Ukraine (Mod Note & Threadbanned Users in OP)

Serious reports of militia breaking through the Russian border and taken over a village towards Belgorod.

videos of people fleeing the city. Some turn of events even if short lived.

I may be pessimistic as I cannot see the Ukrainians pushing the Russians out with this counter-offensive, so this is my humble peace plan.

1. Russia to withdraw completely from Ukraine, but Crimea to be ceded to Russia.

2. Donbas/ Luhansk to remain part of Ukraine as autonomous regions like in Spain or Trentino/Alto Adige, but under UN supervision. Russian to be recognised as an official language in these regions, bi-lingual signs, etc as well as recognition as a minority language in all of Ukraine.

3. Independently supervised referendums to be held after a 20 year cooling off period on A/ Status of Donbas/Luhansk as part of Ukraine or Russia B/Ascension of Ukraine to NATO. Both referendums to be held simultaneously and one cannot pass without the other. If Donbas/Luhansk joins Russia, Ukraine joins NATO. Otherwise status quo remains. The timeframe may be changed if stability returns quicker.

4. Any further encroachment by Russia onto Ukranian territory to result in NATO intervention.

5. Russia to have no objections to Ukraine joining the EU.

Some of this may be pie in the sky to some, but I feel it is a realistic starting frame in which both sides get/lose something. Let the criticism begin.

Russia isn't interested in peace but may not have a choice now. Seems as though they have lost significant soldiers and equipment in the flood. I doubt that they are even interested in holding the occupied areas now given the scale of the disaster that they have caused, they might not even want Crimea anymore. They might just pull out now rather than deal with the mess they made. They have fucked up on a level nobody thought possible.

Absolutely not ,the Ukrainans are taking it all back ,donesk and lughansk,and Crimea,the only Way there Will peace is the mass slaughter of the Russian forces inside ukraine and the return of all occupied territories, Russia has zero veto over who and who can't join the eu or anything else,not that ukraine will be joining the eu anytime soon,it's at least another decade+ away and that's only if they completely satisfy all of the criteria set out by the Eu for membership,Nato membership is the same they can apply to join Nato but there is zero guarantees that they will actually get accepted by all other states ,

Look at the damage Ukraine has already done to the second biggest and second best army in the world, with a thrown together military that barely existed 9 years ago when Russia first invaded,now they have several armored divisions equipped with modern Western tanks and IFVs and another armored vehicles, along with Nato providing the training and reorganization of tens of thousands of Ukrainans soldiers while providing 24/7 live Intelligence,it took tens of thousands of Russian 9 months to take the town of bakhmut from Ukraine,

There's not a chance Ukraines counter offensive won't achieve it's goals ,

My question is what happens to western support if Ukraines counteroffensive doesn’t succeed.

US intelligence is now pointing at Ukraine having blown up the nord stream pipeline, what’s to say they aren’t also equally responsible for the dam? Although the Americans are also saying they have intelligence that the Russians blew up the dam. It’s a **** show on all sides as of now.

Probably not but at the end of the day, how much do we really know?

OSINT, broad range of European outlets, some US outlets, UK broadsheets, independents and even a bevy of Russian military bloggers and telegram groups - if you want to really want to get into it and a broad corroborated picture (and trim out the propaganda)

Otherwise a mix of RTE, BBC, Guardian are not bad either, they haven't got much wrong so far. Surprisingly intelligence services (e.g. US and UK) have been quite accurate during this entire war and build-up.

What we do know is that its an accepted fact that it would take explosives to breach that dam. One or two missiles would not do it, as it was designed to withstand a nuclear strike, and for success the explosives would have to be placed inside the structure. In Oct 2022, Zelensky warned the world that the Russians had placed explosives on the dam. Entirely possible, because the Russians controlled that area then, as they do now also. On the morning of the explosion Norsar, the Norwegian Seismic monitoring centre recorded explosions from the site at 02:45. The dam collapsed shortly afterwards. A US Spy Sat also recorded the explosions. Ukrainians recorded a conversation between two Russians discussing the dam destruction. One suggests the Ukrainians themselves did it, but the other one corrects him saying " No, it was our guys, We have a saboteur group working there, and they did it. Since the start of this war Bear, Russia has a horrendous record of destroying civilian infrastructure, this is just more of the same.

So, if it walks like a Duck, Quack's like a Duck, its as Duck. Russia did it, End of story.

Ukrainian and Russian sources confirming a few villages have been taken back by the Ukrainians.

Train line in crimea also blown up so it seems there’s no longer a connection between mainland Russia via crimea into Ukraine.

You could go back even further if you wanted to timeline Putins madness if you wanted to, and in fact when he didn't have to pay much of a price for his previous wrong doing, actually encouraged him to invade Ukraine. But if it paved the way for the invasion, it also paved the way for his downfall, because this time he had bitten off more than he could chew, and hopefully his end will happen in the not to distant future.