Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Never understand why "the" is still added, it's a Soviet thing which has spilled over into post Soviet times, it's like saying The Ireland or The France, only two countries in the world have officially got "the" in their official titles- The Bahamas and The Gambia, yet we add the in all to often, The Netherlands, The Congo etc.

The added use of the stems from Soviet times where the practice was to refer Ukraine as "na Ukraine" - na meaning "in the" as in an unbounded territory.

I'd usually agree, and yes, the benefits do outweigh the negatives currently.... but this conflict has shown that it is not as fully united as it likes to make out... and even though Brexit I still feel was a bad decision, if the UK hadn't left it, there wouldn't have been as much of a steady stream of anti armour weapons entering the country initially, which was definitely a key dis-advantage to the Russian's (and probably a play they didn't envisage when they encouraged Brexit)..

Kellyanne Conway?

I heartily recommend this LAZERPIG satirical dismembering of the T34 - My knowledge of military technology is limited (guns shoot bullets right!?) - but i remember reading about many a flaw in the T34 - including a crazy situation whereby only 'command tanks' had radios? Germans took advantage of this in many battles, and would go for the command tank, which would leave the others uncoordinated and disfunctional

The T34 is a fav of many a military buff - the whole 'Tank that won the war' etc

As for this video - if anyone wants a breather from the news - Check this out - it will make you laugh, and give you some fascinating info too!

I meant that they would possibly be pragmatic, which would imply there is also a possibility that they would not be pragmatic and just follow the order. In short, it's a variable. One hell of a variable.

People's lives do count for something, but that also ties back to the argument of why NATO would be so cagey about directly engaging with Russia - that as bad as what's happening in Ukraine is, if the nukes started flying... yada, yada, yada. We've heard the argument from multiple directions at this point.

My personal belief is that if either a NATO force, or even a joint European one, moved into the west of Ukraine, it would not instantly intensify proceedings to a nuclear level, nor ever. Not by simple fact of such a force setting foot inside Ukraine, anyway. Now, if it were a case of the much talked about no-fly zone being set up and that necessitating hitting ground targets within Russia to make it feasible, i.e. SAM installations, that... would be a new situation. I have no idea how that would develop.

I also think the unavoidable fact of waging war is that the decision makers in it have to be cold, analytical and a fair bit detached from the immense human suffering on the ground. If said decision makers allowed the red mist to descend, there's a strong chance of making rash, uncalculated decisions that would, ironically, get even more people killed. It makes for awfully hard decisions, many of which would be contemporaneously unpopular, but might be viewed differently in the fullness of time... or not, as the case may be.

Fair point. But couldn't the individual EU countries send more weapons if they wanted? I mean, does France need EU approval if it wants to supply arms whereas the UK doesn't? I'm not sure how that works

They can, have and still are, but to play the EU merri-go round and be "a good member" you need consensus across the board, which is slow and full of red-tape....

The US & UK have been doing stuff for years with the Ukrainian military, but the UK took the first public step of arming them with defensive weapons in preparation for the invasion... other Baltic states followed suit, much to the annoyance of Germany and France who has concluded an invasion wouldn't happen at the time..

Has their been any state in the last 100 years which murdered its own citizens as a publicity stunt? I've heard of faked massacres but an actual atrocity would be off the scale (how on earth could they manage it without the surviving citizens of Bucha being aware it had happened?).

Mauripol is going to be off the charts in comparison

It's a discussion board. For discussing things.

Twitter is literally designed for people who can't be arsed reading more than a few words at a time; I suggest you try there if you can't follow more than a few sentences at a time.

Russia 1999 blew up a number of apartment blocks, killed 300+ and injured over 1000 as a false flag to launch the 1st Chechen war. Putin was Prime Minister at the time.

Oh they'll be through there with their cremation machines . That is in no doubt.