War in Ukraine, assorted opinions

[JWB]

8 hours ago, Mistral said:

........... western ..............

I did not write that word.

[Colin]

On 11/4/2023 at 6:39 AM, glenn239 said:

Putin's method is to never take more risk at any one time than is necessary to achieve the objective.  With Ukraine, Putin already sees a Russian victory as inevitable under the current strategy.  So, they're looking beyond the end of the war in 2 years or whatever, and trying to shape the post-war geopolitical circumstances (Europe, USA, Middle East, China) to Russia's maximum advantage.  If, unexpectedly, the equations on the outcome in Ukraine start to take a negative turn, then Putin will up the risk again as necessary to correct the drift.

I actually agree with you. Up till 2014 Putin played his cards well, he gambled on taking the Donbass thanks to Obama diddling. That was not going well, but Putin was gaining face in his Syrian project and giving the Russian military a chance to train and test new weapons there. so things were looking good. It seems though he and his circle got caught in a information trap of their own making in the belief they could do a knock out punch on Kyiv. that failed and ever since then he has been trying to salvage the situation. Including stripping the Russian borders of defences, tossing Assad to the curb and likley several other projects down the drain. His long term rep in Russian history is not going to look good. Best case scenario for Putin is they gain all of the Donbass and Ukraine is forced to the ceasefire table. We are then at a West vs East Germany scenario. There are going to be long term costs to both sides, but the west will adapt better.  

[JWB]

Putin is scraping the bottom of the barrel for man power:

 

[JWB]

 

[JWB]

 

[mkenny]

20 minutes ago, JWB said:

 

The British Army allowed convicted Murderers back into its ranks. 

[JWB]

10 minutes ago, mkenny said:

The British Army allowed convicted Murderers back into its ranks. 

I am not Brit.

[JWB]

 

[bojan]

...

pointless

Edited November 8, 2023 by bojan

[JWB]

 

[mkenny]

23 hours ago, JWB said:

I am not Brit.

Maybe but should you not inform your mate that Britain allows murderers to serve in the ranks as I think he might have missed it. 

[mkenny]

23 hours ago, JWB said:

 

Why don't you just add a tag-line to all your posts that link direct to his Twitter?  It would save you a lot of cutting and pasting.

[JWB]

 

[JWB]

 

[JWB]

 

[JWB]

 

[JWB]

 

[JWB]

 

[DB]

On 11/8/2023 at 5:15 PM, mkenny said:

The British Army allowed convicted Murderers back into its ranks. 

It did. In the Great War, there are several cases where murderers and those guilty of manslaughter or it's Scottish equivalent were allowed to enlist whilst on licence. This is fundamentally different to pardoning murderers mid sentence. I don't know about policies in more recent years.

It's not my subject of interest, but there's a lot to be learned about historic attitudes to criminality. This is a rambling overview:

https://academic.oup.com/histres/article/94/265/578/6285651

In particular, thieves versus violent criminals and even more specifically, rapists and wife beaters.

Edited January 23, 2024 by DB

[JWB]

 

[glenn239]

14 minutes ago, JWB said:

 

Europe’s gas price falls to encourage more industrial use: Kemp | Reuters

LONDON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Europe’s gas inventories are on course to end the winter of 2023/24 at or near a record high as mild temperatures across the region fail to erode the enormous surplus inherited from the winter of 2022/23.

[Strannik]

2 hours ago, JWB said:

 

And so does (continue to decline) German heavy industry.  Quite logical

Edited January 23, 2024 by Strannik

[mkenny]

5 hours ago, DB said:

It did. In the Great War,

And it did in Northern Ireland.

[JWB]

7 hours ago, Strannik said:

And so does (continue to decline) German heavy industry.  Quite logical

More of a problem for Russia.

[DB]

20 hours ago, mkenny said:

And it did in Northern Ireland.

Yeah, gonna need some source material for that one, comrade.

Or are you calling them murderers because of what they did whilst in the army?