Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Jinglejangle69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120430454#Comment_120430454

They really are some piece of work.

Still can’t fathom how they are doing all this while sitting on the UN.

Also how they are still getting away with this whole mess in general.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120430135#Comment_120430135

Germany's government has shown itself up to be utterly pointless in this conflict and too many in the government and past governments seem to be compromised by Russian money.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120430469#Comment_120430469

They have nuclear weapons JJ. That's the long and short of it really and that's why they, their government and media never stop waving them around. They know that's their only real bargaining chip and protection. If they didn't have nukes and NATO decided to stop them it quite simply would stop them. There would be losses on NATO's side of course, but Russian forces in air, on sea and on land would be utterly overwhelmed and bloody quickly too.

Hypersonic missiles? They're launched from Mig 31's from altitude and high speed. The MiG 31 is a very effective platform, one of the best IMHO in Russia's fleet and no slouch worldwide, but they're about as stealthy as a breezeblock. They're already tracked. If NATO went hot they'd be blown out of the sky before Russian radar even noticed the fighters that did it. That goes for every other air asset they have. Their Black Sea fleet would be either at the bottom of same, or running for whatever port they could find. On land Russia's night attack capabilities are seriously lacking so likely NATO would sweep in at night, after every command and control centre they could find was taken out first. Look what just a couple of dozen HIMARS have wrought. Look at the Russian scuttlebutt over a couple of dozen modern NATO tanks. Imagine companies of modern NATO tanks going towards already hammered Russian positions in actual combined force doctrine and practice. And that would be without even having to hit targets within Russia's borders.

Game Over. Like I say Russia knows this all too well, even if their conspiracy theorist western supporters don't. Hence the nukes and talk of nukes. If they were winning and were confident of their forces they wouldn't be always wheeling the oul atomic war stuff out. They wouldn't need to. NATO doesn't. The Chinese don't. About the only other ones that do are that family mafia state North Korea, again because they know 100% they'd be annihilated in any conventional war with pretty much anyone in the region.

saabsaab

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120428816#Comment_120428816

A good sum up. However, the Russians are looking for significant military support from China and if they got that it would upset the balance in Russia's favour. It doesn't look like they are going to help but no one knows.

Jinglejangle69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120430605#Comment_120430605

Yeah doesn’t bode well for the future now countries see once you have Nukes you can do what you want really.

storker

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120430792#Comment_120430792

Unortunately, the logical conclusion of this is that Putin doesn't even need a ground army. He could send the nearest cub scout pack across the border and if the Poles say "Run along home like a good bunch of lads," the Kremlin just has to go *cough*"Nukes!"*cough*, and the Poles have no choice but to respond "Come in lads, help yourselves...our new capital is Moscow, you say?"

Hyperbolic, true, but the principle holds as long as he is allowed to get away with it.

jmreire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120429576#Comment_120429576

I wonder what is the price the relatives back at home pay when one of their family surrenders in this war? ...back in ww2 days, to get captured alive was unforgiveable, even if injured, let alone to surrender. And many ex Russian POW's were indeed very badly treated on their return to Russia at the end of ww2. And you see what that monster Prigozhin does with his sledgehammer to Wagner's who surrender. You think that this may have a bearing on any decision to surrender?

jmreire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120430425#Comment_120430425

This courtship with Melitopol is getting pretty serious....another one or two, and it will be proposal time!!!🤗

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120430730#Comment_120430730

China would have a tricky time of both giving aid to Russia and maintaining good business ties with the West. There's probably also the temptation on China's part to let Russia make all these geopolitical mistakes and end up in pure economic vassalage to China.

jmreire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120430454#Comment_120430454

Back in Grozny, they had a form of "interrogation" known as a telephone call to Putin. It involved tying the victim up to immobilize him/her, then attaching an electrical clamp to the ear, and another to the genitals, and switching on the electric current. Victims were understandably never right after it, even after treatment. So I guess it still in use by the Russians the present day. Monsters do not change their spots, and unlike the ( rightly so) uproar over what went on in the American camps in Guantanamo Bay, I've never heard much outcry over Russian atrocities. But then again, I suppose that's the difference between a country like the US where freedom of speech exists, and Russia where there are no freedoms at all, of any kind.

Dyr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120430135#Comment_120430135

And we've hitched our wagon to these lads, because Europe and stuff.

Rawr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120430605#Comment_120430605

I know I wheel out this theory often, with zero evidence, but I’m always drawn to the idea that the modern Russian nuclear threat is little more than that anymore…an idea.

Now, I do not believe it to be impossible that some diligent soul in Russia’s defense ministry has actually managed to keep at least some of the Soviet Nuclear arsenal operational incase it was even needed, but that arsenal was the work of a state who planned for the real possibility of using them and likely maintained them accordingly. I do not get that impression from the Russian Federation, especially with their recycling of poorly maintained Soviet kit.

At very least the North Koreans (with their very dubious capabilities in general) manage to stage bomb & missile tests, to create impression or idea that they might be able to throw a nuke at you in a war.

But the Russians are actually in a war, right now. A NATO-sponsored Ukraine is fighting back and has even attacked them in Russia proper sometimes. But despite all that, no Nuke tests. There is just talk, or “deployment” of Nukes in Belarus. No solid evidence of their abilities, just rhetoric.

Part of me suspects that rhetoric is all they really have. That they must talk up a nuclear ability that has long since rusted away in the hope that no-one ever doubts that they have it, or test them on it.

If my feelings are related to the truth in anyway, and the world finds out….all bets would be off.

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120430792#Comment_120430792

And also tells other countries, if you have nukes - don't give them up, if you haven't then get to work on developing / getting some, if you haven't perfected the technology, dirty bombs will do until you have.

With the benefit of hindsight I doubt Ukraine would have signed the Budapest Memorandum and given up the nuclear weapons they did , had they known then, what they know now.

Gatling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120431465#Comment_120431465

Wasn't just their nuclear weapons they had long range bombers they chopped up as part of the same deal , which could have easily been able to hit deep inside Russian territory

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120431256#Comment_120431256

Well whatever about missile tests, detonating a nuke as a test, underground, or worse in atmosphere, would get Russia nowhere. It would make it worse for them IMHO. The Chinese would drop them like a hot rock for a start. Xi has more than once made it very clear that he doesn't like talk of nukes and since Russia's the only one talking about nukes... I doubt he's too please putin wheeled nukes into Belarus.

briany

@Wibbs

Xi has more than once made it very clear that he doesn't like talk of nukes and since Russia's the only one talking about nukes... I doubt he's too please putin wheeled nukes into Belarus.

Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to have registered his displeasure to Putin to the point that he'd wheel them out of Belarus again.

Mike3549

Found this on Twitter, happened minutes ago.

#BREAKING Explosion reported in a cafe in St. Petersburg where Russian blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was holding an event.

Casualties reported.

#BREAKING Russian war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky has been killed in St. Petersburg explosion.

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120431824#Comment_120431824

Sky News reporting same, now, as well. Trouble with Russia is that you're always left unsure if this is a government doing (even though he's pro-Kremlin) or some grassroots opposition thing. We never got answers, for example, on who it was who killed the daughter of that very pro-Kremlin commentator, Dughin, or whatever his name was.

maebee

https://news.sky.com/story/russian-military-blogger-killed-and-six-injured-in-blast-at-st-petersburg-cafe-reports-12848536

Has anybody here heard of him / follow him?

maebee

https://twitter.com/ABarbashin/status/1642558335374204930?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1642558335374204930%7Ctwgr%5Ec915e625da8c74e73867463f5f373481f5e310de%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.twitter.com%2F%3Fquery%3Dhttps3A2F2Ftwitter.com2FABarbashin2Fstatus2F1642558335374204930widget%3DTweet

...

TheValeyard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120431957#Comment_120431957

And the boom itself

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1642558018175770624

pro regime blogger killed...

Hmmm questions...

TheValeyard

Also reports that Prigozhin is the owner of the cafe.

Perseverance The Second

A Dangerous Game to be a Russian Military Blogger- Certainly a deliberate bombing given he was holding a 'creative evening'

The question is who set it up? - According to Russian media the cafe was owned(in the past) by PMC Wagner chief Evgeniy Prigozhin.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1642559965536583680

Either another piece of internal politicking or a Ukrainian Operation

TheValeyard

The Russian Offensive has failed.

The objective to take Luhansk and the Donbas by the end of march has failed.

Russia cannot recover its armoured loses.

Russia cannot achieve air superiority .

Are the orcs starting to panic?

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120432000#Comment_120432000

Russia still has a bit of Luhansk and about half of Donetsk left to conquer. This is after conscripting 100,000s of men to join their fight and they can't even take this land, much less get to Kyiv. This is why people call them a paper tiger.

zv2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120431984#Comment_120431984

I read on Twitter a woman gave him a statuette and it blew up.

Dyr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120432086#Comment_120432086

How big was the statue? That's a fair oul wallop in the footage.

briany

Somebody should make a deepfake of the time Gaddafi was pulled from a big construction pipe by Libyan rebels but have Putin's face in there instead and spread it around social media channel (maybe this exists already?). The word was that the original video of this scared the bejesus out of Putin and is basically his number one fear for his own fate.

Private Joker

https://twitter.com/clashreport/status/1642561699508023298?s=20

the alleged bomber who gave him the figurine

storker

Christianity, Russian-style...

https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1642547883873378304?s=20