Ukraine cannot win.

[Benmac]

I am so moved by the Ukrainians opposition to the Russian invaders.
However, without other countries assisting with troops on the ground it is inevitable that Russia will overcome Ukraine.
Europe and the USA cannot do that without starting WW3 and Putin knows that
So how much longer do we encourage Ukraine to hold out?
Should we not be making arrangements to get the president and his government out, let Russia take the country but leave all the sanctions against it in place.
They can have the land. Aid can be given to assist the refugees.
The sanctions will hit Russia hard when they get going. Let Putin then try to run Russia and Ukraine with no hard currency.
EU countries must take the hit and stop buying Russian gas which will slow money transferring in.
In an ideal world Ukraine would hold out long enough to force Russia to withdraw. In this real world thousands of civilians will be slaughtered from now and the end game will be the same

I hate how my phone cuts out part of sentences, it's been infiltrated by Putin's boys😳

[quote valerianaofficiana]@cherrysthename what would you suggest should be done when Putin starts hankering after geographical location where most Russian investments are concentrated, Chelsea/Kensington? Going after the ownership of these areas and threat you nuclear escalation unless UK agrees that Zone 1 really belongs to Russia?
🙄[/quote]
On the plus side as long as the oligarchs still have their assets in London, London isn't going to get nuked.

@valerianaofficiana I wouldn't suggest anything as that's a moot point as far as I'm concerned.

frank Gardner has been very pessimistic imo

Putin is like a jilted lover. He'd rather decapitate the bride than see her walk away.

If he can't have Ukraine he will pulverise it. Ukraine loses either way.
More grease to their elbow i say. make it as hard as possible for his troops if he doesn't care about flattening Ukraine.

stuff it, i'll learn to live with high energy prices. Ukraine is worth more than that.

[quote cherrysthename]@valerianaofficiana I wouldn't suggest anything as that's a moot point as far as I'm concerned. [/quote]
Except it's not. No one knows what Putin would do if he gets one country, he may decide to keep up the nuke threats to take them all. Anyone who thinks if Ukraine give in, that Putin will go 'thanks very much, that's all', you are completely deluded. This is about power, as much as he can have. He won't stop at Ukraine.

I would question why he's started on this quest now, in that case, but I admittedly don't know enough about him to enter into any debate about it. I've only spent the last few days looking into the history there is with Ukraine. It's all just so grim.

Am I the only one who suspects that there are few 'Generals' shaking in their boots. The operation has clearly not gone to plan😬. Someone must take the blame 🤔

Do you think ‘poking at’ Putin is really more dangerous than appeasing his megalomaniac threats to independent countries? If the world lets Putin invade with impunity, what lesson do you think other dictatorships and enemies of the West would learn from that?

The West has been too scared to 'poke' at Putin for ages despite his provocations. And look what its led to!

follow the money, he wants Ukraine's assets. he wants the part that makes money, kyiv the ports and the businesses. not the agricultural lands.
he may win the battle but will not win the war.

@valerianaofficiana

I hate how my phone cuts out part of sentences, it's been infiltrated by Putin's boys😳

Nah, it's the shit MN system.🙄

@cherrysthename

Putin said there would be consequences for Finland and Sweden. It was an ambiguous threat like the ones he made to us. He did not say he would 'go after' them in any sense like he has Ukraine. I don't believe he's got a check list of countries he's planning on invading. It's always been about Ukraine.

It wasn't ambiguous at all. Finland has a massive land border with Russia. His threats are very real and if he succeeds in Ukraine, they are next. Finland may be next regardless.

Yup. About 830 miles of land boarder with Russia. Somewhat difficult to defend. There's also the historical factoid of Russia taking over 35000 km/2 of Finnish territory after WWII. Not much love lost there. Yet Finns submitted a petition to join NATO to Finnish parliament. Yesterday. Fuck Putin.🤬

Do you think we should just hand over Taiwan to China as well OP - just in case?

Finland provides a lesson from history. When WWII kicked off, the Soviet Union, allied with a rampaging Third Reich, invaded Finland in the Winter War with an expectation of an easy win looking similar to what's been going on with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Everyone expected Finland to fold in a very short time but their response was absolutely fierce and it cost the Soviet Union dear in terms of losses of men and equipment. Which they could scarce afford with the Third Reich pushing hard into the Soviet Union, and so the Soviet Union agreed to a Peace Treaty in which they were given some Finnish territory.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War

That would have been a good result for Finland in the circumstances. Unfortunately, when the Third Reich invaded the Soviet Union, Finland allied with the Third Reich and launched the Continuation War which went very badly for Finland and resulted in a large part of the country being handed over to the Soviet Union.

Reading this thread I understand how Munich 1938 could have happened.
Britain would sell their next neighbour to slavery if they though it would save their own butts.
They are only brave when it comes to saving their own hide.

@Justcallmebebes

I think this will be another Afghanistan. Russia will occupy and a proxy guerrilla war will be fought with the West funding the Ukrainians as we did the Mujahedeen. How long it will go on for, who knows?

I also think we'll see a huge swing towards a hard right foreign policy with more hawks in power. Note Germany now massively increasing their defence spending and even Japan mooting the idea of having nuclear weapons.

I also think that the sanctions we are imposing won't stop Putin in the long run. Russia has valuable resources that the world needs so how long the sanctions last, again, anybody's guess. Pakistan has just signed a trade deal with Russia and others will follow because Russia will offer very favourable terms

Just remember what happened to the USSR when it invaded Afghanistan.

@BertieBotts Russian soldiers were told that Ukrainians were living under a Nazi dictatorship and would welcome them as liberators.

Thank you for the explanation. It's all just awful :(

‘Should we not be making arrangements to get the president and his government out, let Russia take the country but leave all the sanctions against it in place.
They can have the land. Aid can be given to assist the refugees’.

You cannot be serious!

I’m assuming you would be happy to bin your whole life and move to another country @Benmac?

When teachers and lawyers and hair dressers and granny’s and teenagers are making Molotov cocktails to through at tanks rolling past their houses they have probably considered running away already. I tried to imagine what I would do if I had to leave my home today, best I could come up with was sit down and cry.

I thought history agreed that you don’t just roll over when a dictator starts a war with their neighbours. I have no idea what will get Russia out of the Ukraine, I don’t know how they will stop it happening again but I know that giving up isn’t the answer.

We are already in WW3, we just haven't noticed.

Russia took Crimea 8 years ago. It started then. We stood by and did nothing. Just like WW2.

Russia interferes with the U.S. election in 2016 to get Trump elected. There is a suggestion they also interfered in relation to brexit.

Presumably Russia thought Trump as President and the UK and EU at odds would reduce our interest in coming to Ukraine's defence.

He has had to invade before Ukraine joins NATO as then we all have no choice but to pile on.

Putin has waited until Covid has taken its toll financially and emotionally on the world and then seized the opportunity.

If he wants to rebuild the "glorious USSR" then he is likely to invade any country that is not part of NATO, including Finland.

We all have to very carefully walk the line to prevent all our war as that is going to cause enormous losses.

But, many Russians have family in Ukraine and won't want a war there.

I think the rhetoric coming out of Ukraine with regards to Russian soldiers who surrender or are captured is genius.

They are being fed, treated with kindness and allowed to call family. Mothers can collect their captured sons from Kyiv.

A call from your child on the ground in Ukraine will quickly debunk the propaganda on TV.

Putin is arresting primary aged children FFS.

Most Russians just want to get on with their lives, they don't care about building an empire. They have no interest in taking Ukraine or anywhere else.

Gone are the days where soldiers blindly followed orders, as they weren't privy to most intelligence. People can see what's happening in real time thanks to the internet.

Russian troops will know that they are not liberating anyone, and that the Ukrainians are prepared to fight.

Russia might have a million troops but there are 44 million people in Ukraine.

Even if 22 million fled, which is unlikely, that leaves a potential 22 million to fight.

As long as we continue to arm Ukraine they are in with a fighting chance.

They just need to hold out long enough to make life difficult for Putin.

Ukraine appear to have learnt a valuable lesson from WW2. If you don't fight at the beginning, you'll end up having to fight for freedom later, and it's harder to do that with Russian feet under the table.

The Ukrainians can make everything really shit for the Russian soldiers. They are protecting a nuclear plant with tyres and sandbags and generally making life very very difficult.

They should be celebrated and cheered on because they can win, and they need to believe it.

Fuck Putin.

Listening to Putin this afternoon he is completely deluded, claiming the Ukranian, Indian and Chinese people are being held hostage and not allowed to leave and they are all neo Nazi.

Listening to Putin this afternoon he is completely deluded, claiming the Ukranian, Indian and Chinese people are being held hostage and not allowed to leave and they are all neo Nazi
I mean, Zelenskyy is Jewish so I doubt very much Ukraine is run by Neo Nazis, it is however being widely reported that people of colour are indeed being prevented from leaving Ukraine and also from entering Poland..