Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Enormous amounts were pumped into Afghanistan to train and equip the military. In the end they were not bothered fighting, so the end result is the Afghans get the government they wanted or at least couldn't be bothered fighting against. The situation in Ukraine is completely different.

I'm not going to tackle everything in that post because it's so long, but I don't think autocracies have 'almost nothing to worry about' besides the war. There are certain hard realities even an autocracy must face, no matter how much they try to control the flow of information, and one of them is that if they run out of money to finance their war, that war is f*cked. And so, there is an amount of calculus that must be performed in deciding to go to war and which target you pick. By going to war with Ukraine, Russia has alienated many economic partners. That, in turn, will create austerity for the Russian population, which will be oxygen for the anti-Putin sentiment that exists in the country.

Those who admire autocracy, either openly or in secret, would admire its apparent strength, but they forget it's also brittle. Enough pressure and it will crack. Putin's doing himself no favours, here. He can try to tell his people one thing, but he probably underestimates just how readily information travels these days.

A little simplistic to say just accept price hikes in petrol/gas. 40% of gas supplies for Europe come from Russia, there is no alternative sources to cover that. And will take decades to reverse this dependance.

But it's just paranoia; there's no rational basis to it. Ukraine as a standalone actor could never attempt to invade Russia, no matter how much western weaponry it possessed. And if the US/NATO/The West wanted to launch an unprovoked attack on Russia it wouldn't need any help from Ukraine. So if Russia genuinely has no aggressive intentions toward Ukraine, the Ukraine joining NATO or whatever military alliance doesn't change anything of substance.

Of course if Russia still harbours ambitions to annex more of Ukraine, install puppet governments etc. then obviously Ukraine joining NATO is a major hindrance to it. But that's where your analogy with Canada and Mexico falls down, those countries have no 'good' reason to join any anti-US military alliance because they can be certain America has no intention of invading them.

Nobody is mentioned "how inconvenient it is when they turn up near us". That is only you.

Again you are being obtuse and not acknowledging the original posters point. Such strawman deflection does not help your argument as it shows you don't must not have a strong one.

I don't know how anyone could refuse to help the Ukrainian people fleeing the war.

There are people, for example, in camps in the likes of Calais. They have possibly been there for years. They were never near a warzone. They will never be in a warzone. There is nobody in France trying to murder them. By concocting and implying a false equivalence between those "refugees" and the women and children literally fleeing Ukraine for their lives at the minute, you are seriously insulting those Ukrainian women and children.

Ahh would you give over with that shyte. Yeah they were paving the way for the women and children to follow.

Now how come that isn't happening in Ukraine at the moment?

It is a busted myth that all those young lads were fleeing Syria, Iraq or indeed Afghanistan.

Yes there were Syrians there, but there was every type of chancer from not just Middle East and Central Asia but also parts of Europe amongst them.

Just like it is a busted myth that they were all doctors, engineers and scientists.

The chat bot has been in place since the beginning of the invasion. The Ukrainians have been using every piece of information they could get their hands on. They were also harvesting information from TikTok. Russian and Belarus teenagers posting videos of military equipment passing through the rail network were an invaluable source of intelligence.

Ordinary Russians who overwhelmingly approve of Presidency. You make your bed you sleep in it, good enough for them.

It's the minority who don't approve of him that I feel sorry for.

There was another story though about Ukrainians doing some basic training in a local community hall/gym/basketball hall kind of place. One fella took a selfie of himself with all the lads in the background and posted it online. About 5 minutes later the building was hit with a rocket and they blamed local collaborators recognising the building from the inside and passing on the info.

If it's the same incident I'm thinking of it was actually worse than that:

It was reported that at least two Russian operatives entered the building and opened fire on mostly sleeping or resting volunteers; there was footage of multiple bodies appearing to have numerous gunshot wounds.

Might be a different one. The one I saw showed your man with the selfie and then beside it showed a picture of the building with a large hole in the wall where the rocket had gone in. It wasn't from a reputable news source though

Edit. This is not where I saw it but it is the same photos

There's no denying Russia has unilaterally broken the agreement. It could be argued that releases the other signatories to the agreement from any undertakings they gave to Russia but not from each other.

I think Russia has walked right up to the line in terms of use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in alluding to 'consequences you have never seen in history' without explicitly threatening Ukraine with the same as to do so would oblige the USA and UK to come to Ukraine's defence.

Russia will not want USA's and UK's direct involvement. I don't think that is a line they will cross.

There an oil exporter but don't have enough for themselves.

This is turning out be a sh1tshow in their own backyard... Delighted!

Agreed. It's a pretext for an asset grab.

Russia's unilateral breach of an existing agreement makes negotiations difficult. As Russia has shown it cannot be trusted any solution will need an effective means of enforcement, something which will be difficult for Russia to accept but without which will be difficult for Ukraine to accept.