Ukraine

[Guest MarshallForEngland]

12 minutes ago, Guesty said:

Nope, just know the tweet was posted by the Defence Reporter from the Kyiv Independent. 

Then how do you know what it depicts? What does it mean to say "They can't even act like it's just one stray missile" if you don't know if it was a missile, or if it was what kind or even part of a missile was it, who it came from, or what the intended target was. I'm not saying I know what it is, that it was or wasn't a deliberate missile attack on a civilian building etc, I have no idea, I'm just saying that none of us can know from that video and we should just be a bit careful before sharing videos and drawing conclusions about them if we don't have enough information to understand exactly what is going on.

[Guest MarshallForEngland]

2 minutes ago, Line-X said:

Russian artillery. There's a mass of information available from multiple national worldwide independent news outlets plus embedded journalists on the ground together with extensive footage testifying to the targeting of residential areas in cities such as Irpin, Mariupol, Kherson and Kharkiv. In Cherniv, there are no military targets and yet large tracts of residential housing including schools and a hospital were bombed during an air raid last night. This is a war waged against the civilians of Ukraine, no different to the tactics used in Grozny and Aleppo. 

Please tell me more, because my knowledge of weaponry is next to zero. What about this video tells you that it is artillery, and Russian artillery at that? What tells you that this building was the intended target?

Edited 4 March 2022 by MarshallForEngland

[Guest Mickyblueeyes]

1 hour ago, David Hankey said:

I agree. And the fact Russia is a nation of 140M people I'm surprised no-one has tried. 

 

It's strange the same goes for Assad in Syria and Mugabe in Zimbabwe although I appreciate the later has since died.

 

But every dog has his day and the 'Day of Reckoning' will eventually come.

The number of people in Russia or the number against him holds no bearing. Not all Germans were Nazis. The fear is crippling under regimes like this. I cant even imagine what people are going through. We get fed soft propaganda shit here. Imagine that intensified tenfold. In fact shooting Putin leaves me with further fear as to who takes over. Has we got to Hitler earlier it probably would've been that psychopath Goebbels. 

 

Its just not an easy fix. 

[Lionator]

17 minutes ago, MPH said:

 

that’s definitely a danger to be wary of..

Putin stepping down after this Ukraine war, with Russian patriotism at a high point is honestly recipe for disaster with regard for who comes in next. But then if he steps down in 5-10 years, the Russians ties with China will also leave the west in a bad place. 

[SpacedX]

30 minutes ago, Lionator said:

I would recommend that people watch all of this. 

My observations were while there’s a lot of flawed thinking here, none of it is irrational and none of it is the sign of somebody who’s gone insane. He has people around him with some absolutely insane ideologies but perhaps none more so than those in the Republican Party for example. 
 

Maybe I’m naive but looking at how the war is developing, he basically wants Eastern Ukraine, this is not about rebuilding the USSR, he doesn’t need conventional warfare to do that. It’s about gaining access to the Black Sea, the oil and gas that is in the East of Ukraine. If they occupy the East, they can probably handle that. In the West beyond Kyiv is where they absolutely despise Russians. If they occupy there, there’ll be all sorts of issues, so I think they leave it. 
 

At some point Zelinskyy (providing he’s alive) will have to make concessions). There’s absolutely no way that from a military perspective that Russia don’t win this war. Economically is another matter. Sadly, the longer the resistance, the harsher Russia’s demands will be. I hope the West are reminding Zelinskyy of this. 

I am inclined to agree with practically everything that you say here, the situation needs the so called 'exit ramp' or 'golden bridge of retreat' as a matter of some urgency and such a resolution must involve concessions from both sides. However, this invasion was a huge miscalculation on Putin's behalf in terms of the military tactics, the resistance of the Ukrainian people and the unified reaction from the rest of the world. This is uncharacteristic of a man renowned for his strategic mastery - the '3d chess player'. 

 

He needs more that 'East Ukraine', otherwise it would simply have been a question of occupying Donbas having decreed signed a decree last week recognising parts of eastern Ukraine as independent entities. He needs to govern from Kiev which will be untenable in the long term. whilst years of insurgency will place a huge drain upon Russia and threaten the continued viability of his leadership. 

 

Regarding the expansion of Russia and the restoration of the Soviet Union, he has spoken of this at great length and the three Baltic states are of particular strategic importance to the Kremlin. 

Edited 4 March 2022 by Line-X

[oxford blue]

10 minutes ago, MarshallForEngland said:

What tells you that this building was the intended target?

Looking at the devastation Russian missiles are incredibly inaccurate if they are not targeting civilians.

For example:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/ninety-per-cent-of-houses-are-damaged-thousands-trapped-in-ukraines-small-towns

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/russias-war-in-ukraine-complete-guide-in-maps-video-and-pictures

This was from day 2 of the war - sorry, I think it is called a "special military operation".

[SpacedX]

13 minutes ago, MarshallForEngland said:

Please tell me more, because my knowledge of weaponry is next to zero. What about this video tells you that it is artillery, and Russian artillery at that? What tells you that this building was the intended target?

I wasn't referring to 'this video'. As I said, there are a huge amount of independently verifiable sources from the world's press testifying to multiple attacks currently on residential areas in cities across Ukraine. 

 

The footage posted here looks like a dumb artillery shell as opposed to a smart weapon or a guided missile. I am not aware of the specific urban geography of Irpin, but reports are very similar to other cities from residential areas under bombardment which have no strategic or military significance. So what would have been the intended target? Moreover, there has also been precision bombing from the air into residential areas and the use of smart weaponry, which we also saw on civilians in Syria.

https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/10/15/targeting-life-idlib/syrian-and-russian-strikes-civilian-infrastructure#

 

This is the strategy, to break the will of the Ukrainian people - a war against civilians. 

 

 

[weller54]

2 hours ago, Happy Fox said:

Exactly, Sanctions are not going to do anything Putin doesn’t give a shit about them, the Ukranian president needs our help, there is only so much they can do. This is a European World Issue and should be treated as such, I think the approach of sitting idly twiddling our thumbs is not productive. 
 

Trying to reason with Russia isn’t going to work, they are clear in their objectives they want to take over Ukraine.

Ukraine and the other ex Soviet Union Countries!

[Guesty]

33 minutes ago, MarshallForEngland said:

Then how do you know what it depicts? What does it mean to say "They can't even act like it's just one stray missile" if you don't know if it was a missile, or if it was what kind or even part of a missile was it, who it came from, or what the intended target was. I'm not saying I know what it is, that it was or wasn't a deliberate missile attack on a civilian building etc, I have no idea, I'm just saying that none of us can know from that video and we should just be a bit careful before sharing videos and drawing conclusions about them if we don't have enough information to understand exactly what is going on.

 

30 minutes ago, MarshallForEngland said:

Please tell me more, because my knowledge of weaponry is next to zero. What about this video tells you that is artillery, and Russian artillery at that? What tells you that this building was the intended target?

It's literally a video of artillery hitting a residential building (which from looking at the video has nothing but other residential buildings around it). 

 

Who else is bombing Ukrainian towns at the minute? Serious reporters don't just share random stuff. If it had just been a random video from someone unknown on the internet then maybe you'd have a point. But like I said, it's the Defence Reporter from one of the main news outlets in the area the video is from - I'm sure he has a pretty good idea about it. The guy has Jeremy Bowen and other well known war correspondents and photojournalists following him. He's not some randomer who knows nothing about the city or weapons - it's literally his job.

 

Edited 4 March 2022 by Guesty

[weller54]

2 hours ago, leicsmac said:

When the supposedly only option has the distinct possibility of the end of human civilisation at the end of it, perhaps it might be a good time to look for those alternatives.

What alternatives are they then?

[Lionator]

15 minutes ago, Line-X said:

I am inclined to agree with practically everything that you say here, the situation needs the so called 'exit ramp' or 'golden bridge of retreat' as a matter of some urgency and such a resolution must involve concessions from both sides. However, this invasion was a huge miscalculation on Putin's behalf in terms of the military tactics, the resistance of the Ukrainian people and the unified reaction from the rest of the world. This is uncharacteristic of a man renowned for his strategic mastery - the '3d chess player'. 

 

He needs more that 'East Ukraine', otherwise it would simply have been a question of occupying Donbas having decreed signed a decree on Monday recognising parts of eastern Ukraine as independent entities. He needs to govern from Kiev which will be untenable in the long term. whilst years of insurgency will place a huge drain upon Russia and threaten the continued viability of his leadership. 

 

Regarding the expansion of Russia and the restoration of the Soviet Union, he has spoken of this at great length and the three Baltic states are of particular strategic importance to the Kremlin. 

I guess the miscalculation was expecting to be welcomed with open arms and he’s had to resort to plan B. On the other hand, those of us who expected them to obliterate Ukraine in a weekend, and then when that didn’t happen, said Putin was cornered were just as daft (obviously with not the same consequences ). 

 

The war’s been won, it’s just a matter of how long it’ll last and what Ukraine will look like after. By East Ukraine, I meant basically anything East of Kiev. I saw an interesting map on Twitter but can’t find it now. Sadly I think they’ll create an environment where they probably can control from Kiev, just look how they squashed democracy and protests in Minsk. 
 

Personally I don’t think he’ll risk the baltics, it’ll take a long time for them to regather military (years) to even consider it. If he does then he’s insane. They’re surely not worth going to war with nato for? 

[leicsmac]

9 minutes ago, weller54 said:

What alternatives are they then?

Defining those would take a better mind than mine. Perhaps the minds of those seemingly so eager to appear tough but without explaining how such toughness wouldn't proceed directly to nuclear holocaust, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 quid.

Edited 4 March 2022 by leicsmac

[Lionator]

3 minutes ago, weller54 said:

What alternatives are they then?

Finding a solution which doesn’t involve nuclear war would be a start. 
 

True neutrality of Ukraine, geo-politically, is not a terrible idea. I just don’t see two power hungry blocs being able to implement it, but I’d imagine they’ll be around a table this summer giving it a go. 

[ARTY_FOX]

1 hour ago, MarshallForEngland said:

Do you have any more information about this? What type of projectile or explosive was it? Do we know where it came from? Was it in the intended target? 

I fail to see how anyone could argue it wasn't the intended target. Speaking from experience in the artillery. You don't send off multiple rockets if you aren't on target

Edited 4 March 2022 by ARTY_FOX

[Guest MarshallForEngland]

24 minutes ago, oxford blue said:

Looking at the devastation Russian missiles are incredibly inaccurate if they are not targeting civilians.

For example:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/ninety-per-cent-of-houses-are-damaged-thousands-trapped-in-ukraines-small-towns

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/russias-war-in-ukraine-complete-guide-in-maps-video-and-pictures

This was from day 2 of the war - sorry, I think it is called a "special military operation".

I ask again, how do you know what caused this? What evidence do you have that Russian forces fired the projectile that caused this damage? It's from a region which unfortunately hasn't seen peace in 8 years, where there has been shelling from both the Ukrainians and the Russian-backed separatist forces. What tells you that this was a deliberate attempt to destroy a civilian building by Russian forces?

 

And if somehow you do know where the projectile came from, how do you know if this was the intended target? Did the missile malfunction (a previous video which alleged to show a Russian missile deliberately hitting an apartment block turned out to be a malfunctioning Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile)? Did part of a projectile intended for a different target detach and strike the building?

 

Guys, in the first 3 weeks of the Iraq invasion in 2003, 7500 civilians died. Would anybody say with confidence that the America-led forces were deliberately trying to slaughter civilians? Or does it seem more likely that sometimes in a war, not everything goes perfectly and the extremely sad and unfortunate fact about wars is that non-combatants sometimes die? Does every civilian death or apartment building destroyed mean that we can only conclude that this was a deliberate attempt by blood-thirsty monsters to kill innocent people? 

Edited 4 March 2022 by MarshallForEngland

[Guest MarshallForEngland]

6 minutes ago, ARTY_FOX said:

I fail to see how anyone could argue it wasn't the intended target. Speaking from experience in the artillery. You don't send off multiple rockets if you aren't on target

Read my response above to oxford blue. You have no idea what that video shows. Neither do I. The difference is I don't claim to. I have no idea what is in that video. I see an explosion on the side of a building. I don't know what caused it, what the projectile was, what type of weapon likely fired it, who fired it, what the likely target was etc. I don't know any of those things and neither do you. Why do people keep pretending that they know things they cannot possibly know?

[leicsmac]

3 minutes ago, MarshallForEngland said:

I ask again, how do you know what caused this? What evidence do you have that Russian forces fired the projectile that caused this damage? It's from a region which has unfortunately hasn't seen peace in 8 years, where there has been shelling from both the Ukrainians and the Russian-backed separatist forces. What tells you that this was a deliberate attempt to destroy a civilian building by Russian forces?

 

And if somehow you do know where the projectile came from, how do you know if this was the intended target? Did the missile malfunction (a previous video which alleged to show a Russian missile deliberately hitting an apartment block turned out to be a malfunctioning Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile)? Did part of a projectile intended for a different target detach and strike the building?

 

Guys, in the first 3 weeks of the Iraq invasion in 2003, 7500 civilians died. Would anybody say with confidence that the America-led forces were deliberately trying to slaughter civilians? Or does it seem more likely that sometimes in a war, not everything goes perfectly and the extremely sad and unfortunate fact about wars is that non-combatants sometimes die? Does every civilian death or apartment building destroyed mean that we can only conclude that this was a deliberate attempt by blood-thirsty monsters to kill innocent people? 

Yep. And yet the people at the top, often across the board, choose to engage in them anyway.

 

I wonder what that says about them.

[Blarmy]

3 minutes ago, MarshallForEngland said:

Read my response above to oxford blue. You have no idea what that video shows. Neither do I. The difference is I don't claim to. I have no idea what is in that video. I see an explosion on the side of a building. I don't know what caused it, what the projectile was, what type of weapon likely fired it, who fired it, what the likely target was etc. I don't know any of those things and neither do you. Why do people keep pretending that they know things they cannot possibly know?

What’s your point?

[SpacedX]

1 minute ago, Lionator said:

 The war’s been won

If so - ask yourself what was the objective and at what cost? Ukraine will be impossible to govern long-term whilst guerrilla warfare is almost impossible to subdue as Russia found to great cost in Afghanistan. Ukraine will always be contested and insurrection and insurgency will become the bane of his remaining tenure in the Kremlin. Russia will remain a pariah state as a consequence and such economic isolation again, is untenable in the long-term. This leadership will forever be on the wrong side of history as the true atrocities of this invasion emerge.  

 

7 minutes ago, Lionator said:

Personally I don’t think he’ll risk the baltics, it’ll take a long time for them to regather military (years) to even consider it. If he does then he’s insane. They’re surely not worth going to war with nato for? 

We simply don't know. A similar incursion from Belarus into Lithuania puts him on NATO soil and the subsequent ground war with would destroy Russia which is when I am certain you would see tactical deployment of nuclear weapons in an attempt to avert this. But as I suggested yesterday, right now, Putin is determined to manufacture and exploit the existing division and polarisation in the world around him. Ironically, in the immediate short-term, his actions have had the reverse effect. One of the greatest threats to humanity lies in the renewed emergence of the far right and the possible swing from the margins in the the United States towards the Republicans, and some absolute lunatics waiting in the wings of Congress. Putin's immediate aim is to further divide and weaken the west.   

[Sampson]

Just now, Blarmy said:

What’s your point?

Just ignore all his posts in this thread.

He comes in, makes some all thinly veiled adolescence "must side with anything remotely anti-Western" or "yeah but the west did xyz" whataboutery point that just comes across as thinly-veiled Putin apologism and then leaves.

[David Hankey]

55 minutes ago, Mickyblueeyes said:

The number of people in Russia or the number against him holds no bearing. Not all Germans were Nazis. The fear is crippling under regimes like this. I cant even imagine what people are going through. We get fed soft propaganda shit here. Imagine that intensified tenfold. In fact shooting Putin leaves me with further fear as to who takes over. Has we got to Hitler earlier it probably would've been that psychopath Goebbels. 

 

Its just not an easy fix. 

Is there anyone else in Russia who is worse than Putin, I guess no-one over here knows that.

[Guest MarshallForEngland]

 

2 minutes ago, Blarmy said:

What’s your point?

Perhaps I didn't explain it properly, my apologies. Videos are often shared on the internet with a caption which makes a claim about what the video shows. Sometimes the caption makes claims that are either not true, or hard (if not impossible) to verify. In the above example, the poster claimed that the video depicted Russian forces deliberately attacking civilians. My point is that it's not possible to know that from the video itself, that none of us know what the projectile was, what weapon fired it, who the weapon belongs to, whether it was functioning properly, whether the building was the intended target, whether the building was being used for military purposes (for example was the building being fired from?) etc. We don't know anything. Why pretend that we do? It seems to me that some people prefer to start with a conclusion (for example, Russian forces are deliberately attacking civilians) and then readily accept that as the explanation for whatever video could be explained by that being true. This is not logical thinking. What happened to healthy skepticism and critical thinking?

[Sol thewall Bamba]

For a war that's "going as planned" according to little man Putin, there's a lot of Russian hardware being abandoned in ditches.  

[String fellow]

1 minute ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

For a war that's "going as planned" according to little man Putin, there's a lot of Russian hardware being abandoned in ditches.  

Putin told the world in February that they weren't going to invade Ukraine. If that had been true, then saying that it's going as planned is a complete logical disconnect.

[MPH]

12 hours ago, MarshallForEngland said:

 

. What happened to healthy skepticism and critical thinking?

 

there comes a time though when people hide behind ‘critical thinking’ and then end up not trusting anything and anyone.  When something stacks up with multiple accounts from multiple people saying the same thing then ‘ critical thinking’ becomes an excuse to not believe what’s happening before your very eyes.

Edited 5 March 2022 by MPH