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Ukraine (Mod Note & Threadbanned Users in OP)

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  • Registered Users Posts: 3,550 ✭✭✭amandstu


    To agree with 3 or 4 other responders,it is indeed terrible (an understatement) that Russian soldiers are dying in this war ,but the cause lies in the leadership they have been bullied into acquiescing with.

    They may have it within their power to remove their present leadership if they can understand why that should happen but until that happens they are in for the ride and Ukraine has the moral right (and historic duty) to defend itself as it sees fit.


    So pity the poor Russian soldier but our thoughts have to be first with the most easily helpable victims of this barbarous aggression and that is the Ukranian army and people



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 36,334 CMod ✭✭✭✭pixelburp


    We all want the war to end. Ordinary Russians are paying for Putin's hubris. Its end is easily achieved by the invading Russian forces leaving and if... If .. they're genuine about institutional issues in Ukraine will work with whatever respected organisations can help, rather than shelling civilians into dust. Big "if" mind you.

    The ordinary Russian soldier appears to be rudderless and low on morale. I pity them; their leaders can rot.



  • Registered Users Posts: 49 SomewhereInTheMiddle


    I apologise for the wrong information, you are right, 2 trillion was the wrong figure. And thanks for the good info regarding tanks.

    However spending more money doesn't mean "most modern", isn't it? Russia is 3rd in the world of military budget, after US and China, so all the rumors about weak military equipment sound a bit strange.

    E.g. look into this Telegram channel, you'll see a lot of examples: https://t.me/asbmil/2023 (be aware, the info can be also not verified, but some messages are obvious).



  • Registered Users Posts: 322 ✭✭myfreespirit


    Ukrainian irregulars are continuing the fight against the occupiers, it seems:


    Classic guerrilla techniques are being employed - attacks on border posts, car bombs, damaging rail links, issuing warnings to collaborators and so on.

    Time to get a translation into Ukrainian of "Guerilla Days in Ireland" by Tom Barry and supply the books to Ukraine?



  • Registered Users Posts: 559 ✭✭✭BurgerFace


    So absent the OCSE, all elections are invalid?

    Ukraine had every chance and opportunity to insist that the OCSE were present to observe and report on the Crimean referendum. They never once asked for observers.

    You didn't address the simple question. It's called a non sequitur. The Crimean referendum is null and void because the OCSE wasn't on hand to observe. Is that your position? And remember the OCSE were not invited.

    Do you see the knots in which you are tying yourself?

    Why didn't Ikraine invite the OCSE to oversee a vote in Ukraine? Are you going to attempt to tell me that the Russians stopped the OCSE?. Russia would have had no more power to do that than if they were to try and stop the OCSE from observing the gay marriage referendum in Ireland.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 17,930 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe




  • Registered Users Posts: 322 ✭✭myfreespirit


    Calm down.

    You are talking complete nonsense.

    Yet again.



  • Registered Users Posts: 29,470 ✭✭✭✭odyssey06


    Quelle surprise. Zero attempt to to engage with the content of the posts.

    Remind me, were armed Russian military on the streets of Ireland during that referendum?

    Well, come on, answer up?

    This is what you compare it to? This is the sort of desperate ridiculous embarrassing attempts at smokescreen we see from conspiracy theorists when cornered in a lie.

    Your posts are exercises in lies and propaganda. On Twitter they would come with a disclaimer that this accounts spreads propaganda and fake news. Well, I think it's clear we can expect nothing more from a proven liar and spreader of such outrageous lies as Ukraine somehow being culpable for every single death in Donbas pre-invasion.

    "To follow knowledge like a sinking star..." (Tennyson's Ulysses)



  • Registered Users Posts: 17,930 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    Those TV pundits and presenters are directly in line with the Kremlin. Since the Kremlin now controls virtually all media in Russia, and independent media over there is criminalized, there's only one narrative.

    We all know it's complete propaganda, which makes it difficult for even the most staunch supporters to defend. So these supporters use a different tactics. They attempt to portray global media as being "the same" as Russian propaganda, so they can then claim that we "can't trust anything". And that's when they insert their own narrative, which is almost always a repackaged version of Russian propaganda :)

    This is why you are linking to e.g. questionable (and heavily pro-Russian) telegram channels here.



  • Registered Users Posts: 559 ✭✭✭BurgerFace


    You probably wouldn't make a very good chess player. I doubt you've read Sun Tzu. Never underestimate your adversary and don't think for a moment that the smaller prize was the original goal.

    Gloating that your opponent has lost pawns, knights, the queen only for you to be found checkmated by a rook and a bishop just makes you look like a fool.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 17,930 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe




  • Registered Users Posts: 29,470 ✭✭✭✭odyssey06


    "To follow knowledge like a sinking star..." (Tennyson's Ulysses)



  • Registered Users Posts: 559 ✭✭✭BurgerFace


    The Russians never entered Kiev. What are you talking about? That APC that ran over a car in Kiev wasn't Russian. They were never in the city.



  • Registered Users Posts: 559 ✭✭✭BurgerFace


    I suggest you take a few deep breaths, McGiver.



  • Registered Users Posts: 559 ✭✭✭BurgerFace


    If Putin is worth 200 billion then why isn't he on the top 10 list? He should be in second place behind Musk who is on $224 billion and ahead of Bezos who is on $144 billion.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 36,334 CMod ✭✭✭✭pixelburp


    The key word you're missing / ignoring is "rumoured". It's well known Putin has a large personal fortune, the only question is just how large it is and kleptocracies don't tend to publicise their leader's ill gotten gains.



  • Registered Users Posts: 18,534 ✭✭✭✭Strazdas


    Well, he totally denies it of course and claims only to have his Presidential salary of $140,000 a year.

    But investigative journalists believe he owns a mansion worth $1.4bn, 20 other properties, 700 cars, perhaps 50 aircraft and a superyacht.

    The Kremlin press are not allowed report any of it and are of course a direct party and accomplice to his criminality and corruption. Many of his stooges on state TV like Solovyov are also billionaires and on the same corrupt gravy train.



  • Registered Users Posts: 925 ✭✭✭ilkhanid


    Not only the Kremlin, extremists on all sides have been-very deliberately and consciously-doing this for years. Remember Steve Bannon and his idea of throwing out so much misinformation, so many lies, that people became confused and mistrustful. He called it ''Flooding the zone with sh1t''. The post-modern academics share some of the blame too, with their dismissal of the very idea that there is any such things as ''truth'' or ''facts'', only 'narratives'.



  • Registered Users Posts: 13,826 ✭✭✭✭Danzy


    I doubt that the Red Army Generals even read The Sun.


    They are fighting in Severdonetsk, 100 plus days after the invasion began. 50 miles from Russia.

    Every aspect of the Russian performance will be taught globally in military schools for years to come as an example of what not to do

    What would Russia do if it was against a small modern Army? It would be a bloodbath for them.


    Maybe the smaller prize was then objective and the humiliation of the Russian army is just a ruse.


    As things stand today I think America could be confident that it would beat Russia in a few weeks without any significant losses outside of a lucky strike or accidents, that it wouldn't even need to send significant troop numbers to Europe, nothing on the scale of the Iraq invasion.



  • Registered Users Posts: 925 ✭✭✭ilkhanid


    Ignorant young men from the back of the Russian beyond, cannon fodder treated like dirt by their own officers who had no idea they were being thrown into the woodchipper....I have some sympathy for them. Other men, those who are setting light to Ukrainian houses, shooting down civilians from the back of personnel carriers, raping women, murdering and torturing people and laughing about it in phone calls home, pillaging, stealing cars, washing machines, televisions, anything they can carry; I haven't a smidgeon of sympathy for them. As for the officers, the FSB officers who ordered these acts, the guards at the ''filtration camps'',the Rosvgardia, Kadyrov's gang and the Wagner group, incinerated into an unrecognizable piece of blackened flesh inside an APC is a kinder fate than they deserve.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 559 ✭✭✭BurgerFace


    Well known? By who? Suspected? Rumoured? Maybe he has hoards of loot all over the place, myabe not. It's also rumoured that Zelensky has hundreds of million squirrelled in away via countless shell companies and offshore accounts. Again this may or may not be true. But you're the one insisting that "it's common knowledge" that Putin is worth XYZ billion. Is he?



  • Registered Users Posts: 925 ✭✭✭ilkhanid


    Third in the world? There is a difference between money allocated and money that is used for the purpose intended; money spent and results achieved. How much of that money was siphoned off along the way into the pockets of Putin's mob, corrupt generals and colonels, pals in industry, procurement officials on the make? Quite a lot would be my guess.



  • Registered Users Posts: 17,930 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe




  • Registered Users Posts: 559 ✭✭✭BurgerFace


    No I don't admit that it was illegal. But if you want to split hairs do you think that it was legal for Khruschev to gift Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 without the consent of the Crimean people? No referendum there. What about the 1991 Crimean Referendum where Crimea voted 94% to re-establish the ASSR. I believe someone on here stated that any vote that hits those numbers is a sham and a fix. What about the 1994 Crimean Referendum?

    Crimea have been requesting full reunification referenda since 1991. These requests were rebuked by Russia. Again people ask what right does Russia have in holding a referendum in Crimea regarding reunification. I would ask these people if they are backwards or something. Don't you think the Russians have some input as to whether someone votes to become part (or reunify) with their country?

    What if there was a referndum in East Germany in 1990 to reunify with West Germany and the West Germans had no input? The East Germans voted YES but the West Germans never consented and were against the decision. Would it be a case of "tough luck, Bonn, she's yours now"?



  • Registered Users Posts: 925 ✭✭✭ilkhanid


    The cost of Putin's Black Sea palace is estimated to be the equivalent of 956 000 000 Dollars. You don't get that on a presidential salary.



  • Registered Users Posts: 17,930 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    Hidden wealth. He's been a state employee his entire life. There's no way he should have billions, if he did, that would make him an absolute crook. He's officially listed as just owning a flat in St Petersburg and two vintage Soviet era cars.

    Yet the superyacht linked to him just got impounded, and the FSB happen to guard the 1 bn euro holiday house he "doesn't own". Many of his family and childhood friends and inner circle are obscenely rich.

    Russia doesn't so much have a government as an organized crime outfit. Nuclear-armed. These people don't really share their wealth on official lists for obvious reasons.



  • Registered Users Posts: 559 ✭✭✭BurgerFace




  • Registered Users Posts: 559 ✭✭✭BurgerFace


    Well isn't that how you crush a nation? If cutting off food and water and bombing ports and blockading essential supplies entering a country for the civilian population works for the Israelis wrt to Gaza or the Saudis wrt Yemen or the Americans wrt Iraq then it ought to be a tried and true tactic for the Russians wrt Ukraine.



  • Registered Users Posts: 17,930 ✭✭✭✭Dohnjoe


    Got it, you have no issue with a 3 week national referendum held by an armed occupying force belonging to a totalitarian country with no allowance to keep the status quo and no proper international monitoring.

    Hey, polls showed a majority wanted to join Russia, why waste a year educating the public, informing them fully and correctly on a national decision, providing full information on the consequences of each decision, providing proper choices on the ballot (instead of trick ones), getting independent foreign observers to make sure no systematic fraud occurs..

    Why bother with all that when it can be done like a shotgun wedding. Sorted!



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  • Registered Users Posts: 2,272 ✭✭✭fash


    Here, again, is one of the many articles on the Russians wandering around Kyiv - I linked to photos & videos etc previously.

    https://thedebrief.org/know-no-mercy-the-russian-cops-who-tried-to-storm-kyiv-by-themselves/

    Now where's your evidence for the wonderfully categorical assertions that "the Russians never entered Kyiv" & "they were never in the city"?

    (Let me guess, your dog ate it)



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