Russia - threadbanned users in OP

I don't see anyone saying its "not a f*ckin horrendous waste of life"

You also said

"Nobody's disputing who's responsible for all this"

You absolutely sure about that? Tbh there's the faux excuses being pushed about Putins invasion of Ukraine and its everyone else's fault but his own and that includes this thread. Then there's some hand wringers who seem to think its the Ukraines fault 'cos they should just acquiesce to Putins demands or wtte.

Yeah there's maybe 1 in a hundred even here who's blaming NATO or saying Putin is great but why even bring that up? Just for the sake of disagreeing on something?The overwhelming majority of us, for all our other disagreements, agree who started this and who's to blame.

airwolf has been downed

I imagine Solovyov and Skabayeva will have a lot to say tonight about Macron & Co's visit. It will be interesting to watch the clips.

Highly unlikely. There's been no change in the posture of the strategic missile and bomber forces. Whilst some land-based mobile ICBM units recently conducted exercises, this is nothing out of the ordinary. The same goes for the ballistic missile submarines, at least those operating out of the Kola Peninsula. There's been no reports from reliable OSINT accounts that would indicate an increase from their usual peacetime operations. It's a bit harder to keep an eye out on the subs operating out of the bases on the Kamchatka peninsula in the Russian Far East, given that there are no handy Nato nations nearby, but there's no reason to believe that those boats are operating under a different state of readiness to their Northern Fleet counterparts.

A boat transporting weapons to snake island was destroyed.Snake island has been heavily fortified over the last few weeks though.

The Ammunition stockpile in Luhansk that was hit yesterday was a major supply to the Severodonetsk area and may slow down operations for the russians.There was a similar hit in the Kherson area a few days ago.Russia have a lot of ammunition but these hits will weaken russian power and will probably become more common as Ukraine weapon ranges get longer and more accurate.

Russian Su-25 crashed in Belgorod region, pilot ejected and safe - Russian Western Military District

Good to see Ukraine pilots are still flying

Putin has more to gain from having nukes than he has from using them, and he knows it. Right now, the threat of the use of nuclear weapons is keeping NATO and the other western Allies from taking direct action in the war. If Russia were to start launching nukes, even just “small” tactical nuclear weapons for use on the battlefield, it would void that deterrence value that nuclear weapons have for the Kremlin at the moment. It would, instead, likely galvanise the west into taking direct actions both on the battlefield in Ukraine and by direct air assaults on Russia to attempt to eliminate the leadership, possibly even a land offensive, which is exactly what Putin does not want to happen.

Crucially, and arguably more importantly, such a move would seriously rattle China, possibly enough to make them side with Ukraine and the West in this fight. Whilst the Chinese leadership has been content with straddling the fence and playing both sides of the conflict thus far, the prospect of a neighbouring country that is so completely out of control that it is lobbing nukes around presents a threat to national security that Beijing will not be able to ignore.

Putin and his cronies may be psychotic, but they are not suicidal.

Until country is ready to join, and the current members agree to it (unanimously).

It is not a seniority thing. Do you think Turkey is ready to join?

IMO it is getting further and further away from ever joining the EU every single day. Even if it met all criteria and hadn't started a slide to being a dictatorship, + regularly making military threats to 2 of the members and now of course blocking another 2 of them from joining NATO out of spite, it would have been quite a tricky one!

It's very muslim and very poor + has a bad and violent history with several members who would be suspicious of it. Some of them could have vetoed it joining, no matter what the govt. there did.

I read that the US can launch nuclear weapons at the sole behest of the President whereas it takes the agreement of several people in Russia. Putin cannot unilaterally authorise a launch.

Uhh... yathink that'd be a problem for him?

POTUS doesn't have the last word in the US even after giving the command afaik. This came up during the #2xIMPOTUS's tenure, people were nervous with such a wing-nut at the helm with the football within reach.