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

[barbos]

Reports say that there are problems with NK soldiers training. Problem with health and fitness.
Meanwhile German government coalition is no more. The Budget Guy openly said there is no money for Ukraine anymore and Pirate Sholtzi had to fire him ending the coalition. People are running away from the government preparing for early election to Reichstag I mean Bundestag. German President Is beating journalists (no joke) over Ukraine-Russia business.
What else? Oh, Elensky started kissing Trumps butt by proxy which is Victor Orbans butt.
Poroshenko accuses ukrainians not taking war seriously by complaining that instead of building defence lines excavators are building ..... mansions near Kiev. Imagine that. These rich ukrainians are so scary of Putin that they are building mansions.

Oh yeah, about freedom of the press. Donald Tusk took accreditation of a journalist who reminded him his statements about Trump. Everyone is trying to memory hole all their official tweets about Orange Idiot.
To be fair, Trump has uncanny ability to forget/ignore prior shit once you say something nice to him.

 

[ZiprHead]

Oh yeah, about freedom of the press. Donald Tusk took accreditation of a journalist who reminded him his statements about Trump. Everyone is trying to memory hole all their official tweets about Orange Idiot.

Uh oh. Now you are on a list.

 

[barbos]

LOL, Elensky "answer"/reaction to the question "Is it true that Trump's win changes the way Europe look at things"


this is going to be the source for countless memes

 

[barbos]

Meanwhile, finnish and russian border control people met and discussed possible opening of the border in February.
Finns reportedly complained that it became a political issue in Finland and they can't do anything about it.
If you ask me this is a jab at a deranged central government. Bottom line, border regions of Finland need russian tourists.

 

[Tigers!]

Meanwhile, finnish and russian border control people met and discussed possible opening of the border in February.
Finns reportedly complained that it became a political issue in Finland and they can't do anything about it.
If you ask me this is a jab at a deranged central government. Bottom line, border regions of Finland need russian tourists.

Ukraine has lots of russian tourists at the moment. But they trash the hotels, leave their rooms in a mess, won't tip the staff and complain about the food and weather.

 

[barbos]

Meanwhile, finnish and russian border control people met and discussed possible opening of the border in February.
Finns reportedly complained that it became a political issue in Finland and they can't do anything about it.
If you ask me this is a jab at a deranged central government. Bottom line, border regions of Finland need russian tourists.

Ukraine has lots of russian tourists at the moment. But they trash the hotels, leave their rooms in a mess, won't tip the staff and complain about the food and weather.

That's all internal tourism, and weather is fine, nobody complains about weather in Russia except germans tourists.

 

[ZiprHead]

Meanwhile, finnish and russian border control people met and discussed possible opening of the border in February.
Finns reportedly complained that it became a political issue in Finland and they can't do anything about it.
If you ask me this is a jab at a deranged central government. Bottom line, border regions of Finland need russian tourists.

Nobody asked you. Nobody would ever ask you.

 

[SLD]

Will Europe fill a breach by Trump?

Trump’s return is terrible news for Ukraine. Europe should step into the breach – but will it?

With Germany’s government collapsing and Europeans so divided in their response to Trump, unity is essential yet elusive

ecfr.eu

Possibly.

Trump is living in a fantasy world if he thinks he can dictate a peace deal to both parties. Putin is not likely to accept anything short of his maximalist aims. This article says there’s a 5% chance he threatens to increase aid to Ukraine if Putin doesn’t back down. The more likely scenario is a Brest-Litovsk type deal, where the threat of future offensive action coupled with a loss of U.S. aid forces an increasingly bad deal on to Ukraine. But it’s still unclear that even such a deal would be acceptable to Russia - much less Ukraine, which might prefer to go down fighting all the way.

The only way to stop it is a coalition of the most powerful EU states, Germany, Poland, France, and Great Britain. All are headed by governments that see the danger of letting Russia succeed in any way.

Even without U.S. aid, it is not clear that Russia can achieve its goals. It may grind slowly forward, but at the rate it moves it will take decades to achieve the results it wishes. In the meantime, Russia could suffer severely under a wartime government. It may not have the staying power and Putin will not have decades. If other European powers fill the Trump breach, it’s unlikely Putin will ever get much further than he has in Ukraine. If these same countries remove some of the shackles on Ukraine all bets are off. They could strike deep into Russia and hit their infrastructure and ability to wage war.