Rayvin
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Posts
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Days Won
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Everything posted by Rayvin
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If it is a reality, and I do accept that not that it justifies anything, then we have to be the bigger dog. This is a western styled democracy that is about to be toppled by a totalitarian dictatorship.
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So we start mobilising and tell Putin that either he leaves or we remove him once mobilised.
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The EU, if you combined forces and threw the UK in, has a standing army of about 1 million troops. No fucking way is Russia repelling that if they went into Ukraine.
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People on the left have told me Russia is self sufficient, the centre say this is ruining them. I don't know who to believe on that front but it seems clear to me that Putin will have expected the sanctions and isn't troubled by them. I don't know why you're bringing in Iraq and Afghanistan unless you think two wrongs make a right and are condoning a race to the bottom on the grounds that the US started it. I've had this conversation all over the place in recent days and it always comes down to the reality that some people think bloodying the nose of the US is more important that the lives of the people on BOTH sides who are dying for this fucking madness.
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Aside from anything else, he shouldn't 'get away with this' at all. It's a sovereign nation ffs. A country which had genocide carried out against it by the very nation that is trying to conquer it. He should not get away with this.
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Yes, that's what I think - but then I also think we should be stopping him. He is testing us repeatedly and I am convinced will try for a minor NATO country next time out. If we really think this stops at Ukraine, letting him have it, while deplorable and cowardly, is probably the rational thing to do. If we think he'll probably continue, then we'd be better off making him pay in lives and money for every step he tries to take. We're giving him a free hit.
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Moreover, Putin has just declared war on the Ukraine for 'self defence' We can say whatever we damn well want at this point, in terms of justifications.
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Fewer lives are lost if it's over fast.
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True. I still feel as though he wouldn't have committed to this unless he was sure that he could take it, and that the West wouldn't intervene though. He's not an idiot.
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Without air support or access to the same level of sophisticated technology. agorodnyuk describes multiple ground invasions on several fronts. He adds:
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Invading Ukraine is rational (for an ambitious and empire driven man) if he believes no one will stop him.
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But that only happens if we chase him to Moscow, surely. He's not going to launch nukes over being pushed out of Ukraine. And if he's about to lose power in Russia, he won't be able to launch them anyway.
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For whatever it's worth, if they initiate conscription because we get embroiled in a ground war somehow with Putin that actually requires us to pull from our own young people, I'd go and do it. Putin has already cost a significant chunk of all our futures anyway through Brexit, and I'm sick to death of the corrupt and broken right wings of our various countries getting into bed with him. I'd be fucking useless and would be killed immediately, but I don't actually have a great deal to live for anyway so it's not that big an issue for me as it would be for some.
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Placating him has absolutely led to this. He's been testing us for years, to the point where I myself am no longer convinced that NATO actually -would- defend a NATO state from Russian aggression. Specifically because of that fear of being nuked doesn't suddenly magically go away if it's a NATO country. We'd be weighing the same damn things, the only meaningful thing that the NATO argument changes is that there's a bit of paper somewhere that 'makes things different'. He'll pick a smaller NATO country next to test us further. Will we go to war for North Macedonia? "Well idk man, he's got 8000 nukes... I think our line in the sand should be 'original NATO countries'". IMO our line in the sand is at best Poland (which would be ironic) and at worst Germany itself. Up to those nations he has a free arm based on what we're seeing from the West.
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This is of course Johnson's Churchill moment as someone else said. I can't wait to see what he's made of. Maybe we should send him in to quote pig latin and blather on at Putin until the latter surrenders just to spare his own sanity.
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A proportionate military response that ensures no quick victory in the Ukraine for Russia while also making very clear that there is no intent to 'chase' Russia back to Moscow. Using whatever means that would entail, I'm not qualified enough to say. If Putin starts losing, he'll lose his grip on power. I still do not believe that Russia will fire nukes over their own war of aggression, even if they fail.
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You have a line in the sand, presumably, over which you would determine that you would have the UK fight him. Ukraine isn't your line, that's fair enough - but your argument doesn't hold unless you have no line at all. "We can let him have this one, it's not that bad" is a thin end of the wedge style approach that will lead to a cascading waterfall of landgrabs by 'strong men' the world over. And also, I really don't see Putin firing nukes over a war that he himself is the aggressor in. If we were trying to take over Russia, sure. But this isn't what that is.
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As crazy as it sounds at first reading (sorry PL ) I actually do think bumping him off would have the desired effect. No way any of his cronies would continue this without him. I don't think we live in a world where that can happen, but it wouldn't be a bad option.
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I'm with PL, I said so further up the page. He needs to be physically stopped.
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He must be very, very confident - he's put everything on this. If he doesn't succeed then I'm not even sure he'd be able to hang onto power. Russia would be humiliated across the world. He must be basically certain that he's going to win. They'll take out airbases and infrastructure and limit Ukraine's response capabilities to ground based approaches with limited manoeuvrability and options for co-ordination. If Ukraine ever got any sort of a foothold, IMO, he'll start hitting civilian targets. He may well already be doing that. This is the man who bought and paid for both Brexit and Trump, who has been destabilising our civilisation for decades. Yes, we created him. Yes, we should have approached this differently, and yes, this is partially our fault - but in the end, he's the incel out there with a gun who has started shooting. We need to act.
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I broadly agree with this but I don't see it happening until he takes another step. I don't know why but Europe always seems to need to throw one country to the dogs before it'll actually do anything about it.
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Ukraine's government is arming civilians, which makes me think we're going to see resistance once the government collapses. Putin doesn't give a shit anymore IMO, he's going to kill whoever he has to in order to conquer and subjugate them.
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This is absolutely true, and I say this even while some of my close friends fall into this bracket. Blinded by their hatred of US politics, they can't see what they're supporting.
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Ukraine is gone IMO, the best we can hope is that he conquers it with minimal bloodshed. Western policy on this has failed absolutely. Bluff has been called, and the vacuum of US withdrawal from global leadership awaits. As if Putin was going to be stopped by sanctions when he'd moved 200,000 troops to the border. All priced in. I work with a programmer in Dnipro. He messaged this morning to say he could hear explosions and his city was under martial law. Dnipro is on the other side of the country to the contested region ffs, and is a civilian target, surely? No bullshit reason Russia can give is worth this.
