Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Beyond the basic stuff we all share as humans some parts of "Russian Culture" can be a very different mindset and not one that's particularly recognisable to other European cultures. Take something like going on demonstration marches. Non government approved ones of course. They're a given. In "the West" we kinda take these for granted, even if we might not agree with the marchers. People march shout slogans carry placards etc and you have police standing by. If it goes south then you can even have riot police to disperse the crowd. Normal stuff. Meanwhile in Russia...

When the vids came out from Russia of people being just picked up off the street for protesting, or even having a blank sheet of paper, or even in one case a woman being interviewed condeming the protests was whisked away, to gauge their reactions/opinions I asked a couple of Russians I knew what was going on, including one who I know disproves of this war. Their take was the same; Russian authorities and the general public feel anti authority marches can be dangerous to society and can easily get out of control, so Russian police take the approach of nipping it in the bud early so they don't have to rely on riot police trying to control a much bigger crowd and failing. Even that fewer people might get hurt. Yep. Their society is deathly afraid of societal chaos of any sort and of course their rulers keep this fear going. This is an even bigger fear for those who lived through the actual chaos of the 90's. There can be very much a vibe of indoor versus outdoor opinions.

It's pretty clear that NATO has no intention of getting dragged into this. Not without major provocation, which putin won't do. He's not a fool, at least on this subject. Neither are NATO. They give two hoots about his conventional forces, but the old doctrine of MAD is still in play on both sides.

Two examples: The French stated that even if putin were to detonate a nuke in Ukraine they would not retaliate with nukes of their own as it would not be an attack on France. The US have been pretty open in saying that if putin escalated to nukes Russia's conventional forces would be in serious trouble. But no nukes. The missile that landed in Poland killing two Poles another better example. The US were very quick to say nope, looks like a Ukrainian air defence missile went rogue, even when Zelensky was not happy and saying it was definitely Russian and they weren't allowed investigate the site themselves. Zelensky may want NATO to get "official" or naturally get more NATO help coming out of that, but NATO didn't bite. For all the Pro Russian eejits looking for NATO false flags, that missile in Poland was a gift wrapped in a bow for NATO. If they wanted to take it. Clearly they didn't.

NATO are prefectly happy with supplying intel and weapons to Ukraine. It's bleeding Russia out without having to ramp things up, go in, inevitably lose NATO personnel(unlike Russia this matters) and possibly escalate to nukes. It's also an absolute bargain costwise, even earns money for the arms industry and is a testing ground and major advertising for future sales. Feck all will be buying Russian militay kit after this, that's for sure. NATO 1, Russia 0.

That's assuming NATO wants to get directly involved Furze. They clearly don't. It would be "bad business". So far. Which also takes putin's "argument" that NATO were threatening Russia and that's why he had to start this war and blows it out of the water. Just add it to the existing pile of his bullshít reasons.

A no fly zone is simply a non runner. That's a direct escalation and one of the first things that would happen is putin would send a few sacrificial lambs in aircraft to be shot down by NATO. NATO knows this, putin knows this. Hell, Zelensky knows this. He quite rightly asks for the impossible to get more of the possible and that has worked very well so far. He'll likely get more AA systems than he would otherwise.