Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Nothing to do with neutrality.

Ireland hosts companies like Intel, HP, Qualcom and more. They all manufacture chipsets / CPU's. These are manufactured for multiple countries around the world.

Anyone can simply hop on a website or Amazon etc and order chips, ship them to a European country and then have them smuggled to Russia.

What happens to them afterwards is the question.

All of these companies have regulations in place to ensure that during the sales cycle "that they have control of" that they do not sell to certain sanctioned countries.

This story is behind a paywall. But nevertheless it's a non-story.

Considering what has been done so far by the Russians in terms of genocide, i would 100% favour the likes of Nestle ceasing All operations in Russia.

Ukraine had a population of 37 million, over 7 million of whom have fled as refugees. There is a massive amount of bitching in Ireland over the intake of refugees, and you know it. If everyone was neutral, Ukraine could thoretically empty - if they were allowed to leave - so proprtionally, Ireland could have over 5 times as many refugees as it currently is complaining about.

That is not realistic or sustanable. It's not an outcome anyone should view positively, but it's what scaled up neutrality would deliver.

Being neutral is to take the side of the agressor - there is no positivity to it.

The different fighting groups do have radio communication, with communication being a huge part of the over all war machine Ukraine have in action there, I think its pretty safe to say that most soldiers \ groups would have a pretty accurate idea of what state the other groups were in, theyre not all acting as single entites, just doing their own thing and hoping it all works out.

I have an Irish passport. I'm working on leaving.

If the tanks aren't in a working condition until a major overhaul, they can't be sent to Ukraine any time soon. Takes a long time to fix them, and it's very expensive.

Unfortunately seems to be in error. Various sources scrubbing the story with the British MOD stating the information was incorrect. Pity.

Maybe the fact it was reported is an indication someone raised the idea of it behind a closed meeting.

As Wibbs said, Ireland are certainly not neutral in this war (so quotes on the dark side of neutrality do not fully apply to us here). Russia definitely has our card marked as a hostile state.

There's not very much military aid Ireland can give (guns, ammunition, anti-tank rpg-like weapons seem to be what is mentioned), but it is quite a rich country and that is mainly how we can help, apart from the sheltering of refugees.

However I would agree with you scaled up, the Irish policy would be an utter disaster for Ukraine (and people here would be castigating larger European countries over it - they already do it on thread as is anyway and say hysterical nonsense like they are "allied with Putin" etc because they are not giving enough or powerful enough weapons!). IMO the refusal to allow Irish euros (e.g. via the EU) to be dirtied up somehow by paying for some weapons for Ukraine is just a cop out/a moral failing.

However would judge that is position most of the Irish public are happy with (e.g. even see way you have been attacked quite a bit now for raising this point), and we are a democracy. The govt. really has (as far as I can see?) no strong mandate to change policy and start buying weapons for Ukraine or sending any of our own stock.

Cute... in the Irish sense.

"WIZARD SPIDER pledged support to the Russian government and threatened critical infrastructure organizations of countries perceived to carry out cyberattacks or war against the Russian government.[39] They later revised this pledge and threatened to retaliate against perceived attacks against the Russian people."

In other words, Wizard Spider is likely a RU FSB/GRU run op. It is they who hacked the HSE and then dropped their demands after the RU embassy and RU government pretended outrage. So a demand for €18m just went away like that, with no quid pro quo?

Australia's Medicare was similarly hacked. Australia didn't play ball and the health records of Australians were released.

The RU governemnt intervened to ireland's benefit out of the goodness of their black rotten heart - Pull the other one.

At least 12 months for rheinmetall to deliver tanks to Ukraine ,and they only have 22 lepoard 2s .

But how many does the German army have,are they going to tell the 5 others countries they have to wait 12 + months to deliver their tanks to Ukraine

Good luck with either of them reciprocating that sentiment; you'd only have a tiny one in sixty chance of getting AIDS from the wrong one.

The end of Putin is near... just a matter of time before Russian power brokers decide on who to replace their maniacal president with.

Good man the Dan [Rice] is still the Ukraine armed forces' no1 adviser.

Once Putin is 'gone', providing that baldie guy who runs Wagner follows suit, I suspect the next Russian president will be certainly a nicer guy to deal with.

But the end of his reign is near anyhow because the elites are now not happy with him.

They used to like him, he used to make them all rich. Now Putin is becoming a problem, but they don't know how to get rid of him. But something is definitely cooking.

@Wibbs As for your calls for Irish neutrality to be dropped? Try asking the Irish people and get back to me. Two thirds want no change, so that's currently a non runner.

How many readers of the times were polled .

We are only neutral in government policy.

If the government chose to send weapons to Ukraine then they can .

Which begs the question re tanks needing repairs. How the hell can that be ? Surely the German's keeps their equipment up to date??? Serviced and ready for action? I once saw a donation of German ex-military 4 x 4 all wheel drive trucks. They were maybe 15 years old, and taken from storage, and with very small mileage. They worked like dream. I can't see them letting equipment like tanks deteriote to the stage that they need major overhauls.