Ukraine

I think it was a report of Youtube - a man that looks like Putin was sitting in one of the Kremlin office mock ups - somewhere. With Russia and now Ukraine saying that all ships are valid military targets - no one is going to take the risk of insuring them. I think that's the last we have seen of Ukraine grain until next year.

 

If only the UN wasn't a complete waste of space. They could set up a peacekeeping force to protect civilian shipping.

 

I don't think Poland has too much to worry about. Putin is using 'all means necessary' to defeat Ukraine. This includes sending convicts to the front line, enlisting people as old as 70 to fight, and raiding his own museums for front line equipment. He can't afford to open another front.

Meanwhile in Belarus, Lukashenko is clinging to power by his finger tips, with most of his people just itching to get rid of him. I reckon if there's even a slight skirmish between Poland and Belarus, the people of Belarus will do a faster job of toppling Lukashenko than Poland.

The only thing Russia has left to escalate with is nukes. And he apparently has a lot of them. But he also knows that if he launches even a single one, he is screwed. A lot of other people would be too, but Putin only cares about Putin, and he knows he would be finished if he crossed a red line with NATO.

I think this is a futile attempt to convince his people that it is everyone else that is the aggressor. Will that work? Maybe with some, but lets face it, when it looked like Wagner was coming to overthrow him, the people hardly seemed upset about it.

 

I get the feeling both sides are trying to drag NATO in.
NATO needs to keep out, if that happens I wouldn't like to say where it would end.

Its almost like how WW2 started, just different players.

 

While I agree, NATO is already very much in. NATO members have supplied equipment, training, intelligence, tactical advice, sanctions and propaganda. That seems to me to be most of the ingredients of war fighting. The only thing NATO hasn't officially done is put boots on the ground so to speak. But it's worth noting that while no NATO member has officially put boots on the ground, there are Americans and Brits and others on the front lines in Ukraine. It's just every time one gets found out their home country's government makes a great show of stressing that they're very naughty for going there and they'll get a jolly good telling off for it when they come home.

As an aside, it was in the news just yesterday that MI6 issued an open invite to Russians to come and join to provide intelligence. I get that intelligence agencies all over the world do things like that but I think the fact they were so public about it said a lot. It was almost like as though MI6 was intentionally sticking two fingers up at Putin.

 

NATO and Sweden getting in. Yes, a kick in the pants for Putin - but Sweden are at the moment sandwiched between two NATO members - who is their right mind would send planes or troops across a NATO country to get at a non NATO country?

NATO needs all the Swedish subs to patrol the Baltic and Atlantic side.

I still can't work out why Ireland are not in NATO - do they assume that the UK will pile in if necessary - because of our historical links?

 

Ireland have taken a stance of neutrality. However in recent times they have talked about increasing their military capability.

I don't think Ireland needs to worry as much as some countries due to their location, in particular their distance from hostile entities. That and the fact that other than if someone wanted to directly fight the UK, I don't see how they're very strategically important.

If Ireland did find itself in a pickle, I think both Britain and America would support them. Britain because it would be disastrous for us if Ireland fell to a hostile force, and America because they seem to think it's kind of theirs already. Back in the 1980s when the IRA was very active there were unofficial reports that the US was secretly arming them.

 

Ukraine has never been neutral, at least not in my lifetime.

For the first half of my life they were part of the USSR. When they gained their 'independence' when the USSR collapsed, there were skirmishes over the ownership of certain pieces of military kit. I remember a battleship being stolen for example. I can't remember if that was Ukrainian, but I remember being amused at news of a load of battle ships being moved and one broke away and made a run for it.

As part of a deal with Russia, Ukraine agreed at the time to relinquish all of its nukes and much of its conventional hardware to Russia in exchange for protection.

More recently, Russia invaded Ukraine and stole the Crimean peninsula.

More recently still, the Ukrainian people mounted an uprising and forcibly overthrew their Kremlin aligned leader. Then more recently still Russia launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine.

I don't think any of that history aligns to Ukrainian neutrality.

 

I always thought Ukraine was part of Russia to be honest, it wasn't something I gave much thought to until a few years ago, but it appears there has always been tensions.
Right back to the 1920 Russia was stealing the Ukrainian grain while the population starved and died in the streets.

 

Same here.

In fact it was only when the news was on about the Russians nicking Crimea that I noticed people were calling it Ukraine instead of The Ukraine.

I've since learned that when it was called The Ukraine, it was because it was widely considered a region of Russia, and the only dropped 'The' when it gained its independence. In fact when I was at school and the Chernobyl disaster happened we were taught that it happened in Russia. An important point to remember though is back in the times of the USSR, the terms Russia, USSR and the Soviet Union were often used interchangeably to mean the same thing.

 

Slight tangent alert, but you've reminded me of an amusing conversation I had with a friend from Croatia. He was a young man living in Yugoslavia when it horribly tore itself apart. I'd watched an amusing video on YouTube the day before called Slavic Drivers. I never gave much thought to the term Slavic until then so I asked my friend what it meant.

He told me Slavic referred to a lineage of people, and a set of languages. Realising the similarity between the term and his country of birth, Yugoslavia, I asked if there was a connection. This is where his answer amused me. You'll have to try and visualise because there weren't many words. He gestured with his hands, and said 'the Croatia are by the coast, over here (waves one hand), and the Slavs are just on the other side of the hills, over here (waves other hand). I'm sure I'm his head he was visualising either a map or a memory of what he could see when he lived there, but all I saw was my friend waving his hands about explaining that one lot was over here and the others over there.

 

This is slightly worrying.

Ukraine war: Russia attacks grain stores at River Danube ports

As Russia continues its efforts to starve as many innocent people as possible, they've attacked Ukrainian facilities very close to the border of Romania. Apart from breaking international rules about attacking targets with no direct military value, it would only take a very slight miscalculation to hit NATO territory.

This when just a couple of days ago Putin whined about Poland moving forces closer to the Belarus border in response to Wagner being allowed to train Belarusian special forces just 3 miles from the Polish border.

I don't want world war three, but it's about time NATO started making threats instead of trying to be all passive. They've tried that, didn't work, time for a review of strategy.