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Post by Dirt Dogg on Feb 13, 2022 13:24:01 GMT
My mate who’s in the know at the Kremlin reckons Wednesday will be the day.
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Post by Officer Barbrady on Feb 13, 2022 17:56:32 GMT
My mate who’s in the know at the Kremlin reckons Wednesday will be the day. expecting standard false flag any day now |
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Post by Gassy on Feb 13, 2022 19:44:41 GMT
My mate who’s in the know at the Kremlin reckons Wednesday will be the day. Will we get the usual 5 minute warning? I'd be surprised as these things usually happen on Thursdays |
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Post by stuart1974 on Feb 15, 2022 16:24:27 GMT
Bit early to read too much into the latest on this, some modest troop withdrawal from Crimea and an increase by Putin in the rhetoric surrounding Ukraine, especially for domestic consumption.
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Post by Officer Barbrady on Feb 15, 2022 18:34:42 GMT
Bit early to read too much into the latest on this, some modest troop withdrawal from Crimea and an increase by Putin in the rhetoric surrounding Ukraine, especially for domestic consumption. Yes, pretext provided, stage set, false flag imminent. |
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Post by stuart1974 on Feb 15, 2022 18:48:15 GMT
Bit early to read too much into the latest on this, some modest troop withdrawal from Crimea and an increase by Putin in the rhetoric surrounding Ukraine, especially for domestic consumption. Yes, pretext provided, stage set, false flag imminent. Plenty of false flags already. The narrative since at least 2014 is that Ukraine is siding with neo-Nazis and photos have circulated recently with accusations of atrocities and talk of 'camps' being built. I hope things are genuinely starting to cool but I can also see a situation where Putin is lauded as a peacemaker by withdrawing a token force but then "genocide" happens to ethnic Russians in the Donbass necessitating Russia's intervention. In short order, he gets his cassus beli and then a chunk of eastern Ukraine with the land access to Crimea. |
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Post by stuart1974 on Feb 15, 2022 22:42:06 GMT
Biden's speech today seemed more of a plea from someone expecting a deterioration in events rather than an improvement. Rumours of credible intelligence reports of Russian special forces already in Kyiv and now this.
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Post by baggins on Feb 16, 2022 11:52:17 GMT
Biden's speech today seemed more of a plea from someone expecting a deterioration in events rather than an improvement. Rumours of credible intelligence reports of Russian special forces already in Kyiv and now this. There's Ukranian Banks? |
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Post by stuart1974 on Feb 16, 2022 12:14:04 GMT
Biden's speech today seemed more of a plea from someone expecting a deterioration in events rather than an improvement. Rumours of credible intelligence reports of Russian special forces already in Kyiv and now this. There's Ukranian Banks? There are at the moment, give it a day or so. 👀 |
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Post by stuart1974 on Feb 16, 2022 12:34:48 GMT
Something a little more light hearted.
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Post by stuart1974 on Feb 17, 2022 15:00:25 GMT
Possible escalatio. From Sky News:
"The attack on a kindergarten in Stanitsya Luhanska, Ukraine, was a "false flag operation designed to discredit the Ukrainians", Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said.
The prime minister added: "We fear very much that that is a thing we will see more of over the next few days".
Speaking during a visit to RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, he added: "What we are doing is making that we do everything to strengthen the package of sanctions that will follow immediately should there be a Russian invasion." "
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Post by aghast on Feb 17, 2022 22:37:32 GMT
What do we export to Russia and buy from them that might make economic sanctions effective? Maybe there's a lot, but I can only think of whisky and vodka. And Russian dolls. The wooden ones.
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Post by stuart1974 on Feb 17, 2022 23:44:08 GMT
What do we export to Russia and buy from them that might make economic sanctions effective? Maybe there's a lot, but I can only think of whisky and vodka. And Russian dolls. The wooden ones. Oil and gas mainly, hence Nordstream 2 and a former German Chancellor on the board of Gazprom. Oil prices have gone up making plenty of money for the oligarchs. War can be good for business. 😶 Which in turn becomes Russia's next big thing, dirty money coming through London both via banks and property. In recent years, Putin has built up a lot of reserves and tried to reduce their dependency on the Dollar, looking towards being friends with China. Almost as if he was buying time economically for such an eventuality. |
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Post by baggins on Feb 18, 2022 6:14:05 GMT
Talking of Nord. Alexei Mordashov (56), currently worth a cool $30 billion, had this built and named Nord as a nod to the Company. Built by Lurssen in 2020, she's 142 metres long, cost $500 million to build and costs over $50 million a year in running costs. He also owns another one similar. Guess when things go right, they really do go right. Attachment Deleted |
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Post by Dirt Dogg on Feb 18, 2022 11:49:04 GMT
Talking of Nord. Alexei Mordashov (56), currently worth a cool $30 billion, had this built and named Nord as a nod to the Company. Built by Lurssen in 2020, she's 142 metres long, cost $500 million to build and costs over $50 million a year in running costs. He also owns another one similar. Guess when things go right, they really do go right. View AttachmentNot for me that, could’ve at least painted the bottom half the same pattern. |
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Post by baggins on Feb 18, 2022 11:55:54 GMT
Talking of Nord. Alexei Mordashov (56), currently worth a cool $30 billion, had this built and named Nord as a nod to the Company. Built by Lurssen in 2020, she's 142 metres long, cost $500 million to build and costs over $50 million a year in running costs. He also owns another one similar. Guess when things go right, they really do go right. View AttachmentNot for me that, could’ve at least painted the bottom half the same pattern. Money can't buy taste. And I've told him that. |
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Post by stuart1974 on Feb 18, 2022 14:01:23 GMT
PR battle being waged too.
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Post by yattongas on Feb 21, 2022 20:07:17 GMT
Sounds like a declaration of war ….
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Post by stuart1974 on Feb 21, 2022 22:05:45 GMT
Sounds like a declaration of war …. More an invitation to war. I'd suspect by recognising the two areas, he'll be able to deploy "peacekeepers" and there will be nothing Kyiv can do about it without escalation. If they do then the gloves will come off and Vlad won't be the aggressor (in his mind anyway). Putin will hold a referendum, staged of course, then subsume the two back to Mother Russia. He'll get the land corridor to Crimea after all, France and Germany will water down any sanctions as it won't be a full invasion so Europe still gets its gas supplies and Nordstream 2 goes ahead. Ironically, if Kyiv accepted this as a fait accompli then it removes the existing territorial disputes and clears the path to Nato accession. |
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Post by axegas on Feb 21, 2022 22:32:12 GMT
Sounds like a declaration of war …. More an invitation to war. I'd suspect by recognising the two areas, he'll be able to deploy "peacekeepers" and there will be nothing Kyiv can do about it without escalation. If they do then the gloves will come off and Vlad won't be the aggressor (in his mind anyway). Putin will hold a referendum, staged of course, then subsume the two back to Mother Russia. He'll get the land corridor to Crimea after all, France and Germany will water down any sanctions as it won't be a full invasion so Europe still gets its gas supplies and Nordstream 2 goes ahead. Ironically, if Kyiv accepted this as a fait accompli then it removes the existing territorial disputes and clears the path to Nato accession. Russia already had the weapons and troops situated within close proximity to Ukraine to deter them from any kind of military intervention into Luhansk and Donetsk in the event of Russia recognising the territories. We’re seeing 75% of Russia’s operational forces, amphibious landing crafts, field hospitals assembled near to the Ukraine border, completely unnecessary and a costly waste of time if Donbas was Putin’s solitary goal. Russia subsuming the two territories does nothing to address the concerns that Putin laid out in his speech. In fact they make the situation worse for him. The economic value of the two provinces doesn’t come close to mitigating the cost of sanctions, as you say Ukraine’s nato membership becomes more likely and the domestic morale boost short lived. It doesn’t even give him a land corridor to Crimea there are a few other provinces in the way. I think Putin cares about the strategic alignment Ukrainian government far more than he does the fate of the two separatist republics, hence the long winded speech talking down the existence of the Ukrainian state and justifying military intervention to Russians watching at home. |
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