Rusting T72s in Red Square.Mr Moofo wrote: ↑Thu May 12, 2022 3:56 pmSuch as?Yorick wrote: ↑Thu May 12, 2022 1:15 pm Last night we had a couple come to see our apartment.
Him Italian her Russian, about 25.
Had been living in Moscow until the invasion then her and young mates fled the country.
They came here for a new life.
Her bank is frozen but his is OK in Italy.
She told me lots of stuff. Not all like I've seen here or on the news. Quite eye opening.
But Zelenskyy has said:Macron warns against humiliating Russia over war in Ukraine.
But there are increasing reports that Putin is dying, such as:Zelenskyy: Macron asked Ukraine to make concessions to help Putin save face
‘We won’t help Putin save face by paying with our territory,’ Ukrainian president says.
So looking increasingly likely that a) Russia will lose this war and b) Putin won't be in power in 2023!Vladimir Putin 'has terminal illness and may be dying from cancer', ex-military source says
Vladimir Putin's health is currently being speculated and sources have alleged he has terminal cancer
Macron is trying to avoid "cohabitation"*, but most likely in vain.Mussels wrote: ↑Fri May 13, 2022 8:13 pm Putin has had a thyroid cancer consultant travelling almost everywhere with him since 2016, it could have got worse but maybe not.
Macron has election issues, more elections next month for parliament so he's trying to win votes for his party.
Russia is going to cut off Finland's electric supply at the weekend, apparently they haven't paid their bill. Nothing to do with NATO then.
Hard to tell with Russia, but it's quite possibly scripted to feed into the Russian siege mentality in preperation for full mobilization. Igor Girkin, the man who led the Donbas assault in 2014, has also been very critical of the Russian campaign over the past week, while making references to there not being enough Russian soldiers in Ukraine to achieve the goals.
Mikhail Khodaryonok was a senior military figure, willing to bet he speaks for many in the military establishment.
From when?
Bet this lot can't be 'persuaded' to change their tune - in St Petersburg no less.
Yehbut, if you look at the Brexit result....Hoonercat wrote: ↑Tue May 31, 2022 6:18 pm Just had a Russian state TV newscast pop up on Twitter (tweeted by Russian Media Monitor). A great example of just how fucking mental their politicians are.
To summarize, he claims (without any source) that 40% of Ukraines are against the removal of WW2 monuments (which show Russia in a good light). 36% are neutral, but that's because 'they are afraid', so they get added to the 40%, which means that 76% of Ukraines are against the removal. He then says that only 19% support the removal of monuments, but "if we reinstall their brains correctly" this number will come down to 12-15%. "So the maximum of 5% are incurable". In his words, this leaves 2 million Ukraines who need to leave Ukraine or be denazified "which means to be destroyed"
A Russian politician, on state TV, calling for 2 million Ukraines to be destroyed because they want WW2 monuments removed, meaning they must be Nazis.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia can win now
The paradox is that a settlement is desperately needed, but there can be no lasting peace with Putin
The Dutch philosopher Spinoza said that “peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice”. Russia’s atrocities and what we now know about Russian nationalism mean that “peace” with Putin so defined is unachievable.
It is quite clear that, as far as Putin and his ideologue Aleksandr Dugin are concerned, Ukraine’s crime was to refuse to be Russian despite being part of the sacred community of orthodoxy of the Cyrillic script. Such is the defensiveness of this mentality, any who don’t want to be Russian must think they are better than the Russians. Hence they can be termed Nazis.
Ukraine’s “crime” is shared with other countries that once belonged to Russia; Poland and Kazakhstan have been described as non-states by both former president Dmitry Medvedev and Putin. And there is nothing new in this imperial ambition and paranoia. As Alexander Borodai, a Donetsk separatist, says: “As Alexander III said, Russia’s allies are its army and its navy. Unfortunately we have no other natural allies.”
So the problem of Russian nationalism cannot be solved; it must be managed. No treaty should be relied on. As Putin’s deputy said in 2017, Russia is not run on treaties; treaties constrain the leader who must break them as soon as he can. Any settlement has to be recognised as one that can be secured against potential breaches. Which implies that the peace dividend we all took in the 1990s must be revisited.
What might any settlement to the current conflict look like? Zelensky has already offered to end his pursuit of Nato membership. What he wants in return is access to the EU. In terms of territory, Zelensky might accept the loss of Crimea but a sustainable Crimea has to have a land corridor resupply route and fresh water. And Putin must leave Ukraine the Odesa coast line to allow it to export by sea. However, the rust belts of the Donbas, home to Russian speakers transported there to replace the millions of Ukrainians killed in Stalin’s Holodomor and the Second World War, could perhaps be ceded.
So the bones of a deal are apparent: swap Nato for EU, cede the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine and Crimea in return for a land corridor. In theory, this would achieve Putin’s war aims. It would leave Ukraine still viable, with maritime export routes for its agricultural produce. Rationally, this should be the end of it. And if so, Henry Kissinger is right to assert that Ukraine’s role is to be a neutral buffer state rather than the frontier of Europe.
Unfortunately, Kissinger’s view is now problematic. Indeed, the problems with the proposal grow with every atrocity Russia commits. Furthermore, Russian nationalism means that the idea of a separate Ukrainian “neutrality” would now seem to be a chimera. As a Polish historian observed in the 1930s, “without Ukraine, Russia is relegated to a northern wilderness”. Hence perhaps why Putin’s negotiator Vladimir Medinsky, has said: “The very existence of Russia is at stake.” A successful Western-oriented economy on its border would also pose a real threat to the internal stability of the Russian regime.
The paradox is that the need for some sort of settlement is growing. Each side is fighting the other to mutual destruction; neither a fully mobilised Ukraine nor a Russia that refuses to admit it is at war has the resources to achieve its ultimate goals. Ukraine’s human resources are finite. Cracks are appearing in the Russian internal narrative; when a pop concert chants “F--- the war” in Putin’s home city of St Petersburg, he should take note. Those protesters are from the generation you need to fight an attritional war; and Russian demographics indicate a severe shortage of this age group. Western sanctions will increasingly make themselves felt. Equally, the global response to the invasion, already patchy, is showing fault lines that will widen as food and fuel shortages bite.
A compromise will have to be reached at some point. And Zelensky will need to show as much wisdom in those negotiations as his people have shown courage in battle. But as we have left the fighting to Ukraine, so we should let the Ukrainians decide where to make those compromises. Our role must be to ensure any settlement sticks and to contain the expansive nationalism that caused this war in the first place.
That scenario is going to split the EU and NATO right down the middle. The US and UK won't be for pressuring Zelensky to give up land in exchange for 'a peace deal' and one would hope that Zelensky just tells Putin to "Fuck off" with that sort of deal but Germany and France . . . 