A wokery note. Ukraine (may the Lord help them) is allowing millions to leave - and who can blame the leavers - but not men from 18-60. They are being called up.
Normally in the face of this sort of sexism the BBC/Guardian/Twitterati would be leading on woke calls for men and women, as well as binaries and transitioners, to be treated identically whether they are what they are by gender, sex or both, while denouncing JK Rowling for saying that it's OK to call up men but not women for hand to hand combat in ruined cities.
Could someone update me on what I should think this week.
I can't - other than to reiterate Yuval Noah Harari's insight that the ability to hold apparently irreconcilable contradictory views is a feature of advanced human development (or something along those lines).
However, I have been seriously wondering if a contributory factor to the start of the war was toxic masculinity. The Kremlin - and Putin's inner circle - seem to be very male dominated. The contrast with the increasingly gender neutral west, particularly so over the last decade, is very noticeable and significant.
Bob Seeley MP with a very forthright and knowledgeable interview on Sky just now. Some very good suggestions as well as valid criticism of Western response over the last couple of decades
Reports 27 countries are actively providing weapons to Ukraine
Time for us to unite, stop sniping, and be proud of the response currently on its way from nations across the world
I'm sorry BigG. We in the West have done next to nothing. There is good reason why we have done next to nothing we don't want Putin to escalate this fiasco to involve the EU and the UK.
Clinton's biggest regret was he did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. We are watching, not genocide, but the destruction of a nation. The upshot either way is thousands of innocents are slaughtered whilst we watch on.
Our declarations "but Ukraine is not in NATO" are sops to ourselves.They are a sovereign nation invaded by an aggressor and we (the West) have sanctioned 70% of Russian banks. Huh, 70%?
Now I don't want British troops involved, I don't want my children conscripted for a world war, but neither can I sit back with satisfaction and claim leaders representing me have done all they can on my behalf, they haven't. In some cases, their vested interests trump my horror.
I don't know how to counter Putin, that is not my job. But neither, it seems, do those whose job it is to deal with Putin.
I am not suggesting a party political or Remainer/ Leave bias here. Whoever they represent, Western leaders have been guilty of dereliction of duty for at least eight years and that includes Starmer and your beloved "Boris".
When I was calling for us to act against Russia in 2014, 2016 (I think), 2018, etc, etc, where was your voice? Were you in the "Russia's ambitions are detrimental to the world; we need to act hard" camp or the "You're a warmonger risking WWIII" camp?
Because actions then would have been a damned sight easier than they are now. And we still face a threat of WWIII.
Yes they would, which is why I have cited eight years of inaction and dereliction of duty by Western leaders.
And, don't you blame me. I was outraged that we in the West did nothing about a downed airliner. We begged for permission to recover our bodies. That single act was brushed under the carpet. That represents the West sitting on its hands while Putin toyed with us.
I was with Elwood weeks ago when he demanded NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That is recorded here.
I'm talking about calling for action over the last eight years. This could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. It was predicted.
And yes, a Conservative / coalition government has been in place for that time. But remember Miliband's hideous backturn over the Syria vote? Remember Corbyn, Labour's leader, who pretended to be rather (ahem) anti-war?
Putin has gambled that the west's weaknesses would prevent us from stopping his territorial ambitions. The UK's negligence played into it - but the blame lies all over the west. It was too hard to do, so it wasn't done.
(I'd actually argue May did very well over Salisbury, although it could have been used as a catalyst for firmer actions.)
There are quite a few videos of Russian tanks that have run out of fuel or been abandoned. It seems the have problem with logistics and morale.
I have a colleague in my network who was a Royal Navy captain and really knows his onions.
He's adamant that Russian forces aren't as strong as they look on paper because their raw material, training, and staff work is highly variable, whereas British forces are tip-top.
Basically, his argument was that military effectiveness, just as in all other walks of life, comes down to people and organisational culture.
Except that the British military tends to have a hugely inflated perception of its own comparative effectiveness. Cf what we were saying about the Americans when we went in to replace them in Basra, brutally exposed as hubris by subsequent events
Yes, there was a bit of arrogance in there.
He also said that there comes a point where numbers absolutely matter, and the British Army is now tokenistic.
I'm afraid I think we now have to raise defence spending to the point where can deploy at least one fully armed heavy warfighting division on the continent, permanently. I suspect that will require us to expand the British army by 15-20,000 men back up to about 95-100k strong, and probably an extra £12-16bn per year in defence spending.
But I think we have to do it.
The fly-on-the-wall 'life on a warship' series on C5 is worth a watch. It illustrates how the Navy has been operating as if Russia is the enemy for some time already. The work our ships are doing is impressive, but there's also a rather British amateurishness about the way the ships are commanded and operated, which makes for interesting TV. But the viewer does wonder how it would stand up if the engagements with the Russian navy were for real?
Within the constraints of the lack of every conceivable type of equipment and materiel the RN would do just fine.
We had an Eng Off on Invincible who would never wear anything but tartan M&S slippers while at sea. Certainly indicative of a certain lack of discipline (he would have been removed from the ship in the USN) but he knew his stuff and could fix anything as long as he didn't have the appropriate tools or parts.
XXX Corps officers wore various coloured cords in the advance on Arnhem in 1944 too, rather than official uniforms and troops have modified their clothing whilst on active campaign for centuries.
If your core discipline and esprit de corps is strong, and you're good at your job, then - within limits - it doesn't really matter.
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
Well it is early days yet, but its encouraging to hear they have not achieved objectives.
Reports 27 countries are actively providing weapons to Ukraine
Time for us to unite, stop sniping, and be proud of the response currently on its way from nations across the world
I'm sorry BigG. We in the West have done next to nothing. There is good reason why we have done next to nothing we don't want Putin to escalate this fiasco to involve the EU and the UK.
Clinton's biggest regret was he did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. We are watching, not genocide, but the destruction of a nation. The upshot either way is thousands of innocents are slaughtered whilst we watch on.
Our declarations "but Ukraine is not in NATO" are sops to ourselves.They are a sovereign nation invaded by an aggressor and we (the West) have sanctioned 70% of Russian banks. Huh, 70%?
Now I don't want British troops involved, I don't want my children conscripted for a world war, but neither can I sit back with satisfaction and claim leaders representing me have done all they can on my behalf, they haven't. In some cases, their vested interests trump my horror.
I don't know how to counter Putin, that is not my job. But neither, it seems, do those whose job it is to deal with Putin.
I am not suggesting a party political or Remainer/ Leave bias here. Whoever they represent, Western leaders have been guilty of dereliction of duty for at least eight years and that includes Starmer and your beloved "Boris".
When I was calling for us to act against Russia in 2014, 2016 (I think), 2018, etc, etc, where was your voice? Were you in the "Russia's ambitions are detrimental to the world; we need to act hard" camp or the "You're a warmonger risking WWIII" camp?
Because actions then would have been a damned sight easier than they are now. And we still face a threat of WWIII.
Yes they would, which is why I have cited eight years of inaction and dereliction of duty by Western leaders.
And, don't you blame me. I was outraged that we in the West did nothing about a downed airliner. We begged for permission to recover our bodies. That single act was brushed under the carpet. That represents the West sitting on its hands while Putin toyed with us.
I was with Elwood weeks ago when he demanded NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That is recorded here.
I'm talking about calling for action over the last eight years. This could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. It was predicted.
And yes, a Conservative / coalition government has been in place for that time. But remember Miliband's hideous backturn over the Syria vote? Remember Corbyn, Labour's leader, who pretended to be rather (ahem) anti-war?
Putin has gambled that the west's weaknesses would prevent us from stopping his territorial ambitions. The UK's negligence played into it - but the blame lies all over the west. It was too hard to do, so it wasn't done.
(I'd actually argue May did very well over Salisbury, although it could have been used as a catalyst for firmer actions.)
There are quite a few videos of Russian tanks that have run out of fuel or been abandoned. It seems the have problem with logistics and morale.
I have a colleague in my network who was a Royal Navy captain and really knows his onions.
He's adamant that Russian forces aren't as strong as they look on paper because their raw material, training, and staff work is highly variable, whereas British forces are tip-top.
Basically, his argument was that military effectiveness, just as in all other walks of life, comes down to people and organisational culture.
Except that the British military tends to have a hugely inflated perception of its own comparative effectiveness. Cf what we were saying about the Americans when we went in to replace them in Basra, brutally exposed as hubris by subsequent events
Yes, there was a bit of arrogance in there.
He also said that there comes a point where numbers absolutely matter, and the British Army is now tokenistic.
I'm afraid I think we now have to raise defence spending to the point where can deploy at least one fully armed heavy warfighting division on the continent, permanently. I suspect that will require us to expand the British army by 15-20,000 men back up to about 95-100k strong, and probably an extra £12-16bn per year in defence spending.
But I think we have to do it.
The fly-on-the-wall 'life on a warship' series on C5 is worth a watch. It illustrates how the Navy has been operating as if Russia is the enemy for some time already. The work our ships are doing is impressive, but there's also a rather British amateurishness about the way the ships are commanded and operated, which makes for interesting TV. But the viewer does wonder how it would stand up if the engagements with the Russian navy were for real?
Yes, I think so.
Ordinary people can do extraordinary things when the chips are down.
Watched one about a submarine and I hadn't realised the Russians like to hide under merchant vessels to disguise the noise.
The cable interference issue is genuinely worrying, particularly with so much of our power coming off offshore wind.
Reports 27 countries are actively providing weapons to Ukraine
Time for us to unite, stop sniping, and be proud of the response currently on its way from nations across the world
I'm sorry BigG. We in the West have done next to nothing. There is good reason why we have done next to nothing we don't want Putin to escalate this fiasco to involve the EU and the UK.
Clinton's biggest regret was he did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. We are watching, not genocide, but the destruction of a nation. The upshot either way is thousands of innocents are slaughtered whilst we watch on.
Our declarations "but Ukraine is not in NATO" are sops to ourselves.They are a sovereign nation invaded by an aggressor and we (the West) have sanctioned 70% of Russian banks. Huh, 70%?
Now I don't want British troops involved, I don't want my children conscripted for a world war, but neither can I sit back with satisfaction and claim leaders representing me have done all they can on my behalf, they haven't. In some cases, their vested interests trump my horror.
I don't know how to counter Putin, that is not my job. But neither, it seems, do those whose job it is to deal with Putin.
I am not suggesting a party political or Remainer/ Leave bias here. Whoever they represent, Western leaders have been guilty of dereliction of duty for at least eight years and that includes Starmer and your beloved "Boris".
When I was calling for us to act against Russia in 2014, 2016 (I think), 2018, etc, etc, where was your voice? Were you in the "Russia's ambitions are detrimental to the world; we need to act hard" camp or the "You're a warmonger risking WWIII" camp?
Because actions then would have been a damned sight easier than they are now. And we still face a threat of WWIII.
Yes they would, which is why I have cited eight years of inaction and dereliction of duty by Western leaders.
And, don't you blame me. I was outraged that we in the West did nothing about a downed airliner. We begged for permission to recover our bodies. That single act was brushed under the carpet. That represents the West sitting on its hands while Putin toyed with us.
I was with Elwood weeks ago when he demanded NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That is recorded here.
I'm talking about calling for action over the last eight years. This could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. It was predicted.
And yes, a Conservative / coalition government has been in place for that time. But remember Miliband's hideous backturn over the Syria vote? Remember Corbyn, Labour's leader, who pretended to be rather (ahem) anti-war?
Putin has gambled that the west's weaknesses would prevent us from stopping his territorial ambitions. The UK's negligence played into it - but the blame lies all over the west. It was too hard to do, so it wasn't done.
(I'd actually argue May did very well over Salisbury, although it could have been used as a catalyst for firmer actions.)
What did we actually *do* about Salisbury, Josias?
Really? We got the evidence, distributed it, and May's team did a heck of a lot of informing and developing a coherent strategy - against a Labour Party that was mostly under hideous denial.
I believe you were a Labour voter at that time? Did you cheer on Miliband when he changed his mind over the Syria vote?
It's rather odd. Russia has lots of fuel, and none of the vehicles have travelled that far. It may be mechanical faults rather than fuel. Its easy to have large headline numbers of fighting vehicles, but keeping them in fighting order is a more complex and expensive task.
Logistics is harder than Putin thinks? Having fuel is one thing, getting it to where it’s needed quite another.
The pyramid of fuel delivery - trucks that carry fuel to fuel the trucks that carry fuel etc etc can reach ridiculous proportions very quickly. See the logistics costs for the US in Afghanistan, for example.
Reports 27 countries are actively providing weapons to Ukraine
Time for us to unite, stop sniping, and be proud of the response currently on its way from nations across the world
I'm sorry BigG. We in the West have done next to nothing. There is good reason why we have done next to nothing we don't want Putin to escalate this fiasco to involve the EU and the UK.
Clinton's biggest regret was he did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. We are watching, not genocide, but the destruction of a nation. The upshot either way is thousands of innocents are slaughtered whilst we watch on.
Our declarations "but Ukraine is not in NATO" are sops to ourselves.They are a sovereign nation invaded by an aggressor and we (the West) have sanctioned 70% of Russian banks. Huh, 70%?
Now I don't want British troops involved, I don't want my children conscripted for a world war, but neither can I sit back with satisfaction and claim leaders representing me have done all they can on my behalf, they haven't. In some cases, their vested interests trump my horror.
I don't know how to counter Putin, that is not my job. But neither, it seems, do those whose job it is to deal with Putin.
I am not suggesting a party political or Remainer/ Leave bias here. Whoever they represent, Western leaders have been guilty of dereliction of duty for at least eight years and that includes Starmer and your beloved "Boris".
When I was calling for us to act against Russia in 2014, 2016 (I think), 2018, etc, etc, where was your voice? Were you in the "Russia's ambitions are detrimental to the world; we need to act hard" camp or the "You're a warmonger risking WWIII" camp?
Because actions then would have been a damned sight easier than they are now. And we still face a threat of WWIII.
Yes they would, which is why I have cited eight years of inaction and dereliction of duty by Western leaders.
And, don't you blame me. I was outraged that we in the West did nothing about a downed airliner. We begged for permission to recover our bodies. That single act was brushed under the carpet. That represents the West sitting on its hands while Putin toyed with us.
I was with Elwood weeks ago when he demanded NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That is recorded here.
I'm talking about calling for action over the last eight years. This could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. It was predicted.
And yes, a Conservative / coalition government has been in place for that time. But remember Miliband's hideous backturn over the Syria vote? Remember Corbyn, Labour's leader, who pretended to be rather (ahem) anti-war?
Putin has gambled that the west's weaknesses would prevent us from stopping his territorial ambitions. The UK's negligence played into it - but the blame lies all over the west. It was too hard to do, so it wasn't done.
(I'd actually argue May did very well over Salisbury, although it could have been used as a catalyst for firmer actions.)
What did we actually *do* about Salisbury, Josias?
Sorry but I'm with Yokes on this one.
The UK's official assessment of the incident was supported by 28 other countries which responded similarly. Altogether, an unprecedented 153 Russian diplomats were expelled by the end of March 2018.
We threw some diplomats out? Wow, that'll teach them a lesson. Bet they won't do that again. I'm almost lost for words.
I'd better just repeat that I'm with Yokes on this one.
Suspect Russia told China this would be a quick and painless operation of leadership change welcomed by the Ukrainians. The longer this is shown to be completely wrong, the harder it will be for China to maintain support (and the cost will rise). For China, Putin is expendable.
It is important to remember that China's foreign policy doctrine of non interference in other territories is related to one-China, in other words other countries should not interfere in Taiwan. Putin's argument over Ukraine is not a completely comfortable one for China.
Ms. Heathener, being against woke bullshit only equates to being far right in the fantastical imagination of the far left who are so love in with the woke stuff to start with.
It's just a regurgitation of "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler".
It's more the staggering detachment from reality of the likes of SLeon to be thinking that gender-neutral toilets and the like should be high up the list of existential threats to the world
Afaics despite the meme that these issues are the obsession of Wokies, lefties and Guardian readers, on here it’s not the Wokies, lefties and Guardian readers who return obsessively to these issues.
Reports 27 countries are actively providing weapons to Ukraine
Time for us to unite, stop sniping, and be proud of the response currently on its way from nations across the world
I'm sorry BigG. We in the West have done next to nothing. There is good reason why we have done next to nothing we don't want Putin to escalate this fiasco to involve the EU and the UK.
Clinton's biggest regret was he did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. We are watching, not genocide, but the destruction of a nation. The upshot either way is thousands of innocents are slaughtered whilst we watch on.
Our declarations "but Ukraine is not in NATO" are sops to ourselves.They are a sovereign nation invaded by an aggressor and we (the West) have sanctioned 70% of Russian banks. Huh, 70%?
Now I don't want British troops involved, I don't want my children conscripted for a world war, but neither can I sit back with satisfaction and claim leaders representing me have done all they can on my behalf, they haven't. In some cases, their vested interests trump my horror.
I don't know how to counter Putin, that is not my job. But neither, it seems, do those whose job it is to deal with Putin.
I am not suggesting a party political or Remainer/ Leave bias here. Whoever they represent, Western leaders have been guilty of dereliction of duty for at least eight years and that includes Starmer and your beloved "Boris".
When I was calling for us to act against Russia in 2014, 2016 (I think), 2018, etc, etc, where was your voice? Were you in the "Russia's ambitions are detrimental to the world; we need to act hard" camp or the "You're a warmonger risking WWIII" camp?
Because actions then would have been a damned sight easier than they are now. And we still face a threat of WWIII.
Yes they would, which is why I have cited eight years of inaction and dereliction of duty by Western leaders.
And, don't you blame me. I was outraged that we in the West did nothing about a downed airliner. We begged for permission to recover our bodies. That single act was brushed under the carpet. That represents the West sitting on its hands while Putin toyed with us.
I was with Elwood weeks ago when he demanded NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That is recorded here.
I'm talking about calling for action over the last eight years. This could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. It was predicted.
And yes, a Conservative / coalition government has been in place for that time. But remember Miliband's hideous backturn over the Syria vote? Remember Corbyn, Labour's leader, who pretended to be rather (ahem) anti-war?
Putin has gambled that the west's weaknesses would prevent us from stopping his territorial ambitions. The UK's negligence played into it - but the blame lies all over the west. It was too hard to do, so it wasn't done.
(I'd actually argue May did very well over Salisbury, although it could have been used as a catalyst for firmer actions.)
There are quite a few videos of Russian tanks that have run out of fuel or been abandoned. It seems the have problem with logistics and morale.
I have a colleague in my network who was a Royal Navy captain and really knows his onions.
He's adamant that Russian forces aren't as strong as they look on paper because their raw material, training, and staff work is highly variable, whereas British forces are tip-top.
Basically, his argument was that military effectiveness, just as in all other walks of life, comes down to people and organisational culture.
Except that the British military tends to have a hugely inflated perception of its own comparative effectiveness. Cf what we were saying about the Americans when we went in to replace them in Basra, brutally exposed as hubris by subsequent events
Yes, there was a bit of arrogance in there.
He also said that there comes a point where numbers absolutely matter, and the British Army is now tokenistic.
I'm afraid I think we now have to raise defence spending to the point where can deploy at least one fully armed heavy warfighting division on the continent, permanently. I suspect that will require us to expand the British army by 15-20,000 men back up to about 95-100k strong, and probably an extra £12-16bn per year in defence spending.
But I think we have to do it.
The fly-on-the-wall 'life on a warship' series on C5 is worth a watch. It illustrates how the Navy has been operating as if Russia is the enemy for some time already. The work our ships are doing is impressive, but there's also a rather British amateurishness about the way the ships are commanded and operated, which makes for interesting TV. But the viewer does wonder how it would stand up if the engagements with the Russian navy were for real?
Yes, I think so.
Ordinary people can do extraordinary things when the chips are down.
Reports 27 countries are actively providing weapons to Ukraine
Time for us to unite, stop sniping, and be proud of the response currently on its way from nations across the world
I'm sorry BigG. We in the West have done next to nothing. There is good reason why we have done next to nothing we don't want Putin to escalate this fiasco to involve the EU and the UK.
Clinton's biggest regret was he did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. We are watching, not genocide, but the destruction of a nation. The upshot either way is thousands of innocents are slaughtered whilst we watch on.
Our declarations "but Ukraine is not in NATO" are sops to ourselves.They are a sovereign nation invaded by an aggressor and we (the West) have sanctioned 70% of Russian banks. Huh, 70%?
Now I don't want British troops involved, I don't want my children conscripted for a world war, but neither can I sit back with satisfaction and claim leaders representing me have done all they can on my behalf, they haven't. In some cases, their vested interests trump my horror.
I don't know how to counter Putin, that is not my job. But neither, it seems, do those whose job it is to deal with Putin.
I am not suggesting a party political or Remainer/ Leave bias here. Whoever they represent, Western leaders have been guilty of dereliction of duty for at least eight years and that includes Starmer and your beloved "Boris".
When I was calling for us to act against Russia in 2014, 2016 (I think), 2018, etc, etc, where was your voice? Were you in the "Russia's ambitions are detrimental to the world; we need to act hard" camp or the "You're a warmonger risking WWIII" camp?
Because actions then would have been a damned sight easier than they are now. And we still face a threat of WWIII.
Yes they would, which is why I have cited eight years of inaction and dereliction of duty by Western leaders.
And, don't you blame me. I was outraged that we in the West did nothing about a downed airliner. We begged for permission to recover our bodies. That single act was brushed under the carpet. That represents the West sitting on its hands while Putin toyed with us.
I was with Elwood weeks ago when he demanded NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That is recorded here.
I'm talking about calling for action over the last eight years. This could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. It was predicted.
And yes, a Conservative / coalition government has been in place for that time. But remember Miliband's hideous backturn over the Syria vote? Remember Corbyn, Labour's leader, who pretended to be rather (ahem) anti-war?
Putin has gambled that the west's weaknesses would prevent us from stopping his territorial ambitions. The UK's negligence played into it - but the blame lies all over the west. It was too hard to do, so it wasn't done.
(I'd actually argue May did very well over Salisbury, although it could have been used as a catalyst for firmer actions.)
I think Putin thinks the West is a wet lettuce.
I'm a bit of a wet lettuce/liberal at heart and I'm not sure how keen I'd be to fight if my country was being invaded by a much larger force. However I'm disgusted by what has happened and I will be equally disgusted if people want to remove sanctions once their is a ceasefire or negotiated peace.
I'm the opposite and, quite frankly, I'm scared. But I share your disgust. What's struck me is the uniformity of opinion on this issue across all my friends and WhatsApp groups over the last 48 hours.
Everyone recognises the time is now and we need to take concrete action.
An important point being missed: Putin has spent YEARS using social media as a vital tool underpinning his craft.
And in 48 hours, that tool has been smashed.
Great point. The loons on both fringes are a strikingly minuscule minority. I've been heartened by the absence of whataboutery. Of course there are a few, but they are now hyper exposed for what they are. Bots and useless idiots. Pleasantly surprised how actually united the West has been in sentiment. Even as we quibble about the practicalities. Vlad has thrown away his divide the weak West card with this. For now.
Another consequence may be to make China rethink the feasibility of retaking Taiwan…
Given it's basically impossible to impose proper sanctions on Russia while NordStream1 continues to pump gas into Germany and cash to Putin, we might as well just go ahead with NS2.
I propose giving the pipeline itself to Ukraine.
The whole point of NordStream 2 is to bypass Ukraine.
I know. I'm saying don't let it bypass Ukraine; make Ukraine a partner in it.
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
I realise Twitter is the go to medium. But why isn't there a place for a long, thoughtful piece like that not to have to be broken up into chunks? Makes reading it really difficult.
The pyramid of fuel delivery - trucks that carry fuel to fuel the trucks that carry fuel etc etc can reach ridiculous proportions very quickly. See the logistics costs for the US in Afghanistan, for example.
c.f. the Vulcan raid on Port Stanley. The entire (serviceable) fleet was used to refuel 1 plane all the way
@KwasiKwarteng summoned BP chief Bernard Looney this afternoon to explain why it owns a 20% stake in Rosneft, which provides fuel to Russia army - Kwarteng also "uneasy" about the fact that Looney sits alongside Putin on the Russian Geographical Society board"
Crikey, that’s pretty pathetic from Kwarteng. This is all public knowledge.
He knows why. Emphasis is on the *explain*
I’m hearing BP has been told to sell
That's what all of the above really means. The explain is - why he hasn't dumped it already?
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
There was an interesting report on FSB commissioned opinion polling in Ukraine. It's possible that they were banking on poor approval ratings for the government translating into people being unwilling to defend the country.
@KwasiKwarteng summoned BP chief Bernard Looney this afternoon to explain why it owns a 20% stake in Rosneft, which provides fuel to Russia army - Kwarteng also "uneasy" about the fact that Looney sits alongside Putin on the Russian Geographical Society board"
Crikey, that’s pretty pathetic from Kwarteng. This is all public knowledge.
They're denying it's a cyber attack. Just incompetent IT. Dunno?
Stillwaters: no I don't. There's no need or place to go Ad Hominem with people with whom you have a different Weltenshauung. This site would be a poorer place if we had monochromatic viewpoints and, if we have the good grace and humility, we can learn. For example I really didn't think Putin would be stupid enough to invade. I was wrong, but then didn't reckon on Putin going full tonto. For the most part I respectfully disagree with posters on the Right but try to avoid going Ad Hominem (occasionally I'm riled into it). Suggesting someone sows dissent deliberately is one step removed from calling them a troll, which is the weakest moment in any poster's life. Engage with the issues and play the ball not the lady. Ta.
You are spending all your time criticising the UK government. There is too much dirty money in London. It needs to be fixed.
But right now Russia is invading Ukraine and you are attacking those who are helping those fighting to preserve their freedom
If you run a government that is entirely built on lies like Putin, don't be surprised when it turns out your generals were lying to you when they said they could overrun Kyiv in 48 hours.
I am fairly sure they could have done.
However, they seem to have been trying to minimise damage so far, presumably for political and emotional reasons (We will liberate historic Ukraine which is so much part of Russia by er, flattening it and killing all its people). They have, for example, not put forward all the soldiers they have on the border yet, just a third of them.
I do not see how Kyiv could hold for long against the full strength of the Russian army committed to seizing it at all costs, but the damage in that scenario would be enormous and even RT would have a hard time explaining it away.
That is not in any way to minimise the courage or stubbornness of the defence, or to note that the planning by Russia's military doesn't look very smart so far. But at the same time, we need to remember the Russians have constrained themselves somewhat by the approach they have taken.
I only hope they don't change their minds, but I fear they will. They can't afford not to win now, their military credibility is on the line.
There is no ‘they’, though, since the ultimate decision is Putin’s alone. His internal propaganda over this invasion is already utterly threadbare compared to that over Crimea (which had broad domestic support), and a devastation of Kyiv would be much more likely to finish him than the decision to invade. His promises to ‘free’ Ukraine from its ‘corrupt’ leaders, and the completely unified Ukraine resistance have left him with a dilemma which might be insoluble.
My Russian relatives say that their friends/relatives in Russia are getting a very confused and contradictory message from State Media. Not the Great Patriotic War message at all - seems all over the place.
Reports 27 countries are actively providing weapons to Ukraine
Time for us to unite, stop sniping, and be proud of the response currently on its way from nations across the world
I'm sorry BigG. We in the West have done next to nothing. There is good reason why we have done next to nothing we don't want Putin to escalate this fiasco to involve the EU and the UK.
Clinton's biggest regret was he did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. We are watching, not genocide, but the destruction of a nation. The upshot either way is thousands of innocents are slaughtered whilst we watch on.
Our declarations "but Ukraine is not in NATO" are sops to ourselves.They are a sovereign nation invaded by an aggressor and we (the West) have sanctioned 70% of Russian banks. Huh, 70%?
Now I don't want British troops involved, I don't want my children conscripted for a world war, but neither can I sit back with satisfaction and claim leaders representing me have done all they can on my behalf, they haven't. In some cases, their vested interests trump my horror.
I don't know how to counter Putin, that is not my job. But neither, it seems, do those whose job it is to deal with Putin.
I am not suggesting a party political or Remainer/ Leave bias here. Whoever they represent, Western leaders have been guilty of dereliction of duty for at least eight years and that includes Starmer and your beloved "Boris".
When I was calling for us to act against Russia in 2014, 2016 (I think), 2018, etc, etc, where was your voice? Were you in the "Russia's ambitions are detrimental to the world; we need to act hard" camp or the "You're a warmonger risking WWIII" camp?
Because actions then would have been a damned sight easier than they are now. And we still face a threat of WWIII.
Yes they would, which is why I have cited eight years of inaction and dereliction of duty by Western leaders.
And, don't you blame me. I was outraged that we in the West did nothing about a downed airliner. We begged for permission to recover our bodies. That single act was brushed under the carpet. That represents the West sitting on its hands while Putin toyed with us.
I was with Elwood weeks ago when he demanded NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That is recorded here.
I'm talking about calling for action over the last eight years. This could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. It was predicted.
And yes, a Conservative / coalition government has been in place for that time. But remember Miliband's hideous backturn over the Syria vote? Remember Corbyn, Labour's leader, who pretended to be rather (ahem) anti-war?
Putin has gambled that the west's weaknesses would prevent us from stopping his territorial ambitions. The UK's negligence played into it - but the blame lies all over the west. It was too hard to do, so it wasn't done.
(I'd actually argue May did very well over Salisbury, although it could have been used as a catalyst for firmer actions.)
There are quite a few videos of Russian tanks that have run out of fuel or been abandoned. It seems the have problem with logistics and morale.
I have a colleague in my network who was a Royal Navy captain and really knows his onions.
He's adamant that Russian forces aren't as strong as they look on paper because their raw material, training, and staff work is highly variable, whereas British forces are tip-top.
Basically, his argument was that military effectiveness, just as in all other walks of life, comes down to people and organisational culture.
Except that the British military tends to have a hugely inflated perception of its own comparative effectiveness. Cf what we were saying about the Americans when we went in to replace them in Basra, brutally exposed as hubris by subsequent events
Yes, there was a bit of arrogance in there.
He also said that there comes a point where numbers absolutely matter, and the British Army is now tokenistic.
I'm afraid I think we now have to raise defence spending to the point where can deploy at least one fully armed heavy warfighting division on the continent, permanently. I suspect that will require us to expand the British army by 15-20,000 men back up to about 95-100k strong, and probably an extra £12-16bn per year in defence spending.
But I think we have to do it.
But I'm afraid that this comes back yet again to the incapability of this government (and quite possibly any government that replaces it) to take unpopular decisions.
Most of the public doesn't give a shit about defence. Much of the public has also been squeezed so hard by taxation, ridiculous housing costs, years of stagnant or negative wage growth and now steep inflation that it hasn't much left to give. So, in the end, a massive increase in defence spending can only be funded by soaking the elderly (through ditching automatic increases to the state pension, and extracting property wealth through large increases in IHT and/or the advent of land taxation,) or by taking an axe to core public service spending priorities.
So it won't happen.
That's where leadership (or the lack of it) counts. By 1937, living standards were no higher than in 1920, and were about one third of their current level. Ultimately, our leaders stepped up to the mark (after having exhausted the alternatives).
Yes - it may be that for too many years the shibboleth that prosperity must always continue for everyone has made it very difficult to contemplate the alternative which has remained the norm for billions in other parts of the world.
People can surprise on the upside as well as on the downside.
What after all, does spending more on defence (and not taking Russian money) mean? A slight reduction in a standard of living that is still way above the world average.
A wokery note. Ukraine (may the Lord help them) is allowing millions to leave - and who can blame the leavers - but not men from 18-60. They are being called up.
Normally in the face of this sort of sexism the BBC/Guardian/Twitterati would be leading on woke calls for men and women, as well as binaries and transitioners, to be treated identically whether they are what they are by gender, sex or both, while denouncing JK Rowling for saying that it's OK to call up men but not women for hand to hand combat in ruined cities.
Could someone update me on what I should think this week.
I can't - other than to reiterate Yuval Noah Harari's insight that the ability to hold apparently irreconcilable contradictory views is a feature of advanced human development (or something along those lines).
However, I have been seriously wondering if a contributory factor to the start of the war was toxic masculinity. The Kremlin - and Putin's inner circle - seem to be very male dominated. The contrast with the increasingly gender neutral west, particularly so over the last decade, is very noticeable and significant.
Lots of what looks suspiciously like sand there. I think that is footage of what was left of the Iraqi army when they fled from Kuwait City.
You might well be correct.
I'd just like to say I've got a lot of fondness for combat engineers. They often have to work on the very front lines, under fire. Some of the stories of Russian combat engineers during the push to Berlin are staggering.
Also, the temporary bridge over a river made by Napoleon during his retreat from Russia at Berezina. Or Wellington's bridge over the Adur at Bayonne.
A friend from uni (I studied a branch of civ eng) became an army engineer. He was in the OTC at university, and often went away at weekends to build bridges.
Ms. Heathener, being against woke bullshit only equates to being far right in the fantastical imagination of the far left who are so love in with the woke stuff to start with.
It's just a regurgitation of "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler".
It's more the staggering detachment from reality of the likes of SLeon to be thinking that gender-neutral toilets and the like should be high up the list of existential threats to the world
One interesting thing, and I am sure Putin disapproves, is that Ukraine is becoming more Woke. Sure, older attitudes persist, but culture change takes time.
A wokery note. Ukraine (may the Lord help them) is allowing millions to leave - and who can blame the leavers - but not men from 18-60. They are being called up.
Normally in the face of this sort of sexism the BBC/Guardian/Twitterati would be leading on woke calls for men and women, as well as binaries and transitioners, to be treated identically whether they are what they are by gender, sex or both, while denouncing JK Rowling for saying that it's OK to call up men but not women for hand to hand combat in ruined cities.
Could someone update me on what I should think this week.
I can't - other than to reiterate Yuval Noah Harari's insight that the ability to hold apparently irreconcilable contradictory views is a feature of advanced human development (or something along those lines).
However, I have been seriously wondering if a contributory factor to the start of the war was toxic masculinity. The Kremlin - and Putin's inner circle - seem to be very male dominated. The contrast with the increasingly gender neutral west, particularly so over the last decade, is very noticeable and significant.
Measuring the presence of women as negotiators, mediators, witnesses, and signatories to 182 signed peace agreements between 1989 and 2011, this analysis shows that women’s participation has its greatest impact in the long term: an agreement is 35 percent more likely to last at least 15 years if women participate in its creation.
Reports 27 countries are actively providing weapons to Ukraine
Time for us to unite, stop sniping, and be proud of the response currently on its way from nations across the world
I'm sorry BigG. We in the West have done next to nothing. There is good reason why we have done next to nothing we don't want Putin to escalate this fiasco to involve the EU and the UK.
Clinton's biggest regret was he did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. We are watching, not genocide, but the destruction of a nation. The upshot either way is thousands of innocents are slaughtered whilst we watch on.
Our declarations "but Ukraine is not in NATO" are sops to ourselves.They are a sovereign nation invaded by an aggressor and we (the West) have sanctioned 70% of Russian banks. Huh, 70%?
Now I don't want British troops involved, I don't want my children conscripted for a world war, but neither can I sit back with satisfaction and claim leaders representing me have done all they can on my behalf, they haven't. In some cases, their vested interests trump my horror.
I don't know how to counter Putin, that is not my job. But neither, it seems, do those whose job it is to deal with Putin.
I am not suggesting a party political or Remainer/ Leave bias here. Whoever they represent, Western leaders have been guilty of dereliction of duty for at least eight years and that includes Starmer and your beloved "Boris".
When I was calling for us to act against Russia in 2014, 2016 (I think), 2018, etc, etc, where was your voice? Were you in the "Russia's ambitions are detrimental to the world; we need to act hard" camp or the "You're a warmonger risking WWIII" camp?
Because actions then would have been a damned sight easier than they are now. And we still face a threat of WWIII.
Yes they would, which is why I have cited eight years of inaction and dereliction of duty by Western leaders.
And, don't you blame me. I was outraged that we in the West did nothing about a downed airliner. We begged for permission to recover our bodies. That single act was brushed under the carpet. That represents the West sitting on its hands while Putin toyed with us.
I was with Elwood weeks ago when he demanded NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That is recorded here.
I'm talking about calling for action over the last eight years. This could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. It was predicted.
And yes, a Conservative / coalition government has been in place for that time. But remember Miliband's hideous backturn over the Syria vote? Remember Corbyn, Labour's leader, who pretended to be rather (ahem) anti-war?
Putin has gambled that the west's weaknesses would prevent us from stopping his territorial ambitions. The UK's negligence played into it - but the blame lies all over the west. It was too hard to do, so it wasn't done.
(I'd actually argue May did very well over Salisbury, although it could have been used as a catalyst for firmer actions.)
There are quite a few videos of Russian tanks that have run out of fuel or been abandoned. It seems the have problem with logistics and morale.
I have a colleague in my network who was a Royal Navy captain and really knows his onions.
He's adamant that Russian forces aren't as strong as they look on paper because their raw material, training, and staff work is highly variable, whereas British forces are tip-top.
Basically, his argument was that military effectiveness, just as in all other walks of life, comes down to people and organisational culture.
Except that the British military tends to have a hugely inflated perception of its own comparative effectiveness. Cf what we were saying about the Americans when we went in to replace them in Basra, brutally exposed as hubris by subsequent events
Yes, there was a bit of arrogance in there.
He also said that there comes a point where numbers absolutely matter, and the British Army is now tokenistic.
I'm afraid I think we now have to raise defence spending to the point where can deploy at least one fully armed heavy warfighting division on the continent, permanently. I suspect that will require us to expand the British army by 15-20,000 men back up to about 95-100k strong, and probably an extra £12-16bn per year in defence spending.
But I think we have to do it.
But I'm afraid that this comes back yet again to the incapability of this government (and quite possibly any government that replaces it) to take unpopular decisions.
Most of the public doesn't give a shit about defence. Much of the public has also been squeezed so hard by taxation, ridiculous housing costs, years of stagnant or negative wage growth and now steep inflation that it hasn't much left to give. So, in the end, a massive increase in defence spending can only be funded by soaking the elderly (through ditching automatic increases to the state pension, and extracting property wealth through large increases in IHT and/or the advent of land taxation,) or by taking an axe to core public service spending priorities.
So it won't happen.
We'll see. My perception is that public opinion is shifting, and the Government can shape it as well as reflect it.
Even if that is true, the public desire to spend money on anything extends only as far as that money is extracted from someone who isn't them. The nanosecond any Government goes after the gigantic stock of wealth locked up in housing - which is the only way we're going to make serious progress on funding any of the mountain of priorities and disasters that we've somehow got to manage all at the same time - the violent tantrum from the grey vote will be so extreme that it will run away in fright.
All that will end up happening in the end is that working age voters will be bled absolutely white and the whole lot will be sunk into inflating the state pension and desperately trying to clear the backlog of hip operations. The more I contemplate the situation, the more hopeless it looks.
The gigantic stock of wealth locked up in housing and the freedom to use it will be worth Jack Shit if the West ends up becoming hostage to global autarky because it decided to be impotent and didn't stand up to be counted when it mattered.
Reports 27 countries are actively providing weapons to Ukraine
Time for us to unite, stop sniping, and be proud of the response currently on its way from nations across the world
I'm sorry BigG. We in the West have done next to nothing. There is good reason why we have done next to nothing we don't want Putin to escalate this fiasco to involve the EU and the UK.
Clinton's biggest regret was he did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. We are watching, not genocide, but the destruction of a nation. The upshot either way is thousands of innocents are slaughtered whilst we watch on.
Our declarations "but Ukraine is not in NATO" are sops to ourselves.They are a sovereign nation invaded by an aggressor and we (the West) have sanctioned 70% of Russian banks. Huh, 70%?
Now I don't want British troops involved, I don't want my children conscripted for a world war, but neither can I sit back with satisfaction and claim leaders representing me have done all they can on my behalf, they haven't. In some cases, their vested interests trump my horror.
I don't know how to counter Putin, that is not my job. But neither, it seems, do those whose job it is to deal with Putin.
I am not suggesting a party political or Remainer/ Leave bias here. Whoever they represent, Western leaders have been guilty of dereliction of duty for at least eight years and that includes Starmer and your beloved "Boris".
When I was calling for us to act against Russia in 2014, 2016 (I think), 2018, etc, etc, where was your voice? Were you in the "Russia's ambitions are detrimental to the world; we need to act hard" camp or the "You're a warmonger risking WWIII" camp?
Because actions then would have been a damned sight easier than they are now. And we still face a threat of WWIII.
Yes they would, which is why I have cited eight years of inaction and dereliction of duty by Western leaders.
And, don't you blame me. I was outraged that we in the West did nothing about a downed airliner. We begged for permission to recover our bodies. That single act was brushed under the carpet. That represents the West sitting on its hands while Putin toyed with us.
I was with Elwood weeks ago when he demanded NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That is recorded here.
I'm talking about calling for action over the last eight years. This could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. It was predicted.
And yes, a Conservative / coalition government has been in place for that time. But remember Miliband's hideous backturn over the Syria vote? Remember Corbyn, Labour's leader, who pretended to be rather (ahem) anti-war?
Putin has gambled that the west's weaknesses would prevent us from stopping his territorial ambitions. The UK's negligence played into it - but the blame lies all over the west. It was too hard to do, so it wasn't done.
(I'd actually argue May did very well over Salisbury, although it could have been used as a catalyst for firmer actions.)
I think Putin thinks the West is a wet lettuce.
I'm a bit of a wet lettuce/liberal at heart and I'm not sure how keen I'd be to fight if my country was being invaded by a much larger force. However I'm disgusted by what has happened and I will be equally disgusted if people want to remove sanctions once their is a ceasefire or negotiated peace.
I'm the opposite and, quite frankly, I'm scared. But I share your disgust. What's struck me is the uniformity of opinion on this issue across all my friends and WhatsApp groups over the last 48 hours.
Everyone recognises the time is now and we need to take concrete action.
An important point being missed: Putin has spent YEARS using social media as a vital tool underpinning his craft.
And in 48 hours, that tool has been smashed.
Great point. The loons on both fringes are a strikingly minuscule minority. I've been heartened by the absence of whataboutery. Of course there are a few, but they are now hyper exposed for what they are. Bots and useless idiots. Pleasantly surprised how actually united the West has been in sentiment. Even as we quibble about the practicalities. Vlad has thrown away his divide the weak West card with this. For now.
Another consequence may be to make China rethink the feasibility of retaking Taiwan…
They've been re-thinking that for 73 years and counting.
A fascinating reminder of the psychology of our prime minister by @RSylvesterTimes. “I’ve never met anyone who believes their own lies so much,” one interviewee says. Inside the mind of Boris Johnson — by his friends and enemies
[he] can be lazy, manipulative, dishonest and ruthless. Many of those who have worked most closely with the prime minister are among his staunchest critics. Dominic Cummings, his former senior strategist, is only the most high-profile and dangerous example. Another former No 10 aide says, “David Cameron and Tony Blair still have a team of advisers who remain loyal to them. People who have worked for Boris just have horror stories about how appallingly they were treated.” Sir Max Hastings, who was Johnson’s editor at The Daily Telegraph, puts it even more bluntly: “The only people who like Boris Johnson are those who don’t know him.”
MPs who are watching the polls and recent by-election results are starting to wonder whether the prime minister is becoming a liability rather than an asset. With Shakespearean symmetry, the strengths that got Johnson to the very top have become the weaknesses that may drive him from power.
The constitutional historian Lord Hennessy...suggests the traditional reliance on decency has been suspended under Johnson, he hopes temporarily. “He’s not a man driven by public service; he is the most dramatic example we have ever had of a vanity prime minister. His great project is himself, which is very dangerous for a country... No prime minister in the 100 years since Lloyd George has had such a disregard for convention and norms of behaviour in their personal and political life. But Lloyd George was a genius and Johnson is not.”
A former Downing Street aide believes that Johnson has been fatally wounded by his own character flaws. “He believes the worst of everybody, then behaves in such a way to ensure that that will happen. He betrays people and then they do turn on him. It’s a self-fulfilling self-destructive pattern. Behind this persona of the jolly clown, Boris is a deeply scarred, deeply cynical individual.”
@KwasiKwarteng summoned BP chief Bernard Looney this afternoon to explain why it owns a 20% stake in Rosneft, which provides fuel to Russia army - Kwarteng also "uneasy" about the fact that Looney sits alongside Putin on the Russian Geographical Society board"
Crikey, that’s pretty pathetic from Kwarteng. This is all public knowledge.
Ms. Heathener, being against woke bullshit only equates to being far right in the fantastical imagination of the far left who are so love in with the woke stuff to start with.
It's just a regurgitation of "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler".
It's more the staggering detachment from reality of the likes of SLeon to be thinking that gender-neutral toilets and the like should be high up the list of existential threats to the world
Afaics despite the meme that these issues are the obsession of Wokies, lefties and Guardian readers, on here it’s not the Wokies, lefties and Guardian readers who return obsessively to these issues.
Yet here you are going on about it again. Most people ignore it as it’s a non issue.
Lots of what looks suspiciously like sand there. I think that is footage of what was left of the Iraqi army when they fled from Kuwait City. The Z logos on the vehicles are interesting though. I remember reading the Russians were marking their vehicles that way. Maybe it is true after all.
It seems to have been a dryish early spring in Ukraine (which perhaps was a contributory factor to Vlad going for it) so lots of dust/grit. The Z seems fairly conclusive. May be bullshit but apparently Russian special forces/freelancers have Vs on their pick-up trucks.
Ms. Heathener, being against woke bullshit only equates to being far right in the fantastical imagination of the far left who are so love in with the woke stuff to start with.
It's just a regurgitation of "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler".
It's more the staggering detachment from reality of the likes of SLeon to be thinking that gender-neutral toilets and the like should be high up the list of existential threats to the world
One interesting thing, and I am sure Putin disapproves, is that Ukraine is becoming more Woke. Sure, older attitudes persist, but culture change takes time.
There are quite a few videos of Russian tanks that have run out of fuel or been abandoned. It seems the have problem with logistics and morale.
I have a colleague in my network who was a Royal Navy captain and really knows his onions.
He's adamant that Russian forces aren't as strong as they look on paper because their raw material, training, and staff work is highly variable, whereas British forces are tip-top.
Basically, his argument was that military effectiveness, just as in all other walks of life, comes down to people and organisational culture.
Yep.
When I worked for a short while in intelligence (sorry that disappoints you MM) that was very much the prevailing view.
I admit I'm way out of touch these days, and left that behind long ago, but it did become something of a running joke.
Russian military might was vastly exaggerated. This may have changed and their intelligence and cyber warfare suggests they are a different entity now.
In a social media age it may be that the biggest variable in the use of arms in Europe, including Russia, is the willingness of mothers, wives and sisters to accept stoically the return of their men in body bags after dying for a worthless cause.
But for that the UK would have intervened in Syria in aid of Cameron's vain belief that there were coherent groups to fight with for a new liberal woke cool Syria. Parliament saved us form this, and this particular cat is now out of the bag. Afghanistan made 'Never Again In An Unwinnable Cause' permanent.
Which could be a complete disaster of course. A society that is not willing to fight for its own existence will not and does not deserve to survive. I think the government in this case was adamant that there will be no British troops on the ground because of the psychological humiliation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. We cannot be scared into immobility. Our values are worth fighting for.
Ms. Heathener, being against woke bullshit only equates to being far right in the fantastical imagination of the far left who are so love in with the woke stuff to start with.
It's just a regurgitation of "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler".
It's more the staggering detachment from reality of the likes of SLeon to be thinking that gender-neutral toilets and the like should be high up the list of existential threats to the world
Afaics despite the meme that these issues are the obsession of Wokies, lefties and Guardian readers, on here it’s not the Wokies, lefties and Guardian readers who return obsessively to these issues.
Yet here you are going on about it again. Most people ignore it as it’s a non issue.
I’m not ‘going on about it again’, I’m referring to those who do which I think should be clear to all but the hard of thinking.
Given it's basically impossible to impose proper sanctions on Russia while NordStream1 continues to pump gas into Germany and cash to Putin, we might as well just go ahead with NS2.
I propose giving the pipeline itself to Ukraine.
The whole point of NordStream 2 is to bypass Ukraine.
I know. I'm saying don't let it bypass Ukraine; make Ukraine a partner in it.
It's a pipeline from Russia to Germany (largely) in the middle of the Baltic.
What exactly would you "give" to the Ukrainians? The control of the pumps?
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
There's a pretty hefty crater in that video clip. Roadside bomb?
Location lines up with where Ukrainians said they'd been conducting airstrikes. Convoys travelling along roads with no protection are the perfect target for those sorts of strikes.
Apparently Ukraine had time to diversify their air force storage without the Russians finding out, and despite (almost) all their airbases being made inoperable, they have stretches of highway in the West that have been suspiciously well maintained.
Lots of what looks suspiciously like sand there. I think that is footage of what was left of the Iraqi army when they fled from Kuwait City.
You might well be correct.
I'd just like to say I've got a lot of fondness for combat engineers. They often have to work on the very front lines, under fire. Some of the stories of Russian combat engineers during the push to Berlin are staggering.
Also, the temporary bridge over a river made by Napoleon during his retreat from Russia at Berezina. Or Wellington's bridge over the Adur at Bayonne.
A friend from uni (I studied a branch of civ eng) became an army engineer. He was in the OTC at university, and often went away at weekends to build bridges.
When we lived in Falingbostel one of the regiments on the base was REME. Their open days were fantastic, far better than tanks or big guns. I loved it.
Suspect Russia told China this would be a quick and painless operation of leadership change welcomed by the Ukrainians. The longer this is shown to be completely wrong, the harder it will be for China to maintain support (and the cost will rise). For China, Putin is expendable.
It is important to remember that China's foreign policy doctrine of non interference in other territories is related to one-China, in other words other countries should not interfere in Taiwan. Putin's argument over Ukraine is not a completely comfortable one for China.
There are quite a few videos of Russian tanks that have run out of fuel or been abandoned. It seems the have problem with logistics and morale.
I have a colleague in my network who was a Royal Navy captain and really knows his onions.
He's adamant that Russian forces aren't as strong as they look on paper because their raw material, training, and staff work is highly variable, whereas British forces are tip-top.
Basically, his argument was that military effectiveness, just as in all other walks of life, comes down to people and organisational culture.
Yep.
When I worked for a short while in intelligence (sorry that disappoints you MM) that was very much the prevailing view.
I admit I'm way out of touch these days, and left that behind long ago, but it did become something of a running joke.
Russian military might was vastly exaggerated. This may have changed and their intelligence and cyber warfare suggests they are a different entity now.
In a social media age it may be that the biggest variable in the use of arms in Europe, including Russia, is the willingness of mothers, wives and sisters to accept stoically the return of their men in body bags after dying for a worthless cause.
But for that the UK would have intervened in Syria in aid of Cameron's vain belief that there were coherent groups to fight with for a new liberal woke cool Syria. Parliament saved us form this, and this particular cat is now out of the bag. Afghanistan made 'Never Again In An Unwinnable Cause' permanent.
Which could be a complete disaster of course. A society that is not willing to fight for its own existence will not and does not deserve to survive. I think the government in this case was adamant that there will be no British troops on the ground because of the psychological humiliation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. We cannot be scared into immobility. Our values are worth fighting for.
It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened?
But in the end, it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't.
They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for
Lots of what looks suspiciously like sand there. I think that is footage of what was left of the Iraqi army when they fled from Kuwait City.
You might well be correct.
I'd just like to say I've got a lot of fondness for combat engineers. They often have to work on the very front lines, under fire. Some of the stories of Russian combat engineers during the push to Berlin are staggering.
Also, the temporary bridge over a river made by Napoleon during his retreat from Russia at Berezina. Or Wellington's bridge over the Adur at Bayonne.
A friend from uni (I studied a branch of civ eng) became an army engineer. He was in the OTC at university, and often went away at weekends to build bridges.
The lorries have 'Z' marked on them. As far as I know that was not a feature in Kuwait City war.
With all these walkabouts posting messages from the streets with his phone out it is clear Zelensky is a fan of Rory Stewart.
Rory Stewart @RoryStewartUK Acutely intelligent, sensitive to Russia as much as to Ukraine, clear about the horror of war - quietly immensely courageous - @zelenskyyUa is an extraordinary man. This is one of the most remarkable speeches ever made - in dignified contrast to Putin’s hysterical megalomania. https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1497499513833115655
Ms. Heathener, being against woke bullshit only equates to being far right in the fantastical imagination of the far left who are so love in with the woke stuff to start with.
It's just a regurgitation of "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler".
It's more the staggering detachment from reality of the likes of SLeon to be thinking that gender-neutral toilets and the like should be high up the list of existential threats to the world
One interesting thing, and I am sure Putin disapproves, is that Ukraine is becoming more Woke. Sure, older attitudes persist, but culture change takes time.
Ms. Heathener, being against woke bullshit only equates to being far right in the fantastical imagination of the far left who are so love in with the woke stuff to start with.
It's just a regurgitation of "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler".
It's more the staggering detachment from reality of the likes of SLeon to be thinking that gender-neutral toilets and the like should be high up the list of existential threats to the world
One interesting thing, and I am sure Putin disapproves, is that Ukraine is becoming more Woke. Sure, older attitudes persist, but culture change takes time.
Ms. Heathener, being against woke bullshit only equates to being far right in the fantastical imagination of the far left who are so love in with the woke stuff to start with.
It's just a regurgitation of "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler".
It's more the staggering detachment from reality of the likes of SLeon to be thinking that gender-neutral toilets and the like should be high up the list of existential threats to the world
Afaics despite the meme that these issues are the obsession of Wokies, lefties and Guardian readers, on here it’s not the Wokies, lefties and Guardian readers who return obsessively to these issues.
Yet here you are going on about it again. Most people ignore it as it’s a non issue.
I’m not ‘going on about it again’, I’m referring to those who do which I think should be clear to all but the hard of thinking.
I appreciate the irony of your comment. You do bang on about somewhat. Have a day off and try being a pleasant human being and not a rude bore.
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
There's a pretty hefty crater in that video clip. Roadside bomb?
Location lines up with where Ukrainians said they'd been conducting airstrikes. Convoys travelling along roads with no protection are the perfect target for those sorts of strikes.
How on earth have they still got an airforce left? I am starting to wonder if some of them have been rehoused in friendly countries nearby.
Lots of what looks suspiciously like sand there. I think that is footage of what was left of the Iraqi army when they fled from Kuwait City. The Z logos on the vehicles are interesting though. I remember reading the Russians were marking their vehicles that way. Maybe it is true after all.
Weird - just as an example I know that Jersey are allowing Ukrainian people in Jersey to get fast track visas for family with an initial 6 month cover and not worried about how they get there - people are driving to Jersey through Europe and absolutely no objection from the govt who just want to help and have said they are following UK visa rules so I imagine there will be immense flexibility.
So whilst you think this is a zinger of an attack on the UK gov it’s probably not. It’s probably been tabled for release today for some time but otherwise might be a reminder to anyone wanting to try and take advantage of Ukrainians’ plight and play the system.
The rugby is on today. See if your friends want to go to a pub, have a few beers, laugh, maybe even get a shag and you can take a break from this constant pointless posting of things you think damage the govt.
Whilst you are having a fun day away from PB you might realise that actually life is pretty good, you are free and not being shelled and actually the govt isn’t that bad - far from perfect - but not bad, and then you might have some perspective and stop the boring cut and paste worthy of Pravda.
I noticed you referred to posts of mine from several years ago. You obviously decided to lose your history by one or possibly several changes of identity.
Who were you posting as before changing to BOULAY? Same with ASIAN and TAZ? Nothing wrong with changing your usernames but if you're going to have conversations with people who haven't about things that were said several years ago the conversation is going to be a bit one sided.
Ms. Heathener, being against woke bullshit only equates to being far right in the fantastical imagination of the far left who are so love in with the woke stuff to start with.
It's just a regurgitation of "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler".
It's more the staggering detachment from reality of the likes of SLeon to be thinking that gender-neutral toilets and the like should be high up the list of existential threats to the world
Afaics despite the meme that these issues are the obsession of Wokies, lefties and Guardian readers, on here it’s not the Wokies, lefties and Guardian readers who return obsessively to these issues.
Yet here you are going on about it again. Most people ignore it as it’s a non issue.
I’m not ‘going on about it again’, I’m referring to those who do which I think should be clear to all but the hard of thinking.
I appreciate the irony of your comment. You do bang on about somewhat. Have a day off and try being a pleasant human being and not a rude bore.
Suspect Russia told China this would be a quick and painless operation of leadership change welcomed by the Ukrainians. The longer this is shown to be completely wrong, the harder it will be for China to maintain support (and the cost will rise). For China, Putin is expendable.
It is important to remember that China's foreign policy doctrine of non interference in other territories is related to one-China, in other words other countries should not interfere in Taiwan. Putin's argument over Ukraine is not a completely comfortable one for China.
It's a funny theory but could the Russian military command be engaging in self sabotage? It does seem a bit incompetent. And how have they not managed to get complete control of the airspace? I thought Ukraine had minimal defences?
It's rather odd. Russia has lots of fuel, and none of the vehicles have travelled that far. It may be mechanical faults rather than fuel. Its easy to have large headline numbers of fighting vehicles, but keeping them in fighting order is a more complex and expensive task.
Logistics is harder than Putin thinks? Having fuel is one thing, getting it to where it’s needed quite another.
Fuel trucks running out of fuel?
There was the story a couple of days before the invasion of Russian troops in Belarus selling their fuel to buy alcohol.
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
There's a pretty hefty crater in that video clip. Roadside bomb?
Location lines up with where Ukrainians said they'd been conducting airstrikes. Convoys travelling along roads with no protection are the perfect target for those sorts of strikes.
How on earth have they still got an airforce left? I am starting to wonder if some of them have been rehoused in friendly countries nearby.
No idea. But remember that a lot of Ukrainian infrastructure would have been constructed during the Cold War, and the Soviets would have tried to make it as hard to destroy as possible.
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
There's a pretty hefty crater in that video clip. Roadside bomb?
Location lines up with where Ukrainians said they'd been conducting airstrikes. Convoys travelling along roads with no protection are the perfect target for those sorts of strikes.
How on earth have they still got an airforce left? I am starting to wonder if some of them have been rehoused in friendly countries nearby.
Ms. Heathener, being against woke bullshit only equates to being far right in the fantastical imagination of the far left who are so love in with the woke stuff to start with.
It's just a regurgitation of "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler".
It's more the staggering detachment from reality of the likes of SLeon to be thinking that gender-neutral toilets and the like should be high up the list of existential threats to the world
One interesting thing, and I am sure Putin disapproves, is that Ukraine is becoming more Woke. Sure, older attitudes persist, but culture change takes time.
Being Woke doesn't seem to be impairing their will to fight. Indeed it seems to be a powerful motivating factor. A freedom worth fighting for.
Maybe I am naive but I do not see any of that as being woke but something to be welcomed
We should probably stop using the word Woke. It makes it difficult to distinguish good social change from bad social change, and creates artificial divisions that frustrate meaningful debate and objective analysis. Some things that may be described as 'woke' are good, others are bad, some are neutral. It should be possible to value living in a free and equal society without regarding yourself as Woke.
Just received this message from a friend who runs an office in Kyiv. He visits regularly
“I've spent the last week trying to get my 15 staff out of Kyiv. Some made it, one on the last flight out. Some are on their way west, leaving their families and are now stuck at the border. Others trapped in their basements in Kyiv or spending their nights in the underground. They are armed and say they are prepared to fight, but there is total fear in their voices. It's a shit show. But I fear the worst is yet is yet to come. Fuck Putin.”
What is weird is coming on here after months to talk about the dire situation in Ukraine only to see that the usual suspects are still making it all about Boris and Brexit.
You do realise that no-one normal in the real world does that, don't you?
Brexit, not so much, nonetheless up to the invasion the chattering classes talked of nothing else but Johnson's outrageous behaviour. They were triggered!
\ I'm afraid I think we now have to raise defence spending to the point where can deploy at least one fully armed heavy warfighting division on the continent, permanently. I suspect that will require us to expand the British army by 15-20,000 men back up to about 95-100k strong, and probably an extra £12-16bn per year in defence spending.
Just "men" though. Chaps, that sort of thing.
It's a sign of the times that Wokery was your first instinct when you saw that.
Yes, women can now join frontline regiments and good luck to those that choose to do so. But even in the longer term they will likely make up < 1% of the numbers.
One might as well say your language is of a part with your (unwarranted) assumption that “even in the longer term they will likely make up <1%…”
As Israel’s experience has shown, the proportion of women in combat roles can rise very quickly indeed once attitudes change.
It's rather odd. Russia has lots of fuel, and none of the vehicles have travelled that far. It may be mechanical faults rather than fuel. Its easy to have large headline numbers of fighting vehicles, but keeping them in fighting order is a more complex and expensive task.
Logistics is harder than Putin thinks? Having fuel is one thing, getting it to where it’s needed quite another.
Fuel trucks running out of fuel?
There was the story a couple of days before the invasion of Russian troops in Belarus selling their fuel to buy alcohol.
Given the reputation of Russians and being tough with booze surprised they weren't just drinking the fuel.
Reports 27 countries are actively providing weapons to Ukraine
Time for us to unite, stop sniping, and be proud of the response currently on its way from nations across the world
I'm sorry BigG. We in the West have done next to nothing. There is good reason why we have done next to nothing we don't want Putin to escalate this fiasco to involve the EU and the UK.
Clinton's biggest regret was he did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. We are watching, not genocide, but the destruction of a nation. The upshot either way is thousands of innocents are slaughtered whilst we watch on.
Our declarations "but Ukraine is not in NATO" are sops to ourselves.They are a sovereign nation invaded by an aggressor and we (the West) have sanctioned 70% of Russian banks. Huh, 70%?
Now I don't want British troops involved, I don't want my children conscripted for a world war, but neither can I sit back with satisfaction and claim leaders representing me have done all they can on my behalf, they haven't. In some cases, their vested interests trump my horror.
I don't know how to counter Putin, that is not my job. But neither, it seems, do those whose job it is to deal with Putin.
I am not suggesting a party political or Remainer/ Leave bias here. Whoever they represent, Western leaders have been guilty of dereliction of duty for at least eight years and that includes Starmer and your beloved "Boris".
When I was calling for us to act against Russia in 2014, 2016 (I think), 2018, etc, etc, where was your voice? Were you in the "Russia's ambitions are detrimental to the world; we need to act hard" camp or the "You're a warmonger risking WWIII" camp?
Because actions then would have been a damned sight easier than they are now. And we still face a threat of WWIII.
Yes they would, which is why I have cited eight years of inaction and dereliction of duty by Western leaders.
And, don't you blame me. I was outraged that we in the West did nothing about a downed airliner. We begged for permission to recover our bodies. That single act was brushed under the carpet. That represents the West sitting on its hands while Putin toyed with us.
I was with Elwood weeks ago when he demanded NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That is recorded here.
I'm talking about calling for action over the last eight years. This could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. It was predicted.
And yes, a Conservative / coalition government has been in place for that time. But remember Miliband's hideous backturn over the Syria vote? Remember Corbyn, Labour's leader, who pretended to be rather (ahem) anti-war?
Putin has gambled that the west's weaknesses would prevent us from stopping his territorial ambitions. The UK's negligence played into it - but the blame lies all over the west. It was too hard to do, so it wasn't done.
(I'd actually argue May did very well over Salisbury, although it could have been used as a catalyst for firmer actions.)
There are quite a few videos of Russian tanks that have run out of fuel or been abandoned. It seems the have problem with logistics and morale.
I have a colleague in my network who was a Royal Navy captain and really knows his onions.
He's adamant that Russian forces aren't as strong as they look on paper because their raw material, training, and staff work is highly variable, whereas British forces are tip-top.
Basically, his argument was that military effectiveness, just as in all other walks of life, comes down to people and organisational culture.
Except that the British military tends to have a hugely inflated perception of its own comparative effectiveness. Cf what we were saying about the Americans when we went in to replace them in Basra, brutally exposed as hubris by subsequent events
Yes, there was a bit of arrogance in there.
He also said that there comes a point where numbers absolutely matter, and the British Army is now tokenistic.
I'm afraid I think we now have to raise defence spending to the point where can deploy at least one fully armed heavy warfighting division on the continent, permanently. I suspect that will require us to expand the British army by 15-20,000 men back up to about 95-100k strong, and probably an extra £12-16bn per year in defence spending.
But I think we have to do it.
But I'm afraid that this comes back yet again to the incapability of this government (and quite possibly any government that replaces it) to take unpopular decisions.
Most of the public doesn't give a shit about defence. Much of the public has also been squeezed so hard by taxation, ridiculous housing costs, years of stagnant or negative wage growth and now steep inflation that it hasn't much left to give. So, in the end, a massive increase in defence spending can only be funded by soaking the elderly (through ditching automatic increases to the state pension, and extracting property wealth through large increases in IHT and/or the advent of land taxation,) or by taking an axe to core public service spending priorities.
So it won't happen.
We'll see. My perception is that public opinion is shifting, and the Government can shape it as well as reflect it.
Even if that is true, the public desire to spend money on anything extends only as far as that money is extracted from someone who isn't them. The nanosecond any Government goes after the gigantic stock of wealth locked up in housing - which is the only way we're going to make serious progress on funding any of the mountain of priorities and disasters that we've somehow got to manage all at the same time - the violent tantrum from the grey vote will be so extreme that it will run away in fright.
All that will end up happening in the end is that working age voters will be bled absolutely white and the whole lot will be sunk into inflating the state pension and desperately trying to clear the backlog of hip operations. The more I contemplate the situation, the more hopeless it looks.
The gigantic stock of wealth locked up in housing and the freedom to use it will be worth Jack Shit if the West ends up becoming hostage to global autarky because it decided to be impotent and didn't stand up to be counted when it mattered.
The electorate doesn't understand that. The electorate understands "Don't you dare touch my money!" It understands "But I paid my taxes?!" It understands "I am a special sunflower, let someone else pay all the bills." The electorate wants stuff for itself and it wants somebody else to pay for it. The electorate knows little of and cares nothing for geopolitics. The electorate cares about pensions, inheritances, hospitals and schools, in that order, and nothing else.
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
I realise Twitter is the go to medium. But why isn't there a place for a long, thoughtful piece like that not to have to be broken up into chunks? Makes reading it really difficult.
Could Putin really have been as stupid and deluded as she seems to be saying? Would make sense if he has cut himself off and is now being told what he wants to hear from the 'yes' men.
Lots of what looks suspiciously like sand there. I think that is footage of what was left of the Iraqi army when they fled from Kuwait City. The Z logos on the vehicles are interesting though. I remember reading the Russians were marking their vehicles that way. Maybe it is true after all.
No snow around, either.
I froze the clip at 23 seconds and took the below screenshot. Looks like Cyrillic lettering to me - certainly not Arabic
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
There's a pretty hefty crater in that video clip. Roadside bomb?
Location lines up with where Ukrainians said they'd been conducting airstrikes. Convoys travelling along roads with no protection are the perfect target for those sorts of strikes.
Apparently Ukraine had time to diversify their air force storage without the Russians finding out, and despite (almost) all their airbases being made inoperable, they have stretches of highway in the West that have been suspiciously well maintained.
I suspect the video is maybe real. The vehicles are Russian-looking. The Zs on the sides are a giveaway - all the Ukraine-bound Russian traffic has these. The terrain looks icy, dry, gritty, wintry - there are leafless trees? Not a desert
But it could still be fake. Or from Afghanistan or something
The pyramid of fuel delivery - trucks that carry fuel to fuel the trucks that carry fuel etc etc can reach ridiculous proportions very quickly. See the logistics costs for the US in Afghanistan, for example.
c.f. the Vulcan raid on Port Stanley. The entire (serviceable) fleet was used to refuel 1 plane all the way
I know the chap who planned that, now lives in Dartmouth.
There are quite a few videos of Russian tanks that have run out of fuel or been abandoned. It seems the have problem with logistics and morale.
I have a colleague in my network who was a Royal Navy captain and really knows his onions.
He's adamant that Russian forces aren't as strong as they look on paper because their raw material, training, and staff work is highly variable, whereas British forces are tip-top.
Basically, his argument was that military effectiveness, just as in all other walks of life, comes down to people and organisational culture.
Yep.
When I worked for a short while in intelligence (sorry that disappoints you MM) that was very much the prevailing view.
I admit I'm way out of touch these days, and left that behind long ago, but it did become something of a running joke.
Russian military might was vastly exaggerated. This may have changed and their intelligence and cyber warfare suggests they are a different entity now.
In a social media age it may be that the biggest variable in the use of arms in Europe, including Russia, is the willingness of mothers, wives and sisters to accept stoically the return of their men in body bags after dying for a worthless cause.
But for that the UK would have intervened in Syria in aid of Cameron's vain belief that there were coherent groups to fight with for a new liberal woke cool Syria. Parliament saved us form this, and this particular cat is now out of the bag. Afghanistan made 'Never Again In An Unwinnable Cause' permanent.
Which could be a complete disaster of course. A society that is not willing to fight for its own existence will not and does not deserve to survive. I think the government in this case was adamant that there will be no British troops on the ground because of the psychological humiliation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. We cannot be scared into immobility. Our values are worth fighting for.
The military objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan were both ultimately achieved, Saddam was toppled and executed by Iraqis and Bin Laden was killed and the Taliban removed.
It was Biden's decision to withdraw troops as the body bag count was too high that let the Taliban back. It could equally be the body bag count of Russian troops that ultimately leads to Russian withdrawal from Ukraine but that could take years
It's a funny theory but could the Russian military command be engaging in self sabotage? It does seem a bit incompetent. And how have they not managed to get complete control of the airspace? I thought Ukraine had minimal defences?
It is far from unique in history for an on paper superior force, for reasons of internal politics, morale and organisation, to be less effective than it should be. Generals slow rolling things, not taking initiative where they could etc. Probably harder to manage thesedays with some presidential apparatchik hovering over you.
Reports 27 countries are actively providing weapons to Ukraine
Time for us to unite, stop sniping, and be proud of the response currently on its way from nations across the world
I'm sorry BigG. We in the West have done next to nothing. There is good reason why we have done next to nothing we don't want Putin to escalate this fiasco to involve the EU and the UK.
Clinton's biggest regret was he did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. We are watching, not genocide, but the destruction of a nation. The upshot either way is thousands of innocents are slaughtered whilst we watch on.
Our declarations "but Ukraine is not in NATO" are sops to ourselves.They are a sovereign nation invaded by an aggressor and we (the West) have sanctioned 70% of Russian banks. Huh, 70%?
Now I don't want British troops involved, I don't want my children conscripted for a world war, but neither can I sit back with satisfaction and claim leaders representing me have done all they can on my behalf, they haven't. In some cases, their vested interests trump my horror.
I don't know how to counter Putin, that is not my job. But neither, it seems, do those whose job it is to deal with Putin.
I am not suggesting a party political or Remainer/ Leave bias here. Whoever they represent, Western leaders have been guilty of dereliction of duty for at least eight years and that includes Starmer and your beloved "Boris".
When I was calling for us to act against Russia in 2014, 2016 (I think), 2018, etc, etc, where was your voice? Were you in the "Russia's ambitions are detrimental to the world; we need to act hard" camp or the "You're a warmonger risking WWIII" camp?
Because actions then would have been a damned sight easier than they are now. And we still face a threat of WWIII.
Yes they would, which is why I have cited eight years of inaction and dereliction of duty by Western leaders.
And, don't you blame me. I was outraged that we in the West did nothing about a downed airliner. We begged for permission to recover our bodies. That single act was brushed under the carpet. That represents the West sitting on its hands while Putin toyed with us.
I was with Elwood weeks ago when he demanded NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That is recorded here.
I'm talking about calling for action over the last eight years. This could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. It was predicted.
And yes, a Conservative / coalition government has been in place for that time. But remember Miliband's hideous backturn over the Syria vote? Remember Corbyn, Labour's leader, who pretended to be rather (ahem) anti-war?
Putin has gambled that the west's weaknesses would prevent us from stopping his territorial ambitions. The UK's negligence played into it - but the blame lies all over the west. It was too hard to do, so it wasn't done.
(I'd actually argue May did very well over Salisbury, although it could have been used as a catalyst for firmer actions.)
There are quite a few videos of Russian tanks that have run out of fuel or been abandoned. It seems the have problem with logistics and morale.
I have a colleague in my network who was a Royal Navy captain and really knows his onions.
He's adamant that Russian forces aren't as strong as they look on paper because their raw material, training, and staff work is highly variable, whereas British forces are tip-top.
Basically, his argument was that military effectiveness, just as in all other walks of life, comes down to people and organisational culture.
Except that the British military tends to have a hugely inflated perception of its own comparative effectiveness. Cf what we were saying about the Americans when we went in to replace them in Basra, brutally exposed as hubris by subsequent events
Yes, there was a bit of arrogance in there.
He also said that there comes a point where numbers absolutely matter, and the British Army is now tokenistic.
I'm afraid I think we now have to raise defence spending to the point where can deploy at least one fully armed heavy warfighting division on the continent, permanently. I suspect that will require us to expand the British army by 15-20,000 men back up to about 95-100k strong, and probably an extra £12-16bn per year in defence spending.
But I think we have to do it.
But I'm afraid that this comes back yet again to the incapability of this government (and quite possibly any government that replaces it) to take unpopular decisions.
Most of the public doesn't give a shit about defence. Much of the public has also been squeezed so hard by taxation, ridiculous housing costs, years of stagnant or negative wage growth and now steep inflation that it hasn't much left to give. So, in the end, a massive increase in defence spending can only be funded by soaking the elderly (through ditching automatic increases to the state pension, and extracting property wealth through large increases in IHT and/or the advent of land taxation,) or by taking an axe to core public service spending priorities.
So it won't happen.
We'll see. My perception is that public opinion is shifting, and the Government can shape it as well as reflect it.
Even if that is true, the public desire to spend money on anything extends only as far as that money is extracted from someone who isn't them. The nanosecond any Government goes after the gigantic stock of wealth locked up in housing - which is the only way we're going to make serious progress on funding any of the mountain of priorities and disasters that we've somehow got to manage all at the same time - the violent tantrum from the grey vote will be so extreme that it will run away in fright.
All that will end up happening in the end is that working age voters will be bled absolutely white and the whole lot will be sunk into inflating the state pension and desperately trying to clear the backlog of hip operations. The more I contemplate the situation, the more hopeless it looks.
The gigantic stock of wealth locked up in housing and the freedom to use it will be worth Jack Shit if the West ends up becoming hostage to global autarky because it decided to be impotent and didn't stand up to be counted when it mattered.
I'm hoping there will be a consensus that rearmament, at a minimum, is required. But I see no sign of this in statements from politicians.
What do we do, as citizens in a democracy, to make this happen?
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
There's a pretty hefty crater in that video clip. Roadside bomb?
Location lines up with where Ukrainians said they'd been conducting airstrikes. Convoys travelling along roads with no protection are the perfect target for those sorts of strikes.
How on earth have they still got an airforce left? I am starting to wonder if some of them have been rehoused in friendly countries nearby.
The Russian Airforce seems to be curiously absent. They have been some attacks but the massed stuff that people was expecting - darken the sky with anti-aircraft suppression on the first day of the war (Desert Storm style) - seems not to have happened.
Nor has massed raids.
And apparently the Ukrainian Airforce is still flying.
I'm starting to wonder if cyber attack from outside having something to do with this?
Remember the Israelis attack on the potential reactor site in Syria? They hacked the interconnected Syria (Russian built) air defence network to shut it off. Then the last plane out, so the story goes, broadcast a signal to switch it back on. As final "we owned you" message.
Lots of what looks suspiciously like sand there. I think that is footage of what was left of the Iraqi army when they fled from Kuwait City. The Z logos on the vehicles are interesting though. I remember reading the Russians were marking their vehicles that way. Maybe it is true after all.
No snow around, either.
Fair number of trees/bushes with no leaves - winter....
Lots of what looks suspiciously like sand there. I think that is footage of what was left of the Iraqi army when they fled from Kuwait City. The Z logos on the vehicles are interesting though. I remember reading the Russians were marking their vehicles that way. Maybe it is true after all.
No snow around, either.
I froze the clip at 23 seconds and took the below screenshot. Looks like Cyrillic lettering to me - certainly not Arabic
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
I seriously think they got high on their own propaganda supply and thought they’d be welcomed in. All of them from Putin downwards. Would explain why they may be running out of fuel if they thought they could just pop into a Kyiv Shell to fill up with a cheery welcome from the attendant.
Putin living in virtual isolation with his yes men in attendance is the equivalent of those relying on the echo chamber of like minded twitter twats for opinions, beliefs and reassurance.
Ms. Heathener, being against woke bullshit only equates to being far right in the fantastical imagination of the far left who are so love in with the woke stuff to start with.
It's just a regurgitation of "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler".
It's more the staggering detachment from reality of the likes of SLeon to be thinking that gender-neutral toilets and the like should be high up the list of existential threats to the world
One interesting thing, and I am sure Putin disapproves, is that Ukraine is becoming more Woke. Sure, older attitudes persist, but culture change takes time.
Being Woke doesn't seem to be impairing their will to fight. Indeed it seems to be a powerful motivating factor. A freedom worth fighting for.
Maybe I am naive but I do not see any of that as being woke but something to be welcomed
We should probably stop using the word Woke. It makes it difficult to distinguish good social change from bad social change, and creates artificial divisions that frustrate meaningful debate and objective analysis. Some things that may be described as 'woke' are good, others are bad, some are neutral. It should be possible to value living in a free and equal society without regarding yourself as Woke.
I agree but it's generally only being used a term of insult by those on the right. None of the many people I know with left of centre views goes around proclaiming themselves to be 'Woke'.
It replaced 'political correctness' when that term lost its zing because most people adopted attitudes respecting the rights of others. 'Political correctness' and 'Woke' are really simply 'informed politeness' in most instances.
Lots of what looks suspiciously like sand there. I think that is footage of what was left of the Iraqi army when they fled from Kuwait City. The Z logos on the vehicles are interesting though. I remember reading the Russians were marking their vehicles that way. Maybe it is true after all.
No snow around, either.
I froze the clip at 23 seconds and took the below screenshot. Looks like Cyrillic lettering to me - certainly not Arabic
I'm pretty sure the voices on the video are Ukrainian.
The account that originally posted the video seems to have plenty of similar and definitely in Ukraine videos.
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
There's a pretty hefty crater in that video clip. Roadside bomb?
Location lines up with where Ukrainians said they'd been conducting airstrikes. Convoys travelling along roads with no protection are the perfect target for those sorts of strikes.
Apparently Ukraine had time to diversify their air force storage without the Russians finding out, and despite (almost) all their airbases being made inoperable, they have stretches of highway in the West that have been suspiciously well maintained.
I suspect the video is maybe real. The vehicles are Russian-looking. The Zs on the sides are a giveaway - all the Ukraine-bound Russian traffic has these. The terrain looks icy, dry, gritty, wintry - there are leafless trees? Not a desert
But it could still be fake. Or from Afghanistan or something
One reason it is difficult to tell is because the Russian trucks and kit all look like they are Dinky toys from the 50's....
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
There's a pretty hefty crater in that video clip. Roadside bomb?
Location lines up with where Ukrainians said they'd been conducting airstrikes. Convoys travelling along roads with no protection are the perfect target for those sorts of strikes.
Apparently Ukraine had time to diversify their air force storage without the Russians finding out, and despite (almost) all their airbases being made inoperable, they have stretches of highway in the West that have been suspiciously well maintained.
The Soviet period aircraft they are using were all designed for rough field operation. The Mig-29 especially so.
The baffling failure of Russian air power and ability to defend it's own supply lines make no sense. Mavbe he really did expect Ukraine to just roll over?
There's a pretty hefty crater in that video clip. Roadside bomb?
Location lines up with where Ukrainians said they'd been conducting airstrikes. Convoys travelling along roads with no protection are the perfect target for those sorts of strikes.
Apparently Ukraine had time to diversify their air force storage without the Russians finding out, and despite (almost) all their airbases being made inoperable, they have stretches of highway in the West that have been suspiciously well maintained.
I suspect the video is maybe real. The vehicles are Russian-looking. The Zs on the sides are a giveaway - all the Ukraine-bound Russian traffic has these. The terrain looks icy, dry, gritty, wintry - there are leafless trees? Not a desert
But it could still be fake. Or from Afghanistan or something
Ngorno Karabakh? I wonder if they also used Z there.
I may well be wrong in this instance but I do think we have to be very careful about footage on social media. @Heathener and I don't agree on much but the link to the BBC examples of this was spot on.
It's based on data for voluntary forces. In the US it's less than 2% and in the UK under 0.5% at the moment.
In the IDF fewer than 4 percent of women are in combat positions such as tank commanders, infantry, helicopter or fighter pilots and don't forget they have universal conscription too.
Edit: this shouldn't surprise us. You need high levels of testosterone and aggression for close-quarters combat, and significant physical strength and endurance to deal with heavy weaponry and forced marches, so the numbers will always be heavily skewed by biological reality no matter how much we try to convince ourselves to the contrary with our weird present day social-political obsession with identity politics.
It's a funny theory but could the Russian military command be engaging in self sabotage? It does seem a bit incompetent. And how have they not managed to get complete control of the airspace? I thought Ukraine had minimal defences?
It is far from unique in history for an on paper superior force, for reasons of internal politics, morale and organisation, to be less effective than it should be. Generals slow rolling things, not taking initiative where they could etc. Probably harder to manage thesedays with some presidential apparatchik hovering over you.
Half the people Putin has ordered his poor troops to kill SPEAK RUSSIAN - and look Russian, too
Emotionally that must be extremely hard. It’s not surprising the Russian army is struggling to kill half-Russian people
Reports 27 countries are actively providing weapons to Ukraine
Time for us to unite, stop sniping, and be proud of the response currently on its way from nations across the world
I'm sorry BigG. We in the West have done next to nothing. There is good reason why we have done next to nothing we don't want Putin to escalate this fiasco to involve the EU and the UK.
Clinton's biggest regret was he did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. We are watching, not genocide, but the destruction of a nation. The upshot either way is thousands of innocents are slaughtered whilst we watch on.
Our declarations "but Ukraine is not in NATO" are sops to ourselves.They are a sovereign nation invaded by an aggressor and we (the West) have sanctioned 70% of Russian banks. Huh, 70%?
Now I don't want British troops involved, I don't want my children conscripted for a world war, but neither can I sit back with satisfaction and claim leaders representing me have done all they can on my behalf, they haven't. In some cases, their vested interests trump my horror.
I don't know how to counter Putin, that is not my job. But neither, it seems, do those whose job it is to deal with Putin.
I am not suggesting a party political or Remainer/ Leave bias here. Whoever they represent, Western leaders have been guilty of dereliction of duty for at least eight years and that includes Starmer and your beloved "Boris".
When I was calling for us to act against Russia in 2014, 2016 (I think), 2018, etc, etc, where was your voice? Were you in the "Russia's ambitions are detrimental to the world; we need to act hard" camp or the "You're a warmonger risking WWIII" camp?
Because actions then would have been a damned sight easier than they are now. And we still face a threat of WWIII.
Yes they would, which is why I have cited eight years of inaction and dereliction of duty by Western leaders.
And, don't you blame me. I was outraged that we in the West did nothing about a downed airliner. We begged for permission to recover our bodies. That single act was brushed under the carpet. That represents the West sitting on its hands while Putin toyed with us.
I was with Elwood weeks ago when he demanded NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That is recorded here.
I'm talking about calling for action over the last eight years. This could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. It was predicted.
And yes, a Conservative / coalition government has been in place for that time. But remember Miliband's hideous backturn over the Syria vote? Remember Corbyn, Labour's leader, who pretended to be rather (ahem) anti-war?
Putin has gambled that the west's weaknesses would prevent us from stopping his territorial ambitions. The UK's negligence played into it - but the blame lies all over the west. It was too hard to do, so it wasn't done.
(I'd actually argue May did very well over Salisbury, although it could have been used as a catalyst for firmer actions.)
What did we actually *do* about Salisbury, Josias?
Really? We got the evidence, distributed it, and May's team did a heck of a lot of informing and developing a coherent strategy - against a Labour Party that was mostly under hideous denial.
I believe you were a Labour voter at that time? Did you cheer on Miliband when he changed his mind over the Syria vote?
In the words of David Steele when asked who he voted for, "it's a secret ballot". Not sure how this alters the fact that despite talking a good game, our bark was worse than our bite.
As soon as I woke up I felt instantly forlorn. It’s supposed to be a fun day, sunny, racing, England Wales Rugby. But It don’t feel right to be happy and self indulgent with this ongoing crisis so unnecessary and sad.
But I have picked out four horses for a lucky 15. I would caution though, don’t leap on them just because three of last weeks four won, I had nothing for weeks before that, and quite possibly nothing for weeks to come.
Kempton - 1315 - Patroclus Specialises in the distance, first Chase win start of this month
Kempton - 1350 - Moka De Vassy 3 hurdles now in career, placed over 2m in last two,
Kempton - 1500 - Galore Desassences Yet again I am attracted to the long odds for a horse with a history of placing, likes distance and won the last two.
NEWCASTLE - 1515 - Eclair Surf Book spoilt by errors disguises the staying promise form good from last race too
So we are on the fourth day of the liberation of Ukraine, a country with a population two thirds that of the UK, and so far apparently the Russians have captured only one city, about the size of Canterbury?
Reports 27 countries are actively providing weapons to Ukraine
Time for us to unite, stop sniping, and be proud of the response currently on its way from nations across the world
I'm sorry BigG. We in the West have done next to nothing. There is good reason why we have done next to nothing we don't want Putin to escalate this fiasco to involve the EU and the UK.
Clinton's biggest regret was he did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. We are watching, not genocide, but the destruction of a nation. The upshot either way is thousands of innocents are slaughtered whilst we watch on.
Our declarations "but Ukraine is not in NATO" are sops to ourselves.They are a sovereign nation invaded by an aggressor and we (the West) have sanctioned 70% of Russian banks. Huh, 70%?
Now I don't want British troops involved, I don't want my children conscripted for a world war, but neither can I sit back with satisfaction and claim leaders representing me have done all they can on my behalf, they haven't. In some cases, their vested interests trump my horror.
I don't know how to counter Putin, that is not my job. But neither, it seems, do those whose job it is to deal with Putin.
I am not suggesting a party political or Remainer/ Leave bias here. Whoever they represent, Western leaders have been guilty of dereliction of duty for at least eight years and that includes Starmer and your beloved "Boris".
When I was calling for us to act against Russia in 2014, 2016 (I think), 2018, etc, etc, where was your voice? Were you in the "Russia's ambitions are detrimental to the world; we need to act hard" camp or the "You're a warmonger risking WWIII" camp?
Because actions then would have been a damned sight easier than they are now. And we still face a threat of WWIII.
Yes they would, which is why I have cited eight years of inaction and dereliction of duty by Western leaders.
And, don't you blame me. I was outraged that we in the West did nothing about a downed airliner. We begged for permission to recover our bodies. That single act was brushed under the carpet. That represents the West sitting on its hands while Putin toyed with us.
I was with Elwood weeks ago when he demanded NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That is recorded here.
I'm talking about calling for action over the last eight years. This could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. It was predicted.
And yes, a Conservative / coalition government has been in place for that time. But remember Miliband's hideous backturn over the Syria vote? Remember Corbyn, Labour's leader, who pretended to be rather (ahem) anti-war?
Putin has gambled that the west's weaknesses would prevent us from stopping his territorial ambitions. The UK's negligence played into it - but the blame lies all over the west. It was too hard to do, so it wasn't done.
(I'd actually argue May did very well over Salisbury, although it could have been used as a catalyst for firmer actions.)
I think Putin thinks the West is a wet lettuce.
And morally bankrupt. He has been banging on about drugs and homosexuality and transgenderism etc.
Remember that next time those of you on the far right have a go about being woke. You may find yourself in bed with Vladimir Putin.
Still spending your time trying to create discord? Which country’s intelligence services did you say you worked in again?
Lots of what looks suspiciously like sand there. I think that is footage of what was left of the Iraqi army when they fled from Kuwait City. The Z logos on the vehicles are interesting though. I remember reading the Russians were marking their vehicles that way. Maybe it is true after all.
No snow around, either.
I froze the clip at 23 seconds and took the below screenshot. Looks like Cyrillic lettering to me - certainly not Arabic
Yes, it’s Russian. And look at that Z
Question is: where? And who wiped them out?
It's in Kherson, and apparently they're engineering vehicles for bridging rivers.
Comments suggest they were taken out with Turkish donated Bayraktars
Ukrainian forces ‘repulsed’ a Russian air assault this morning - 60 Russian soldiers from 3 helicopters attacked near Brody, 1.5 hours outside Lviv, in Western Ukraine. Casualties unknown. Russian paratroopers have retreated into the forest: Lviv mayor https://twitter.com/LucasFoxNews/status/1497514404505538561
Given it's basically impossible to impose proper sanctions on Russia while NordStream1 continues to pump gas into Germany and cash to Putin, we might as well just go ahead with NS2.
I propose giving the pipeline itself to Ukraine.
The whole point of NordStream 2 is to bypass Ukraine.
I think that was his point. If Ukraine owns NS2 they still get the transit fees
I cannot understand why a conservative party leadership election taking upto 8 weeks at this time of war could be justified or indeed accepted by the voters
When the PM is an incompetent buffoon, I cannot understand why you would want him in post for a second longer
I agree with BigG that right now is not quite the time. This will have largely played out in a week or 2 and the key focus will have to be how to stop Putin going any further and Johnson needs to be got shot of right away because he won't bother putting in the hard work to achieve that objective.
In truth the Conservative Party should never have allowed the Brexit issue to blind it into choosing an incompetent, weak and dishonest leader. However we are where we are and at the end of the day Johnson is only a buffoon and is not in the same evil and dangerous category as Trump.
The Tories need to act sooner rather than later once this is over. We are stuck with Brexit now and If they cannot now see that he is not the right leader for a pandemic or an international crisis then they never will and any further disasters will be on their heads.
Reports 27 countries are actively providing weapons to Ukraine
Time for us to unite, stop sniping, and be proud of the response currently on its way from nations across the world
I'm sorry BigG. We in the West have done next to nothing. There is good reason why we have done next to nothing we don't want Putin to escalate this fiasco to involve the EU and the UK.
Clinton's biggest regret was he did nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. We are watching, not genocide, but the destruction of a nation. The upshot either way is thousands of innocents are slaughtered whilst we watch on.
Our declarations "but Ukraine is not in NATO" are sops to ourselves.They are a sovereign nation invaded by an aggressor and we (the West) have sanctioned 70% of Russian banks. Huh, 70%?
Now I don't want British troops involved, I don't want my children conscripted for a world war, but neither can I sit back with satisfaction and claim leaders representing me have done all they can on my behalf, they haven't. In some cases, their vested interests trump my horror.
I don't know how to counter Putin, that is not my job. But neither, it seems, do those whose job it is to deal with Putin.
I am not suggesting a party political or Remainer/ Leave bias here. Whoever they represent, Western leaders have been guilty of dereliction of duty for at least eight years and that includes Starmer and your beloved "Boris".
When I was calling for us to act against Russia in 2014, 2016 (I think), 2018, etc, etc, where was your voice? Were you in the "Russia's ambitions are detrimental to the world; we need to act hard" camp or the "You're a warmonger risking WWIII" camp?
Because actions then would have been a damned sight easier than they are now. And we still face a threat of WWIII.
Yes they would, which is why I have cited eight years of inaction and dereliction of duty by Western leaders.
And, don't you blame me. I was outraged that we in the West did nothing about a downed airliner. We begged for permission to recover our bodies. That single act was brushed under the carpet. That represents the West sitting on its hands while Putin toyed with us.
I was with Elwood weeks ago when he demanded NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. That is recorded here.
I'm talking about calling for action over the last eight years. This could have been prevented. It should have been prevented. It was predicted.
And yes, a Conservative / coalition government has been in place for that time. But remember Miliband's hideous backturn over the Syria vote? Remember Corbyn, Labour's leader, who pretended to be rather (ahem) anti-war?
Putin has gambled that the west's weaknesses would prevent us from stopping his territorial ambitions. The UK's negligence played into it - but the blame lies all over the west. It was too hard to do, so it wasn't done.
(I'd actually argue May did very well over Salisbury, although it could have been used as a catalyst for firmer actions.)
There are quite a few videos of Russian tanks that have run out of fuel or been abandoned. It seems the have problem with logistics and morale.
I have a colleague in my network who was a Royal Navy captain and really knows his onions.
He's adamant that Russian forces aren't as strong as they look on paper because their raw material, training, and staff work is highly variable, whereas British forces are tip-top.
Basically, his argument was that military effectiveness, just as in all other walks of life, comes down to people and organisational culture.
Except that the British military tends to have a hugely inflated perception of its own comparative effectiveness. Cf what we were saying about the Americans when we went in to replace them in Basra, brutally exposed as hubris by subsequent events
Yes, there was a bit of arrogance in there.
He also said that there comes a point where numbers absolutely matter, and the British Army is now tokenistic.
I'm afraid I think we now have to raise defence spending to the point where can deploy at least one fully armed heavy warfighting division on the continent, permanently. I suspect that will require us to expand the British army by 15-20,000 men back up to about 95-100k strong, and probably an extra £12-16bn per year in defence spending.
But I think we have to do it.
But I'm afraid that this comes back yet again to the incapability of this government (and quite possibly any government that replaces it) to take unpopular decisions.
Most of the public doesn't give a shit about defence. Much of the public has also been squeezed so hard by taxation, ridiculous housing costs, years of stagnant or negative wage growth and now steep inflation that it hasn't much left to give. So, in the end, a massive increase in defence spending can only be funded by soaking the elderly (through ditching automatic increases to the state pension, and extracting property wealth through large increases in IHT and/or the advent of land taxation,) or by taking an axe to core public service spending priorities.
So it won't happen.
We'll see. My perception is that public opinion is shifting, and the Government can shape it as well as reflect it.
Even if that is true, the public desire to spend money on anything extends only as far as that money is extracted from someone who isn't them. The nanosecond any Government goes after the gigantic stock of wealth locked up in housing - which is the only way we're going to make serious progress on funding any of the mountain of priorities and disasters that we've somehow got to manage all at the same time - the violent tantrum from the grey vote will be so extreme that it will run away in fright.
All that will end up happening in the end is that working age voters will be bled absolutely white and the whole lot will be sunk into inflating the state pension and desperately trying to clear the backlog of hip operations. The more I contemplate the situation, the more hopeless it looks.
The gigantic stock of wealth locked up in housing and the freedom to use it will be worth Jack Shit if the West ends up becoming hostage to global autarky because it decided to be impotent and didn't stand up to be counted when it mattered.
The electorate doesn't understand that. The electorate understands "Don't you dare touch my money!" It understands "But I paid my taxes?!" It understands "I am a special sunflower, let someone else pay all the bills." The electorate wants stuff for itself and it wants somebody else to pay for it. The electorate knows little of and cares nothing for geopolitics. The electorate cares about pensions, inheritances, hospitals and schools, in that order, and nothing else.
and jobs and wages and football and prices and bins and dog poo and
Yeah, OK, the last sentence was excessively simplistic. The general point, however, stands. The population (or so much of it as to render any argument to the contrary moot) only wants stuff for itself, paid for by other people. Weapons don't directly benefit anyone save for the people who make them and the people trained to use them. This does not encompass more than a fraction of 1% of the population, and doesn't include any of the old people whose interests now dominate politics. Frankly, its astonishing that the nation spends as much on its skeletal defences as it still does.
Comments
However, I have been seriously wondering if a contributory factor to the start of the war was toxic masculinity. The Kremlin - and Putin's inner circle - seem to be very male dominated. The contrast with the increasingly gender neutral west, particularly so over the last decade, is very noticeable and significant.
If your core discipline and esprit de corps is strong, and you're good at your job, then - within limits - it doesn't really matter.
The cable interference issue is genuinely worrying, particularly with so much of our power coming off offshore wind.
I believe you were a Labour voter at that time? Did you cheer on Miliband when he changed his mind over the Syria vote?
I'd better just repeat that I'm with Yokes on this one.
Makes reading it really difficult.
But right now Russia is invading Ukraine and you are attacking those who are helping those fighting to preserve their freedom
What after all, does spending more on defence (and not taking Russian money) mean? A slight reduction in a standard of living that is still way above the world average.
I'd just like to say I've got a lot of fondness for combat engineers. They often have to work on the very front lines, under fire. Some of the stories of Russian combat engineers during the push to Berlin are staggering.
Also, the temporary bridge over a river made by Napoleon during his retreat from Russia at Berezina. Or Wellington's bridge over the Adur at Bayonne.
A friend from uni (I studied a branch of civ eng) became an army engineer. He was in the OTC at university, and often went away at weekends to build bridges.
This is Kyiv Pride before the pandemic:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48738251
One of the Ukranian gold medalists at the Olympics is black, and now also an MP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhan_Beleniuk
Women are 10% of Ukranian military, and serve in all roles, including combat, with equal rights.
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2022/0223/We-want-to-keep-Ukraine-free.-Why-women-rise-in-Ukraine-army
Indeed one of their recent pilot casualties was this young woman:
https://twitter.com/diwanshu_tomar/status/1497354469201571842?t=E5GN3rZ3S-_C3j5ks-fDkg&s=19
Being Woke doesn't seem to be impairing their will to fight. Indeed it seems to be a powerful motivating factor. A freedom worth fighting for.
Measuring the presence of women as negotiators, mediators, witnesses, and signatories to 182 signed peace agreements between 1989 and 2011, this analysis shows that women’s participation has its greatest impact in the long term: an agreement is 35 percent more likely to last at least 15 years if women participate in its creation.
MPs who are watching the polls and recent by-election results are starting to wonder whether the prime minister is becoming a liability rather than an asset. With Shakespearean symmetry, the strengths that got Johnson to the very top have become the weaknesses that may drive him from power.
The constitutional historian Lord Hennessy...suggests the traditional reliance on decency has been suspended under Johnson, he hopes temporarily. “He’s not a man driven by public service; he is the most dramatic example we have ever had of a vanity prime minister. His great project is himself, which is very dangerous for a country... No prime minister in the 100 years since Lloyd George has had such a disregard for convention and norms of behaviour in their personal and political life. But Lloyd George was a genius and Johnson is not.”
A former Downing Street aide believes that Johnson has been fatally wounded by his own character flaws. “He believes the worst of everybody, then behaves in such a way to ensure that that will happen. He betrays people and then they do turn on him. It’s a self-fulfilling self-destructive pattern. Behind this persona of the jolly clown, Boris is a deeply scarred, deeply cynical individual.”
Or how BP will be paid. Yet here you are going on about it again. Most people ignore it as it’s a non issue.
I bet you all come on here for that sort of insightful commentary.
What exactly would you "give" to the Ukrainians? The control of the pumps?
Apparently Ukraine had time to diversify their air force storage without the Russians finding out, and despite (almost) all their airbases being made inoperable, they have stretches of highway in the West that have been suspiciously well maintained.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47DfQcHMYLY
It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened?
But in the end, it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't.
They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for
@RoryStewartUK
Acutely intelligent, sensitive to Russia as much as to Ukraine, clear about the horror of war - quietly immensely courageous - @zelenskyyUa is an extraordinary man. This is one of the most remarkable speeches ever made - in dignified contrast to Putin’s hysterical megalomania.
https://twitter.com/RoryStewartUK/status/1497499513833115655
Who were you posting as before changing to BOULAY? Same with ASIAN and TAZ? Nothing wrong with changing your usernames but if you're going to have conversations with people who haven't about things that were said several years ago the conversation is going to be a bit one sided.
An extreme example being the underground Željava Air Base in Yugoslavia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Željava_Air_Base
“I've spent the last week trying to get my 15 staff out of Kyiv. Some made it, one on the last flight out. Some are on their way west, leaving their families and are now stuck at the border. Others trapped in their basements in Kyiv or spending their nights in the underground. They are armed and say they are prepared to fight, but there is total fear in their voices. It's a shit show. But I fear the worst is yet is yet to come. Fuck Putin.”
As Israel’s experience has shown, the proportion of women in combat roles can rise very quickly indeed once attitudes change.
But it could still be fake. Or from Afghanistan or something
Even if occupied, Ukraine will still exist. Unless…
It was Biden's decision to withdraw troops as the body bag count was too high that let the Taliban back. It could equally be the body bag count of Russian troops that ultimately leads to Russian withdrawal from Ukraine but that could take years
What do we do, as citizens in a democracy, to make this happen?
Nor has massed raids.
And apparently the Ukrainian Airforce is still flying.
I'm starting to wonder if cyber attack from outside having something to do with this?
Remember the Israelis attack on the potential reactor site in Syria? They hacked the interconnected Syria (Russian built) air defence network to shut it off. Then the last plane out, so the story goes, broadcast a signal to switch it back on. As final "we owned you" message.
Question is: where? And who wiped them out?
I did wonder if they'd used that time wisely. Perhaps they have.
It replaced 'political correctness' when that term lost its zing because most people adopted attitudes respecting the rights of others. 'Political correctness' and 'Woke' are really simply 'informed politeness' in most instances.
The account that originally posted the video seems to have plenty of similar and definitely in Ukraine videos.
https://twitter.com/XyKyiv
I may well be wrong in this instance but I do think we have to be very careful about footage on social media. @Heathener and I don't agree on much but the link to the BBC examples of this was spot on.
It's based on data for voluntary forces. In the US it's less than 2% and in the UK under 0.5% at the moment.
In the IDF fewer than 4 percent of women are in combat positions such as tank commanders, infantry, helicopter or fighter pilots and don't forget they have universal conscription too.
Edit: this shouldn't surprise us. You need high levels of testosterone and aggression for close-quarters combat, and significant physical strength and endurance to deal with heavy weaponry and forced marches, so the numbers will always be heavily skewed by biological reality no matter how much we try to convince ourselves to the contrary with our weird present day social-political obsession with identity politics.
Emotionally that must be extremely hard. It’s not surprising the Russian army is struggling to kill half-Russian people
BBC cut away from Orla G at a ruined roadside convoy of Ukranian military vehicles
As soon as I woke up I felt instantly forlorn. It’s supposed to be a fun day, sunny, racing, England Wales Rugby. But It don’t feel right to be happy and self indulgent with this ongoing crisis so unnecessary and sad.
But I have picked out four horses for a lucky 15. I would caution though, don’t leap on them just because three of last weeks four won, I had nothing for weeks before that, and quite possibly nothing for weeks to come.
Kempton - 1315 - Patroclus
Specialises in the distance, first Chase win start of this month
Kempton - 1350 - Moka De Vassy
3 hurdles now in career, placed over 2m in last two,
Kempton - 1500 - Galore Desassences
Yet again I am attracted to the long odds for a horse with a history of placing, likes distance and won the last two.
NEWCASTLE - 1515 - Eclair Surf
Book spoilt by errors disguises the staying promise form good from last race too
Good luck, whatever you are on! 🙋♀️
Comments suggest they were taken out with Turkish donated Bayraktars
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayraktar_TB2
https://twitter.com/LucasFoxNews/status/1497514404505538561
In truth the Conservative Party should never have allowed the Brexit issue to blind it into choosing an incompetent, weak and dishonest leader. However we are where we are and at the end of the day Johnson is only a buffoon and is not in the same evil and dangerous category as Trump.
The Tories need to act sooner rather than later once this is over. We are stuck with Brexit now and If they cannot now see that he is not the right leader for a pandemic or an international crisis then they never will and any further disasters will be on their heads.
https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1497520313013309447