Russian invasion of Ukraine

But how, then, would the Tory party fund itself?

Revocation of all golden visas, would be a good first step.

An all out rejection of Russians smells of xenophobia. You'd risk galvanising the elites. I'd suggest putting golden visas under a review and only hesitantly give them back as and when the Visa holder publicly burns all bridges to Putin, divests from any arms investments etc.

If you feel powerless there’s a little thing you can do, start commenting on Russian owned business reviews.
Pasting this text:
Ваше правительство лжет вам об Украине. Пожалуйста, найдите способ узнать правду от семьи, друзей и источников новостей за пределами России! Убивают невинных людей. Вставать!
(Your government lies to you about Ukraine. Please find a way to get the truth from family, friends and news sources outside of Russia! Innocent people are being killed. Get up!)

It’s a tiny thing, but at least it makes you feel like you’ve done something.
And if enough of us, etc etc.

I mean... telling the US Trump supporters they're being lied to worked so well.

They're still there totally brainwashed and supporting Trump now, giving Putin a higher approval score than their own president. Similar for Tory voting people here, the Brexit voters, etc.

If the US and UK can't solve it's own issues with truth and rational thought why do we expect a little comment spam to achieve it for Russia when they're been brainwashed by a single dictator for far far longer than any single leader in the West has.

An all out rejection of Russians smells of xenophobia.

Nonsense. Oligarchs =! Russians.
You want to galvanise the elites. They cannot exist without freedom of international movement, international trade, and international banking , and pressure must be applied to the extent where these are so restricted that their lives are affected, to effect them to pressure Putin. There is no power of the people, but money always holds power.

I agree with you, however, on the risk of rank xenophobia, akin to the sentiment against Arabs, Jews, Asian, Indians, Pakistanis, Black, other eastern European nationals, etc that we've been so good at in this country for so long.

As such, we need to examine our (Western) view on Russia, and others, which has been so very toxic for so long that it cannot be seen as innocent in the development of this crisis.
More erudite people have stated this for a long time, and a quick google highlights a few articles (Foreign Affairs, Guardian, Brookings, FT), sadly many behind paywalls, regarding our own failures to dispose of Cold War sentiments, or the Britain vs Russia narrative that has been so pervasive in our media for a long time.
It should be noted that I'm very much not defending Russia (or other nations) here, but poisoning the water has meant we have clouded vision. We're just less good at spotting our own bias than bias that we're told exists elsewhere.

This war was preventable. It is now becoming increasingly finalistic as the escalation ramps and narrows the path away from containment and economic sanctions.

they're been brainwashed by a single dictator for far far longer than any single leader in the West has

Yes. Posting on random businesses reviews is a great idea if it was a completely isolated country but it isn't. They have access to BBC or CNN, it's just they've been brainwashed to not believe anything "western propaganda" publishes.

here’s a guy on newsnight saying a debate will have to be had soon about imposing a no fly zone over ukraine. https://mobile.twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1498437262727647237

who will be there to argue against this in this debate, when the main opposition party is led by a brazenly hawkish flag shagger and the media and politicians have smeared anti war voices (inciting death threats towards them) as idiots, traitors, and pro-putin apologists?

this is why they were pushing so hard for deescalation and a return to Minsk II - wars are hard to stop and escalation can take on a logic of its own. the impossible becomes inevitable - things which were described as "impossible", "inconceivable" etc have already happened as part of this war. fuck me

If you don’t have s no fly zone it will be difficult for the Ukrainians to bring up supplies their lines of communication are far longer than the Russians.

St George's Hill has been like that since pre-Glasnost days though - although it appears to have reached the next evolution of golf club leif.

anti war voices

Literally everyone is anti-war. The difference between the tanky far left and everyone else is that we recognise the people of Ukraine have a right to self determination and shouldn't simply accept being a vassal state of Putin. Buffer Zone Jones and the rest have nothing constructive to say.

In terms of who will speak against a no-fly zone, our defence secretary has explicitly ruled it out.

lol we're all gonna die

Quite possibly, but unlikely to be due to NATO imposing a no fly zone.

I do agree that general on Newsnight was a complete muppet.

If you don’t have s no fly zone it will be difficult for the Ukrainians to bring up supplies their lines of communication are far longer than the Russians.

Sure, but it cannot be enforced without putting NATO air forces directly against Russian air forces.

It's a WWIII scenario.

OK no more doom posting

a couple of days ago someone posted a picture of a captured russian army radio on social media. someone quickly ID'ed it as an off-the-shelf, unencrypted chinese baofeng transceiver. since then russian military frequencies have been flooded with relentless pirate transmissions, broadcasts, sound effects, “fuck putin” chants, and pig noises:
https://soundcloud.com/frenchbloke/websdr-recording-start-2022-02-28t10-32-36z-79333khz

The hypothesis that Russia will now change gears and 'win' in Ukraine is based on the assumption that they can move from incompetence to competence.

For me, sadly, I think they can ‘win’, whatever that means, as social media has a tendency to overstate Russia’s loses and understate it’s capabilities with respect to things like it’s air force which hasn’t really been involved in a major way yet (due to trying the ‘softly-softly’ approach in the sense that it’s not been shock and awe bomb into submission).

That, and things like the 40 mile long convoy headed towards Kyiv at the moment.

edit: hope i’m very very wrong

The difference between the tanky far left and everyone else is that we recognise the people of Ukraine have a right to self determination and shouldn't simply accept being a vassal state of Putin.

Who's this a reference to? STW? People like Zarah Sultana who has had to deal with death threats because of people - including those in her own party - making claims like this?

.

WWIII air defence over Europe was supposed to have a forward zone of attack helicopters,A10, Frogfoots etc then a missile belt then an air defence zone patrolled by F15s . Maybe the Ukrainians could establish a missile belt and inch it forward, the Russians would do the same over their troops giving a defacto no fly zone.

The areas were split up like this to stop “friendly Fire” I don’t think anyone can identify a moving aircraft at 3km.

Stinger missiles should curtail tactical air power but LGBs probably allow attacks on supply lines from higher altitude.

The areas were split up like this to stop “friendly Fire” I don’t think anyone can identify a moving aircraft at 3km.

That depends really,. The Russians were moving to upgrade/replace their IFF systems in 2013/14...if they did manage to do that perhaps they can identify fast jets at close range. At the time they were talking about using encrypted ADSB.

I was thinking more about the Ukrainians I’m not sure of the total number of SAMs we have sent or how many Ukraine already had but there are a lot out there.
Our Cold War infantry Anti Aircraft tactic was shoot at anything it’s probably hostile.

On the plus side- when even Belarus thinks you've gone too far, you've probably gone too far.

Didn’t that pre-emptive celebration article state that Belarus also had joined Russia?
Might have med walrus man think twice.

Anyone else worried about the possibility of some kind of mini nuclear device stashed away somewhere in the middle of this giant fucking convoy as an insurance policy?

Heard far too many statements beginning with "he wouldn't..." that have turned out to be waaaay wide of the mark in the last few days for my liking.

I geniunely worry he's decided it's his way or fuck everyone to the moon.

Enjoying the trolling from the Ukrainians though, every cloud...

Anyone else worried about the possibility of some kind of mini nuclear device stashed away somewhere in the middle of this giant fucking convoy as an insurance policy?

No. Movie thread >>>>>>>