Ukraine

How do we solve this crisis ?

Hard to say without knowing all the details. And we clearly don’t.

I donated to DEC last night also.

Gift Aid + Gov donation matching more than doubles whatever you give.

How do we solve this crisis ?.

We can’t. Putin doesn’t want to solve it. It’s in his hands.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/ukraine-zelensky-assassination-attempt-wagner-group-b986057.html
Apparently the FSB and the Chechen assassins are briefing journos now (!)

“How do we solve this crisis ?.”

We don’t. Not everything is solvable or fixable. Providing Ukrainians with weaponry to try and hold on to as much of their territory for as long as they can is as much as we can do.

How do we solve this crisis ?.

It may simply not be solvable without a great deal of discomfort for the west.

I’m a school cleaner, not a diplomat or military planner but it feels that Putin must feel relatively untouchable by the west. He deployed nuclear & nerve agents in the UK (a NATO member), killing both times without significant sanction. He was also allowed to run riot in Syria and doesn’t seem to have paid any real price for shooting down a Ukranian airliner or, indeed, annexing Crimea. He must feel that the west is terrified of him (and I suspect that it is).

I originally thought that the west should have called his bluff and backed Ukraine up militarily (although I didn’t think that he’d invade anyway) but I’m now inclined to think that he’s mad enough to allow all this to escalate into WW3.

I’m assuming that Poland is a line in the sand for the west/NATO but what would happen if Russia deployed nuclear or nerve agents on the Ukrainian battlefield?

How do we solve this crisis ?

Hope the Ukrainians can hold out long enough for sanctions to start to affect Russia’s ability to send troops to the front lines, keep it’s vehicles moving, keep it’s planes in the air, etc

Hope the sanctions hit the richest in Russia hard. Hope they start struggling to pay the police.

I know, there’s a lot of hopes in that but I think any sort of appeasement strategy requires a lot more faith than sanctions require.

Edit to add: I know it’s not a good solution but what we are in now is the definition of a no-win scenario.

but what would happen if Russia deployed nuclear or nerve agents on the Ukrainian battlefield?

Thoughts and prayers.

How do we solve this crisis ?.

The only question that matters. But, “solved” in the context of “what”?

Advantage Putin?
Advantage Ukraine?
Advantage China?
Advantage EU?

War is a form of conflict resolution – The Allies in WWII got to the point that only “unconditional surrender” was acceptable.

At the moment, none of the players (combatants) has anything to gain by giving any ground (literal or otherwise).

The “answer” has to be to give a way out to one or both of the protagonists. My preferred way is to force the global narrative that this is putin’s war and he has totally failed Russia and leader change is a good and wise thing to be carried out by brave Russians.
Sticking to the absolute truth won’t deliver this.
Or, in fact, any other non shit solution.

1,the uk government is matching DEC donations up to 20m and you get tax aid.
2,is there an ignore function?

“How do we solve this crisis ?.”

We don’t. Not everything is solvable or fixable. Providing Ukrainians with weaponry to try and hold on to as much of their territory for as long as they can is as much as we can do.

Partly this but also I wonder if we can turn his own tricks on him – instead of installing a Trump president, can we look at destabilising his stranglehold of the media (like the Anonymous takeover of TV) or disrupting electricity networks? I haven’t heard anyone talk about red lines on cyber warfare yet…

Edit: back to the point of the question – we need Russians to stop him. And to do that they need to see, hear and feel that he’s lying to them. Breaking his stranglehold on the media would be a way of helping that.

The Russian operators that abandoned this Pantsir-S1 even left the screens on https://t.co/gDUVVCuH1Y

— Oryx (@oryxspioenkop) March 4, 2022

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1499748267692892163

I hope they can use this equipment against the Russians!

In a war of images, every time I see an image of an abandoned vehicle or a captured conscript i remind myself of another image.. the map that they pull up on TV every night and in that image it looks like the Russians are winning.

The Russians always meet more resistance than (we think) they expect when they invade a territory and they always respond by incrementally ramping up the nastiness.

but what would happen if Russia deployed nuclear or nerve agents on the Ukrainian battlefield?

I dont understand why anyone would think that they would do this. It would cause them more problems than not, and if their point is to free the Ukrainians, killing or contaminating the country, would cause more of a nato move than just plain fighting to the end and capturing the country.

Hope the Ukrainians can hold out long enough for sanctions to start to affect Russia’s ability to send troops to the front lines, keep it’s vehicles moving, keep it’s planes in the air, etc

Hope the sanctions hit the richest in Russia hard. Hope they start struggling to pay the police.

I know, there’s a lot of hopes in that but I think any sort of appeasement strategy requires a lot more faith than sanctions require.

Edit to add: I know it’s not a good solution but what we are in now is the definition of a no-win scenario.

Not sure sanctions will work, and Putin did say they expected the very worst but that would mean they would just basically have to suck them up and keep going. And while they will hurt the billionaires, i dont think any of them have such an influence ideologically in the kremlin’s eyes that they wouldnt just be told tough luck, thats how it is.

What will happen is the longer the Ukraine holds out, the greater the casualty numbers will be and our constantly sending weapons of war can only greatly increase that number. Fighting to the last Ukrainian isnt going to do the Ukraine any good. However patriotic that will be.

The other option is to surrender. but that then leaves us in the hope that the Russians dont take things a step further and make a play for the other former Soviet states, using the same nuclear threatening. But the chances there are much higher and we’ll possibly inevitably end up in a nuclear exchange scenario.

Or if we do go on the attack, we are hoping that it is all bluff and Russia will fight it out with us using conventional weapons,seeing that mutual destruction is not something they themselves would contemplate, but as time goes on, each side will be increasingly inclined to go nuclear. Either way the ball is in the Russians court and it is all we can do to hope it stops with the Ukraine.

If it doesnt its a nuclear exchange. If the Ukraine keeps fighting its tens to hundreds of deaths.

I’m far from agreeing with dyna-ti on all his points but it is quite scary to see how quickly the dominant narrative becomes the only acceptable one and all other viewpoints should be quashed/banned/ignored. Some people are understandably wary of wholeheartedly accepting the official narrative especially since the Gulf War.

There’s people talking all sorts of wild speculation and frankly ill-informed conjecture on this thread but as long as it’s supporting the consensus opinion nobody seems to mind. But step even slightly outside the ‘acceptable’ view and you’re suddenly a Putin-enabling fool.

Ask yourselves why this war is so much more important than all the other wars that are happening/have happened? The answer is, being honest, well it’s a bit closer and the people look a bit more like us. I’m not saying we shouldn’t care but the levels of hysteria and minute over-analysis of every last detail isn’t healthy or proportionate. Some people really need to take a good look at their consumption of news media and take several steps backward.

Food for thought for the news addicts:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli

but what would happen if Russia deployed nuclear or nerve agents on the Ukrainian battlefield?

I dont understand why anyone would think that they would do this. It would cause them more problems than not, and if their point is to free the Ukrainians, killing or contaminating the country, would cause more of a nato move than just plain fighting to the end and capturing the country.

They probably learned a lesson from the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The “international community” will pass resolutions condemning it but nothing will happen. It’ll kill the pockets of resistance and terrify the survivors enough that they’ll cooperate. For someone like Putin who doesn’t care about the suffering of his victims, there’s no reason not to use those weapons. NATO aren’t going to stop him.

Ask yourselves why this war is so much more important than all the other wars that are happening/have happened?

1. Geographic proximity, hasn’t been this type of war fought this close to us in most, if not all, of our lifetimes.

2. Proximity to NATO/EU countries.

3. The outcome isn’t known. Most recent wars have been over before they’ve even begun due to massively mis-matched odds.

4. What’s next? If Putin wins does he roll right on to Moldova? Poland?

Like it or not (and we should look at what it says about our lack of interest in people who don’t look like us) this is the most significant European conflict since WWII and poses the greatest threat to the human race since the Cuban missile crisis.

But yes, I will be making an effort to limit my focus on this over the weekend. I’m sure it’ll still be here on Monday.

Ask yourselves why this war is so much more important than all the other wars that are happening/have happened? The answer is, being honest, well it’s a bit closer and the people look a bit more like us.

No. Its ‘so much more important than all the other wars that are happening/have happened’ because it has the very real potential to rapidly escalate into a full scale nuclear confrontation between superpowers, and thus the end of the world for pretty much everyone, regardless of location or skin colour

I’m sure it’ll all be NATO’s fault though, as everything obviously is 🙄

Proving my point perfectly there ^^^^

I dont understand why anyone would think that they would do this

Yeah, but you also didn’t understand why anyone would think he would invade. To be fair, I didn’t think he would invade but I was only mildly surprised when it happened.

If I wake up and find out Putin has used chemical weapons I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

Ask yourselves why this war is so much more important than all the other wars that are happening/have happened? The answer is, being honest, well it’s a bit closer and the people look a bit more like us.

No. It’s because Europe fought a horrifying war back in the 1940s. About 25% of the population of Eastern Europe died in that war. Following that, there were 70 years of very tense stability, with no major wars. This is a deliberate attempt by Putin to upend that stability. It’s not just another minor war, tt’s the most consequential event in at least 30 years, maybe 70.

Putin didn’t want to blow the reactor up, he wanted to switch the lights off. It was the press that wanted to ‘blow it up’.

I’m not sure anyone knows what Putin wants. I’m also not certain Putin would be aware they were shelling the nuclear plant until the same time as we were – but they could have been following his direct orders. However regardless of the purpose and regardless of whether they were targeting the reactor itself the international community foresaw this risk in 1977 when they added additional protocols to the Geneva Conventions. Russia is a signatory to those protocols.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/Article.xsp?action=openDocument&documentId=3376730ECD9DF7B1C12563CD0051DD37

because it has the very real potential to rapidly escalate into a full scale nuclear confrontation between superpowers, and thus the end of the world for pretty much everyone, regardless of location or skin colour

Unlike the constant skirmishes between India and Pakistan (both nuclear powers) in Kashmir, for instance?

I think this has more to do with it than anyone will care to admit.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/02/civilised-european-look-like-us-racist-coverage-ukraine

The BBC interviewed a former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine, who told the network: “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair … being killed every day.” Rather than question or challenge the comment, the BBC host flatly replied, “I understand and respect the emotion.” On France’s BFM TV, journalist Phillipe Corbé stated this about Ukraine: “We’re not talking here about Syrians fleeing the bombing of the Syrian regime backed by Putin. We’re talking about Europeans leaving in cars that look like ours to save their lives.”

but what would happen if Russia deployed nuclear or nerve agents on the Ukrainian battlefield?

I dont understand why anyone would think that they would do this. 

Putin is on record as saying that a world without Russia isn’t worth having. He appears to feel it’s all or literally nothing. As he appears mentally unstable in his recent appearances and the lies he’s told to justify the invasion, I’m not sure I’d rule it out.

Unlike the constant skirmishes between India and Pakistan (both nuclear powers) in Kashmir, for instance?

Yes, this is exactly like Kashmir. Almost identical. Indistinguishable at every level

What, you’re saying India-Kashmir doesn’t have the potential to result in nuclear war? Really?

Proving my point perfectly there ^^^^

Planning on elaborating or are you happy enough just sneering.

I’m not even sure why you are trying to downplay it as I’m struggling to believe you don’t see the importance of these events.

If your point was that it would be better for our mental health to not follow events so closely then you’re probably right. Following every update or tweet and posting endlessly on here isn’t making any difference to the situation but people are worried and if ‘spaffing’ over the hardware or discussing geopolitics helps people work through it then I don’t see what the problem is?

I think this has more to do with it than anyone will care to admit.

Ah, got it. You’re just desperate to prove your superiority to the rest of us.

But yes, it would be nice if the Western world took a long hard look at it’s own actions in the last 20 years and reflected on the war crimes it has committed.

Putin is on record as saying that a world without Russia isn’t worth having. He appears to feel it’s all or literally nothing. As he appears mentally unstable in his recent appearances and the lies he’s told to justify the invasion, I’m not sure I’d rule it out.

A more optimistic view is that if he feels a world without his beloved Russia isn’t worth having, he’s not going to do anything which makes the destruction of both more likely.

What, you’re saying India-Kashmir doesn’t have the potential to result in nuclear war? Really?

I don’t know. Which one of them is going to fire one or all of the 6,000 nuclear warheads they each possess at us?

Ah, got it. You’re just desperate to prove your superiority to the rest of us.

I have the same biases everyone else does but I am at least aware of them.

Which one of them is going to fire one or all of the 6,000 nuclear warheads each they possess at us?

Ah I see so the issue isn’t fear of nuclear war and horrific widespread destruction it’s fear of you getting caught up in it. You are the most important thing in all of this of course.

“I think this has more to do with it than anyone will care to admit.”

Very much this grum. I posted similar yesterday. Funny how no one saw the ironing in people being racially segregated into different queue”s at the borders of Ukraine and the EU.

For a lot of the world this is white peoples’ s***.

Funny how no one saw the ironing in people being racially segregated into different queue”s at the borders of Ukraine and the EU.

Yup, and it just seems to have been accepted as ‘one of those things’.

Ask yourselves why this war is so much more important than all the other wars that are happening/have happened? The answer is, being honest, well it’s a bit closer and the people look a bit more like us. 

This.
If India and Pakistan have a go at each other I’m sure that would terrible but I would survive. If NATO and Russia do I would be very unlikely to.
Selfish as it might sound the second one matters more to me personally.
.
The people look more like us. We do not value life equally, at all, nowhere near. If push comes to shove your family take priority over your friends, your friends over your neighbours, your neighbours over a random bloke from the next town and so on, it’s just how we are.

Ah I see so the issue isn’t fear of nuclear war and horrific widespread destruction it’s fear of you getting caught up in it. You are the most important thing in all of this of course.

Oh, I do apologise for my instinct for self-preservation. How frightfully insensitive and selfish of me

I have the same biases everyone else does but I am at least aware of them.

You and you alone, eh. Must be a nice feeling.

Yup, and it just seems to have been accepted as ‘one of those things’.

I don’t think it has. I saw it and it was really disappointed and saddened (I know, I sound like a Tory politician) but tbh, I really didn’t know how to react.

If it had happened in Glasgow or London I would have known that the obvious answer would be to demand boycotts of whatever service allowed these actions to take place but I’m really not sure who to boycott here.

Since you are so aware, compared to the rest of us, can you tell us how we should have reacted and what we should do now?

I think most people have that impulse andrewh and up to a point perhaps it’s reasonable but I don’t think we should just accept it 100% as inevitable.

You and you alone, eh. Must be a nice feeling.

In this thread pretty much aye, in the wider world, no.

There’s a very good Blindboy podcast on this very subject, well worth a listen

I think this has more to do with it than anyone will care to admit.

It does – not necessarily overt racism (although it might be) but it’s just because Ukraine is closer, and this makes a subconscious difference. It shouldn’t, but it does.

I haven’t banged on about it on this thread because our previous atrocities don’t make Putin any better, and it’s detracting from the issue at hand right now.

Anyway. Linked from one of those tweets up there is an interesting point about the abandoned air defence missile truck thing that apparently was not only undamaged and in full working order but still switched on and logged in. They are saying that it could give Ukrainian forces the ability to effectively hack and disrupt the entire Russian AD network and even allow the Ukrainians to cause Russian planes to be mis-identified as enemies and be targeted by their own systems. Absolutely huge if true. And, one wonders if it were done deliberately by disillusioned soldiers.

How do we think this is playing out in Africa and the Middle East? For the most part they’re pulling up the deckchairs to watch us Europeans do on our own front lawn what we have done by proxy on their doorstep for decades.

Funny how no one saw the ironing in people being racially segregated into different queue”s at the borders of Ukraine and the EU.

Certainly saw how disgusting it was. But in the context of a debate about the war as a whole, I prioritised my anger and frustration.