Ukraine (Mod Note & Threadbanned Users in OP)

jimdemp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118689622#Comment_118689622

Thats why no one will do business with America, China or the UK right?

Field east

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118656979#Comment_118656979

Was all this done under Hitlers watch ? . If so it would explain a lot. Is the same not happening now re Ukraine - at a certain person’s behest?

faceman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118689456#Comment_118689456

People in the West underestimate how effective Russian propaganda has been at brainwashing Russians. Many Russians genuinely believe that NATO and the US wants to invade Russia and the only thing preventing it is nukes. Putin’s popularity skyrocketed after he took Crimea.

The extent at which Russia goes to with their propaganda. I’ve seen articles in Russian media about Ireland (nothing to do with the war) and the comment section has plenty of people pretending to be irish claiming they hate the EU and the US

(I troll the crap out of the comment section but many of my posts get flagged or deleted)

Detritus70

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118689481#Comment_118689481

Merkel? What on Earth has Merkel to do with it? Try Olaf Scholz

Detritus70

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118689493#Comment_118689493

Trump would have sent troops to help Russia take over the country. It is foolish to state otherwise

schmoo2k

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118689493#Comment_118689493

Is this the same Trump who was impeached for withholding military aid to the Ukraine?

lulublue22

Fierce fighting around Kyiv - Official Ukraine sources report a number of of Russian soldiers have changed into Ukrainian uniforms with the intent of trying to destabilise the city. Ukrainians expecting a cyber attack on the city’s infrastructure - calling on Ukrainian hackers to counter digital warfare and to conduct cyber spying on Russia.

Turkey has acknowledged the request to close the Bosphorus straight - saying it might close it but would have to allow Russian ships travel home. That situation seems complicated due to the agreement governing the straights - there are questions around the legality of Turkey closing the straights and of course Turkey and Russia’s relationship.

ETA

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1497122294258229253?s=21

Again can I just say - I love the Ukrainian spirit , determination and courage.

Mikhail.XM

I can not believe this is real. As a Russian, I am ashamed of what is happening, and I ask the forgiveness of the Ukrainians for my inability to stop this terrible war. How cynical to talk about your own safety when you yourself ignore the safety of millions of people. I have never supported the current Russian government, nor have I ever voted for Vladimir Putin. Nevertheless, I am infinitely ashamed.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118689658#Comment_118689658

That's what I was thinking too. But posters here have been having a go at Merkel and I was wondering why.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118689606#Comment_118689606

That's why I said modern Russia.

Quin_Dub

##Mod Note##

Multiple below standard posts removed.

This is the politics forum not AH.

Up the Standards please.

Thank you.

batman75

My heart goes out to the people of Ukraine. Trying to control Ukraine is going to put a huge burden on Russia's finances. Allied to sanctions. Putin sounds like he is mad and deluded. His warning sounded like if the West intervene militarily then the nuclear arsenal will come out. Ukraine must feel abandoned by Europe. I honestly thought I wouldn't see a European war in my lifetime. My vain hope is that the Russian people rise up against the Putin regime. I live in hope.

In terms of outcomes well he could look to install a puppet government in Kyiv. Alternatively he could look to divvy up the country on ethnic grounds. A third alternative I heard on 5 live last night is the creation of a land connection through Ukraine to Transnistria in Moldova which is a Russian enclave from my understanding.

Detritus70

Why is everyone saying it would be hard for Russia to control Ukraine?

The USSR comprised of Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Belorussia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and it held together for almost 70 years. Plus the Soviets had plenty of spare time and capacity to hold  Poland, Eastern Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania in check by installing puppet regimes and even as far as brutally putting down uprisings with tanks.

It did this whilst almost being completely isolated.

Russia is very well capable of annexing all former Soviet countries and holding them by military force. Putin is no fool. He will have foreseen any type of sanctions. And my guess is, if the sanctions get too strict, he will hold civilians hostage and threaten to harm them if we don't give in to his demands.

I pretty much guarantee this.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118689977#Comment_118689977

Another clairvoyant. I wish people would have a bit more humility in their posts on here.

Gusser09

Incredible that the world just stands back and watches. Utterly ignoring what happened with the policy of appeasement in WW2. Poland won't be safe either you know. NATO and the UN are a talking shop.

VinLieger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118689977#Comment_118689977

The active Soviet military was 4-5 times the size of Russias current active military also the populations of those countries were far smaller than they are now and were not as open to the rest of the world to be able to avoid USSR propaganda as they are now thanks to current technology or used to the western luxury of living to know what they were missing.

Also as we are seeing Russias military is woefully out of date as compared to the advanced weapons the Ukraine have been supplied from NATO countries and this is just the surplus those countries feel comfortable of letting go of. Imagine the numbers of these things they have left not to mention other items they might not be willing to share.

There is also a completely different level of anger and outrage among Ukrainian people as compared to 80 years ago due to many of the points I raised in my first paragraph. They are more educated informed and aware of what is being taken from them and what conditions they will instead be expected to live under and they will not be willing to accept that.

Detritus70

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118689984#Comment_118689984

I'm saying, don't think Putin hasn't thought this through. He will have anticipated the response from NATO (no direct involvement) and the EU (a specific list of sanctions). And it is speculation, of course. We cannot see inside Putin's head and we can't know for sure what the future holds. But we can extrapolate from what we know.

I'm willing to bet that the response from the Western side comes as no surprise to him. He will have anticipated any sanctions to date and he will anticipate exclusion from Swift and maybe even a gas embargo. At least I hope these steps will come. And he will have prepared responses.

Since he has already annexed Crimea without any serious repercussions to speak of, he is certainly confident that he can invade and hold the Ukraine and that the losses through sanctions will be tolerable.

timmymagoo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118689977#Comment_118689977

Most people don’t get what’s happening yet, it’s too frightened and they don’t want to accept everything has changed

Russia will take Ukraine easily and take their time installing and propping up a puppet government

the Baltic states and all other former soviet states will know Putin has a gun to their head , either bend to Russian influence or you will be invaded

for the baltics it could be simply leave NATO and kick out NATO troops but you can stay in the EU as long as you allow Russian troops and bases in your lands

as I said, most people don’t want to accept the reality that a new Cold War has started.

there will be women and children in Ukraine raped and murdered in this invasion, this is hard for average young person in The west to acknowledge, people whose only daily worry up to now is their data minutes have run out.

Loafing Oaf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118687597#Comment_118687597

 Putin sounds like he is mad and deluded. His warning sounded like if the West intervene militarily then the nuclear arsenal will come out.

Is it just an act though, following Nixon's 'Madman Theory'? He has now actually gone and done something that a lot of people thought he would ultimately back away from, is muttering darkly about nukes, putting out images of himself in classic crazed dictator pose. So now if he does invade Poland/Lithuania/wherever, will NATO be too cowed to resist with conventional forces for fear he might be crazy enough to drop the big one.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118689984#Comment_118689984

Is it clairvoyance to look at history to see what has already happened, and suggest that we should be wary that it could happen again?

Russia could theoretically hold their former territories. They already have a certain percentage of the population who are likely to cooperate with the Russians, and we have seen plenty of examples of brutal repressive regimes even right next door to the most advanced economies in the world. They would need to be absolutely brutal and severely suppress any opposition, but again, history shows that this is possible even with meagre economic resources, and sanctions do nothing to stop this from persisting.

North Korea for example

What lessons do we need to learn from history here?

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118690164#Comment_118690164

No. NATO will back NATO nations and Putin mad or pretend mad knows that. It's why Ukraine happened when it did

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118690199#Comment_118690199

There seems to be a few people on here "guaranteeing" that things will happen. I'd like to see less of that and more humility.

johnnyskeleton

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118690065#Comment_118690065

Crimea is a very unusual area. It was part of Russia until the 1950s and was given to the Ukrainian SSR not because it was Ukrainian, but for convenience within the USSR. The population is majority ethnic Russian, overwhelmingly Russian speaking, had sought its independence from Ukraine back in the early 90s, always had a strong separatist/independence position politically, the Russian elite would traditionally holiday there and, perhaps crucially, Sebastapol was leased to the Russian Navy and there was always a Russian military presence on the penninsula. Although there were major flaws in the referendum that the Russians carried out, there is nevertheless a clear pro-Russian population in Crimea.

With all of that, it is perhaps unsurprising that he could easily annex Crimea, that this move was popular at home in Russia, the international community didn't know how to respond and the Ukranian government realised that there was no point in trying to stop them. The situation in Donbas was much more nuanced, hence the Ukranian authorities were actively involved there.

The Eastern and Central parts of Ukraine are very different still. They are less Russian influenced and, since what happened in 2014, their anti-Russian sentiment has skyrocketed. This is an entirely different situation and none of the factors that applied to Crimea will apply there. The people are showing their remarkable resistance to the invasion, the Russian people appear to be mostly neutral towards this invasion (with mass protests on the one hand and hawks talking about Russian genocide on the other as two minority views on either side), the international community are providing military and financial aid, together with imposing sanctions and ratcheting up the NATO forward presence in Eastern European NATO members (the very thing Putin has been complaining about) and the Ukrainian government, army and people are ready, willing and (so far) able to successfully resist the invasion.

So to be honest, the annexation of Crimea is an incomparable situation to the present one.

bear1

It would be interesting to see what would happen if Turkey did close the strait.

bear1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118690233#Comment_118690233

Swift isn't regulated by American law so why could biden do it when he hasn't the power to? Swift is regulated by Belgian and therefore EU law. It's up to the EU to disconnect them.

Christy42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118690199#Comment_118690199

I mean this time around they would find an Iron curtain much harder to impose as people are far more used to travel and far more used to seeing what it is like on the other side of the curtain. They have propaganda but it isn't as effective these days with the internet and that is a big border to patrol. Certainly North Korea controls their population well but only because their people haven't grown up in the freedom the west provides. If Putin can't give a much better quality of life than the soviets then people will find ways to leave which will be easier these days.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118690215#Comment_118690215

Would be nice if people admitted that they're just poking around in the dark just like everyone else, but the internet's gonna internet

Nobody knows what Putin will do, or how successful his plans will be, or how other regions will respond to this, all there are are potential scenarios for how this could unfold and plans should be made for each scenario

I would have thought the world leaders and intelligence communities would have had plans in place for this but after seeing the response to covid, and brexit, and Biden's pathetic attempts to get his own party to vote for his own policies, I think they're all just reactionary blowhards who haven't the faintest idea of how to stop Putin

Clearly the former USSR states who haven't managed to join either NATO or the EU are going to have to come up with some kind of strategy to protect themselves as best they can, but I have no idea what would work given the history in the region.

Should there be a mutual defence pact between the former USSR countries to dissuade Putin from going in and picking them off one by one? Maybe, but it's hard to imagine Bosnia and Serbia agreeing to defend each other for example. Would it even work?

How would the refugees from this conflict affect politics in the EU and neighbouring countries? How would rising Russian nationalism and separatist movements destabilise the region

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118690295#Comment_118690295

Bosnia and Serbia (or Yugoslavia) were not in the USSR.

20silkcut

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118690020#Comment_118690020

just think about 1930’s appeasement for a second. It occurred at a time when there was no nuclear weapons. It was the trench warfare of WW1 and poison gas and bombing of guernica etc that created the appetite for appeasement .

Today it is nuclear holocaust that tempers appetite for conflict a much worse spectre altogether. So expect much more appeasement before anyone decides on a path that ultimately leads to Nuclear destruction.

it’s a completely different scenario to the 1930’s even if it does appear to echo it.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118690345#Comment_118690345

This is much more like Korea, Vietnam or the various invasions of Afghanistan.

It's basically an extension of the cold war where one side actively engaged the enemy to create regime change and the other side does everything possible except put troops on the ground.

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118690233#Comment_118690233

I'll address the final point: The Stans are all allied with Russia to some extent or other. 4 of them are ruled by autocrats and the other, Kyrgyzstan is an unstable mess but is also a member of Russia's Eurasian economic union. Notably Kazakhstan recently called in Russian troops to help them quell a popular uprising.

Of the 14 former soviet republics the only ones that Russia has absolutely no sway over are the 3 Baltic countries who are all in the EU and NATO. Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine all have independent governments but all of them have Russian supported separatist regions in their country. Armenia has mortal enemies on both sides of it (Turkey & Azerbaijan) so has to bend the knee to Russia for support. Belarus is a puppet state of Russia. Azerbaijan is another autocracy who closely links to Russia (The dictator, Alyev visited Putin the other day - and looked like he was absolutely petrified).

Based on the above, while I do not think Putin will attack the Baltic countries because of their NATO status, I could see him possibly going into Moldova at some stage, since it borders Ukraine and has a western-leaning government at present.