Ukraine and Russia

So you believe the headline news? It has nothing to do with NATO. And everything to do with natural resources in East Ukraine.

And Putin is to be trusted?

He’s a warmongering idiot with no goal but to destroy as much as he can.

That's as maybe...and how does it go?Something like "he would say that wouldn't he".

For multiple decades one of the standard gripes of the Russian leadership (and the Soviet leadership before them) was that Russia was surrounded.

Now in military terms a few decades back if you took a suitable map you could just about see their POV if you assumed the US was definitely tied into NATO and China was definitely hostile to them....now with Trump as POTUS, Putin talking to the Chinese leadership on a regular basis and North Korean troops fighting for Russia in Ukraine it all looks a bit different and the paranoia a bit suspect.

As for the EU - they are/or were until Russia invaded Ukraine, primarily an economic power that certainly didn't surround or ring fence Russia.

None of the above is an excuse for Russia going around invading independent nations, it looks like a plain old land grab with a side element of Putin wanting to restore the Russian empire.

No. Its because his regime is failing and he needs a distraction. And it's creating Greater Russia.

Oh my God! Breaking news! He’s obviously going to blame Europe. I’m pretty sure he’s said this before. And of course Putin would never lie would he? 😂 He said he wasn’t involved in the Sailsbury attack. He said all his opponents just fell from windows. And many more lies.

What reason did Finland and Sweden give for joining NATO? They wouldn’t have joined if Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine.

@Leavesfalling
@RoamingToaster
@notimagain

It’s just been on BBC news. Putin stated EU and NATO expansion Eastwards is the reason for war in the Ukraine.

The Soviet Union fell in the last century along with the Warsaw Pact.

Russia is already "ring fenced" by the EU and has been for decades. Look at the map. The EU is an economic alliance and Russia was once hoping to joint it and NATO..under Putin!

NATO was set up to defend against a Russian attack. A non member has been attacked by Russia....so membership seems a logical thing to do! Hence Finland and Sweden joining because of Russia.

The EU is supporting a rules based order that requires countries not to invade others. Russia has always been a problematic country invading on all sides. Including China.

WW3 will only happen if China is involved. And as mentioned China has beef with Russia historically over land Russia pinched.

Russia is having trouble wiping out non nuclear Ukraine. Europe does have a few nukes of its own so hopefully that will continue to act as a deterrent.

Switzerland is literally surrounded by the EU all along its border yet it doesn’t seem to mind. Likewise apart from its border to Austria all other countries around it are in NATO. If Austria were to apply to join NATO would Switzerland go to war with them? Of course not.

Like PP said Russia is massive and doesn’t need to worry about being surrounded. I don’t see the advantage to Russia in Ukraine being in or out NATO apart from invasion and annexation. NATO is a defence pact not aggressive.

Russia does not want to be ring fenced by the EU or NATO. So, they are preventing it.

Have you looked at a map recently....

Russia is probably less "fenced in", as you put it, by the EU than the UK is.

That doesn't give the UK an excuse to go to war with France.

They see having NATO on it's western border is more of a problem, always have done, hence they were quite happy to occupy a big chunk of eastern europe for decades..

@Leavesfalling

Ukraine isn't in the EU.

Two answers to that.

FIRST

Not yet, but want to be in the future. There lies the issue. Russia does not want to be ring fenced by the EU or NATO. So, they are preventing it.

A peace deal, if there ever is one, will be conditional that Ukraine never becomes a NATO member. If they do, then WW3 is a certainty, with the EU being wiped out first. Trump is aware of that. Hence he is encouraging a peace deal.

SECOND

As Ukraine are not in the EU, why are the EU supporting them? More significantly why is the EU buying energy from Russia? Does funding both combatants at the same time not mean the war will continue forever or up to the time when the donors are bankrupt?

Ukraine isn't in the EU.

Russia stockpiled oil from Iraq when the oil price dropped in 2015. They have oceans of oil they can sell to China and India. So, sanctions and the threats from the EU and the Us are ineffective.

The EU expansion eastwards and allowing Eastern European countries to become EU members is what caused the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine lost the war... The sooner we stop burning money on war mongering and spend more on infrastructure the better.

Fact check.:

We don't have surface to air missiles stationed all over Britain (the last significant medium/long range UK based SAM system was Bloodhound and as I recall it that went end of the cold war)....

Probably the best all round SAM system UK has is the PAAMS system onboard the type 45 guided missile destroyers (we have 6 of those, in various states of servicability), on any given day the servicable ones may or may not be in position to provide partial coverage of a small part of the UK, they are often deployed to other parts of the world it would be down to luck.

FWIW we don't have many fighters either...

This is why I think under the same pressure NATO would also crack . Nobody stuck to that agreement what makes anyone think that NATO would step up. For example in the event of a tactical nuclear weapon used on a NATO state I would bet anything the US would immediately say they were putting the world first by not retaliating and then they’d distance themselves as they are in a position to do so.

"we"... Are you planning on joining the trenches? I'm not supporting staying ww3 with Russia in Ukraine just because USA says so.

It's the same as Russian spy ships....if we honestly think they are a threat....sink them

For goodness sake 🙄

First of all, NATO evidently doesn't believe Russian spy ships are enough of an issue that they require sinking. Doing so would be tantamount to a declaration of war in any case, since even if they are illegally in your territorial waters and they refuse to leave when prompted, the next step is to apprehend them, not sink them and murder their notionally civilian crews.

Secondly, NATO has had "spying" HK subs stationed permanently outside every significant Russian naval base for decades, doing pretty much exactly the same thing that Russia's fleet of trawlers and "research" vessels does. NATO does it covertly, Russia just doesn't care about the fact they are brazen.

We are already at war with Russia and Putin has made that very clear

Putin, famously renowned for being a beacon of truth and as honest as the day is long.

We are not at war with Russia. This is nonsense.

We need to show the yanks we actually don't need them and go it alone and put some muscle in where it's needed. Air and Naval Support for example

Well that would certainly be one way to ensure we do actually get into a hot war with Russia.

Right now Russia wouldn't win a war with the UK while it's fighting the Ukraine.....

Slight problem there, is the UK is in no fit state to be fighting a war with Russia either, and it's a fools errand since the UK is in no way capable of defeating Russia either.

No ..we can attack a non NATO member as long as it's legal. Spy ships etc are more than enough justification to take action....sink them

They are really not.

You are correct that in the likelihood the UK committed yet another egregious act of stupidity and provoked a live conflict with Russia, the vast majority, if not every single other NATO member would likely just ignore Article 5, but more than that, there would likely be significant agitation for punting the UK from NATO entirely, given that we've just demonstrated we're essentially a rogue State who can't be trusted to behave ourselves.

So the net result is the UK is in a hot war with Russia, has practically no reliable allies, is entirely missing the NATO logistical support UK armed forces are wholly dependent upon to do much of anything beyond sit in barracks and peel potatoes, and not only that, if Putin decides at any point that he's simply fed up of it all and fancies turning a UK city or two into a sheet of glass, absolutely nobody is going to bother riding to our rescue and risk conflagrating it into a full nuclear war by helping us nuke him back

The Baltic States are completely and utterly screwed if Putin turns his attention toward them, because NATO is not going to get into a conflict with Russia for the purpose of protecting Estonian, Latvian, or Lithuanian sovereignty. Likewise, it wouldn't bother it's arse about a rogue UK State deciding it wants to have a go at Russia and it's allies all by itself. And yes, Russia does have a few friends, believe it or not.

Given that the UK would lose NATO logistical support and likely have trouble convincing NATO members to permit a non-NATO member to use their territory for the purpose of prosecuting a war vs Russia, what are you proposing to do? Shift the entirety of the UK's deployable armed forces to Ukraine, assuming Zelensky even consents to this?

True. I’ll just go back in time and speak to my grandfathers who fought in WW2 for the allies when it wasn’t their war. Front lines - the full duration.

I’m so fed up of people that forget that while no one wants war sometimes you fight because it’s the right thing to do.

If the UK and EU declared war on Russia, I expect that the US would immediately withdraw from NATO.

That would mean the UK and EU needing to triple defence spending, just to cover the loss of US support. To maintain a war, we'd probably need to at least quadruple. All to say - enormous and sustained tax increases.

Replacing the money, though, is actually the easier part. Replacing the US's technologies is much, much harder. It's not just aircraft, air-carriers, missiles, nuclear defences and alike - it's satellite systems for early warning, surveillance, GPS, etc. Developing the technologies and manufacturing them would likely take at least a decade or two.

We have become prisoners to our own reliance on the US, and warnings should have been heeded. Recent increases in defence spending are meaningful, but nowhere close to adequate to fill any US-shaped gap that may arise in the near or medium term.

The waiting game is really all we have, and Ukraine will pay the price first. They might be the last.

Yes, I agree. I wish they'd stand up and act.

:(

I’m fed up of people so eager to send our military to fight in a war that’s not ours. Maybe if you had family members in the armed forces you’d feel differently, for me it’s a hard no, Ukraine has had enough help from numerous countries and still haven’t achieved anything except a luxury billion dollar ski resort.

NATO is paralyzed for so long as Trump (or a Trump-like figure) is in office.

NATO cannot do anything unless all members approve, and the member most resistant (or rather, dead against) is the US - and given they are the largest military power and economy, its not as if European nations can meaningfully pressure them.

The US-Russia backed Surrender Treaty is an attempt to extort Ukraine and the rest of Europe. The former for its sovereignty and minerals, the latter for hundreds of billions of dollars.

Quite why Trump is always so ready to align with Russia/Putin, we can only speculate, but we also know his Vice President (and potential successor) is very anti-Europe on ideological grounds.

I don't think people are yet grasping how dire Europe's current position is. Our once greatest ally is - at best - an ally no longer. At worst, it is hostile.

Europe deserves some of the blame for allowing itself to become so dependent on the US for its own safety, and not spending adequately on defence but, ultimately, it was never going to be able to protect itself from a US heel-turn.

All Europe can really do is try and play the waiting game, so much as possible, in the hope that the US returns to normalcy at some point (while investing as heavily as possible in defence).

I admire your principles, OP, but Ukraine isn't the hill I want to risk nuclear war over.