Boris Johnson to address nation as he describes Russian invasion as 'catastrophe for our continent

[Ponyclubkick]

Anyone finding the tone of this really quite terrifying...

I’m not one to get myself in a tizz over sensationalised news but this is starting to feel very different!

Bullshit, I am really shocked at Putin. He's lost the plot and this is turning Russians against him.

But let's not pretend this isn't exactly what America wanted him to do

@ABitBesotted

Bullshit, I am really shocked at Putin. He's lost the plot and this is turning Russians against him.

But let's not pretend this isn't exactly what America wanted him to do

What a Western centric view you have.

Putin has always behaved as Putin wants.

Do you honestly think Putin is being controlled by the US to start a war? I mean, genuinely?

So now this is not Putin's fault at all, he was just a wee peaceful lamb respectful of all borders but the nasty Americans 'made' him do it?!

I think I have heard it all now.

Seriously how messed up is that train of thought!

Oh I see you and raise you a messed up train of thought. My BIl thinks the whole war was because Biden and the Democrats want to distract attention from Hilary Clinton being a paedophile.

Straight out of the David Icke and Piers Corbyn playbook that one.

Nice strawmanning there. No. As I said, Putin has truly lost the plot. Shelling Soviet apartment blocks in Kiev? Those are the images really horrifying ordinary Russians, because they live in the exact same buildings. It's insanity.

But you think the West haven't provoked this or being trying to goad Putin into war? Did you just discover Ukraine three days ago?

I discovered Ukraine in 1999 when I lived there and worked there for 4 years. Since then I have worked in the Baltics, and the Balkans. But only until 2013 when I changed tracks and focused on Uk based organisations. So yes granted I might be slightly out of date.

What's your stance on Putin and Chechnya then? Also a Western conspiracy?

Working in the Baltics you will have imbibed a lot of anti-Russian sentiment, no doubt (if you spoke to locals and left the expat bubble).

I don't think it is possible to be 'goaded' into any war. The onus is always to show restraint and intelligence - and to create this utter devastation ia no one's responsibility but Putin's I am afraid.

This war is for Putin's ego and to fulfil some legacy of resurrection, it has precious little to do with anything else. Russia is in decline, steep decline, probably made worse by the pandemic. Oil will soon be replaced and he knows it. Everything he leans on - natural resources and fossil fuels to prop us his elite will soon evaporate.

I see this as the lashing out of someone deeply resentful and bitter that the world has moved on and left him behind, still living in the 'golden' imperial era with an infrastructure and living standards of some part of the third world. I feel rather sorry for him, if it were not for this terrible war.

@ABitBesotted

Working in the Baltics you will have imbibed a lot of anti-Russian sentiment, no doubt (if you spoke to locals and left the expat bubble).

Bless. And what is your experience? (Other than watching youtube?)

Thanks. I do not usually get exercised in my MN life or my daily life. But I am geuinely heartbroken at all of this.

@PurpleDaysAreHereAgain

Oh and I spent a fair whack of time in Bishkek (google it *@ABitBesotted*) and in some other Stans. I have so much time in the former Soviet States. I speak Russian. So fuck off with your apologist notions of the glory of the USSR.

If you had the experience you claim, you wouldn't have got quite so chippy at the "expat bubble" remark, as that type is easily the most common among Westerners in Slavic countries. I have not met the current BBC correspondent in Moscow, but know for a fact that the previous one didn't even have basic conversational Russian. And anyone who has lived there could rattle off a hundred examples like that. Visiting English football fans would pick up more of the language than certain paranoid Guardian journalists (who seldom ventured outside the Irish pub) ever did.

Again, you ascribe views to me I do not hold and therefore haven't expressed. It's all emotion, or sarcasm, or outrage that someone has reached a different conclusion from you, so you'd better claim they worship Putin or pine for communism or some other horseshit.

Fucking men.

A MEN to that (sorry )

isc.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/CCS207_CCS0221966010-001_Russia-Report-v02-Web_Accessible.pdf

The Russia Report. Worth reading carefully.

Love it was not the expat bubble I got chippy at. Nothing you claimed actually made sense.

Thank you for the report YanTanTetheraPetheraPimp

Russia is an awful regime and Putin has not been goaded into this by the West. Whether you are in Russia or UK it is pretty obvious Russia took this decision. this is not something the West has forced Putin to do.

Having an Eastern Slavic username gives you special insight, of course, Xenia.

[sits on hands while @ABitBesotted makes herself look ridiculous]

Oh dear..

You keep tagging me, Purple, but since it's only to make snide or sarcastic remarks (or to tell me I said things I never said, which strikes me as a thoroughly British way of arguing), it's all a bit pointless.

I'm not British. [falls about laughing]. Or even a native English speaker.

And I'm the Prince of the Kyrgyz...

I am disinclined to believe you, and you me, so let's leave it there.