Sorry Airvent, I went up a mountain and never repied.
The point is we don’t need to involve ourselves in fighting because the economic sanctions have stopped them arming themselves to anywhere near the level required to threaten a NATO member state.
You mentioned Lithuania, Poland, Germany, they are NATO members so very different to Ukraine. Completely different.
I disagree with this. Russia are very well armed, and are developing some pretty fancy new weapons systems (hypersonic missiles, Su-35, Borei-A submarines for example) As we have seen with North korea, even much tougher sanctions do not limit military spending, that is the last thing to get cut (which actually makes sense if you perceive your country to be under threat from those imposing sanctions). The sanctions may have damaged the Russian economy, but they have neither substantially weakened Russia militarily, nor undermined Putin’s position to an extent that it is under threat, and one or both of these things needs to happen to prevent them invading Ukraine.
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Russia are more than capable of taking on, and beating, a number of NATO members fairly easily, any of the Baltic states for example. If we do nothing in Ukraine why would they think we would do anything there? Would the US, UK or France go to war to protect Lithuania? I doubt it. Would Putin try? He might if we don’t stand up to him now
And we don’t have a legal obligation to Ukraine under the BP, it’s not a legally binding treaty and Ukraine know that.
The legal status is disputed (mainly by Russia) By not acting over Crimea we have given them carte blanche to ignore it and carry on, and Donbas will be next.
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I am not advocating a nuclear strike on Moscow the instant that the first Russian soldier crosses the border but at this stage giving Ukraine everything it may need or ask for in terms of air defenses, including maybe stationing USAF and RAF aircraft there, and a substantial combined fleet being sent to the Black Sea – all with the clear message going out that they will under no circumstances cross the border first, but will place themselves between the parties and any attack on them including crossfire will result in military action being taken against those repsonsible from either side will have far more of an effect on Russia’s actions than the threat of more sanctions ever will – as long as Putin takes this threat seriously. Which brings me back to my main point, if we do nothing now, why would he take a NATO threat seriously if he decided to attack the Baltic states? Or Poland? Or Germany? Where do we draw the line? If the 1930s taught us anything appeasement does not work in the long term