"Prime Minister Keir Starmer recommits to £3 billion a year of military support for Ukraine until 2030/31 and for as long as needed"

Excellent idea!

I am getting a distinct whiff of Kremlin here…….

Oh, and Russia's economy is in real trouble, as acknowledged by Governor of the Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina in the last days. While some growth is happening, it's all war-driven and there are very serious problems under the surface due to labour shortages (people got sent to the war or fled) and technological shortages.

Russia's also dropping down the league tables scientifically due to the barriers it's placed around itself in the last two years.

Which world do you live in?

Russia from the beginning totally and utterly screwed this up.

A population of roughly 150million v a population in Ukraine of roughly 36million pre-war.

Russia's army was 1,320,000 pre-invasion. Ukraine's roughly 700,000.

Russia had 17,500 tanks, a significant proportion of which were unusable admittedly. Ukraine had around 700 iirc.

Russia has lost over 8000 tanks and FIFTEEN THOUSAND artillery systems.

They couldn't even get their 64km long army to Kyiv!

Putin claimed to take over Ukraine in 3 days. It's now 2 1/2 years on and they are reduced to primitive human meat waves to take village by village slowly, and they have taken only 20% of Ukraine.

Their elite units were wasted by bad generalship early in the war and while some of the surviving soldiers are battle hardened and good, most units are not cohesive due partly to the fact that training is poor, because the trainers were sent to the front lines too early in the war!

They've gone from the 2nd most feared army in the world to a laughing stock.

Im afraid that if you seriously think that Russia is better prepared then you'd better start looking at what's actually happened, rather than what you want to have happened.

550,000 Russians have been killed or seriously injured. The last known Ukrainian figures were from February and around 31,000 Ukrainians killed - no mention of seriously injured.

I think the Ukrainian numbers are under reported myself, though I've no evidence of that. But without doubt the Russian meat-waves tactics mean that their losses are enormously higher.

Russia has already been given a huge bloody nose in Ukraine and are suing for peace in return for 20% of the country. They have no appetite, men or arms for further adventuring

Just so's you know, Medvedev and I think Putin has said repeatedly that they want to take over all of Ukraine and that only that will satisfy them. In fact Medvedev said that only this week.

Putin says one minute that he wants to negotiate, then he asks whyever would he want to. Only all of Ukraine will do for them.

No. The Russians are the ones who have killed Ukrainian men.

And women

And children

Are you a fan of appeasement? Because that's what putin wants

I reckon a donation to united24 is in order here

Better to send a small portion of our GDP to stop tyranny and oppression than sending the armed forces to fight and die

I'll ask again how many russian boys and men have died compared to Ukrainian boys and men?

'Only killed more Ukrainian men'. More than what? We all know what the Russians have done in the occupied areas. They killed quite a lot of men, women and children in, say Bucha.

No one is talking about ‘giving’ Ukraine. As I said, a long stalemate followed by a diplomatic solution is optimal.

Optimal for whom? Certainly not for Ukraine who are the innocent party in this and have been invaded, bombed, children kidnapped, women raped, people tortured, their land occupied, their dams destroyed and are losing their youth to this blood thirsty tyrant.
If we're taking 'optimal' outcomes, optimal for Ukraine is for russian forces to pack up and go back where they came from and for russia to pay reparations for the damage that has been caused - although no amount of money will ever compensate Ukraine for what Putin has put them through.

This, but not only this.

Our armed forces are in a terrible state from years of neglect. It's not for nothing that Putin thinks he can do anything he wants and get away with it.

What does a non military buffer zone look like?

Without support Ukraine would have fallen months ago, what then?

I suspect tar more russian men have been killed

its absurd. All the money Ukraine has been given has only killed more Ukrainian men. The Russians are massively better prepared and showing that on a daily basis. The EU and UK should be saving their money and sitting down to discuss a non-military buffer zone in Ukraine and no more war.

Even if you are pro funding Ukraine, it must be obvious to all that £3bn is a drop in a very large ocean and isn't going to lead to any sort of victory. Ukraine is just living as a rump state while more and more of their men get killed.

That’s fair. Attacking Labour on this issue is dumb and wrong.

But when I said on a thread a while ago that Johnson could be praised for his support for Ukraine I got loads of Labour supporters telling me he didn’t really mean it, it wasn’t his decision, he was only doing it to give money to arms manufacturers etc etc.

It would be nice to see some sensible give and take on here about domestic politics.

@Newbutoldfather your post doesn’t factor in the cost to Putin of using a nuke.

@DucklingSwimmingInstructress ,

‘The Kremlin uses the threat of nuclear escalation in order to scare you. There have been literally hundreds of them coming from Russia - I have a record somewhere if you want to see. It's intended to do exactly what it's done for you - scare people so that they crumble and allow Russia to invade countries, as with Chechnya, Ukraine, Transnistra, Crimea and Georgia. ‘

Maybe, but you don’t know any more than I do. As we saw, Russia couldn’t even invade Ukraine and the scary column of tanks turned out to be a massive logistical overreach.

I think people are ridiculously scared of this domino effect as they are still mentally fighting the Nazi war machine of WW2.

Russia has already been given a huge bloody nose in Ukraine and are suing for peace in return for 20% of the country. They have no appetite, men or arms for further adventuring

Nukes are real and an existential danger to humanity far in excess of climate change . Brinkmanship is brilliant….until you go over the brink.

What percentage chance of global Armageddon is worth it to you for us to declare victory in Ukraine? 10%, 1%, 0.1%. Because you cannot pretend it is zero.

Have you seen the state of Russia’s armed forces ?

Any diplomatic solution which gifts ANY occupied Ukranian territory to Russia is unacceptable and sends a message to Moscow that military invasions work. Crimea is a stepping stone to Moldova. They cannot have ANY of it.

So is there a diplomatic solution which involves Russia returning ALL Ukrainian territory to Ukraine ?

@brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ,

‘The US allows Ukraine to use US weapons in Russia too, with certain restrictions.’

The restrictions are important and we should impose the same restrictions.

‘I think it’s brilliant for Britain to stand up to Russia, and believe it will encourage others to take a similar stance. If we gave Ukraine to Putin, would we be more or less secure than we are now ? ‘

I don’t, and it won’t. Who do you think is looking at the UK for leadership. Have you seen the state of our armed forces recently? Maybe we should rearm ourselves ahead of arming a foreign power.

If we really feel we are threatened, our first priority should be a missile defence system at least as good as Israel’s.

No one is talking about ‘giving’ Ukraine. As I said, a long stalemate followed by a diplomatic solution is optimal.

‘If Putin then invaded Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Moldova would we also hold back with the use of our weapons ? ‘

This is superpower politics and best left to actual superpowers to decide. Our involvement should be limited to our role within NATO. We don’t need to go beyond this either militarily or politically.

@Newbutoldfather It's not jingoistic - it's common sense to support the people who are facing down a gigantic threat.

The Kremlin uses the threat of nuclear escalation in order to scare you. There have been literally hundreds of them coming from Russia - I have a record somewhere if you want to see. It's intended to do exactly what it's done for you - scare people so that they crumble and allow Russia to invade countries, as with Chechnya, Ukraine, Transnistra, Crimea and Georgia.

If Russia uses nuclear weopons, tactical or larger, they're going to have to answer to China and in the partnership between China and Russia, China's the senior one. Xi Jingping has already told Putin to rein in his own threats, which is why it's the officials under him who spin them out like paint from a whirling pan and almost never him himself.

And in the end ... If you think that Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Estonia and other countries will not fight back if Russia tries to invade as the officials have threatened, nukes or no nukes, I'm afraid that's not the case.

The victim blaming mentality is nuts.

We can't do something because it might make Putin escalate to nukes.

How far does that travel before he does it anyway? Fuck that.

If Putin escalates to nukes, it's because of Putins actions, nobody else's. Draw the line in the sand.

@Newbutoldfather if Putin wants to use nukes, he will use nukes. The escalation argument is rapidly becoming redundant.

The US allows Ukraine to use US weapons in Russia too, with certain restrictions.

I think it’s brilliant for Britain to stand up to Russia, and believe it will encourage others to take a similar stance. If we gave Ukraine to Putin, would we be more or less secure than we are now ?

If Putin then invaded Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Moldova would we also hold back with the use of our weapons ?

If the answer is “no”, then it should be “no” now.

@brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ,

And you would be risking nuclear escalation.

I don’t understand why the UK is the only country allowing free use of our missiles to attack Russia when we have no iron dome.

There is really no need for us to go beyond the U.S and the rest of NATO.

This jingoistic approach is crazy.

I think the U.S have played it perfectly, not allowing Russia to lose or win or give Putin an excuse to use tactical nukes.

We can never face down a nuclear adversary when they are not even directly threatening us. We don’t even do it with North Korea.