Russia - threadbanned users in OP

War crime, right there. I literally just heard a big boom - hopefully it's just thunder.

It's big. The Chernobyl power plant has been offline for a few years but there's a major nuclear storage facility on the site to store spent fuel rods and similar stuff. And then there's the highly radioactive and contaminated containment facility around reactor block 4 which blew up in 1986. Damage or destruction of either facility would lead to widespread radioactive contamination of the surrounding areas and possibly even the Dniepr river which provides drinking water for a number of Ukraine's largest cities, including Kiev.

In effect Putin saw Crimea as part of Russia forever and thus annexation in 2014 was logical from his deluded perspective. So this is now getting repeated with Donbas with Vlad using the same part of Russia forever logic. Putin also wants to protect Russia by getting guarantees that Ukraine will not join NATO. He does not want NATO on the Russian border. He also wants the US and EU to commit to Ukraine never being allowed to join NATO. The US AND the EU cannot respond favorably to this request because it would call into question Ukraine's sovereignty in choosing its alliances. It would also be a betrayal of a promise made to Ukraine when the country agreed to get rid of its nuclear arsenal. It is hard to see how the current situation could be de-escalated because neither side is willing to make the concessions demanded by the other. It's very worrying because if Putin annexes Ukraine then NATO will be on his borders regardless of his intentions.

Yeah, to anybody paying close attention to Russian/US relations since the 1920's it's the hypocrisy of the US attitude that is so frustrating. And there's so many instances of it, the start of WW2 is with some good justification partially blamed on the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland. Of course, nobody mentions that less than 20 years earlier Poland invaded the Soviet Union taken large parts of Ukraine & Belarus for themselves at the expense of 60,000 Russian lives.

The situation is presented (mainly in US "liberal" media) as Biden & Boris standing up for the rights of poor, small & democratic Ukraine & facing down evil Russian aggression, which is obvious fiction, because if the US & UK were worried about evil aggressors trampling on small nations they would have invaded Saudi Arabia who have been bombing Yemen back to the stone age for the past several years & is miles worse than anything Russia has done to Ukraine, same goes for Israeli massacres in Gaza & oppression/occupation in the West Bank, but of course, too much money is made from selling arms to the Saudi's & getting cheap oil of them. The situation, in reality, is about expanding NATO & US global hegemony.

The problem is that a lot of those 40m will be happy under Russian control.

The Russian populations will be elevated, will get civil service jobs, police jobs, armed forces jobs. There will be plenty of Ukrainian troops that will lay down their arms and defect.

It will be a Civil War scenario and Russia will be the controlling forces.

Tbf, the US "spreading democracy" has involved their military for as long as any of us are alive.

Yes thats true, and Europe, Germany, Japan, South Korea are better for that. Would you not agree?

You just offer your own point of view and unless you are inclined to insult posters it doesn't matter where they are. TBH there's a lot of anger, confusion and anxiety on this thread, not unlike the start of COVID in 2020.

Yeah, forget about facts, the US has been anyway.

And propping up Fascist & military juntas while at the same time taking out people who support the wrong kind of democracy.

Whether they 'should' or not isn't really what matters though, is it?

What matters is that they think they do.

Yes we all know what America did thank you ,

We're reminded on every thread on boards..

Insightful

Ukranian ambassador to the UK says he is very disappointed in western leaders but not at the UK's response. F***ing shameful honestly and this NATO organisation needs to be disbanded ASAP.