Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Cnoc, you do get that it's possible to laud an action, even if it's a foolish one, or in this case a laudable action done foolishly, without any cognitive dissonance required? Like hailing a weak swimmer diving in to save a drowning man as a genuine hero even if both of them end up drowning. I stand by every part of those quoted posts.

It seems Zelensky in his position takes a somewhat similar view. He talks far more about weapons than Ukrainain refugees or humanitarian aid(we've given 40 million in that). Never mind the open secret of Russian dirty money bankrolling their British interests including their current government(and their Labour party isn't exactly squeaky clean here too), he lauds the British government for the weapons they have given, while ignoring the Ukrainians refugees they haven't taken. Apparently Britain is "with us", Ireland "not quite there". Whose country is the only one whose delegate didn't get the Zelensky handshake for the cameras treatment? The first foreign and defence minister to visit and UN security council member with it.

I also mused in the same thread that if what we were looking for was political praise and the feelgoods from Zelensky it does seem we would have been better off emptying the stores of the Curragh of weapons we'll never use and taken in a couple of thousand Ukrainian refugees and capped it at that. It certainly also would have been far cheaper in the short, medium and long term.

Before this conflict that ineptness hadn't been tested. It's pretty clear now that they are not close to the fighting force that was assumed. Or even egged on by US military contractors as they had done in the Cold War with the missile gap which was huge, but military contracts are lucrative.

The countries around them who had been once part of the Soviet Union were the ones looking to NATO. The British empire outside of nations like Ireland who wanted feck all to do with them politically were at least able to cobble together some sort of commonwealth after their empire fell. The Russians tried but weren't. Their ex colonies wanted nothing to do with Mother Russia as they knew them only too well. The few that seemed to like Ukraine and Belarus only did so because of putin puppets in charge. Chechnya wanted them gone and putin had to flatten the country and stick another puppet in charge to bring them back to the fold. Ukraine is a good example of one who thought eff this, got shot of putin's puppet and looked westward. And look how putin has reacted, just like he did in Chechnya and Georgia, but this time it blew back in his face.

His talk of "nazis" in Ukraine further illustrates his nonsense. Yes there are indeed hard right nationalists in Ukraine(that otherwise Right On people will praise Azov makes me laugh TBH). Their mainstream parties are hardly the twitter friendly FG we get here either and before this war they were still considered the second most corrupt nation in Europe.

However and it's a big however; ten, fifteen, twenty years ago Ukraine had far more hard right nationalists and support and they were in power and the country was more corrupt. So why didn't putin invade to remove "nazis" then? Why did he wait until "nazis" couldn't even return a single seat in parliament and corruption is being tackled? I have found this question to shut Russian supporters down on twitter and elsewhere. They have no answer to this, even with their other delusions. Or they know and can't admit it. He didn't invade ten, fifteen, twenty years ago because he had no problems with "nazis", not when they were his "nazis". He certainly has no problem with the Wagner group. They only become "nazis" when he can't control them.

If tomorrow morning Azov went nuts and pledged allegiance to putin and Mother Russia they'd magically become denazified and all references to nazis in Russian propaganda around them would vanish in minutes and they'd become instant comrades in the fight against other "nazis".

Russia is getting desperate in my humble. Their propaganda has moved to claiming they're fighting NATO, because little Ukraine giving them a kicking is too unpalatable. If they didn't have nukes and they were actually fighting NATO this war would be a route and would have been over a fortnight after it started with the Russian fleet mostly sunk, their airforce blasted out of the sky or grounded in flattened airfields and their army would have been slaughtered, pushed back to their borders. Minus nukes and if they wanted to, NATO could likely take Russia itself, certainly get them to surrender and sue for peace at a table in the Kremlin looking across at NATO commanders.

They see no real "out" that saves face for them. The only one is keeping the "independent states" in the east and calling that a "victory". They may hold the Crimea corridor when Mariupol falls, but even there I'm not so sure they can hold it for long. They'd be looking at the Northern Ireland Troubles on steroids for years with Western weapons flooding across that border. Never mind the Russian economy at home picking away at them.