To ask if most of us have forgotten about Ukraine

[BeaBachinasec]

The invasion was terrifying and dramatic. We admired the plucky Ukrainians defending their homeland against the mighty Russian bear.

And now? I'm not quite sure what's going on anymore and wonder if most of us have lost interest as the war has rumbled on relentlessly.

There's a whole topic on the conflict in the Middle East, nothing like that for Ukraine.

@GordonBlue and in the meantime, please enjoy this 🙂🇬🇧🇺🇦 just for you!

@Lucanus I did say they need more than Artillery alone.

Russia is right now launching an assault on UA lines, thanks to are supine Govts, UA is being pushed to its limits & its the ordinary citizen being killed and maimed.
Its shocking that after 2 years, the UK still isn't ramping up its production of munitions, tax cuts being more important & even what we plan (in other words not even a start date) is less than £1b per year.....

On the Kerch Bridge, they need better missiles to penetrate the concrete structures and we aren't giving them.

When US/UK & EU were talking about rebuilding Ukraine etc etc i thought "Hang on, Russia isn't defeated yet" this minor detail seems to have escaped many people & atm, this aim seems further away than ever.... which is why i think we need to at least think about alternatives to our current plan which appears to be no more than containment... we give just enough to allow UA to hold but nothing else.

@ArchaeoSpy I specifically said battlefield weapons, not Russia's Strategic ones, there is also the use of nerve agents and Ukraine nuc power stations plus given how the country is run, do you really think Russia has robust chains of command?

Is this part of the same Russian campaign as the idea of bio- engineered mosquitos, removing organs from children for sale (there are no depths to which Russian propaganda won't sink) being a neo-Nazi state, riddled with Satanism?

"Some of the disinformation seeks to undermine international support for Ukraine and to provoke hostility against Ukrainian refugees."

Ill remind you of the link, just in case you don't believe it - the actual source material is contained within https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine

"Some 50,000 fake accounts were uncovered in Germany last year, and many of them were found spreading Russian fabrications about the war in Ukraine. And here is one of the most awful lies exposed by Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation. https://t.me/United24media/21584 " - that Ukrainians are harvesting Mariupolitan children for organs.

This is a direct Russian claim about Ukrainians. (Russia, you know, has a very high rate of child abuse https://undispatch.com/here-is-how-every-country-ranks-on-child-safety/ )

And Yes this is a clear case of good and bad. Russia set up and then carried out an invasion of a country that only wanted to be left alone.

The picture of Mariupol theater -remember there were over 600 women and children in that theatre, and it was labelled as so. Russia bombed it. Very few got out.

Yes, this is a matter of good and bad, and you are pushing the side of the aggressor.

Russia is a terrorist state and its danger to world peace cannot be overestimated. Terrorising and killing innocent people is its modus operandi since at least WW2. We witness daily the actions of the Russian Federation. Should anyone be in any doubt about the methods of the Russian state in all its incarnations just google Katyn Massacre. Shamefully, both the UK and US were complicit in covering it up after the war.

Salt pot.

Never heard that before. Is that a salt cellar?

On the chain of command yes i do think there is a solid chain, however there could always be special ops, and or groups that operate outside of the offical chain of command that follow different rules.

here are the basic titles in the chain of command for battlefield weapons in Russia:

1. President of Russia
2. Minister of Defense
3. Chief of the General Staff
4. Commanders of Ground Forces, Aerospace Forces, and Navy
5. Operational Commanders
6. Brigade/Division Commanders
7. Unit Commanders
8. Soldiers/Operators

its like a jar for different spices but called a salt pot

but then how can we be sure they are fully academic based and not biased ?

Do you think academic work is bias free?

@ArchaeoSpy Well, you ve said it... there are always other actors, its not anything like what we have in the West and if Russia was defeated completely in Ukraine, then anything could happen.

I don't really understand how it can be a point of contention.

I do get pissed off with people having ago at Zelensky, in my eyes he is a fucking hero!!! so easy for him to have run to the West and given back in Feb 22, now his life is in constant danger and that doesn't strike me as a man who is on the take.

Agreed there - he's very brave, both physically and morally. Not perfect, by any means, but a real strong leader.

Zelensky, im not sure whole heartedly, that said he may be the person the west needs right now, but after ive been influenced with too much espionage Tv shows, la femme nikita, Central intelligence agency, covert affiars, the unit, spooks, Alias, james bond, etc then various espionage books etc

No one is truly as they seem when its on the worlds stage, who knows what roles are being played and by who.

nah , theres always someone pulling strings etc but in theory if its more academic then there will be more soruces etc

oh god, this is not a movie

You might want to keep your fevered imagination firmly in the books and films you read in your arm chair.

You are just being silly now. Why?

The war in Ukraine will end when the West wants it to and not before.

Nothing ABOUT Ukraine WITHOUT Ukraine ring any bells?

🤣

Lets not mix things up & forget that Putin invaded a sovereign country.

Ukraine is defending itself, there is only one aggressor here and its not the West, Nato or Ukraine.....

Putin could order his troops to withdraw today.

Sadly, for a lot of people the invasion of Ukraine was nothing more than a TikTok trend....
This week we love ABCD and hate XYZ, next week we love EFGH and hate IJKL....
It's sad and shallow but it's true.

well ill let the main authors explain my points and some include ex CIA directors etc @WinterMorn

To give perspectives for my thoughts heres the reading list to showcase how espionage, and operations etc alter the political landscape and how people can play different roles eg double agents in espionage etc,
here's the list of non-fiction books about espionage, double agents, and related topics, along with their titles, authors, and publication dates:

"Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal" by Ben Macintyre
Publication Date: 2007

"The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945" by J.C. Masterman
Publication Date: 1972

"The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal" by David E. Hoffman
Publication Date: 2015

"The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story" by Robert Baer and Dayna Baer
Publication Date: 2011

"An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent" by Owen Matthews
Publication Date: 2019

"A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal" by Ben Macintyre
Publication Date: 2014

"Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies" by Ben Macintyre
Publication Date: 2012

"The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War" by Ben Macintyre
Publication Date: 2018

"The Art of Betrayal: The Secret History of MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service" by Gordon Corera
Publication Date: 2011

"Stalin's Romeo Spy: The Remarkable Rise and Fall of the KGB's Most Daring Operative" by Emil Draitser
Publication Date: 2011

"Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory" by Ben Macintyre
Publication Date: 2010

"Spies in the Vatican: Espionage and Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust" by David Alvarez
Publication Date: 2002

"The Spy's Son: The True Story of the Highest-Ranking CIA Officer Ever Convicted of Espionage and the Son He Trained to Spy for Russia" by Bryan Denson
Publication Date: 2015

"The Art of Intelligence: Lessons from a Life in the CIA's Clandestine Service" by Henry A. Crumpton
Publication Date: 2012

"The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War" by Stephen Kinzer (2013)

"The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics" by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith (2011)

"Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq" by Stephen Kinzer (2007)

"All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror" by Stephen Kinzer (2003)

"Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" by Tim Weiner (2007)

"The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade" by Andrew Feinstein (2011)

"Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum" by Michael T. Klare (2005)

"The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire" by Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin (2012)

"Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism" by Vladimir Lenin (1917)

"Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield" by Jeremy Scahill (2013)

"The Dark Side of Camelot" by Seymour Hersh (1997)

"The Colonizer and the Colonized" by Albert Memmi (1957)

"The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" by Naomi Klein (2007)

"The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government" by David Talbot (2015)

"The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran" by David Crist (2012)

"The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" by John Mearsheimer (2001)

Of course i could be wrong ?

@ArchaeoSpy, yes, you probably are

true but then various coups sponsored by various intelligence agencies, have altered the political arena both for the wests advantage and disadvantage depending on the results from the coups.

For Example:

1. Operation Ajax (1953) - Iran
2. Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961) - Cuba
3. Chilean coup of 1973 - Chile
4. Operation PBSUCCESS (1954) - Guatemala
5. 1971 Bangladesh coup - Bangladesh
6. 1966 Nigerian coup - Nigeria
7. 1964 Brazilian coup - Brazil
8. 1958 Lebanon crisis - Lebanon

You mean like the attempted coup in Ukraine? Or the successful one in Crimea?

It has to be said that Mearsheimer is not a good source.

The West's hands are far from clean in many recent events, but saying that Russia invading Ukraine is the West's fault is actually 1) rather egotistical of the West by assuming that Russia has no agency of its own and 2) indeed, exactly that - assuming that Russia has no agency of its own. Poor Russia, forced to invade Georgia, Chechnya, Crimea and Ukraine.