Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Why are the Russian drone videos low res? Couldn't that be anything burning - a stack of round bales soaked in fuel.

Just leave their ambassador and one or two caterers only. Get rid of the rest..

Listening to Macron speaking after UKR special conference in Paris where all EU ministers inc ours met. Gloves off it seems. He said we are at war. He said Europe cannot allow Russia to win this war. He said this is Europes war and if others are involved with us in this it is a bonus. Clear msg re USA. No longer depending on USA

@TheValeyard He did. Was just listening to him on FRANCE 24 .. however it was being translated as he was speaking in French. Thats what the translator said.

I am fascinated the mejia havent caught up with all this yet. Looked at twitter etc, no mention of what Macron said from majors yet.

@TheValeyard - "actions speak louder than words, let's see what becomes of this."

'No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness.' Franklin D Roosevelt, 1940.

I wouldn't trust a word from Fico to be honest.

The image is funny but it tells a serious truth.

Russia is now surrounded by NATO in a way would be unconceivable pre-invasion.

Invasion itself is bogged down in a horrific war with limited gains and massive casulties, and Russia has burned international bridges left, right and centre, and is now in an unsustainable war economy, in an unsustainble war.

It's completely **** that Ukraine is suffering as it is, but there's zero long term win for Russia regardless of how much they creep forward at such a dreadful casulty rate. Putin is basically Hitler circa 1944, still fighting because for him there's no alternative.

There was a big gamble in Feburary 2022, not unlike Operation Barbarossa the goal - and assumption - was quick collapse. There wasn't a plan B for a) failure and b) a long war of attrition. Russia isn't a global powerhouse, just like Germany wasn't in 1941 despite the illusion of power.

It has limits, limits that are higher than most countries due to the nature of Putin's grip on power but at the end of the day, it's a limited economy to be waging a war on this scale indefinitely. It's not the Soviet Union.

Obviously Ukraine would prefer to win militarily, fight the war of attrition on equal terms, and not cede land and lives but even if external support isn't forthcoming Russia is still climbing Mount Everest.

It's a million years from defeating the Ukrainian army, and even if it did in a meaningful sense, there's insurgency and occupation, pacification, which would cost unfathomably more than the current disaster is costing.

Unfortunately Nazi Germany kept going until the country literally collapsed. That's what Putin is doing, praying for a miracle. We can only pray in turn that someone takes charge to spare the country, and the wider world, more suffering for what'll ultimately amount to worse than zero gain.

The game is over for Russia. It has been since the first week of the invasion when Ukraine made it clear Russia was about as welcome as cancer. The question is how many more lives have to be lost senselessly on all sides before someone in Russia gives priority to everyone not called Vladimir Putin and calls a halt to the madness.

The 4D chess meme is, again, funny but it's always been 1D chess from the start. Putin rolled snake eyes in 2022 and there's no coming back, regardless of how long he/Russia continues to fight. It's an unwinnable war.

Tbh it could mostly be backlog from the Avdiivka fight. There was a HUGE amount happening over a number of weeks there and not much footage of lost equipment. Now the fight isn't AS intense the footage is coming out.

That'd be my guess anyway.

The fact they have to go scrounging to Iran and North Korea for help says about everything. I mean the global humiliation to be seen begging from one of the world's poorest countries with regards North Korea. Begging for shells they probably sold most of them in the 1950's. Begging for low-quality ammunition from a pariah state that doesn't even have a proper road network.

Economy wise, yeah it's weathered sanctions better than expected, but it's now in a war economy. Anyone with a functioning braincell knows that is not remotely sustainable in the medium to long term and unless I'm missing something Russia shows absolutely zero chance of "winning" in the short term.

So what's the end-game? There is none. Except Putin throwing everything he can at the conflict until he can't.

"Slowly winning" at a snails pace in a foreign country has never worked, even with countries 10 times richer than Russia. So trying to paint this as anything other than a collossal embarrassment and failure for Russia is disingenuous.

Ukraine has less constraints in many ways because it's a war of basic survival. For Russia, it's a botched and humiliating failure of an invasion, that it had no business launching in the first place, it has incomparably less mileage with which to wage this war.

If the Russian army performed as it should have - as everyone expected it would - in February 2022 the war should've been over in a few weeks. But that didn't happen because the Russian army, like the state itself, is absolutely gutted by corruption.

We're in 2024 and Russia's only successful strategy is 1916-era tactics of mass bombardment and infantry assaults. No combined arms. No overwhelming air power. No evidence of even a semblence of high-level command and control. Relative to the modern day they're not even remotely on even the vaguest level of what the Soviet Union was capable of in 1944-45.

No evidence of any modern equipment in even the vaguest meaningful numbers that wasn't built in the Soviet era either. The Russian state is simply rotten to the central core with corruption.

China was shocked - and probably delighted - by how bad the Russian army has proven to be. China is a friend of Russia when it suits China to be a friend of Russia.

Also, if EU could stop buying LNG from Russia, that would have a big impact. 8 billion last year, 15.75 billion in 2022 (however amounts imported are the same, so I assume that means the price has halved).

Source: https://ieefa.org/european-lng-tracker#:~:text=M-,LNG%20import%20and%20export%20volumes,the%20rest%20from%20other%20countries.

...on wrong page and reading an old post there and responded to it! Sorry.

With EU collective defence being so nascent, it would (IMO) be more likely to be some kind of cooperative mission under aegis of NATO between countries that are willing.

We know Hungary won't help at all, but if something like that ever began to look likely (due to prospect of Russia making much greater progress than as yet in East of Ukraine perhaps) it is doubtful they can do anything to stop it. They can't tell other EU countries what to do with their militaries.

I mean at the EU level I am guessing (?), Ireland might be almost as likely to try and block something like a specific EU led mission sending soldiers into West of Ukraine as Hungary is.

Macron has rightly come in for some criticism during this war, but unusually strong words from him now, so let's hope it's followed through with actions: