Ukraine invasion discussion thread part 11

[ScatteredMama82]

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/4499310-Ukraine-invasion-discussion-thread-part-10?pg=40

@RedToothBrush

And as if by magic....

Nigel Farage @nigelfarage
I am launching a new campaign to kill of Boris Johnson’s ruinous green agenda.

We demand a referendum on Net Zero.

I demand a referendum on Farage being airdropped on the Kremlin.

I really hope the peace talks come to something tomorrow. All this is making me unwell

Does anyone think the peace talks will come to something?

Today’s Media Show (R4) worth a listen when it’s up on Sounds. Russian founder of Rain TV (where they walked out) contributing.

@CustardySergeant I’m pretty sure other countries have done that already haven’t they?

@BringBackCoffeeCreams I demand a referendum on Farage being airdropped on the Kremlin.

Nah. Strap him to the wing of a MiG with a loudspeaker taped over his gob and fly him low over the Kremlin. He can bore Putin to death.

@AgnesWestern

Does anyone think the peace talks will come to something?

Do they have peace talks coming up...sorry I've not read the whole thread

The latest attack on a maternity unit and children’s hospital makes me sick. This is so disgraceful.

And the footage I saw the other day of a Russian tank deliberately driving over a civilian car (with civilian inside).

These are war crimes!!!

[quote sadpapercourtesan]**@BringBackCoffeeCreams* I demand a referendum on Farage being airdropped on the Kremlin.*

Nah. Strap him to the wing of a MiG with a loudspeaker taped over his gob and fly him low over the Kremlin. He can bore Putin to death.[/quote]
Couldn't we just encourage him to fly around in a plane with a banner on it again?

Afp news agency @afp
#BREAKING 17 staff wounded by air strike on Mariupol children's hospital: official

No mention of children nor patients.

Thinking of the agricultural and environmental situation, it wouldn’t surprise me if there was an element of long-term planning in Putin’s calculations. We complain accurately of Britain not being able to feed its population. That will not be helped, nor will Europe be helped, by the simultaneous influx of refugees and removal of productive land due to war.
We simply can’t afford as a species to be removing habitable land in a global environmental crisis (it is not separate from the direct human loss here).

At least we know a bit about what capability the Russians have....

Josiah Mortimer @josiahmortimer
NEW: The government has granted licences to sell £1.5 billion worth of military-capable equipment to Russia since 2010

Ministers have only just closed a loophole to stop 'duel use' goods being sold to Russia - equipment, chemicals or tech that can be used for both peaceful and military purposes

Arms equipment able to be sold to Russia since 2010 includes 49 licences for weapon sights contracts, 28 for small arms ammunition and 12 for sniper rifles

£10 million in licences for armoured vehicles and tanks, £4 million for aircraft and drones, and another £4 million for use on warships has been granted since 2010, though most military sales stopped after the 2014 Crimea invasion

www.mylondon.news/news/uk-world-news/british-arms-firms-given-licences-23336113

An extra 254 licences had an “unlimited” value - effectively giving firms free rein to sell to Russians. The vast majority of the total is ‘dual-use’ items which could be used for either military or peaceful means. That can include night vision and thermal imaging tech, lasers, encryption software, nuclear equipment and more.

And

A Department for International Trade spokesperson told NationalWorld: “We have not granted any export licences to Russia for controlled military items following the arms embargo imposed in July 2014 for its illegal annexation of Crimea. However, £1.3 million worth of military licences were approved in 2016.

@ParsleySageRosemary "and in agriculture, muttering about rewilding and the like instead of just maximising yields"

Maximising yields is difficult when chemicals are also being lost at a record rate and we risk resistance developing to those we do have.

Maximising nutrition is even harder - that has been decreasing lately.

Ministers have only just closed a loophole to stop 'duel use' goods being sold to Russia - equipment, chemicals or tech that can be used for both peaceful and military purposes

That's a chilling typo right there...

@CustardySergeant

Britain is going to supply anti-air missiles to Ukraine (just announced). Is this putting the UK even more in harm's way?

Yes, but probably in a more subtle way than you might be thinking.

Without air support, Ukraine will eventually be overrun. There should be equipment inventories, but war is messy and most plans go awry. The location of munitions will be evident from air surveillance. There is a danger tens of thousands of US and British anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles get captured and eventually removed from Ukraine by private contractors.

On the subject of Russian disinformation, some journalists have investigated Ukrainian pro-Russian bloggers and discovered they are actually accounts run by Russian bot farms. They've even provided CGI photographs to make the bloggers look more authentic. Russia has been sowing the seeds of this invasion for a long time.

Maternity hospital bombed in Mariupol. This is pure evil.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10593177/Ukraine-war-Russia-reopens-evacuation-routes-besieged-cities.html

@ParsleySageRosemary

Thinking of the agricultural and environmental situation, it wouldn’t surprise me if there was an element of long-term planning in Putin’s calculations. We complain accurately of Britain not being able to feed its population. That will not be helped, nor will Europe be helped, by the simultaneous influx of refugees and removal of productive land due to war. We simply can’t afford as a species to be removing habitable land in a global environmental crisis (it is not separate from the direct human loss here).

There's an episode of Simon Reeves Russia Travel documentary which has a whole segment on how Russian cheese makers were beating western sanctions by making their own cheese and this self sufficiency was being encouraged by Putin (but as weve seen in a thread i posted today about tractors this self sufficiency drive has been as crooked and corrupt as hell in places).

This interested me after seeing cheese smuggling in person in Serbia - they were on a train passing bribes to EU guards to turn a blind eye to great big huge buckets of the stuff. Obviously this was big enough business to merit smuggling. Serbian cheese must be dreadful. So I remember the programme well.

I also know the bbc looked at russian cheese production in another thing they did about how Britain can thrive post brexit. Again cos im clearly obsessed by cheese smuggling and the bbc were clearly rather taken with the Russian cheese story too.

The programme was broadcast in 2017 and the cheese guys were pretty well established at that point.

I don't think Im alone in my memory of the Russian cheese success story though. I also think a former international trade secretary probably also watches Simon Reeve documentaries.

Thanks for new thread.

Anyone else feel like they’ve lived through a short ‘golden period’ of the last 20 years or so and everything’s going back to shit again?

We’ve had Brexit, a pandemic, 4 years of Donald Trump and 12 years of Tory rule, but all that pales into insignificance compared to this.

[quote bluewanda]Maternity hospital bombed in Mariupol. This is pure evil.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10593177/Ukraine-war-Russia-reopens-evacuation-routes-besieged-cities.html[/quote]
It is.

At what point do those of us in the West decide that a line has been crossed in this war, and actually do something about it?

@EsmaCannonball

On the subject of Russian disinformation, some journalists have investigated Ukrainian pro-Russian bloggers and discovered they are actually accounts run by Russian bot farms. They've even provided CGI photographs to make the bloggers look more authentic. Russia has been sowing the seeds of this invasion for a long time.

I'm sure a few sock puppet FSBers have turned up on some threads here too, people with a great interest in "unbiased information". Cold as ice and untouched by death and destruction in their quest to have a "balanced discussion". I'm starting to wonder if the stunningly cruel and depraved act of dropping Middle Eastern asylum seekers into the Belorussian forests to fight with border guards or die this winter was also a preparation for them to have more fuel for their whataboutery.

Echoing @heldinadream - very well said that poster!

@jgw1 so more death is caused?