Ukraine (Mod Note & Threadbanned Users in OP)

The reality is, the politics of the situation have crystallised fairly solidly; taking the forum at its most literal or relevant, based on the other active threads, you can see the subjects are mundane issues of (political) parties, taxation, and "high street" issues. There's an expectation of debate, but what topics there are WRT the war in Ukrane have been debated into the dust, especially by those preaching "peace" at the expense of Ukrainian autonomy.

The initial shock of the Russian invasion has subsided, with the actual politics of the situation not really existing, compared against the tactical immediacy of an ongoing war. if this forum is about debate, there's not much political debate to glean from a scenario that's as cut & dry as you can make: Russia invaded a sovereign country and has met what might be euphemistically described as "resistance". Vladimir Putin rolled the dice on his plan to absorb Ukraine into a new USSR via two hopes & expectations:

1. Kyiv would fall faster than the Ukraine's thin defence - or the West - could respond.
2. Even if the West did respond, Nord Stream would guarantee the EU would simply tut from the sidelines.

Both these gambles have failed - spectacularly. We're now in a situation where Sunk Cost, and the threat of what would happen Putin if he retreated, has demanded Russia continues to grind out this war, regardless of its reduced viability. The military coup, or whatever the Eff Prigozhin's race to Moscow was, has highlighted that Putin's grip is less than total. While clearly interior defence has been lessened with so much committed to Ukraine - and now lying burning or in graves. Only this week we saw T55s on the move: tanks dating from the 1950s; Russia is prosecuting a war for which it's struggling to maintain adequate logistics. Meanwhile, the sleeping giant of Germany is ramping up its military industry, Leopards under production at a historically unprecedented rate. Germany has entered the war; that's how different this war is. While Russia begs Iran and China for shells and drones, the might of German industry is ramping up. America is thawing on aircraft and cluster munitions... Russia is prolonging this war now - not Ukraine.

There are parallels with Japan in WW2 here: knowing it couldn't go toe to toe with America if it got its dander up, Tokyo gambled on a swift strike on Pearl Harbour to decapitate US power in the Pacific. It failed (IIRC the prize targets were the aircraft carriers, luckily out on drills during the attack), and America had enough leeway to build up power and strangle Japan. But every island liberated from Japanese control was a slog. So it goes here: Moscow hoped to catch the West unawares by taking Kyiv faster than anyone could fathom - and it nearly worked. But it didn't, and here we are.

Of course we've had the occasional bump of interest as those forcibly evicted from the Current Affairs thread have tried to fashion the whole "it was NATO wot dunnit" canard that still smells up the discussion under the pretence of rationality; not sure one should take as a credible PoV that Ukraine just surrender cos "can't win don't try", when so far we've seen no evidence Ukraine is losing this. Or that they shouldn't defend their sovereignty at all; as I've said before it's a deeply arrogant, Western attitude to flit away Ukraine's self-determination cos something something NATO. We've seen plenty of evidence Russia is no benevolent force as well, from child kidnapping to outright war crimes.

As for the counter offensive? It's going precisely as one could have predicted, had anyone looked at the satellite maps, or listened to Ukraine's own announcements for pragmatism. Russia has had months to fortify the south with mine fields and 2 major lines of trenches - without air support or "bunker buster" munitions, the counter offensive was always going to be a slog. Only the media got caught into ludicrous, breathless hype after the speed of the Kharkiv offensive caught everyone by surprise. But Ukraine is advancing, however slowly and the thing with static trenches is: if they're breached, you're screwed cos very quickly, the enemy is behind and in front of you, and you have no capacity to adjust. It'll be slow until it isn't, if the advance continues the way it is.

Firstly, spell the names of these places & people correctly; I'm not sure why you feel the need to repeatedly misspell Zelensky's name when it's not for the lack of publication. Unless your z isn't working?

Second: The UN and other sources have already outlined the various human rights' violations enacted by Russia; it's out there for your perusal, including the issue of forcibly relocating children en masse into Russia.

Third: it's quite ironic - and more than a little rich - that you made a series of posts deriding others' emotionality... when this reply is basically baseless, fact-free emotive soapboxing that adds nothing to the "debate" you claim to want. Lots of big talk about geopolitics, the big bad USA up to their tricks, and supposing Ukraine is not entirely behind the war - but offering no evidence or assertions. No actual substance that Ukraine doesn't have the appetite for this war - or that it's losing. If it's losing - again, show some indication from reliable sources that they've lost ground (which, at a minimum is the most basic metric to measure "losing"). As @Nody already noted, the percentage of Ukraine Russia controls has shrunk since its height.

Whither the insurrections, militias, counter-insurgencies, and so on? Show some actual facts that back up your position, or else there's nothing to discuss. Otherwise all the above is just emotive fluff. "fat cats playing chess games in their ivory towers" is nothing and succumbing to the very thing you came here to denounce.