The Serious Discussion Thread.

Top Contributors
I find it incredulous that the free world is sitting aside when it has clear intelligence that Russia plans to invade Ukraine. So they intend allowing Putin to move his 100K troops across the border of a sovereign nation and retaliate only by threatening it with diplomatic and economic sanctions. Ruskies are saying sanctions dont hurt them but rather embolden them. Meanwhile tens of thousands of human lives may be lost and this lot sit on their bums in Washington, London and Brussels twiddling their thumbs. I am no warmonger.. seems the West's leaders are not either but Putin is. His end game is to have his former Russian/Soviet states back under the Russian flag.
 
Last edited:
Western Europe including Germany should be careful not to get involved in that conflict between Ukraine and Russia. The last time German soldiers were on Ukrainian soil millions of Ukrainians died. Nonetheless, Ukraine wants German arms which would only fuel the political crisis.
Putin is not very likely to invade Ukraine but if he did, there should be economic sanctions only. Since Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council we have had to take Western intelligence with a pinch of salt. What Putin really wants is respect and, at least, a guarantee that Ukraine never becomes a NATO member, which is fair enough. The solution for Ukraine is a "Finlandization", i.e., cooperating closely with the West but doing without NATO membership. It's about time Ukraine itself realised that .
 
looker-on said:
The solution for Ukraine is a "Finlandization", i.e., cooperating closely with the West but doing without NATO membership. It's about time Ukraine itself realised that .
Click to expand...
Therein lies the solution to the current mess. Ok so he gets that assurance then he will want more and more. Like I said his primary aim is to reunite Russia with its former Soviet states. Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Bulgaria etc etc. He already has Belarus, parts of Ukraine and Georgia too under his control. We have to avoid trusting Putin. You do realize Russia was invited to join NATO but refused. Had he accepted then this mess need never have happened.
 
Last edited:
Ritchie said:
You do realize Russia was invited to join NATO but refused.
Click to expand...
Yes, I'm aware of Russia's refusal. Much as there has to be a limit to appeasing Putin there has to be a limit to including one state after the other in NATO. NATO ought to stop its eastward expansion and should make sure that there's a buffer zone between Russia and the West. It has worked well economically with Turkey being denied EU membership. The same should be done with Ukraine and - later on - with Belarus militarily.
Bulgaria never belonged to the Soviet Union but was part of Warsaw Pact and COMECON.
True, Putin should be watched closely. Yet his/Russia's security interests ought not to be ignored either by tightening the noose more and more around Russia.
 
Stop Press: Russia has said some military units are returning to their bases with the remainder to follow shortly as its foreign ministry accused the West of being "humiliated" over its warnings about an invasion of Ukraine.
Reflecting on Moscow saying some units are returning to their bases, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: "15 February, 2022, will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed. Humiliated and destroyed without a single shot fired."

So that cagey Mr Putin has been playing our leaders like a violin. Well he kept saying that they were not going to invade.
 
Last edited:
Ritchie said:
I find it incredulous that the free world is sitting aside when it has clear intelligence that Russia plans to invade Ukraine. So they intend allowing Putin to move his 100K troops across the border of a sovereign nation and retaliate only by threatening it with diplomatic and economic sanctions. Ruskies are saying sanctions dont hurt them but rather embolden them. Meanwhile tens of thousands of human lives may be lost and this lot sit on their bums in Washington, London and Brussels twiddling their thumbs. I am no warmonger.. seems the West's leaders are not either but Putin is. His end game is to have his former Russian/Soviet states back under the Russian flag.
Click to expand...

Russia supplies the European Union with oil and/or gas which makes up a fair bit of the EU's energy supplies. If the EU intervenes, Russia would likely cut that off which leaves them vulnerable with part of the northern winter and spring still to come. That would likely push up energy prices even more and they are already expensive at the moment which would cause issues for the entire bloc of nations. It's likely the EU and the USA also don't view the issue as their problem although it would be rather concerning for them given Russia seems intent on being belligerent to the point of toying with the concept of invading another country.

The question is whether Russia invades and if they do, what will the USA and EU do about it? If they go down the sanctions route, that will hurt Russia but they might feel emboldened to do more given that more sanctions will be the only thing coming their way.

Certainly an interesting situation and hopefully it does not escalate any further.
 
Ritchie said:
Agree. Paranoid Putin needs to be appeased. Actually is NATO passed its used by date. Perhaps time to disband it. Is an cold war organisation is it not?

I stand corrected. What is difference?
Click to expand...
There were Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR) like Georgia, Kasachstan, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus etc. which belonged to the national territory of the Soviet Union with Russian being the official language and all males having to serve in the Red Army. The Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe did not belong to the SU but were dominated by it politically and economically (oil, gas) but they were way more independent than SSRs.
 
Ritchie said:
Stop Press: Russia has said some military units are returning to their bases with the remainder to follow shortly as its foreign ministry accused the West of being "humiliated" over its warnings about an invasion of Ukraine.
Reflecting on Moscow saying some units are returning to their bases, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: "15 February, 2022, will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed. Humiliated and destroyed without a single shot fired."

So that cagey Mr Putin has been playing our leaders like a violin. Well he kept saying that they were not going to invade.
Click to expand...
The West did not read Putin properly. It confirms my point made earlier here.
 
Ljp86 said:
Russia supplies the European Union with oil and/or gas which makes up a fair bit of the EU's energy supplies.
Click to expand...
Then that has to change as Russia can virtually blackmail those countries by turning off the power. Find alternative suppliers and Putin loses a his ace card. Some quiet talk that Australia may supply Europe with LNG, rated among the best in the world. We are also a leader in green hydrogen production and have already exported a shipment to Japan.
 
Ritchie said:
Then that has to change as Russia can virtually blackmail those countries by turning off the power. Find alternative suppliers and Putin loses a his ace card. Some quiet talk that Australia may supply Europe with LNG, rated among the best in the world. We are also a leader in green hydrogen production and have already exported a shipment to Japan.
Click to expand...
In theory, yes, but Europe has been dependent on Russian gas and oil ever since the end of WWII. Have a guess how often Russia has blackmailed Western Europe for the past 70 years or even turned off the power? Not a single time, not even during the Cold War. The reason is interdependence. The Russian are just as dependent on Western payments as we are on their supply.
The only hiccups ever noticed were when Ukraine turned off the gas and oil pipelines running through the country in order to blackmail Russia but they hit us. That was precisely the reason why Germany and other Western countries built Nordstream 2 bypassing Ukraine. And now they keep complaining about that.🙄
 
Ritchie said:
Then that has to change as Russia can virtually blackmail those countries by turning off the power. Find alternative suppliers and Putin loses a his ace card. Some quiet talk that Australia may supply Europe with LNG, rated among the best in the world. We are also a leader in green hydrogen production and have already exported a shipment to Japan.
Click to expand...

Russia has dependence on the EU for other things economy wise so it's a two-way street. It's why the decision on whether Russia decides to take action or not is so intriguing with a lot of stake in terms of the economies of both parties.
 
looker-on said:
Germany and other Western countries built Nordstream 2 bypassing Ukraine.
Click to expand...
This really is developing into a dilemma. And Ukraine seems to be the biggest loser. It had every reason to hurt the Russian economy by turning off the gas and oil pipeline.. (expect to punish Russia over its annexation of Crimea), but the downside is, it also hurt fellow European democracies. As I read things these same democracies.. Germany included, have now given Putin a get out of jail free card with the building of Nordstream 2 while at the same time giving Ukraine a bloody nose.

Wasn't one of the economic sanctions promised by the West if Putin invaded Ukraine, to keep Nordstream 2 inactive? As it would certainly hurt Russia. It would also hurt those European democracies reliant on Russian gas and oil, but if Nordstream 2 was off then would not those democracies have to go back to getting their gas from Ukraine. Putin is then likely to turn off that pipeline too. This really is a mess seemingly caused by Europe being reliant on an energy rich autocratic state to fuel much of its power. Doesn't Germany for instance have the capacity to produce most of its energy needs. It is after all Europe's strongest economy.
 
Last edited:
Ritchie said:
Stop Press: Russia has said some military units are returning to their bases with the remainder to follow shortly as its foreign ministry accused the West of being "humiliated" over its warnings about an invasion of Ukraine.
Reflecting on Moscow saying some units are returning to their bases, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: "15 February, 2022, will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed. Humiliated and destroyed without a single shot fired."

So that cagey Mr Putin has been playing our leaders like a violin. Well he kept saying that they were not going to invade.
Click to expand...
This Maria Zakharova fancies herself a bit of a comedienne. After her swipe at the Free World over the non invasion of Ukraine yesterday she followed today with;
"I wrote a request to the mass disinformation outlets of the USA and Britain – Bloomberg, the New York Times, the Sun etc – to announce the schedule of our ‘invasions’ for the coming year. I’d like to plan my vacation.”
 
Ritchie said:
Wasn't one of the economic sanctions promised by the West if Putin invaded Ukraine, to keep Nordstream 2 inactive? As it would certainly hurt Russia. It would also hurt those European democracies reliant on Russian gas and oil, but if Nordstream 2 was off then would not those democracies have to go back to getting their gas from Ukraine. Putin is then likely to turn off that pipeline too. This really is a mess seemingly caused by Europe being reliant on an energy rich autocratic state to fuel much of its power. Doesn't Germany for instance have the capacity to produce most of its energy needs. It is after all Europe's strongest economy.
Click to expand...
Yes, but it's a double-edged sword.
Again, Putin is not likely to turn off the other two pipelines either. Gazprom, the owner and biggest taxpayer of Russia, needs them like the air that they breathe. Russia's never done that. It's true that Ukraine will be the biggest loser but that is also its own fault.
Germany has been working on becoming more independent on Russian gas but finds it hard to become self-sufficient because it is opting out of nuclear power and coal almost at the same time. Germany wants to use renewables only to become independent but has to accept that it needs fossil fuels for a transitory period. Although liquid gas is a energetic disaster, it is building LNG terminals to import liquid gas but doesn't want to use dirty fracking gas from the US. So it's a real mess, as you say.
 
Last edited:
looker-on said:
doesn't want to use dirty fracking gas from the US.
Click to expand...
Then use Australia's superior gas instead. Giving up on nuclear. We are finally talking about supplementing our energy during this transition period by building a small latest tech nuke plant.
 
Those Chinese Commies are at it again with their lies and intimidation. Last week an Aussie surveillance plane was monitoring two Commie ships passing thru the Torres Strait north of Australia in our official soverign economic zone when the plane was hit by a laser from one of their ships. Our government made a formal complaint to Beijing. But instead of aplogising they accused the plane of provoking the ship to fire the laser.
comments.
 
Last edited:
This is a worrying trend with India, the planet's largest democracy beginning to cosy up to hated authoritarian states. First it is all buddy buddy with the country that has just invaded a soverign nation, Russia now it is doing the same with Israel, which occupies Palestine and subjugates its people. This is most bizarre as it seems India is having a few bucks each way as it too is aligned with the Free World thru certain organisations such as The Quad. India you cant talk to the angels and then get into bed with the Devil too.. comments.
 
looker-on said:
Sorry, Ritchie, I know next to nothing about India. I pity it and hope India will keep a low profile.
Click to expand...
Thomas India has the Free World's fastest growing middle class and has the potential to become our next major super power. But it needs to decide which side of the political fence it stands first. It must stop buying arms from Russia to punish them for invading Ukraine.. plus any energy that it currently buys from them. It can harvest all it needs either at home or from the US, EU or UK. Stop supporting the economies of authoritarian states.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top