Ukraine (Mod Note & Threadbanned Users in OP)

So is the West Antartic Ice Shelf. It's the rate of cracking that's important. While we don't know what's happening on the Russian side, we do know that Ukraine will get 4 70km HIMARS. That's not a lot, but as per the 777s they may just be a precursor to a larger delivery later. By themselves they are unlikely to give much respite.

Future deliveries however should reach the battlefield much sooner after any announcement because crews will already have undergone training.

So you do see Popasna. Its the red dot inside the red area on the map you just posted. What are you on about then?

They are now moving north and west from there slowly taking town by town in (as BluePlanet said above) the most heavily fortified area in all of the country. They've been fortifying this area for 8 years.

I have always said they wage war slowly and methodically. Like Mariupol & Aleppo it looked to be going at a snail pace and then suddenly it fell within a week with the exception of the Azovstal steel plant basement squatting.

So you accept that their attempt to quickly take Kiev was a massive mistake and did not play to their strengths?

I've said it many times before that I think Kiev and Kharkiv were decoy attacks that successfully allowed them to take the entire south of the country including the highly symbolic Mariupol by keeping thousands of soldiers and weaponry in the north of the country. Which is exactly what happened.

You can believe the myth of the plucky underdog repelling the evil forces from a capital 8 times the size of Paris with 3 million hostile inhabitants. The Russians aren't stupid despite what you are repeatedly told in the press. We can agree to differ on this one.

If you've ever done multi-day/week training courses I'm sure you'll agree that the timescales are very generous. Usually to allow the training company to justify high training costs. In this case I would expect that the Ukrainians can still be very effectively trained within the 3 week period, especially if they've only got 1 type of ammunition to train up on initially. HIMARS training is normally 10 + 4. I think your anecdotal iphone analogy is weak.

You have no proof of any of that. The 32,000 figure is sourced another one of Zelensky and crew's crazy big random number shouting games. And the only evidence of these masses of tanks that were destroyed that anyone on here has been able to provide is grainy photo's from the NED and bellingcat affiliated Oryx Open Source intelligence.

Even BBC Russia and Meduza only claim about 3,000 verifiable Russian deaths. I'm sure its much much more than that but most of those deaths occurred outside of Kiev.

Nothing obvious about it. They probably thought the airport would be a quick win. Didn't work out that way. Doesn't prove in any way that it wasn't part of the decoy. In your Wiki link there was also a quote from John Spencer who "argued that this would have secured a military victory for Russia, albeit probably producing a massive Ukrainian insurgency."

Not in Russia's interest to be dealing with hostile insurgents on that scale. The only thing that is truly apparent is that Russia were able to capitalise on the fixing operation in the North by easily taking swathes of the South and cutting off most of the Asov sea to the Ukrainians.

But I can't prove it and neither can you. So we can agree to differ also.

That article is a just a NATO narrative, taking Putin out of context. Even in the translation: "he compared himself to the ruler and said they were both destined to expand Russia. "Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well," he said."

He is stating ironically, how the events have saddled him.

The interpretation that he was in it for land grab is just an an editorial prefence.

We know the events that played out. Ukraine was shelling the (Russo-Ukrainian) peoples of Donbas after Zelensky rejected Minsk II. Putin cannot just stand by and witness his brethren be ethnically cleansed by Ukrainian ultra nationalists and their neo nazis battalion.

He was compelled to act. Whether he does so in the east only, or takes all of Ukraine, western sanctions would be forthcoming.

I quoted the BBC which is for all intents and purposes the british governments propaganda wing and you are still accusing me of quoting Russian sources.

You can go back over all of my posts if you care to. You will not find one quote from a Russian source. You seem to mistakenly think that any contrary opinion to yours must come from a Russian source which is incredibly naive I have to say.

I don't know what this has to do with the current point.

The BBC is an independent news organisation. Anyone who has been paying the slightest attention knows they are independent of and at times adversarial and critical of the British government in its reports and coverage and investigations. To suggest they are the British governments propaganda arm is an utter delusion and seems to reflect not the reality of the BBC but the reality of actual propaganda outlets they have been indoctrinated by.

I spent hours the other night debating with you about your mad claim that Ukraine never promised to not join NATO. I provided you with the founding document of the state where it explicitly stated those exact words and you still wouldn't accept it as proof.

My posts never lack sources. You just think anything that doesn't fit your narrow ostrich like view of the conflict must be because its from a Russian source.

Its very hard debating with you most of the time as you don't argue you just say sentences like "Russia has killed more ethnic Russians civilians in its invasion than were harmed during the 2014-2021 conflict." I wouldn't type anything like that as there is no way whatsoever of proving it. If I have a theory which I think is plausible I say its a theory. You don't. You constantly speak in unproven facts as if they are established. When you are called on it you go rogue and start talking in strawman arguments. Its a tiresome circle.

Sorry, where's the evidence of ethnic cleansing???

If my post is utter claptrap, it implies there was ethnic cleansing. You don't have have any lies to back that up.

The report you linked to is by some very dodgy organisation The Foundation for the Study of Democracy & Russian Public Council for International Cooperation and Public Diplomacy. It is not an actual OSCE report.

This is from the linked article, which you don't seem to have read. How do you expect the OSCE to prove they are members of the Russian military but they have documented convoys containing military troops and equipment crossing the border.

FP: What’s the OSCE’s official stance on Russia’s involvement in Eastern Ukraine?

AH: If the question is what we have seen on the ground … we have seen convoys leaving and entering Ukraine on dirt roads in the middle of the night, in areas where there is no official crossing. In one border area, we’ve also made this public, including some footage we have put out. We have seen specific types of weapons that we have described in detail, including electronic warfare equipment. We have spoken to prisoners taken by the Ukrainian forces who claim to be members of the Russian armed forces fighting on rotation in Ukraine. We have seen men with the insignia of the Russian Federation, but you can buy this jacket anywhere. We have also seen the insignia of Germany, Spain, and others—but also of the Russians.

Would you feed a dog that might bite you?

BBC is UK agency. It criticises its government exactly as much as it needs to, according to what is allowed by UK gov. Just like in any other western country, including Ukraine and Russia.

Otherwise, people would think it's not independent. ;)