To not really fancy a "winter of hardship to beat Putin"

YABU

I'm not sure who you mean by "we", but if it's the UK then your formal obligations are spelled out in the Budapest Memoranda.

I'm quite tickled by and I think at least some people in said various bits would like to join Russia anyway, who am I to stop them, though. Quite a few people in NI want to join Ireland and quite a few in Scotland want to join France or Norway, so I guess it's instructive to know that at least one rando on the internet would be quite sanguine if Michaél Martin or Manu Macron or Jonas Gahr Støre rolled into the UK and ran a years-long campaign raping, killing, and bombing civilians en masse.

I think this is the most unreasonable OP I’ve ever seen.

You don’t care about your fellow humans. That’s nice. Have you seen what the russians do to Ukrainians on the bits of land they get to occupy? It’s brutal and at least equivalent to Nazi occupation.

Very few people in those areas “want to join russia” or ever did. You’ve fallen for the propaganda, well done. The fact some people speak russian doesn’t mean they want to be russian - the only thing to suggest they did/ do is sham referendums held after occupation.

Even if you don’t care about fellow humans in those part of the world (or anywhere?), you are still misguided.

Ukraine will not be where Putin stops. He’s out for as much of Europe as he can get, and to influence those places he doesn’t get to occupy. Together with people like Trump, who approves of his authoritarian government style, the ultimate goal is to carve up as much of the world, and certainly Europe, as possible.

This is pure rage bait, the OP is having a laugh at our outrage, don't feed the trolls

YABU. Nothing will be enough. Once he gets a bit of Ukraine, he will want more and more until he has the whole lot. And then he will move onto the next country, and the next. The Ukraine is doing everyone else a huge favour at the moment by holding Russia back from advancing across the rest of Europe.

Are you a descendant of Neville Chamberlain?

you will get your hardship if he does

I get it OP, I really do but mad dictators like Putin cannot be given free rein to take whatever they want with impunity. I fear though that there will always be a Putin in the world and they have to be stopped. Trust me, one day it will be the UK under threat, f we are not already. I think the way you feel is totally understandable. I have the same thoughts when my energy bills arrive and when I check out at the supermarket.

Have a little think about what happened in Europe in the 1930s. Probably most British people assumed the same then about Czechoslovakia.

You do realise this is the man whose agents’ actions on British soil a few years ago caused the death of a British woman? Who thinks it’s fine to smear toxic substances on British property? Who pays stupid British or other people to burn buildings in the UK? Whose ships are threatening our undersea cables? Whose planes buzz our airspace? Whose propaganda tries to influence elections?

Are you really so naive?

I do agree with you but Putin can't even beat Ukraine. There's no way he'd mess with NATO

Ok but if he invades Poland which would be very likely NATO will have to intervene

All Putin needs to do to destroy NATO as a going concern is snip off and hold some village in Estonia or Latvia, because none of the big dogs are going to get into a hot war with Russia over that, and it would ably demonstrate to not only Ukraine, but anyone else thinking NATO is somehow some sort of shield against despotism and conquest that Article 5 isn't worth a damn.

This is why Trump is the single biggest threat to stability in Europe, not Putin, because the fat orange moron's continual public undermining of the alliance just encourages the likes of Putin to continue to push. It's little wonder so many people are convinced Trump is a Russian asset, because he assists Putin far more so than can simply be written off as incompetence and idiocy.

No kidding, what’s the whether like in Moscow, OP?

You really can’t get decent propagandists these days.

Yabu and selfish.

@frazzled1excellent summary, you could have included the Salisbury poisonings as well which were a badly targeted attack at eliminating Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Putin is ex KGB and I don’t think has forgiven Soviet leaders for breaking up the USSR. He’s a dangerous man and I very much doubt the security services and armed services are underestimating him

I think you need to give up drinking.

I think the op is well aware of the ways in which Russia is undermining the west 😁

Energy prices have been a hardship ever since Russia went into Ukraine anyway. Nothing new here.

Russia also shares intelligence with Iran, which is paying petty criminals in the UK to commit terror offences, and using huge bot farms in North Korea to spread disinformation and destabilise the West. At least you can physically monitor a giant submarine.

Agree. Brief summary of Russian hostile activity towards UK.

• 1 Nov 2006 – Alexander Litvinenko poisoned: Former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko was deliberately poisoned in London with polonium-210 after meeting Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun. He died on 23 Nov 2006.
• 27 Jun 2017 – NotPetya: A destructive cyberattack initially aimed at Ukraine spread internationally, hitting some UK companies, including Reckitt Benckiser; the UK later attributed it to the Russian military. Reckitt Benckiser estimated around £100m in lost revenue from the disruption.
• Mar–Apr 2018 – GRU attacks on UK government: Russian military intelligence (GRU) attempted to compromise the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in March and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) in April using cyber techniques including spear-phishing.
• 2018–19 – Political and democratic targets: Russian FSB-linked group Star Blizzard targeted UK parliamentarians and hacked the Institute for Statecraft; in 2019, UK-US trade documents were stolen and leaked ahead of the General Election. The UK subsequently attributed this activity to Russian intelligence.
• 2020 – COVID vaccine research: Russian intelligence-linked APT29/Cozy Bear targeted UK organisations involved in COVID-19 vaccine development, seeking research and intellectual property. The National Cyber Security Centre assessed it was almost certainly part of the Russian intelligence services.
• Mar–Dec 2020 / Apr 2021 – SolarWinds: Russia's SVR compromised SolarWinds software, with a small number of UK public-sector organisations subsequently targeted. The UK formally attributed the operation to Russia in April 2021.
• From Mar 2022 – Russian-aligned cyber attacks: Pro-Russian groups such as NoName057(16) began conducting disruptive DDoS campaigns against Western targets. The National Cyber Security Centre says these groups have repeatedly targeted UK local government.
• 7 Dec 2023 – Russian cyber-espionage against UK politics: The UK formally exposed an FSB-linked campaign targeting politicians, civil servants, journalists, NGOs and other organisations, including spear-phishing and theft of sensitive information.
• Sept 2024 – Russian warships near UK: The Royal Navy shadowed Russian naval vessels travelling through the English Channel and North Sea, including the corvette Stoiky and support vessels, as they passed UK waters.
• Late Oct–Nov 2024 – Middlesbrough Council cyberattack: Middlesbrough Council suffered several DDoS attacks, temporarily taking its website offline; a further attack occurred in early December. The attacks were part of a wider wave of UK council attacks associated with the pro-Russian group NoName057(16). In response, the council implemented additional protection and subsequently approved a £25,000 12-month cybersecurity service.
• Nov 2024 – Russian spy ship Yantar: Yantar, a Russian intelligence ship, was detected loitering over UK critical undersea infrastructure. The UK deployed naval and air assets to monitor it.
• Jan 2025 – Yantar returns: Yantar again entered the UK’s Exclusive Economic Zone, about 45 nautical miles from the British coast, and was monitored by Royal Navy vessels.
• 5–11 Nov 2025 – Russian spy ship near UK: Yantar again operated near UK waters, north of Scotland, while mapping undersea cables; RAF pilots tracking it were subjected to laser illumination, and GPS interference was reported in the area.
• 24 Nov 2025 – Russian vessels off UK coast: The Royal Navy intercepted and shadowed the Russian corvette Stoikiy and tanker Yelnya through the Dover Strait and English Channel.
• 9 Apr 2026 – Russian submarine activity: The UK disclosed a month-long operation tracking a Russian Akula-class submarine and GUGI specialist vessels operating around critical undersea infrastructure north of the UK. British and allied forces monitored the vessels continuously.

Would you have said the same about Hitler before Poland?

I don't think

You really should have stopped there.

No, you clearly don't think.

Jesus, your ignorance is amazing along with any finer feelings for the rest of Europe.

Even if Russia and Ukraine reached some sort of truce it wouldn't solve the immediate problem and even if it did, it's unlikely that oil prices would fall that dramatically.

Some of them are genuine British disciples of Nigel Haw Haw, could be that.

the article is talking about energy prices - so petrol, gas, heating homes.

there’s two wars driving those up and one of them is trump’s fuckup.

maybe if we could get trump to stop bombing the Iranians we’d have lower energy prices?

You don’t care about the Ukraine? Seriously? I’m deeply unsettled by the fact that you have the right to vote. Jeez