What do the ordinary Ukrainians think? Who do they want to be aligned with?
Why does the lie that Abramovich hasn’t been sanctioned been spouted by you twice now ?
Any EPL fanboy knows he was exiled from England after Salisbury, let alone a geo political lightweight like yourself
Europe.
America is the issue as much as Russia.
It’s mad that an Irish person would make it a lifestyle choice to keep falling for Boris Johnson’s lies.
Europe and America are aligned.
65% of Ukrainians want into NATO, 74% into the EU.
How is America the issue? America has done nothing to create this situation, and by golly if you go back over the history of this forum nobody has been more critical of American foreign policy over the years than me.
Russia, which is a criminal regime, has zero legitimate demands, zero legitimate grievances, and has 100% cynically and grotesquely fabricated this situation.
Stationing troops across Baltic states wasn’t ever going to calm the situation.
America would implode if Russia positioned troops in Mexico
The west are absolute saints are they when it comes to geopolitics?
Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya just in the last 15 years or so.
Crazy stuff. None of that has ended well.
Tony Blair lied. He should be in jail.
The criminal mafia regime of Russia has nuclear weapons in the heart of Europe, in Kaliningrad, pointed at us. They west does not have nuclear weapons near Russia.
In five days’ time Putin will have the go ahead to place them in Belarus, on the border with Poland and the Baltic countries.
The grievances are entirely Ukraine’s and the west’s.
The Baltic countries are independent countries which have the right to their own agency.
Cuba exists 90 miles away from Florida and has been left to its own devices for the last 60 years.
Can’t argue any of that mate.
Why is Putin moving now?
Because he knows the West is weak.
Really so much more weaker than say 5 years ago?
Ukraine was never assured of NATO membership.
Tensions have calmed in Middle East after a horrible decade of fighting.
We’ve come through a Recession.
The debacle in Afghanistan and the dependency on gas and his build up of reserves. You can throw Brexit into the mix as well.
COVID and the populations in the West diligently doing as they were told possibly reiterating his beliefs that we’ll just do as told?
As I see it: he has been building up to this for years both militarily and in terms of organising the Russian economy to withstand sanctions, ie. foreign currency reserves. It’s also somewhat to do with the timing of the completion of NordStream 2.
The Lithuanian PM is interviewed at 13:10 on this. I have found the voices from the Baltic countries to be some of the most morally clear in all the commentary around this manufactured crisis.
It’s the opposite. Putin looks on approvingly at the prevalence of anti-vaxxers and anti-lockdowners in the west. They are the people who eat up the anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown propaganda he spread, which then backfired when it came to vaccinating his own population and controlling the spread of Covid in Russia. They are also the people who in general make up the backbone of Russia’s fifth column in the west.
Tell us again how Putin isn’t a war criminal.
Some of us were calling Putin a war criminal 20 years ago after Chechnya. Welcome to the bandwagon in the case of some posters
A simple yes or no minus the filibuster of whataboutery- was Abramovich banned from entering England after Salisbury? You are clearly (3 times now) saying something at odds with the basic knowledge of an epl soccer fan
Can you lay out what you think will happen next and a time frame?
You seem to be ahead of the curve but it’s hard to follow.
Do you see a full on invasion ?
Is that addressed to me?
Abramovich is not under sanction.
Why on earth do you think Boris Johnson’s spokesman admitted the veracity of Chris Bryant’s correction of him?
You are now desperately trying to move the goalposts when caught out being wrong.
Has anyone made the arguement that putin is doing all this as the final dying sting of a wasp? Is the Russian economy close to collapse or a real internal treat to his power? Rally up support to Bury real issues? Maybe sanctions might break them if harsh enough but I suspect the putin is ahead of that. China may roll in behind and prop him up.