Sanctions against Russia

[willedoo]

There's a lot of reports and footage emerging of Ukrainian forces capturing Russian armour, vehicles, ammunition and equipment. You would think if the Russians don't get the upper hand in the next week or so, they will have a big morale problem among their troops in the field. That's if they don't already have one.

[Jerry_Atrick]

At the moment, Russia is accusing Ukraine of manufacturing biological weapons with the help of the US. It may be true, but somehow, it reeks of another false flag to support Russia going in with biological weapons. Assad (Syria) used them against his own people, and of course, Russia was an active ally to Syria in its war against its people.. The concern is that Russia, which is frustrated with how their special military operation is going, are starting the accusation of Ukraine and US manufacturing biological weapons so they can justify going in with them.. and this is sort of the strategy Eastern Europe tends to use.

 

If they are deployed, it will definitely be a game changer... They will go where the conventional weapons can't go, through the bunkers, shelters, etc. However, how will the wet react?

 

Here is an interesting video narrated by Stephen Fry (a hero of mine) with respect to whether or not Putin will go nuclear:

 

 

Interestingly, his point on dialogue seems so much common sense.. something very uncommon.

 

Also, as an aside, and slightly off topic, I commend to you a book called Kleptopia by Tim (or Tom) Burgess.. it is about the risse of the olgiarchy and how they wash their dirty money through London.. A lot of the Oligarchs and organised crims are from Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and, you guessed it, Ukraine.

 

[willedoo]

3 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

At the moment, Russia is accusing Ukraine of manufacturing biological weapons with the help of the US.

It's a bit hard to believe as the WHO also funds the laboratories. You would think they'd keep a fairly good eye on what goes on there. The WHO has been calling on Ukraine to destroy all harmful pathogens in case they escape the labs because of the war. It sounds like they know what Ukraine has in the labs. I can't remember the third party that funds them; it might be the EU.

[nomadpete]

Labs that work on developing vaccines will need live pathogens on which to experiment. I would not be surprised if they have live plague, swine flu, covid, etc. I wouldn't be pleased if a careless bomb spread all of their live pathogens around.

 

So, no, it does not prove that Ukraine has military biological warfare pathogens. There might or might not be any. We will never know. It smacks of BS to me, and sounds like Putin is justifying using biological weapons himself. This ploy was handy for the USA when they wanted to go into Iraq.

 

But now that the accusation has been made.....

[Bruce Tuncks]

Letting information out has proven an effective tactic...  it prevented Putin from claiming that russia was "forced" to invade to save ethnic russians.

I knew an australian- german ( Harry Schneider ) who honestly believed that the Poles started ww2. He had been a recipient of nazi propaganda, which he still believed after living in Australia for 50 years.

In the interests of balance, I must point out that my mother-in-law still thinks the Japanese ww2 planes were crude things " made of sticks and rags" because of propaganda from the other side.

It says awful things about us that propaganda is so effective.

[Old Koreelah]

22 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

…my mother-in-law still thinks the Japanese ww2 planes were crude things " made of sticks and rags" because of propaganda from the other side.

It says awful things about us that propaganda is so effective.

…and my father-in-law is still adamant that Jap pilots couldn’t fly at night because of their thick glasses. Very easy for propaganda to ingrain a prejudice at an impressionable age group. 
 

Propaganda is effective even if only a minority of people believe it; look how Trump’s deporables have the Republican Part by the balls.

[willedoo]

This video probably won't stay up long as I think YouTube is suspending all official Russian accounts. It shows the Russians initially taking the Antonov airport near Kiev. At 2.06 you can see the An-225 still undamaged in it's hangar. One day we might find out who's artillery destroyed it, but the current narrative seems to be the Russians. I could be wrong, but I think at some stage the Ukrainian forces regained control before the Russians retook it.

 

 

[willedoo]

[willedoo]

The Russian finance minister has given their figure on the amount of gold and foreign exchange reserves frozen. He said out of 640 billion in reserves, around 300 billion are frozen. Further proof that Putin has flipped his lid. In a sane state of mind, simple mathematics would have told him the war was a crazy plan.

 

 

Edited March 14, 2022 by willedoo

[willedoo]

Russian airline operators have 768 aircraft with Bermudan registration. Bermuda has suspended their airworthiness certificates, grounding all of them. The aircraft are mainly Boeing and Airbus planes from foreign leasing companies.

 

 

[kgwilson]

The Spring thaw is imminent. The Russians will need to gain control of roads, railways and strategic centres to have any chance of control once that occurs and they are far from that goal at this stage with Ukraine putting up ever more effective defence. Russia is firing off a few long range missiles to show they are advancing but I reckon it is more of a a ploy to gain more home support and try to dampen the resolve of the Ukrainians.

 

All the time more arms are pouring in to Ukraine and their volunteers are becoming trained and battle hardened while Russian troops are just doing their job and in many cases not very well. NATO could blow Russia away easily but with a madman who will stop at nothing, doing that would ensure WW3, M.A.D, a nuclear winter & billions of deaths.

 

So the war will draw out into a long bloody conflict that Putin will not be able to afford for too long so a mediated settlement is the only long term solution. Putin doesn't have many mates other than Assad & a few non descripts. I can't see Xi Jinping coming to his aid militarily. He needs the west to buy everything he makes but he may well become a mediator if Nato & Ukraine accept him for the role. He is probably the only option that Putin would be happy with.

[old man emu]

Is it just due to where we get our international news from, or are the non-white countries of Africa, Asia and the Arab world, and I'll include South America,  keeping out of this matter? 

[onetrack]

They're all too busy putting out their own local war fires.

[Yenn]

Will Putin realise that the war cannot be won and give in? I doubt it, he has so much at stake that he is possibly mad enough to use the nuclear option. In which case he could be stopped by the generals, or maybe they are as mad as he is.

we really need a way to wage war that takes it out of the hands of politicians  when they have failed and puts the top military in control. Over the years they seem to be much more level headed than politicians.

[rgmwa]

The only way Putin will stop is if he finds some face-saving way out that allows him to declare that he's the winner, or if the Russians themselves knock him off his perch. 

[willedoo]

I read an article a couple of days ago that made sense. It theorised that if Putin was knocked off his perch, it wouldn't come from the military or the politicians, but from the security services, or spooks for want of a better word. The article gave examples as precedents, saying that every time things have gone pear shaped, they've stepped in. One example given was the attempted coup against Gorbachev.

 

Another point raised was that they are the only people able to get to him. I bet Vladimir has someone tasting his food for him. The writer said that Putin would know all this, being an ex spook himself, and that the people protecting him would be the likely ones to get him if they made that decision. They are seeing Russia crumbling economically, so it could happen if there's no peace deal soon. Russia has done untold damage, but any assessment of their campaign at the three week mark would have to  be of it being a failure. So far, it's been a humiliation for Putin. He underestimated the Ukrainians by a long way.

[willedoo]

The pro Ukrainian/anti Russian memes are being pumped out in volumes. The posed photo of the young girl sitting in the window says it all.

 

 

[willedoo]

A few more.

 

 

 

 

[kgwilson]

Russians disposing of their leaders murderously is a national pass time and has been going on since the Tsars. They always find a way to make it seem as if it was an accident or some misfortune.

[willedoo]

Olga Smirnova, prima ballerina with the Bolshoi ballet company, has quit in protest of the war. She starts with the Dutch ballet next month. Joining her there is Brazilian soloist Victor Caixeta, who has quit the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg in response to the war. Possibly the first of many to quit the country.

[facthunter]

Russia  has and will lose a lot of their best talent. You'd need a wall to keep them in and they don't have one these days.  Nev

[willedoo]

This is clever. The right colours as well:

https://twitter.com/NewsUkraine2/status/1501490333519130627

 

Edited March 17, 2022 by willedoo

[willedoo]

There's been reports of a lot of Russian journalists and TV presenters quitting as well. Not only independents, but from State backed media as well. Probably the most high profile one is Maria Baronova, who was editor in chief of RT's Russian language edition.

 

As an edit, it seems like Maria Baronova was an odd fit with a Kremlin backed media outlet. She was a former anti-government opposition activist before being offered the job with Russia Today. In an interview, she said she didn't have much clout as editor. It looks like she was put in the job in a puppet position in an attempt to give the false impression that RT had balance.

Edited March 17, 2022 by willedoo

[Bruce Tuncks]

Willedoo, you have the best handle on Russia of all the people I know.

What do you think is going to happen?

[willedoo]

3 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Willedoo, you have the best handle on Russia of all the people I know.

What do you think is going to happen?

To be honest Bruce, I think it's anyone's guess. The problem as I see it is that a normally rational, measured and calculating Putin seems to have flipped his lid. As one American analyst said, we're seeing a different person here. It's looking like a very dangerous and unpredictable time. For sure, Putin has tested the resolve of NATO and the West, but the way he's done this is anything but rational. He's taken his country back to the stone age.

 

I wonder if those around him in his inner circle are just going along with it because they fear his power. Or are they just as delusional as Putin appears to have become. I check the various Russian press daily and have done so for years. Normally you can sift the BS and propaganda from the half believable stuff, but since the war started, most of it has become farcical. It reminds me of the daily comedy spiel from the Iraqi Information Minister during their war with the US.

 

The next two or three weeks might fit a few more pieces of the puzzle together. If it keeps going badly for the Russian military in Ukraine, Putin will need a face saving deal to wind this down. In his present state of mind, backing him into a corner could end badly. The two sides are talking, but they are so far apart in their goals that it's hard to see a compromise. At this stage, Putin's demands for a peace deal is for Ukraine to declare neutrality, recognise Crimea as Russian, and the two Donbass regions as independent sovereign states. The catch is, Russia and the Donbass rebels will want the whole provinces and not just the smaller part the rebels are in control of.

 

On top of that, I doubt he'll give up gains in the south along the Azov coast to Crimea. If the war drags on, surely it would be on his mind to keep going from Kherson, take Odessa and have a strip above Crimea all the way from the Russian mainland to the Moldovan border. That's a fairly big wish list of Putin's and would make Ukraine a land locked country; any sea freight to Ukraine would depend on them playing Russia's game. As it stands, he's almost got Mariupol and securing that city would mean the Azov sea would be all Russian. In any negotiations, Putin won't want to give that up. I really think he'll want more than what he's currently telling Ukraine.

 

Putin will probably want to wrap this up fairly quickly. If it drags on too long and costs Russia too much blood and treasure, his own survival would be at stake. The elephant in the room for him is the Ukrainian will to fight. I don't think he expected it, and I think it makes him more unpredictable and dangerous. There has been some worrying nuclear sabre rattling coming from the Kremlin. One of the big wigs there the other day was quoted on the subject of sanctions and nukes as saying what's the point of having a world if Russia's not part of it. From a MAD point of view, I think the world was a lot safer when the Soviets had the nukes. The lady journalist I mentioned in a previous post, the ex editor in chief of the Kremlin backed RT channel, thinks there's one of two outcomes for Russians. One is that they'll become a North Korea, or the other one where the West drops a nuke on them. It's only her opinion, but a bit scary that people are actually thinking that way.

 

Ukraine is the meat in the sandwich. There's talk of security guarantees if they declare neutrality, but the last one when they de-nuked was obviously just hot air. That was the deal when they gave up their nuclear weapons after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russia and the West guaranteed their security in return for them handing over their nukes. Instead they've got the Russians killing them and the West not helping them.