Russia - threadbanned users in OP

I doubt they would ever sink an oil tanker and risk an oil spill. Fairly sure it's a war crime to do so intentionally anyway.

The only country who can end this war is, you guessed it, Russia. Its been a complete disaster for them that only gets worse with each passing day.

The longer they stay in Ukraine the more the damage they do to their own country.

Putin is borrowing from the Hitler playbook. "If I can't win, I am determined to drag my own country down with me". Most dictators are like that.

Russia will not end the war as long as Putin is in charge, which is for the foreseeable future, which is why Ukraine needs better weapons. I don't really care about Russia being dragged down, what I want to see is a peaceful Ukraine where its citizens aren't dying fighting or because of Russian rockets. That will only come with Putin dying or being overthrown or killed

Nobodies going to be escorting Putin anywhere. Even if the siloviki were to turn on him (very unlikely since they're basically his trusted old St Petersburg buddies) he has his very own insurance policy in the shape of his private army the Roskvardia. So there'd have to be a war in Moscow itself to get him out. He wouldn't go quietly.

Those russians have always been for turning. putin turned on Yeltsin the second he got power. If his “special operation” causes the oil money to stop flowing then I think they will kill him. Hundreds of thousands dead will have no impact on his future, but if the oil industry gets destroyed I think he is in trouble.

Whats going on with Macron, suddenly he is much more bellicose. Has something changed cos he was a lot less vocal for the past 2 years? Did I miss something?

Just leave this here

I see this floating around everywhere.

So what do we take from this?

The FSB have their handcuffs off and freely execute people around the world. We know this is true already from Canterbury, England and countless other poisonings around the world we know of and then the "suicides" and "accidents" we don't know of.

But would the CIA and FBI take Trump lying down just because the spies may not have been american?

Would the Queensberry rules just apply to the CIA. And every other non western Putin sphere get away with murder..

The private security FSB staff Trump has must be on top of their game.

Imagine Ronald Regan coming back to look at this.

Nothing will be able to force most of Europe to defend itself. Even suggesting the idea of European States paying for their own defense is causing incredible consternation.

Trump tried to force Europe to pay its way but no one can.

The will to not do it is ideological.

Trump was not the first US president to want/ask European NATO to meet their 2% commitment.

I think the real prospect of the US leaving NATO though would be a game changer. Trump gets back in which is 50/50 then NATO is finished.

Aid to Ukraine from a number of EU states is at a higher percentage of their GDP than it is from the USA. The USA for example has committed 0.32% of its GDP to support Ukraine while at the same time Estonia has committed over 4% of its GDP to Ukraine when its share of EU aid is included. Denmark another sensible contributor to the defense of Europe from putin's terrorist state has committed 8.4billion euro to military support for Ukraine. The published figures for support from European countries for Ukraine's fight against putin do not support your statement that Europe is not paying its way in defending the continent from terrorists. The best defense Europe has from putin's terrorists is supporting Ukraine and many European countries are now building up their military and related industries as putin has shown himself to be an empire building tyrant with no interest in the well being of the people of the russian federation or any one in Europe. An answer to putin's aggression is needed regardless of whether or not the USA can be relied on to play a role in Europe's defense and Europe is waking up to the challenge.

Trump's a moron or is being willfully ignorant. When the stakes are this high, I don't really care about the difference.

The U.S. has not headed up NATO for the last 70/80 years out of pure charity. The interest has always been the ability to project power overseas and to protect liberal democracy against the spread of competing ideologies. And when A5 was invoked, it was the US invoking it, and its NATO allies duly responded, as Radek Sikorsky recently reminded us all.

Trump doesn't care about Europe 'paying its way'. What's happening here is an ideological shift where about one half of the US electorate is backing a man who is not particularly interested in liberal democracy, and he is therefore no longer particularly interested in protecting an alliance to that end. Trump and his backers want the liberal democracies of Europe to fail, and the new foreign policy toward Europe is to weaken it - to carve it into two zones of control between the new alliance of the US and Russia. The first step of that is to remove the guarantee of military protection. The second step is to light fires at the foundation of the EU. Under this pincer movement, the liberal democracies of Europe cannot hold. The ones who do not fall to right-wing populism cannot fully defend themselves against Russian intimidation. Conventional war might be one thing, but there is no comeback to Putin saying to the holdouts that he can nuke them with no comeback.

That's the future if Trump gets back in power and is able to fully exert his foreign policy. The EU would likely attempt to respond to this by proposing centralised military structures, but the beauty of this for the right-wingers would be that it would possibly accelerate EU collapse as propaganda about this being EU overreach causes yet more populist backlash.

In reality, Americas investment is much lower than the headline figure they proclaim. They cost everything as if it were built new and not the 2nd hand/surplus stock/due to be decommissioned/end of life equipment that the vast majority of what's supplied actually is. The cluster munitions are a good example. They would have had to spend millions decommissioning these weapons plus all the headaches of where to dispose of the material. Instead, they got to ship them off to Ukraine, degrade Russia and save themselves all the cost and headaches in the process.

Even new stuff is propping up alot of jobs and boosting revenues of alot of influential American companies plus feeding tax back to the exchequer.

Europe is far more heavily invested financially not to mention bearing the cost of the refugees.

Interesting perspective from ex SAS Robin Horsfall, he does keynote speeches now and is obvious pro British but he does know war.

"Russia is losing this war.

Another Russian warship has been badly damaged by navy drones. Patrol ship, Sergey Kotov came under attack last night in the south of Crimea and was struck at least twice.

The powerful effects of sea going drones must be forcing naval commanders across the word to review the safety of their entire fleets. Ukraine has sunk more than 25% of the Black Sea Fleet without possessing a warship of their own. The powerful results obtained by marine drones has forced Russia to cease many operations in the Black Sea region. However, Russian ships are not safe even in Russian territory. The cruiser, Olenegorsky Gornyak was sunk the same way in the port of Novorossiysk last year.

Russia is helpless to defend its ships against these attacks. Their defensive guns cannot depress low enough to engage at close range and their radar cannot locate drones carrying up to 1000 pounds of explosive riding close to the surface with a profile that is often smaller than the surrounding waves.

Although this is a major concern for Russia, NATO chiefs will be examining new ways of defending their own fleets in the light of this new development.

In the air, Russia has started to take dramatic losses in fighters and fighter bombers. This included 10 Su-34 fighter-bomber jets, two Su-35 jets and another Russian A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft. This equated to more than one billion dollars worth of irreplaceable aircraft.

Some pundits have suggested that Ukraine moved at least one Patriot air defence system away from city defence duties and placed it close to the front lines. Reports or rumours from Russia indicate that pilots are loathe to fly because they feel helpless in the face of these top level US weapons.

If Russia lose their air presence over Donbas and the Asov Sea their ground troops will find themselves at a serious disadvantage.

Despite some minor land advances in the east at a terrible cost, Russia is losing this war.