Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Presumably, like Snake Island, another gesture of Russia's "good will" towards Ukraine.

Every day a new atrocity, already the shopping centre attack is vanishing from media attention. So sad and enraging

Dont worry comrade, by the end of this month when the Ukrainian's are fully trained on the weapons that are being delivered at the moment they will push the Russian thugs back to the **** hole they came from.

Just have patience for a couple of weeks

They forgot to add the washing machine and maybe a tractor pulling a tank somewhere in that field.

This is the type of thing that could really start to bite in coming months. What happens when ATMs and cash registers start to break down.....will they even be able to repair them? The idea that Russia can turn itself into North Korea and get rid of imports and exports is clearly a fallacy.

Wow, now you’re parroting far right “fake Jews” conspiracy theories. The mask has slipped. It’s pretty consistent with your far right leaning that’s on display throughout this thread. (Calling for collective punishment based on race, repeatedly and graphically illustrating your fantasies of piles of dead Russians)

Israeli citizenship on the basis of proving one’s Jewishness has very very specific and restrictive requirements heavily influenced by the Orthodox Rabbis. I know this because I am Jewish, my family came to England from modern day East Ukraine during the Tsarist Pogroms and eventually married into an Irish family.

Typical poorly disguised neo-nazi views from you, rabid hatred for all things Russian and Jewish.

Why don’t you put your money where your big mouth is and go join Asov so you can live out your fantasies of Russian bodies stacked high?

2 more weeks right? we can only hope

By that time the Russians will have taken all of Luhansk and be pushing toward Kramatorsk so the sooner the better

No, I mean new relative to the stock Ukraine has which dates back to the USSR. And even then its only some of their stuff is relatively new, they have plenty of their own from the cold war era.

Yeah, Putin is counting on two things right now - war-generated austerity weakening European resolve, and American political instability turning America into an unreliable partner in the alliance of Western countries. The famine-induced immigration to Europe would just be more fuel to the fire.

Net result of a heavily sanctioned country though is that they just get left behind. Also, the idea that they could very quickly turn things around if sanctions were lifted might not be realistic....it could take them many years to recover from being a sanctioned regime.

Macron put out a tweet about the tanks (I believe it was an English tweet), which was quickly corrected to armoured vehicles. People put it down to a translation error, but I'd say someone questioned the tanks and it was corrected. I don't think western countries have that many Soviet tanks left, so they would need to be western tanks, which for some reason the west is reluctant to send.

They can shrug all they want and shrink back into an economy of self sufficiency and comely maidens dancing at the crossroads, a la DeValera. Lorded over by an elite who will continue to splash the cash on desirable consumables. That's what generally leads to revolution.

Russia/Putin appear to have learned somewhat from the earlier part of this phase of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, although it's far from a sophisticated kind of learning, more of a 'concentrate artillery into this one area and rain it down indiscriminately' kind. It's working to the extent of keeping Ukrainian forces at bay, although it's grindingly slow progress for Russia - a really ugly attrition warfare. Ukraine needs those long range weapons in number to render Mr. Putin's strategy in the Donbas yet another miscalculation.

But Putin appears to be making sweeping long term assumptions and predictions - European resolve waning, America ditto, famine putting pressure on the West etc. It's all roll of the dice stuff with very little to back it up or to indicate it may happen. So far, he seems to have gotten every big call wrong.