Kate Osamor removed as a Labour MP for suggesting Gaza might be genocide. But Azhar Ali, the @UKLabour Rochdale candidate, accuses Israel of deliberately allowing the October 7 massacre and he gets full support.
This can’t be right. According to the PB labour fanatics the only anger over this is synthetic Tory anger.
Netenyahu desperately wanting a reason to destroy Gaza isn’t that far fetched. Ali’s comments will resonate with quite a few voters even though it might seem unpalatable !
That’s not what he said.
We also have left wing labour MPs suspended for saying far less.
In your world it is all fake offence from so called PB Tories. However there is offence across the political divide at, what are, offensive comments.
His comments were offensive but not anti -Semitic .
At this rate saying you don’t like knishes will result in accusations of anti-Semitism !
Accusing Netenyahu and the IDF of allowing an attack or not assisting quickly enough to aid the people effected so you can then pulverize Gaza is just that .
The fault is with those not the Jewish people as a whole .
How does that square with your comment:
"The biggest recruiting sergeant for anti-Semitism is Netenyahu and his disgusting cabinet."
Because some people can’t distinguish between the actions of a corrupt cesspit administration and the wider Jewish population.
Which is my point. And why Netenyahu is a handmaiden for anti-Semitism.
There's a contrary angle to this: anti-Semitism is a handmaiden for Netenyahu and his fellow travellers. As long as Jewish people feel they don't have anywhere safe in the world, the desire for a 'safe' Israel will exist.
Do you believe that Netanyahu makes Israel safer?
Do you believe that when Palestinians are turfed out of their homes for another settlement, that makes the State of Israel more secure?
Or do you think it radicalizes yet another Muslin to hate Israel with all consuming passion.
I'm not saying - obviously - that anti-semitism would disappear if the settlement building did. But I strongly believe that if the Palestinian people have no hope, then any energy they have will be channeled into hurting who they see as the source of that hopelessness.
That is - I believe - an unstable equilibrium.
They were given Gaza as a test case. I would have to google how often/long missiles have been fired at Israel since 2006 but I would guess it pre-dates October 6th.
I absolutely think that illegal settlements should be stopped, dismantled even, in the West Bank but it seems that throughout history Israel has adopted the sheep/lamb approach. If nothing they do is going to make a difference then fuck it, they might as well go for broke. They did this in the wars of 1947-48 and seem to be doing it again now.
The flaw in your argument appears to be the claim that "throughout history Israel has adopted the sheep/lamb approach".
Whisper it quietly, but a certain popstar will be eligible for the Presidency when the inauguration takes place. It could be taylor made for Biden to stand down at the Chicago convention for her
🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead widens to eighteen points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 27% (-) Lab 45% (+2) Lib Dem 8% (-2) Other 19% (-1) Fieldwork: 9th - 12th February 2024 Sample: 1,977 GB adults (Changes from 2nd - 5th February 2024)
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
But what if they do seek our advice?
Look at it this way
Imagine Ukraine is your best friend at school and he's in a fight.He's already had a leg broken and lost a few teeth, but he will survive. He is incredibly brave, and the attack on him was unprovoked. Unfortunately he is fighting an absolute lying thug who is three times his size and known for brutal cruelty
The fighting has reached a stalemate, the thug is hinting at calling it a draw, but if it kicks off again it is much more likely your friend will lose both eyes and an arm, rather than the thug losing . The friend turns to you and asks for advice. You are his friend. What do you say? Maybe nothing? Say: it's up to you?
Or as a good friend is it better to say, Look, you're gonna lose both eyes if you fight on, take the draw for now and then we can go home and I will teach you judo
And, if the bullying thug makes clear that he's going to beat the crap out of your friend, and his relative that he already has in his power, what then?
Almost certainly Putins ceasefire conditions would include keeping the currently occupied territories, regime change in Kyiv, and ending of Western nations military and financial aid.
So the bully would not be allowing judo lessons or a gun, but rather seeing the victim have both arms broken.
This is what I thought when I went to Ukraine last summer. I saw all the men on crutches, arms in slings, etc, and I thought: wow, Ukraine is going to run out of men. I said so on this site
And here we are
To be fair Russia is also running out of a lot of men too
But they have so many more
I have found a debate from August last year when I painstakingly tried to explain all this to PB. Lots of PB-ers accused me of mongering doom-porn
"Because you are continuously purveying doom porn.
Claims that Ukraine are running out of people just isn't backed by reality and is Putinist propaganda we should get from those registering on a Saturday for 15-40 posts in before the ban, not you"
Leon replied: . "I’ve been to Ukraine and I’ve seen all the men on crutches, missing limbs, etc. They are now sending men in their 50s to the front line. They are absolutely having difficulties with manpower
Because Russia is 3-4 times as big in population, and now Ukraine is trying to attack through the worst minefields in military history"
That's right: Ukraine is struggling to get troops to fill the front line.
But so is Russia.
You are absolutely right to point out Ukraine's difficulties, but you are curiously blind to Russia's.
And defeat is so much worse for Ukraine than for Russia, that I suspect you will find they will keep being able to find men and women - exhausted and elderly and injured etc - for far, far longer than you might expect.
Is Russia undermanned? Maybe, but
"Serhiy was injured last autumn in Avdiivka, where the fighting has been fierce and even Ukrainian officials admit their army is outgunned and outmanned.
One source put the difference at 8-1, in Russia's favour."
Moreover, Putin doesn't really need to attack. He can defend what he has, and rely on Ukraine to give up, out of sheer exhaustion, because Ukraine no longer has the manpower or strength to mount another large offensive
The war is frozen, and Ukraine cannot win. They might as well seek a ceasefire and save what few soldiers they have left
Russia is only 3x bigger than Ukraine.
And holding territory you've captured is not free. You need troops to hold down the (unhappy) local population. Look at Northern Ireland: even though 55% of the population want us (against - what - 10% in Ukraine), it was incredibly expensive for us.
Ukraine has close to one million men under arms.
A few weeks ago, the BBC reported that at the start of the war, the typical Russian death was a 21 year old professional soldier. Now, it's a 34 year old convict.
No army recruits convicts, unless it has no alternative.
You've always been a cheerleader for Ukraine (and fair enough), but your many predictions of their advances and successes have not come true, have they? Not since early 2023
The counter offensive was a complete failure, and they lost 100,000s of men killed and injured, for no significant territorial gain whatsoever
Given that, how do you suggest they proceed? There is no way for them to win a ground offensive, but they can maybe defend what they have
But if all they are doing is defending what they have, then they might as well seek a truce or an armistice no? Then rebuild, and save all those lives
The only alternative I can see is that they try and hold their ground AND fight Russia in more unconventional ways, attacking the navy (as they have done with great success), maybe fomenting unrest in Russia (much less successful)
But all that risks Russia slowly grinding them down and Russia is still bombing Ukrainian cities daily, it has not run out of drones and missiles, as we have been assured was immiment, every week since about November 2022
Plenty of invaded nations have kept going in terrible circumstances, and have emerged victorious. Invading is harder than defending, and eventually they sicken the invader.
Given the choice for Ukranians is to flee as refugees, submit to the butchers of Bucha or fight on, then none of the options is great.
War weariness doesn't always make for a desire to surrender, in the absence of military defeat. All the major powers in 1917 had it to some degree, but all bar Russia fought on.
By 1917 the Allies knew the Americans were coming, that's a huge difference
Without that, who knows. France was close to seeking peace, as its armies mutinied after Verdun
Ridiculous amount of faux outrage by some Tories .
Louise Ellman MP supports the Labour decision to support Ali .
Simple fact is, it’s doing Labour more political and reputational damage standing by him, than cutting him loose. After such a distasteful comment he deserves to be cut loose. He said something far more disgusting than what got Long-Bailey the sack, so the lack of consistency is going off like a flipping Klaxon.
The Labour Party - all political party’s - need to make it loud and clear, British democracy isn’t about being a great representative of your community by believing in the same offensive crackpot conspiracy theories of the constituents, but that no one can be an MP and legislator if they believe in offensive crackpot conspiracy theories.
A lot of MPs would lose the whip if you enforced that idea. Not saying it’s a bad idea, just that a lot of MPs would lose the whip.
Really? Apart from this one Labour candidate, how many MPs can you name pushing crackpot and insulting conspiracytheories?
Doesn’t David Treddinick support homeopathy?
Homeopathy isn’t a conspiracy theory!
😊
Although your original post could reasonably be read as “crackpot theories and insulting conspiracy theories”
Whisper it quietly, but a certain popstar will be eligible for the Presidency when the inauguration takes place. It could be taylor made for Biden to stand down at the Chicago convention for her
Little waves on a sky blue sea, under a cloudless blue sky; what a beautiful day. One could almost believe that spring is here already.
Since my early 30s, I have been increasingly aware of - and enjoyed - the season of late winter. The first evidence of nature waking up; the occasional mildness; the feeling that the darkest days are finally behind us. This morning was the first weekday this year I have got up in the light. It's not spring yet; but winter's days are clearly numbered.
Hawthorn in leaf: ✓ Blackthorn in flower: ✓ (Seen yesterday)
I don't actually care what temperature it is - you can always put on more clothes. It was definitely light enough today to start thinking of Spring.
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
But what if they do seek our advice?
Look at it this way
Imagine Ukraine is your best friend at school and he's in a fight.He's already had a leg broken and lost a few teeth, but he will survive. He is incredibly brave, and the attack on him was unprovoked. Unfortunately he is fighting an absolute lying thug who is three times his size and known for brutal cruelty
The fighting has reached a stalemate, the thug is hinting at calling it a draw, but if it kicks off again it is much more likely your friend will lose both eyes and an arm, rather than the thug losing . The friend turns to you and asks for advice. You are his friend. What do you say? Maybe nothing? Say: it's up to you?
Or as a good friend is it better to say, Look, you're gonna lose both eyes if you fight on, take the draw for now and then we can go home and I will teach you judo
And, if the bullying thug makes clear that he's going to beat the crap out of your friend, and his relative that he already has in his power, what then?
Almost certainly Putins ceasefire conditions would include keeping the currently occupied territories, regime change in Kyiv, and ending of Western nations military and financial aid.
So the bully would not be allowing judo lessons or a gun, but rather seeing the victim have both arms broken.
How the feck do you know that? Has anyone asked Putin?
if those are his conditions then yes, they would surely be intolerable, certainly for Kyiv
Kate Osamor removed as a Labour MP for suggesting Gaza might be genocide. But Azhar Ali, the @UKLabour Rochdale candidate, accuses Israel of deliberately allowing the October 7 massacre and he gets full support.
This can’t be right. According to the PB labour fanatics the only anger over this is synthetic Tory anger.
Netenyahu desperately wanting a reason to destroy Gaza isn’t that far fetched. Ali’s comments will resonate with quite a few voters even though it might seem unpalatable !
That’s not what he said.
We also have left wing labour MPs suspended for saying far less.
In your world it is all fake offence from so called PB Tories. However there is offence across the political divide at, what are, offensive comments.
His comments were offensive but not anti -Semitic .
At this rate saying you don’t like knishes will result in accusations of anti-Semitism !
Accusing Netenyahu and the IDF of allowing an attack or not assisting quickly enough to aid the people effected so you can then pulverize Gaza is just that .
The fault is with those not the Jewish people as a whole .
How does that square with your comment:
"The biggest recruiting sergeant for anti-Semitism is Netenyahu and his disgusting cabinet."
Because some people can’t distinguish between the actions of a corrupt cesspit administration and the wider Jewish population.
Which is my point. And why Netenyahu is a handmaiden for anti-Semitism.
There's a contrary angle to this: anti-Semitism is a handmaiden for Netenyahu and his fellow travellers. As long as Jewish people feel they don't have anywhere safe in the world, the desire for a 'safe' Israel will exist.
Do you believe that Netanyahu makes Israel safer?
Do you believe that when Palestinians are turfed out of their homes for another settlement, that makes the State of Israel more secure?
Or do you think it radicalizes yet another Muslin to hate Israel with all consuming passion.
I'm not saying - obviously - that anti-semitism would disappear if the settlement building did. But I strongly believe that if the Palestinian people have no hope, then any energy they have will be channeled into hurting who they see as the source of that hopelessness.
That is - I believe - an unstable equilibrium.
They were given Gaza as a test case. I would have to google how often/long missiles have been fired at Israel since 2006 but I would guess it pre-dates October 6th.
I absolutely think that illegal settlements should be stopped, dismantled even, in the West Bank but it seems that throughout history Israel has adopted the sheep/lamb approach. If nothing they do is going to make a difference then fuck it, they might as well go for broke. They did this in the wars of 1947-48 and seem to be doing it again now.
Oh, I'm not saying it's easy.
In fact, it absolutely sucks for Israel, for the Israeli people, and for Jews worldwide.
It also sucks to be a Palestinian in the West Bank. And it sucks to be a Palestinian in Gaza. It doubly sucks when the Israeli government secretly channels money to Hamas in Gaza, because it helps Bibi domestically to have an implacable foe.
My personal belief is that you can buy temporary security through force of arms. But it is only temporary. Because you are creating new enemies every day.
Much has been made of that Times of Israel (Bibi supports Hamas) article. Reading it as I did (shock) it seemed to be the calculus that his actions were aimed at bringing peace rather than "propping up Hamas". I'd have to read it again to confirm this is the right interpretation but it seemed logical at the time so I'm not sure about this line about Bibi/Hamas.
You may not be able to bring permanent security through force of arms but look at the current ME environment. The whole thing started apparently because Israel was about to sign an agreement with Saudi. Meanwhile no one is sending arms and materiel to Hamas. So why should Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, be afforded more accommodation by Israel than, say, Egypt or Saudi.
If I was an Israeli, having seen anti-Semitism around the world, and having seen what happened on October 7th, I might well support Bibi's actions - if not vote for him.
If I was a Palestinian, having seen what Israel's doing, I might support Hamas - if not vote for them.
Although that's a major simplification, that's a difficulty I find with this - there's right and wrong on both sides.
This is what I thought when I went to Ukraine last summer. I saw all the men on crutches, arms in slings, etc, and I thought: wow, Ukraine is going to run out of men. I said so on this site
And here we are
To be fair Russia is also running out of a lot of men too
But they have so many more
I have found a debate from August last year when I painstakingly tried to explain all this to PB. Lots of PB-ers accused me of mongering doom-porn
"Because you are continuously purveying doom porn.
Claims that Ukraine are running out of people just isn't backed by reality and is Putinist propaganda we should get from those registering on a Saturday for 15-40 posts in before the ban, not you"
Leon replied: . "I’ve been to Ukraine and I’ve seen all the men on crutches, missing limbs, etc. They are now sending men in their 50s to the front line. They are absolutely having difficulties with manpower
Because Russia is 3-4 times as big in population, and now Ukraine is trying to attack through the worst minefields in military history"
That's right: Ukraine is struggling to get troops to fill the front line.
But so is Russia.
You are absolutely right to point out Ukraine's difficulties, but you are curiously blind to Russia's.
And defeat is so much worse for Ukraine than for Russia, that I suspect you will find they will keep being able to find men and women - exhausted and elderly and injured etc - for far, far longer than you might expect.
Is Russia undermanned? Maybe, but
"Serhiy was injured last autumn in Avdiivka, where the fighting has been fierce and even Ukrainian officials admit their army is outgunned and outmanned.
One source put the difference at 8-1, in Russia's favour."
Moreover, Putin doesn't really need to attack. He can defend what he has, and rely on Ukraine to give up, out of sheer exhaustion, because Ukraine no longer has the manpower or strength to mount another large offensive
The war is frozen, and Ukraine cannot win. They might as well seek a ceasefire and save what few soldiers they have left
Russia is only 3x bigger than Ukraine.
And holding territory you've captured is not free. You need troops to hold down the (unhappy) local population. Look at Northern Ireland: even though 55% of the population want us (against - what - 10% in Ukraine), it was incredibly expensive for us.
Ukraine has close to one million men under arms.
A few weeks ago, the BBC reported that at the start of the war, the typical Russian death was a 21 year old professional soldier. Now, it's a 34 year old convict.
No army recruits convicts, unless it has no alternative.
You've always been a cheerleader for Ukraine (and fair enough), but your many predictions of their advances and successes have not come true, have they? Not since early 2023
The counter offensive was a complete failure, and they lost 100,000s of men killed and injured, for no significant territorial gain whatsoever
Given that, how do you suggest they proceed? There is no way for them to win a ground offensive, but they can maybe defend what they have
But if all they are doing is defending what they have, then they might as well seek a truce or an armistice no? Then rebuild, and save all those lives
The only alternative I can see is that they try and hold their ground AND fight Russia in more unconventional ways, attacking the navy (as they have done with great success), maybe fomenting unrest in Russia (much less successful)
But all that risks Russia slowly grinding them down and Russia is still bombing Ukrainian cities daily, it has not run out of drones and missiles, as we have been assured was immiment, every week since about November 2022
Plenty of invaded nations have kept going in terrible circumstances, and have emerged victorious. Invading is harder than defending, and eventually they sicken the invader.
Given the choice for Ukranians is to flee as refugees, submit to the butchers of Bucha or fight on, then none of the options is great.
War weariness doesn't always make for a desire to surrender, in the absence of military defeat. All the major powers in 1917 had it to some degree, but all bar Russia fought on.
By 1917 the Allies knew the Americans were coming, that's a huge difference
Without that, who knows. France was close to seeking peace, as its armies mutinied after Verdun
No the French mutinied after the Nivelle offensive in 1917, but there was significant war weariness in Germany, Austria Hungary, Italy, and the UK by 1917.
This is what I thought when I went to Ukraine last summer. I saw all the men on crutches, arms in slings, etc, and I thought: wow, Ukraine is going to run out of men. I said so on this site
And here we are
To be fair Russia is also running out of a lot of men too
But they have so many more
I have found a debate from August last year when I painstakingly tried to explain all this to PB. Lots of PB-ers accused me of mongering doom-porn
"Because you are continuously purveying doom porn.
Claims that Ukraine are running out of people just isn't backed by reality and is Putinist propaganda we should get from those registering on a Saturday for 15-40 posts in before the ban, not you"
Leon replied: . "I’ve been to Ukraine and I’ve seen all the men on crutches, missing limbs, etc. They are now sending men in their 50s to the front line. They are absolutely having difficulties with manpower
Because Russia is 3-4 times as big in population, and now Ukraine is trying to attack through the worst minefields in military history"
That's right: Ukraine is struggling to get troops to fill the front line.
But so is Russia.
You are absolutely right to point out Ukraine's difficulties, but you are curiously blind to Russia's.
And defeat is so much worse for Ukraine than for Russia, that I suspect you will find they will keep being able to find men and women - exhausted and elderly and injured etc - for far, far longer than you might expect.
Is Russia undermanned? Maybe, but
"Serhiy was injured last autumn in Avdiivka, where the fighting has been fierce and even Ukrainian officials admit their army is outgunned and outmanned.
One source put the difference at 8-1, in Russia's favour."
Moreover, Putin doesn't really need to attack. He can defend what he has, and rely on Ukraine to give up, out of sheer exhaustion, because Ukraine no longer has the manpower or strength to mount another large offensive
The war is frozen, and Ukraine cannot win. They might as well seek a ceasefire and save what few soldiers they have left
Russia is only 3x bigger than Ukraine.
And holding territory you've captured is not free. You need troops to hold down the (unhappy) local population. Look at Northern Ireland: even though 55% of the population want us (against - what - 10% in Ukraine), it was incredibly expensive for us.
Ukraine has close to one million men under arms.
A few weeks ago, the BBC reported that at the start of the war, the typical Russian death was a 21 year old professional soldier. Now, it's a 34 year old convict.
No army recruits convicts, unless it has no alternative.
You've always been a cheerleader for Ukraine (and fair enough), but your many predictions of their advances and successes have not come true, have they? Not since early 2023
The counter offensive was a complete failure, and they lost 100,000s of men killed and injured, for no significant territorial gain whatsoever
Given that, how do you suggest they proceed? There is no way for them to win a ground offensive, but they can maybe defend what they have
But if all they are doing is defending what they have, then they might as well seek a truce or an armistice no? Then rebuild, and save all those lives
The only alternative I can see is that they try and hold their ground AND fight Russia in more unconventional ways, attacking the navy (as they have done with great success), maybe fomenting unrest in Russia (much less successful)
But all that risks Russia slowly grinding them down and Russia is still bombing Ukrainian cities daily, it has not run out of drones and missiles, as we have been assured was immiment, every week since about November 2022
Plenty of invaded nations have kept going in terrible circumstances, and have emerged victorious. Invading is harder than defending, and eventually they sicken the invader.
Given the choice for Ukranians is to flee as refugees, submit to the butchers of Bucha or fight on, then none of the options is great.
War weariness doesn't always make for a desire to surrender, in the absence of military defeat. All the major powers in 1917 had it to some degree, but all bar Russia fought on.
By 1917 the Allies knew the Americans were coming, that's a huge difference
Without that, who knows. France was close to seeking peace, as its armies mutinied after Verdun
Nope.
The “mutinies” were about not doing pointless attacks. The troops in question repeatedly stated they would defend (and acted to defend ) their lines against the Germans.
Whisper it quietly, but a certain popstar will be eligible for the Presidency when the inauguration takes place. It could be taylor made for Biden to stand down at the Chicago convention for her
Ke$ha 4 President!
What about Britney Spears? Having a president subject to a conservatorship would test the constitution.
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
But what if they do seek our advice?
Look at it this way
Imagine Ukraine is your best friend at school and he's in a fight.He's already had a leg broken and lost a few teeth, but he will survive. He is incredibly brave, and the attack on him was unprovoked. Unfortunately he is fighting an absolute lying thug who is three times his size and known for brutal cruelty
The fighting has reached a stalemate, the thug is hinting at calling it a draw, but if it kicks off again it is much more likely your friend will lose both eyes and an arm, rather than the thug losing . The friend turns to you and asks for advice. You are his friend. What do you say? Maybe nothing? Say: it's up to you?
Or as a good friend is it better to say, Look, you're gonna lose both eyes if you fight on, take the draw for now and then we can go home and I will teach you judo
They aren't asking us for advice. They're asking us for help. Our decision is not how best to advise them. Our decision is whether to abandon them. Thanks to various fuckwit Republicans we may end up abandoning them. Should that unpleasant event happen, we should at least have the moral courage to admit to ourselves that we are abandoning them.
This is what I thought when I went to Ukraine last summer. I saw all the men on crutches, arms in slings, etc, and I thought: wow, Ukraine is going to run out of men. I said so on this site
And here we are
To be fair Russia is also running out of a lot of men too
But they have so many more
I have found a debate from August last year when I painstakingly tried to explain all this to PB. Lots of PB-ers accused me of mongering doom-porn
"Because you are continuously purveying doom porn.
Claims that Ukraine are running out of people just isn't backed by reality and is Putinist propaganda we should get from those registering on a Saturday for 15-40 posts in before the ban, not you"
Leon replied: . "I’ve been to Ukraine and I’ve seen all the men on crutches, missing limbs, etc. They are now sending men in their 50s to the front line. They are absolutely having difficulties with manpower
Because Russia is 3-4 times as big in population, and now Ukraine is trying to attack through the worst minefields in military history"
That's right: Ukraine is struggling to get troops to fill the front line.
But so is Russia.
You are absolutely right to point out Ukraine's difficulties, but you are curiously blind to Russia's.
And defeat is so much worse for Ukraine than for Russia, that I suspect you will find they will keep being able to find men and women - exhausted and elderly and injured etc - for far, far longer than you might expect.
Is Russia undermanned? Maybe, but
"Serhiy was injured last autumn in Avdiivka, where the fighting has been fierce and even Ukrainian officials admit their army is outgunned and outmanned.
One source put the difference at 8-1, in Russia's favour."
Moreover, Putin doesn't really need to attack. He can defend what he has, and rely on Ukraine to give up, out of sheer exhaustion, because Ukraine no longer has the manpower or strength to mount another large offensive
The war is frozen, and Ukraine cannot win. They might as well seek a ceasefire and save what few soldiers they have left
Russia is only 3x bigger than Ukraine.
And holding territory you've captured is not free. You need troops to hold down the (unhappy) local population. Look at Northern Ireland: even though 55% of the population want us (against - what - 10% in Ukraine), it was incredibly expensive for us.
Ukraine has close to one million men under arms.
A few weeks ago, the BBC reported that at the start of the war, the typical Russian death was a 21 year old professional soldier. Now, it's a 34 year old convict.
No army recruits convicts, unless it has no alternative.
You've always been a cheerleader for Ukraine (and fair enough), but your many predictions of their advances and successes have not come true, have they? Not since early 2023
The counter offensive was a complete failure, and they lost 100,000s of men killed and injured, for no significant territorial gain whatsoever
Given that, how do you suggest they proceed? There is no way for them to win a ground offensive, but they can maybe defend what they have
But if all they are doing is defending what they have, then they might as well seek a truce or an armistice no? Then rebuild, and save all those lives
The only alternative I can see is that they try and hold their ground AND fight Russia in more unconventional ways, attacking the navy (as they have done with great success), maybe fomenting unrest in Russia (much less successful)
But all that risks Russia slowly grinding them down and Russia is still bombing Ukrainian cities daily, it has not run out of drones and missiles, as we have been assured was immiment, every week since about November 2022
Plenty of invaded nations have kept going in terrible circumstances, and have emerged victorious. Invading is harder than defending, and eventually they sicken the invader.
Given the choice for Ukranians is to flee as refugees, submit to the butchers of Bucha or fight on, then none of the options is great.
War weariness doesn't always make for a desire to surrender, in the absence of military defeat. All the major powers in 1917 had it to some degree, but all bar Russia fought on.
By 1917 the Allies knew the Americans were coming, that's a huge difference
Without that, who knows. France was close to seeking peace, as its armies mutinied after Verdun
Nope.
The “mutinies” were about not doing pointless attacks. The troops in question repeatedly stated they would defend (and acted to defend ) their lines against the Germans.
I didn't mean as a direct result, I meant chronologically. Verdun was fought until the end of 1916, the French mutinied in 1917
This is what I thought when I went to Ukraine last summer. I saw all the men on crutches, arms in slings, etc, and I thought: wow, Ukraine is going to run out of men. I said so on this site
And here we are
To be fair Russia is also running out of a lot of men too
But they have so many more
I have found a debate from August last year when I painstakingly tried to explain all this to PB. Lots of PB-ers accused me of mongering doom-porn
"Because you are continuously purveying doom porn.
Claims that Ukraine are running out of people just isn't backed by reality and is Putinist propaganda we should get from those registering on a Saturday for 15-40 posts in before the ban, not you"
Leon replied: . "I’ve been to Ukraine and I’ve seen all the men on crutches, missing limbs, etc. They are now sending men in their 50s to the front line. They are absolutely having difficulties with manpower
Because Russia is 3-4 times as big in population, and now Ukraine is trying to attack through the worst minefields in military history"
That's right: Ukraine is struggling to get troops to fill the front line.
But so is Russia.
You are absolutely right to point out Ukraine's difficulties, but you are curiously blind to Russia's.
And defeat is so much worse for Ukraine than for Russia, that I suspect you will find they will keep being able to find men and women - exhausted and elderly and injured etc - for far, far longer than you might expect.
Is Russia undermanned? Maybe, but
"Serhiy was injured last autumn in Avdiivka, where the fighting has been fierce and even Ukrainian officials admit their army is outgunned and outmanned.
One source put the difference at 8-1, in Russia's favour."
Moreover, Putin doesn't really need to attack. He can defend what he has, and rely on Ukraine to give up, out of sheer exhaustion, because Ukraine no longer has the manpower or strength to mount another large offensive
The war is frozen, and Ukraine cannot win. They might as well seek a ceasefire and save what few soldiers they have left
Russia is only 3x bigger than Ukraine.
And holding territory you've captured is not free. You need troops to hold down the (unhappy) local population. Look at Northern Ireland: even though 55% of the population want us (against - what - 10% in Ukraine), it was incredibly expensive for us.
Ukraine has close to one million men under arms.
A few weeks ago, the BBC reported that at the start of the war, the typical Russian death was a 21 year old professional soldier. Now, it's a 34 year old convict.
No army recruits convicts, unless it has no alternative.
You've always been a cheerleader for Ukraine (and fair enough), but your many predictions of their advances and successes have not come true, have they? Not since early 2023
The counter offensive was a complete failure, and they lost 100,000s of men killed and injured, for no significant territorial gain whatsoever
Given that, how do you suggest they proceed? There is no way for them to win a ground offensive, but they can maybe defend what they have
But if all they are doing is defending what they have, then they might as well seek a truce or an armistice no? Then rebuild, and save all those lives
The only alternative I can see is that they try and hold their ground AND fight Russia in more unconventional ways, attacking the navy (as they have done with great success), maybe fomenting unrest in Russia (much less successful)
But all that risks Russia slowly grinding them down and Russia is still bombing Ukrainian cities daily, it has not run out of drones and missiles, as we have been assured was immiment, every week since about November 2022
This is, in actual fact, exactly what is happening.
The ground war has effectively been fought to a bloody stalemate, with Russia barely able to push into a town (Adviivka) only a km or two beyond the border they’ve held since 2014 & a city (Donetsk) that has a railhead for supplies. Likewise the Ukrainians seem unable to break through Russian lines in the face of drone defenses & dense minefields.
I do wonder exactly how much Russian oil infrastructure the Ukrainians can credibly threaten. Wipe out enough & Russia has real problems; would that be enough to force Putin’s hand?
Russia has a problem - they have a huge land area to defend & Russian air defenses can’t cover all of it. Meanwhile Ukraine has a much smaller area & western air defenses have been proven to be very capable & more are arriving every month.
If the Ukrainians can hit every oil refinery in Russia, what then?
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
The only feasible stance if you think about it. There could come a point where the situation is so futile we might change it, but we're not there now and now is all there is with this one.
Trying to construct a different future policy of less/no support in some unknown/unknowable circumstances is pointless. Worse, actually, since the more that's anticipated the more likely it is to happen.
@Leon - this could be a guy in Birmingham or London or whichever example you want of the people you say you want to mass deport. What makes his claim to Ireland, or a hypothetically similar guy in Birmingham or London or Manchester, less important than the bloke behind the camera, or you or me?
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
But what if they do seek our advice?
Look at it this way
Imagine Ukraine is your best friend at school and he's in a fight.He's already had a leg broken and lost a few teeth, but he will survive. He is incredibly brave, and the attack on him was unprovoked. Unfortunately he is fighting an absolute lying thug who is three times his size and known for brutal cruelty
The fighting has reached a stalemate, the thug is hinting at calling it a draw, but if it kicks off again it is much more likely your friend will lose both eyes and an arm, rather than the thug losing . The friend turns to you and asks for advice. You are his friend. What do you say? Maybe nothing? Say: it's up to you?
Or as a good friend is it better to say, Look, you're gonna lose both eyes if you fight on, take the draw for now and then we can go home and I will teach you judo
And, if the bullying thug makes clear that he's going to beat the crap out of your friend, and his relative that he already has in his power, what then?
Almost certainly Putins ceasefire conditions would include keeping the currently occupied territories, regime change in Kyiv, and ending of Western nations military and financial aid.
So the bully would not be allowing judo lessons or a gun, but rather seeing the victim have both arms broken.
How the feck do you know that? Has anyone asked Putin?
if those are his conditions then yes, they would surely be intolerable, certainly for Kyiv
But has anyone asked?
Putin & Co have repeatedly stated that
- they want Ukraine’s government “de-Nazified” - They regard EU expansion as intolerable - They regard NATO expansion as intolerable - They want Ukraine disarmed
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
But what if they do seek our advice?
Look at it this way
Imagine Ukraine is your best friend at school and he's in a fight.He's already had a leg broken and lost a few teeth, but he will survive. He is incredibly brave, and the attack on him was unprovoked. Unfortunately he is fighting an absolute lying thug who is three times his size and known for brutal cruelty
The fighting has reached a stalemate, the thug is hinting at calling it a draw, but if it kicks off again it is much more likely your friend will lose both eyes and an arm, rather than the thug losing . The friend turns to you and asks for advice. You are his friend. What do you say? Maybe nothing? Say: it's up to you?
Or as a good friend is it better to say, Look, you're gonna lose both eyes if you fight on, take the draw for now and then we can go home and I will teach you judo
And, if the bullying thug makes clear that he's going to beat the crap out of your friend, and his relative that he already has in his power, what then?
Almost certainly Putins ceasefire conditions would include keeping the currently occupied territories, regime change in Kyiv, and ending of Western nations military and financial aid.
So the bully would not be allowing judo lessons or a gun, but rather seeing the victim have both arms broken.
How the feck do you know that? Has anyone asked Putin?
if those are his conditions then yes, they would surely be intolerable, certainly for Kyiv
But has anyone asked?
Why don't you believe it when Putin says himself, barely 6 weeks ago that his war aims are unchanged and include "Denazification" and "Demilitarisation". By this he means regime change in Kyiv, and disarmament of the Ukranian military.
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
But what if they do seek our advice?
Look at it this way
Imagine Ukraine is your best friend at school and he's in a fight.He's already had a leg broken and lost a few teeth, but he will survive. He is incredibly brave, and the attack on him was unprovoked. Unfortunately he is fighting an absolute lying thug who is three times his size and known for brutal cruelty
The fighting has reached a stalemate, the thug is hinting at calling it a draw, but if it kicks off again it is much more likely your friend will lose both eyes and an arm, rather than the thug losing . The friend turns to you and asks for advice. You are his friend. What do you say? Maybe nothing? Say: it's up to you?
Or as a good friend is it better to say, Look, you're gonna lose both eyes if you fight on, take the draw for now and then we can go home and I will teach you judo
They aren't asking us for advice. They're asking us for help. Our decision is not how best to advise them. Our decision is whether to abandon them. Thanks to various fuckwit Republicans we may end up abandoning them. Should that unpleasant event happen, we should at least have the moral courage to admit to ourselves that we are abandoning them.
So we're not even allowed to advise them?
What is this purist nonsense?
What about this hypothesis. What if we know that they cannot win? What if we have access to facts, via intel and satellites, that they do not possess, and these facts tell us that they cannot win? Do we not advise them of this?
This is what I thought when I went to Ukraine last summer. I saw all the men on crutches, arms in slings, etc, and I thought: wow, Ukraine is going to run out of men. I said so on this site
And here we are
To be fair Russia is also running out of a lot of men too
But they have so many more
I have found a debate from August last year when I painstakingly tried to explain all this to PB. Lots of PB-ers accused me of mongering doom-porn
"Because you are continuously purveying doom porn.
Claims that Ukraine are running out of people just isn't backed by reality and is Putinist propaganda we should get from those registering on a Saturday for 15-40 posts in before the ban, not you"
Leon replied: . "I’ve been to Ukraine and I’ve seen all the men on crutches, missing limbs, etc. They are now sending men in their 50s to the front line. They are absolutely having difficulties with manpower
Because Russia is 3-4 times as big in population, and now Ukraine is trying to attack through the worst minefields in military history"
That's right: Ukraine is struggling to get troops to fill the front line.
But so is Russia.
You are absolutely right to point out Ukraine's difficulties, but you are curiously blind to Russia's.
And defeat is so much worse for Ukraine than for Russia, that I suspect you will find they will keep being able to find men and women - exhausted and elderly and injured etc - for far, far longer than you might expect.
Is Russia undermanned? Maybe, but
"Serhiy was injured last autumn in Avdiivka, where the fighting has been fierce and even Ukrainian officials admit their army is outgunned and outmanned.
One source put the difference at 8-1, in Russia's favour."
Moreover, Putin doesn't really need to attack. He can defend what he has, and rely on Ukraine to give up, out of sheer exhaustion, because Ukraine no longer has the manpower or strength to mount another large offensive
The war is frozen, and Ukraine cannot win. They might as well seek a ceasefire and save what few soldiers they have left
Russia is only 3x bigger than Ukraine.
And holding territory you've captured is not free. You need troops to hold down the (unhappy) local population. Look at Northern Ireland: even though 55% of the population want us (against - what - 10% in Ukraine), it was incredibly expensive for us.
Ukraine has close to one million men under arms.
A few weeks ago, the BBC reported that at the start of the war, the typical Russian death was a 21 year old professional soldier. Now, it's a 34 year old convict.
No army recruits convicts, unless it has no alternative.
You've always been a cheerleader for Ukraine (and fair enough), but your many predictions of their advances and successes have not come true, have they? Not since early 2023
The counter offensive was a complete failure, and they lost 100,000s of men killed and injured, for no significant territorial gain whatsoever
Given that, how do you suggest they proceed? There is no way for them to win a ground offensive, but they can maybe defend what they have
But if all they are doing is defending what they have, then they might as well seek a truce or an armistice no? Then rebuild, and save all those lives
The only alternative I can see is that they try and hold their ground AND fight Russia in more unconventional ways, attacking the navy (as they have done with great success), maybe fomenting unrest in Russia (much less successful)
But all that risks Russia slowly grinding them down and Russia is still bombing Ukrainian cities daily, it has not run out of drones and missiles, as we have been assured was immiment, every week since about November 2022
Plenty of invaded nations have kept going in terrible circumstances, and have emerged victorious. Invading is harder than defending, and eventually they sicken the invader.
Given the choice for Ukranians is to flee as refugees, submit to the butchers of Bucha or fight on, then none of the options is great.
War weariness doesn't always make for a desire to surrender, in the absence of military defeat. All the major powers in 1917 had it to some degree, but all bar Russia fought on.
By 1917 the Allies knew the Americans were coming, that's a huge difference
Without that, who knows. France was close to seeking peace, as its armies mutinied after Verdun
Nope.
The “mutinies” were about not doing pointless attacks. The troops in question repeatedly stated they would defend (and acted to defend ) their lines against the Germans.
I didn't mean as a direct result, I meant chronologically. Verdun was fought until the end of 1916, the French mutinied in 1917
The Germans came close to winning WW1.
Without British or American intervention France would probably have been defeated by Germany as early as 1916.
As important as the troop contribution the British made- probably more important- was the close blockade of the the Germany economy throughout by the Royal Navy.
Not sexy or particularly interesting, but very effective.
Whisper it quietly, but a certain popstar will be eligible for the Presidency when the inauguration takes place. It could be taylor made for Biden to stand down at the Chicago convention for her
The way american politics is going I expect Biden to stand down for Dolly Parton (age a young 78).
I can't believe Zelensky hasn't already thought of the brilliant ideas suggested on PB today, for winning the war against Putin
1. Ask Putin to withdraw to the internationally recognised borders. I mean, that's genius. Ask him. Watch him cower. He will almost certainly fold
And if that doesn't work
2. Arm all the three year olds in Ukraine, and send them to war in Bakhmut, with their teddy bears
After they've agreed this "Korean style armistice" which you imagine is available, what will be your advice when Putin carries on with the invasion a year or so down the line ?
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
But what if they do seek our advice?
Look at it this way
Imagine Ukraine is your best friend at school and he's in a fight.He's already had a leg broken and lost a few teeth, but he will survive. He is incredibly brave, and the attack on him was unprovoked. Unfortunately he is fighting an absolute lying thug who is three times his size and known for brutal cruelty
The fighting has reached a stalemate, the thug is hinting at calling it a draw, but if it kicks off again it is much more likely your friend will lose both eyes and an arm, rather than the thug losing . The friend turns to you and asks for advice. You are his friend. What do you say? Maybe nothing? Say: it's up to you?
Or as a good friend is it better to say, Look, you're gonna lose both eyes if you fight on, take the draw for now and then we can go home and I will teach you judo
And, if the bullying thug makes clear that he's going to beat the crap out of your friend, and his relative that he already has in his power, what then?
Almost certainly Putins ceasefire conditions would include keeping the currently occupied territories, regime change in Kyiv, and ending of Western nations military and financial aid.
So the bully would not be allowing judo lessons or a gun, but rather seeing the victim have both arms broken.
How the feck do you know that? Has anyone asked Putin?
if those are his conditions then yes, they would surely be intolerable, certainly for Kyiv
But has anyone asked?
Putin & Co have repeatedly stated that
- they want Ukraine’s government “de-Nazified” - They regard EU expansion as intolerable - They regard NATO expansion as intolerable - They want Ukraine disarmed
What do you think that all means?
Kyiv has explicitly said
1. They want Crimea back 2. They want all the occupied territory back 3. They want Russia to retreat to the borders of 2013 4. They want to join NATO
And so on and so forth
When an armistice is agreed, neither side gets everything it wants, pretty much by definition, it just means stop shooting then talk
"An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace.[1] It is derived from the Latin arma, meaning "arms" (as in weapons) and -stitium, meaning "a stopping""
If I was an Israeli, having seen anti-Semitism around the world, and having seen what happened on October 7th, I might well support Bibi's actions - if not vote for him.
If I was a Palestinian, having seen what Israel's doing, I might support Hamas - if not vote for them.
Although that's a major simplification, that's a difficulty I find with this - there's right and wrong on both sides.
Even if we both sides this thing ideologically - materially Israel has killed 28,000 Palestinians, with over 67,000 injured. Over 12,000 of those deaths are kids.
That is not the acts of a state trying to deal with Hamas. These are the acts of a state trying to purge Palestinians from Gaza.
And not only this, but all the utterances, from the top down, of why they are doing it and what they want to do after make clear that they don't care about Hamas - that this is understood as a war to take the lands off of the Palestinians in Gaza, something Israeli settlers have wanted to do for a long time.
I can't believe Zelensky hasn't already thought of the brilliant ideas suggested on PB today, for winning the war against Putin
1. Ask Putin to withdraw to the internationally recognised borders. I mean, that's genius. Ask him. Watch him cower. He will almost certainly fold
And if that doesn't work
2. Arm all the three year olds in Ukraine, and send them to war in Bakhmut, with their teddy bears
After they've agreed this "Korean style armistice" which you imagine is available, what will be your advice when Putin carries on with the invasion a year or so down the line ?
If Ukraine buys a year of peace, with a truce on the frontlines as they are, we should absolutely flood them with weapons and advisors so that deters Putin from coming back for more
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
But what if they do seek our advice?
Look at it this way
Imagine Ukraine is your best friend at school and he's in a fight.He's already had a leg broken and lost a few teeth, but he will survive. He is incredibly brave, and the attack on him was unprovoked. Unfortunately he is fighting an absolute lying thug who is three times his size and known for brutal cruelty
The fighting has reached a stalemate, the thug is hinting at calling it a draw, but if it kicks off again it is much more likely your friend will lose both eyes and an arm, rather than the thug losing . The friend turns to you and asks for advice. You are his friend. What do you say? Maybe nothing? Say: it's up to you?
Or as a good friend is it better to say, Look, you're gonna lose both eyes if you fight on, take the draw for now and then we can go home and I will teach you judo
They aren't asking us for advice. They're asking us for help. Our decision is not how best to advise them. Our decision is whether to abandon them. Thanks to various fuckwit Republicans we may end up abandoning them. Should that unpleasant event happen, we should at least have the moral courage to admit to ourselves that we are abandoning them.
So we're not even allowed to advise them?
What is this purist nonsense?
What about this hypothesis. What if we know that they cannot win? What if we have access to facts, via intel and satellites, that they do not possess, and these facts tell us that they cannot win? Do we not advise them of this?
PB is quite insane on this subject
There's no such state of having such perfect advance knowledge.
You, yourself, believe that you have this perfect foresight, but the real world is much more uncertain..
I can't believe Zelensky hasn't already thought of the brilliant ideas suggested on PB today, for winning the war against Putin
1. Ask Putin to withdraw to the internationally recognised borders. I mean, that's genius. Ask him. Watch him cower. He will almost certainly fold
And if that doesn't work
2. Arm all the three year olds in Ukraine, and send them to war in Bakhmut, with their teddy bears
After they've agreed this "Korean style armistice" which you imagine is available, what will be your advice when Putin carries on with the invasion a year or so down the line ?
If Ukraine buys a year of peace, with a truce on the frontlines as they are, we should absolutely flood them with weapons and advisors so that deters Putin from coming back for more
And let Poland have nukes
Why aren’t we flooding them with weapons now, then ?
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
But what if they do seek our advice?
Look at it this way
Imagine Ukraine is your best friend at school and he's in a fight.He's already had a leg broken and lost a few teeth, but he will survive. He is incredibly brave, and the attack on him was unprovoked. Unfortunately he is fighting an absolute lying thug who is three times his size and known for brutal cruelty
The fighting has reached a stalemate, the thug is hinting at calling it a draw, but if it kicks off again it is much more likely your friend will lose both eyes and an arm, rather than the thug losing . The friend turns to you and asks for advice. You are his friend. What do you say? Maybe nothing? Say: it's up to you?
Or as a good friend is it better to say, Look, you're gonna lose both eyes if you fight on, take the draw for now and then we can go home and I will teach you judo
And, if the bullying thug makes clear that he's going to beat the crap out of your friend, and his relative that he already has in his power, what then?
Almost certainly Putins ceasefire conditions would include keeping the currently occupied territories, regime change in Kyiv, and ending of Western nations military and financial aid.
So the bully would not be allowing judo lessons or a gun, but rather seeing the victim have both arms broken.
How the feck do you know that? Has anyone asked Putin?
if those are his conditions then yes, they would surely be intolerable, certainly for Kyiv
But has anyone asked?
Putin & Co have repeatedly stated that
- they want Ukraine’s government “de-Nazified” - They regard EU expansion as intolerable - They regard NATO expansion as intolerable - They want Ukraine disarmed
What do you think that all means?
Kyiv has explicitly said
1. They want Crimea back 2. They want all the occupied territory back 3. They want Russia to retreat to the borders of 2013 4. They want to join NATO
And so on and so forth
When an armistice is agreed, neither side gets everything it wants, pretty much by definition, it just means stop shooting then talk
"An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace.[1] It is derived from the Latin arma, meaning "arms" (as in weapons) and -stitium, meaning "a stopping""
If Putin stops fighting and Ukraine pushes ahead to join the EU and NATO, how does that work for Putin?
That will look bad for him. And he is President for Life….
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
But what if they do seek our advice?
Look at it this way
Imagine Ukraine is your best friend at school and he's in a fight.He's already had a leg broken and lost a few teeth, but he will survive. He is incredibly brave, and the attack on him was unprovoked. Unfortunately he is fighting an absolute lying thug who is three times his size and known for brutal cruelty
The fighting has reached a stalemate, the thug is hinting at calling it a draw, but if it kicks off again it is much more likely your friend will lose both eyes and an arm, rather than the thug losing . The friend turns to you and asks for advice. You are his friend. What do you say? Maybe nothing? Say: it's up to you?
Or as a good friend is it better to say, Look, you're gonna lose both eyes if you fight on, take the draw for now and then we can go home and I will teach you judo
Happened in Cool Hand Luke. And Luke kept fighting - earning the respect of all.
I can't believe Zelensky hasn't already thought of the brilliant ideas suggested on PB today, for winning the war against Putin
1. Ask Putin to withdraw to the internationally recognised borders. I mean, that's genius. Ask him. Watch him cower. He will almost certainly fold
And if that doesn't work
2. Arm all the three year olds in Ukraine, and send them to war in Bakhmut, with their teddy bears
After they've agreed this "Korean style armistice" which you imagine is available, what will be your advice when Putin carries on with the invasion a year or so down the line ?
If Ukraine buys a year of peace, with a truce on the frontlines as they are, we should absolutely flood them with weapons and advisors so that deters Putin from coming back for more
And let Poland have nukes
Why aren’t we flooding them with weapons now, then ?
Sure, but they are burning them up with every day of fighting AND THEY ARE RUNNING OUT OF MEN TO USE THEM
PB is a brick wall on this topic, I will soon stop banging my head, and go to bed
I can't believe Zelensky hasn't already thought of the brilliant ideas suggested on PB today, for winning the war against Putin
1. Ask Putin to withdraw to the internationally recognised borders. I mean, that's genius. Ask him. Watch him cower. He will almost certainly fold
And if that doesn't work
2. Arm all the three year olds in Ukraine, and send them to war in Bakhmut, with their teddy bears
After they've agreed this "Korean style armistice" which you imagine is available, what will be your advice when Putin carries on with the invasion a year or so down the line ?
If Ukraine buys a year of peace, with a truce on the frontlines as they are, we should absolutely flood them with weapons and advisors so that deters Putin from coming back for more
And let Poland have nukes
This obsession with nukes that you have is so infantile. What happened to Putin's use of nukes by the way?
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
But what if they do seek our advice?
Look at it this way
Imagine Ukraine is your best friend at school and he's in a fight.He's already had a leg broken and lost a few teeth, but he will survive. He is incredibly brave, and the attack on him was unprovoked. Unfortunately he is fighting an absolute lying thug who is three times his size and known for brutal cruelty
The fighting has reached a stalemate, the thug is hinting at calling it a draw, but if it kicks off again it is much more likely your friend will lose both eyes and an arm, rather than the thug losing . The friend turns to you and asks for advice. You are his friend. What do you say? Maybe nothing? Say: it's up to you?
Or as a good friend is it better to say, Look, you're gonna lose both eyes if you fight on, take the draw for now and then we can go home and I will teach you judo
They aren't asking us for advice. They're asking us for help. Our decision is not how best to advise them. Our decision is whether to abandon them. Thanks to various fuckwit Republicans we may end up abandoning them. Should that unpleasant event happen, we should at least have the moral courage to admit to ourselves that we are abandoning them.
I'm sure there was a time when Britain's self-perceived role was to advise other nations- Greece to Rome and all that. But that time isn't now.
I can't believe Zelensky hasn't already thought of the brilliant ideas suggested on PB today, for winning the war against Putin
1. Ask Putin to withdraw to the internationally recognised borders. I mean, that's genius. Ask him. Watch him cower. He will almost certainly fold
And if that doesn't work
2. Arm all the three year olds in Ukraine, and send them to war in Bakhmut, with their teddy bears
After they've agreed this "Korean style armistice" which you imagine is available, what will be your advice when Putin carries on with the invasion a year or so down the line ?
If Ukraine buys a year of peace, with a truce on the frontlines as they are, we should absolutely flood them with weapons and advisors so that deters Putin from coming back for more
And let Poland have nukes
This obsession with nukes that you have is so infantile. What happened to Putin's use of nukes by the way?
He has not yet been put in a position by the West of having to consider using them.
🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead widens to eighteen points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 27% (-) Lab 45% (+2) Lib Dem 8% (-2) Other 19% (-1) Fieldwork: 9th - 12th February 2024 Sample: 1,977 GB adults (Changes from 2nd - 5th February 2024)
That’s a good poll for Labour as it includes any fall out from the green u-turn .
It won’t inciude much fieldwork in relation to Aligate !
I can't believe Zelensky hasn't already thought of the brilliant ideas suggested on PB today, for winning the war against Putin
1. Ask Putin to withdraw to the internationally recognised borders. I mean, that's genius. Ask him. Watch him cower. He will almost certainly fold
And if that doesn't work
2. Arm all the three year olds in Ukraine, and send them to war in Bakhmut, with their teddy bears
After they've agreed this "Korean style armistice" which you imagine is available, what will be your advice when Putin carries on with the invasion a year or so down the line ?
If Ukraine buys a year of peace, with a truce on the frontlines as they are, we should absolutely flood them with weapons and advisors so that deters Putin from coming back for more
And let Poland have nukes
This obsession with nukes that you have is so infantile. What happened to Putin's use of nukes by the way?
Infantile. OK. That's a new one. Oh do fuck off
Do you think Putin would have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine had kept its nukes?
The answer is no. I don't think the Ukrainians regard the nuclear question as "infantile". They bitterly regret renouncing them
And plenty of experts, not just Leon off of PB, are speculating on Polish nukes
Whisper it quietly, but a certain popstar will be eligible for the Presidency when the inauguration takes place. It could be taylor made for Biden to stand down at the Chicago convention for her
I can't believe Zelensky hasn't already thought of the brilliant ideas suggested on PB today, for winning the war against Putin
1. Ask Putin to withdraw to the internationally recognised borders. I mean, that's genius. Ask him. Watch him cower. He will almost certainly fold
And if that doesn't work
2. Arm all the three year olds in Ukraine, and send them to war in Bakhmut, with their teddy bears
After they've agreed this "Korean style armistice" which you imagine is available, what will be your advice when Putin carries on with the invasion a year or so down the line ?
If Ukraine buys a year of peace, with a truce on the frontlines as they are, we should absolutely flood them with weapons and advisors so that deters Putin from coming back for more
And let Poland have nukes
This obsession with nukes that you have is so infantile. What happened to Putin's use of nukes by the way?
The difficulty with nukes isn't necessarily that they are being used, but they are constantly a threat that can be used. I remember listening to someone talking about comparing war when one side has nukes to a chess game where, if you lose, you will be punished proportionately to how badly you lose - but you always have the option of blowing up the chess board (and you and your opponent).
If Putin believes that being seen to lose is a one way ticket to being deposed, or going the way of Gaddafi (which Putin has mentioned a lot in relation to how clear it is when the West says things are merely peaceful regime change they mean offing the guy in charge), why wouldn't he blow up Ukraine at the same time? If you're going to lose anyway, lose in a way that hurts your enemies the most. That's the problem, in my mind.
Excl: Investigation by @thetimes into the scale of abuse of Christian conversion in the asylum system has found: - Murderers, rapists, drug dealers & burglars avoided deportation by claiming they're Christian converts - Outlandish claims lodged included a "Christian" who spent a month going to a synagogue by mistake 1/8 With @GeorgeGreenwood & @inspirellie_: thetimes.co.uk/article/509b22…
Just distinguish between asylum seekers who are Christian on arrival in the UK and fleeing persecution, who should still be granted asylum and those who are not Christian on arrival but convert while here for convenience to stay who shouldn't
Do you have a direct line to God to give you the correct shibboleth? I mean, I could answer all the questions listed in the thread and I'm not a believer - how would anyone ever know?
Well you aren't claiming to be a believer so it wouldn't apply to you.
There are multiple questions on the bible, baptism, the Trinity etc that could be answered on arrival in the UK and if you fail so does your religious asylum claim and checks can also be made with churches in country of origin, even proof of being in underground ones
Interesting question. Does C of E require them of anyone who wants to get married in their parish church?
No.
As it is the established Church of English people who are actually citizens of this country. Muslims coming to the UK facing no persecution from their nation of origin using 'conversion' to Christianity while in the UK as a quick way to get a UK passport are a different matter
You're equating 'C of E' with 'holding a UK passport'.
It is the church for everyone who lives in England and has UK citizenship yes, it is not a backdoor route for economic migrants not facing persecution to get UK citizenship
But who determines that? That's the issue. The vicar? Or the state? So why is the Party complaining about the vicars?
The state, if you aren't already Christian at passport control no religious persecution claim
So why are your colleagues in the Party complaining about the poor vicars?
The state is at fault but priests who convert those asylum seekers who aren't Christian already just seeking a passport are too
Sheer gibberish, isn't it? How could they be converted if they were Christian already? And how does "not Christian already" equate to "just seeking a passport"?
Thank the Lord we don't have "salvation by intelligence"!
They couldn't be and shouldn't be, conversions should be focused on the domestic English population only already resident here. Not Muslims seeking a temporary conversion for a passport for economic reasons before going back to Islam again
In the Times article, a priest recommended judging the sincerity of people's belief by using their willingness to do unpaid work as a shibboleth. Another said he'd had good success by soaking people with cold water in the winter.
By tutting at these easily-fooled liberals and crying that ducking stools sound a bit woke, you are rather missing the point. None of this stuff works. There's no way to tell whether people are sincere or not.
England tried this with the Test Acts for about seventy years. It didn't work. Today, there are more Catholics than Anglicans in England. In Ireland, the laws were harsher and in place for longer. The last of the Penal Laws was only lifted in 1829. But they still didn't work. Today, there are more than eight times more Catholics than Anglicans in Ireland.
Francis Bacon told us in the 16th century that Elizabeth I was unable to "make windows into men's hearts and secret thoughts". They were right.
How about focussing the asylum debate on things that can actually be measured and factors that we are able to control?
I would have thought that regular attendance at a CofE church is evidence that someone is NOT a practicing Christian.
I can't believe Zelensky hasn't already thought of the brilliant ideas suggested on PB today, for winning the war against Putin
1. Ask Putin to withdraw to the internationally recognised borders. I mean, that's genius. Ask him. Watch him cower. He will almost certainly fold
And if that doesn't work
2. Arm all the three year olds in Ukraine, and send them to war in Bakhmut, with their teddy bears
After they've agreed this "Korean style armistice" which you imagine is available, what will be your advice when Putin carries on with the invasion a year or so down the line ?
If Ukraine buys a year of peace, with a truce on the frontlines as they are, we should absolutely flood them with weapons and advisors so that deters Putin from coming back for more
And let Poland have nukes
Why aren’t we flooding them with weapons now, then ?
Sure, but they are burning them up with every day of fighting AND THEY ARE RUNNING OUT OF MEN TO USE THEM
PB is a brick wall on this topic, I will soon stop banging my head, and go to bed
They have had virtually nothing from the US in the last month and a half. If you’d hadn’t noticed, there’s an ongoing battle in Congress about whether they get anything more at all.
What do you think the chances are of that ‘flood of weapons’ if there’s an ‘armistice’ ? And without that, how long do you think any ceasefire would last ?
The Korean comparison, as I’ve noted before, is ludicrous. That came after UN forces had knocked seven shades of shit out of the North’s forces - and relied on the continued presence of US troops for the next half century and beyond. And that’s to defend a border a tenth of the size.
There aren’t any good options. From Ukraine’s POV, you suggestion looks one of the worse ones.
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
But what if they do seek our advice?
Look at it this way
Imagine Ukraine is your best friend at school and he's in a fight.He's already had a leg broken and lost a few teeth, but he will survive. He is incredibly brave, and the attack on him was unprovoked. Unfortunately he is fighting an absolute lying thug who is three times his size and known for brutal cruelty
The fighting has reached a stalemate, the thug is hinting at calling it a draw, but if it kicks off again it is much more likely your friend will lose both eyes and an arm, rather than the thug losing . The friend turns to you and asks for advice. You are his friend. What do you say? Maybe nothing? Say: it's up to you?
Or as a good friend is it better to say, Look, you're gonna lose both eyes if you fight on, take the draw for now and then we can go home and I will teach you judo
And, if the bullying thug makes clear that he's going to beat the crap out of your friend, and his relative that he already has in his power, what then?
Almost certainly Putins ceasefire conditions would include keeping the currently occupied territories, regime change in Kyiv, and ending of Western nations military and financial aid.
So the bully would not be allowing judo lessons or a gun, but rather seeing the victim have both arms broken.
How the feck do you know that? Has anyone asked Putin?
if those are his conditions then yes, they would surely be intolerable, certainly for Kyiv
But has anyone asked?
Putin & Co have repeatedly stated that
- they want Ukraine’s government “de-Nazified” - They regard EU expansion as intolerable - They regard NATO expansion as intolerable - They want Ukraine disarmed
What do you think that all means?
Kyiv has explicitly said
1. They want Crimea back 2. They want all the occupied territory back 3. They want Russia to retreat to the borders of 2013 4. They want to join NATO
And so on and so forth
When an armistice is agreed, neither side gets everything it wants, pretty much by definition, it just means stop shooting then talk
"An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace.[1] It is derived from the Latin arma, meaning "arms" (as in weapons) and -stitium, meaning "a stopping""
Ukraine voted by 92% to 8% for Independence in 1991. Even a majority in Crimea. Putin is trying to overturn the result by force.
Imagine the EU sending an army over to Blighty to reverse the Brexit Referendum of 2016 by force.
Whisper it quietly, but a certain popstar will be eligible for the Presidency when the inauguration takes place. It could be taylor made for Biden to stand down at the Chicago convention for her
I can't believe Zelensky hasn't already thought of the brilliant ideas suggested on PB today, for winning the war against Putin
1. Ask Putin to withdraw to the internationally recognised borders. I mean, that's genius. Ask him. Watch him cower. He will almost certainly fold
And if that doesn't work
2. Arm all the three year olds in Ukraine, and send them to war in Bakhmut, with their teddy bears
After they've agreed this "Korean style armistice" which you imagine is available, what will be your advice when Putin carries on with the invasion a year or so down the line ?
If Ukraine buys a year of peace, with a truce on the frontlines as they are, we should absolutely flood them with weapons and advisors so that deters Putin from coming back for more
And let Poland have nukes
This obsession with nukes that you have is so infantile. What happened to Putin's use of nukes by the way?
Infantile. OK. That's a new one. Oh do fuck off
Do you think Putin would have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine had kept its nukes?
The answer is no. I don't think the Ukrainians regard the nuclear question as "infantile". They bitterly regret renouncing them
And plenty of experts, not just Leon off of PB, are speculating on Polish nukes
🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead widens to eighteen points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 27% (-) Lab 45% (+2) Lib Dem 8% (-2) Other 19% (-1) Fieldwork: 9th - 12th February 2024 Sample: 1,977 GB adults (Changes from 2nd - 5th February 2024)
That’s a good poll for Labour as it includes any fall out from the green u-turn .
It won’t inciude much fieldwork in relation to Aligate !
A couple of stats in the same poll
Labour drop 1% on economic competence to 45% and conservatives rise 4% to 32%
Nett approval for Starmer falls 6% to -7 and Sunak rises 3% to - 35
If I was an Israeli, having seen anti-Semitism around the world, and having seen what happened on October 7th, I might well support Bibi's actions - if not vote for him.
If I was a Palestinian, having seen what Israel's doing, I might support Hamas - if not vote for them.
Although that's a major simplification, that's a difficulty I find with this - there's right and wrong on both sides.
Indeed, although I note Hamas were polling much better among Palestinians than Bibi/Likud is among Israelis. But we lack up-to-date information on Palestinian views.
Whisper it quietly, but a certain popstar will be eligible for the Presidency when the inauguration takes place. It could be taylor made for Biden to stand down at the Chicago convention for her
Ke$ha 4 President!
What about Britney Spears? Having a president subject to a conservatorship would test the constitution.
I'm not certain Britney has the same executive ability as Ke$ha. But the conservatorship was terminated in 2021.
🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead widens to eighteen points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 27% (-) Lab 45% (+2) Lib Dem 8% (-2) Other 19% (-1) Fieldwork: 9th - 12th February 2024 Sample: 1,977 GB adults (Changes from 2nd - 5th February 2024)
That’s a good poll for Labour as it includes any fall out from the green u-turn .
It won’t inciude much fieldwork in relation to Aligate !
A couple of stats in the same poll
Labour drop 1% on economic competence to 45% and conservatives rise 4% to 32%
Nett approval for Starmer falls 6% to -7 and Sunak rises 3% to - 35
That’s worse for the Tories in that respect. Even when Starmers approval falls it hasn’t effected vote share . People want rid of the Tories .
Whisper it quietly, but a certain popstar will be eligible for the Presidency when the inauguration takes place. It could be taylor made for Biden to stand down at the Chicago convention for her
The way american politics is going I expect Biden to stand down for Dolly Parton (age a young 78).
Parton has excellent policies (see Dolly Parton's Imagination Library and her pro-vaccine stance) and would garner votes from both blue and red states. It would be an electoral college blowout.
This is what I thought when I went to Ukraine last summer. I saw all the men on crutches, arms in slings, etc, and I thought: wow, Ukraine is going to run out of men. I said so on this site
And here we are
To be fair Russia is also running out of a lot of men too
But they have so many more
I have found a debate from August last year when I painstakingly tried to explain all this to PB. Lots of PB-ers accused me of mongering doom-porn
"Because you are continuously purveying doom porn.
Claims that Ukraine are running out of people just isn't backed by reality and is Putinist propaganda we should get from those registering on a Saturday for 15-40 posts in before the ban, not you"
Leon replied: . "I’ve been to Ukraine and I’ve seen all the men on crutches, missing limbs, etc. They are now sending men in their 50s to the front line. They are absolutely having difficulties with manpower
Because Russia is 3-4 times as big in population, and now Ukraine is trying to attack through the worst minefields in military history"
That's right: Ukraine is struggling to get troops to fill the front line.
But so is Russia.
You are absolutely right to point out Ukraine's difficulties, but you are curiously blind to Russia's.
And defeat is so much worse for Ukraine than for Russia, that I suspect you will find they will keep being able to find men and women - exhausted and elderly and injured etc - for far, far longer than you might expect.
Is Russia undermanned? Maybe, but
"Serhiy was injured last autumn in Avdiivka, where the fighting has been fierce and even Ukrainian officials admit their army is outgunned and outmanned.
One source put the difference at 8-1, in Russia's favour."
Moreover, Putin doesn't really need to attack. He can defend what he has, and rely on Ukraine to give up, out of sheer exhaustion, because Ukraine no longer has the manpower or strength to mount another large offensive
The war is frozen, and Ukraine cannot win. They might as well seek a ceasefire and save what few soldiers they have left
Russia is only 3x bigger than Ukraine.
And holding territory you've captured is not free. You need troops to hold down the (unhappy) local population. Look at Northern Ireland: even though 55% of the population want us (against - what - 10% in Ukraine), it was incredibly expensive for us.
Ukraine has close to one million men under arms.
A few weeks ago, the BBC reported that at the start of the war, the typical Russian death was a 21 year old professional soldier. Now, it's a 34 year old convict.
No army recruits convicts, unless it has no alternative.
Ukraine do not call up anyone under 27, so far anyway.
Sky News @SkyNews · 44m The former chief economist of the Bank of England Andy Haldane has criticised Labour's decision to abandon its £28 billion-a-year green spending pledge.
Watch the full interview at 7pm on Politics Hub with @SophyRidgeSky
🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead widens to eighteen points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 27% (-) Lab 45% (+2) Lib Dem 8% (-2) Other 19% (-1) Fieldwork: 9th - 12th February 2024 Sample: 1,977 GB adults (Changes from 2nd - 5th February 2024)
That’s a good poll for Labour as it includes any fall out from the green u-turn .
It won’t inciude much fieldwork in relation to Aligate !
A couple of stats in the same poll
Labour drop 1% on economic competence to 45% and conservatives rise 4% to 32%
Nett approval for Starmer falls 6% to -7 and Sunak rises 3% to - 35
That’s worse for the Tories in that respect. Even when Starmers approval falls it hasn’t effected vote share . People want rid of the Tories .
I do not think anyone would argue with you
The extent of the Labour majority depends on how much of the Reform 10% share in that poll does not add to the conservatives
Whisper it quietly, but a certain popstar will be eligible for the Presidency when the inauguration takes place. It could be taylor made for Biden to stand down at the Chicago convention for her
The way american politics is going I expect Biden to stand down for Dolly Parton (age a young 78).
Parton has excellent policies (see Dolly Parton's Imagination Library and her pro-vaccine stance) and would garner votes from both blue and red states. It would be an electoral college blowout.
OK you know what. I give up. This is like arguing with a kindergarten
Let's talk about potato printing
What is your actual point on Ukraine? I think if you were clearer you'd get a better response.
No I wouldn’t. Because I’ve been perfectly clear
PB is just unhinged on this subject and goes into some weird moral huff. I haven’t argued it for a while so I forgot. I’ve now been reminded and I shall abandon the cause like the appeaser I am
I do not repine. I shall drink red wine and read the hare with the amber eyes - which I cannot decide is genuinely brilliant or absurdly overrated
OK you know what. I give up. This is like arguing with a kindergarten
Let's talk about potato printing
What is your actual point on Ukraine? I think if you were clearer you'd get a better response.
Leon's arguments are always the same, and consist of three parts.
1. I was right about this, because I'm so clever and you're all stupid. 2. The situation is irredeemably awful, there is no hope for a good outcome. 3. Therefore we must (regretfully, natch) do this very right-wing, authoritarian thing, that coincidentally I've always wanted us to do.
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
But what if they do seek our advice?
Look at it this way
Imagine Ukraine is your best friend at school and he's in a fight.He's already had a leg broken and lost a few teeth, but he will survive. He is incredibly brave, and the attack on him was unprovoked. Unfortunately he is fighting an absolute lying thug who is three times his size and known for brutal cruelty
The fighting has reached a stalemate, the thug is hinting at calling it a draw, but if it kicks off again it is much more likely your friend will lose both eyes and an arm, rather than the thug losing . The friend turns to you and asks for advice. You are his friend. What do you say? Maybe nothing? Say: it's up to you?
Or as a good friend is it better to say, Look, you're gonna lose both eyes if you fight on, take the draw for now and then we can go home and I will teach you judo
That's a massive fucking *if* that you are hanging your entire premise off.
Is it? I am pretty sure there are top people in Kyiv who want the advice of the best military and strategic experts in the west. Why would they not? They are now in deep shit, and the leadership is split on how to proceed (hence Zelensky sacking his hero general)
Send them some decent long range missiles , once that bridge is gone Crimea is fecked.
Putin will not use nukes over Ukraine. The reason: it is of no advantage for him to use them.
Strategic weapons have massive consequences and risks.
Tactical weapons have very limited usefulness, and massive geopolitical consequences.
the US and China will have explains this to him, very clearly.
I agree with the first part of your post, but would it not follow from the second part that on some level Putin was given tacit 'permission' to invade Ukraine?
Sky News @SkyNews · 44m The former chief economist of the Bank of England Andy Haldane has criticised Labour's decision to abandon its £28 billion-a-year green spending pledge.
Watch the full interview at 7pm on Politics Hub with @SophyRidgeSky
I think the key point in all this discussion of the £28 billion pledge is how everyone is talking about it because we just take for granted that Labour will win the election and, thus, we're talking about national policy.
Can we drop ship them some white feathers to take out on their recruiting drives ?
We need to adjust to this bitter new reality. Putin is not going to be defeated in Ukraine, or not as we once hoped. He will not be forced to cede Crimea, he will not have to retreat to the 2013 borders
It's over, I think. It doesn't matter how much aid or kit we send to Ukraine, if they don't have the men they cannot prosecute the war: that's it. Done. Unless we are prepared to put our own NATO men in the field? But of course, we are not going to do that
Kyiv needs to seek a grim ceasefire and rebuild what is left of Ukraine, and NATO needs to make sure Poland is armed with nukes
NPXMP was saying something sensible along the lines of the first part of your final paragraph.
Of course the Ukrainian Ultra PB Chairborne Division (copyright dura ace) will have anyone who is not fully on board with continuing the war as a Putinist. However reality will eventually bite.
All wars end with either total defeat of one side or a compromise. Ukraine needs some belief that if it agreed to cede territory to the bully, the bully wouldn't be back in a few years time.
Like paying Danegeld only led to a need to pay more Danegeld.
And yet, what can they do if they run out of troops? Conscription (have they already done this?) Call up women too? (Have they already done this?)
They have conscription, but the minimum age for conscription is something like 29. This is because the age cohort of the 20s is particularly small, so it would be demographically catastrophic to suffer heavy casualties in that age cohort.
This is one of the things behind Zelenskyy replacing Zaluzhny - disagreements about the future of conscription.
Again, the more in the way of ammunition, long-range weaponry, etc, that we provide, then the lower will be Ukraine's casualties. Being able to fire fewer artillery shells than Russia is not helpful when trying to minimise their own casualties. Being forbidden from firing NATO munitions at targets in Russia does not heThey'lp Ukraine minimise their casualties. Being denied long-range weapons does not help Ukraine to minimise their casualties.
I want Ukraine to have its best chance of decreasing Russia so that any other dictator tempted to invade a democratic neighbour will reconsider. There is more that we could do to improve Ukraine's chances.
The minimum age for conscription in Ukraine is 27. Or so I was told by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, coming up to their 27th birthdays
They've run out of men and the war is lost. To the extent that it can no longer be won. We are now asking them to sacrifice the last cohort of young people for..... what exactly?
I'm sorry: we're asking them?
This isn't our war. We're not fighting. We're not choosing to fight.
Even if the war is utterly futile, it's their fight.
And when they give in, and the Russian troops come in, and they round up those who supported the war and shoot them? And when they rape the women?
Will that have been a perfectly reasonable price to pay?
They are fighting so the flame of their country is not estinguished, so they can avoid the brutal occupation of the Russians.
We are not fighting. And we are certainly not forcing them to fight.
Stirring words, and all true in a way, but this is realpolitik
They cannot win, as I see it. Let's say I am right for the purposes of this argument
If they come to us as their allies, and ask our advice, what should we say? Urge them to fight on, even though we know they cannot win? Is that moral?
They're not coming to us for advice, they're coming to us for aid.
And so long as they keep fighting and asking, we should keep giving.
But what if they do seek our advice?
Look at it this way
Imagine Ukraine is your best friend at school and he's in a fight.He's already had a leg broken and lost a few teeth, but he will survive. He is incredibly brave, and the attack on him was unprovoked. Unfortunately he is fighting an absolute lying thug who is three times his size and known for brutal cruelty
The fighting has reached a stalemate, the thug is hinting at calling it a draw, but if it kicks off again it is much more likely your friend will lose both eyes and an arm, rather than the thug losing . The friend turns to you and asks for advice. You are his friend. What do you say? Maybe nothing? Say: it's up to you?
Or as a good friend is it better to say, Look, you're gonna lose both eyes if you fight on, take the draw for now and then we can go home and I will teach you judo
And, if the bullying thug makes clear that he's going to beat the crap out of your friend, and his relative that he already has in his power, what then?
Almost certainly Putins ceasefire conditions would include keeping the currently occupied territories, regime change in Kyiv, and ending of Western nations military and financial aid.
So the bully would not be allowing judo lessons or a gun, but rather seeing the victim have both arms broken.
How the feck do you know that? Has anyone asked Putin?
if those are his conditions then yes, they would surely be intolerable, certainly for Kyiv
But has anyone asked?
The arsehole would want that as a minimum , how do you ask a deranged murderer what he wants. He has said he wants to wipe out all Ukrianians, is that not enough for you to get the picture.
Putin will not use nukes over Ukraine. The reason: it is of no advantage for him to use them.
Strategic weapons have massive consequences and risks.
Tactical weapons have very limited usefulness, and massive geopolitical consequences.
the US and China will have explains this to him, very clearly.
I agree with the first part of your post, but would it not follow from the second part that on some level Putin was given tacit 'permission' to invade Ukraine?
The West lost deterrent credibility during the chaotic evacuation from Kabul.
As it turned out, Putin was wrong to think that the West would abandon Ukraine (or, he was wrong in 2022), but the debacle in Afghanistan gave him reason to think otherwise.
If the conflict ends up frozen, it will end up informally frozen. As in, the Ukrainians and Russians will be so dug in, and will so lack reinforcements, that forward movement will be impossible. (You might argue that point has been reached already.)
Both sides would effectively abandon offensive operations, but would continue to man the trenches on the front line. Which would, in turn, be increasingly well defended.
But that's not something that involves "advice", that's one potential natural consequence of a war where attacking is incredibly expensive.
And it's not cost free for either country, albeit casualties would be dramatically reduced.
That's not a situation, mind, where we tell the Ukrainians not to fight. That's not a situation, either, where we stop sending arms and ammunition to Ukraine.
OK you know what. I give up. This is like arguing with a kindergarten
Let's talk about potato printing
What is your actual point on Ukraine? I think if you were clearer you'd get a better response.
No I wouldn’t. Because I’ve been perfectly clear
PB is just unhinged on this subject and goes into some weird moral huff. I haven’t argued it for a while so I forgot. I’ve now been reminded and I shall abandon the cause like the appeaser I am
I do not repine. I shall drink red wine and read the hare with the amber eyes - which I cannot decide is genuinely brilliant or absurdly overrated
I can't believe Zelensky hasn't already thought of the brilliant ideas suggested on PB today, for winning the war against Putin
1. Ask Putin to withdraw to the internationally recognised borders. I mean, that's genius. Ask him. Watch him cower. He will almost certainly fold
And if that doesn't work
2. Arm all the three year olds in Ukraine, and send them to war in Bakhmut, with their teddy bears
We are very much aligned on the fact that it would have made sense to support a freezing of the conflict along current territorial lines a while ago, along with a huge effort to secure the remainder of Ukraine. That didn't happen and it's a pity. However, negotiation at this stage is going to be very difficult, because Russia has the upper hand. Biden can't give Ukraine's negotiating stance any credible menace, because the Republicans will block any further military aid.
I actually think the Ukrainian's best chance might lie with hanging on for Trump. He will want a foreign policy diplomatic achievement, Putin seems to respect him (sort of), and Trump can credibly claim in a way that Biden cannot that if he doesn't get his way he will rain bombs on Moscow, because you can never guarantee he won't do it.
Putin will not use nukes over Ukraine. The reason: it is of no advantage for him to use them.
Strategic weapons have massive consequences and risks.
Tactical weapons have very limited usefulness, and massive geopolitical consequences.
the US and China will have explains this to him, very clearly.
I agree with the first part of your post, but would it not follow from the second part that on some level Putin was given tacit 'permission' to invade Ukraine?
The West lost deterrent credibility during the chaotic evacuation from Kabul.
As it turned out, Putin was wrong to think that the West would abandon Ukraine (or, he was wrong in 2022), but the debacle in Afghanistan gave him reason to think otherwise.
This is spot on: Biden presiding over the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul undoubtedly emboldened Putin.
Putin will not use nukes over Ukraine. The reason: it is of no advantage for him to use them.
Strategic weapons have massive consequences and risks.
Tactical weapons have very limited usefulness, and massive geopolitical consequences.
the US and China will have explains this to him, very clearly.
I agree with the first part of your post, but would it not follow from the second part that on some level Putin was given tacit 'permission' to invade Ukraine?
The West lost deterrent credibility during the chaotic evacuation from Kabul.
As it turned out, Putin was wrong to think that the West would abandon Ukraine (or, he was wrong in 2022), but the debacle in Afghanistan gave him reason to think otherwise.
The failure to do much when Putin took Crimea, Abkhazia/South Ossetia and Transnistria were all significant. Ditto the failure to complain about the Russian war crimes in the two Chechen wars, or their involvement in Syrian Government war crimes. Putin had plenty of evidence of Western failure to act long before Kabul.
Putin will not use nukes over Ukraine. The reason: it is of no advantage for him to use them.
Strategic weapons have massive consequences and risks.
Tactical weapons have very limited usefulness, and massive geopolitical consequences.
the US and China will have explains this to him, very clearly.
I agree with the first part of your post, but would it not follow from the second part that on some level Putin was given tacit 'permission' to invade Ukraine?
Saying that “if you do x, we will do y” doesn’t mean any kind of permission to do Z.
If the conflict ends up frozen, it will end up informally frozen. As in, the Ukrainians and Russians will be so dug in, and will so lack reinforcements, that forward movement will be impossible. (You might argue that point has been reached already.)
Both sides would effectively abandon offensive operations, but would continue to man the trenches on the front line. Which would, in turn, be increasingly well defended.
But that's not something that involves "advice", that's one potential natural consequence of a war where attacking is incredibly expensive.
And it's not cost free for either country, albeit casualties would be dramatically reduced.
That's not a situation, mind, where we tell the Ukrainians not to fight. That's not a situation, either, where we stop sending arms and ammunition to Ukraine.
One difficulty for Ukraine is that it is not in their gift to lift Western sanctions on Russia, so this does limit their negotiating position if they decide they want to come to terms.
OK you know what. I give up. This is like arguing with a kindergarten
Let's talk about potato printing
What is your actual point on Ukraine? I think if you were clearer you'd get a better response.
Leon's arguments are always the same, and consist of three parts.
1. I was right about this, because I'm so clever and you're all stupid. 2. The situation is irredeemably awful, there is no hope for a good outcome. 3. Therefore we must (regretfully, natch) do this very right-wing, authoritarian thing, that coincidentally I've always wanted us to do.
I’m sorry I was going to drop this but I can’t let this pass. It is an accusation as absurd as it is grotesque as it is unfair
I mean, the idea I think “you are all stupid” is, for a start, utter bollocks. I’ve said on numerous occasions that @Penddu2 is really good on rugby
Putin will not use nukes over Ukraine. The reason: it is of no advantage for him to use them.
Strategic weapons have massive consequences and risks.
Tactical weapons have very limited usefulness, and massive geopolitical consequences.
the US and China will have explains this to him, very clearly.
I agree with the first part of your post, but would it not follow from the second part that on some level Putin was given tacit 'permission' to invade Ukraine?
The West lost deterrent credibility during the chaotic evacuation from Kabul.
As it turned out, Putin was wrong to think that the West would abandon Ukraine (or, he was wrong in 2022), but the debacle in Afghanistan gave him reason to think otherwise.
You think if Putin knew the western response to the invasion would be as it's been that he wouldn't have done it?
Putin will not use nukes over Ukraine. The reason: it is of no advantage for him to use them.
Strategic weapons have massive consequences and risks.
Tactical weapons have very limited usefulness, and massive geopolitical consequences.
the US and China will have explains this to him, very clearly.
I agree with the first part of your post, but would it not follow from the second part that on some level Putin was given tacit 'permission' to invade Ukraine?
The West lost deterrent credibility during the chaotic evacuation from Kabul.
As it turned out, Putin was wrong to think that the West would abandon Ukraine (or, he was wrong in 2022), but the debacle in Afghanistan gave him reason to think otherwise.
You think if Putin knew the western response to the invasion would be as it's been that he wouldn't have done it?
Putin took a gamble. The 'west' had given him the impression we would do next to nothing; it is alleged the Russian government looked at the sanctions we imposed on them, calculated what else we might do, and factored that into their decision making.
Unfortunately for them, it looks like the 'wests' response was far harsher than they had been expecting.
OT Just heard Cameron on radio. I thought he was very good. A humanitarian FS and a Tory. Who'd have thought? And what contrast to Starmer who seems to have an obsession with keeping on the right side of Israel and Jews which he seems to think are interchangeable however right wing or brutal they might be. He's becoming a total cringe.
Putin will not use nukes over Ukraine. The reason: it is of no advantage for him to use them.
Strategic weapons have massive consequences and risks.
Tactical weapons have very limited usefulness, and massive geopolitical consequences.
the US and China will have explains this to him, very clearly.
I agree with the first part of your post, but would it not follow from the second part that on some level Putin was given tacit 'permission' to invade Ukraine?
Our reaction to his 2014 adventures in Crimea and the Donbass may well have given him the impression we would do little. But I wouldn't call that 'permission': just that he figured the consequences' of his adventures would be less than they had been. Especially as he very nearly won in February 22. If he had won in 22, by now we would all have adjusted to the new 'normal' of a Russia-ruled Ukraine and still be sucking up Russian gas.
It's a bit (but not totally) like the Falklands Islands crisis; where the Argentinian views of Britain's actions were that we would not respond heavily to an invasion. They took the gamble, and were wrong.
If I was an Israeli, having seen anti-Semitism around the world, and having seen what happened on October 7th, I might well support Bibi's actions - if not vote for him.
If I was a Palestinian, having seen what Israel's doing, I might support Hamas - if not vote for them.
Although that's a major simplification, that's a difficulty I find with this - there's right and wrong on both sides.
That is spot on.
And it's why the circle needs to be broken.
It's why I am a great believer in another country - like Malaysia - taking over administration of Gaza. And in return for them essentially guaranteeing Israel's security, Israel has to remove the blockade on Gaza. Because while travel and trade with Gaza is impossible, so is development. And if there's no development, there can be no hope.
Putin will not use nukes over Ukraine. The reason: it is of no advantage for him to use them.
Strategic weapons have massive consequences and risks.
Tactical weapons have very limited usefulness, and massive geopolitical consequences.
the US and China will have explains this to him, very clearly.
I agree with the first part of your post, but would it not follow from the second part that on some level Putin was given tacit 'permission' to invade Ukraine?
The West lost deterrent credibility during the chaotic evacuation from Kabul.
As it turned out, Putin was wrong to think that the West would abandon Ukraine (or, he was wrong in 2022), but the debacle in Afghanistan gave him reason to think otherwise.
You think if Putin knew the western response to the invasion would be as it's been that he wouldn't have done it?
Well, it was the Ukrainian success in defending Kyiv that created the time for the West to decide to provide support. So I think his main miscalculation was in terms of the Ukrainian ability and resolve to resist. Had Kyiv fallen in the first month, and Zelenskyy executed, then Putin's gamble could have been said to have paid off, regardless of the Western support provided to whatever survived of West Ukraine.
If things go badly for UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week, it will electrify the Conservative Party WhatsApp groups dedicated to getting him sacked. Get The Readout with @AllegraStratton https://trib.al/xjG8Mfk
If I was an Israeli, having seen anti-Semitism around the world, and having seen what happened on October 7th, I might well support Bibi's actions - if not vote for him.
If I was a Palestinian, having seen what Israel's doing, I might support Hamas - if not vote for them.
Although that's a major simplification, that's a difficulty I find with this - there's right and wrong on both sides.
That is spot on.
And it's why the circle needs to be broken.
It's why I am a great believer in another country - like Malaysia - taking over administration of Gaza. And in return for them essentially guaranteeing Israel's security, Israel has to remove the blockade on Gaza. Because while travel and trade with Gaza is impossible, so is development. And if there's no development, there can be no hope.
I'd agree with that, except I don't think it's workable as it would be in the interests of both sides to make the administrators 'occupiers', and untrusted by both sides. When has a foreign administration force worked in the medium term? Japan 1945 to 1952?
If I was an Israeli, having seen anti-Semitism around the world, and having seen what happened on October 7th, I might well support Bibi's actions - if not vote for him.
If I was a Palestinian, having seen what Israel's doing, I might support Hamas - if not vote for them.
Although that's a major simplification, that's a difficulty I find with this - there's right and wrong on both sides.
That is spot on.
And it's why the circle needs to be broken.
It's why I am a great believer in another country - like Malaysia - taking over administration of Gaza. And in return for them essentially guaranteeing Israel's security, Israel has to remove the blockade on Gaza. Because while travel and trade with Gaza is impossible, so is development. And if there's no development, there can be no hope.
Couldn't agree more. But this was sort of the situation in Gaza pre-Hamas so you'd have to throw Hamas out. Cameron said something to this effect also.
I think that if the Israelis knew there was no threat from Gaza, no odd missile, incursion, still less, of course, another October 7th type event, then its attitude and physical security measures would be hugely different.
How do we know this? Because that's exactly what happened in 2005.
And then you could look at the West Bank. Israel forcibly removed Israeli settlers from Gaza, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth, because they wanted peace. If it is shown that Gaza can be peaceful then I have no doubt that internal and external pressure for something similar to happen in the West Bank would grow significantly.
If I was an Israeli, having seen anti-Semitism around the world, and having seen what happened on October 7th, I might well support Bibi's actions - if not vote for him.
If I was a Palestinian, having seen what Israel's doing, I might support Hamas - if not vote for them.
Although that's a major simplification, that's a difficulty I find with this - there's right and wrong on both sides.
That is spot on.
And it's why the circle needs to be broken.
It's why I am a great believer in another country - like Malaysia - taking over administration of Gaza. And in return for them essentially guaranteeing Israel's security, Israel has to remove the blockade on Gaza. Because while travel and trade with Gaza is impossible, so is development. And if there's no development, there can be no hope.
It's a nice idea, but the current Israeli government wouldn't go for it. Israeli politics and society have moved to the right in recent years. You need a shift in Israeli public opinion.
Comments
It could be taylor made for Biden to stand down at the Chicago convention for her
So the bully would not be allowing judo lessons or a gun, but rather seeing the victim have both arms broken.
Without that, who knows. France was close to seeking peace, as its armies mutinied after Verdun
Although your original post could reasonably be read as “crackpot theories and insulting conspiracy theories”
I would put homeopathy in the “crackpot” category
Blackthorn in flower: ✓
(Seen yesterday)
I don't actually care what temperature it is - you can always put on more clothes. It was definitely light enough today to start thinking of Spring.
if those are his conditions then yes, they would surely be intolerable, certainly for Kyiv
But has anyone asked?
You may not be able to bring permanent security through force of arms but look at the current ME environment. The whole thing started apparently because Israel was about to sign an agreement with Saudi. Meanwhile no one is sending arms and materiel to Hamas. So why should Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, be afforded more accommodation by Israel than, say, Egypt or Saudi.
If I was an Israeli, having seen anti-Semitism around the world, and having seen what happened on October 7th, I might well support Bibi's actions - if not vote for him.
If I was a Palestinian, having seen what Israel's doing, I might support Hamas - if not vote for them.
Although that's a major simplification, that's a difficulty I find with this - there's right and wrong on both sides.
The “mutinies” were about not doing pointless attacks. The troops in question repeatedly stated they would defend (and acted to defend ) their lines against the Germans.
Russia has a problem - they have a huge land area to defend & Russian air defenses can’t cover all of it. Meanwhile Ukraine has a much smaller area & western air defenses have been proven to be very capable & more are arriving every month.
If the Ukrainians can hit every oil refinery in Russia, what then?
Trying to construct a different future policy of less/no support in some unknown/unknowable circumstances is pointless. Worse, actually, since the more that's anticipated the more likely it is to happen.
https://twitter.com/seanbeegee/status/1756791596358476105
- they want Ukraine’s government “de-Nazified”
- They regard EU expansion as intolerable
- They regard NATO expansion as intolerable
- They want Ukraine disarmed
What do you think that all means?
https://tass.com/politics/1409189
What is this purist nonsense?
What about this hypothesis. What if we know that they cannot win? What if we have access to facts, via intel and satellites, that they do not possess, and these facts tell us that they cannot win? Do we not advise them of this?
PB is quite insane on this subject
Without British or American intervention France would probably have been defeated by Germany as early as 1916.
As important as the troop contribution the British made- probably more important- was the close blockade of the the Germany economy throughout by the Royal Navy.
Not sexy or particularly interesting, but very effective.
1. They want Crimea back
2. They want all the occupied territory back
3. They want Russia to retreat to the borders of 2013
4. They want to join NATO
And so on and so forth
When an armistice is agreed, neither side gets everything it wants, pretty much by definition, it just means stop shooting then talk
"An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace.[1] It is derived from the Latin arma, meaning "arms" (as in weapons) and -stitium, meaning "a stopping""
Best odds on Michelle Obama according to oddschecker currently 13/2 to win Nomination and 10/1 the Presidency.
Biden 5/2, Trump 1/1 for the latter
That is not the acts of a state trying to deal with Hamas. These are the acts of a state trying to purge Palestinians from Gaza.
And not only this, but all the utterances, from the top down, of why they are doing it and what they want to do after make clear that they don't care about Hamas - that this is understood as a war to take the lands off of the Palestinians in Gaza, something Israeli settlers have wanted to do for a long time.
They're making clear what they want to do:
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/05/axel-springer-israel-settlement-profit/
And let Poland have nukes
You, yourself, believe that you have this perfect foresight, but the real world is much more uncertain..
That will look bad for him. And he is President for Life….
PB is a brick wall on this topic, I will soon stop banging my head, and go to bed
It won’t inciude much fieldwork in relation to Aligate !
Do you think Putin would have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine had kept its nukes?
The answer is no. I don't think the Ukrainians regard the nuclear question as "infantile". They bitterly regret renouncing them
And plenty of experts, not just Leon off of PB, are speculating on Polish nukes
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/its-time-to-give-poland-nuclear-weapons/
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2023/08/16/poland-takes-risks-asking-for-nuclear-weapons/
But, ok, they are all "infantile"
Let's talk about potato printing
If Putin believes that being seen to lose is a one way ticket to being deposed, or going the way of Gaddafi (which Putin has mentioned a lot in relation to how clear it is when the West says things are merely peaceful regime change they mean offing the guy in charge), why wouldn't he blow up Ukraine at the same time? If you're going to lose anyway, lose in a way that hurts your enemies the most. That's the problem, in my mind.
If you’d hadn’t noticed, there’s an ongoing battle in Congress about whether they get anything more at all.
What do you think the chances are of that ‘flood of weapons’ if there’s an ‘armistice’ ?
And without that, how long do you think any ceasefire would last ?
The Korean comparison, as I’ve noted before, is ludicrous.
That came after UN forces had knocked seven shades of shit out of the North’s forces - and relied on the continued presence of US troops for the next half century and beyond.
And that’s to defend a border a tenth of the size.
There aren’t any good options. From Ukraine’s POV, you suggestion looks one of the worse ones.
Imagine the EU sending an army over to Blighty to reverse the Brexit Referendum of 2016 by force.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_referendum
Now you are advocating giving Poland nukes as a way to prove your anti-Putin tough guy credentials.
That's why I call your obsession with them infantile, but I don't say that the discussions about the issue elsewhere are. Just you.
https://www.spottednews.uk/politics/corruption-watch-uk-director-andrew-feinstein-to-challenge-keir-starmer-in-next-general-election/
Labour drop 1% on economic competence to 45% and conservatives rise 4% to 32%
Nett approval for Starmer falls 6% to -7 and Sunak rises 3% to - 35
Strategic weapons have massive consequences and risks.
Tactical weapons have very limited usefulness, and massive geopolitical consequences.
the US and China will have explains this to him, very clearly.
Sky News
@SkyNews
·
44m
The former chief economist of the Bank of England Andy Haldane has criticised Labour's decision to abandon its £28 billion-a-year green spending pledge.
Watch the full interview at 7pm on Politics Hub with
@SophyRidgeSky
The extent of the Labour majority depends on how much of the Reform 10% share in that poll does not add to the conservatives
PB is just unhinged on this subject and goes into some weird moral huff. I haven’t argued it for a while so I forgot. I’ve now been reminded and I shall abandon the cause like the appeaser I am
I do not repine. I shall drink red wine and read the hare with the amber eyes - which I cannot decide is genuinely brilliant or absurdly overrated
1. I was right about this, because I'm so clever and you're all stupid.
2. The situation is irredeemably awful, there is no hope for a good outcome.
3. Therefore we must (regretfully, natch) do this very right-wing, authoritarian thing, that coincidentally I've always wanted us to do.
As it turned out, Putin was wrong to think that the West would abandon Ukraine (or, he was wrong in 2022), but the debacle in Afghanistan gave him reason to think otherwise.
If the conflict ends up frozen, it will end up informally frozen. As in, the Ukrainians and Russians will be so dug in, and will so lack reinforcements, that forward movement will be impossible. (You might argue that point has been reached already.)
Both sides would effectively abandon offensive operations, but would continue to man the trenches on the front line. Which would, in turn, be increasingly well defended.
But that's not something that involves "advice", that's one potential natural consequence of a war where attacking is incredibly expensive.
And it's not cost free for either country, albeit casualties would be dramatically reduced.
That's not a situation, mind, where we tell the Ukrainians not to fight. That's not a situation, either, where we stop sending arms and ammunition to Ukraine.
I actually think the Ukrainian's best chance might lie with hanging on for Trump. He will want a foreign policy diplomatic achievement, Putin seems to respect him (sort of), and Trump can credibly claim in a way that Biden cannot that if he doesn't get his way he will rain bombs on Moscow, because you can never guarantee he won't do it.
Lowest Conservative % since Sunak became PM.
Just two points above lowest under Truss.
Westminster VI (11 Feb):
Labour 46% (+1)
Conservative 21% (-3)
Reform UK 12% (–)
Liberal Democrat 11% (+2)
Green 5% (+1)
SNP 3% (–)
Other 2% (–)
Changes +/- 4 Feb
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1757087174779183560
Horror show for the Tories .
I mean, the idea I think “you are all stupid” is, for a start, utter bollocks. I’ve said on numerous occasions that @Penddu2 is really good on rugby
So ALL is utterly wrong and you should resile
Unfortunately for them, it looks like the 'wests' response was far harsher than they had been expecting.
"This is the difference 1️⃣4️⃣ years of Conservatives Government delivers.
Unemployment in our area is down from 10.6% to 3.6%.
👷♂️ More good jobs
🚢 Our Freeport
🧑🏫 Higher school standards
🔨 Thousands of apprenticeships
🚀 Aiming high
💷 Welfare reform to make sure work pays"
You can quibble with the claims, but that looks like much better campaigning material for the Tories than going on about Rwanda or culture wars.
It's a bit (but not totally) like the Falklands Islands crisis; where the Argentinian views of Britain's actions were that we would not respond heavily to an invasion. They took the gamble, and were wrong.
And it's why the circle needs to be broken.
It's why I am a great believer in another country - like Malaysia - taking over administration of Gaza. And in return for them essentially guaranteeing Israel's security, Israel has to remove the blockade on Gaza. Because while travel and trade with Gaza is impossible, so is development. And if there's no development, there can be no hope.
They face total extinction within months. It can’t get any worse than total extinction
Get Farage as leader
If things go badly for UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak this week, it will electrify the Conservative Party WhatsApp groups dedicated to getting him sacked. Get The Readout with
@AllegraStratton
https://trib.al/xjG8Mfk
I think that if the Israelis knew there was no threat from Gaza, no odd missile, incursion, still less, of course, another October 7th type event, then its attitude and physical security measures would be hugely different.
How do we know this? Because that's exactly what happened in 2005.
And then you could look at the West Bank. Israel forcibly removed Israeli settlers from Gaza, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth, because they wanted peace. If it is shown that Gaza can be peaceful then I have no doubt that internal and external pressure for something similar to happen in the West Bank would grow significantly.