Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
We need to move fast towards cutting off the flow of western cash, buying Russian hydrocarbons
That’s the crucial choke point - that’s when Russia REALLY suffers. No more money. Default. Then Putin simply can’t afford any more wars
It will be painful and difficult for us, too. Finding and paying for new sources of energy. But there are no cheap easy ways out of this
Does anyone on PB know fast we could get some of our gas fields up and running (again) ? Surely the current price of energy means some previously uneconomical sources of gas are now viable?
Government should just approve them and get on with it.
Good morning
I expect this week's energy statement from HMG will do just that together with a drive to nuclear, more windfarms, and home insulation
HMG is to subsidise new boilers from April, though the timeline seems a bit odd and, to the uninitiated, even backwards but I expect they know what they are doing. Kwasi went to Eton, you know, purveyor of quality ministers since 2019. Though based on the header, as educated professionals working in the public sector. they must all be secret Labour voters.
1 April 2022 - Low carbon heating systems that are commissioned on or after this date will be entitled to support under the scheme. (Commissioning is the completion of installation and set up of the system).
11 April 2022 - Installers will be able to open an account for the scheme with Ofgem, the scheme administrator.
23 May 2022 - The scheme opens for grant applications and payments.
Sajid Javid joins Rishi Sunak in having to argue that night is day on behalf of the prime minister over the Brexit/Ukraine row: "I don't accept that he was comparing the UK to Ukraine." Which is nonsense, of course. https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1505807648448565250/photo/1
So what interpretation did he offer for this ?
"I know that it's the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. "When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don't believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. "It's because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself."...
That both the UK and Ukraine are in the category of countries with a freedom loving people. That doesn’t mean that the UK is equivalent to Ukraine
Yes, Boris’ quote about “Ukraine and Brexit” really isn’t that offensive. You can see what he’s trying to say. It was emotionally misjudged but not an obviously foolish or outrageous statement
But the misjudgement (or canny trolling?) got his opponents to hyper-ventilate, which then made the news
Nonsense. It was appalling as well as being spectacularly inaccurate.
What he said was “the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, … choose freedom every time”
Is that appalling? Or inaccurate?
The UK was almost evenly split over Brexit. A very large majority in Ukraine want EU membership. They are now fighting a war to preserve their democracy.
Please explain how Boris' comment was in any way 'accurate'.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
What his comment did was expose the nonsense of people who say they're "over Brexit".
BoZo is the one who claimed it was "done"
The fact it is not, and never will be, is an open sore that BoZo can't heal
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
If Brexit was done Johnson would not have said what he did. The speech was a clear indication the Tories intend to make it front and centre of the next general election campaign.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
We need to move fast towards cutting off the flow of western cash, buying Russian hydrocarbons
That’s the crucial choke point - that’s when Russia REALLY suffers. No more money. Default. Then Putin simply can’t afford any more wars
It will be painful and difficult for us, too. Finding and paying for new sources of energy. But there are no cheap easy ways out of this
Does anyone on PB know fast we could get some of our gas fields up and running (again) ? Surely the current price of energy means some previously uneconomical sources of gas are now viable?
Government should just approve them and get on with it.
Good morning
I expect this week's energy statement from HMG will do just that together with a drive to nuclear, more windfarms, and home insulation
HMG is to subsidise new boilers from April, though the timeline seems a bit odd and, to the uninitiated, even backwards but I expect they know what they are doing. Kwasi went to Eton, you know, purveyor of quality ministers since 2019. Though based on the header, as educated professionals working in the public sector. they must all be secret Labour voters.
1 April 2022 - Low carbon heating systems that are commissioned on or after this date will be entitled to support under the scheme. (Commissioning is the completion of installation and set up of the system).
11 April 2022 - Installers will be able to open an account for the scheme with Ofgem, the scheme administrator.
23 May 2022 - The scheme opens for grant applications and payments.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
We need to move fast towards cutting off the flow of western cash, buying Russian hydrocarbons
That’s the crucial choke point - that’s when Russia REALLY suffers. No more money. Default. Then Putin simply can’t afford any more wars
It will be painful and difficult for us, too. Finding and paying for new sources of energy. But there are no cheap easy ways out of this
Does anyone on PB know fast we could get some of our gas fields up and running (again) ? Surely the current price of energy means some previously uneconomical sources of gas are now viable?
Government should just approve them and get on with it.
Good morning
I expect this week's energy statement from HMG will do just that together with a drive to nuclear, more windfarms, and home insulation
HMG is to subsidise new boilers from April, though the timeline seems a bit odd and, to the uninitiated, even backwards but I expect they know what they are doing. Kwasi went to Eton, you know, purveyor of quality ministers since 2019. Though based on the header, as educated professionals working in the public sector. they must all be secret Labour voters.
1 April 2022 - Low carbon heating systems that are commissioned on or after this date will be entitled to support under the scheme. (Commissioning is the completion of installation and set up of the system).
11 April 2022 - Installers will be able to open an account for the scheme with Ofgem, the scheme administrator.
23 May 2022 - The scheme opens for grant applications and payments.
It may be popular response to the disgraceful behaviour of P & O but I assume the consequence would see companies go into liquidation and the workforce made redundant
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there exists no limits on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
In my bad moments, this is exactly what I think. Putin has crossed the Rubicon; he may not have wished to, but he has. He will now treat all of Ukraine like he did Chechnya, and that grotesque spectacle will drag us into outright war with Russia
And then I try and cheer up
Yes - always worth trying to cheer up. But if this analysis is correct, then surely there is an argument to fight now?
I am not a great fan of Twitter, but that is what Gary Kasparov is repeatedly saying
The retired opinion leader @HuXijin_GT gave a candid explanation of why China should support Russia on WeiBo. Interestingly he meant it for domestic consumption and didn’t post it on Twitter. I am doing him a favor by translating the main points (thread)
In other news, if you haven’t heard the Italian commentary of the last three minutes of the game in Cardiff on Saturday, you really should. A magnificent swing in commentator emotion in the space of 10 seconds. Madonna!
The last 3 minutes of that game are some of my favourite minutes of any rugby I’ve ever watched. It’s one thing to win such an historic victory in the last minute… but to do it with a try like THAT!
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
Grozny was destroyed because, when Chechnya tried to leave post Soviet Russia, Russia sent in the military. When the Russian military ground to a halt due to having the shit kicked out of them by a mobile, effective resistance, they destroyed everything. To batter Chechnya, until they gave up. That was an utterly imperial project.
Aleppo was about protecting their proxy (Assad) in the last remains (Syria) of their overseas empire. Another imperial project.
the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most
The Brexiteers fought against the EU for 30 years.
The notion that Brexit will be forgotten is absurd
This was my full comment to you and it stands
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
Btw, were you at the Festival this year, and if so how did you do?
I was not there this year, but I didn't lose as much money as usual
This year I didn't look at the form at all and finished ahead. Is there a lesson here?
The lesson of this year's Cheltenham is thanks partly to the increased number of races, and partly to Willie Mullins, most of the good things won. Only one of Willie's ten winners was bigger than 5/2.
From Chris Cook (son of...) in the Racing Post:- In total, 16 of the 28 Festival winners were returned at 3-1 or shorter. It may seem normal to you for big-race winners to be well fancied but depth of competition at the Festival used to ensure that such prices were a rarity.
At the 2012 Festival, just five of the 27 winners were 3-1 or shorter. In 2002, when the meeting was only three days long, it was four winners out of 20. All the way back in 1992, just two winners were that short.
What his comment did was expose the nonsense of people who say they're "over Brexit".
BoZo is the one who claimed it was "done"
The fact it is not, and never will be, is an open sore that BoZo can't heal
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
If Brexit was done Johnson would not have said what he did. The speech was a clear indication the Tories intend to make it front and centre of the next general election campaign.
We have the quote from the No10 policy unit that 'delivering Brexit benefits' is their number one priority for future policy.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
The NATO countries might be slightly safer. But this is not the comfort blanket you seem to take it for. There are lots of non NATO countries that could be attacked in a similar way. Finland is an obvious one. Are you suggesting that we should do nothing if Finland gets attacked, because it isn't in NATO?
It may be popular response to the disgraceful behaviour of P & O but I assume the consequence would see companies go into liquidation and the workforce made redundant
Does it make any difference to the workforce?
In this case it was 800 jobs out of 4,000
I am not arguing against it I just am not sure what it is supposed to achieve
It may be popular response to the disgraceful behaviour of P & O but I assume the consequence would see companies go into liquidation and the workforce made redundant
Fire and rehire on worse terms you mean? You cannot hire and fire after your probation period without employment law rights kicking in
What his comment did was expose the nonsense of people who say they're "over Brexit".
BoZo is the one who claimed it was "done"
The fact it is not, and never will be, is an open sore that BoZo can't heal
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
If Brexit was done Johnson would not have said what he did. The speech was a clear indication the Tories intend to make it front and centre of the next general election campaign.
I am not sure why Brexit will be a major party of GE24 but if it is then why should opponents worry about it ?
the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most
The Brexiteers fought against the EU for 30 years.
The notion that Brexit will be forgotten is absurd
This was my full comment to you and it stands
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
Hold on.
You are (understandably and rightly) quick to criticise those who link politics to mental illness.
Except about Brexit, where you do it all the time.
It's democracy. The whole point is that debates are never over, however uncongenial you find that.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there exists no limits on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
In my bad moments, this is exactly what I think. Putin has crossed the Rubicon; he may not have wished to, but he has. He will now treat all of Ukraine like he did Chechnya, and that grotesque spectacle will drag us into outright war with Russia
And then I try and cheer up
He can't do that because he doesn't have the fire power. He is only doing it to Mariupol because he thought it was an easy take and it would be disastrous for both morale and the overall strategy if he didn't take it at all.
Those are the reasons to be cheerful. Unfortunately that's about as good as it gets because I just don't see a way out of this for him and therefore for the Ukranians, and us.
You have to reckon the use of chemical and/or nukes remains an option, albeit unlikely in my view. But then how does he climb down? He's losing, in every material respect. It's going to get worse - for us all but mostly for him and the wretched citizens of Russia. Even if he is shunted aside, one way or another, the outlook remains very grim, especially for what is left of Russia after he has trashed its resources and reputation.
I'm gonna walk the dog. I'll let you know if I am any more cheerful when I get back,
It may be popular response to the disgraceful behaviour of P & O but I assume the consequence would see companies go into liquidation and the workforce made redundant
Does it make any difference to the workforce?
It would make it smaller - if companies can't fire, they won't hire. And we'll undermine the one thing our economy has going for it - a fairly flexible labour market by Europe's sclerotic standards.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
But was combined with a concerted effort to extirpate the very concept of "Ukraine" - decapitating the intelligentsia and the Ukraine Communist Party and suppressing the language. The language used to blame the "temporary food supply problems" on "Kulaks" was very similar how the Nazi's described the Jews - and this Russian attitude to Ukrainians can be seen in their treatment of Ukrainian civilians today.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
Grozny was destroyed because, when Chechnya tried to leave post Soviet Russia, Russia sent in the military. When the Russian military ground to a halt due to having the shit kicked out of them by a mobile, effective resistance, they destroyed everything. To batter Chechnya, until they gave up. That was an utterly imperial project.
Aleppo was about protecting their proxy (Assad) in the last remains (Syria) of their overseas empire. Another imperial project.
Both conflicts could also be justified on the basis of countering Islamic terrorism though, in a similar manner to the actions of the west in the middle east since 2001.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there exists no limits on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
What goes around comes around, as Germany learned the hard way in WWII and the French in Spain.
The more brutal the Russians are, the more savage the resistance will be.
As Sir Arthur Harris put it "They have sowed the wind, and now they will reap the whirlwind."
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there exists no limits on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
In my bad moments, this is exactly what I think. Putin has crossed the Rubicon; he may not have wished to, but he has. He will now treat all of Ukraine like he did Chechnya, and that grotesque spectacle will drag us into outright war with Russia
And then I try and cheer up
He can't do that because he doesn't have the fire power. He is only doing it to Mariupol because he thought it was an easy take and it would be disastrous for both morale and the overall strategy if he didn't take it at all.
Those are the reasons to be cheerful. Unfortunately that's about as good as it gets because I just don't see a way out of this for him and therefore for the Ukranians, and us.
You have to reckon the use of chemical and/or nukes remains an option, albeit unlikely in my view. But then how does he climb down? He's losing, in every material respect. It's going to get worse - for us all but mostly for him and the wretched citizens of Russia. Even if he is shunted aside, one way or another, the outlook remains very grim, especially for what is left of Russia after he has trashed its resources and reputation.
I'm gonna walk the dog. I'll let you know if I am any more cheerful when I get back,
Have a good walk. Not a bad idea. I am interested in the analysis that Putin lacks the firepower to carry out this strategy. Are we sure? How difficult or quick would it be for him to acquire it?
What his comment did was expose the nonsense of people who say they're "over Brexit".
BoZo is the one who claimed it was "done"
The fact it is not, and never will be, is an open sore that BoZo can't heal
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
If Brexit was done Johnson would not have said what he did. The speech was a clear indication the Tories intend to make it front and centre of the next general election campaign.
I am not sure why Brexit will be a major party of GE24 but if it is then why should opponents worry about it ?
I doubt they will be that concerned. It will just demonstrate that the Tories have nothing else to offer - except culture war, of course. It’s a great 30% strategy. Not sure it will be a 40%+ one, though.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Nukes remain the issue. The myth of Russian military might has now been completely busted as far as conventional weapons go.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
But was combined with a concerted effort to extirpate the very concept of "Ukraine" - decapitating the intelligentsia and the Ukraine Communist Party and suppressing the language. The language used to blame the "temporary food supply problems" on "Kulaks" was very similar how the Nazi's described the Jews - and this Russian attitude to Ukrainians can be seen in their treatment of Ukrainian civilians today.
The truth is that the similarities between Stalin and Hitler were greater than the differences.
the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most
The Brexiteers fought against the EU for 30 years.
The notion that Brexit will be forgotten is absurd
This was my full comment to you and it stands
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
Hold on.
You are (understandably and rightly) quick to criticise those who link politics to mental illness.
Except about Brexit, where you do it all the time.
It's democracy. The whole point is that debates are never over, however uncongenial you find that.
But @Scott_xP does behave like someone driven half mad by Brexit. Strasbourg Syndrome
I don’t say this to be mean, or score a point. I remember Scott as a quite insightful and intelligent commenter; now he posts demented discourse about the evils of Brexit, 24/7, and six years after the vote
He’s not alone. The likes of A C Grayling are still ranting away on Twitter (to a slowly dwindling audience).
I hope this disease - and it is a real thing - runs its course soon, and cures itself
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
The NATO countries might be slightly safer. But this is not the comfort blanket you seem to take it for. There are lots of non NATO countries that could be attacked in a similar way. Finland is an obvious one. Are you suggesting that we should do nothing if Finland gets attacked, because it isn't in NATO?
Technically we have no obligation to defend Finland no as it is not in NATO and hence there are no NATO troop reinforcements in Finland unlike Poland and the Baltic States for example. That was the risk Finland and Sweden took when they decided not to join NATO given their closeness to Russia, despite the fact Finland for example was in the Tsarist empire at one stage and fought a war to become a safe haven for white Russians from the Bolsheviks.
Of course we would impose further economic sanctions on Russia if it invaded Finland like we have over its invasion of Ukraine but we would likely not respond militarily as we would had a NATO nation been invaded.
Though I think non NATO Georgia and Moldova are more likely targets for Russian invasion beyond Ukraine than Finland. Finland is also in the EU but the EU has no army unlike NATO as yet
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there exists no limits on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
In my bad moments, this is exactly what I think. Putin has crossed the Rubicon; he may not have wished to, but he has. He will now treat all of Ukraine like he did Chechnya, and that grotesque spectacle will drag us into outright war with Russia
And then I try and cheer up
He can't do that because he doesn't have the fire power. He is only doing it to Mariupol because he thought it was an easy take and it would be disastrous for both morale and the overall strategy if he didn't take it at all.
Those are the reasons to be cheerful. Unfortunately that's about as good as it gets because I just don't see a way out of this for him and therefore for the Ukranians, and us.
You have to reckon the use of chemical and/or nukes remains an option, albeit unlikely in my view. But then how does he climb down? He's losing, in every material respect. It's going to get worse - for us all but mostly for him and the wretched citizens of Russia. Even if he is shunted aside, one way or another, the outlook remains very grim, especially for what is left of Russia after he has trashed its resources and reputation.
I'm gonna walk the dog. I'll let you know if I am any more cheerful when I get back,
What his comment did was expose the nonsense of people who say they're "over Brexit".
BoZo is the one who claimed it was "done"
The fact it is not, and never will be, is an open sore that BoZo can't heal
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
Nevertheless, he is right that it is very far from being done as, sadly, is much of the consequential damage from it.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there exists no limits on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
What goes around comes around, as Germany learned the hard way in WWII and the French in Spain.
The more brutal the Russians are, the more savage the resistance will be.
As Sir Arthur Harris put it "They have sowed the wind, and now they will reap the whirlwind."
Not if the resistance is completely crushed, like the uighurs in xinjiang
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
After the first Gulf war, an American general commented that he had spent his professional life assuming that he would be fighting in the Fulda gap for 2 days, lose and then the nukes go off.... After the war, he seriously wondered how long it would have taken for the the Soviets to break. And then for the nukes to go off....
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there exists no limits on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
What goes around comes around, as Germany learned the hard way in WWII and the French in Spain.
The more brutal the Russians are, the more savage the resistance will be.
As Sir Arthur Harris put it "They have sowed the wind, and now they will reap the whirlwind."
Not if the resistance is completely crushed, like the uighurs in xinjiang
I think it's clear that completely crushing resistance in a country the size of France is beyond current Russian capabilities.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
I'd recommend it - the parallels with today are uncanny and unpleasant. It's very revealing about Soviet/Russian leadership's attitude to Ukraine and Ukrainians - and from anecdotal reports, given what they are told, many Russians too.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
The NATO countries might be slightly safer. But this is not the comfort blanket you seem to take it for. There are lots of non NATO countries that could be attacked in a similar way. Finland is an obvious one. Are you suggesting that we should do nothing if Finland gets attacked, because it isn't in NATO?
Technically we have no obligation to defend Finland no as it is not in NATO and hence there are no NATO troop reinforcements in Finland unlike Poland and the Baltic States for example. That was the risk Finland and Sweden took when they decided not to join NATO given their closeness to Russia, despite the fact Finland for example was in the Tsarist empire at one stage and fought a war to become a safe haven for white Russians from the Bolsheviks.
Of course we would impose further economic sanctions on Russia if it invaded Finland like we have over its invasion of Ukraine but we would likely not respond militarily as we would had a NATO nation been invaded.
Though I think non NATO Georgia and Moldova are more likely targets for Russian invasion beyond Ukraine than Finland. Finland is also in the EU but the EU has no army unlike NATO as yet
Finland did though fight off Stalin's invasion in 1939
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
Yep - you’d back us over them every day if the week. But in three years Trump or an acolyte is likely to be US president. That will change plenty. If Putin can hold on until then he may be home free.
Btw, were you at the Festival this year, and if so how did you do?
I was not there this year, but I didn't lose as much money as usual
This year I didn't look at the form at all and finished ahead. Is there a lesson here?
The lesson of this year's Cheltenham is thanks partly to the increased number of races, and partly to Willie Mullins, most of the good things won. Only one of Willie's ten winners was bigger than 5/2.
From Chris Cook (son of...) in the Racing Post:- In total, 16 of the 28 Festival winners were returned at 3-1 or shorter. It may seem normal to you for big-race winners to be well fancied but depth of competition at the Festival used to ensure that such prices were a rarity.
At the 2012 Festival, just five of the 27 winners were 3-1 or shorter. In 2002, when the meeting was only three days long, it was four winners out of 20. All the way back in 1992, just two winners were that short.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there exists no limits on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
In my bad moments, this is exactly what I think. Putin has crossed the Rubicon; he may not have wished to, but he has. He will now treat all of Ukraine like he did Chechnya, and that grotesque spectacle will drag us into outright war with Russia
And then I try and cheer up
He can't do that because he doesn't have the fire power. He is only doing it to Mariupol because he thought it was an easy take and it would be disastrous for both morale and the overall strategy if he didn't take it at all.
Those are the reasons to be cheerful. Unfortunately that's about as good as it gets because I just don't see a way out of this for him and therefore for the Ukranians, and us.
You have to reckon the use of chemical and/or nukes remains an option, albeit unlikely in my view. But then how does he climb down? He's losing, in every material respect. It's going to get worse - for us all but mostly for him and the wretched citizens of Russia. Even if he is shunted aside, one way or another, the outlook remains very grim, especially for what is left of Russia after he has trashed its resources and reputation.
I'm gonna walk the dog. I'll let you know if I am any more cheerful when I get back,
Have a good walk. Not a bad idea. I am interested in the analysis that Putin lacks the firepower to carry out this strategy. Are we sure? How difficult or quick would it be for him to acquire it?
The best site I have yet found for technical analysis of the military operations is:
Like many others, they rather overestimated the Russian military at first. They now convey a certain sense of the tide turning, but cautiously, as is their won't.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
Yep - you’d back us over them every day if the week. But in three years Trump or an acolyte is likely to be US president. That will change plenty. If Putin can hold on until then he may be home free.
Trump is now saying he would 'bomb the shit out of Russia' over its Ukraine invasion using jets with Chinese flags put on them.
the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most
The Brexiteers fought against the EU for 30 years.
The notion that Brexit will be forgotten is absurd
This was my full comment to you and it stands
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
Hold on.
You are (understandably and rightly) quick to criticise those who link politics to mental illness.
Except about Brexit, where you do it all the time.
It's democracy. The whole point is that debates are never over, however uncongenial you find that.
You make a very good point. The point scoring over Ukraine versus our EX European partners is actually nauseous as is the chauvinism which is non stop evident on this site. One of the great pleasures of being in France is that as far as I can tell they're not treating it like a sporting event where the competitors aren't even the Russians and the Ukrainians but the Euro countries versus the UK.
The same four or five posters chuntering on daily about the great success of the BRITISH EFFORT makes you realise quite how parochial the UK is and probably always will be. It's why the EU are almost certainly better off without us.
We are following multiple unconfirmed reports about a possible accident involving China Eastern Airlines flight #MU5735 a Boeing 737-89P (B-1791) en route from Kunming to Guanghzou, China.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
After the first Gulf war, an American general commented that he had spent his professional life assuming that he would be fighting in the Fulda gap for 2 days, lose and then the nukes go off.... After the war, he seriously wondered how long it would have taken for the the Soviets to break. And then for the nukes to go off....
I think the Soviets were spooked by two things. The first was the Falklands war, which showed what a small, but highly professional army could do, fighting a much larger number of conscripts. The second was the air battle in the Beqaa Valley, which showed how outclassed their planes were.
the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most
The Brexiteers fought against the EU for 30 years.
The notion that Brexit will be forgotten is absurd
This was my full comment to you and it stands
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
Hold on.
You are (understandably and rightly) quick to criticise those who link politics to mental illness.
Except about Brexit, where you do it all the time.
It's democracy. The whole point is that debates are never over, however uncongenial you find that.
But @Scott_xP does behave like someone driven half mad by Brexit. Strasbourg Syndrome
I don’t say this to be mean, or score a point. I remember Scott as a quite insightful and intelligent commenter; now he posts demented discourse about the evils of Brexit, 24/7, and six years after the vote
He’s not alone. The likes of A C Grayling are still ranting away on Twitter (to a slowly dwindling audience).
I hope this disease - and it is a real thing - runs its course soon, and cures itself
Damn that is another irony meter that has exploded.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
People said that about the Russians. When was "the military strength of a united NATO" ever demonstrably put to the test?
What his comment did was expose the nonsense of people who say they're "over Brexit".
BoZo is the one who claimed it was "done"
The fact it is not, and never will be, is an open sore that BoZo can't heal
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
If Brexit was done Johnson would not have said what he did. The speech was a clear indication the Tories intend to make it front and centre of the next general election campaign.
I am not sure why Brexit will be a major party of GE24 but if it is then why should opponents worry about it ?
I doubt they will be that concerned. It will just demonstrate that the Tories have nothing else to offer - except culture war, of course. It’s a great 30% strategy. Not sure it will be a 40%+ one, though.
I really do not see it being an issue unless a party declared their intention to re-join and as far as I know the SNP and Plaid are the only ones in that that place
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
That wasn't why I used the term Nazi. You're correct that they don't need another inspiration to draw upon, and frankly I find the still present reluctance to see Stalin era in particular crimes as as horrific as they were to be deeply bizarre (and no, that we allied with a monster to defeat another monster doesn't explain it).
It simply resonates quite strongly given Russia's own justifications about their opponents, wilfully blind to the fact that the shadow they purport to be chasing is the one they are casting.
Your last paragraph is a fair point.
I just note that there is still among some a reluctance to acknowledge the enormity of Soviet Russia's crimes. It's as if the worst evil man could do has to be by definition Nazi. It's lazy and inaccurate thinking.
In other circumstances, I would agree. There is plenty of awfulness in the history of Soviet Communism to draw on for the most ghastly regime.
But Putin & Co are deliberately buying into Blood & Soil Nationalism combined with Fascism. See "Foundations of Geopolitics" etc etc.
And, more widely, he is clearly a right wing nationalist dictator with an oligarchic economy, based on private ownership; they are no longer trying to run things along socialist lines. The emphasis upon empire and conquest is more reminiscent of right-wing dictatorship, as is the male-oriented culture around the leader. Economically people are relatively free to act, constrained by the actions of gangster individuals rather than directly the state. The trappings of a socialist dictatorship including relative gender equality (at least superficially) and the (fake) emphasis upon the collective are missing. Religion is tolerated.
The one element of fascism overtly missing from Putin’s Russia is public policy based on racial discrimination, although the way he has ‘decided’ that the Ukranians are really Russian and hence due for incorporation within his state is essentially how the Nazis saw the Dutch and Scandinavians.
Putinism is much more concerned with pushing an anti-LGBT+ ideology than overtly racist policy, but racism has formed a depressingly common staple of Putinist propaganda, especially around Obama.
There is plenty of overt, officially supported racism against minorities - such as Muslims - in Russia.
The Japanese ambassador is supposed to have said about Crystal Nacht - "Splendid to see the people so united, unfortunately we have no Jews in Japan".
He shouldn't have worried - as soon as the Imperial Japanese Army came across some non-Japanese people, the inner racism came out, really well.
What his comment did was expose the nonsense of people who say they're "over Brexit".
BoZo is the one who claimed it was "done"
The fact it is not, and never will be, is an open sore that BoZo can't heal
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
If Brexit was done Johnson would not have said what he did. The speech was a clear indication the Tories intend to make it front and centre of the next general election campaign.
I am not sure why Brexit will be a major party of GE24 but if it is then why should opponents worry about it ?
I doubt they will be that concerned. It will just demonstrate that the Tories have nothing else to offer - except culture war, of course. It’s a great 30% strategy. Not sure it will be a 40%+ one, though.
I really do not see it being an issue unless a party declared their intention to re-join and as far as I know the SNP and Plaid are the only ones in that that place
Even they are now more rejoin the single market for now than full EU, same with the LDs
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
The NATO countries might be slightly safer. But this is not the comfort blanket you seem to take it for. There are lots of non NATO countries that could be attacked in a similar way. Finland is an obvious one. Are you suggesting that we should do nothing if Finland gets attacked, because it isn't in NATO?
Technically we have no obligation to defend Finland no as it is not in NATO and hence there are no NATO troop reinforcements in Finland unlike Poland and the Baltic States for example. That was the risk Finland and Sweden took when they decided not to join NATO given their closeness to Russia, despite the fact Finland for example was in the Tsarist empire at one stage and fought a war to become a safe haven for white Russians from the Bolsheviks.
Of course we would impose further economic sanctions on Russia if it invaded Finland like we have over its invasion of Ukraine but we would likely not respond militarily as we would had a NATO nation been invaded.
Though I think non NATO Georgia and Moldova are more likely targets for Russian invasion beyond Ukraine than Finland. Finland is also in the EU but the EU has no army unlike NATO as yet
This - which I accept is the western position - is appeasement and weakness. It is drawing 'red lines' that are ultimately completely artificial. The red line of NATO can collapse because a) we don't know if Biden is really willing to bomb Russia; b) we don't know how committed a future republican US president will be to NATO; and c) NATO has been in decline for many years. Its resurgence, sparked by fear, is a couple of weeks old and may not be sustained.
Putin just sees this weakness and strikes at the first opportunity. It seems inevitable to me that the paradigm will change, and the west will decide to fight back. The question is when.
We are following multiple unconfirmed reports about a possible accident involving China Eastern Airlines flight #MU5735 a Boeing 737-89P (B-1791) en route from Kunming to Guanghzou, China.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
After the first Gulf war, an American general commented that he had spent his professional life assuming that he would be fighting in the Fulda gap for 2 days, lose and then the nukes go off.... After the war, he seriously wondered how long it would have taken for the the Soviets to break. And then for the nukes to go off....
I think the Soviets were spooked by two things. The first was the Falklands war, which showed what a small, but highly professional army could do, fighting a much larger number of conscripts. The second was the air battle in the Beqaa Valley, which showed how outclassed their planes were.
The first Gulf War was the one that really caused a panic at Frunze. Lots of stuff about how they needed to pivot to high tech and a professional military.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
The NATO countries might be slightly safer. But this is not the comfort blanket you seem to take it for. There are lots of non NATO countries that could be attacked in a similar way. Finland is an obvious one. Are you suggesting that we should do nothing if Finland gets attacked, because it isn't in NATO?
Technically we have no obligation to defend Finland no as it is not in NATO and hence there are no NATO troop reinforcements in Finland unlike Poland and the Baltic States for example. That was the risk Finland and Sweden took when they decided not to join NATO given their closeness to Russia, despite the fact Finland for example was in the Tsarist empire at one stage and fought a war to become a safe haven for white Russians from the Bolsheviks.
Of course we would impose further economic sanctions on Russia if it invaded Finland like we have over its invasion of Ukraine but we would likely not respond militarily as we would had a NATO nation been invaded.
Though I think non NATO Georgia and Moldova are more likely targets for Russian invasion beyond Ukraine than Finland. Finland is also in the EU but the EU has no army unlike NATO as yet
This - which I accept is the western position - is appeasement and weakness. It is drawing 'red lines' that are ultimately completely artificial. The red line of NATO can collapse because a) we don't know if Biden is really willing to bomb Russia; b) we don't know how committed a future republican US president will be to NATO; and c) NATO has been in decline for many years. Its resurgence, sparked by fear, is a couple of weeks old and may not be sustained.
Putin just sees this weakness and strikes at the first opportunity. It seems inevitable to me that the paradigm will change, and the west will decide to fight back. The question is when.
Unless a NATO nation is invaded I can guarantee the West will do nothing militarily against Russia, certainly with Biden President. Otherwise you get WW3. Biden has made adamantly clear he will not fight Russia unless it invades a NATO nation. That is just reality.
What his comment did was expose the nonsense of people who say they're "over Brexit".
BoZo is the one who claimed it was "done"
The fact it is not, and never will be, is an open sore that BoZo can't heal
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
Nevertheless, he is right that it is very far from being done as, sadly, is much of the consequential damage from it.
I think it is fair to say I am "over it" in the sense that I accept it is pretty much irreversible. It won't stop me pointing out to those that continue to crow about it that it was the most pointless bit of nationalistic "virtue signalling" in the history of these islands, and that many of the people that voted for it fell for a massive con trick that was supported by and very heavily influenced by Vladimir Putin. "But the Russia Report, the Russia Report" they will cry. lol.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
Yep - you’d back us over them every day if the week. But in three years Trump or an acolyte is likely to be US president. That will change plenty. If Putin can hold on until then he may be home free.
Trump is now saying he would 'bomb the shit out of Russia' over its Ukraine invasion using jets with Chinese flags put on them.
What his comment did was expose the nonsense of people who say they're "over Brexit".
BoZo is the one who claimed it was "done"
The fact it is not, and never will be, is an open sore that BoZo can't heal
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
Nevertheless, he is right that it is very far from being done as, sadly, is much of the consequential damage from it.
I readily accept more needs to be done to improve our relationship and the war will de facto see that happen as close cooperation over Europe's defence and security is essential as is an movement in trade relationship but without re-joining
ON topic, I’ve subscribed to the NYT just to see what it offers. If it’s better than the Knapper’s Gazette etc
Plus it is 50p a month or something, at the moment. They really are trying to hoover up UK punters
Verdict: the app is extremely slick. Videos embedded in the “front page” which play as you scroll. The graphics are excellent. The breadth of paid correspondents is impressive. In these respects it is seriously superior to UK equivalents
Might it eat up UK competitors? Esp the Guardian, which has a very similar Woke-liberal worldview?
Quite easily. The writing is still better, more vivid and characterful, in British papers. In some areas. And of course the NYT has a parochial American feel in things like sports.
But the NYT is so rich it could buy up all the good UK writers, have a dedicated European sports team (they’ve already bought the Athletic) and then it will destroy UK competition
I see a real threat here. The NYT is becoming the Netflix/Disney/Amazon of news journals.
What his comment did was expose the nonsense of people who say they're "over Brexit".
BoZo is the one who claimed it was "done"
The fact it is not, and never will be, is an open sore that BoZo can't heal
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
If Brexit was done Johnson would not have said what he did. The speech was a clear indication the Tories intend to make it front and centre of the next general election campaign.
I am not sure why Brexit will be a major party of GE24 but if it is then why should opponents worry about it ?
I doubt they will be that concerned. It will just demonstrate that the Tories have nothing else to offer - except culture war, of course. It’s a great 30% strategy. Not sure it will be a 40%+ one, though.
I really do not see it being an issue unless a party declared their intention to re-join and as far as I know the SNP and Plaid are the only ones in that that place
Even they are now more rejoin the single market for now than full EU, same with the LDs
It's a practical position really. Rejoin is really impossible in the near or medium term and would be a nightmare internally. Let's see if we can unwind some of the harm in terms of trade, travel, NI, cooperation, etc and see if we can exploit any benefits of Brexit.
My anecdotal 'evidence' matches this thread. The people in my life who are avowed tories and Boris fans did not go to University.
The problem here for me as a Labour (or when the situation suits LibDem of Green) supporter is that it is all too easy to come across as snotty. This really came to the fore with Brexit where the divide was quite stark. Thick, stupid, easily misled people tended to support Boris and Brexit. Of course there are exceptions to this like our very own Leon who I am sure is very bright.
See how easy it is to get snotty over it? It's something which is guaranteed to wind up Brexit supporters and Boris tories, who will point with some justification to the same kind of Metropolitan elitism which herded people into the Brexit fold. Concerns about ghost towns, immigration and the EU's manifest centralised corruption were ignored by the well-educated.
I wonder if Mike and Ipsos have really hit on something. That THIS is the real and biggest divide in Britain today?
Clever. Insult both Brexit supporters and remainers in the same post and hope to set off an argument. Shame we know what you are.
You don't though. You don't like me because I dare to disagree with your nasty right wing views. But I also don't entirely tow the left wing line on everything. IanB2 has never managed to get over the fact that I accused Jeremy Corbyn of being an anti-semite.
The problem on here is that too many of you are entrenched. You are not prepared to be free thinkers. To think outside your own box. To use this site as a great opportunity to broaden your perspective. It's frankly sad to see the way arguments develop and people pile-on people almost the moment they post.
Eh? This is just nonsense, as more attentive PB'ers will already know.
The only reason I had a go at you is because your posts were becoming tiresome, repetitive and over-frequent, didn't present any sort of analysis or insight, and you appeared to be using the site to work merely through your emotional counter-reaction having spent days incorrectly predicting that this invasion would never happen. And doing all of this from an IP address we were told is apparently on the spam-blocklist.
Well done. What a self-destructing way to defeat his own achievements.
This is a precise example of what I’m saying
Scott is quoting an ex Finnish PM who is Helsinki’s version of Jolyon Maugham. Check his Twitter history. This Finn hates Brexit with a vengeance and often says quite lunatically anti-British stuff - and he has been doing it since 2016
There is a small subset of people who patently lost their wits because Brexit. They really are best ignored. For their own good
I voted Leave but I was always in the 'could be persuaded otherwise' category. The concept made sense and I can see the attraction for countries not already members. However, it was soured by politicians, not necessarily EU politicans. Tony's enthusiasm for the idea outpaced common sense. 'Rubbing people's nose in it' began to run true.
Had he brought in the immigration changes at the pace he was allowed to by the EU, I suspect the referendum would never have happened. But he couldn't resist making it a political point.
An eye-opener for me was the BBC 'Question Time' programme just before the Referendum which was broadcast from Boston, where I was born and bred. It seemed most Bostonians were in favour of the EU. Completely at odds with my experience. We're talking of immigrants who were white, hard-working, and generally Catholic (as I am, the first and last anyway). They tend to group together as their second language was often Russian rather than English - although they learn quickly.
How could the BBC make such an error? Because they only saw what they wanted to see. As did Tony. Ignoring the nay-says as being ignorant racists. A mistake they came back to haunt them.
I've been to European meetings - on the science side - and I saw some very good work being done. But in the end, democracy is precious. I voted leave because the chasm between the two sides was growing and fuelled by the one's who knew they were superior people. The other people didn't matter.
Nose and face, you might say, but today, I'd do the same.
Sajid Javid joins Rishi Sunak in having to argue that night is day on behalf of the prime minister over the Brexit/Ukraine row: "I don't accept that he was comparing the UK to Ukraine." Which is nonsense, of course. https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1505807648448565250/photo/1
So what interpretation did he offer for this ?
"I know that it's the instinct of the people of this country, like the people of Ukraine, to choose freedom, every time. I can give you a couple of famous recent examples. "When the British people voted for Brexit in such large, large numbers, I don't believe it was because they were remotely hostile to foreigners. "It's because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to be able to run itself."...
That both the UK and Ukraine are in the category of countries with a freedom loving people. That doesn’t mean that the UK is equivalent to Ukraine
Yes, Boris’ quote about “Ukraine and Brexit” really isn’t that offensive. You can see what he’s trying to say. It was emotionally misjudged but not an obviously foolish or outrageous statement
But the misjudgement (or canny trolling?) got his opponents to hyper-ventilate, which then made the news
I’m cynical enough to go with canny trolling. The words were carefully chosen. You would hope for better, but that’s the PM the UK has. For now.
You said exactly the same thing about the refugee cock up. If you don't like what you hear you call it trolling rather than accepting it is true. It is true as was the refugee issue. I'm not a troll. I don't even have a twitter account, but I was fully aware of the refugee issue and had an immediate reaction to Boris' statement.
Doesn't look good if your reaction to everything you don't like is 'trolls'.
@StillWaters my apologies, wrong person. Please ignore my post. Sorry.
No problem. Just to be clear I think you were being trolled by Boris, not a troll yourself!
On the refugee issue, I tend to view it as, initially, a combination of cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility. Where Patel was at fault was politically not realising it was a problem (I find it hard to believe that she could be personally unmoved by the situation) and being unable / unwilling to devote the focus and energy to sorting it out.
I don't know how the new system works, so no idea whether the criticisms are justified, but it seems to be these are criticisms of execution rather than of principle at this point, so definitely an improvement. Let's hope that it works.
(The only person on here I accuse of being a troll is Heathener. Because she is. A spinner of Putin-preferred lines with a compromised VPN that is on an anti-spamming blacklist and was also used by two previous trolls)
My anecdotal 'evidence' matches this thread. The people in my life who are avowed tories and Boris fans did not go to University.
The problem here for me as a Labour (or when the situation suits LibDem of Green) supporter is that it is all too easy to come across as snotty. This really came to the fore with Brexit where the divide was quite stark. Thick, stupid, easily misled people tended to support Boris and Brexit. Of course there are exceptions to this like our very own Leon who I am sure is very bright.
See how easy it is to get snotty over it? It's something which is guaranteed to wind up Brexit supporters and Boris tories, who will point with some justification to the same kind of Metropolitan elitism which herded people into the Brexit fold. Concerns about ghost towns, immigration and the EU's manifest centralised corruption were ignored by the well-educated.
I wonder if Mike and Ipsos have really hit on something. That THIS is the real and biggest divide in Britain today?
This has been the biggest divide in politics for at least 6 years.
There are some Labour seats with very low levels of people with degrees, like Nottingham North and Hull East, which may be vulnerable to the Tories at the next election if this trend continues.
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
FWIW, I think if Finland or Sweden were attacked, we would find ourselves in a shooting war with Russia. And that's why neither country will be attacked.
the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most
The Brexiteers fought against the EU for 30 years.
The notion that Brexit will be forgotten is absurd
This was my full comment to you and it stands
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
Hold on.
You are (understandably and rightly) quick to criticise those who link politics to mental illness.
Except about Brexit, where you do it all the time.
It's democracy. The whole point is that debates are never over, however uncongenial you find that.
But @Scott_xP does behave like someone driven half mad by Brexit. Strasbourg Syndrome
I don’t say this to be mean, or score a point. I remember Scott as a quite insightful and intelligent commenter; now he posts demented discourse about the evils of Brexit, 24/7, and six years after the vote
He’s not alone. The likes of A C Grayling are still ranting away on Twitter (to a slowly dwindling audience).
I hope this disease - and it is a real thing - runs its course soon, and cures itself
I'm still surprised about how Brexit panned out. Dave's deal was crap, so crap that I was sure that a vote to leave would result in is returning to the negotiating table, securing better terms, and codifying a kind of two speed Europe with Britain and a few other states choosing to opt out from "ever closer union" but retaining close ties. It might have worked.
What I didn't understand at the time was that ever closer union wasn't just a feature of the EU, it was (and still is) its raison d'etre.
However, the world has moved on. Europe faces an economic crisis, a refugee crisis and a hot war on its border. The correct answer is an alliance of nations to promote aid, assistance and co-operation *without* the ever closer union. A Europe based on co-operation between nation states, rather than nation building.
The answer has always been there, but it requires the EU (and some of the more hard headed Brexiteers) to drop some of their intransigence.
Unfortunately I fear the moment has long since passed and the divorce is final.
the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most
The Brexiteers fought against the EU for 30 years.
The notion that Brexit will be forgotten is absurd
This was my full comment to you and it stands
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
Hold on.
You are (understandably and rightly) quick to criticise those who link politics to mental illness.
Except about Brexit, where you do it all the time.
It's democracy. The whole point is that debates are never over, however uncongenial you find that.
You make a very good point. The point scoring over Ukraine versus our EX European partners is actually nauseous as is the chauvinism which is non stop evident on this site. One of the great pleasures of being in France is that as far as I can tell they're not treating it like a sporting event where the competitors aren't even the Russians and the Ukrainians but the Euro countries versus the UK.
The same four or five posters chuntering on daily about the great success of the BRITISH EFFORT makes you realise quite how parochial the UK is and probably always will be. It's why the EU are almost certainly better off without us.
You live in France. Brexit is done. You think Europe is better off without us
Why then do you bother coming back with such tedious regularity, just so you can be offended by the same four or five posters “chuntering on”
"Germany's arms deliveries to Ukraine seem paradoxical: Germany is the fourth largest arms exporter in the world and has leading arms companies in the country. But after four weeks of Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, not a single new weapon from these manufacturers has been purchased and delivered there. Instead, there were only deliveries from the extremely manageable stocks of the Bundeswehr.
But why should one deliver weapons from the stocks of the Bundeswehr when excellent new material can be obtained from the factories of the German arms companies? Why did four cruel weeks of war pass without new weapons being delivered?"
My anecdotal 'evidence' matches this thread. The people in my life who are avowed tories and Boris fans did not go to University.
The problem here for me as a Labour (or when the situation suits LibDem of Green) supporter is that it is all too easy to come across as snotty. This really came to the fore with Brexit where the divide was quite stark. Thick, stupid, easily misled people tended to support Boris and Brexit. Of course there are exceptions to this like our very own Leon who I am sure is very bright.
See how easy it is to get snotty over it? It's something which is guaranteed to wind up Brexit supporters and Boris tories, who will point with some justification to the same kind of Metropolitan elitism which herded people into the Brexit fold. Concerns about ghost towns, immigration and the EU's manifest centralised corruption were ignored by the well-educated.
I wonder if Mike and Ipsos have really hit on something. That THIS is the real and biggest divide in Britain today?
This has been the biggest divide in politics for at least 6 years.
There are some Labour seats with very low levels of people with degrees, like Nottingham North and Hull East, which may be vulnerable to the Tories at the next election if this trend continues.
Indeed before Brexit the biggest divide between Tory and Labour was how rich you were, the more you earnt and the more property you had the more likely you were to be Conservative and the poorer you were the more likely you were to vote Labour.
Now the biggest divide is age, the younger you are and hence the more likely you are to have a degree the more likely you are to vote Labour and the older you are the more likely you are to vote Tory.
Remember Cameron won most over 25s in 2010, now the Tories only lead with over 55s in current polls. While the Tories did best with C2s not ABs in 2019 with Boris, whereas Cameron did best with ABs
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
We need to move fast towards cutting off the flow of western cash, buying Russian hydrocarbons
That’s the crucial choke point - that’s when Russia REALLY suffers. No more money. Default. Then Putin simply can’t afford any more wars
It will be painful and difficult for us, too. Finding and paying for new sources of energy. But there are no cheap easy ways out of this
Does anyone on PB know fast we could get some of our gas fields up and running (again) ? Surely the current price of energy means some previously uneconomical sources of gas are now viable?
Government should just approve them and get on with it.
Good morning
I expect this week's energy statement from HMG will do just that together with a drive to nuclear, more windfarms, and home insulation
HMG is to subsidise new boilers from April, though the timeline seems a bit odd and, to the uninitiated, even backwards but I expect they know what they are doing. Kwasi went to Eton, you know, purveyor of quality ministers since 2019. Though based on the header, as educated professionals working in the public sector. they must all be secret Labour voters.
1 April 2022 - Low carbon heating systems that are commissioned on or after this date will be entitled to support under the scheme. (Commissioning is the completion of installation and set up of the system).
11 April 2022 - Installers will be able to open an account for the scheme with Ofgem, the scheme administrator.
23 May 2022 - The scheme opens for grant applications and payments.
I really have no interest in how someone was educated but this seems part of the announcement
If you look at the dates, to an outsider like me, they do seem backwards. You can install your new heat pump or whatever at the start, but only later discover if your installer is part of the scheme, and only after that apply for the grant.
FWIW, I think if Finland or Sweden were attacked, we would find ourselves in a shooting war with Russia. And that's why neither country will be attacked.
It's the Finns and Swedes who have been the most vocal against Johnson's comments, illustrating their incredible strategic stupidity. Carl Bildt's comments, as ex-Prime Minister of Sweden, may even have been co-ordinated with the ex-Finnish PM's ones to this effect - in fact, I think that's the likelihood.
I might have to get that; I've have never understood the hatred of 'official' Russians for Ukrainians. The comments about relationships that we are hearing surely make it clear that they are very similar peoples, if not the same, just speaking a different language!
They are, but there are two hideous crimes that have polluted the relationship for decades. The Holodomor in the 1930s literally starved huge numbers of Ukranians to death, because Stalin collectivised them and then confiscated the wheat for expoert. Conversely, Bandera led a large number of Ukrainians to collaborate with the Nazis, and remains celebrated today in countless Ukrainian memorials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera?msclkid=d8e7922ea8f411eca9a3867070865b47). My Russian-born mother, whose family had suffered in the war (her aunt starved to death in the siege of Leningrad), loathed the (pre-Zelensky - this was 20 years ago) Ukrainian leadership for that reason - she felt it wasn't so much that there were collaborators, since every country had some, but that they were still seen by many as heroes.
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
You are a Ukrainian in 1940 or 1941. You are 30. You saw the horrors of the Holodomor visited upon you and your family just ten years before. Do you go and fight for the people who did that to you, or do you go and fight for the people fighting them?
The same was true in the Baltic states, where the Soviets pursued a campaign of mass murder in 1939-40.
My anecdotal 'evidence' matches this thread. The people in my life who are avowed tories and Boris fans did not go to University.
The problem here for me as a Labour (or when the situation suits LibDem of Green) supporter is that it is all too easy to come across as snotty. This really came to the fore with Brexit where the divide was quite stark. Thick, stupid, easily misled people tended to support Boris and Brexit. Of course there are exceptions to this like our very own Leon who I am sure is very bright.
See how easy it is to get snotty over it? It's something which is guaranteed to wind up Brexit supporters and Boris tories, who will point with some justification to the same kind of Metropolitan elitism which herded people into the Brexit fold. Concerns about ghost towns, immigration and the EU's manifest centralised corruption were ignored by the well-educated.
I wonder if Mike and Ipsos have really hit on something. That THIS is the real and biggest divide in Britain today?
This has been the biggest divide in politics for at least 6 years.
There are some Labour seats with very low levels of people with degrees, like Nottingham North and Hull East, which may be vulnerable to the Tories at the next election if this trend continues.
Indeed before Brexit the biggest divide between Tory and Labour was how rich you were, the more you earnt and the more property you had the more likely you were to be Conservative and the poorer you were the more likely you were to vote Labour.
Now the biggest divide is age, the younger you are and hence the more likely you are to have a degree the more likely you are to vote Labour and the older you are the more likely you are to vote Tory.
Remember Cameron won most over 25s in 2010, now the Tories only lead with over 55s in current polls. While the Tories did best with C2s not ABs in 2019 with Boris, whereas Cameron did best with ABs
It'll probably be back to 40+ for the Tories by the time of the next GE.
Well done. What a self-destructing way to defeat his own achievements.
This is a precise example of what I’m saying
Scott is quoting an ex Finnish PM who is Helsinki’s version of Jolyon Maugham. Check his Twitter history. This Finn hates Brexit with a vengeance and often says quite lunatically anti-British stuff - and he has been doing it since 2016
There is a small subset of people who patently lost their wits because Brexit. They really are best ignored. For their own good
You patronising oaf. Do you ever read the garbage you write? I don't know whether the plan is to outpost Tim but even with your various ludicrous name changes your non stop posting is making the site unreadable. The days of the Raj are over. Time to get over it
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
Well done. What a self-destructing way to defeat his own achievements.
This is a precise example of what I’m saying
Scott is quoting an ex Finnish PM who is Helsinki’s version of Jolyon Maugham. Check his Twitter history. This Finn hates Brexit with a vengeance and often says quite lunatically anti-British stuff - and he has been doing it since 2016
There is a small subset of people who patently lost their wits because Brexit. They really are best ignored. For their own good
You patronising oaf. Do you ever read the garbage you write? I don't know whether the plan is to outpost Tim but even with your various ludicrous name changes your non stop posting is making the site unreadable. The days of the Raj are over. Time to get over it
The old prostate giving you a bit of gyp, this morning? Sympathies
Well done. What a self-destructing way to defeat his own achievements.
This is a precise example of what I’m saying
Scott is quoting an ex Finnish PM who is Helsinki’s version of Jolyon Maugham. Check his Twitter history. This Finn hates Brexit with a vengeance and often says quite lunatically anti-British stuff - and he has been doing it since 2016
There is a small subset of people who patently lost their wits because Brexit. They really are best ignored. For their own good
You patronising oaf. Do you ever read the garbage you write? I don't know whether the plan is to outpost Tim but even with your various ludicrous name changes your non stop posting is making the site unreadable. The days of the Raj are over. Time to get over it
In other news, if you haven’t heard the Italian commentary of the last three minutes of the game in Cardiff on Saturday, you really should. A magnificent swing in commentator emotion in the space of 10 seconds. Madonna!
The last 3 minutes of that game are some of my favourite minutes of any rugby I’ve ever watched. It’s one thing to win such an historic victory in the last minute… but to do it with a try like THAT!
Magic
Sad that Wales lost, but well done to Italy, and it will give them confidence for the future.
FWIW, I think if Finland or Sweden were attacked, we would find ourselves in a shooting war with Russia. And that's why neither country will be attacked.
I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I think Finland is in a very invidious position. They look as if they might join NATO, but haven't actually done so. Possibly the worst of all worlds.
Now represents, theoretically, an opportunity for Putin to act which may not be available later. Extremely unlikely we may think, but who knows what the thinking is in the bunker.
NATO is a red line. If anyone attempts to invade they get incinerated by NATO air power. Not so, Finland. Membership brings benefits.
Shashank Joshi @shashj Treating civilians as combatants on the basis that they haven’t fled a city by your bogus deadline is about as war crime-y as it gets.
Say what you will about Putin and his acolytes (and as the old joke goes, in Russia you cannot), but when they decide to go full Nazi they commit to it.
They are going full Stalinist. The seizure of people and making them disappear far away, executions, lists of people being picked up etc., starving people into submission etc. They did not need to learn this from the Nazis. They simply need to repeat what previous Russian leaders did in their own recent history.
Constantly referring to this regime as Nazi-like is wrong because it somehow assumes that Russia had to learn all this appalling behaviour from others when the truth is that it has behaved appallingly to its own and other people in exactly this way. It is copying its own playbook not another country's.
That's a pretty strange post, given that the "intellectual" inspiration for later Putinism have been the likes of Dugin and Ilyin, two bona fide fascists. I don't really feel the need to correct you if you want to trace a line from Putin back to Stalin, but telling people that they're wrong to point out the fascist underpinning of Putin's regime is strange when it's probably the most accurate descriptor.
There is nothing strange about pointing out that Putin is copying what Stalin did. What is strange is the need to refer to the Nazis when describing Russia's behaviour when there are direct examples of exactly the same behaviour in Russia's own history. It's as if there is a need to downplay the very obvious likenesses between Putin and earlier Russian leaders, specifically Stalin, not least because Putin himself has praised what Stalin achieved and bemoaned the loss of the Russian Empire he created.
The Nazis were not the sole embodiment of evil in 20th century Europe. Stalinism and what he got the Soviets to do were quite as evil. Putin may choose to airbrush his and Soviet crimes from history. We in the West should not.
Having just finished Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine" the parallels are striking - down to the same lies.
Certainly Stalin found it useful to break the Ukranian peasant class, but the extraction of grain was also key to his industrialisation programme. Not just to feed his new urban industrial workers, but also to export. Grain exports were one of his few sources of Foreign exchange, and that was essential to restructure an agricultural economy into an industrial one. Starving Ukraine served two purposes.
On that note, I see the Russians stole 5 ships of Ukrainian grain yesterday. Perhaps they are attempting Holodomor 2.0
There’s a column in the NYT which says Putin’s new plan is to create so many refugees, pouring into the EU/NATO, that the West pressures Zelenskyy into agreeing a peace deal that looks good for Putin
Sounds plausible. 10m Ukes have already been displaced inside and outside their country. It might work, as well
He might get a peace deal by that route (though I doubt it). Removal of sanctions is another matter.
He is utterly trashing his country, financially, morally and reputationally.
The way I see it, is this. Putin's Regime cannot go down any further in our estimation. The Wayne Couzens of countries. Beyond forgiveness or redemption.
However, we can't do anything more than we are doing. The US has already said that they won't intervene. Russia still has nukes, wheat and oil; there will be many countries outside the west willing to deal with them - almost irrespective of what they do in Ukraine.
Now that they have found themselves in this position, there are no limits exist on their atrocities. They can just go ahead and kill and enslave Ukraine. They will just laugh at the idea of war crimes, because they don't have any interest in courts or justice. They have crossed a rubicon, like a serial killer - what's the difference between 2 and 20 victims?
No one believed 3 weeks ago that Russia would bomb civilians. The idea that something like Mariupol could happen was beyond contemplation. If there is no hope of a client state in Ukraine, or any sort of conventional victory, and they are utterly condemned by the 'west' why wouldn't they just utterly crush and ruin the country? Plunder its resources etc. The nature of global inequality is such that there will still be many countries willing to deal with them.
I don't think this is being alarmist or being dramatic; I think it is a very likely course of events. It seems that we are being drawn, inexorably and inevitably, in to war with Russia; because the situation described above is morally intolerable. It becomes a battle for the future of civilisation.
Destroying cities is what they do.
Aleppo
Grozny
All that is true. But the aims of those wars were different. Both were 'two sided' conflicts. They are not all that different to the wars fought by the UK and the US. So whilst the methods were abhorrent, they are not really comparable.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
As NATO troops are in NATO nations.
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I agree. Other than the obvious reason, it is now apparent he would get absolutely stuffed. It's interesting to compare this now to the past when it was assumed Russian forces would only take a few days overrun Europe.
Despite years of defence cuts, it's clear that the military strength of a united NATO is terrifying.
NATO military spending keeps rising and is enormous. It accounts for more than half of the global total and dwarfs that of anyone else. The calls to spend even more in response to Russia proving unable to occupy its weaker neighbour seem less than logical to me.
I think you've just changed my mind on something. What a weird sensation.
There is definitely something in spending it on stuff that is actually useful. Drones. Missile defence/anti-air.
Comments
1 April 2022 - Low carbon heating systems that are commissioned on or after this date will be entitled to support under the scheme. (Commissioning is the completion of installation and set up of the system).
11 April 2022 - Installers will be able to open an account for the scheme with Ofgem, the scheme administrator.
23 May 2022 - The scheme opens for grant applications and payments.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-if-you-may-be-eligible-for-the-boiler-upgrade-scheme-from-april-2022
A very large majority in Ukraine want EU membership. They are now fighting a war to preserve their democracy.
Please explain how Boris' comment was in any way 'accurate'.
The war in Ukraine is different, in that it is overtly being driven by an idea of imperial expansion. If the model works in Ukraine, then why would it stop there?
The notion that Brexit will be forgotten is absurd
Hence Putin is unlikely to expand beyond Ukraine or any non NATO member seeking to join NATO
I am not a great fan of Twitter, but that is what Gary Kasparov is repeatedly saying
The retired opinion leader @HuXijin_GT gave a candid explanation of why China should support Russia on WeiBo. Interestingly he meant it for domestic consumption and didn’t post it on Twitter. I am doing him a favor by translating the main points (thread)
https://m.weibo.cn/status/4749196285969009?sourceType=weixin&from=10C3195010&wm=4260_0001&featurecode=newtitle
https://twitter.com/polijunkie_aus/status/1505560092649099272
The last 3 minutes of that game are some of my favourite minutes of any rugby I’ve ever watched. It’s one thing to win such an historic victory in the last minute… but to do it with a try like THAT!
Magic
Only on PB is it still regarded as a masterstroke...
Aleppo was about protecting their proxy (Assad) in the last remains (Syria) of their overseas empire. Another imperial project.
I do genuinely feel sorry for your trauma over brexit, but as much as you demonstrate your angst the idea it will never be over is absurd as a closer relationship will evolve to the satisfaction of most when I do hope you will be able to move on but if not that is your choice
From Chris Cook (son of...) in the Racing Post:-
In total, 16 of the 28 Festival winners were returned at 3-1 or shorter. It may seem normal to you for big-race winners to be well fancied but depth of competition at the Festival used to ensure that such prices were a rarity.
At the 2012 Festival, just five of the 27 winners were 3-1 or shorter. In 2002, when the meeting was only three days long, it was four winners out of 20. All the way back in 1992, just two winners were that short.
Big_G is in denial.
I am not arguing against it I just am not sure what it is supposed to achieve
You are (understandably and rightly) quick to criticise those who link politics to mental illness.
Except about Brexit, where you do it all the time.
It's democracy. The whole point is that debates are never over, however uncongenial you find that.
Those are the reasons to be cheerful. Unfortunately that's about as good as it gets because I just don't see a way out of this for him and therefore for the Ukranians, and us.
You have to reckon the use of chemical and/or nukes remains an option, albeit unlikely in my view. But then how does he climb down? He's losing, in every material respect. It's going to get worse - for us all but mostly for him and the wretched citizens of Russia. Even if he is shunted aside, one way or another, the outlook remains very grim, especially for what is left of Russia after he has trashed its resources and reputation.
I'm gonna walk the dog. I'll let you know if I am any more cheerful when I get back,
The more brutal the Russians are, the more savage the resistance will be.
As Sir Arthur Harris put it "They have sowed the wind, and now they will reap the whirlwind."
I am interested in the analysis that Putin lacks the firepower to carry out this strategy. Are we sure? How difficult or quick would it be for him to acquire it?
I don’t say this to be mean, or score a point. I remember Scott as a quite insightful and intelligent commenter; now he posts demented discourse about the evils of Brexit, 24/7, and six years after the vote
He’s not alone. The likes of A C Grayling are still ranting away on Twitter (to a slowly dwindling audience).
I hope this disease - and it is a real thing - runs its course soon, and cures itself
Of course we would impose further economic sanctions on Russia if it invaded Finland like we have over its invasion of Ukraine but we would likely not respond militarily as we would had a NATO nation been invaded.
Though I think non NATO Georgia and Moldova are more likely targets for Russian invasion beyond Ukraine than Finland. Finland is also in the EU but the EU has no army unlike NATO as yet
At least the sun is out
https://www.understandingwar.org/
Like many others, they rather overestimated the Russian military at first. They now convey a certain sense of the tide turning, but cautiously, as is their won't.
An now doggie time.
Biden by contrast has ruled out a no fly zone over Ukraine
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/07/donald-trump-russia-ukraine-jets-chinese
The same four or five posters chuntering on daily about the great success of the BRITISH EFFORT makes you realise quite how parochial the UK is and probably always will be. It's why the EU are almost certainly better off without us.
We are following multiple unconfirmed reports about a possible accident involving China Eastern Airlines flight #MU5735 a Boeing 737-89P (B-1791) en route from Kunming to Guanghzou, China.
https://twitter.com/AviationSafety/status/1505815992366206976
7 year old 737-800
The Japanese ambassador is supposed to have said about Crystal Nacht - "Splendid to see the people so united, unfortunately we have no Jews in Japan".
He shouldn't have worried - as soon as the Imperial Japanese Army came across some non-Japanese people, the inner racism came out, really well.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-russia-ukraine-putin-brexit-alexander-stubb-b2040273.html
Putin just sees this weakness and strikes at the first opportunity. It seems inevitable to me that the paradigm will change, and the west will decide to fight back. The question is when.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/21/chinese-plane-crashes-guangxi-province-china-eastern-737-wuzhou
Eh???? https://twitter.com/KayBurley/status/1505820660760784904
Plus it is 50p a month or something, at the moment. They really are trying to hoover up UK punters
Verdict: the app is extremely slick. Videos embedded in the “front page” which play as you scroll. The graphics are excellent. The breadth of paid correspondents is impressive. In these respects it is seriously superior to UK equivalents
Might it eat up UK competitors? Esp the Guardian, which has a very similar Woke-liberal worldview?
Quite easily. The writing is still better, more vivid and characterful, in British papers. In some areas. And of course the NYT has a parochial American feel in things like sports.
But the NYT is so rich it could buy up all the good UK writers, have a dedicated European sports team (they’ve already bought the Athletic) and then it will destroy UK competition
I see a real threat here. The NYT is becoming the Netflix/Disney/Amazon of news journals.
The only reason I had a go at you is because your posts were becoming tiresome, repetitive and over-frequent, didn't present any sort of analysis or insight, and you appeared to be using the site to work merely through your emotional counter-reaction having spent days incorrectly predicting that this invasion would never happen. And doing all of this from an IP address we were told is apparently on the spam-blocklist.
I don't have much time for Corbyn, at all.
Scott is quoting an ex Finnish PM who is Helsinki’s version of Jolyon Maugham. Check his Twitter history. This Finn hates Brexit with a vengeance and often says quite lunatically anti-British stuff - and he has been doing it since 2016
There is a small subset of people who patently lost their wits because Brexit. They really are best ignored. For their own good
Had he brought in the immigration changes at the pace he was allowed to by the EU, I suspect the referendum would never have happened. But he couldn't resist making it a political point.
An eye-opener for me was the BBC 'Question Time' programme just before the Referendum which was broadcast from Boston, where I was born and bred. It seemed most Bostonians were in favour of the EU. Completely at odds with my experience. We're talking of immigrants who were white, hard-working, and generally Catholic (as I am, the first and last anyway). They tend to group together as their second language was often Russian rather than English - although they learn quickly.
How could the BBC make such an error? Because they only saw what they wanted to see. As did Tony. Ignoring the nay-says as being ignorant racists. A mistake they came back to haunt them.
I've been to European meetings - on the science side - and I saw some very good work being done. But in the end, democracy is precious. I voted leave because the chasm between the two sides was growing and fuelled by the one's who knew they were superior people. The other people didn't matter.
Nose and face, you might say, but today, I'd do the same.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10634901/Boeing-737-passenger-jet-carrying-133-crashes-rural-China.html
On the refugee issue, I tend to view it as, initially, a combination of cock up and bureaucratic inflexibility. Where Patel was at fault was politically not realising it was a problem (I find it hard to believe that she could be personally unmoved by the situation) and being unable / unwilling to devote the focus and energy to sorting it out.
I don't know how the new system works, so no idea whether the criticisms are justified, but it seems to be these are criticisms of execution rather than of principle at this point, so definitely an improvement. Let's hope that it works.
(The only person on here I accuse of being a troll is Heathener. Because she is. A spinner of Putin-preferred lines with a compromised VPN that is on an anti-spamming blacklist and was also used by two previous trolls)
There are some Labour seats with very low levels of people with degrees, like Nottingham North and Hull East, which may be vulnerable to the Tories at the next election if this trend continues.
https://twitter.com/ChinaAvReview/status/1505834279275999236
Up to recently, it was possible to see the past being buried, since virtually everyone involved is now dead. Young Russians mostly see WW2 as a historical issue, much as we see WW1 - how many people in Britain in the last 30 years have brooded about the sins of the Kaiser? Conversely, opinion polls before the invasion showed over 30% of Ukrainians regretting the loss of the Soviet Union, and hostility to Russians as a people was mainly the province of the far right. One of the consequences of the invasion is to set all that back another generation or two. There are plenty of reports from Ukraine of people who felt a natural affinity to Russia, who voted for pro-Russian parties and detested Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, but who now feel completely betrayed and alienated by Russia. Like most imperialist projects, it's both horrible and ultimately self-defeating, since Putin has actually forged a Ukrainian national unity and common purpose that wasn't there before.
More anything it reminds me of Yugoslavia. Under Tito, lots of people had got used to getting over the Serb/Croat/Bosnian divide and many declined to identify with any of the rthnic groups in surveys - they said they were simply Yugoslavs. After Tito died, absent-mindedly neglecting to groom an heir, the country fell apart and nationalist leaders set about organising massacres to pursue their perceived identities. Each atrocity in turn reinforced extremists in the victimised ethnic group, and new hatreds were generated which are only now starting to fade.
What I didn't understand at the time was that ever closer union wasn't just a feature of the EU, it was (and still is) its raison d'etre.
However, the world has moved on. Europe faces an economic crisis, a refugee crisis and a hot war on its border. The correct answer is an alliance of nations to promote aid, assistance and co-operation *without* the ever closer union. A Europe based on co-operation between nation states, rather than nation building.
The answer has always been there, but it requires the EU (and some of the more hard headed Brexiteers) to drop some of their intransigence.
Unfortunately I fear the moment has long since passed and the divorce is final.
Why then do you bother coming back with such tedious regularity, just so you can be offended by the same four or five posters “chuntering on”
Go and hang out on lepolitiqualbettinge.fr
Surely that is your natural new home, post Brexit
"Germany's arms deliveries to Ukraine seem paradoxical: Germany is the fourth largest arms exporter in the world and has leading arms companies in the country. But after four weeks of Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, not a single new weapon from these manufacturers has been purchased and delivered there. Instead, there were only deliveries from the extremely manageable stocks of the Bundeswehr.
But why should one deliver weapons from the stocks of the Bundeswehr when excellent new material can be obtained from the factories of the German arms companies? Why did four cruel weeks of war pass without new weapons being delivered?"
https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/plus237657595/Ukraine-Hilfe-Das-Raetsel-um-die-Waffen-aus-Deutschlands-Fabriken.html
Now the biggest divide is age, the younger you are and hence the more likely you are to have a degree the more likely you are to vote Labour and the older you are the more likely you are to vote Tory.
Remember Cameron won most over 25s in 2010, now the Tories only lead with over 55s in current polls. While the Tories did best with C2s not ABs in 2019 with Boris, whereas Cameron did best with ABs
The health secretary insisted the PM was not suggesting fighting a foreign invasion is like voting to leave the EU. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/sajid-javid-boris-johnson-ukraine-brexit_uk_62384118e4b009ab92fa8863
An article by the head of Police Scotland that might ruin a few mornings.
The comments aren't open
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/21/policing-scotland-radically-reformed-all-uk-forces-learn?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Looks like pilot suicide or a hijacking by suicidal terrorists
Now represents, theoretically, an opportunity for Putin to act which may not be available later. Extremely unlikely we may think, but who knows what the thinking is in the bunker.
NATO is a red line. If anyone attempts to invade they get incinerated by NATO air power. Not so, Finland. Membership brings benefits.
There is definitely something in spending it on stuff that is actually useful. Drones. Missile defence/anti-air.