How should west respond to potential (likely) Russian invasion of Ukraine?

[Toni]

If you are correct, and Russia is truly afraid of tiny Ukraine invading Russia, the the world should fully unite against Russia. A powerful country with nukes that is so paranoid of a tiny military with little offensive power is too great a risk to world security.

Well, technically Eastern Ukraine is not Russia..... yet. But I see nothing wrong with russian forces being proactive and preparing for Ukrainian/American provocations. Just to show Ukraine that Russia will protect status-quo.
As for Ukraine invading actual Russia, you will be laughing but such ideas are very popular in Ukraine. They are seriously making territorial claims on as far as Siberia.
I am not kidding. Ukraine is a country where Capitol rioters won.

Ukraine is not Russia. Your words technically and yet are extremely revealing.

 

[barbos]

Ukraine is not Russia. Your words technically and yet are extremely revealing.

Ukraine will be Russia again. Ukrainian experiment (ironically started by ...... bolsheviks ) turned out to be a fiasco and should be terminated.
We can discuss what should be done with Western Ukraine (correct name Galicia) but proper Ukraine should go back to Russia.
"Ukraine" is a russian name given to that territory.

In my opinion, Galicia should be left to their own devices. NATO is welcome to invade there. But keep in mind, there are quite a lot of russians there

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The Kersh Bridge is developing serious cracks in its pillars. A couple of more good bonks will finish it off for good.

 

[barbos]

The Kersh Bridge is developing serious cracks in its pillars. A couple of more good bonks will finish it off for good.

Does not really matter now, Russia have land bridge to Crimea. And it's a lie anyway.

 

[Elixir]

Ukraine will be Russia again.

Ukraine pre-dates Russia. You might end up working for Zelenskyy!

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Ukraine will remain free. Eventualy, Ukraine will join the EU and Nato. Russia will forever be hated and despise in Ukraine and the world. Ukraine is already removing Russian from Ukraine.

 

[TV and credit cards]

The Kersh Bridge is developing serious cracks in its pillars. A couple of more good bonks will finish it off for good.

Yeah, that's not good.
crimean-bridge-falling-down-cracks-135000186.html

 

[Harry Bosch]

Ukraine will remain free. Eventualy, Ukraine will join the EU and Nato. Russia will forever be hated and despise in Ukraine and the world. Ukraine is already removing Russian from Ukraine.

Agreed. Russia has also lost its more profitable oil/gas market: Europe. It's lost thousands and thousands of young people who don't want to fight its wars. It's united Europe against it.

 

[Rhea]

that dumbass with australian accent, which one of you is him?

Wow that Jackson Hicks is a smug prick, in’t he?


Pavlou gives answer in detail while Jackson is clearly not listening at all but is looking up web info, then on Jackson’s turn he smugly declares, “well, that was a lot of talking, here’s my strawman of you.” He doesn’t engender any respect for his intellect, let alone any sense that he knows what he’s talking about.

 

[Copernicus]

I don't think anybody but you think that Ukraine is run by Nazis. Nobody is buying that, obviously false, Putin propaganda story.

Anybody? I am alone? You really think that?
I understand you probably don't consider 140 million population of Russia capable of thinking, fine.
What about some westerners, you honestly believe that none of them think that and don't have youtube channels saying what they think?
Are you living in a cave with TV which stuck to CNN channel?

I don't think Russians (as a general population) are buying the story either. I even find it questionable that you believe it. Its just too bizarre of a position to hold for a sober person. No, I don't know why you keep repeating the claim anyway.

That's what I think.

Here is why he keeps repeating the story:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

-Joseph Goebbels

Barbos knows that we aren't going to believe it, but Russians have seen how well the technique plays out in larger venues on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. They even employ people to do this on a fulltime basis.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The Kersh Bridge is developing serious cracks in its pillars. A couple of more good bonks will finish it off for good.

Do you think it might have something to do with the extremely tough quality standards and lack of systemic corruption in the Russian state?

With its history of repression one can't help but feel for the average Russian citizen. Freedom for the average Russian is being 90 percent certain the secret police aren't going to come for you to haul you off to the gulag. We in the free west have no idea what this is like and the toll it extracts over time.

 

[Copernicus]

"Ukraine" is a russian name given to that territory.

Utterly false, but barbos has a very weak grasp of Russian history, thanks to his Soviet education. The first people to use the name were Ukrainian-speaking  Zaporizhian Cossacks, who used the name for their Zaporizhian Sich in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It is widely claimed that the word means "borderland", which it does in Russian and Polish. However, the etymology for the Ukrainian word is not the same as for Russian and Polish. It really means something like "homeland". Why would Cossacks call their own  Sich a "borderland"?

 

[Patooka]

You have not the foggiest notion about what neocons are.

It's not me, it's you.

The rest of the entire world took a vote. It's definitely you, barbos.

Most of the World is with me. So it's you.

Nope, you're wrong. Most of the world thinks your definition of neocon is retarded. <Deleted by Moderator.>

 

[Copernicus]

This article is about the hundreds of thousands of people--men and women--who have left Russia because of Putin's invasion of Ukraine, his crackdown on civil rights, and the threat of conscription. Barbos's beloved Alfa Bank has estimated that 1.5% of the workforce have left. Those leaving tend to be younger, urban, wealthier, more pro-democracy, and better-educated than the general education. Many, of course, are draft-age men.

Why are people leaving Russia, who are they, and where are they going?​

 

[DrZoidberg]

"Ukraine" is a russian name given to that territory.

Utterly false, but barbos has a very weak grasp of Russian history, thanks to his Soviet education. The first people to use the name were Ukrainian-speaking  Zaporizhian Cossacks, who used the name for their Zaporizhian Sich in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It is widely claimed that the word means "borderland", which it does in Russian and Polish. However, the etymology for the Ukrainian word is not the same as for Russian and Polish. It really means something like "homeland". Why would Cossacks call their own  Sich a "borderland"?

It's also not relevant. The fact that Americans and Canadians are ethnically the same can't be used to justify an American invasion. Nobody would buy it. So why would we for this conflict?

Ethnic differences are gradual across Europe. You can literally draw the borders anywhere.

Nation building and shared national identities is something we began with after the Napoleonic wars. There's nothing obvious about how we define nations today

 

[zorq]

This article is about the hundreds of thousands of people--men and women--who have left Russia because of Putin's invasion of Ukraine, his crackdown on civil rights, and the threat of conscription. Barbos's beloved Alfa Bank has estimated that 1.5% of the workforce have left. Those leaving tend to be younger, urban, wealthier, more pro-democracy, and better-educated than the general education. Many, of course, are draft-age men.

Why are people leaving Russia, who are they, and where are they going?​

I personally know two of those people who will likely never return to Russia. They are lucky to have that option.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

This article is about the hundreds of thousands of people--men and women--who have left Russia because of Putin's invasion of Ukraine, his crackdown on civil rights, and the threat of conscription. Barbos's beloved Alfa Bank has estimated that 1.5% of the workforce have left. Those leaving tend to be younger, urban, wealthier, more pro-democracy, and better-educated than the general education. Many, of course, are draft-age men.

Why are people leaving Russia, who are they, and where are they going?​

Sadly, for Russia's people this is nothing new. Call it artificial selection but the people who want freedom and a better life and are willing to act on those wishes are selected against in Russia and have been for all of its history. The choices have been to leave, starve, face imprisonment and death, or drink plenty of vodka.

 

[Elixir]

The choices have been to leave, starve, face imprisonment and death, or drink plenty of vodka.

That’s a little harsh. Seems to imply that if you leave you can’t drink plenty of vodka.

 

[zorq]

Most of the World is with me.

No, the world is not with Russia.

Only psychopaths with a fucked sense of morality (or the truly stupid) think that wanting to steal your neighbor's land is a good reason to murder your neighbor.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of stupid and/or twisted people out there, but I promise you that it isn't "Most of the world."

Who do you think is "with you?"

 

[bilby]

Most of the World is with me.

No, the world is not with Russia.

Only psychopaths with a fucked sense of morality (or the truly stupid) think that wanting to steal your neighbor's land is a good reason to murder your neighbor.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of stupid and/or twisted people out there, but I promise you that it isn't "Most of the world."

Who do you think is "with you?"

All of the great powers prior to 1914?

Russia is over a century behind the rest of the world, and has been for quite a while.

Stalin forced through an Industrial Revolution, and then the Cold War demanded that they have a Technological Revolution too, but these weren't organic developments by a people who were actively modernising, they were "cargo cult" revolutions imposed by a dictatorship that was desperate to keep up with the Jones's.

The result is that the adjustments in mindset that were a characteristic of the Western world in the twentieth century have passed the Russians by; They're a post-industrial society with a post-medieval mindset.

Russia is trying to be a world power, and they are failing utterly, because they're trying to do it in the nineteenth century style, while the rest of the world has moved on and considers that way of gaining power to be a rather cringeworthy and embarrassing legacy of a less educated time.

Leaving Putin looking like the slow kid who still hasn't learned to do long division, when the rest of the class has mastered calculus. Nobody's impressed.