The Ukraine War

[ramit]

8 hours ago, Crewton said:

So you agreed with everything in that Twitter post then - is that what we were supposed to assume?

Do what you like in your own life, believe what you want, question everything, read any news sites or X accounts that appeal to you - neither I nor any other poster has stated that you shouldn't do that. What I and others have said or suggested to you is that reposting things that you think are legitimate without comment or context leave you open to accusations of pushing disinformation or "sockpuppetry" as it's colloquially known.

If you're happy to be regarded as such, there's nothing to stop you unless a mod decides you've broken forum rules. But I can't quite work out if you're being naïve or disingenuous in your posts here because your responses are often quite bizarre.

I don't care you what you think, but I do find it amusing and revealing how you repeatedly call for assistance from the mods.

[Ram-Alf]

18 minutes ago, Ramarena said:

I mean if you’re into conspiracy theories then the obvious one is, how in a country that cracks down on dissent in such a draconian manner (as we saw with the Navalny memorials), can a group of terrorists spend as long as they did, doing what they did, with absolutely no response from the state. A state that had been warned of terrorist attacks at this kind of event a couple of days before?

There was no one even there to martyr these guys!

They even almost made it to the Belorussian border.

Strange that that wouldn’t be the first question that people would have. 

I read/saw a report/video last week where a reporter from the UK asked a Russian male citizen about invading Ukraine, There was a couple of barbed comments one of which was..."the English security service is crap" or words to that effect.

So guessing that the Russian security is a good few rungs lower on the ladder than ours then 👍  

[Ramarena]

28 minutes ago, Ram-Alf said:

I read/saw a report/video last week where a reporter from the UK asked a Russian male citizen about invading Ukraine, There was a couple of barbed comments one of which was..."the English security service is crap" or words to that effect.

So guessing that the Russian security is a good few rungs lower on the ladder than ours then 👍  

And this is who all these statements and accusations are for………Russian citizens.

We have to remember the stuff that Putin, the Kremlin and the propagandists are pumping out are primarily for Russian consumption, they don’t care what the outside world thinks. 

They need to continually shore up support for the continued invasion and destruction of Ukraine. 

 

[Ramarena]

Here’s a weird twist. 

ISIS have announced another round of jihad on Russia, after seeing how the terrorists were tortured.

 

[Ram-Alf]

43 minutes ago, Ramarena said:

Here’s a weird twist. 

ISIS have announced another round of jihad on Russia, after seeing how the terrorists were tortured.

 

No doubt funded by Ukraine 😁

[Ramarena]

Can’t stand the daily mail, but they are one of the first to pick up on an AFP story about Lukashenko saying in an interview that the terrorists tried to get into Belarus as their escape route.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13240807/amp/Blundering-Belarus-dictator-Lukashenko-destroys-Putins-evidence-Zelensky-ISIS-attack-revealing-terrorists-tried-flee-country-not-Ukraine.html

Also ties in with what Belarus ambassador to Russia said the day after the attack.

Edited March 26 by Ramarena

[Crewton]

It was reported in an article in the Guardian that the suspects lived and worked in the Moscow area, though one is thought to have been possibly there illegally. The article also said there was thought to be as many as 1.5M Tajik migrant workers in Russia and, as both migrants and Muslims, they face heavy discrimination and live in poor accommodation. That's a large pool of potentially resentful young men for IS to recruit from, which makes it odd that Putin was apparently so dismissive of the possibility that IS might be planning to mount an attack in Russia, particularly as the FSB foiled a planned attack on a synagogue and publicised the fact only a couple of weeks ago.

The Kremlin appear now to have given up on the idea of finding actual evidence that Ukraine funded and/or assisted with the attack, moving directly on to stating that Ukraine were behind it as if it was an established fact. It would be terribly inconvenient if they were forced to tell the Russian people that the chickens they hatched in Syria have come home to roost and that they now share a common enemy with the West.

[Tamworthram]

I watched “Ukraine: Enemy in the woods” last night (on BBC and available on IPlayer). It was a hard watch as it gave a small inkling as to what war must be like on the front line. It must be even worse for the Russian soldiers a lot of whom probably don’t want to be there and whose chances of survival are no doubt much lower than the Ukrainians. 

[Ramarena]

2 hours ago, Tamworthram said:

I watched “Ukraine: Enemy in the woods” last night (on BBC and available on IPlayer). It was a hard watch as it gave a small inkling as to what war must be like on the front line. It must be even worse for the Russian soldiers a lot of whom probably don’t want to be there and whose chances of survival are no doubt much lower than the Ukrainians. 

Yep, Ukrainians are fighting for their existence, what are Russians fighting for?

[Crewton]

1 hour ago, Ramarena said:

Yep, Ukrainians are fighting for their existence, what are Russians fighting for?

I think many of them are caught between a rock and a hard place. They don't have Kommissars as such behind them waving Nagan pistols, but I imagine going backwards is often as risky as going forward.

[Crewton]

I found this thread on page 2, which I guess is a fair indicator of how the war sits in the consciousness of people at the moment. But hang on folks! I get a sense that, with Russia resurgent thanks largely to its support from China and Iran in the provision of weapons, Putin "could" soon turn his attention to a former Soviet state with a population opposed to its government seeking to introduce a "Russian-style" agent-of-foreign influence law. The parallels with Ukraine 2014 are uncomfortably close, and the comments of the Kremlin spokesman in this article have a familiar ring to them. Look out for social media posts alleging oppression of Russian minorities in Georgia in due course. I hope I'm just being paranoid.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/17/georgia-footballers-protest-against-tbilisis-foreign-influence-bill

 

[Ram-Alf]

1 hour ago, Crewton said:

I found this thread on page 2, which I guess is a fair indicator of how the war sits in the consciousness of people at the moment. But hang on folks! I get a sense that, with Russia resurgent thanks largely to its support from China and Iran in the provision of weapons, Putin "could" soon turn his attention to a former Soviet state with a population opposed to its government seeking to introduce a "Russian-style" agent-of-foreign influence law. The parallels with Ukraine 2014 are uncomfortably close, and the comments of the Kremlin spokesman in this article have a familiar ring to them. Look out for social media posts alleging oppression of Russian minorities in Georgia in due course. I hope I'm just being paranoid.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/17/georgia-footballers-protest-against-tbilisis-foreign-influence-bill

 

This is only going to end one way I'm afraid Crewton, Oppress the masses and you'll get conflict, Will Turkey be happy with an influential Russian Country as a next door neighbour 🙄

I see Erdogan lost his 1st local elections a couple of weeks ago, It's a volatile place in that neck of the woods 😮 

[Ram-Alf]

Interesting read 👍

https://news.sky.com/story/are-we-heading-for-world-war-three-experts-give-their-verdicts-13116540

[Van der MoodHoover]

12 hours ago, Crewton said:

I found this thread on page 2, which I guess is a fair indicator of how the war sits in the consciousness of people at the moment. But hang on folks! I get a sense that, with Russia resurgent thanks largely to its support from China and Iran in the provision of weapons, Putin "could" soon turn his attention to a former Soviet state with a population opposed to its government seeking to introduce a "Russian-style" agent-of-foreign influence law. The parallels with Ukraine 2014 are uncomfortably close, and the comments of the Kremlin spokesman in this article have a familiar ring to them. Look out for social media posts alleging oppression of Russian minorities in Georgia in due course. I hope I'm just being paranoid.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/17/georgia-footballers-protest-against-tbilisis-foreign-influence-bill

 

Didn't they give Georgia a kicking a few years ago whilst we all tutted and watched on?

[Crewton]

Yep. 2008, over the self-declared enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Resulted in ethnic cleansing of Georgians from the two enclaves, establishment of russian naval bases in each enclave on the Black Sea. They're still technically part of Georgia, but the Georgians can't enter them or else.

[Van der MoodHoover]

17 hours ago, Crewton said:

Yep. 2008, over the self-declared enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Resulted in ethnic cleansing of Georgians from the two enclaves, establishment of russian naval bases in each enclave on the Black Sea. They're still technically part of Georgia, but the Georgians can't enter them or else.

That's the badger!

The irony of course being that Josef Stalin was Georgian I believe. 

[Ramarena]

The Ukrainian aid bill finally passes through the House despite Republican opposition and now moves onto the Senate, hopefully by Tuesday at the latest.

Ukraine desperately needs this to bolster their defence.

Weird story this week with American, Russell Bentley being killed by members of his battalion after he’d gone to fight “Ukrainian Nazis” with the DPR.

Russian Telegram channels are claiming he was kidnapped and beheaded by Russian soldiers on suspicion of espionage, who were demoralised and angry at the heavy losses in their area of Donetsk.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/19/us-citizen-dead-russia-separatists-ukraine

[Ramarena]

The senate passes Ukrainian aid with a dupe majority.

Hopefully the defenders get what they need quickly. Air defence needs to be a huge priority to save Ukrainian civilian lives!