Off Topic Chat. (MOD NOTE post# 3949 and post#5279)

tomtucker81

France is the closest in Europe to Russia that is a nuclear power.

The Nato countries being threatened is way more likely than them reaching France. As it stands, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland are all Nato countries that now are bordering an aggressive enemy.

magnumman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118687521#Comment_118687521

The lame duck in the White House is to his advantage also.

Feisar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118688703#Comment_118688703

Will France launch one in defence of Estonia?

Edit - The concept of mutually assured destruction is great and all however a state is unlikely to go down that route in defence of another. So in theory can Russia keep going until they reach a nuclear power?

otmmyboy2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118688998#Comment_118688998

That is the big question.

I suspect even if there is a "shooting war" between NATO and Russia it won't degenerate to nuclear war as both sides, even in the cold war, were aware that would mean the destruction of their regimes, and the rest of the world.

Hence Russia attacking Ukraine after much telegraphing to see what the world powers would do, and them doing nothing militarily.

I would hope that an attack on a NATO country would not meet the same apathy, but given politics currently who knows...

BattleCorp1

Grizzly 45

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118688703#Comment_118688703

Kaliningrad the 13th Russian province and the last Russian outpost in Western Europe[About the size of Munster and Connaught] is there between Poland and Latvia.This was formerly German East Prussia and is now a nuke missile nest.NATO believes it is full of the ISKANDER-M missiles. Which can reach ANY EU city within 10 mins of launch. That's Russias dead man trigger to checkmate any ideas NATO might have of using tactical battlefield nukes.

BTW France won't have any say, or much of one if it came to turning the keys. That's now a Brussels decision. Another reason the UK wanted out of the EU. It would have had to surrender its nuke keys to Brussels. Britan might be out of the EU, but it is not out of NATO

Grizzly 45

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118690891#Comment_118690891

Stealing this!!!

tomtucker81

My impression of what's happened so far is that the western countries, nato, whatever, are not going to stand up to putin due to what he could do.

In which case has he not won already??

Grizzly 45

Or it becomes another Chechnya with better equipment supplied by the West.

Evidence already that Russia has lost armour and aircraft to US-made Stingers and anti-tank weapons. Invading a country is one thing, occupying and pacifying it is another, as we found out recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. Putin isn't going to hang around there either and get his best and key army divisions tied up in this occupying Ukraine to have them chopped up slowly. He'll do whatever needs doing in Kiev to install a puppet regime, and then send in 2nd rate conscript expendables to hold it for however long.

tomtucker81

A government that will never be recognised by anyone outside of Russia and itself.

There'll be a lengthy guerilla war then or even civil war once the Russians leave.

JP22

I see that the Irish Government has stated they will accept all family members of Ukrainians who are residing here to come to Ireland if they so wish.

BTW, I totally agree with this decision, any modern democracy would/should do the same.

Question is?

If each Ukrainian family presently here has 4/5/6 members in Ukraine who wish to flee/come here for protection, etc., does our government have the necessary planes to fly them out?, do they have the necessary housing?, medical facilities?, welfare facilities?, etc, etc……

I think not, last time I looked our DF had no primary radar, no air heavy lift capabilities, no nothing basically.

Last time we evacuated people, our dept civs went home by gov jet and some of our DF staff stuck their thumb out on the runway for a lift home by another countries Airforce. BTW, our DF personnel who completed this task are still awaiting their full pay increase which was awarded several years ago.

Mellor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118692885#Comment_118692885

Ukraine isn’t a part of NATO. As it stands, NATO aren’t involved (outside of aid, support), and the only way they can get involved is to declare war, which would essentially mean starting WW3.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118693188#Comment_118693188

They aren’t leaving imo.

BattleCorp1

Will China say fcuk it and go for Taiwan?

Mississippi.

They'll be watching very carefully what exactly the rest of the world does to Russia first.

Putin is their guenea pig on this one.

Grizzly 45

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118698411#Comment_118698411

Possibly within the next 3 weeks...The stock of Tawain semiconductors is dropping like nothing..Why this important...TSC is the biggest producer of Semiconductors on the planet, and everyone needs them, and it's mostly Chinese money that is invested in it. So if they are pulling out their money, something is going to give possibly. Make Ukraine look like a mild schoolyard scuffle.

JP22

I would hate to be a tank commander over the coming days.

Germany is giving 1,000 anti-tank rockets and 500 Stinger missiles to Ukraine.

More and more EU countries are now sending arms also.

I say China will make moves on Taiwan. Their air force violated their airspace the other day. Plus Russia and China are very close now after shared military exercises and tech in recent times. Could be possible that they planned attacks around the same time.

tomtucker81

I know Ukraine isn't in Nato or the EU. My point is they've been completely left alone and the impression I get from Nato and the EU is that you're not in the club so we won't do anything at risk of incurring the wrath of Putin. If they're(nato) afraid of him...then surely they've lost to him already?

Since that post however there appears to be a commitment to send a lot more munitions which will greatly help.

The point is, being in NATO means that if any nuclear power attacks you then mutually assured destruction applies. So Russia cannot attack Estonia, Poland or Latvia without starting WW3.

Putin knows that the time to attack Ukraine is now or never as they are not NATO but could join in the future. So there is no legal obligation for NATO to defend them. He knows no one wants nuclear war, including Russia. But if they were NATO then they would have to defend them whether they want to or not.

Unfortunately for Ukraine they have a lot of Russian sympathisers due to Russian migration for generations so they could not fast track NATO membership without opposition like the other Eastern European countries that joined. Because of the way things happened since 2014, NATO have left them high and dry and at Russias mercy because of the threats Russia have made. It's been a bit of a diplomatic mess.

Grizzly 45

Seems more anti war Russians have been arrested protesting this attack ,than have sofar been killed in Ukraine. Est 3000 dead sofar in Ukraine...Russia claims it is willing to lose 50 ,000 men to conquer Ukraine and is calling up its medical personnel to deal with mass casualties, as well as sending in its Chechynan thugs in hunter killer squads targeting govt officials. A 52 armoured coloum of Chechen mercenaries was wiped out last night by the Ukrainian forces including one of their best generals.

Verdict sofar.Gone from No hope at all last Wed.To extremely sh**ty situation Sunday

BattleCorp1

I could be wrong here but from looking at things Russia hasn't thrown the kitchen sink (and I don't mean nukes) at Ukraine just yet. If the Russians start to get huge casualties, I can see them flattening large areas with huge civilian casualties.

kowloon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118698411#Comment_118698411

Unlikely. China seems to have been caught unprepared for Putin's actions. It's difficult to launch an invasion on a whim and the logistics on an entirely amphibious operation are much more difficult to grapple with than the largely land-based invasion of Ukraine. China's port capacity on the coast adjacent to Taiwan means they would either have to send multiple small waves of invaders or load up ships and have them wait offshore for the invasion to build up. This would be spotted, would give early warning and would leave the invasion fleet vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike.

Grizzly 45

I think the Russians have gravely miscalculated three things. Javelins and Stingers and UAVs for one.The Javelin AT missile crews is playing havoc on their supply lines. Their new T90 tank is drinking petrol like nothing, and their conscript crews of kids seem to be dumping them and not disabling them once they run out of fuel, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.[Witness the vid of the aul lad offering a Russian a tank crew a tow back to Russia with his Lada.]It seems like the Russian resupply /logistics for this has been wholly underestimated by their high command. Without either of those systems, I think it would be all over by now. Even it's contested as to who owns the air over Ukraine. Ghost of Keiv, notwithstanding. Russia should have been able to dominate the sky over Ukraine within hours.

Certainly possible that it will get nastier, as there has been confirmed reports of Russia moving one or more Thermobaric bomb missile launchers and Buk air defence launchers into the conflict zones.It has been even mooted that Putin, whom everyone even in his yes men cabal thinks has now got a few screws loose,might even authorise chemical weapons to be used.

Have been using this site to watch whats going on. It's mad that we can watch a war in Europe on Twitter and Tik Tok and get better info from those feeds than what MSM is providing...What a time to be alive!🙄

https://ukrstream.tv/en/liveuamap

kowloon

It's moving too fast for traditional journalism to keep up. There can be huge changes on the ground in the time it takes to write, edit and publish a newspaper article. But all the live feeds and social media posts are information overload. It's hard to filter out the truth and get a proper idea of what's going on.

Grizzly 45

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118702838#Comment_118702838

Things that make you go Hmmmm!🤔

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/just-china-announces-military-exercises-south-china-sea-sunday-thru-tuesday/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=the-gateway-pundit&utm_campaign=dailyam&utm_content=daily

kowloon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118704098#Comment_118704098

My guess is it's all just posturing, but I thought Putin would stop at Donbass so I'm not going to rule out **** really hitting the fan. Hopefully it's just the Chinese flexing and keeping the US busy.

JP22

Watching various news media it seems the Russians definitely under estimated the Ukrainians ability to defend themselves, is also looks like the Russian supply lines are falling to pieces.

With all the restrictions imposed so far and many more to come over the coming days, we could see Russia bombed back to the last century without a shot being fired by Nato/EU. It’s useless to have money if you cannot spend it and if you are ostracized out of the international market.

I now see the EU 27 in block is to purchase armaments for Ukraine, a momentous decision.

Was this decision taken with a vote?, if so did Ireland vote yes, I hope so.

JP22

Breaking news, just saw the answer to my previous question.

A vote was taken, Ireland abstained.

There you go lads, a country fighting for their lives and our chicken shite politicians abstained.

Neutral me arse, in WW2 we locked up German air crew, we returned British air crew, and we sent condolences on Hitler’s death.

Grizzly 45

And I bet we won't have the stones to shut down or suspend Aughinish production or refuse Russian coal for Moneypoint either. Go on lads with those global sanctions, we in the Dail are right behind you all! So long as we don't suffer that is.

Munsterlad102

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118705134#Comment_118705134

Well we are neutral, so what did you expect? Don't go bringing WW2 into this, just because we gave slight concessions to the allies that doesn't mean anything. Giving weather reports and not blowing planes out of the air isn't the same as sending our troops to fight. Also let's not forget when Dev sent condolences for FDR's death too. A mass bouquet is hardly a declaration of war.