Russian invasion of Ukraine

Putin poisoned his superiors to get ahead.
It’s easy to imagine officers leaking the locations of their superiors to get them killed and create vacancies.
Also easy to imagine rivals sabotaging each other’s work.

Not a drone, just a normal Australian spider?

This appears to be a drone dropping a munition through the open hatch of a Russian tank

https://twitter.com/KyleJGlen/status/1520799313814867968?s=20&t=8YMXDyI454bdPCwFz1QKag

They are 3D printing fins for ancient Russian anti tank grenades
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1520561969153073153?s=20&t=8YMXDyI454bdPCwFz1QKag

That's horrifying, suddenly get blown out of nowhere.

They are doing this at night too. No warning at all of anything incoming.

"how the turntables"

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A load of former classified files from 1991 are about to be released in Germany and it's going to be interesting. I ran some parts of an article about it through a translator:

Gorbachev's long-time former foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze warned the Germans. Should the Soviet Union disintegrate, a "fascist leader" could one day appear in Russia demanding the return of Crimea from Ukraine, he predicted in October 1991 during a visit by Genscher.

Putin then annexed Crimea a good two decades later.

Even a resurgence of toxic nationalism in Eastern Europe as once happened after the First World War seemed conceivable to Chancellor Kohl in 1991. He said that if the Baltic states became independent, "the row with Poland would start (again)". Poland and Lithuania had fought each other in 1920.

And so the Palatine decided: "A break-up of the Soviet Union cannot be in our interest..."
In the end, the Balts and Ukrainians won their independence anyway. And it will probably not be possible to conclusively clarify whether Kohl made a mistake in judgement or whether Latvians and Lithuanians were simply lucky that their path was halfway peaceful.

In any case, many allies in the West obviously tended in the same direction as the Germans. France's power-conscious President Mitterrand, for example, scolded the Balts, "you can't jeopardise everything you've achieved (with Moscow - the ed.) just to help countries that haven't had their own existence for 400 years." Even US President George Bush, former CIA chief and cold realist, complained about the insistence of the Baltic politicians striving for independence

Another day in paradise

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"Pope in lack of honesty" shocker... meh...

I keep hearing this excuse, it makes no sense. Joining NATO poses a threat?

If your intimidating someone its usually cos youre bigger, until their big bro turns up then you become intimidated dont you.

I think, as always, the nuances of this argument are lost in the age of binary internet opinions.

Its perfectly possible to say that NATO has contributed to where we are today, without actually saying that NATO did the wrong thing or Putin is acting reasonably in response. If Putin thinks NATO policy is a reason for the war, then its one of the contributing factors leading to this war, whether its justified/rational or not.

That said, there are also the people who are saying that Putin is right to regard NATO as a threat...which is much less arguable.

Anyway, to resolve a conflict you have to understand exactly what has driven your enemy to get to this point, whether its fundamentally insane or not.

Have NATO member states ever armed a non member state to the levels seen today without themselves ever officially getting physically (boots on the ground) involved?

I don't think so.

That's said, the UK did have boots on the ground in Ukraine from 2014 to 2021 in very small numbers, to help train the army. Canada and a few others did too.

I was wrong. It was 2015 to 2022.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Orbital

Canadian operation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unifier

Mobikes for Ukraine

https://twitter.com/adamtranter/status/1520141650248577027

Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? I think we originally supplied the Afgan gov against the Soviets

Haven't they suffered enough?

You know what is fun. The Left has been calling everybody with a right wing consertive political view nazis. I know there are real fascists and nationalists too,but now that they have been calling wolf long enough We are really moving into a strange territory when Putler comes to liberate the Cancel-culture activists from the only people that have been concerned about national defense and heritage.

The documentary film “Mariupol. Chronicles of Hell” is the stories of 11 heroes who survived during the siege of the city.
https://youtu.be/_Z4I1xYbQxU

Hehe.

https://twitter.com/crouchingbadger/status/1520173283420913670

The Left has been calling everybody with a right wing consertive political view nazis

Citation needed

It hurt itself in it's confusion

I keep hearing this excuse, it makes no sense. Joining NATO poses a threat?

Ukraine would not have been admitted into NATO anyway. NATO is a defensive organization. Ukraine has been technically at war with Russia for 8 years. Countries with pre-existing conditions (ongoing wars) would not be admitted because NATO would be obligated to intervene militarily on day 1 of its membership.

If an application for NATO membership were the real motive for the invasion then Russia will have to invade Finland (again). The last invasion in 1939 was a huge success!

The Russian view of Nato is that its purpose is to unite against an enemy, which is Russia. So every time a country joins Nato, it ceases to be neutral and declares that it is Russia's enemy.