctions that the UK would need to apply to hurt Putin will not be imposed because they will hurt too many people and institutions in politics, the law, the City, business, education, etc. We will continue to enable him as a result. It is shameful, but it’s the reality.
Happy Tues! ☀️ Just remember UK govt COVID decisions are now driven by catching headlines & not in the interests of the health & well-being of the population. We can both recognize need to open up economy & society using vaccines/testing and seriousness of COVID as a disease.
It will be the correct approach once Nicola advocates it, until then this “independent” (sic) “expert” (sic) will continue taking pot shots at the U.K. government, unlike any of her peers in the rest of the U.K.
No answer to her hypocrisy. She’s just an SNP shill now.
Blackford's fury in the HOC at the thought HMG will not continue funding Scotland (and Wales) testing regime confirmed just how dependent they have been on the Treasury and they now realise they will need to find their own funding if they want to continue their own restrictions
My impression is that Scotland has been testing at a lower rate than England throughout the pandemic (and consequently has had a higher positivity rate). That would imply that they've managed to use some of the money they received as Barnett-consequentials of England's Covid testing to spend on other things. I'd suspect that the end of that gravy train is the real cause of their displeasure.
Golly, that’s a lot of ‘my impression’, ‘that would imply’ and ‘I’d suspect’. Anything more concrete?
I think your snide reaction shows a palpable hit was scored....
@A1istair·8m Nothing to offer but blood sweat and toil. God save Ukraine. 🙏
They need all that spirit, and even more.
The Ukrainians clearly have right on their side in this case, but it has to be said that the World War II history of Ukraine is rather different from that. I'm not sure that ahistorical connections will help deter Putin from going further, in this case.
In his own mind, he imagines himself as the WWII-aliied USSR against the Nazi-sympathetic parts of Ukraine, that acquiesced in the Nazi's plans for the Russians. This, too, is exaggerated and ahistorical, but convenient for him.
In Galicia, the Ukrainians were encouraged to see themselves as ethnically different by the Nazis, and joined the SS. This is one reason not previously mentioned here why a modern centre-left German politician like Scholz, keeps a noticeable distance from some of the stronger rhetoric coming from the Ukrainian Right.
Some Ukrainians certainly see themselves as Europeans, and the Russians as Asiatics.
But, inasmuch as any white European can be a different ethnicity from another, the Ukrainians are different to the Russians. As different as the Poles, for example. Different language, and completely different history. Lviv, for example, was Polish, then Austrian, then Polish again, then only Russian since 1945. It used to be a Polish-majority city, until Stalin ethnically cleansed it and sent the Poles to live in Breslau which he had just conquered.
The war in the East was incredibly brutal, and incredibly messy, and people had to choose between Nazism and Stalin. They had no other option. We would rather they had sided with our ally rather than our enemy, but I see little difference between the two.
Breslau, of course, is now known as Wroclow and the descendants of the German speakers/ ethnic Germans who lived there prior to 1945 now live, primarily, in what was West Germany.
A great book. His history of Europe is very good too.
Indeed, an exercise in bringing clarity to such complexity. And a rare case of a history written without imagining a Berlin Wall centuries ahead of time and then downplaying everything that happened beyond where it would eventually be.
This isn't being done for the nation's health but so that Johnson keeps his right wingers happy. They're more interested in freedom at any cost, including poor people's lives. = Capitalism.
As for Russia, I suspect Putin will stop with these incursions into eastern Ukraine but we shall see. The fact that he waited until the Olympics closed is not a coincidence imho. The new world axis is Putin-Xi and in many ways this kind of incursion is VERY much in the style of China.
Didn't you say it was all scaremongering and this wouldn't happen?
I think the US-UK have been overplaying it, yes.
I still don't think Putin will invade the rest of Ukraine. His 'peacekeeping' operation in the separatist states is pure State China of course.
He will keep the troops there for quite some time, he has the west where he wants them, he has a close alliance now with China, he has done enough not to lose face. For Putin this is a big win.
If he did invade the rest of Ukraine I think it would be a very different story.
Meanwhile expect masses of overhyped rhetoric and war talk from Johnson today. Lots of talk of 'invasion' (it isn't really). Anything to channel the ghost of Winston and desperately re-invoke the tory tabloids into Falklands spirit.
It won't work because whilst this is really grim and Putin stinks, it's not at the moment going to draw in UK citizens.
N.B. I dislike Vladimir Putin as much as I dislike Jeremy Corbyn. I'm an anti-state anti-capitalist person who believes in wilding. I accept this makes me unconventional to the left-right simplistic categories on here but spare me the 'you're in love with Vladimir' guff, ta.
You say you dislike Putin but you play down his 'invasion' overnight which has been unanimously condemned by the US-UK-EU- AUS and the UN
Happy Tues! ☀️ Just remember UK govt COVID decisions are now driven by catching headlines & not in the interests of the health & well-being of the population. We can both recognize need to open up economy & society using vaccines/testing and seriousness of COVID as a disease.
It will be the correct approach once Nicola advocates it, until then this “independent” (sic) “expert” (sic) will continue taking pot shots at the U.K. government, unlike any of her peers in the rest of the U.K.
No answer to her hypocrisy. She’s just an SNP shill now.
Blackford's fury in the HOC at the thought HMG will not continue funding Scotland (and Wales) testing regime confirmed just how dependent they have been on the Treasury and they now realise they will need to find their own funding if they want to continue their own restrictions
My impression is that Scotland has been testing at a lower rate than England throughout the pandemic (and consequently has had a higher positivity rate). That would imply that they've managed to use some of the money they received as Barnett-consequentials of England's Covid testing to spend on other things. I'd suspect that the end of that gravy train is the real cause of their displeasure.
Golly, that’s a lot of ‘my impression’, ‘that would imply’ and ‘I’d suspect’. Anything more concrete?
I think your snide reaction shows a palpable hit was scored....
As the Russian army marches into Ukraine, I hope the PB scum that accused everyone demanding more serious ultimatums of warmongering see what they have done. You are all human filth.
I've been called worse. Problem for you is that 4 years in local government hardened me to not care one little bit about jibes thrown by people I don't respect. And I still don't see what point there is in NATO sabre-rattling. We will stop him financially and diplomatically, not by war.
We have had sanctions on Russia and Russian individuals for years. They have not stopped the aggression. What makes you so certain that stronger sanctions will stop Russian aggression?
Yes, but you haven't described what you would do differently. Would you dispatch our armoured division there?
I think if there was any doubt, the myth that the right don’t do virtue signalling is entirely busted.
I had two good friends who identified as Yugoslav.
One was from Vojvodina, and was part Croat, part Serb. He told me confidently that war will not happen in Yugoslavia. Everyone has much more in common than separates them. After the Way, he was very sad, and he still calls himself a Yugoslav. It was a good country, he said, I was proud of it as a nation of all the Slavs. He now lives in Edinburgh.
The second friend was part Serb, part Hungarian, part Jewish. He told me confidently that there is no difference between these peoples, they speak mutually intelligible versions of the same language. There will not be a war. He now lives in Montreal, Canada.
The lesson is that the forces of nationalism in these multi-ethnic Eastern European countries are just incredibly powerful.
Yugoslavia could not withstand them, and it had a much longer history as a stable, independent, multi-ethnic country than the present-day Ukraine.
The other lesson is that people who think like my friends leave. They did not stay in Yugoslavia. Like-minded people will not stay in the present-day Ukraine. Because both sides are now increasingly controlled by extremists.
I am not sure whether there ever was a time that Stalin's boundaries of the Ukraine could be saved, but that time is long past.
The boundaries of a new Ukraine need to be sorted.
I wanted them sorted through plebiscites. They will now be sorted through force.
What about the big, multi-ethnic nation next door to Ukraine, the Russian Federation? I wonder whether, perhaps in a period of post-Putin turmoil, it will splinter with places like Chechnya achieving independence.
This isn't being done for the nation's health but so that Johnson keeps his right wingers happy. They're more interested in freedom at any cost, including poor people's lives. = Capitalism.
As for Russia, I suspect Putin will stop with these incursions into eastern Ukraine but we shall see. The fact that he waited until the Olympics closed is not a coincidence imho. The new world axis is Putin-Xi and in many ways this kind of incursion is VERY much in the style of China.
Didn't you say it was all scaremongering and this wouldn't happen?
I think the US-UK have been overplaying it, yes.
I still don't think Putin will invade the rest of Ukraine. His 'peacekeeping' operation in the separatist states is pure State China of course.
He will keep the troops there for quite some time, he has the west where he wants them, he has a close alliance now with China, he has done enough not to lose face. For Putin this is a big win.
If he did invade the rest of Ukraine I think it would be a very different story.
Meanwhile expect masses of overhyped rhetoric and war talk from Johnson today. Lots of talk of 'invasion' (it isn't really). Anything to channel the ghost of Winston and desperately re-invoke the tory tabloids into Falklands spirit.
It won't work because whilst this is really grim and Putin stinks, it's not at the moment going to draw in UK citizens.
N.B. I dislike Vladimir Putin as much as I dislike Jeremy Corbyn. I'm an anti-state anti-capitalist person who believes in wilding. I accept this makes me unconventional to the left-right simplistic categories on here but spare me the 'you're in love with Vladimir' guff, ta.
Did you listen to Putin's actual speech? He has gone full on Greater Russian Nationalist. All former Russian states must be Russian again etc etc.
Some here were suggesting that he has no ideology - just money. Doesn't look like that now....
If Nord Stream 2 isn't 100% dead then the Germans have sold their souls.
Genuine question - how easy will it be for European countries to stop using Russian gas and find alternative sources? Just wondering how on the tit we are despite the posturing towards the gas man...
There were quite a few stories about the US organising contingencies for LNG deliveries to plug the gap a few weeks ago, and spring is starting to get into its stride - so I would hope that they would be quite well covered for the rest of this winter (albeit at a special price).
Then it's a matter of doing whatever it takes to prepare for next winter.
The considered view of industry is that energy sanctions remain highly unlikely. And they will be the ones advising policy makers on the impact of doing so.
I would think it’s highly unlikely that Putin would pull the plug himself. So we’ll see Russia formalise its earlier bites out of the Ukrainian peach, perhaps another clumsy nibble on top. And then business as usual between the kleptocrats and British politicians in time for party conference season.
The Tories won't give up their Russian money, why should they? Its not like taking donations from Russian oligarchs has anything to do with sanctioning Russian oligarchs is it?
Meanwhile we're heading into the new F1 season with a team whose cars are parading round draped in the Russian flag with Russian Oligarch company branding and the son of said Oligarch crashing randomly into things. Should not F1 ban all of this?
Let’s hope Gene Haas had Mazepin pay up front for the year’s sponsorship. There is very unlikely to be a Russian Grand Prix this year, that’s for sure.
The sanctions, especially the financial sanctions are going to be very tough for any rich Russians living abroad, although a fair number of those in the UK are opposed to Putin and have been trying to get their money out of his reach. Many will claim asylum.
I attended a business conference at a hotel in Tallinn last night, and afterwards we were having a coffee in the hotel lobby when the Putin speech came on CNN.
The Estonians and Georgians in our party were very grim faced indeed. This is no longer about Ukraine.
Essentially Putin´s angry and rambling discourse showed that Putin demands that all places previously under Soviet rule should return to the the Kremlin. In his demented world view, any resistance will be proof that NATO is protecting their "puppets" and therefore Russia has the right to unleash attacks directly against any NATO state, and not just the eastern members.
The spectacle of the tyrant lecturing his henchmen (at a 10 metre distance) was so sinister as to be almost comical, but not one of us was laughing. It is as we feared, the demands of the Kremlin regime can only lead to war.
I was talking to a friend, the editor of one of the major newspapers here. Putin is serious, but he is also mad. He will use all the resources at his disposal, including nuclear in order to recreate the disaster of the past, which in his mind is "Soviet glory". A fair estimate of the victims of Communist terror is over 20 million dead, and the tortured and maimed in body and spirit includes more or less anyone who endured Soviet power, including, of course runty little mad Vova from the wrong side of the tracks in Leningrad. In Estonia the population fell by a third from the beginning of the Soviet occupation in 1940 until the 1960s. Women and children in their thousands were put on cattle carts and sent to the camps, many of the men were simply shot. My friend like others whose family were taken, was very shaken. There is no ambiguity about what the tyrant now wants, and thousands and even millions of people are going to die because of it.
This is no longer about sanctions. If we are to stop this, we actually have to fight. Economic sanctions, no matter how crippling, will not work. We must now recognise that the defeat of Ukraine must be prevented by all means possible. The war is coming to us, whatever we do, so far better that the Russian forces are defeated in Donetsk than Dresden or Dover. The Russian naval exercise off Ireland is to cut the subsea communications cables, an attack that could cost trillions. Kremlin planning includes this, and this is NOT about just Ukraine.
The diplomats amongst us pointed out that both the UK and France, the current EU President, have been playing a well coodinated good cop/bad cop process, but, as they said, that only works when dealing with the sane. The calls for restraint made by China were greeted with some approval, "at least the Chinese are rational".
Neverthless we were a very sombre party. I have not slept well.
We are very scared, but determined. My friends in the Militia are expecting call ups and if it comes to it, the Baltic will fight to defend themselves, together with the NATO allies based here.
"Deliver us from Evil"
Extremely sobering post. I have also not sleep well at all last night. God knows what dark age we are now entering but I genuinely fear, as your friends do, that this Donetsk business is merely the amuse-bouche to war across much of eastern europe.
I attended a business conference at a hotel in Tallinn last night, and afterwards we were having a coffee in the hotel lobby when the Putin speech came on CNN.
The Estonians and Georgians in our party were very grim faced indeed. This is no longer about Ukraine.
Essentially Putin´s angry and rambling discourse was showed that Putin demands that all places previously under Soviet rule should return to the the Kremlin. In his demented world view, any resistance will be proof that NATO is protecting their "puppets" and therefore Russia has the right to unleash attacks directly against any NATO state, and not just the eastern members.
The spectacle of the tyrant lecturing his henchmen (at a 10 metre distance) was so sinister as to be almost comical, but not one of us was laughing. It is as we feared, the demands of the Kremlin regime can only lead to general war.
I was talking to a friend, the editor of one of the major newspapers here. Putin is serious, but he is also mad. He will use all the resources at his disposal, including nuclear in order to recreate the disaster of the past, which in his mind is "Soviet glory". A fair estimate of the victims of Communist terror is over 20 million dead, and the tortured and maimed in body and spirit includes more or less anyone who endured Soviet power, including, of course runty little mad Vova from the wrong side of the tracks in Leningrad. In Estonia the population fell by a third from the beginning of the Soviet occupation in 1940 until the 1960s. Women and children in their thousands were put on cattle carts and sent to the camps, many of the men were simply shot. My friend like others, was very shaken indeed. There is no ambiguity about what the tyrant now wants, and thousands and even millions of people are going to die because of it.
This is no longer about sanctions. If we are to stop this, we actually have to fight. Economic sanctions, no matter how crippling, will not work. We must now recognise that the defeat of Ukraine must be prevented by all means possible. The war is coming to us, whatever we do, so far better that the Russian forces are defeated in Donetsk than Dresden or Dover. The Russian naval exercise off Ireland is to cut the subsea communications cables, an attack that could cost trillions. Yes, Kremlin planning includes this, and this is NOT about just Ukraine.
The diplomats amongst us pointed out that both the UK and France, the current EU President, have been playing a well coodinated good cop/bad cop process, but, as they said, that only works when dealing with the sane. The calls for restraint made by China were greeted with some approval, "at least the Chinese are rational", Neverthless we were a very sombre party.
I have not slept well.
We are very scared, but determined. My friends in the Militia are expecting call ups and if it comes to it, the Baltic will fight to defend themselves, together with the NATO allies based here.
"Deliver us from Evil"
It must be a disquieting time for our friends in Estonia. But note that word - friends. Estonia are our allies. That is very different to intervening in Ukraine in their civil war & border dispute. I've just posted that our sabre-rattling over Ukraine is counter-productive because Putin can see right through it. It is a completely different scenario where a NATO country is under threat.
NATO has stood up to Soviet and now Russian aggression for 64 years. Putin may not like Estonia's membership but they are members. I think he knows that the west has been prepared to defend itself and that I hope hasn't changed despite his decade and more of undermining us.
I don't expect Putin to move against Estonia just as the Soviets never poured through the Fulda gap to take NATO out. But our specific weakness now is that the UK armed forces are a shadow of what they were. Run down after the cold war ended they have been savagely cut by successive governments especially this one.
If we're serious about standing up to Putin, we need to start spending real money on recruiting people to join and giving them state of the art equipment. Yes it costs money that I'm sure the government don't think they have. But defence is an industry with a long proud history of make work projects, paying a lot of people good money to build things we need. That gives them money to spend elsewhere in the economy.
i am not expecting Big Dog to give a penny of hope to our armed forces. All mouth and no trousers.
I had two good friends who identified as Yugoslav.
One was from Vojvodina, and was part Croat, part Serb. He told me confidently that war will not happen in Yugoslavia. Everyone has much more in common than separates them. After the Way, he was very sad, and he still calls himself a Yugoslav. It was a good country, he said, I was proud of it as a nation of all the Slavs. He now lives in Edinburgh.
The second friend was part Serb, part Hungarian, part Jewish. He told me confidently that there is no difference between these peoples, they speak mutually intelligible versions of the same language. There will not be a war. He now lives in Montreal, Canada.
The lesson is that the forces of nationalism in these multi-ethnic Eastern European countries are just incredibly powerful.
Yugoslavia could not withstand them, and it had a much longer history as a stable, independent, multi-ethnic country than the present-day Ukraine.
The other lesson is that people who think like my friends leave. They did not stay in Yugoslavia. Like-minded people will not stay in the present-day Ukraine. Because both sides are now increasingly controlled by extremists.
I am not sure whether there ever was a time that Stalin's boundaries of the Ukraine could be saved, but that time is long past.
The boundaries of a new Ukraine need to be sorted.
I wanted them sorted through plebiscites. They will now be sorted through force.
What about the big, multi-ethnic nation next door to Ukraine, the Russian Federation? I wonder whether, perhaps in a period of post-Putin turmoil, it will splinter with places like Chechnya achieving independence.
The War in Chechnya was savage, savage, slaughter, used to stop more pieces of Russia leaving. It was one of the foundations of Putin's Russia Through Strength stuff.
Happy Tues! ☀️ Just remember UK govt COVID decisions are now driven by catching headlines & not in the interests of the health & well-being of the population. We can both recognize need to open up economy & society using vaccines/testing and seriousness of COVID as a disease.
It will be the correct approach once Nicola advocates it, until then this “independent” (sic) “expert” (sic) will continue taking pot shots at the U.K. government, unlike any of her peers in the rest of the U.K.
No answer to her hypocrisy. She’s just an SNP shill now.
Blackford's fury in the HOC at the thought HMG will not continue funding Scotland (and Wales) testing regime confirmed just how dependent they have been on the Treasury and they now realise they will need to find their own funding if they want to continue their own restrictions
If Blackford is one of the leading lights in the SNP then they have a real dearth of talent. He was ranting and raving, almost incoherent. His face was beetroot red. He looked like an angry landowner who’d discovered people camping on his land and was demanding they leave.
To be fair they’ve got better talent - like Joanna Cherry, but she’s been consigned to the back benches as she has the courage of her convictions over the Trans/TERF wars and doesn’t dismiss women’s concerns as “not valid”.
I attended a business conference at a hotel in Tallinn last night, and afterwards we were having a coffee in the hotel lobby when the Putin speech came on CNN.
The Estonians and Georgians in our party were very grim faced indeed. This is no longer about Ukraine.
Essentially Putin´s angry and rambling discourse showed that Putin demands that all places previously under Soviet rule should return to the the Kremlin. In his demented world view, any resistance will be proof that NATO is protecting their "puppets" and therefore Russia has the right to unleash attacks directly against any NATO state, and not just the eastern members.
The spectacle of the tyrant lecturing his henchmen (at a 10 metre distance) was so sinister as to be almost comical, but not one of us was laughing. It is as we feared, the demands of the Kremlin regime can only lead to war.
I was talking to a friend, the editor of one of the major newspapers here. Putin is serious, but he is also mad. He will use all the resources at his disposal, including nuclear in order to recreate the disaster of the past, which in his mind is "Soviet glory". A fair estimate of the victims of Communist terror is over 20 million dead, and the tortured and maimed in body and spirit includes more or less anyone who endured Soviet power, including, of course runty little mad Vova from the wrong side of the tracks in Leningrad. In Estonia the population fell by a third from the beginning of the Soviet occupation in 1940 until the 1960s. Women and children in their thousands were put on cattle carts and sent to the camps, many of the men were simply shot. My friend like others whose family were taken, was very shaken. There is no ambiguity about what the tyrant now wants, and thousands and even millions of people are going to die because of it.
This is no longer about sanctions. If we are to stop this, we actually have to fight. Economic sanctions, no matter how crippling, will not work. We must now recognise that the defeat of Ukraine must be prevented by all means possible. The war is coming to us, whatever we do, so far better that the Russian forces are defeated in Donetsk than Dresden or Dover. The Russian naval exercise off Ireland is to cut the subsea communications cables, an attack that could cost trillions. Kremlin planning includes this, and this is NOT about just Ukraine.
The diplomats amongst us pointed out that both the UK and France, the current EU President, have been playing a well coodinated good cop/bad cop process, but, as they said, that only works when dealing with the sane. The calls for restraint made by China were greeted with some approval, "at least the Chinese are rational".
Neverthless we were a very sombre party. I have not slept well.
We are very scared, but determined. My friends in the Militia are expecting call ups and if it comes to it, the Baltic will fight to defend themselves, together with the NATO allies based here.
"Deliver us from Evil"
The UK will stand with you and all the threatened states
An interesting post from Cicero. Putin's ideas for the wider region are definitely a big worry.
On the Southwestern coast of the Black Sea , I see that the Romanians have green-lighted a large increase in NATO forces, but the Bulgarians apparently not so much. Relations with Russia are traditionally stronger there.
Meanwhile, even as the menacing attitude and danger he poses in the Med increases, the west still obviously relies on Erdogan to deter the Russians on the south side of the black sea, and on the southwestern side the Greeks are more enthusiastically pro-US than they've ever been. That leaves Poland, next to Ukraine, and the Baltic states, that Cicero describes.
In #Russia, the stock exchange index is down by 14.2% in Monday trading over concerns of a large scale invasion into Ukraine, erasing over $12.7 bn in market value in a single day. This was the worst day for Russian stocks since November 2008. https://twitter.com/AlexKokcharov/status/1495804888944627715
I had two good friends who identified as Yugoslav.
One was from Vojvodina, and was part Croat, part Serb. He told me confidently that war will not happen in Yugoslavia. Everyone has much more in common than separates them. After the Way, he was very sad, and he still calls himself a Yugoslav. It was a good country, he said, I was proud of it as a nation of all the Slavs. He now lives in Edinburgh.
The second friend was part Serb, part Hungarian, part Jewish. He told me confidently that there is no difference between these peoples, they speak mutually intelligible versions of the same language. There will not be a war. He now lives in Montreal, Canada.
The lesson is that the forces of nationalism in these multi-ethnic Eastern European countries are just incredibly powerful.
Yugoslavia could not withstand them, and it had a much longer history as a stable, independent, multi-ethnic country than the present-day Ukraine.
The other lesson is that people who think like my friends leave. They did not stay in Yugoslavia. Like-minded people will not stay in the present-day Ukraine. Because both sides are now increasingly controlled by extremists.
I am not sure whether there ever was a time that Stalin's boundaries of the Ukraine could be saved, but that time is long past.
The boundaries of a new Ukraine need to be sorted.
I wanted them sorted through plebiscites. They will now be sorted through force.
What about the big, multi-ethnic nation next door to Ukraine, the Russian Federation? I wonder whether, perhaps in a period of post-Putin turmoil, it will splinter with places like Chechnya achieving independence.
Of course. It will suffer the fate of the Austro-Hungarian empire in its turn.
I attended a business conference at a hotel in Tallinn last night, and afterwards we were having a coffee in the hotel lobby when the Putin speech came on CNN.
The Estonians and Georgians in our party were very grim faced indeed. This is no longer about Ukraine.
Essentially Putin´s angry and rambling discourse showed that Putin demands that all places previously under Soviet rule should return to the the Kremlin. In his demented world view, any resistance will be proof that NATO is protecting their "puppets" and therefore Russia has the right to unleash attacks directly against any NATO state, and not just the eastern members.
The spectacle of the tyrant lecturing his henchmen (at a 10 metre distance) was so sinister as to be almost comical, but not one of us was laughing. It is as we feared, the demands of the Kremlin regime can only lead to war.
I was talking to a friend, the editor of one of the major newspapers here. Putin is serious, but he is also mad. He will use all the resources at his disposal, including nuclear in order to recreate the disaster of the past, which in his mind is "Soviet glory". A fair estimate of the victims of Communist terror is over 20 million dead, and the tortured and maimed in body and spirit includes more or less anyone who endured Soviet power, including, of course runty little mad Vova from the wrong side of the tracks in Leningrad. In Estonia the population fell by a third from the beginning of the Soviet occupation in 1940 until the 1960s. Women and children in their thousands were put on cattle carts and sent to the camps, many of the men were simply shot. My friend like others whose family were taken, was very shaken. There is no ambiguity about what the tyrant now wants, and thousands and even millions of people are going to die because of it.
This is no longer about sanctions. If we are to stop this, we actually have to fight. Economic sanctions, no matter how crippling, will not work. We must now recognise that the defeat of Ukraine must be prevented by all means possible. The war is coming to us, whatever we do, so far better that the Russian forces are defeated in Donetsk than Dresden or Dover. The Russian naval exercise off Ireland is to cut the subsea communications cables, an attack that could cost trillions. Kremlin planning includes this, and this is NOT about just Ukraine.
The diplomats amongst us pointed out that both the UK and France, the current EU President, have been playing a well coodinated good cop/bad cop process, but, as they said, that only works when dealing with the sane. The calls for restraint made by China were greeted with some approval, "at least the Chinese are rational".
Neverthless we were a very sombre party. I have not slept well.
We are very scared, but determined. My friends in the Militia are expecting call ups and if it comes to it, the Baltic will fight to defend themselves, together with the NATO allies based here.
"Deliver us from Evil"
The UK will stand with you and all the threatened states
Yes - because they are NATO. Ukraine is not. We stand with our allies.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
I agree.
The boundaries were fixed by Comrade Stalin.
Comrade Stalin drew the boundaries to undermine Ukrainian nationalism.
It has been one of the most successful gerrymanders in history.
Yes; It is, too, I think, sometime somewhat difficult for people in the UK to understand that, particularly in Eastern Europe it is impossible to draw a line and say that 'everyone to the east identifies as Nationality A and every one to the west as B. Population movements, both forced and voluntary have been enormous.
This discussion is not the point you two think it is. All borders are artificial in the end. And if people don't like the ones that are there you dont prove that by invading. And all of it is nonsense anyway as Putin's justifications relies on all Ukraine not being a real country, not that some parts of it have people who consider themselves Russian.
I attended a business conference at a hotel in Tallinn last night, and afterwards we were having a coffee in the hotel lobby when the Putin speech came on CNN.
The Estonians and Georgians in our party were very grim faced indeed. This is no longer about Ukraine.
Essentially Putin´s angry and rambling discourse showed that Putin demands that all places previously under Soviet rule should return to the the Kremlin. In his demented world view, any resistance will be proof that NATO is protecting their "puppets" and therefore Russia has the right to unleash attacks directly against any NATO state, and not just the eastern members.
The spectacle of the tyrant lecturing his henchmen (at a 10 metre distance) was so sinister as to be almost comical, but not one of us was laughing. It is as we feared, the demands of the Kremlin regime can only lead to war.
I was talking to a friend, the editor of one of the major newspapers here. Putin is serious, but he is also mad. He will use all the resources at his disposal, including nuclear in order to recreate the disaster of the past, which in his mind is "Soviet glory". A fair estimate of the victims of Communist terror is over 20 million dead, and the tortured and maimed in body and spirit includes more or less anyone who endured Soviet power, including, of course runty little mad Vova from the wrong side of the tracks in Leningrad. In Estonia the population fell by a third from the beginning of the Soviet occupation in 1940 until the 1960s. Women and children in their thousands were put on cattle carts and sent to the camps, many of the men were simply shot. My friend like others whose family were taken, was very shaken. There is no ambiguity about what the tyrant now wants, and thousands and even millions of people are going to die because of it.
This is no longer about sanctions. If we are to stop this, we actually have to fight. Economic sanctions, no matter how crippling, will not work. We must now recognise that the defeat of Ukraine must be prevented by all means possible. The war is coming to us, whatever we do, so far better that the Russian forces are defeated in Donetsk than Dresden or Dover. The Russian naval exercise off Ireland is to cut the subsea communications cables, an attack that could cost trillions. Kremlin planning includes this, and this is NOT about just Ukraine.
The diplomats amongst us pointed out that both the UK and France, the current EU President, have been playing a well coodinated good cop/bad cop process, but, as they said, that only works when dealing with the sane. The calls for restraint made by China were greeted with some approval, "at least the Chinese are rational".
Neverthless we were a very sombre party. I have not slept well.
We are very scared, but determined. My friends in the Militia are expecting call ups and if it comes to it, the Baltic will fight to defend themselves, together with the NATO allies based here.
"Deliver us from Evil"
The UK will stand with you and all the threatened states
Yes - because they are NATO. Ukraine is not. We stand with our allies.
Indeed.
By the way, what's with this BBC fad for calling it Nato? It's an acronym. NATO please
In #Russia, the stock exchange index is down by 14.2% in Monday trading over concerns of a large scale invasion into Ukraine, erasing over $12.7 bn in market value in a single day. This was the worst day for Russian stocks since November 2008. https://twitter.com/AlexKokcharov/status/1495804888944627715
Putin and his cronies will be fine; they will have shorted the market on the basis of actions they knew they were going to take....
So what's your answer? How do you defeat this evil? Or are you secretly tumescent at the idea of an emboldened Russia?
Why does it have to be defeated? One corrupt shit hole dismembering another corrupt shit hole isn't our problem.
Ukraine on its post 2014 de facto borders isn't a viable or stable situation so something has to change. The ability of the Alliance of Awesome to influence the outcome of that change is severely limited by an understandable lack of appetite for WW3.
I had two good friends who identified as Yugoslav.
One was from Vojvodina, and was part Croat, part Serb. He told me confidently that war will not happen in Yugoslavia. Everyone has much more in common than separates them. After the Way, he was very sad, and he still calls himself a Yugoslav. It was a good country, he said, I was proud of it as a nation of all the Slavs. He now lives in Edinburgh.
The second friend was part Serb, part Hungarian, part Jewish. He told me confidently that there is no difference between these peoples, they speak mutually intelligible versions of the same language. There will not be a war. He now lives in Montreal, Canada.
The lesson is that the forces of nationalism in these multi-ethnic Eastern European countries are just incredibly powerful.
Yugoslavia could not withstand them, and it had a much longer history as a stable, independent, multi-ethnic country than the present-day Ukraine.
The other lesson is that people who think like my friends leave. They did not stay in Yugoslavia. Like-minded people will not stay in the present-day Ukraine. Because both sides are now increasingly controlled by extremists.
I am not sure whether there ever was a time that Stalin's boundaries of the Ukraine could be saved, but that time is long past.
The boundaries of a new Ukraine need to be sorted.
I wanted them sorted through plebiscites. They will now be sorted through force.
I attended a business conference at a hotel in Tallinn last night, and afterwards we were having a coffee in the hotel lobby when the Putin speech came on CNN.
The Estonians and Georgians in our party were very grim faced indeed. This is no longer about Ukraine.
Essentially Putin´s angry and rambling discourse showed that Putin demands that all places previously under Soviet rule should return to the the Kremlin. In his demented world view, any resistance will be proof that NATO is protecting their "puppets" and therefore Russia has the right to unleash attacks directly against any NATO state, and not just the eastern members.
The spectacle of the tyrant lecturing his henchmen (at a 10 metre distance) was so sinister as to be almost comical, but not one of us was laughing. It is as we feared, the demands of the Kremlin regime can only lead to war.
I was talking to a friend, the editor of one of the major newspapers here. Putin is serious, but he is also mad. He will use all the resources at his disposal, including nuclear in order to recreate the disaster of the past, which in his mind is "Soviet glory". A fair estimate of the victims of Communist terror is over 20 million dead, and the tortured and maimed in body and spirit includes more or less anyone who endured Soviet power, including, of course runty little mad Vova from the wrong side of the tracks in Leningrad. In Estonia the population fell by a third from the beginning of the Soviet occupation in 1940 until the 1960s. Women and children in their thousands were put on cattle carts and sent to the camps, many of the men were simply shot. My friend like others whose family were taken, was very shaken. There is no ambiguity about what the tyrant now wants, and thousands and even millions of people are going to die because of it.
This is no longer about sanctions. If we are to stop this, we actually have to fight. Economic sanctions, no matter how crippling, will not work. We must now recognise that the defeat of Ukraine must be prevented by all means possible. The war is coming to us, whatever we do, so far better that the Russian forces are defeated in Donetsk than Dresden or Dover. The Russian naval exercise off Ireland is to cut the subsea communications cables, an attack that could cost trillions. Kremlin planning includes this, and this is NOT about just Ukraine.
The diplomats amongst us pointed out that both the UK and France, the current EU President, have been playing a well coodinated good cop/bad cop process, but, as they said, that only works when dealing with the sane. The calls for restraint made by China were greeted with some approval, "at least the Chinese are rational".
Neverthless we were a very sombre party. I have not slept well.
We are very scared, but determined. My friends in the Militia are expecting call ups and if it comes to it, the Baltic will fight to defend themselves, together with the NATO allies based here.
"Deliver us from Evil"
There is zero chance of any western nation fighting for any non NATO ex USSR states whether Ukraine or Georgia for example. The western population does not have the will for it, nor do the governments.
Even military action if Putin invaded the Baltic states is not guaranteed. If Putin went beyond the old USSR and invaded Poland and not only NATO but EU states then NATO would respond militarily but only then and then we would be in World War 3.
Otherwise economy sanctions is all he would face. Ireland is not in NATO, if it wants to ensure its security I suggest it joins sooner rather than later
The Dildo Knapper's Gazette wants to send me write about flintwork in some corner of Europe, Australia or north America that they feel has been unjustly neglected by travellers
Does anyone have any ideas?
I've just been looking at the list of national parks in Europe for some inspiration. There are 500 or more, most of which I've barely or never heard of
And so much more. Has anyone got a favourite secret corner of Europe?
Barnsley. I'm sure the average Torygraph reader would be fascinated by your tales of adventures in Wombwell.
Jamund is beautiful, as is the rest of Rügen, amazing beaches, fascinating Nazi holiday architecture in Prora etc. But it is not exactly neglected, it's one of the most popular holiday destinations for Germans. Not many foreigners apart from Scandinavians, Poles and Russians. No Brits, it's true.
Less visited are Meck-Pomm's Hanseatic towns, I recommend Stralsund and Wismar.
I'm in Gdańsk in June and was looking for a way of making it a longer trip. But one option is German Pomerania, then entering Poland at Swinoujscie and maybe looking for V2 launch sites and U boat pens.
I don't know Poland at all, only been over the border at Swinemünde (as it's known round here). There's a museum in Peenemünde that might be of interest, don't know about u boat pens. Greifswald is a nice hanseatic (university) town with some examples of the red brick gothic architecture.
Stralsund is definitely worth visiting. And Prora in Rügen is worth visiting if you're interested in that bit of German history and the KdF program. It's been gradually converted into flats (and a youth hostel and a hotel) the last years, which is kind of a shame, but I think a couple of blocks remain unrenovated. From Wiki:
"Robert Ley, head of the German Labour Front – of which Strength Through Joy was a subsidiary – envisioned Prora as a parallel to Butlins, which were British "holiday camps" designed to provide affordable holidays for the average worker. Prora was designed to house 20,000 holidaymakers, under the ideal that every worker deserved a holiday at the beach. Designed by Clemens Klotz, who won a design competition overseen by Adolf Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer, all rooms were planned to overlook the sea, while corridors and sanitation are located on the landward side.[3] Each room of 5 metres (16 ft) by 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) was to have two beds, a wardrobe and a sink. There were communal toilets, showers and bathrooms on each floor.
Hitler's plans for Prora were much more ambitious. He wanted a gigantic sea resort, the "most mighty and large one to ever have existed", holding 20,000 beds. In the middle, a huge building was to be erected. At the same time, Hitler wanted it to be convertible into a military hospital in case of war. Hitler insisted that the plans of a giant indoor arena by architect Erich Putlitz be included. Putlitz's Festival Hall was intended to be able to accommodate all 20,000 guests at the same time. His plans included two wave-swimming pools, a cinema and a theatre.[1] A large dock for passenger ships was also planned.
The designs won a Grand Prix award at the 1937 Paris World Exposition."
So what's your answer? How do you defeat this evil? Or are you secretly tumescent at the idea of an emboldened Russia?
Why does it have to be defeated? One corrupt shit hole dismembering another corrupt shit hole isn't our problem.
Ukraine on its post 2014 de facto borders isn't a viable or stable situation so something has to change. The ability of the Alliance of Awesome to influence the outcome of that change is severely limited by an understandable lack of appetite for WW3.
Spot on!
It doesn't have to be defeated.
The last time we went on a global moral crusade to rid the world of an evil dictator who was apparently about to unleash WWIII, we opened a Pandora's Box that will continue to reverberate a century from now.
I had two good friends who identified as Yugoslav.
One was from Vojvodina, and was part Croat, part Serb. He told me confidently that war will not happen in Yugoslavia. Everyone has much more in common than separates them. After the Way, he was very sad, and he still calls himself a Yugoslav. It was a good country, he said, I was proud of it as a nation of all the Slavs. He now lives in Edinburgh.
The second friend was part Serb, part Hungarian, part Jewish. He told me confidently that there is no difference between these peoples, they speak mutually intelligible versions of the same language. There will not be a war. He now lives in Montreal, Canada.
The lesson is that the forces of nationalism in these multi-ethnic Eastern European countries are just incredibly powerful.
Yugoslavia could not withstand them, and it had a much longer history as a stable, independent, multi-ethnic country than the present-day Ukraine.
The other lesson is that people who think like my friends leave. They did not stay in Yugoslavia. Like-minded people will not stay in the present-day Ukraine. Because both sides are now increasingly controlled by extremists.
I am not sure whether there ever was a time that Stalin's boundaries of the Ukraine could be saved, but that time is long past.
The boundaries of a new Ukraine need to be sorted.
I wanted them sorted through plebiscites. They will now be sorted through force.
What about the big, multi-ethnic nation next door to Ukraine, the Russian Federation? I wonder whether, perhaps in a period of post-Putin turmoil, it will splinter with places like Chechnya achieving independence.
Of course. It will suffer the fate of the Austro-Hungarian empire in its turn.
The belief that all multi-ethnic states must splinter is...... interesting.
I attended a business conference at a hotel in Tallinn last night, and afterwards we were having a coffee in the hotel lobby when the Putin speech came on CNN.
The Estonians and Georgians in our party were very grim faced indeed. This is no longer about Ukraine.
Essentially Putin´s angry and rambling discourse showed that Putin demands that all places previously under Soviet rule should return to the the Kremlin. In his demented world view, any resistance will be proof that NATO is protecting their "puppets" and therefore Russia has the right to unleash attacks directly against any NATO state, and not just the eastern members.
The spectacle of the tyrant lecturing his henchmen (at a 10 metre distance) was so sinister as to be almost comical, but not one of us was laughing. It is as we feared, the demands of the Kremlin regime can only lead to war.
I was talking to a friend, the editor of one of the major newspapers here. Putin is serious, but he is also mad. He will use all the resources at his disposal, including nuclear in order to recreate the disaster of the past, which in his mind is "Soviet glory". A fair estimate of the victims of Communist terror is over 20 million dead, and the tortured and maimed in body and spirit includes more or less anyone who endured Soviet power, including, of course runty little mad Vova from the wrong side of the tracks in Leningrad. In Estonia the population fell by a third from the beginning of the Soviet occupation in 1940 until the 1960s. Women and children in their thousands were put on cattle carts and sent to the camps, many of the men were simply shot. My friend like others whose family were taken, was very shaken. There is no ambiguity about what the tyrant now wants, and thousands and even millions of people are going to die because of it.
This is no longer about sanctions. If we are to stop this, we actually have to fight. Economic sanctions, no matter how crippling, will not work. We must now recognise that the defeat of Ukraine must be prevented by all means possible. The war is coming to us, whatever we do, so far better that the Russian forces are defeated in Donetsk than Dresden or Dover. The Russian naval exercise off Ireland is to cut the subsea communications cables, an attack that could cost trillions. Kremlin planning includes this, and this is NOT about just Ukraine.
The diplomats amongst us pointed out that both the UK and France, the current EU President, have been playing a well coodinated good cop/bad cop process, but, as they said, that only works when dealing with the sane. The calls for restraint made by China were greeted with some approval, "at least the Chinese are rational".
Neverthless we were a very sombre party. I have not slept well.
We are very scared, but determined. My friends in the Militia are expecting call ups and if it comes to it, the Baltic will fight to defend themselves, together with the NATO allies based here.
"Deliver us from Evil"
There is zero chance of any western nation fighting for any non NATO ex USSR states whether Ukraine or Georgia for example. The western population does not have the will for it, nor do the governments.
Even military action if Putin invaded the Baltic states is not guaranteed. If Putin went beyond the old USSR and invaded Poland and not only NATO but EU states then NATO would respond militarily but only then and then we would be in World War 3.
Otherwise economy sanctions is all he would face
Military action on invading any NATO state is guaranteed
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
I agree.
The boundaries were fixed by Comrade Stalin.
Comrade Stalin drew the boundaries to undermine Ukrainian nationalism.
It has been one of the most successful gerrymanders in history.
Yes; It is, too, I think, sometime somewhat difficult for people in the UK to understand that, particularly in Eastern Europe it is impossible to draw a line and say that 'everyone to the east identifies as Nationality A and every one to the west as B. Population movements, both forced and voluntary have been enormous.
This discussion is not the point you two think it is. All borders are artificial in the end. And if people don't like the ones that are there you dont prove that by invading. And all of it is nonsense anyway as Putin's justifications relies on all Ukraine not being a real country, not that some parts of it have people who consider themselves Russian.
Indeed. Our country’s only land border is no different. There are people to the north of it who identify with the nation to the south of it, and there are people to the south of it who speak English!
You can say the same about the French/German border, the French/Spanish border, the German/Belgium border, the Italian/Swiss border, and so on. This isn’t something unique to Eastern Europe. The difference is that we have (after centuries of war) found peaceful solutions.
@A1istair·8m Nothing to offer but blood sweat and toil. God save Ukraine. 🙏
They need all that spirit, and even more.
The Ukrainians clearly have right on their side in this case, but it has to be said that the World War II history of Ukraine is rather different from that. I'm not sure that ahistorical connections will help deter Putin from going further, in this case.
In his own mind, he imagines himself as the WWII-aliied USSR against the Nazi-sympathetic parts of Ukraine, that acquiesced in the Nazi's plans for the Russians. This, too, is exaggerated and ahistorical, but convenient for him.
In Galicia, the Ukrainians were encouraged to see themselves as ethnically different by the Nazis, and joined the SS. This is one reason not previously mentioned here why a modern centre-left German politician like Scholz, keeps a noticeable distance from some of the stronger rhetoric coming from the Ukrainian Right.
Some Ukrainians certainly see themselves as Europeans, and the Russians as Asiatics.
But, inasmuch as any white European can be a different ethnicity from another, the Ukrainians are different to the Russians. As different as the Poles, for example. Different language, and completely different history. Lviv, for example, was Polish, then Austrian, then Polish again, then only Russian since 1945. It used to be a Polish-majority city, until Stalin ethnically cleansed it and sent the Poles to live in Breslau which he had just conquered.
The war in the East was incredibly brutal, and incredibly messy, and people had to choose between Nazism and Stalin. They had no other option. We would rather they had sided with our ally rather than our enemy, but I see little difference between the two.
Breslau, of course, is now known as Wroclow and the descendants of the German speakers/ ethnic Germans who lived there prior to 1945 now live, primarily, in what was West Germany.
Best thing Britain can do is smack Putin on the wrist and otherwise keep well out.
I know that's unpopular with what someone below described as pb.com's bellicose armchair generals, but there we go.
I find this oh so hilarious repetition of armchair general thing to be childish, tiresome and wrong personally.
It's obvious the intent is to portray anyone suggesting tougher 'language' as being some gung ho 'send in the tanks' fool not thinking about the practicalities and the alternative as being the realistic side, but its very rare anyone talks of physical intervention. They are being pragmatic and realistic in mostly advocating words, or defensive actions in allied states as an example.
Are people not able to comment on the situation and suggest firm language at least without being an armchair general? Can they not criticise one side more than another without a supposedly cutting remark about 'well what would you do, start marching on the Donbass?' style rejoinder
These situations are clearly not easy and practical options limited, the world is like that. But the swift attempt to paint even expressing outrage as bellicose or discussion of basically any reaction as discredited by coming from armchair generals is unpleasantly cynical at best and absolute nonsense at worst.
And one person talking of the need to fight is pretty close to the action, so understandable.
I attended a business conference at a hotel in Tallinn last night, and afterwards we were having a coffee in the hotel lobby when the Putin speech came on CNN.
The Estonians and Georgians in our party were very grim faced indeed. This is no longer about Ukraine.
Essentially Putin´s angry and rambling discourse showed that Putin demands that all places previously under Soviet rule should return to the the Kremlin. In his demented world view, any resistance will be proof that NATO is protecting their "puppets" and therefore Russia has the right to unleash attacks directly against any NATO state, and not just the eastern members.
The spectacle of the tyrant lecturing his henchmen (at a 10 metre distance) was so sinister as to be almost comical, but not one of us was laughing. It is as we feared, the demands of the Kremlin regime can only lead to war.
I was talking to a friend, the editor of one of the major newspapers here. Putin is serious, but he is also mad. He will use all the resources at his disposal, including nuclear in order to recreate the disaster of the past, which in his mind is "Soviet glory". A fair estimate of the victims of Communist terror is over 20 million dead, and the tortured and maimed in body and spirit includes more or less anyone who endured Soviet power, including, of course runty little mad Vova from the wrong side of the tracks in Leningrad. In Estonia the population fell by a third from the beginning of the Soviet occupation in 1940 until the 1960s. Women and children in their thousands were put on cattle carts and sent to the camps, many of the men were simply shot. My friend like others whose family were taken, was very shaken. There is no ambiguity about what the tyrant now wants, and thousands and even millions of people are going to die because of it.
This is no longer about sanctions. If we are to stop this, we actually have to fight. Economic sanctions, no matter how crippling, will not work. We must now recognise that the defeat of Ukraine must be prevented by all means possible. The war is coming to us, whatever we do, so far better that the Russian forces are defeated in Donetsk than Dresden or Dover. The Russian naval exercise off Ireland is to cut the subsea communications cables, an attack that could cost trillions. Kremlin planning includes this, and this is NOT about just Ukraine.
The diplomats amongst us pointed out that both the UK and France, the current EU President, have been playing a well coodinated good cop/bad cop process, but, as they said, that only works when dealing with the sane. The calls for restraint made by China were greeted with some approval, "at least the Chinese are rational".
Neverthless we were a very sombre party. I have not slept well.
We are very scared, but determined. My friends in the Militia are expecting call ups and if it comes to it, the Baltic will fight to defend themselves, together with the NATO allies based here.
"Deliver us from Evil"
There is zero chance of any western nation fighting for any non NATO ex USSR states whether Ukraine or Georgia for example. The western population does not have the will for it, nor do the governments.
Even military action if Putin invaded the Baltic states is not guaranteed. If Putin went beyond the old USSR and invaded Poland and not only NATO but EU states then NATO would respond militarily but only then and then we would be in World War 3.
Otherwise economy sanctions is all he would face
Military action on invading any NATO state is guaranteed
"The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area."
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Unfortunately many managers are less competent and less enlightened than you, and will already be reintroducing presenteeism and threats.
This isn't being done for the nation's health but so that Johnson keeps his right wingers happy. They're more interested in freedom at any cost, including poor people's lives. = Capitalism.
As for Russia, I suspect Putin will stop with these incursions into eastern Ukraine but we shall see. The fact that he waited until the Olympics closed is not a coincidence imho. The new world axis is Putin-Xi and in many ways this kind of incursion is VERY much in the style of China.
Didn't you say it was all scaremongering and this wouldn't happen?
I think the US-UK have been overplaying it, yes.
I still don't think Putin will invade the rest of Ukraine. His 'peacekeeping' operation in the separatist states is pure State China of course.
He will keep the troops there for quite some time, he has the west where he wants them, he has a close alliance now with China, he has done enough not to lose face. For Putin this is a big win.
If he did invade the rest of Ukraine I think it would be a very different story.
Meanwhile expect masses of overhyped rhetoric and war talk from Johnson today. Lots of talk of 'invasion' (it isn't really). Anything to channel the ghost of Winston and desperately re-invoke the tory tabloids into Falklands spirit.
It won't work because whilst this is really grim and Putin stinks, it's not at the moment going to draw in UK citizens.
N.B. I dislike Vladimir Putin as much as I dislike Jeremy Corbyn. I'm an anti-state anti-capitalist person who believes in wilding. I accept this makes me unconventional to the left-right simplistic categories on here but spare me the 'you're in love with Vladimir' guff, ta.
You say you dislike Putin but you play down his 'invasion' overnight which has been unanimously condemned by the US-UK-EU- AUS and the UN
You are effectively a Putin apologist
I don't read that at all from Heathener's post. What she has said fn my interpretation is correct, is if Putin stops at the disputed territories he satisfies his critics in the Kremlin. If he takes more of the Ukraine he sets off a whirlwind of sanctions and more and potentially over the medium term loses everything.
Questionable Russian assets in the UK frozen subject to HMRC enquiry. Political Party donations from the "owners" of these assets recovered and stored in a HMRC account until sources have been identified and then the money sequestered, returned to Russia or returned to the political party in the event of no wrongdoing.
The visas of Putin shills revoked and their repatriation to Russia.
Happy Tues! ☀️ Just remember UK govt COVID decisions are now driven by catching headlines & not in the interests of the health & well-being of the population. We can both recognize need to open up economy & society using vaccines/testing and seriousness of COVID as a disease.
It will be the correct approach once Nicola advocates it, until then this “independent” (sic) “expert” (sic) will continue taking pot shots at the U.K. government, unlike any of her peers in the rest of the U.K.
No answer to her hypocrisy. She’s just an SNP shill now.
This isn't being done for the nation's health but so that Johnson keeps his right wingers happy. They're more interested in freedom at any cost, including poor people's lives. = Capitalism.
As for Russia, I suspect Putin will stop with these incursions into eastern Ukraine but we shall see. The fact that he waited until the Olympics closed is not a coincidence imho. The new world axis is Putin-Xi and in many ways this kind of incursion is VERY much in the style of China.
Didn't you say it was all scaremongering and this wouldn't happen?
I think the US-UK have been overplaying it, yes.
I still don't think Putin will invade the rest of Ukraine. His 'peacekeeping' operation in the separatist states is pure State China of course.
He will keep the troops there for quite some time, he has the west where he wants them, he has a close alliance now with China, he has done enough not to lose face. For Putin this is a big win.
If he did invade the rest of Ukraine I think it would be a very different story.
Meanwhile expect masses of overhyped rhetoric and war talk from Johnson today. Lots of talk of 'invasion' (it isn't really). Anything to channel the ghost of Winston and desperately re-invoke the tory tabloids into Falklands spirit.
It won't work because whilst this is really grim and Putin stinks, it's not at the moment going to draw in UK citizens.
N.B. I dislike Vladimir Putin as much as I dislike Jeremy Corbyn. I'm an anti-state anti-capitalist person who believes in wilding. I accept this makes me unconventional to the left-right simplistic categories on here but spare me the 'you're in love with Vladimir' guff, ta.
You say you dislike Putin but you play down his 'invasion' overnight which has been unanimously condemned by the US-UK-EU- AUS and the UN
You are effectively a Putin apologist
I don't read that at all from Heathener's post. What she has said fn my interpretation is correct, is if Putin stops at the disputed territories he satisfies his critics in the Kremlin. If he takes more of the Ukraine he sets off a whirlwind of sanctions and more and loses everything.
Questionable Russian assets in the UK frozen subject to HMRC enquiry. Political Party donations from the "owners" of these assets recovered and stored in a HMRC account until sources have been identified and then the money sequestered, returned to Russia or returned to the political party in the event of no wrongdoing.
The visas of Putin shills revoked and their repatriation to Russia.
I attended a business conference at a hotel in Tallinn last night, and afterwards we were having a coffee in the hotel lobby when the Putin speech came on CNN.
The Estonians and Georgians in our party were very grim faced indeed. This is no longer about Ukraine.
Essentially Putin´s angry and rambling discourse showed that Putin demands that all places previously under Soviet rule should return to the the Kremlin. In his demented world view, any resistance will be proof that NATO is protecting their "puppets" and therefore Russia has the right to unleash attacks directly against any NATO state, and not just the eastern members.
The spectacle of the tyrant lecturing his henchmen (at a 10 metre distance) was so sinister as to be almost comical, but not one of us was laughing. It is as we feared, the demands of the Kremlin regime can only lead to war.
I was talking to a friend, the editor of one of the major newspapers here. Putin is serious, but he is also mad. He will use all the resources at his disposal, including nuclear in order to recreate the disaster of the past, which in his mind is "Soviet glory". A fair estimate of the victims of Communist terror is over 20 million dead, and the tortured and maimed in body and spirit includes more or less anyone who endured Soviet power, including, of course runty little mad Vova from the wrong side of the tracks in Leningrad. In Estonia the population fell by a third from the beginning of the Soviet occupation in 1940 until the 1960s. Women and children in their thousands were put on cattle carts and sent to the camps, many of the men were simply shot. My friend like others whose family were taken, was very shaken. There is no ambiguity about what the tyrant now wants, and thousands and even millions of people are going to die because of it.
This is no longer about sanctions. If we are to stop this, we actually have to fight. Economic sanctions, no matter how crippling, will not work. We must now recognise that the defeat of Ukraine must be prevented by all means possible. The war is coming to us, whatever we do, so far better that the Russian forces are defeated in Donetsk than Dresden or Dover. The Russian naval exercise off Ireland is to cut the subsea communications cables, an attack that could cost trillions. Kremlin planning includes this, and this is NOT about just Ukraine.
The diplomats amongst us pointed out that both the UK and France, the current EU President, have been playing a well coodinated good cop/bad cop process, but, as they said, that only works when dealing with the sane. The calls for restraint made by China were greeted with some approval, "at least the Chinese are rational".
Neverthless we were a very sombre party. I have not slept well.
We are very scared, but determined. My friends in the Militia are expecting call ups and if it comes to it, the Baltic will fight to defend themselves, together with the NATO allies based here.
"Deliver us from Evil"
That’s very interesting, and also very worrying, to hear. I don’t think there’s much we can do about Ukraine, but we need to support the Baltic States, and other former Russian satellites that are now in NATO.
This isn't being done for the nation's health but so that Johnson keeps his right wingers happy. They're more interested in freedom at any cost, including poor people's lives. = Capitalism.
As for Russia, I suspect Putin will stop with these incursions into eastern Ukraine but we shall see. The fact that he waited until the Olympics closed is not a coincidence imho. The new world axis is Putin-Xi and in many ways this kind of incursion is VERY much in the style of China.
Didn't you say it was all scaremongering and this wouldn't happen?
I think the US-UK have been overplaying it, yes.
I still don't think Putin will invade the rest of Ukraine. His 'peacekeeping' operation in the separatist states is pure State China of course.
He will keep the troops there for quite some time, he has the west where he wants them, he has a close alliance now with China, he has done enough not to lose face. For Putin this is a big win.
If he did invade the rest of Ukraine I think it would be a very different story.
Meanwhile expect masses of overhyped rhetoric and war talk from Johnson today. Lots of talk of 'invasion' (it isn't really). Anything to channel the ghost of Winston and desperately re-invoke the tory tabloids into Falklands spirit.
It won't work because whilst this is really grim and Putin stinks, it's not at the moment going to draw in UK citizens.
N.B. I dislike Vladimir Putin as much as I dislike Jeremy Corbyn. I'm an anti-state anti-capitalist person who believes in wilding. I accept this makes me unconventional to the left-right simplistic categories on here but spare me the 'you're in love with Vladimir' guff, ta.
apologist
More of a pragmatist. And a cynic.
I find the overall world a more stable place with pragmatism. Bellicose armchair generals? Less so.
Professor Timothy Garton Ash (another “armchair general”?) on R4 - risk is that because of (so far) limited Russian incursion countries like Germany will argue for minimalist sanctions. Quotes Lenin - push in your bayonet and if you find mush, keep pushing, if you find steel, withdraw. Key thing to watch for is German reaction on Nordstream2.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
We're in agreement then. Covid makes people sick, they take time off. The good news is that Omicron doesn't make you very sick, so it isn't for weeks.
I'd suggest that the media not being filled with tales of schools closed because no staff means that the wave of issues in the schools is long past. The media are pretty quick to latch onto middle class mums who start moaning about stuff.
So what's your answer? How do you defeat this evil? Or are you secretly tumescent at the idea of an emboldened Russia?
Why does it have to be defeated? One corrupt shit hole dismembering another corrupt shit hole isn't our problem.
Ukraine on its post 2014 de facto borders isn't a viable or stable situation so something has to change. The ability of the Alliance of Awesome to influence the outcome of that change is severely limited by an understandable lack of appetite for WW3.
Spot on!
It doesn't have to be defeated.
The last time we went on a global moral crusade to rid the world of an evil dictator who was apparently about to unleash WWIII, we opened a Pandora's Box that will continue to reverberate a century from now.
Does Pandora's box reverberate? Be interesting to meet her if so
Do not exaggerate. Are you perhaps misremembering the order in which 9/11 and the war in Iraq happened?
Best thing Britain can do is smack Putin on the wrist and otherwise keep well out.
I know that's unpopular with what someone below described as pb.com's bellicose armchair generals, but there we go.
I find this oh so hilarious repetition of armchair general thing to be childish, tiresome and wrong personally.
It's obvious the intent is to portray anyone suggesting tougher 'language' as being some gung ho 'send in the tanks' fool not thinking about the practicalities and the alternative as being the realistic side, but its very rare anyone talks of physical intervention. They are being pragmatic and realistic in mostly advocating words, or defensive actions in allied states as an example.
Are people not able to comment on the situation and suggest firm language at least without being an armchair general? Can they not criticise one side more than another without a supposedly cutting remark about 'well what would you do, start marching on the Donbass?' style rejoinder
These situations are clearly not easy and practical options limited, the world is like that. But the swift attempt to paint even expressing outrage as bellicose or discussion of basically any reaction as discredited by coming from armchair generals is unpleasantly cynical at best and absolute nonsense at worst.
And one person talking of the need to fight is pretty close to the action, so understandable.
Well, we all have our childish, tiresome and wrong stuff. Personally I wish the the cliché mongers pooping out ‘useful idiots’ like it was a newly minted zinger would give it up. I realise that it’s difficult for many of them to say something interesting but silence is always an option.
This isn't being done for the nation's health but so that Johnson keeps his right wingers happy. They're more interested in freedom at any cost, including poor people's lives. = Capitalism.
As for Russia, I suspect Putin will stop with these incursions into eastern Ukraine but we shall see. The fact that he waited until the Olympics closed is not a coincidence imho. The new world axis is Putin-Xi and in many ways this kind of incursion is VERY much in the style of China.
Didn't you say it was all scaremongering and this wouldn't happen?
I think the US-UK have been overplaying it, yes.
I still don't think Putin will invade the rest of Ukraine. His 'peacekeeping' operation in the separatist states is pure State China of course.
He will keep the troops there for quite some time, he has the west where he wants them, he has a close alliance now with China, he has done enough not to lose face. For Putin this is a big win.
If he did invade the rest of Ukraine I think it would be a very different story.
Meanwhile expect masses of overhyped rhetoric and war talk from Johnson today. Lots of talk of 'invasion' (it isn't really). Anything to channel the ghost of Winston and desperately re-invoke the tory tabloids into Falklands spirit.
It won't work because whilst this is really grim and Putin stinks, it's not at the moment going to draw in UK citizens.
N.B. I dislike Vladimir Putin as much as I dislike Jeremy Corbyn. I'm an anti-state anti-capitalist person who believes in wilding. I accept this makes me unconventional to the left-right simplistic categories on here but spare me the 'you're in love with Vladimir' guff, ta.
You say you dislike Putin but you play down his 'invasion' overnight which has been unanimously condemned by the US-UK-EU- AUS and the UN
You are effectively a Putin apologist
I don't read that at all from Heathener's post. What she has said fn my interpretation is correct, is if Putin stops at the disputed territories he satisfies his critics in the Kremlin. If he takes more of the Ukraine he sets off a whirlwind of sanctions and more and potentially over the medium term loses everything.
Questionable Russian assets in the UK frozen subject to HMRC enquiry. Political Party donations from the "owners" of these assets recovered and stored in a HMRC account until sources have been identified and then the money sequestered, returned to Russia or returned to the political party in the event of no wrongdoing.
The visas of Putin shills revoked and their repatriation to Russia.
Yep that's exactly right.
He does need to stop at this point. Which I actually think he will.
There's a touching quote from the Kenyan delegate to the UN on trying to settle states on ethnic boundaries:
On Monday night, Kenya’s permanent representative, Martin Kimani, delivered a powerful address, suggesting Russia learn to live with ethnic grievances just as African states have done.
“Kenya and almost every African country was birthed by the ending of empire. Our borders were not of our own drawing,” Kimani said. “Had we chosen to pursue states on the basis of ethnic, racial or religious homogeneity, we would still be waging bloody wars these many decades later.”
--------- As others have said, the history of Yugoslavia and now Russia/Ukraine suggests that the extreme nationalists win out in the end in Eastern Europe.
There are now two quite different prospective futures. One is that Putin pushes on past the current de facto borders to create larger East Ukraine statelets with a land border to Crimea. He'd obviously like to, but the West has made it clear that it would trigger really massive sanctions (and if he pushed on to Kiev, even more so).
The other is that he doesn't, and all that's actually happened is that the Russians have declared the de facto split to be de jure, which would after all the sabre-rattling constitute a Putin climbdown. The Western comments have made it pretty clear that we'll live with that, with fairly token sanctions. From the Guardian today:
"A senior US administration official said more sanctions would imposed on Tuesday and would be proportionate to Russian steps overnight. It was unclear however if the deployment of “peacekeeping forces” in the Moscow-backed enclaves would be seen by Washington as an invasion. The official pointed out that Russian forces had been acting covertly in the area for eight years."
"At the end of a meeting of EU foreign ministers, the bloc’s foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, said a package of prepared EU sanctions would be triggered by Russia’s recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk territories, but the extent of the sanctions would reflect “the level of aggression”.
The EU has threatened “severe costs and massive consequences” in the event of a further Russian incursion into Ukraine. The package has yet to be made public but it would involve a block on exports of key electrical components on which Russia is reliant, potentially an import ban on Russian oil and gas, and the freezing of assets of individuals and companies affiliated with the government in Moscow."
In that case, it looks likely that we'll treat it much like the Israeli-occupied West Bank - we don't accept it, but it's a fact and not likely to end soon. We're being quite subtle here, and it may produce the result that Western govenments mostly want - NATO strengthened, and Putin forced to recognise that a military incursion will trigger unbearable costs, without having such a loss of face that he gets overthrown by anyone up for actual war.
The stock market has not taken the hit (yet) that was predicted. Currently rising back to near parity on the day. I suggest that's because they agree with me (oh the chutzpah!) that whilst this is not great, it's also not World War Three. It's not even an invasion of Ukraine as such.
Providing this is all Putin does, we can live with it.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
We're in agreement then. Covid makes people sick, they take time off. The good news is that Omicron doesn't make you very sick, so it isn't for weeks.
I'd suggest that the media not being filled with tales of schools closed because no staff means that the wave of issues in the schools is long past. The media are pretty quick to latch onto middle class mums who start moaning about stuff.
They're not 'past.' They're just not leading to full closures. There's still plenty of disruption. I had to take several days off myself a fortnight ago due to Covid. I haven't taken more than two consecutive days off since I was at school myself, and I was one of 28 teaching staff absent. The cover situation was - difficult.
The stock market has not taken the hit (yet) that was predicted. Currently rising back to near parity on the day. I suggest that's because they agree with me (oh the chutzpah!) that whilst this is not great, it's also not World War Three. It's not even an invasion of Ukraine as such.
Providing this is all Putin does, we can live with it.
There's a touching quote from the Kenyan delegate to the UN on trying to settle states on ethnic boundaries:
On Monday night, Kenya’s permanent representative, Martin Kimani, delivered a powerful address, suggesting Russia learn to live with ethnic grievances just as African states have done.
“Kenya and almost every African country was birthed by the ending of empire. Our borders were not of our own drawing,” Kimani said. “Had we chosen to pursue states on the basis of ethnic, racial or religious homogeneity, we would still be waging bloody wars these many decades later.”
--------- As others have said, the history of Yugoslavia and now Russia/Ukraine suggests that the extreme nationalists win out in the end in Eastern Europe.
There are now two quite different prospective futures. One is that Putin pushes on past the current de facto borders to create larger East Ukraine statelets with a land border to Crimea. He'd obviously like to, but the West has made it clear that it would trigger really massive sanctions (and if he pushed on to Kiev, even more so).
The other is that he doesn't, and all that's actually happened is that the Russians have declared the de facto split to be de jure, which would after all the sabre-rattling constitute a Putin climbdown. The Western comments have made it pretty clear that we'll live with that, with fairly token sanctions. From the Guardian today:
"A senior US administration official said more sanctions would imposed on Tuesday and would be proportionate to Russian steps overnight. It was unclear however if the deployment of “peacekeeping forces” in the Moscow-backed enclaves would be seen by Washington as an invasion. The official pointed out that Russian forces had been acting covertly in the area for eight years."
"At the end of a meeting of EU foreign ministers, the bloc’s foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, said a package of prepared EU sanctions would be triggered by Russia’s recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk territories, but the extent of the sanctions would reflect “the level of aggression”.
The EU has threatened “severe costs and massive consequences” in the event of a further Russian incursion into Ukraine. The package has yet to be made public but it would involve a block on exports of key electrical components on which Russia is reliant, potentially an import ban on Russian oil and gas, and the freezing of assets of individuals and companies affiliated with the government in Moscow."
In that case, it looks likely that we'll treat it much like the Israeli-occupied West Bank - we don't accept it, but it's a fact and not likely to end soon. We're being quite subtle here, and it may produce the result that Western govenments mostly want - NATO strengthened, and Putin forced to recognise that a military incursion will trigger unbearable costs, without having such a loss of face that he gets overthrown by anyone up for actual war.
Indeed. The logic of those suggesting that multi-ethnic states must be split up, is that the chaps below were right.....
As the Russian army marches into Ukraine, I hope the PB scum that accused everyone demanding more serious ultimatums of warmongering see what they have done. You are all human filth.
I've been called worse. Problem for you is that 4 years in local government hardened me to not care one little bit about jibes thrown by people I don't respect. And I still don't see what point there is in NATO sabre-rattling. We will stop him financially and diplomatically, not by war.
We have had sanctions on Russia and Russian individuals for years. They have not stopped the aggression. What makes you so certain that stronger sanctions will stop Russian aggression?
Yes, but you haven't described what you would do differently. Would you dispatch our armoured division there?
I have explained in previous posts. Support Ukraine financially and with military aid, short of boots on the ground. Particularly intel. Bolster the security of other Eastern European states. All this on top of massive sanctions on the Russian state and individuals.
Make it clear that Russia is a pariah. It should have been done after Salisbury really, but we are where we are.
The stock market has not taken the hit (yet) that was predicted. Currently rising back to near parity on the day. I suggest that's because they agree with me (oh the chutzpah!) that whilst this is not great, it's also not World War Three. It's not even an invasion of Ukraine as such.
Providing this is all Putin does, we can live with it.
Best thing Britain can do is smack Putin on the wrist and otherwise keep well out.
I know that's unpopular with what someone below described as pb.com's bellicose armchair generals, but there we go.
I find this oh so hilarious repetition of armchair general thing to be childish, tiresome and wrong personally.
It's obvious the intent is to portray anyone suggesting tougher 'language' as being some gung ho 'send in the tanks' fool not thinking about the practicalities and the alternative as being the realistic side, but its very rare anyone talks of physical intervention. They are being pragmatic and realistic in mostly advocating words, or defensive actions in allied states as an example.
Are people not able to comment on the situation and suggest firm language at least without being an armchair general? Can they not criticise one side more than another without a supposedly cutting remark about 'well what would you do, start marching on the Donbass?' style rejoinder
These situations are clearly not easy and practical options limited, the world is like that. But the swift attempt to paint even expressing outrage as bellicose or discussion of basically any reaction as discredited by coming from armchair generals is unpleasantly cynical at best and absolute nonsense at worst.
And one person talking of the need to fight is pretty close to the action, so understandable.
Well, we all have our childish, tiresome and wrong stuff. Personally I wish the the cliché mongers pooping out ‘useful idiots’ like it was a newly minted zinger would give it up. I realise that it’s difficult for many of them to say something interesting but silence is always an option.
Fair enough, useful idiot is not particularly clever. I could argue on a sliding scale which is less appropriate than the other and whether each seeks to recast the thrust of the expressed opinion, but I'd be happy to see neither.
The 'wrong' part is particularly relevant however. Responding to what is going on, even with impotent anger rather than a shrug, is not bellicosity, nor seeking, somehow, to figure out what might be a proportionate reaction.
So what's your answer? How do you defeat this evil? Or are you secretly tumescent at the idea of an emboldened Russia?
Why does it have to be defeated? One corrupt shit hole dismembering another corrupt shit hole isn't our problem.
Ukraine on its post 2014 de facto borders isn't a viable or stable situation so something has to change. The ability of the Alliance of Awesome to influence the outcome of that change is severely limited by an understandable lack of appetite for WW3.
The answer I'd expect from you. Let Russia do what it wants.
Good morning one and all. At least the wind seems to have dropped, but the sky I can see from my window looks a bit threatening. I'm somewhat concerned at the dropping of all restrictions; I don't get the I'm press ion that everything's OK now, by any means, although I do think we have to learn to live with endemic Covid; I only hope it remains a mild variety. I suspect there's still an issue with schools.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, are not the boundaries of these States somewhat artificial. AIUI, the majority, possibly the vast majority, of the population of the separatist 'republics' identifies as Russian. I'm not defending Putin, who appears to be running diversionary tactics of his own...... what's going awry in Russia?
What issue do you see with schools? Children are the least vulnerable to this virus.
Schools 100% should be the first thing to live as normal.
The problem is that with Covid still ripping through quite a lot of primary schools the staff absence means that normal is difficult. OK so the period of sick leave is shorter than the old 2 weeks in chokey used to be but it is still disruptive.
Primary schools can be filled with snot monkeys at the best of times. Managing absences is something that schools have always had to do, and will always have to do.
However those absences should be because people are actually sick, rather than they have an endemic virus that hasn't made them sick.
Makes you wonder how we ever managed these situations before covid.
1. People catch virus 2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus 3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Is is a legal mandate to stay home with norovirus, or just guidance based on common sense? As in, what you should do now if you have a cold, or sore throat etc.
Comments
I don't see what is left-wing about granting the state the power to put people under house arrest if they are infected by a virus that widespread vaccination renders only about as deadly as seasonal influenza. As a left-winger I'm opposed to such authoritarianism - why aren't you?
The basis of left-wing support for state power has always been to use it against the strong in order to protect the weak. In this context that would mean things like imposing laws on minimum sick pay rates on large companies, to cover employees on zero-hour contracts, for example, and not imprisoning those workers in their own homes.
On topic, it feels quaint to me that anyone is even still talking about covid anymore, much less recommending statutes and criminal sanctions to contain it. HM ERII has it at 95 and it barely warrants a mention. Should tell you everything.
2. People go off sick because they are ill with the virus
3. People get better and return to work
BR has been demanding that people sick with Covid go to work as normal. If its Norovirus they don't bring arse-spraying mayhem into work, they stay home, so why is Covid any different? The genuinely good news is that for most people 3 jabs means Omicron is relatively mild. A few days of being crap, a week tops and you're back to normal.
Before Br says "eugh but a lot of people don't even know they have it the virus is that mild" then they won't be ill and won't be off sick. But if people are ill - with Covid or anything else - you don't want them in an office environment. I have both ordered people to go home and been ordered home for things that were not Covid.
Most countries have their right-wing nutters, Russia more than most.
Then it's a matter of doing whatever it takes to prepare for next winter.
- Natural gas is a sensible intermediate step to a green future
- Nothing wrong with Nordstream2
- LNG import terminals for ships are the Devil's work! insanely dangerous! and must be banned! From neighbouring
countries, even.
With so much profit still being made by the energy giants I am not suggesting public subsidy. But a regulatory framework where partnerships between the little companies exploring and the mega giants who can pay for it may be needed.
We also need to tone down the abuse hurled at the industry. Yes we need to transition to renewables. But we still need oil and gas and that isn't about to change. Branding Shell etc evil because they sell stuff we need has always felt counter-productive.
South Korea has rather a lot of Omicron now but has perhaps the most effective covid record amongst mid sised nations, despite being hit quite early on. They never had a true lockdown either, though did close some nightclubs etc.
Societies with trust in government and in each other seemed to cope better.
I had two good friends who identified as Yugoslav.
One was from Vojvodina, and was part Croat, part Serb. He told me confidently that war will not happen in Yugoslavia. Everyone has much more in common than separates them. After the Way, he was very sad, and he still calls himself a Yugoslav. It was a good country, he said, I was proud of it as a nation of all the Slavs. He now lives in Edinburgh.
The second friend was part Serb, part Hungarian, part Jewish. He told me confidently that there is no difference between these peoples, they speak mutually intelligible versions of the same language. There will not be a war. He now lives in Montreal, Canada.
The lesson is that the forces of nationalism in these multi-ethnic Eastern European countries are just incredibly powerful.
Yugoslavia could not withstand them, and it had a much longer history as a stable, independent, multi-ethnic country than the present-day Ukraine.
The other lesson is that people who think like my friends leave. They did not stay in Yugoslavia. Like-minded people will not stay in the present-day Ukraine. Because both sides are now increasingly controlled by extremists.
I am not sure whether there ever was a time that Stalin's boundaries of the Ukraine could be saved, but that time is long past.
The boundaries of a new Ukraine need to be sorted.
I wanted them sorted through plebiscites. They will now be sorted through force.
I would think it’s highly unlikely that Putin would pull the plug himself. So we’ll see Russia formalise its earlier bites out of the Ukrainian peach, perhaps another clumsy nibble on top. And then business as usual between the kleptocrats and British politicians in time for party conference season.
https://twitter.com/lisas_research/status/1495843816070336512
Meanwhile we're heading into the new F1 season with a team whose cars are parading round draped in the Russian flag with Russian Oligarch company branding and the son of said Oligarch crashing randomly into things. Should not F1 ban all of this?
I still don't think Putin will invade the rest of Ukraine. His 'peacekeeping' operation in the separatist states is pure State China of course.
He will keep the troops there for quite some time, he has the west where he wants them, he has a close alliance now with China, he has done enough not to lose face. For Putin this is a big win.
If he did invade the rest of Ukraine I think it would be a very different story.
Meanwhile expect masses of overhyped rhetoric and war talk from Johnson today. Lots of talk of 'invasion' (it isn't really). Anything to channel the ghost of Winston and desperately re-invoke the tory tabloids into Falklands spirit.
It won't work because whilst this is really grim and Putin stinks, it's not at the moment going to draw in UK citizens.
N.B. I dislike Vladimir Putin as much as I dislike Jeremy Corbyn. I'm an anti-state anti-capitalist person who believes in wilding. I accept this makes me unconventional to the left-right simplistic categories on here but spare me the 'you're in love with Vladimir' guff, ta.
Except that it doesn't. NATO is not going to engage in WWIII over Ukraine. We know it. Putin knows it. Even the Ukranians know it. So our postured deployment would just be waved off by Putin.
The Estonians and Georgians in our party were very grim faced indeed. This is no longer about Ukraine.
Essentially Putin´s angry and rambling discourse showed that Putin demands that all places previously under Soviet rule should return to the the Kremlin. In his demented world view, any resistance will be proof that NATO is protecting their "puppets" and therefore Russia has the right to unleash attacks directly against any NATO state, and not just the eastern members.
The spectacle of the tyrant lecturing his henchmen (at a 10 metre distance) was so sinister as to be almost comical, but not one of us was laughing. It is as we feared, the demands of the Kremlin regime can only lead to war.
I was talking to a friend, the editor of one of the major newspapers here. Putin is serious, but he is also mad. He will use all the resources at his disposal, including nuclear in order to recreate the disaster of the past, which in his mind is "Soviet glory". A fair estimate of the victims of Communist terror is over 20 million dead, and the tortured and maimed in body and spirit includes more or less anyone who endured Soviet power, including, of course runty little mad Vova from the wrong side of the tracks in Leningrad. In Estonia the population fell by a third from the beginning of the Soviet occupation in 1940 until the 1960s. Women and children in their thousands were put on cattle carts and sent to the camps, many of the men were simply shot. My friend like others whose family were taken, was very shaken. There is no ambiguity about what the tyrant now wants, and thousands and even millions of people are going to die because of it.
This is no longer about sanctions. If we are to stop this, we actually have to fight. Economic sanctions, no matter how crippling, will not work. We must now recognise that the defeat of Ukraine must be prevented by all means possible. The war is coming to us, whatever we do, so far better that the Russian forces are defeated in Donetsk than Dresden or Dover. The Russian naval exercise off Ireland is to cut the subsea communications cables, an attack that could cost trillions. Kremlin planning includes this, and this is NOT about just Ukraine.
The diplomats amongst us pointed out that both the UK and France, the current EU President, have been playing a well coodinated good cop/bad cop process, but, as they said, that only works when dealing with the sane. The calls for restraint made by China were greeted with some approval, "at least the Chinese are rational".
Neverthless we were a very sombre party. I have not slept well.
We are very scared, but determined. My friends in the Militia are expecting call ups and if it comes to it, the Baltic will fight to defend themselves, together with the NATO allies based here.
"Deliver us from Evil"
Shell and BP, as well as other oils and gas businesses, are at the forefront of the switch to renewables. They have to be for their long term future. Demonising them is pointless.
As for Russian gas, it’s not cheap now. Our policy on gas has been incredibly short sighted.
And I don't think you can so simply equate Ukraine with Yugoslavia.
Top o’ the mornin’ tae ye.
You are effectively a Putin apologist
Some here were suggesting that he has no ideology - just money. Doesn't look like that now....
The sanctions, especially the financial sanctions are going to be very tough for any rich Russians living abroad, although a fair number of those in the UK are opposed to Putin and have been trying to get their money out of his reach. Many will claim asylum.
The lights are going out...
NATO has stood up to Soviet and now Russian aggression for 64 years. Putin may not like Estonia's membership but they are members. I think he knows that the west has been prepared to defend itself and that I hope hasn't changed despite his decade and more of undermining us.
I don't expect Putin to move against Estonia just as the Soviets never poured through the Fulda gap to take NATO out. But our specific weakness now is that the UK armed forces are a shadow of what they were. Run down after the cold war ended they have been savagely cut by successive governments especially this one.
If we're serious about standing up to Putin, we need to start spending real money on recruiting people to join and giving them state of the art equipment. Yes it costs money that I'm sure the government don't think they have. But defence is an industry with a long proud history of make work projects, paying a lot of people good money to build things we need. That gives them money to spend elsewhere in the economy.
i am not expecting Big Dog to give a penny of hope to our armed forces. All mouth and no trousers.
On the Southwestern coast of the Black Sea , I see that the Romanians have green-lighted a large increase in NATO forces, but the Bulgarians apparently not so much. Relations with Russia are traditionally stronger there.
Meanwhile, even as the menacing attitude and danger he poses in the Med increases, the west still obviously relies on Erdogan to deter the Russians on the south side of the black sea, and on the southwestern side the Greeks are more enthusiastically pro-US than they've ever been. That leaves Poland, next to Ukraine, and the Baltic states, that Cicero describes.
In #Russia, the stock exchange index is down by 14.2% in Monday trading over concerns of a large scale invasion into Ukraine, erasing over $12.7 bn in market value in a single day.
This was the worst day for Russian stocks since November 2008.
https://twitter.com/AlexKokcharov/status/1495804888944627715
I know that's unpopular with what someone below described as pb.com's bellicose armchair generals, but there we go.
And all of it is nonsense anyway as Putin's justifications relies on all Ukraine not being a real country, not that some parts of it have people who consider themselves Russian.
By the way, what's with this BBC fad for calling it Nato? It's an acronym. NATO please
Ukraine on its post 2014 de facto borders isn't a viable or stable situation so something has to change. The ability of the Alliance of Awesome to influence the outcome of that change is severely limited by an understandable lack of appetite for WW3.
Even military action if Putin invaded the Baltic states is not guaranteed. If Putin went beyond the old USSR and invaded Poland and not only NATO but EU states then NATO would respond militarily but only then and then we would be in World War 3.
Otherwise economy sanctions is all he would face. Ireland is not in NATO, if it wants to ensure its security I suggest it joins sooner rather than later
Stralsund is definitely worth visiting. And Prora in Rügen is worth visiting if you're interested in that bit of German history and the KdF program. It's been gradually converted into flats (and a youth hostel and a hotel) the last years, which is kind of a shame, but I think a couple of blocks remain unrenovated.
From Wiki:
"Robert Ley, head of the German Labour Front – of which Strength Through Joy was a subsidiary – envisioned Prora as a parallel to Butlins, which were British "holiday camps" designed to provide affordable holidays for the average worker. Prora was designed to house 20,000 holidaymakers, under the ideal that every worker deserved a holiday at the beach. Designed by Clemens Klotz, who won a design competition overseen by Adolf Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer, all rooms were planned to overlook the sea, while corridors and sanitation are located on the landward side.[3] Each room of 5 metres (16 ft) by 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) was to have two beds, a wardrobe and a sink. There were communal toilets, showers and bathrooms on each floor.
Hitler's plans for Prora were much more ambitious. He wanted a gigantic sea resort, the "most mighty and large one to ever have existed", holding 20,000 beds. In the middle, a huge building was to be erected. At the same time, Hitler wanted it to be convertible into a military hospital in case of war. Hitler insisted that the plans of a giant indoor arena by architect Erich Putlitz be included. Putlitz's Festival Hall was intended to be able to accommodate all 20,000 guests at the same time. His plans included two wave-swimming pools, a cinema and a theatre.[1] A large dock for passenger ships was also planned.
The designs won a Grand Prix award at the 1937 Paris World Exposition."
It doesn't have to be defeated.
The last time we went on a global moral crusade to rid the world of an evil dictator who was apparently about to unleash WWIII, we opened a Pandora's Box that will continue to reverberate a century from now.
Think about what that suggests.
Police Scotland to review policy that allows male rapists to self-identify as women
The force provoked criticism in December when it said it would record the sex of criminals in line with how they 'present or self-declare'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/21/police-scotland-review-policy-allows-rapists-self-identify-women/
You can say the same about the French/German border, the French/Spanish border, the German/Belgium border, the Italian/Swiss border, and so on. This isn’t something unique to Eastern Europe. The difference is that we have (after centuries of war) found peaceful solutions.
Apparently, a plebiscite could be organised after the greatest slaughter Europe has ever seen, but it cannot possibly be organised now in the Donbass.
It's obvious the intent is to portray anyone suggesting tougher 'language' as being some gung ho 'send in the tanks' fool not thinking about the practicalities and the alternative as being the realistic side, but its very rare anyone talks of physical intervention. They are being pragmatic and realistic in mostly advocating words, or defensive actions in allied states as an example.
Are people not able to comment on the situation and suggest firm language at least without being an armchair general? Can they not criticise one side more than another without a supposedly cutting remark about 'well what would you do, start marching on the Donbass?' style rejoinder
These situations are clearly not easy and practical options limited, the world is like that. But the swift attempt to paint even expressing outrage as bellicose or discussion of basically any reaction as discredited by coming from armchair generals is unpleasantly cynical at best and absolute nonsense at worst.
And one person talking of the need to fight is pretty close to the action, so understandable.
Almost guaranteed.
https://twitter.com/Guderian_Xaba/status/1496043215576780800
What sanctions are you expecting?
Questionable Russian assets in the UK frozen subject to HMRC enquiry. Political Party donations from the "owners" of these assets recovered and stored in a HMRC account until sources have been identified and then the money sequestered, returned to Russia or returned to the political party in the event of no wrongdoing.
The visas of Putin shills revoked and their repatriation to Russia.
Yet another news story about a woman exposing her penis in public.
There must be some explanation for this bizarre rise in sex crimes among women.
For now, it remains a mystery. 🤷♀️
https://mobile.twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1494493549852864531
I find the overall world a more stable place with pragmatism. Bellicose armchair generals? Less so.
Peace to you all.
Do not exaggerate. Are you perhaps misremembering the order in which 9/11 and the war in Iraq happened?
Personally I wish the the cliché mongers pooping out ‘useful idiots’ like it was a newly minted zinger would give it up. I realise that it’s difficult for many of them to say something interesting but silence is always an option.
He does need to stop at this point. Which I actually think he will.
On Monday night, Kenya’s permanent representative, Martin Kimani, delivered a powerful address, suggesting Russia learn to live with ethnic grievances just as African states have done.
“Kenya and almost every African country was birthed by the ending of empire. Our borders were not of our own drawing,” Kimani said. “Had we chosen to pursue states on the basis of ethnic, racial or religious homogeneity, we would still be waging bloody wars these many decades later.”
---------
As others have said, the history of Yugoslavia and now Russia/Ukraine suggests that the extreme nationalists win out in the end in Eastern Europe.
There are now two quite different prospective futures. One is that Putin pushes on past the current de facto borders to create larger East Ukraine statelets with a land border to Crimea. He'd obviously like to, but the West has made it clear that it would trigger really massive sanctions (and if he pushed on to Kiev, even more so).
The other is that he doesn't, and all that's actually happened is that the Russians have declared the de facto split to be de jure, which would after all the sabre-rattling constitute a Putin climbdown. The Western comments have made it pretty clear that we'll live with that, with fairly token sanctions. From the Guardian today:
"A senior US administration official said more sanctions would imposed on Tuesday and would be proportionate to Russian steps overnight. It was unclear however if the deployment of “peacekeeping forces” in the Moscow-backed enclaves would be seen by Washington as an invasion. The official pointed out that Russian forces had been acting covertly in the area for eight years."
"At the end of a meeting of EU foreign ministers, the bloc’s foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, said a package of prepared EU sanctions would be triggered by Russia’s recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk territories, but the extent of the sanctions would reflect “the level of aggression”.
The EU has threatened “severe costs and massive consequences” in the event of a further Russian incursion into Ukraine. The package has yet to be made public but it would involve a block on exports of key electrical components on which Russia is reliant, potentially an import ban on Russian oil and gas, and the freezing of assets of individuals and companies affiliated with the government in Moscow."
In that case, it looks likely that we'll treat it much like the Israeli-occupied West Bank - we don't accept it, but it's a fact and not likely to end soon. We're being quite subtle here, and it may produce the result that Western govenments mostly want - NATO strengthened, and Putin forced to recognise that a military incursion will trigger unbearable costs, without having such a loss of face that he gets overthrown by anyone up for actual war.
Providing this is all Putin does, we can live with it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c9qdqqkgz27t/ftse-100
Equally one has to feel that Putin doesn’t care what sanctions are imposed as he won’t personally feel the pain .
Make it clear that Russia is a pariah. It should have been done after Salisbury really, but we are where we are.
So what is your answer?
The 'wrong' part is particularly relevant however. Responding to what is going on, even with impotent anger rather than a shrug, is not bellicosity, nor seeking, somehow, to figure out what might be a proportionate reaction.