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Powerful front pages following Putin’s aggression – politicalbetting.com
Powerful front pages following Putin’s aggression – politicalbetting.com
No doubt at all what dominates the papers this morning and each one covers in their own way Putin’s use of force to take over a European democracy.
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Seems to me he’ll keep the bits of the east and Black Sea coast he wants. And as for the rest, he will set out to deliberately make it an unliveable and ungovernable mess, believing that a tide of instability will then crash west.
My only pause is his misplaced ethno-romantic attachment to Kiev…perhaps west of there is where his line gets drawn. Halves the territory to control.
Putin is completely transfixed by fear of such alarmingly genteel sanctions.
Absoloute cowardly selfish tossers.
And the costs will not just be financial.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/02/24/ukraine-swift-sanctions-germany-russia-ban/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN5Zmq9YTUs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNnq8gMAE-8 (starts about 20 minutes in)
Mr. JS, an axis of stupidity from Germany and Italy.
Stop pussyfooting about and do it, complete isolation in all forms for Russia. If we won't commit militarily we have to make it as uncomfortable for the Russia people and let that anger and hate from the populace overthrow this vile piece of shit.
Two of the most interesting pieces in this morning's news are.
1. Growing sense that Putin has lost his marbles.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/24/putin-russian-president-ukraine-invasion-mental-fitness
Many of us watched his rambling speech and thought the same: he has gone doolally. (Also when I realised he would invade.)
2. Large numbers of Russians vociferously and quietly opposed to the lunatic's invasion
https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-police-arrest-more-than-1-700-anti-war-protesters-in-russia-as-anger-erupts-over-invasion-12550653
The Telegraph are suggesting this may end Putin's reign although I suspect that's wishful thinking.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/02/24/vladimir-putin-may-just-have-made-error-ends-bloody-rule/
Ukraine covers over 600,000km². If Putin funnelled every soldier in Russia into it, that still might not be enough to defeat a bloody insurgency. We also have to consider the possibility that a substantial fraction of Russia's entire conventional military capability - both men and materiel - will be destroyed in this conflict. If and when the Russian army's professional troops start to become degraded and overstretched, the Kremlin will be increasingly forced to plug the gaps with its abused and pitiful conscripts. That is unlikely to end well for Putin, either.
Ukraine is outgunned and much of it will end up in ruins as this war progresses, but the country is very far from finished.
The Conservative Party has blood on its hands.
We chuntered, we moaned, but we still allowed Putin's Russian money to flow through London. Where were the UK calls then to ban them from SWIFT?
Instead Boris Johnson played tennis with the wife of one of Putin's mafia for a £160,000 donation to the tory party.
So easy to condemn other countries. To pick the speck out of their eyes and miss the bloody great plank which has been in our own for years.
The UK are utter hypocrites. Conservatives especially so.
On that general topic, Ukraine itself could substantially disrupt gas supplies by destroying sections of the pipelines that traverse its territory, and frankly one wonders why they haven't done that yet. Indeed, Poland and Slovakia could choke off everything except Nord Stream 1 by the simple expedient of closing a few valves...
The Soviet Union was bigger, nastier and stronger than the Russian Federation and it still couldn't beat Afghanistan - and Afghanistan wasn't sat immediately next door to NATO, with its effectively inexhaustible conveyer belt of weaponry that's presumably available to the Ukrainian Government on a "buy now, don't worry about paying later" basis.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/21/russia-report-reveals-uk-government-failed-to-address-kremlin-interference-scottish-referendum-brexit
It stinks
And in President Zelinskiy the Ukrainians have a hero
The following are probably simultaneously correct:
1. Russia should be kicked out of Swift.
2. British political parties should reconsider accepting donations from Russian oligarchs.
I hope.
I would encourage others reading PB to do the same. I will check out the organisations that have been set up for this purpose (the ones I have linked to already were recommended by a respected QC on Linkedin) and keep you updated, assuming that is ok with the sites owners?
The hope has to be that Putin's mission in Ukraine is a failure, and he ultimately gets overthrown by his own people. At the moment, this is perhaps the most important cause of our lifetimes.
The person with blood on his hands is Putin.
Brexit is an evil. The harm it does has only just started. It was one of Putin’s greatest triumphs.
What makes us centrist, pro-democracy, pro-European folk “queasy” is the formerly fairly respectable Conservative & Unionist Party being thoroughly hijacked by repulsive far-right populists determined to hinder European cooperation and teamwork.
Brexit is an evil. The harm it does has only just started. It was one of Putin’s greatest triumphs.
Ffs you wanted a YES vote in 2014. A vote which would have immediately expelled Scotland from the EU, with no clear route back. Just shut the fuck up
We know we’re the good guys, you know we’re the good guys, we know you know we’re the good guys, we know you know we know we’re the good guys. But still you lie.
I wouldn't personally have put you in those categories, but if you think so...
I think fairly soon they'll install a puppet regime in the Ukraine, but a debilitating insurgency will tie the Russians down for however long they stay - and the puppet govt will need massive troop support to keep it in place. Added to which they need to keep the lid on Belarus, and possibly large street protests at home.
I think our best hope is for a palace coup led by Sergei Lavrov, or whoever.
https://twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/1496953514387464196?t=PVUTmNfEcqe-bRUrbxMDYQ&s=19
And yet they still try their luck.
But the bigger truth is that the only sanctions that will really hurt Russia will cause a level of pain here, too. We have yet to pass that threshold. The EU should be expelling Russia from SWIFT, we should be excluding all private and institutional Russian money and influence not directly linked to known opponents of Putin from the UK. The same in the US. None of this is happening yet. Why? Because the domestic price is deemed too high.
Aside from 'scum'. But I'm in good company with Labour's front bench there...
It doesn't invalidate the legitimacy of the issue, whether Brexit or Sindy, or BLM, but we should be aware of Putin's manipulations, and decide issues on their own merits.
On the far edge of fantasy. RoI as Ukraine, perhaps, in SF minds.
The modern iteration of the Conservative Party is utterly repulsive. They have far more in common with Putin than they care to admit. Luckily we have something Putin’s internal opponents largely lack: the ballot box. Register everyone to vote dear folks! The battle with the forces of evil looms.
PS: clear out the Tory stables while we are at it
#Russian bombers have crossed the Northern #Belarus'ian border near #Gomel and are enroute to the Ukrainian Capital Kyiv, they should be arriving in the next 15 minutes, citizens are being urged to get to Bomb Shelters Immediately | EMPR #Ukraine #russianinvasion #Russia
https://twitter.com/euromaidanpr/status/1497104458475528193?s=21
Chances are that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will join many of his fellow Ukrainians among the dead before International Women's Day, if not by the end of February. I get a sense from his latest statements that he knows this and that he feels betrayed by being left to face Russian aggression alone.
If we don't want the shame of abandoning Ukraine to be followed by the shame of abandoning another country then we have to get ready to fight. Not spending money on the Russian army (via oil and gas purchases) would be useful, but we have to spend money on our own capabilities, and we have to be prepared to suffer heavy losses to check the Russian advance - and China too.
Maximum sanctions should be the easy bit. Which politician is even talking about doing what is necessary?
I'd have said making Putin look sane was an impossible task, but in comparison this does it.
Don’t say you weren’t told. Countless senior officers are on record.
I'm not convinced there will be a major insurgency.
This is not to doubt the will of Ukrainians to resist, or their courage, but I think an insurgency is not all that easy to sustain, and the Russians will be prepared to be a lot more brutal than the Americans.
I think it should probably be done, but it isn't the simple answer that people want.
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/02/25/why-the-west-is-reluctant-to-deny-russian-banks-access-to-swift
They stand at the opposite end of the spectrum of regard than those spineless, self-centred leaders within the EU. Today more than ever, I am relieved we are now unshackled from that moral vacuum.
BBC News - Angela Rayner 'unreservedly' apologises for Conservative 'scum' comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59081482
Biden has provided accurate intelligence ; Macron has kept a channel of communication open. That's about it, as far as I can see.
But please stop calling me Sean. It is fucking tedious, I am not called ‘Sean’, and the mods - as I understand it - do not like people being openly misidentified on the site. Thanks
Putin will go by internal political intrigue, not mass uprising.
And it's not easy to see how the Ukrainians can defeat what's being thrown at them. The murder of those 13 soldiers in the Black Sea by the Russian warship rather grimly encapsulates the situation.
1. Hiroshima
2. Nagasaki
3. Tbd
I don't mind being described as a "Reasonable Centrist Dad". I cannot deny any of the three words!
According to Paul B Stephan – a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia who served from 2020 to 2021 as Special Counsel to the General Counsel of the US Department of Defence, with previous Russia-oriented roles in the US State Department and Treasury over decades – it is Britain that is likely to be the biggest drag on any Western sanctions initiative against Russia.’
https://bylinetimes.com/2022/02/24/uk-sanctions-will-flop-because-the-city-of-london-is-compromised-by-russian-money/?fbclid=IwAR3ld_T-jKae2XpPS663FKAIhYl2k1xErVA4i236sQvb9l5NrclRWEUapTA
I like to think of myself as a centrist.
And I am very reasonable. Putin apologists should be burned alive, as should civil servants at the DfE, but for lesser crimes such as taking pizza with pineapple the penalty should be to be shot.
And terrain is almost irrelevant. Yes, Afghanistan had mountains, but one of the centres of Vietnamese resistance was the flat Mekong Delta
All that matters is the will of the people to resist - and a ready supply of arms from outsiders.
So far I’d say both are in place. Ukraine borders NATO. But maybe Putin can crush all resistance. We shall see
NATO should admit Ukraine with effect from midnight tonight.
Waking to another utterly grim day in world events.