Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
No. “Potemkin” villages are themselves a myth
Read more
And the idea Russia didn’t build Odesa is infantile. Look at it
And the Ukrainians do look and sound awfully Russian. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing
Putin has turned a natural brother into a mortal enemy
King Cole, I believe there's a settlement in the west of China which has a strange frequency of blue eyes and blonde hair, a leftover genetic legacy of Alexander the Great's empire.
Indeed. Isn’t there something similar In Afghanistan and/or Kashmir?
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
If there is indeed a path to "Russia gets to keep Crimea" somewhere in the future, I am not convinced "drops a tactical nuke" is a step on that path...
So many people in the West seem to buy the Russian leadership’s crazy act, when they know full well their own governments would not just drop a tactical nuke because they were losing a war. Only a few weeks ago Putin looked in the eyes of Prigozhin and blinked.
Romanians are completely different to Ukrainians. The difference is remarkable
You go from a land of slim pale blonde people - extremely lovely women - to fat dark tattoooed people - women “not quite so striking” - in 100km
What explains this? The Romanians are darker than the Italians; the Ukrainians are whiter than the icelandics
It’s the same landscape, same climate, same everything. Except for the people
EU Membership. Romaina has been totally hollowed out by freedom of movement. Its population is down over 20% in the past two decades, as anyone with aspiration has moved West.
I doubt EU membership means all the tall blonde people have left Romania. My guess is that whereas Ukraine was populated largely from the north and west, Romania’s population was built a lot more from the south and east.
Ukraine is viking. Romania is latin. Thats why they look different - they are.
But they don’t just look Latin. They look extremely Latin. Like calabrians or Maltese or even westernised Tunisians
I do love a bit of amateur ethnography
I suppose it’s like the UK where you have distinct looks in each country. The Welsh are all four foot tall with dark hair and darker eyes, the Scots are blue skinned with wild red hair and the English are tall, athletic, flaxen haired with blue eyes, “angels not angles” no less.
The Welsh have two distinct ethnographic extremes: the 'Iberian' look (swarthy, dark curly hair, brown eyes) and the 'Celtic' look (pale, ruddy-faced, ginger hair and blue eyes). Of course, most of us are somewhere in between, having poached our ancestors from faraway places like (in my case) Shropshire and Cheshire.
Poaching your own ancestors sounds more an Irish sort of thing.
Fighting talk. We're P-Celts, they're Q-Celts.
I meant to add, btw, that the answer to that age-old question 'Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to go to university?" is because the Vikings didn't have universities.
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
If there is indeed a path to "Russia gets to keep Crimea" somewhere in the future, I am not convinced "drops a tactical nuke" is a step on that path...
So many people in the West seem to buy the Russian leadership’s crazy act, when they know full well their own governments would not just drop a tactical nuke because they were losing a war. Only a few weeks ago Putin looked in the eyes of Prigozhin and blinked.
Did he?
There are multiple conspiracy theories surrounding that weird non-coup
I’ve no idea if any of them are right but it was certainly a bizarre episode
I don’t actually think Starmer is a centrist from conviction. He seems to have actually quite left wing instincts, more so than say, Wilson or Callaghan.
What he does have is pragmatism. He’s willing to compromise with the electorate to win power.
Blair and Brown were willing to do that too - the snag was they then never tried to make meaningful reforms with the opportunity they had. They spent so long rebranding and not frightening the horses that Brown in particular wasn’t willing to make radical changes. Meanwhile Blair, frustrated, took it out in misguided foreign policy ventures.
Unfortunately even if Starmer should prove not to have their timidity, it seems unlikely he will have a similar opportunity.
I think Blair actually believed it.
He was (and is) effectively a Christian Democrat, and pretty unique within the Labour movement.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Yeah Yeah bit like England's serious emotional ties to India , Australia , etc. Time to call these morons bluff , twist or fold.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
No. “Potemkin” villages are themselves a myth
Read more
And the idea Russia didn’t build Odesa is infantile. Look at it
And the Ukrainians do look and sound awfully Russian. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing
Putin has turned a natural brother into a mortal enemy
By the same token you could say the British built Dublin (therefore it’s ours), we also built New Delhi, Philadelphia, Boston, Harare, the French built Algiers, Austria built Trieste and so on. But yes, Russia does seem to have a (conveniently) irredentist mindset. It needs to be driven out of them.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
No. “Potemkin” villages are themselves a myth
Read more
And the idea Russia didn’t build Odesa is infantile. Look at it
And the Ukrainians do look and sound awfully Russian. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing
Putin has turned a natural brother into a mortal enemy
By the same token you could say the British built Dublin (therefore it’s ours), we also built New Delhi, Philadelphia, Boston, Harare, the French built Algiers, Austria built Trieste and so on. But yes, Russia does seem to have a (conveniently) irredentist mindset. It needs to be driven out of them.
I think the best comparison for Crimea - in a British context - is Northern Ireland
Seized by Britain centuries ago. But then also settled by Britain, built up by Britain, and with at least half the population feeling highly British (but the other half very much not)
Then add sunshine and beaches and vines and make it more covetable
I don’t actually think Starmer is a centrist from conviction. He seems to have actually quite left wing instincts, more so than say, Wilson or Callaghan.
What he does have is pragmatism. He’s willing to compromise with the electorate to win power.
Blair and Brown were willing to do that too - the snag was they then never tried to make meaningful reforms with the opportunity they had. They spent so long rebranding and not frightening the horses that Brown in particular wasn’t willing to make radical changes. Meanwhile Blair, frustrated, took it out in misguided foreign policy ventures.
Unfortunately even if Starmer should prove not to have their timidity, it seems unlikely he will have a similar opportunity.
I think Blair actually believed it.
He was (and is) effectively a Christian Democrat, and pretty unique within the Labour movement.
I worry (others may hope) that Starmer is actually going in a journey. I’ve no doubt he has been a true lefty for much of his career but it’s not unknown for people to start way to the left and end up way to the right as they get older.
I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility that an elected Starmer could keep moving, at least on the authoritarian vs liberal spectrum.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
No. “Potemkin” villages are themselves a myth
Read more
And the idea Russia didn’t build Odesa is infantile. Look at it
And the Ukrainians do look and sound awfully Russian. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing
Putin has turned a natural brother into a mortal enemy
That last point I can certainly believe.
Last night I was in my favourite quiet beer bar in the Old City of Tallinn. A young Russian at the next table started a phone call where in Russian he belittled and insulted the Estonians. Practically shouting down the phone. It was clear that he was in Estonia avoiding the draft, yet instead of behaving politely he was boorish and obnoxious. In the end he stepped out to the Off sales and brought a can back in, at which point the barman asked him quietly to leave, which with a few confused harumphs, he did.
My eye met a couple with a young baby and we smiled and in Estonian we all thanked the barkeep.
"What can you expect? They never change" He replied.
You suggest Odesa as a Russian foundation, but it actually was the site of a Greek settlement of as early as the 6th Century BC, and later a Genoese and Ottoman port, I also raise you the Circassian genocide, which killed or exiled an entire nation of over a million people, and incidentally ultimately brought the Circassian family of Sikandar Kemal, aka Boris Johnson, to our shores.
They never change.
The Latvians are already asking these people to leave. The Estonians will not be far behind.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
No. “Potemkin” villages are themselves a myth
Read more
And the idea Russia didn’t build Odesa is infantile. Look at it
And the Ukrainians do look and sound awfully Russian. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing
Putin has turned a natural brother into a mortal enemy
By the same token you could say the British built Dublin (therefore it’s ours), we also built New Delhi, Philadelphia, Boston, Harare, the French built Algiers, Austria built Trieste and so on. But yes, Russia does seem to have a (conveniently) irredentist mindset. It needs to be driven out of them.
I think the best comparison for Crimea - in a British context - is Northern Ireland
Seized by Britain centuries ago. But then also settled by Britain, built up by Britain, and with at least half the population feeling highly British (but the other half very much not)
Then add sunshine and beaches and vines and make it more covetable
There are some similarities (and I doubt anybody’s going to be dropping a tactical nuke on Donegal any time soon), but the big difference is that Crimea has been officially part of Ukraine since the 1950s. NI has always been under British jurisdiction.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
Exactly usual Leon fantasist bollox.
You both need to read some history
As I have extensively written and lectured on these subjects at various academic institutions, I think I can safely dismiss that comment.
There's no doubt in my mind that WW1 was a catastrophe for all concerned.
All the social changes that are believed to have come out of it, such as greater home rule for Ireland, votes for women, and greater rights for workers, were already in play before it started.
It really was the most tremendous waste. But, once Germany undertook the Schlieffen Plan, we had no choice but to fight because the alternative - France defeated and all the low countries dominated by them - would have been even worse.
Leon - Crimea is roughly the size of Wales. Or in relative terms to the Russian federation, it's what the Isle of Wight is to Great Britain.
'Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales/Crimea!'
Did Russian hearts bleed after 1991 when Crimea was part of an independent Ukraine? Do you really think they would risk the collapse of the entire Russian federation for a small territory where people like to go on holiday? I don't buy it. And it is NOT historically Russian. Up to the 1950s it was inhabited by Crimean Tatars.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
Exactly usual Leon fantasist bollox.
You both need to read some history
Don't need to read anything to know the Russians are a bunch of evil nasty thieving barstewards.
OK so I did this on the thread yesterday but a lot of the legal wonks seem to think Trump is going to get convicted in DC, for serious crimes, next year? Then I guess he appeals?
Equally, as far as the primary polling goes, it looks like Trump is going to control most of the delegates at the GOP convention. So he gets to choose whether to run himself, or substitute someone else.
Even if he somehow does beat Biden under these conditions, it's not clear that he can pardon himself.
The move to make if he's not a complete and utter delusional moron would be to put up someone more popular as GOP nominee.
Is he a complete and utter delusional moron? I don't think it's clear either way. It's worth thinking about who he might choose.
Surely in this scenario, there is no-one more popular than Trump, else they would already be nominee. And if Trump were to make way for someone less popular than himself, there is no guarantee he can deliver his base, who, let's not forget, have just declined to vote for this substitute in order to vote for Trump himself.
So who might Trump choose? Someone who has not attacked him personally during the primary campaign, and who has agreed to pardon him. Anyone but DeSantis, so far.
Actually, DeSantis has already publicly stated he would pardon Trump. And been attacked by Trumpists for contemplating the possibility of Trump being found guilty.
DeSantis is the (wrong) answer to the question, "who can tap into GOP resentment enough to have a chance of beating Trump". If Trump gets to pick his question is "who is loyal and can beat Biden". Depending on the balance of those things he could pick Ivanka, or one of several other GOP governors with high approval ratings.
There's no doubt in my mind that WW1 was a catastrophe for all concerned.
All the social changes that are believed to have come out of it, such as greater home rule for Ireland, votes for women, and greater rights for workers, were already in play before it started.
It really was the most tremendous waste. But, once Germany undertook the Schlieffen Plan, we had no choice but to fight because the alternative - France defeated and all the low countries dominated by them - would have been even worse.
Universal suffrage. And how quickly would those things have actually happened?
Leon - Crimea is roughly the size of Wales. Or in relative terms to the Russian federation, it's what the Isle of Wight is to Great Britain.
'Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales/Crimea!'
Did Russian hearts bleed after 1991 when Crimea was part of an independent Ukraine? Do you really think they would risk the collapse of the entire Russian federation for a small territory where people like to go on holiday? I don't buy it. And it is NOT historically Russian. Up to the 1950s it was inhabited by Crimean Tatars.
Excellent, an addition to my collection of Wales sized land masses along with Sicily and the peloponnese. Putting them in order is a good quiz question
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
Worth noting that every oblast voted for independence from Russia, even Crimea, albeit by a smaller margin, in the last free vote held.
OK so I did this on the thread yesterday but a lot of the legal wonks seem to think Trump is going to get convicted in DC, for serious crimes, next year? Then I guess he appeals?
Equally, as far as the primary polling goes, it looks like Trump is going to control most of the delegates at the GOP convention. So he gets to choose whether to run himself, or substitute someone else.
Even if he somehow does beat Biden under these conditions, it's not clear that he can pardon himself.
The move to make if he's not a complete and utter delusional moron would be to put up someone more popular as GOP nominee.
Is he a complete and utter delusional moron? I don't think it's clear either way. It's worth thinking about who he might choose.
Surely in this scenario, there is no-one more popular than Trump, else they would already be nominee. And if Trump were to make way for someone less popular than himself, there is no guarantee he can deliver his base, who, let's not forget, have just declined to vote for this substitute in order to vote for Trump himself.
So who might Trump choose? Someone who has not attacked him personally during the primary campaign, and who has agreed to pardon him. Anyone but DeSantis, so far.
Actually, DeSantis has already publicly stated he would pardon Trump. And been attacked by Trumpists for contemplating the possibility of Trump being found guilty.
DeSantis is the (wrong) answer to the question, "who can tap into GOP resentment enough to have a chance of beating Trump". If Trump gets to pick his question is "who is loyal and can beat Biden". Depending on the balance of those things he could pick Ivanka, or one of several other GOP governors with high approval ratings.
People have been asking "where is Melania?" but a better candidate for dogs not barking is Ivanka, although perhaps that is to allow the GOP a free run at Hunter Biden without Ivanka's husband muddying the waters.
The problem for Republicans is Trump's first court case isn't until late March 2024 ie after Super Tuesday and the early Republican primaries and caucuses while his second case doesn't start until May. So depending on how long each case takes Trump could have won the nomination before the case concludes.
Yet a guilty verdict and jail sentence if he is convicted could be reached before the November general election and polls show even half of Republican voters would not vote for Trump again were he convicted
I think Khan should have delayed the extension of Ulez by 6 months but the scheme does need to come in .
The problem at the moment is people falling for the Tory scare mongering and being too lazy to just find out if they’re effected .
Of course the Tories who have nothing to offer will jump on anything . It might make things a little difficult for Labour in certain target seats. I don’t see how though if you’re a Labour supporter you’re going to suddenly say I’ll vote Tory over this .
If he delayed it by about 5-7 years it would become pointless as it would effect almost nobody, and the emissions problem will largely have gone away. This is already a solved problem, it's just taking a bit of time for older vehicles to work through the vehicle population. The youngest non-compliant vehicles are about 7 years old, they will mostly have gone by 12-14 years old.
There should be a general legal principle that if something is constructed or sold which complies with current legislation (as all these cars did), it can't be banned or restricted in favour of a product meeting newer standards for a period of say double the item's median working life. Possibly with a clause allowing such restrictions provided that the government compensates owners with 100% of the new price (not the current value) to allow the fixing of cases where the government has really stuffed up the regulations - but with a big financial disincentive to deter governments from doing this without a really good reason.
So much of the problem with this country is the obsession with instant results - thus ten years ago we couldn't build the new nuclear power stations we need because they would only just be finished now. The emission standards are the mirror image of this issue - we've got to impose lots of expensive restrictions now, because despite air quality having steadily improved for the last 50 years, we can't wait another 5 whilst the process carries on.
I don’t actually think Starmer is a centrist from conviction. He seems to have actually quite left wing instincts, more so than say, Wilson or Callaghan.
What he does have is pragmatism. He’s willing to compromise with the electorate to win power.
Blair and Brown were willing to do that too - the snag was they then never tried to make meaningful reforms with the opportunity they had. They spent so long rebranding and not frightening the horses that Brown in particular wasn’t willing to make radical changes. Meanwhile Blair, frustrated, took it out in misguided foreign policy ventures.
Unfortunately even if Starmer should prove not to have their timidity, it seems unlikely he will have a similar opportunity.
I think Blair actually believed it.
He was (and is) effectively a Christian Democrat, and pretty unique within the Labour movement.
No Blair was a social and economic liberal and a foreign policy neoconservative. Starmer is a social democrat like Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband and closer to most in the Labour Party ideologically than Blair was even if not a socialist like Corbyn
There's no doubt in my mind that WW1 was a catastrophe for all concerned.
All the social changes that are believed to have come out of it, such as greater home rule for Ireland, votes for women, and greater rights for workers, were already in play before it started.
It really was the most tremendous waste. But, once Germany undertook the Schlieffen Plan, we had no choice but to fight because the alternative - France defeated and all the low countries dominated by them - would have been even worse.
Universal suffrage. And how quickly would those things have actually happened?
Probably by the 1930s. There was a clear path of development in that direction anyway, as the representation of the people acts in the last 35 years of the 19thC showed.
I don’t actually think Starmer is a centrist from conviction. He seems to have actually quite left wing instincts, more so than say, Wilson or Callaghan.
What he does have is pragmatism. He’s willing to compromise with the electorate to win power.
Blair and Brown were willing to do that too - the snag was they then never tried to make meaningful reforms with the opportunity they had. They spent so long rebranding and not frightening the horses that Brown in particular wasn’t willing to make radical changes. Meanwhile Blair, frustrated, took it out in misguided foreign policy ventures.
Unfortunately even if Starmer should prove not to have their timidity, it seems unlikely he will have a similar opportunity.
I think Blair actually believed it.
He was (and is) effectively a Christian Democrat, and pretty unique within the Labour movement.
I worry (others may hope) that Starmer is actually going in a journey. I’ve no doubt he has been a true lefty for much of his career but it’s not unknown for people to start way to the left and end up way to the right as they get older.
I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility that an elected Starmer could keep moving, at least on the authoritarian vs liberal spectrum.
My sense is he's actually quite left-wing but also a careerist so, if nothing else, it will be interesting to see how that plays out in office.
There's no doubt in my mind that WW1 was a catastrophe for all concerned.
All the social changes that are believed to have come out of it, such as greater home rule for Ireland, votes for women, and greater rights for workers, were already in play before it started.
It really was the most tremendous waste. But, once Germany undertook the Schlieffen Plan, we had no choice but to fight because the alternative - France defeated and all the low countries dominated by them - would have been even worse.
Universal suffrage. And how quickly would those things have actually happened?
Golly. I would defer universal suffrage to the year 3000 in exchange for no WW1. Not that I would have to, it was inevitably on its way ans was in place in much of the world by 1900.
The problem for Republicans is Trump's first court case isn't until late March 2024 ie after Super Tuesday and the early Republican primaries and caucuses while his second case doesn't start until May. So depending on how long each case takes Trump could have won the nomination before the case concludes.
Yet a guilty verdict and jail sentence if he is convicted could be reached before the November general election and polls show even half of Republican voters would not vote for Trump again were he convicted
The problem for Republicans is they have surrendered their party and principles to a narcissistic toddler who wants to be a dictator.
Re the scheduling I'd expect Trumps lawyers to argue the court cases be postponed if he is the Republican nominee and can see courts going along with that.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
No. “Potemkin” villages are themselves a myth
Read more
And the idea Russia didn’t build Odesa is infantile. Look at it
And the Ukrainians do look and sound awfully Russian. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing
Putin has turned a natural brother into a mortal enemy
That's because he and most Russians don't see them as brothers, but subjects. Good way to turn friendly disposed peoples into enemies.
The problem for Republicans is Trump's first court case isn't until late March 2024 ie after Super Tuesday and the early Republican primaries and caucuses while his second case doesn't start until May. So depending on how long each case takes Trump could have won the nomination before the case concludes.
Yet a guilty verdict and jail sentence if he is convicted could be reached before the November general election and polls show even half of Republican voters would not vote for Trump again were he convicted
The problem for Republicans is they have surrendered their party and principles to a narcissistic toddler who wants to be a dictator.
Re the scheduling I'd expect Trumps lawyers to argue the court cases be postponed if he is the Republican nominee and can see courts going along with that.
Given the New York and DC judges at least are Democrat appointees they certainly wouldn't go along with that
The problem for Republicans is Trump's first court case isn't until late March 2024 ie after Super Tuesday and the early Republican primaries and caucuses while his second case doesn't start until May. So depending on how long each case takes Trump could have won the nomination before the case concludes.
Yet a guilty verdict and jail sentence if he is convicted could be reached before the November general election and polls show even half of Republican voters would not vote for Trump again were he convicted
The problem for Republicans is they have surrendered their party and principles to a narcissistic toddler who wants to be a dictator.
Re the scheduling I'd expect Trumps lawyers to argue the court cases be postponed if he is the Republican nominee and can see courts going along with that.
His first hope appears to have been if he announced as a candidate very early that would stop the cases anyway (see his plaintive wails about being arrested despite being a candidate), but it doesn't take a lawyer to see why that would be nonsense.
His second hope as you note appears to be to work to ensure any cases take place after the election, or at least after he has already got the nomination, or as good as. That, on top of his arrogance, is presumably party behind his proxies desperately demanding the no hopers drop out now, so he is effectively already nominee even if not officially.
And given the wheels of justice do run slowly, and the myriad of challenges that are surely possible, that second hope is partly realised even if he cannot get all cases pushed until after the election. What does he care if that screws the GOP? (Assuming it does for the moment).
The problem for Republicans is Trump's first court case isn't until late March 2024 ie after Super Tuesday and the early Republican primaries and caucuses while his second case doesn't start until May. So depending on how long each case takes Trump could have won the nomination before the case concludes.
Yet a guilty verdict and jail sentence if he is convicted could be reached before the November general election and polls show even half of Republican voters would not vote for Trump again were he convicted
The problem for Republicans is they have surrendered their party and principles to a narcissistic toddler who wants to be a dictator.
Re the scheduling I'd expect Trumps lawyers to argue the court cases be postponed if he is the Republican nominee and can see courts going along with that.
His first hope appears to have been if he announced as a candidate very early that would stop the cases anyway (see his plaintive wails about being arrested despite being a candidate), but it doesn't take a lawyer to see why that would be nonsense.
His second hope as you note appears to be to work to ensure any cases take place after the election, or at least after he has already got the nomination, or as good as. That, on top of his arrogance, is presumably party behind his proxies desperately demanding the no hopers drop out now, so he is effectively already nominee even if not officially.
And given the wheels of justice do run slowly, and the myriad of challenges that are surely possible, that second hope is partly realised even if he cannot get all cases pushed until after the election. What does he care if that screws the GOP? (Assuming it does for the moment).
The GOP as a separate entity hardly exists anymore. It is merely a Trump branding aid.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
No. “Potemkin” villages are themselves a myth
Read more
And the idea Russia didn’t build Odesa is infantile. Look at it
And the Ukrainians do look and sound awfully Russian. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing
Putin has turned a natural brother into a mortal enemy
That's because he and most Russians don't see them as brothers, but subjects. Good way to turn friendly disposed peoples into enemies.
IIRC we’ve been over this ground before. There have been so many changes of population in what we now call Ukraine and European Russia that it’s difficult to regard anyone as ancestral holders of land.. In the 13th C, for example, the Mongols depopulated significant parts of the area.
The problem for Republicans is Trump's first court case isn't until late March 2024 ie after Super Tuesday and the early Republican primaries and caucuses while his second case doesn't start until May. So depending on how long each case takes Trump could have won the nomination before the case concludes.
Yet a guilty verdict and jail sentence if he is convicted could be reached before the November general election and polls show even half of Republican voters would not vote for Trump again were he convicted
The problem for Republicans is they have surrendered their party and principles to a narcissistic toddler who wants to be a dictator.
Re the scheduling I'd expect Trumps lawyers to argue the court cases be postponed if he is the Republican nominee and can see courts going along with that.
Given the New York and DC judges at least are Democrat appointees they certainly wouldn't go along with that
The DC judge was even appointed by Obama, no way will she postpone the case to convenience Trump's campaign schedule
The problem for Republicans is Trump's first court case isn't until late March 2024 ie after Super Tuesday and the early Republican primaries and caucuses while his second case doesn't start until May. So depending on how long each case takes Trump could have won the nomination before the case concludes.
Yet a guilty verdict and jail sentence if he is convicted could be reached before the November general election and polls show even half of Republican voters would not vote for Trump again were he convicted
The problem for Republicans is they have surrendered their party and principles to a narcissistic toddler who wants to be a dictator.
Re the scheduling I'd expect Trumps lawyers to argue the court cases be postponed if he is the Republican nominee and can see courts going along with that.
Given the New York and DC judges at least are Democrat appointees they certainly wouldn't go along with that
We do rightly excoriate some of the openly partisan nature of judges in the USA and the absurd pretence the top ones don't make their decisions based on personal political preferences, but in slight defence of the system plenty of Trump appointees ruled against a lot of his spurious legal challenges. Ones like the judge in his documents case who basically ignored the law to help him and got slapped down by an appeals court appear to be rarer (which does make what looks a very solid case more unknown). So I'd say it isn't entirely assured that the judges in NY and DC would not permit some delays - presumably they will be wary of appeals.
A note on the Brighton Pavillion selection process: it hasn't yet started. It needs to be triggered by the LP NEC, and that hasn't happened. So @eddieizzard has jumped the gun.
Why?
Because it's Brighton Pride weekend, and there are plenty of photo opps available.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
No. “Potemkin” villages are themselves a myth
Read more
And the idea Russia didn’t build Odesa is infantile. Look at it
And the Ukrainians do look and sound awfully Russian. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing
Putin has turned a natural brother into a mortal enemy
That is also at odds with history.
There have been efforts to build a free Ukraine since the end of the 19thC - and the Holodomor is not something visited on you by a 'natural brother'.
The relationship has been a colonial one for centuries.
I don’t actually think Starmer is a centrist from conviction. He seems to have actually quite left wing instincts, more so than say, Wilson or Callaghan.
What he does have is pragmatism. He’s willing to compromise with the electorate to win power.
Blair and Brown were willing to do that too - the snag was they then never tried to make meaningful reforms with the opportunity they had. They spent so long rebranding and not frightening the horses that Brown in particular wasn’t willing to make radical changes. Meanwhile Blair, frustrated, took it out in misguided foreign policy ventures.
Unfortunately even if Starmer should prove not to have their timidity, it seems unlikely he will have a similar opportunity.
I think Blair actually believed it.
He was (and is) effectively a Christian Democrat, and pretty unique within the Labour movement.
No Blair was a social and economic liberal and a foreign policy neoconservative. Starmer is a social democrat like Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband and closer to most in the Labour Party ideologically than Blair was even if not a socialist like Corbyn
I think that's right - I've only met him once but I have relatives who are old friends of his. They think he's mainstream social democrat, qualified by the focus on reassurance and winning.
Leon - Crimea is roughly the size of Wales. Or in relative terms to the Russian federation, it's what the Isle of Wight is to Great Britain.
'Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales/Crimea!'
Did Russian hearts bleed after 1991 when Crimea was part of an independent Ukraine? Do you really think they would risk the collapse of the entire Russian federation for a small territory where people like to go on holiday? I don't buy it. And it is NOT historically Russian. Up to the 1950s it was inhabited by Crimean Tatars.
It's now part of their current mythologising though, way more than the other areas. The actual history may not be as relevant if the public there genuinely regard it as part of Russia, rather than the more forced seeming sentiment over the rest of Ukraine.
If we get to the point where Ukraine can push for Crimea, I assume they'll have to do it with whatever they have built up at that point, without further significant assistance. I really hope they manage it oneday.
ZSU are saying this afternoon that last night was the best night they've had "all year". In addition to the two naval attacks, and yet further significant damage to rhe Kerch bridge, it seems that there have been significant land advances in at least three places and further landings in the Dnipro delta. We certainly hope that the momentum is building and Ukraine can get to the Sea of Azov soon.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
No. “Potemkin” villages are themselves a myth
Read more
And the idea Russia didn’t build Odesa is infantile. Look at it
And the Ukrainians do look and sound awfully Russian. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing
Putin has turned a natural brother into a mortal enemy
That's because he and most Russians don't see them as brothers, but subjects. Good way to turn friendly disposed peoples into enemies.
IIRC we’ve been over this ground before. There have been so many changes of population in what we now call Ukraine and European Russia that it’s difficult to regard anyone as ancestral holders of land.. In the 13th C, for example, the Mongols depopulated significant parts of the area.
Ancestral holding is pretty dumb for all sorts of reasons, and inconsistent even from the Putinistas who advocate it, picking convenient moments when it is and is not applicable.
I don’t actually think Starmer is a centrist from conviction. He seems to have actually quite left wing instincts, more so than say, Wilson or Callaghan.
What he does have is pragmatism. He’s willing to compromise with the electorate to win power.
Blair and Brown were willing to do that too - the snag was they then never tried to make meaningful reforms with the opportunity they had. They spent so long rebranding and not frightening the horses that Brown in particular wasn’t willing to make radical changes. Meanwhile Blair, frustrated, took it out in misguided foreign policy ventures.
Unfortunately even if Starmer should prove not to have their timidity, it seems unlikely he will have a similar opportunity.
I think Blair actually believed it.
He was (and is) effectively a Christian Democrat, and pretty unique within the Labour movement.
No Blair was a social and economic liberal and a foreign policy neoconservative. Starmer is a social democrat like Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband and closer to most in the Labour Party ideologically than Blair was even if not a socialist like Corbyn
I think that's right - I've only met him once but I have relatives who are old friends of his. They think he's mainstream social democrat, qualified by the focus on reassurance and winning.
I thought for a second you were saying you'd only met Blair once, which felt pretty rough considering you were an MP during his entire premiership!
I don’t actually think Starmer is a centrist from conviction. He seems to have actually quite left wing instincts, more so than say, Wilson or Callaghan.
What he does have is pragmatism. He’s willing to compromise with the electorate to win power.
Blair and Brown were willing to do that too - the snag was they then never tried to make meaningful reforms with the opportunity they had. They spent so long rebranding and not frightening the horses that Brown in particular wasn’t willing to make radical changes. Meanwhile Blair, frustrated, took it out in misguided foreign policy ventures.
Unfortunately even if Starmer should prove not to have their timidity, it seems unlikely he will have a similar opportunity.
I think Blair actually believed it.
He was (and is) effectively a Christian Democrat, and pretty unique within the Labour movement.
No Blair was a social and economic liberal and a foreign policy neoconservative. Starmer is a social democrat like Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband and closer to most in the Labour Party ideologically than Blair was even if not a socialist like Corbyn
I think that's right - I've only met him once but I have relatives who are old friends of his. They think he's mainstream social democrat, qualified by the focus on reassurance and winning.
I get that and he comes across as a reasonable man. But he also comes across as bereft of ideas or solutions to the problems we face in 2023 beyond being "nicer" and "more caring". To describe his policy ideas to date as banal would be generous and he has retreated from several at the first whiff of smoke.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
I don’t actually think Starmer is a centrist from conviction. He seems to have actually quite left wing instincts, more so than say, Wilson or Callaghan.
What he does have is pragmatism. He’s willing to compromise with the electorate to win power.
Blair and Brown were willing to do that too - the snag was they then never tried to make meaningful reforms with the opportunity they had. They spent so long rebranding and not frightening the horses that Brown in particular wasn’t willing to make radical changes. Meanwhile Blair, frustrated, took it out in misguided foreign policy ventures.
Unfortunately even if Starmer should prove not to have their timidity, it seems unlikely he will have a similar opportunity.
I think Blair actually believed it.
He was (and is) effectively a Christian Democrat, and pretty unique within the Labour movement.
No Blair was a social and economic liberal and a foreign policy neoconservative. Starmer is a social democrat like Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband and closer to most in the Labour Party ideologically than Blair was even if not a socialist like Corbyn
I think that's right - I've only met him once but I have relatives who are old friends of his. They think he's mainstream social democrat, qualified by the focus on reassurance and winning.
Yes I would say Starmer is economically social democrat, socially centrist and a foreign policy pragmatist note too he opposed the Iraq War and on Brexit is now more accepting of it than Blair too
The problem for Republicans is Trump's first court case isn't until late March 2024 ie after Super Tuesday and the early Republican primaries and caucuses while his second case doesn't start until May. So depending on how long each case takes Trump could have won the nomination before the case concludes.
Yet a guilty verdict and jail sentence if he is convicted could be reached before the November general election and polls show even half of Republican voters would not vote for Trump again were he convicted
The problem for Republicans is they have surrendered their party and principles to a narcissistic toddler who wants to be a dictator.
Re the scheduling I'd expect Trumps lawyers to argue the court cases be postponed if he is the Republican nominee and can see courts going along with that.
Given the New York and DC judges at least are Democrat appointees they certainly wouldn't go along with that
We do rightly excoriate some of the openly partisan nature of judges in the USA and the absurd pretence the top ones don't make their decisions based on personal political preferences, but in slight defence of the system plenty of Trump appointees ruled against a lot of his spurious legal challenges. Ones like the judge in his documents case who basically ignored the law to help him and got slapped down by an appeals court appear to be rarer (which does make what looks a very solid case more unknown). So I'd say it isn't entirely assured that the judges in NY and DC would not permit some delays - presumably they will be wary of appeals.
There are various possible grounds for delay, but it's unlikely that a campaign schedule is among them.
I think people are projecting onto SKS precisely what they want to.
He is perfectly happy to let them do it.
Pragmatic centrists beware - they are always assuming leaders and parties are more centrist and pragmatic than they are, and then shocked when they do radical thing x they said they would!
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Indeed. And if the Kerch bridge keeps getting hit that adds another element to making holding it hard.
The problem for Republicans is Trump's first court case isn't until late March 2024 ie after Super Tuesday and the early Republican primaries and caucuses while his second case doesn't start until May. So depending on how long each case takes Trump could have won the nomination before the case concludes.
Yet a guilty verdict and jail sentence if he is convicted could be reached before the November general election and polls show even half of Republican voters would not vote for Trump again were he convicted
The problem for Republicans is they have surrendered their party and principles to a narcissistic toddler who wants to be a dictator.
Re the scheduling I'd expect Trumps lawyers to argue the court cases be postponed if he is the Republican nominee and can see courts going along with that.
Given the New York and DC judges at least are Democrat appointees they certainly wouldn't go along with that
We do rightly excoriate some of the openly partisan nature of judges in the USA and the absurd pretence the top ones don't make their decisions based on personal political preferences, but in slight defence of the system plenty of Trump appointees ruled against a lot of his spurious legal challenges. Ones like the judge in his documents case who basically ignored the law to help him and got slapped down by an appeals court appear to be rarer (which does make what looks a very solid case more unknown). So I'd say it isn't entirely assured that the judges in NY and DC would not permit some delays - presumably they will be wary of appeals.
There are various possible grounds for delay, but it's unlikely that a campaign schedule is among them.
His team have a long history of advancing one argument in the media, and not using it in court (hence so many of the election challenges not being as dramatic in court as out), I'm sure they can think of something.
I don’t actually think Starmer is a centrist from conviction. He seems to have actually quite left wing instincts, more so than say, Wilson or Callaghan.
What he does have is pragmatism. He’s willing to compromise with the electorate to win power.
Blair and Brown were willing to do that too - the snag was they then never tried to make meaningful reforms with the opportunity they had. They spent so long rebranding and not frightening the horses that Brown in particular wasn’t willing to make radical changes. Meanwhile Blair, frustrated, took it out in misguided foreign policy ventures.
Unfortunately even if Starmer should prove not to have their timidity, it seems unlikely he will have a similar opportunity.
I think Blair actually believed it.
He was (and is) effectively a Christian Democrat, and pretty unique within the Labour movement.
I worry (others may hope) that Starmer is actually going in a journey. I’ve no doubt he has been a true lefty for much of his career but it’s not unknown for people to start way to the left and end up way to the right as they get older.
I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility that an elected Starmer could keep moving, at least on the authoritarian vs liberal spectrum.
My sense is he's actually quite left-wing but also a careerist so, if nothing else, it will be interesting to see how that plays out in office.
He should go big pretty early - even if it looks to be going further than his campaign indicated he will never have a better opportunity to have the public give that the benefit of the doubt.
OK so I did this on the thread yesterday but a lot of the legal wonks seem to think Trump is going to get convicted in DC, for serious crimes, next year? Then I guess he appeals?
Equally, as far as the primary polling goes, it looks like Trump is going to control most of the delegates at the GOP convention. So he gets to choose whether to run himself, or substitute someone else.
Even if he somehow does beat Biden under these conditions, it's not clear that he can pardon himself.
The move to make if he's not a complete and utter delusional moron would be to put up someone more popular as GOP nominee.
Is he a complete and utter delusional moron? I don't think it's clear either way. It's worth thinking about who he might choose.
Surely in this scenario, there is no-one more popular than Trump, else they would already be nominee. And if Trump were to make way for someone less popular than himself, there is no guarantee he can deliver his base, who, let's not forget, have just declined to vote for this substitute in order to vote for Trump himself.
So who might Trump choose? Someone who has not attacked him personally during the primary campaign, and who has agreed to pardon him. Anyone but DeSantis, so far.
Actually, DeSantis has already publicly stated he would pardon Trump. And been attacked by Trumpists for contemplating the possibility of Trump being found guilty.
DeSantis is the (wrong) answer to the question, "who can tap into GOP resentment enough to have a chance of beating Trump". If Trump gets to pick his question is "who is loyal and can beat Biden". Depending on the balance of those things he could pick Ivanka, or one of several other GOP governors with high approval ratings.
I think the idea that Trump will 'pick' anyone is fanciful. He either gets the nomination, or becomes irrelevant. There isn't really a middle ground.
5km from the border, inching slowly past the long lines of lorries taking their cargo into Ukraine. A noticeable change of atmosphere, everyone who’s been buried deep in their phones and books for the past five hours, now awake, alert, and looking around. Nervousness and trepidation.
I don’t actually think Starmer is a centrist from conviction. He seems to have actually quite left wing instincts, more so than say, Wilson or Callaghan.
What he does have is pragmatism. He’s willing to compromise with the electorate to win power.
Blair and Brown were willing to do that too - the snag was they then never tried to make meaningful reforms with the opportunity they had. They spent so long rebranding and not frightening the horses that Brown in particular wasn’t willing to make radical changes. Meanwhile Blair, frustrated, took it out in misguided foreign policy ventures.
Unfortunately even if Starmer should prove not to have their timidity, it seems unlikely he will have a similar opportunity.
I think Blair actually believed it.
He was (and is) effectively a Christian Democrat, and pretty unique within the Labour movement.
I worry (others may hope) that Starmer is actually going in a journey. I’ve no doubt he has been a true lefty for much of his career but it’s not unknown for people to start way to the left and end up way to the right as they get older.
I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility that an elected Starmer could keep moving, at least on the authoritarian vs liberal spectrum.
My sense is he's actually quite left-wing but also a careerist so, if nothing else, it will be interesting to see how that plays out in office.
He should go big pretty early - even if it looks to be going further than his campaign indicated he will never have a better opportunity to have the public give that the benefit of the doubt.
I keep banging on about it, but that should include their plan to grant councils enhanced compulsory purchase powers for building land. That will be extremely unpopular among a small group of people - and extremely popular if it shows results during the term of his government.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Hard to see Ukraine accepting any compromise unless West desert them
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Indeed. And if the Kerch bridge keeps getting hit that adds another element to making holding it hard.
That bridge is going to be reminiscent of Mr Eagles’ favourite online stepmom, by the time this war is over.
5km from the border, inching slowly past the long lines of lorries taking their cargo into Ukraine. A noticeable change of atmosphere, everyone who’s been buried deep in their phones and books for the past five hours, now awake, alert, and looking around. Nervousness and trepidation.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Hard to see Ukraine accepting any compromise unless West desert them
Quite possibly. But the point is that without their retaking the coast, the war will continue.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Hard to see Ukraine accepting any compromise unless West desert them
It's a complete shitshow Malcolm. It cannot be put back in a box, and I cannot see any scenario that doesn't end in Russia taking a chunk of Ukraine, and all those with a Russian preference moving there, and vice versa. Then rebuilding, and heavily garrisoning each side. It was true 6 months ago, it is true now, and it will be true 6 month's hence, just more people will be dead, more buildings and equipment destroyed, and economies more destabilised.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Hard to see Ukraine accepting any compromise unless West desert them
Quite possibly. But the point is that without their retaking the coast, the war will continue.
Yes, breaking the land line between Russia and Crimea is the key to winning, even if it doesn't end it. Mariupol is the key objective but it looks quite a long way off.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Hard to see Ukraine accepting any compromise unless West desert them
It's a complete shitshow Malcolm. It cannot be put back in a box, and I cannot see any scenario that doesn't end in Russia taking a chunk of Ukraine, and all those with a Russian preference moving there, and vice versa. Then rebuilding, and heavily garrisoning each side. It was true 6 months ago, it is true now, and it will be true 6 month's hence, just more people will be dead, more buildings and equipment destroyed, and economies more destabilised.
I’m inclined to agree. Unless a third party appears who wants some part of Russia, or Putin is replaced. I can’t at moment see that Zelenskyy will be replaced unless the Constitution says one term only.
The problem for Republicans is Trump's first court case isn't until late March 2024 ie after Super Tuesday and the early Republican primaries and caucuses while his second case doesn't start until May. So depending on how long each case takes Trump could have won the nomination before the case concludes.
Yet a guilty verdict and jail sentence if he is convicted could be reached before the November general election and polls show even half of Republican voters would not vote for Trump again were he convicted
The problem for Republicans is they have surrendered their party and principles to a narcissistic toddler who wants to be a dictator.
Re the scheduling I'd expect Trumps lawyers to argue the court cases be postponed if he is the Republican nominee and can see courts going along with that.
Why should the courts agree to a postponement? That would not be standard procedure for any other defendant. “Oh, you’re busy with some voluntary activity in your life so you want your criminal trial delayed? No problem!”
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Hard to see Ukraine accepting any compromise unless West desert them
It's a complete shitshow Malcolm. It cannot be put back in a box, and I cannot see any scenario that doesn't end in Russia taking a chunk of Ukraine, and all those with a Russian preference moving there, and vice versa. Then rebuilding, and heavily garrisoning each side. It was true 6 months ago, it is true now, and it will be true 6 month's hence, just more people will be dead, more buildings and equipment destroyed, and economies more destabilised.
I think you are correct bar some miraculous advances by Ukraine however much I wish to be wrong. I would imagine a Korea situation solution if donor fatigue hits and a negotiated settlement required with a DMZ and Crimea demilitarised, Ukraine can then join NATO as conflict officially over and then the DMZ on Ukraine side backed by a big NATO contingent to ensure Russia can’t try again once they have restocked their military.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Hard to see Ukraine accepting any compromise unless West desert them
Quite possibly. But the point is that without their retaking the coast, the war will continue.
Yes, breaking the land line between Russia and Crimea is the key to winning, even if it doesn't end it. Mariupol is the key objective but it looks quite a long way off.
I think the railway line, which is crucial for Russian logistics, is well to the north of Mariupol.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
That is a quietly expressed view in Kyiv, but it is expressed.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Hard to see Ukraine accepting any compromise unless West desert them
It's a complete shitshow Malcolm. It cannot be put back in a box, and I cannot see any scenario that doesn't end in Russia taking a chunk of Ukraine, and all those with a Russian preference moving there, and vice versa. Then rebuilding, and heavily garrisoning each side. It was true 6 months ago, it is true now, and it will be true 6 month's hence, just more people will be dead, more buildings and equipment destroyed, and economies more destabilised.
I’m inclined to agree. Unless a third party appears who wants some part of Russia, or Putin is replaced. I can’t at moment see that Zelenskyy will be replaced unless the Constitution says one term only.
Russia isn't just illegally occupying eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
Let's not forget the Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (since 2008), and the Moldovan territory of Transnistria (since the early 1990s). There's also a case for mentioning the South Kuriles, claimed by Japan pending a final settlement to the Soviet-Japanese conflict right at the end of WW2.
Headline, "Trump leads by a huge margin" Read the story it is among Republican voters only. Not only that if my maths are correct 57 and 13 = 70 per cent. So Trump scores 57 out of 70? By me calculation he is therefore in the actual 39-40% range overall. The critical 30% may include a few Spence and other candidate voters but most will be stay at home or even vote for Biden. Whatever Trump appears "trumped". Surely another will emerge in the primaries, my money is on Nikki Haley.
The hot war is in Ukraine, but from the Russian point of view, it is only incidentally about Ukraine.
For most of the past two decades, Russia has been seeking to overturn what they see as the Western dominated world order. In that time they have not only used violence: in Moldova, Georgia, Syria and other places, as well as Ukraine itself, but they have also used an arsenal of hybrid or unconventional tactics. The regime sends murder squads to kill opponents, at home, like Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov or Pavel Klebnikov or abroad, like Sasha Litvinenko in London or Yanderbayev in Qatar and hundreds of other examples.
Moscow also uses bribery, blackmail and subversion to bring key people under their control. Some political parties, such as AfD and the French National Rally have received public support, including financial support from Russian sources. Some movements, like the French Gilets Jaunes are believed to be entirely sustained by Russian clandestine operations. These operations undertaken by the Russian secret services are believed to be even larger and more active than during the very worse of the Cold War. It would be extremely naive to assume that the UK was not also the focus of such operations, which is why the relationship of Farage and Salmond with the Russia Today black propaganda channel has been highlighted as a source of concern, and why the decisions by Boris Johnson to hire Dominic Cummings, despite his not receiving full security clearance, and appoint Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords led to considerable dismay in certain quarters.
In short, by a variety of means, including but not limited to full scale war, the Putin government has been launching a large and orchestrated campaign to undermine Western democracy, and reduce its will to counter Russian aggression.
Putin clearly hopes that the return of Trump would destroy the united will of the West to support Ukraine and in the process lead to the collapse of NATO. The danger now in the Ukrainian war is not that the Ukrainian nation will fold, but that the West, demoralized and leaderless, will allow Russia a free hand first in Ukraine, and then elsewhere in order to destroy the EU and then democracy itself.
This is a World War already.
If we are to avoid the victory of corruption and criminal and brutal barbarism, we must understand that this is an existential struggle, not just for Ukraine, but for the West itself and act accordingly. There is nothing we can give Putin that will satisfy him.
Putin must be defeated and destroyed.
Huzzah!
And how do you suggest that we do this, practically?
A good start would be to recognize the reality of the situation, and to send all of the weapons and the financial support to Ukraine that we have promised and which the Germans and the US have delayed.
Then to provide the ZSU with as much advanced equipment as they want, including F-16s and any other kit that they ask for, so that they can establish greater air superiority and then also interdict the ports of Sevastopil and Novorossysk as the Russians have interdicted Odesa until now. This would allow the grain flows to reopen, because the Russian Navy could no longer stop them.
To counter the Wagner coup in Niger by supporting an ECOWAS military intervention. Push back in Syria and Iran, and permit Ukrainian special operations to be used against Iranian drone manufacturers.
Diplomatically to continue the dialogue with China, but make it clear that the West will not permit any form of Russian victory.
Lustrate the cases where individuals or groups in the West have long term relations with Russian organisations, and force them to account for themselves.
Do not give up.
Interesting. And Thankyou for answering my question so thoroughly
Some of this makes sense, some of this is just hopeful dreamland. How are we going to “push back in Syria and Iran”?!
You also seem to suggest we give Ukraine an air force that can outmatch Russia’s. That’s never going to happen, no American President would authorise it for multiple reasons, the Europeans can’t afford it and don’t have the capability
It does need to outmatch Russia all the time, just provide local air superiority, and the Russian Air Force is, how shall we put this..? Not that good. Even Wagner were able to knock some kit out the sky.
As for Iran, up the sanctions, interfere with the trade flows to Russia, allow the UA forces to take down supply routes. Reducing the supply of components for Shaheeds would help a lot.
Headline, "Trump leads by a huge margin" Read the story it is among Republican voters only. Not only that if my maths are correct 57 and 13 = 70 per cent. So Trump scores 57 out of 70? By me calculation he is therefore in the actual 39-40% range overall. The critical 30% may include a few Spence and other candidate voters but most will be stay at home or even vote for Biden. Whatever Trump appears "trumped". Surely another will emerge in the primaries, my money is on Nikki Haley.
The percentage of US voters backing Trump at the Presidential Election of 2020 was less than the percentage of UK voters backing Remain at the EU referendum of 2016.
I don’t actually think Starmer is a centrist from conviction. He seems to have actually quite left wing instincts, more so than say, Wilson or Callaghan.
What he does have is pragmatism. He’s willing to compromise with the electorate to win power.
Blair and Brown were willing to do that too - the snag was they then never tried to make meaningful reforms with the opportunity they had. They spent so long rebranding and not frightening the horses that Brown in particular wasn’t willing to make radical changes. Meanwhile Blair, frustrated, took it out in misguided foreign policy ventures.
Unfortunately even if Starmer should prove not to have their timidity, it seems unlikely he will have a similar opportunity.
I think Blair actually believed it.
He was (and is) effectively a Christian Democrat, and pretty unique within the Labour movement.
I worry (others may hope) that Starmer is actually going in a journey. I’ve no doubt he has been a true lefty for much of his career but it’s not unknown for people to start way to the left and end up way to the right as they get older.
I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility that an elected Starmer could keep moving, at least on the authoritarian vs liberal spectrum.
My sense is he's actually quite left-wing but also a careerist so, if nothing else, it will be interesting to see how that plays out in office.
He should go big pretty early - even if it looks to be going further than his campaign indicated he will never have a better opportunity to have the public give that the benefit of the doubt.
I keep banging on about it, but that should include their plan to grant councils enhanced compulsory purchase powers for building land. That will be extremely unpopular among a small group of people - and extremely popular if it shows results during the term of his government.
Assuming that Starmer wins in 2024, his next target is to make things feel better by 2028- enough to campaign on "lots done, lots still to do". That points to doing the politically brave stuff early on, possibly coupled with a "the Tories' inheritance is even worse than we feared" mantra.
Looking at the methodical way he has worked towards making Labour electable, that sort of planning looks within his skill set. Whereas the Conservatives have been incredibly skittish over the last decade. Only one of the reasons why they really can't do another term of government.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Hard to see Ukraine accepting any compromise unless West desert them
It's a complete shitshow Malcolm. It cannot be put back in a box, and I cannot see any scenario that doesn't end in Russia taking a chunk of Ukraine, and all those with a Russian preference moving there, and vice versa. Then rebuilding, and heavily garrisoning each side. It was true 6 months ago, it is true now, and it will be true 6 month's hence, just more people will be dead, more buildings and equipment destroyed, and economies more destabilised.
I think you are correct bar some miraculous advances by Ukraine however much I wish to be wrong. I would imagine a Korea situation solution if donor fatigue hits and a negotiated settlement required with a DMZ and Crimea demilitarised, Ukraine can then join NATO as conflict officially over and then the DMZ on Ukraine side backed by a big NATO contingent to ensure Russia can’t try again once they have restocked their military.
Well from reading @Leon earlier in the week donor fatigue certainly seems to be something that is starting to happen in the US.
If this war grinds on, and I think it will as neither side seems to really have the upper hand, and Ukraine is largely reliant on the largesse of western nations then I suspect donor fatigue will become more and more mainstream.
The hot war is in Ukraine, but from the Russian point of view, it is only incidentally about Ukraine.
For most of the past two decades, Russia has been seeking to overturn what they see as the Western dominated world order. In that time they have not only used violence: in Moldova, Georgia, Syria and other places, as well as Ukraine itself, but they have also used an arsenal of hybrid or unconventional tactics. The regime sends murder squads to kill opponents, at home, like Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov or Pavel Klebnikov or abroad, like Sasha Litvinenko in London or Yanderbayev in Qatar and hundreds of other examples.
Moscow also uses bribery, blackmail and subversion to bring key people under their control. Some political parties, such as AfD and the French National Rally have received public support, including financial support from Russian sources. Some movements, like the French Gilets Jaunes are believed to be entirely sustained by Russian clandestine operations. These operations undertaken by the Russian secret services are believed to be even larger and more active than during the very worse of the Cold War. It would be extremely naive to assume that the UK was not also the focus of such operations, which is why the relationship of Farage and Salmond with the Russia Today black propaganda channel has been highlighted as a source of concern, and why the decisions by Boris Johnson to hire Dominic Cummings, despite his not receiving full security clearance, and appoint Evgeny Lebedev to the House of Lords led to considerable dismay in certain quarters.
In short, by a variety of means, including but not limited to full scale war, the Putin government has been launching a large and orchestrated campaign to undermine Western democracy, and reduce its will to counter Russian aggression.
Putin clearly hopes that the return of Trump would destroy the united will of the West to support Ukraine and in the process lead to the collapse of NATO. The danger now in the Ukrainian war is not that the Ukrainian nation will fold, but that the West, demoralized and leaderless, will allow Russia a free hand first in Ukraine, and then elsewhere in order to destroy the EU and then democracy itself.
This is a World War already.
If we are to avoid the victory of corruption and criminal and brutal barbarism, we must understand that this is an existential struggle, not just for Ukraine, but for the West itself and act accordingly. There is nothing we can give Putin that will satisfy him.
Putin must be defeated and destroyed.
Huzzah!
And how do you suggest that we do this, practically?
A good start would be to recognize the reality of the situation, and to send all of the weapons and the financial support to Ukraine that we have promised and which the Germans and the US have delayed.
Then to provide the ZSU with as much advanced equipment as they want, including F-16s and any other kit that they ask for, so that they can establish greater air superiority and then also interdict the ports of Sevastopil and Novorossysk as the Russians have interdicted Odesa until now. This would allow the grain flows to reopen, because the Russian Navy could no longer stop them.
To counter the Wagner coup in Niger by supporting an ECOWAS military intervention. Push back in Syria and Iran, and permit Ukrainian special operations to be used against Iranian drone manufacturers.
Diplomatically to continue the dialogue with China, but make it clear that the West will not permit any form of Russian victory.
Lustrate the cases where individuals or groups in the West have long term relations with Russian organisations, and force them to account for themselves.
Do not give up.
Interesting. And Thankyou for answering my question so thoroughly
Some of this makes sense, some of this is just hopeful dreamland. How are we going to “push back in Syria and Iran”?!
You also seem to suggest we give Ukraine an air force that can outmatch Russia’s. That’s never going to happen, no American President would authorise it for multiple reasons, the Europeans can’t afford it and don’t have the capability
It does need to outmatch Russia all the time, just provide local air superiority, and the Russian Air Force is, how shall we put this..? Not that good. Even Wagner were able to knock some kit out the sky.
As for Iran, up the sanctions, interfere with the trade flows to Russia, allow the UA forces to take down supply routes. Reducing the supply of components for Shaheeds would help a lot.
It is a little surprising, that no-one has yet had a good go at that Iranian drone factory. It’s not as if it’s too difficult to blow up stuff in that part of the world, it happens all the time and from several different groups.
I don’t actually think Starmer is a centrist from conviction. He seems to have actually quite left wing instincts, more so than say, Wilson or Callaghan.
What he does have is pragmatism. He’s willing to compromise with the electorate to win power.
Blair and Brown were willing to do that too - the snag was they then never tried to make meaningful reforms with the opportunity they had. They spent so long rebranding and not frightening the horses that Brown in particular wasn’t willing to make radical changes. Meanwhile Blair, frustrated, took it out in misguided foreign policy ventures.
Unfortunately even if Starmer should prove not to have their timidity, it seems unlikely he will have a similar opportunity.
I think Blair actually believed it.
He was (and is) effectively a Christian Democrat, and pretty unique within the Labour movement.
I worry (others may hope) that Starmer is actually going in a journey. I’ve no doubt he has been a true lefty for much of his career but it’s not unknown for people to start way to the left and end up way to the right as they get older.
I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility that an elected Starmer could keep moving, at least on the authoritarian vs liberal spectrum.
My sense is he's actually quite left-wing but also a careerist so, if nothing else, it will be interesting to see how that plays out in office.
He should go big pretty early - even if it looks to be going further than his campaign indicated he will never have a better opportunity to have the public give that the benefit of the doubt.
I keep banging on about it, but that should include their plan to grant councils enhanced compulsory purchase powers for building land. That will be extremely unpopular among a small group of people - and extremely popular if it shows results during the term of his government.
If.
The problem with change is that the opposition is immediate and the achievements can take years to arrive, if at all.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Hard to see Ukraine accepting any compromise unless West desert them
It's a complete shitshow Malcolm. It cannot be put back in a box, and I cannot see any scenario that doesn't end in Russia taking a chunk of Ukraine, and all those with a Russian preference moving there, and vice versa. Then rebuilding, and heavily garrisoning each side. It was true 6 months ago, it is true now, and it will be true 6 month's hence, just more people will be dead, more buildings and equipment destroyed, and economies more destabilised.
I think you are correct bar some miraculous advances by Ukraine however much I wish to be wrong. I would imagine a Korea situation solution if donor fatigue hits and a negotiated settlement required with a DMZ and Crimea demilitarised, Ukraine can then join NATO as conflict officially over and then the DMZ on Ukraine side backed by a big NATO contingent to ensure Russia can’t try again once they have restocked their military.
Well from reading @Leon earlier in the week donor fatigue certainly seems to be something that is starting to happen in the US.
If this war grinds on, and I think it will as neither side seems to really have the upper hand, and Ukraine is largely reliant on the largesse of western nations then I suspect donor fatigue will become more and more mainstream.
There has been much unwise talk of offering an 'off ramp' for Putin. However we should have done a lot more to promote the idea of an off ramp for Russia. One analysis I saw showed that a lot of Russians think the war is a bad thing but are afraid of losing, therefore they have to fight on. But what are they afraid of? No-one suggests they would face losing any of their 1991 territory or Versailles style punishment. As things stand their assets in the west are frozen and of no use to them.
Withdrawing their forces and then reestablishing their relations with the west would seem to be in their best interests. When I hear talk about the Russian economy defying expectations, my question would be 'where is the money coming from?' Sadly they probably aren't well informed on what happened with West Germany after WW2.
Saudi Arabia holding this conference is an interesting one. Have they decided that Russia is an unreliable (OPEC+) partner?
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Hard to see Ukraine accepting any compromise unless West desert them
It's a complete shitshow Malcolm. It cannot be put back in a box, and I cannot see any scenario that doesn't end in Russia taking a chunk of Ukraine, and all those with a Russian preference moving there, and vice versa. Then rebuilding, and heavily garrisoning each side. It was true 6 months ago, it is true now, and it will be true 6 month's hence, just more people will be dead, more buildings and equipment destroyed, and economies more destabilised.
I think you are correct bar some miraculous advances by Ukraine however much I wish to be wrong. I would imagine a Korea situation solution if donor fatigue hits and a negotiated settlement required with a DMZ and Crimea demilitarised, Ukraine can then join NATO as conflict officially over and then the DMZ on Ukraine side backed by a big NATO contingent to ensure Russia can’t try again once they have restocked their military.
Well from reading @Leon earlier in the week donor fatigue certainly seems to be something that is starting to happen in the US.
If this war grinds on, and I think it will as neither side seems to really have the upper hand, and Ukraine is largely reliant on the largesse of western nations then I suspect donor fatigue will become more and more mainstream.
The problem is that Trumps personal vendetta against the Bidens includes Ukraine, because of the stuff that led to his first impeachment.
The MAGA crowd want to pull funding and surplus weapons from Ukraine in order to get back at Biden. They want to cut down the tree because they don't like the bird singing in it.
In terms of value for money, and at considerable cost in Ukrainian blood, the USA has defanged and declawed the Russian bear, eliminating
There has been much unwise talk of offering an 'off ramp' for Putin. However we should have done a lot more to promote the idea of an off ramp for Russia. One analysis I saw showed that a lot of Russians think the war is a bad thing but are afraid of losing, therefore they have to fight on. But what are they afraid of? No-one suggests they would face losing any of their 1991 territory or Versailles style punishment. As things stand their assets in the west are frozen and of no use to them.
Withdrawing their forces and then reestablishing their relations with the west would seem to be in their best interests. When I hear talk about the Russian economy defying expectations, my question would be 'where is the money coming from?' Sadly they probably aren't well informed on what happened with West Germany after WW2.
Saudi Arabia holding this conference is an interesting one. Have they decided that Russia is an unreliable (OPEC+) partner?
Russia’s main source of revenue is black market oil, which goes out through China and India at a substantial discount, and ends up being washed back through OPEC countries.
OPEC are trying to decide whether to cut production to keep up prices, or to up production so that Putin’s discounted oil becomes worthless. As a bit of background, many OPEC countries are keen importers of food from Ukraine, and not close to self-sufficiency. Thinking that your country may be short of food, does tend to sharpen your thinking somewhat. There’s also a ban on rice exports from India at the moment, after a poor harvest, which doesn’t exactly help.
"Personally, I’m less sure of Mr. Trump’s legal fate. Prosecutors will soon run up against the epistemological challenges of explaining and convicting a man whose behavior defies and undermines the structures and logic of civic life."
"...the prosecutors’ story of his grand scheming will most likely require them to present a figure of the former president — calculated, methodical, knowing and cunning — that none of his supporters or anyone who has ever met him or reasonable jurors and perhaps even the world at large would recognize."
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
No. “Potemkin” villages are themselves a myth
Read more
And the idea Russia didn’t build Odesa is infantile. Look at it
And the Ukrainians do look and sound awfully Russian. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing
Putin has turned a natural brother into a mortal enemy
That's because he and most Russians don't see them as brothers, but subjects. Good way to turn friendly disposed peoples into enemies.
Before the start of the recent war, I was told here that to describe Russia or China as empires was “to make the concept of empire meaningless”
If you rule a collection of cultures & counties by force, methodically demolishing their identity, and ruling them as second class citizens in their own land - that’s an empire.
The imperial mentality is exactly what Cicero describes above.
If the only way to “keep” your subjects is to channel General Dwyer, you are running an Empire. End of.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Hard to see Ukraine accepting any compromise unless West desert them
Quite possibly. But the point is that without their retaking the coast, the war will continue.
Yes, breaking the land line between Russia and Crimea is the key to winning, even if it doesn't end it. Mariupol is the key objective but it looks quite a long way off.
I think the railway line, which is crucial for Russian logistics, is well to the north of Mariupol.
And it is now in range of Ukrainian artillery. But road transport is important too.
The problem for Republicans is Trump's first court case isn't until late March 2024 ie after Super Tuesday and the early Republican primaries and caucuses while his second case doesn't start until May. So depending on how long each case takes Trump could have won the nomination before the case concludes.
Yet a guilty verdict and jail sentence if he is convicted could be reached before the November general election and polls show even half of Republican voters would not vote for Trump again were he convicted
The problem for Republicans is they have surrendered their party and principles to a narcissistic toddler who wants to be a dictator.
Re the scheduling I'd expect Trumps lawyers to argue the court cases be postponed if he is the Republican nominee and can see courts going along with that.
Why should the courts agree to a postponement? That would not be standard procedure for any other defendant. “Oh, you’re busy with some voluntary activity in your life so you want your criminal trial delayed? No problem!”
Courts grant postponements all the time for reasons valid and spurious, US court cases often take forever and Trump is a master of court delay. The US Justice department has an informal 60 day rule that they wont start new investigations into candidates before an election so similar (different but similar) already exists. I can imagine Trump arguing a court handicapping a Presidential election by denying one of the main two candidates campaigning time is unreasonable vs a few months delay.
Or he might come up with something completely different, but he will almost certainly ask and I wouldn't be surprised if some delays are accepted. Of course he has several cases at once, so a delay in one case wouldn't necessarily create a delay in all. Perhaps he can schedule them in his favour of least likely to be conviced, or least serious first as an alternative.
I saw the first episode of Chris Packham's Earth last night on Iplayer. It was very good, if simplified to the level of incoherence in places. He used the extinction of the Permian era to highlight various issues arising today but he did so in a much more constructive way, pointing out that but for that and later extinctions we would not be here! Worth a watch.
Edit, it came to mind because both CO2 and SO2 played major roles in that extinction.
Yes, this was fascinating. The “good” news about this sort of termination shock is that the heat in the Atlantic is probably superficial. This is about surface heating from eliminating low level clouds, rather than deep ocean warming through drawdown (though that drawdown will happen if the surface remains warm).
You only need one Trump cult member on any jury and that will end up with no verdict being reached . I don’t expect Trump to be found guilty in any of the cases .
It’s also hard to find anyone who hasn’t already made their mind up about Trumps actions .
You could argue that a fair trial isn’t possible but Trump bears a lot of the responsibility for that.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
The next claim would be the Baltic, Poland, Germany- They will not stop with Crimea, nor Vohlynia, nor Saxony... They must be stopped here and now.
It is hard to see how Russia's government could survive losing Crimea without at least attempting to escalate still further, it is easy to see how international partners would pressure Ukraine into accepting the status quo there (even though it provides a launch pad for any future invasion attempts), especially if it was the only part that was left in that limbo.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
If Ukraine retakes the Black Sea coast, holding Crimea without their consent becomes extremely difficult. That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
Hard to see Ukraine accepting any compromise unless West desert them
Quite possibly. But the point is that without their retaking the coast, the war will continue.
Yes, breaking the land line between Russia and Crimea is the key to winning, even if it doesn't end it. Mariupol is the key objective but it looks quite a long way off.
I think the railway line, which is crucial for Russian logistics, is well to the north of Mariupol.
And it is now in range of Ukrainian artillery. But road transport is important too.
[Incidentally, having read the thing, it appears the spike is caused as an unintentional side-effect of preventing SO2 pollution. Having noted the deleritous effects of accidental geoengineering, he uses it as an excuse for deliberate geoengineering. Which is stupid. IIRC there's a phenomenon whereby trying to control an indicator with a time delay results in you making it worse]
"Personally, I’m less sure of Mr. Trump’s legal fate. Prosecutors will soon run up against the epistemological challenges of explaining and convicting a man whose behavior defies and undermines the structures and logic of civic life."
"...the prosecutors’ story of his grand scheming will most likely require them to present a figure of the former president — calculated, methodical, knowing and cunning — that none of his supporters or anyone who has ever met him or reasonable jurors and perhaps even the world at large would recognize."
The problem for Republicans is Trump's first court case isn't until late March 2024 ie after Super Tuesday and the early Republican primaries and caucuses while his second case doesn't start until May. So depending on how long each case takes Trump could have won the nomination before the case concludes.
Yet a guilty verdict and jail sentence if he is convicted could be reached before the November general election and polls show even half of Republican voters would not vote for Trump again were he convicted
The problem for Republicans is they have surrendered their party and principles to a narcissistic toddler who wants to be a dictator.
Re the scheduling I'd expect Trumps lawyers to argue the court cases be postponed if he is the Republican nominee and can see courts going along with that.
Why should the courts agree to a postponement? That would not be standard procedure for any other defendant. “Oh, you’re busy with some voluntary activity in your life so you want your criminal trial delayed? No problem!”
Courts grant postponements all the time for reasons valid and spurious, US court cases often take forever and Trump is a master of court delay. The US Justice department has an informal 60 day rule that they wont start new investigations into candidates before an election so similar (different but similar) already exists. I can imagine Trump arguing a court handicapping a Presidential election by denying one of the main two candidates campaigning time is unreasonable vs a few months delay.
Or he might come up with something completely different, but he will almost certainly ask and I wouldn't be surprised if some delays are accepted. Of course he has several cases at once, so a delay in one case wouldn't necessarily create a delay in all. Perhaps he can schedule them in his favour of least likely to be conviced, or least serious first as an alternative.
At what point will some GOP wannabe have the courage to say "Do you want your campaign donations to fight Biden, or to pay Trumps' legal fees?"
"Personally, I’m less sure of Mr. Trump’s legal fate. Prosecutors will soon run up against the epistemological challenges of explaining and convicting a man whose behavior defies and undermines the structures and logic of civic life."
"...the prosecutors’ story of his grand scheming will most likely require them to present a figure of the former president — calculated, methodical, knowing and cunning — that none of his supporters or anyone who has ever met him or reasonable jurors and perhaps even the world at large would recognize."
Not a great look that a global anti-pollution measure has backfired in such a spectacular way if that is what's happened. And hardly lends credence to the argument that we should grind the UK economy to a halt to reduce CO2 emissions, when other things can make such a huge and virtually instantaneous difference.
The problem for Republicans is Trump's first court case isn't until late March 2024 ie after Super Tuesday and the early Republican primaries and caucuses while his second case doesn't start until May. So depending on how long each case takes Trump could have won the nomination before the case concludes.
Yet a guilty verdict and jail sentence if he is convicted could be reached before the November general election and polls show even half of Republican voters would not vote for Trump again were he convicted
The problem for Republicans is they have surrendered their party and principles to a narcissistic toddler who wants to be a dictator.
Re the scheduling I'd expect Trumps lawyers to argue the court cases be postponed if he is the Republican nominee and can see courts going along with that.
Why should the courts agree to a postponement? That would not be standard procedure for any other defendant. “Oh, you’re busy with some voluntary activity in your life so you want your criminal trial delayed? No problem!”
Courts grant postponements all the time for reasons valid and spurious, US court cases often take forever and Trump is a master of court delay. The US Justice department has an informal 60 day rule that they wont start new investigations into candidates before an election so similar (different but similar) already exists. I can imagine Trump arguing a court handicapping a Presidential election by denying one of the main two candidates campaigning time is unreasonable vs a few months delay.
Or he might come up with something completely different, but he will almost certainly ask and I wouldn't be surprised if some delays are accepted. Of course he has several cases at once, so a delay in one case wouldn't necessarily create a delay in all. Perhaps he can schedule them in his favour of least likely to be conviced, or least serious first as an alternative.
At what point will some GOP wannabe have the courage to say "Do you want your campaign donations to fight Biden, or to pay Trumps' legal fees?"
The author does rather miss the point that this is a drama, not a documentary, and none of the inaccuracies distort the truth - like Third Class being locked below deck on Titanic, for example.
One legitimate criticism of Oppenheimer - the complete erasure of the Anglo-Canadian contribution- goes unremarked.
Probably it would go nuclear if Crimea was seriously close to being overrun
I definitely think RF would threaten it if Crimea was in peril. Maybe a 'test' detonation over the Black Sea. That would be enough to cause utter chaos in the financial markets and Biden would be on WhatsApp to Z telling him to chill the fuck out.
Yes. That’s what I think. Crimea is the red line
I’ve just been reading Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs and it is highly illustrative of the psychological importance of the South Ukrainian coast - especially Odessa - even more Crimea - to Russia’s self image
Catherine’s lover Potemkin was buried in the town he founded. Kherson. The Russians removed his bones as they retreated
So why did Putin flatten Odessa's cathedral last week?
Because he’s a mobster.
And the idea Crimea would be some nuclear red line seems predicated on Putin and his goons having a deep emotional attachment to it as an ancient motherland (which it isn’t and never was, even under the Tsars), rather than simply some turf his crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014.
In February 2022 I was all in on contingency planning to flee the country if things turned nuclear. I had a location analysis spreadsheet. Now I realise the Eastern Europeans and Baltics knew what they were taking about while the rest of us ignored them for decades. Russia’s just a bog standard bully that cowers when people stand up to it. Look at the reaction to Wagner’s mutiny.
You are absolutely and cluelessly wrong about Crimea. Read some history
It’s up there with historical British possessions like Ireland or the United States. Or French Algeria. Somewhere they have a long history of owning or coveting, but always in reality a colony.
That’s better than your first attempt. Let’s remind ourselves what you said
Crimea is “simply some turf Putin’s crew picked up by a stroke of good luck in 2014”
But you’re still not quite there. Many of these southern Ukrainian/Crimean towns were tiny villages or uninhabited swampland. Russians literally built them from nothing
Eg Kherson, Odesa
Catherine seized Crimea from the ottomans, Potemkin built it up. It’s been Russian since the late 18th century. It was Russian in the USSR until kruschev handed it to the ukes for reasons of internal politics
Catherine called Crimea “Russia’s piece of paradise”
There is a serious emotional attachment to Crimea, in Russia. They won’t give it up now without a massive fight, or they will drop a tactical nuke on some island and scare everyone into a truce as world economies collapse in panic
Except that it is a national myth. Potemkin did not build villages in the wilderness, he built fake villages with fake peasants. The people in South Ukraine were and are Ukrainian. The primary population of Crimea, until 1942 were Crimean Tatars. Stalin murdered them on an industrial scale. Crimea was allocated to the UkrSSR in 1954, because it was largely depopulated. It wasn´t some absurd Russian gesture of good will.
So the regime may manufacture some propaganda, but the Russian claim is as stupid as a British claim on, say, Tuscany or the Dordogne would be.
No. “Potemkin” villages are themselves a myth
Read more
And the idea Russia didn’t build Odesa is infantile. Look at it
And the Ukrainians do look and sound awfully Russian. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing
Putin has turned a natural brother into a mortal enemy
That's because he and most Russians don't see them as brothers, but subjects. Good way to turn friendly disposed peoples into enemies.
Before the start of the recent war, I was told here that to describe Russia or China as empires was “to make the concept of empire meaningless”
If you rule a collection of cultures & counties by force, methodically demolishing their identity, and ruling them as second class citizens in their own land - that’s an empire.
The imperial mentality is exactly what Cicero describes above.
If the only way to “keep” your subjects is to channel General Dwyer, you are running an Empire. End of.
You only need one Trump cult member on any jury and that will end up with no verdict being reached . I don’t expect Trump to be found guilty in any of the cases .
It’s also hard to find anyone who hasn’t already made their mind up about Trumps actions .
You could argue that a fair trial isn’t possible but Trump bears a lot of the responsibility for that.
The DC trial is in DC. Trump got 5% there, and they'll strike the outlier jurors.
Comments
Read more
And the idea Russia didn’t build Odesa is infantile. Look at it
And the Ukrainians do look and sound awfully Russian. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing
Putin has turned a natural brother into a mortal enemy
I meant to add, btw, that the answer to that age-old question 'Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to go to university?" is because the Vikings didn't have universities.
There are multiple conspiracy theories surrounding
that weird non-coup
I’ve no idea if any of them are right but it was certainly a bizarre episode
He was (and is) effectively a Christian Democrat, and pretty unique within the Labour movement.
Time to call these morons bluff , twist or fold.
He is perfectly happy to let them do it.
Seized by Britain centuries ago. But then also settled by Britain, built up by Britain, and with at least half the population feeling highly British (but the other half very much not)
Then add sunshine and beaches and vines and make it more covetable
I don’t think it’s beyond the realms of possibility that an elected Starmer could keep moving, at least on the authoritarian vs liberal spectrum.
Last night I was in my favourite quiet beer bar in the Old City of Tallinn. A young Russian at the next table started a phone call where in Russian he belittled and insulted the Estonians. Practically shouting down the phone. It was clear that he was in Estonia avoiding the draft, yet instead of behaving politely he was boorish and obnoxious. In the end he stepped out to the Off sales and brought a can back in, at which point the barman asked him quietly to leave, which with a few confused harumphs, he did.
My eye met a couple with a young baby and we smiled and in Estonian we all thanked the barkeep.
"What can you expect? They never change" He replied.
You suggest Odesa as a Russian foundation, but it actually was the site of a Greek settlement of as early as the 6th Century BC, and later a Genoese and Ottoman port, I also raise you the Circassian genocide, which killed or exiled an entire nation of over a million people, and incidentally ultimately brought the Circassian family of Sikandar Kemal, aka Boris Johnson, to our shores.
They never change.
The Latvians are already asking these people to leave. The Estonians will not be far behind.
More like Germany wanting Alsace or Danzig back.
All the social changes that are believed to have come out of it, such as greater home rule for Ireland, votes for women, and greater rights for workers, were already in play before it started.
It really was the most tremendous waste. But, once Germany undertook the Schlieffen Plan, we had no choice but to fight because the alternative - France defeated and all the low countries dominated by them - would have been even worse.
'Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales/Crimea!'
Did Russian hearts bleed after 1991 when Crimea was part of an independent Ukraine? Do you really think they would risk the collapse of the entire Russian federation for a small territory where people like to go on holiday? I don't buy it. And it is NOT historically Russian. Up to the 1950s it was inhabited by Crimean Tatars.
Yet a guilty verdict and jail sentence if he is convicted could be reached before the November general election and polls show even half of Republican voters would not vote for Trump again were he convicted
There should be a general legal principle that if something is constructed or sold which complies with current legislation (as all these cars did), it can't be banned or restricted in favour of a product meeting newer standards for a period of say double the item's median working life. Possibly with a clause allowing such restrictions provided that the government compensates owners with 100% of the new price (not the current value) to allow the fixing of cases where the government has really stuffed up the regulations - but with a big financial disincentive to deter governments from doing this without a really good reason.
So much of the problem with this country is the obsession with instant results - thus ten years ago we couldn't build the new nuclear power stations we need because they would only just be finished now. The emission standards are the mirror image of this issue - we've got to impose lots of expensive restrictions now, because despite air quality having steadily improved for the last 50 years, we can't wait another 5 whilst the process carries on.
economic liberal and a
foreign policy
neoconservative. Starmer is a social democrat like Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband and closer to most in the Labour Party ideologically than Blair was even if not a socialist like Corbyn
"Imran Khan: Pakistan ex-PM given three-year jail sentence - BBC News" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-66414696
Re the scheduling I'd expect Trumps lawyers to argue the court cases be postponed if he is the Republican nominee and can see courts going along with that.
But the basic point is irrefutable - if you succeed in one invasion to acquire territory you will believe you can do it again, even though in this scenario hundreds of thousands of lives were wasted on failed attempts to expand that area further.
His second hope as you note appears to be to work to ensure any cases take place after the election, or at least after he has already got the nomination, or as good as. That, on top of his arrogance, is presumably party behind his proxies desperately demanding the no hopers drop out now, so he is effectively already nominee even if not officially.
And given the wheels of justice do run slowly, and the myriad of challenges that are surely possible, that second hope is partly realised even if he cannot get all cases pushed until after the election. What does he care if that screws the GOP? (Assuming it does for the moment).
In the 13th C, for example, the Mongols depopulated significant parts of the area.
So @eddieizzard has jumped the gun.
Why?
Because it's Brighton Pride weekend, and there are plenty of photo opps available.
https://twitter.com/runthinkwrite/status/1687743940282200064?s=20
There have been efforts to build a free Ukraine since the end of the 19thC - and the Holodomor is not something visited on you by a 'natural brother'.
The relationship has been a colonial one for centuries.
If we get to the point where Ukraine can push for Crimea, I assume they'll have to do it with whatever they have built up at that point, without further significant assistance. I really hope they manage it oneday.
That might be a basis for a negotiation over its status. And indeed for a peace agreement.
economically social
democrat, socially centrist
and a foreign policy
pragmatist note too he opposed the Iraq War and on
Brexit is now more accepting of it than Blair too
He either gets the nomination, or becomes irrelevant. There isn't really a middle ground.
That will be extremely unpopular among a small group of people - and extremely popular if it shows results during the term of his government.
But the point is that without their retaking the coast, the war will continue.
I can’t at moment see that Zelenskyy will be replaced unless the Constitution says one term only.
Let's not forget the Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (since 2008), and the Moldovan territory of Transnistria (since the early 1990s). There's also a case for mentioning the South Kuriles, claimed by Japan pending a final settlement to the Soviet-Japanese conflict right at the end of WW2.
Read the story it is among Republican voters only. Not only that if my maths are correct 57 and 13 = 70 per cent. So Trump scores 57 out of 70? By me calculation he is therefore in the actual 39-40% range overall. The critical 30% may include a few Spence and other candidate voters but most will be stay at home or even vote for Biden. Whatever Trump appears "trumped". Surely another will emerge in the primaries, my money is on Nikki Haley.
As for Iran, up the sanctions, interfere with the trade flows to Russia, allow the UA forces to take down supply routes. Reducing the supply of components for Shaheeds would help a lot.
46.8% versus 48.1%
Just let that sink in.
Looking at the methodical way he has worked towards making Labour electable, that sort of planning looks within his skill set. Whereas the Conservatives have been incredibly skittish over the last decade. Only one of the reasons why they really can't do another term of government.
If this war grinds on, and I think it will as neither side seems to really have the upper hand, and Ukraine is largely reliant on the largesse of western nations then I suspect donor fatigue will become more and more mainstream.
The problem with change is that the opposition is immediate and the achievements can take years to arrive, if at all.
https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0uzv4jn8hNdxc7gZKiDvTAXyRkdcFkSMCFVyAdFCipSYijTbg8aehjWEoNdFZ8R7gl
are anywhere near accurate then Russia ultimately runs out of equipment.
The Russian army has already ceased to be capable of effective offensive action, at some point it will cease to be capable of effective defense.
Withdrawing their forces and then reestablishing their relations with the west would seem to be in their best interests. When I hear talk about the Russian economy defying expectations, my question would be 'where is the money coming from?' Sadly they probably aren't well informed on what happened with West Germany after WW2.
Saudi Arabia holding this conference is an interesting one. Have they decided that Russia is an unreliable (OPEC+) partner?
The MAGA crowd want to pull funding and surplus weapons from Ukraine in order to get back at Biden. They want to cut down the tree because they don't like the bird singing in it.
In terms of value for money, and at considerable cost in Ukrainian blood, the USA has defanged and declawed the Russian bear, eliminating
OPEC are trying to decide whether to cut production to keep up prices, or to up production so that Putin’s discounted oil becomes worthless. As a bit of background, many OPEC countries are keen importers of food from Ukraine, and not close to self-sufficiency. Thinking that your country may be short of food, does tend to sharpen your thinking somewhat. There’s also a ban on rice exports from India at the moment, after a poor harvest, which doesn’t exactly help.
"...the prosecutors’ story of his grand scheming will most likely require them to present a figure of the former president — calculated, methodical, knowing and cunning — that none of his supporters or anyone who has ever met him or reasonable jurors and perhaps even the world at large would recognize."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/opinion/trump-indictment-fraud.html
https://twitter.com/hankgreen/status/1687535525169930241?s=61&t=s0ae0IFncdLS1Dc7J0P_TQ
If you rule a collection of cultures & counties by force, methodically demolishing their identity, and ruling them as second class citizens in their own land - that’s an empire.
The imperial mentality is exactly what Cicero describes above.
If the only way to “keep” your subjects is to channel General Dwyer, you are running an Empire. End of.
Or he might come up with something completely different, but he will almost certainly ask and I wouldn't be surprised if some delays are accepted. Of course he has several cases at once, so a delay in one case wouldn't necessarily create a delay in all. Perhaps he can schedule them in his favour of least likely to be conviced, or least serious first as an alternative.
Edit, it came to mind because both CO2 and SO2 played major roles in that extinction.
It’s also hard to find anyone who hasn’t already made their mind up about Trumps actions .
You could argue that a fair trial isn’t possible but Trump bears a lot of the responsibility for that.
[Incidentally, having read the thing, it appears the spike is caused as an unintentional side-effect of preventing SO2 pollution. Having noted the deleritous effects of accidental geoengineering, he uses it as an excuse for deliberate geoengineering. Which is stupid. IIRC there's a phenomenon whereby trying to control an indicator with a time delay results in you making it worse]
https://twitter.com/GovChristie/status/1686784012109463552?t=3nI_PXeB2EuqheglznB3aA&s=19
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/07/29/opinion-nolans-oppenheimer-marred-by-5-historical-inaccuracies/
The author does rather miss the point that this is a drama, not a documentary, and none of the inaccuracies distort the truth - like Third Class being locked below deck on Titanic, for example.
One legitimate criticism of Oppenheimer - the complete erasure of the Anglo-Canadian contribution- goes unremarked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Dyer
Michael O'Dwyer was the Governor of Punjab at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_O'Dwyer