Russia wins with conventional weapons in Ukraine or it wins with a Nuclear bomb, either way Russia wins.

Source - Russian state media.

The mountains are calling & I must go.

There are lessons here for the global village idealists in Europe, not that any number of lessons would make any difference to them.

I think you would have to go back to the Minsk agreement to see that all of your solutions require good faith actors and that this just wasn't the case.

As for going forward I think the reality that the polarisation means that there can be no regional divided loyalties within these regions now.....It'll be highly dangerous to be loyal to Russia in western Ukraine and loyal to Ukraine in the Donbas and southern areas. Essentially there has been ethnic cleansing going on for years now.

I can't see those two mentalities just burying the hatchet and going back to how it was pre-2014 coup.

Edited by Stirlingsays (24 May 2022 10.03pm)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

The Ukraine is going to be in debt for donkey's year whatever happens.

Western Ukraine has mainly been given loans and the parts Russia has taken, if they remain Russian, will obviously come under their economy.

It will be interesting to see how well those different parts of pre war Ukraine do economically. Will it be crap on both sides? Western Ukraine doing well or kind of like a reverse soviet Berlin where Russian Ukraine does well.

Guess we won't know till years after this craziness ends.....let's hope we are all here to find out.

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

Compare the western reporting....say by the BBC...which has basically acted as a Ukrainian mouthpiece....and the actual events that have happened on the ground.

I've lost count of the number of predictions that Russia was losing or was about to lose, that its economy was on the brink and couldn't continue. The number of 'experts' and talking heads essentially saying whatever the news network wanted to hear. If you were only taking in that media you weren't getting an accurate reflection of the truth.

A great play has been made about the Russian media basically being an arm of the state and not reflecting balanced opinion and I agree with that assessment. However, our own media has long fallen in objectivity and from what it once was.

The tendency to employ people who all think the same means that perspectives also become restricted and don't reflect reality and the world is seen as they want it to be rather than how it is. That is as true in Russia as it is here.

However, when it came to the battlefield, only alternative sources provide the opportunity to actually hear assessments that reflected reality.

Edited by Stirlingsays (25 May 2022 5.58am)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)

It's the economic stuff that makes so little sense to me. The Rouble is at a 4 year high against the dollar. Russia does not need to import anything so 'sanctions' are utterly pointless. And the West is STILL buying its gas.

All that is happening by way of prolonging this war, which seems to be the deliberate Western policy, is to create in the next few months a massive food shortage whose impact is going to be felt the most in the poorer countries to the south. Which in turn is no doubt going to generate even large waves of illegal migrants heading towards Europe.

If you wanted to pursue a policy that f***ed Europe then this is it.

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." - 1984 - George Orwell.

"all the sudden" Russia is winning? This would only surprise or shock you if you believed the Western media and dismissed alternative sources telling you Russia was making steady progress toward inevitable victory since this began.