Ukraine

mace1229

Halifax2TheMax said:

mace1229 said:

Halifax2TheMax said:

Defending the wrong side of history. So proud.

Please show me where I defended trump. All I said was if you’re going to make fun of trump for deferring the draft, you should know Biden did it 1 more time. That’s not defending draft dodging, it’s pointing out the silliness of that meme.
Post fat pictures of trump all you want, it doesn’t bother me and it doesn’t change the facts of draft deferent. 

President Biden is still fit for the draft. And as CIC, is serving his nation while POOTWH is an enemy within.  But same/same.

They don’t draft 79 year olds. Anywhere.

Halifax2TheMax

mace1229 said:

Halifax2TheMax said:

mace1229 said:

Halifax2TheMax said:

Defending the wrong side of history. So proud.

Please show me where I defended trump. All I said was if you’re going to make fun of trump for deferring the draft, you should know Biden did it 1 more time. That’s not defending draft dodging, it’s pointing out the silliness of that meme.
Post fat pictures of trump all you want, it doesn’t bother me and it doesn’t change the facts of draft deferent. 

President Biden is still fit for the draft. And as CIC, is serving his nation while POOTWH is an enemy within.  But same/same.

They don’t draft 79 year olds. Anywhere.

Gee, I didn’t know that. Really?

mace1229

Gern Blansten said:

mace1229 said:

Halifax2TheMax said:

Defending the wrong side of history. So proud.

Please show me where I defended trump. All I said was if you’re going to make fun of trump for deferring the draft, you should know Biden did it 1 more time. That’s not defending draft dodging, it’s pointing out the silliness of that meme.
Post fat pictures of trump all you want, it doesn’t bother me and it doesn’t change the facts of draft deferent. 

Biden didn't get a letter from his doctor saying he had bone spurs...and then was unable to say which foot he had bone spurs in.

There's a difference. Lots of people got deferrals...very few got fake letters from their doctors

Bid had a letter from his doctor too.
there’s lots of things to complain. About with Trump. I just don’t see the point in complaining about his draft doffing while simultaneously defending Biden’s.

Spiritual_Chaos

https://twitter.com/svenskfotboll/status/1497581717208678402?s=20&t=CYDrrNdwI6tewgiYojb1Zg

Swedish Football Association.: The mens national football team of Sweden will not play against Russia - no matter where the game is held. We also urge FIFA to cancel all the play-off games during march which Russia is playing.

"The illegal and deeply unjust invasion of Ukraine currently makes all football exchanges with Russia impossible. We therefore call on FIFA to decide that the playoff matches in March in which Russia participates are cancelled. But no matter what FIFA chooses to do, we will not play Russia in March," said Karl-Erik Nilsson, president of the Swedish Football Association.

"We find it hard to believe that FIFA will not heed our call. Russia cannot be involved as long as this madness continues.

nicknyr15

Halifax2TheMax said:

nicknyr15 said:

Halifax2TheMax said:

Defending the wrong side of history. So proud.

Good lord. Is this the Ukraine thread? Or the Trump meme thread? 

It’s the loosen the belt to defend Ukraine thread, after someone ties his shoes. Manly, no?

I guess? I don’t know. Maybe? 

Spiritual_Chaos

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1497589738785624068?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1497589738785624068%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=

Meltdown99

Lerxst1992 said:

At what point should the NHL be boycotted? It is absurd star Russian athletes make millions on the backs of a free American economy and taxpayer financed arenas when their leader threatened us with a nuke.

Maybe stop buying Russian Oil and Gas…because that’s what’s financing this war…

Spiritual_Chaos

Meltdown99 said:

Lerxst1992 said:

At what point should the NHL be boycotted? It is absurd star Russian athletes make millions on the backs of a free American economy and taxpayer financed arenas when their leader threatened us with a nuke.

Maybe stop buying Russian Oil and Gas…because that’s what’s financing this war…

HEY HEY HEY! That is just onebridge too far for Germany. In the age of a fucked climate, let's keep heating by (russian) gas

Spiritual_Chaos

https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1497572770296836108?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1497572770296836108%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=

Poncier

Spiritual_Chaos said:

https://twitter.com/svenskfotboll/status/1497581717208678402?s=20&t=CYDrrNdwI6tewgiYojb1Zg

Swedish Football Association.: The mens national football team of Sweden will not play against Russia - no matter where the game is held. We also urge FIFA to cancel all the play-off games during march which Russia is playing.

"The illegal and deeply unjust invasion of Ukraine currently makes all football exchanges with Russia impossible. We therefore call on FIFA to decide that the playoff matches in March in which Russia participates are cancelled. But no matter what FIFA chooses to do, we will not play Russia in March," said Karl-Erik Nilsson, president of the Swedish Football Association.

"We find it hard to believe that FIFA will not heed our call. Russia cannot be involved as long as this madness continues.

Poland refuse to play Russia in 2022 World Cup playoff game (espn.com)

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-nato-353b9d46e2b0d0c7113cc760b144d7fb

 

By LORI HINNANT, MSTYSLAV CHERNOV, AAMER MADHANI and CALVIN WOODWARD

49 mins ago

The week before Russia attacked, a Ukrainian soldier peered through a periscope from the bottom of his trench. Mud seeped into his boots, his clothes and every crack in his gear as he walked the narrow space where he had spent his days for the past 10 months.

Zakhar Leshchyshyn was just 23. He had no memory of Ukraine as anything but a fully independent country. But now he was charged with helping to keep it that way, posted at Ukraine’s eastern front line since early last spring, when 100,000 Russian land and naval forces first encircled most of his country.

“These wars for territory are madness,” he said, “but probably this is human nature.”

Within days, Ukraine was engulfed by what the soldier in the trench saw as humanity’s dark impulse. The largest invasion Europe has seen since World War II has imperiled a young democracy while risking geopolitical instability far beyond the flashpoints of the new war.

In the conflict’s earliest days, each side has managed to surprise the other. Russia unleashed a broader, larger invasion than almost anyone had predicted. And Ukraine, at least by U.S. and other Western accounts, has put up a more tenacious fight than many thought possible against the neighboring superpower. Fortunes can turn at any moment.

“It’s not apparent to us that the Russians over the last 24 hours have been able to execute their plans as they deemed that they would. But it’s a dynamic, fluid situation,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Friday.

And so it has been for much of the past year. Russia alternately added and subtracted troops along the border, diplomacy seemed to make progress until it didn’t, Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed restrained, then not, then maybe, then not.

The path to war was convoluted — but also inexorable.

In this frame from video provided by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Feb. 19, 2022, a Russian marine runs during the Union Courage-2022 Russia-Belarus military drills at the Obuz-Lesnovsky training ground in Belarus. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

Civilians train with members of the Georgian Legion, a paramilitary unit formed mainly by ethnic Georgian volunteers to fight against Russian forces in Ukraine in 2014, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

AN EARLY MARKER

It was back on March 31 of last year when the U.S. military raised an alert of a “potential imminent crisis” arising from Russian drills near the Ukrainian border. Not long after, Russian troops were ordered back to their permanent bases and the sense of alarm eased.

But those orders also required Russian troops to leave their heavy weaponry in Crimea and the Voronezh region bordering Ukraine, where it would already be in place if the forces returned — which they did. The reprieve was brief for Leshchyshyn’s unit and for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had tweeted that the redeployment “proportionally reduces tension.”

Soon afterward, U.S. President Joe Biden agreed to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, a summit widely seen as a reward for suspending the drills. But by the end of summer, it was clear that Putin’s military plans were just getting started — even if they hadn’t quite taken shape yet.

When Zelenskyy visited Washington on Sept. 1, he came away with a pledge of $60 million in military aid.

Zakhar Leshchyshyn, a Ukrainian serviceman, reports to a commander via military intercom while in a shelter at the frontline positions near Zolote, Ukraine, Saturday, Feb. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

IN THE TRENCH

Leshchyshyn’s life in the deserted front-line village of Zolote continued as before, circumscribed by the labyrinth of trenches he commanded. The monotony of four-hour shifts on guard was broken by periodic exchanges of fire with Russia-backed separatists, and by the news he caught on his mobile phone.

Roots poked out along the walls of the trench, but they were never enough to hold up the mud when a shell exploded nearby. Those not on guard duty shored up the sides with hand shovels.

When they returned to their basement barracks in a house with no roof, the same shovels scraped the congealed mud from their boots. When night fell, the village was dark and quiet enough that Leshchyshyn’s men and the separatists sometimes shouted curses at each other from their respective trenches.

By early November, the mud was back, thick enough to weigh down the soldiers’ boots. So were the Russian troops — 90,000 of them again near the border, with more on the way from all corners of the world’s largest country.

A security officer indicates to the media to step back as U.S. President Joe Biden, second from left, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, second from right, and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, right, meet for the U.S.-Russia summit at Villa La Grange in Geneva, Switzerland, June 16, 2021. (Denis Balibouse/Pool Photo via AP)

ALARM IN WASHINGTON

The warnings from the Biden administration grew more pointed, and for the first time, U.S. intelligence officials started sharing specifics with Zelenskyy, European officials and eventually the public.

The White House realized that it was looking at the beginnings of what would probably turn into an enormous crisis by October. Officials were seeing a cascade of worrying intelligence strains, including troop movements, that suggested that Putin was looking to move on Ukraine.

Biden wanted Putin to know what he knew. He sent CIA Director Bill Burns to Moscow to warn Kremlin officials that the U.S. was fully aware of their troop movements. The White House made the calculation that the CIA chief’s travels, normally closely held, needed to be advertised far and wide.

“We wanted it to be known that he was there and understood by the Russians that we were starting to put them on notice and that we were going to do so publicly as well as privately,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, walks under a camouflage net in a trench as he visits the war-hit Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Dec. 6, 2021. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)

Soon after that trip, administration officials decided they needed to accelerate intelligence sharing. They also began discussions with allies about sanctions should Russia invade.

In early December, national security officials shared information from an intelligence document with the press showing at least 70,000 Russian troops had massed near the Ukraine border. Much of the information could be gleaned independently but White House officials thought it was crucial to get the information out in the open “with U.S. government branding.”

So began a name-and-shame campaign in which the White House national security officials widely distributed a series of plots they contend Putin was weighing to set a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine.

Critics of U.S. intelligence — Russian officials among them — recalled past failures like the infamously false identification of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq nearly 20 years ago and the unexpectedly swift fall of Kabul last year.

In mid-November, a senior European diplomat spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential briefings. The diplomat was unconvinced by U.S. intelligence findings.

“We see the military build-up, at the same time, we don’t have any intelligence that there’s something like military action, or that Russians would be trying to become militarily active, so we don’t share this opinion, even though the Americans have said so,” the diplomat said. “We don’t see that there is intention on Putin’s part so far.”

At NATO, Germany blocked efforts to help Ukraine acquire military equipment. France and Germany objected to launching NATO’s crisis management system, but eventually relented at a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Latvia on Dec. 1. The move was essentially symbolic. The system is used to identify whether there is a crisis and launch preliminary planning to respond.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during his annual news conference in Moscow, Russia, Dec. 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

A Ukrainian serviceman speaks, backdropped by a bullet riddled effigy of Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a media interview at a frontline position in the Luhansk region, eastern Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Tanks move during the Union Courage-2022 Russia-Belarus military drills at the Obuz-Lesnovsky training ground in Belarus, Feb. 19, 2022. Over the past year, Russia alternately added and subtracted troops along the border. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr)

PUTIN’S GUESSING GAME

With some satisfaction, Putin said the military buildup has caused a “certain stress” in the West. “It’s necessary to keep them in that condition for as long as possible” to secure long-term security guarantees for Russia, he added.

He laid down his demands on Dec. 15: a ban on NATO membership for Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations, a halt to the deployment of NATO weapons in those countries and a rollback of NATO forces from Eastern Europe. Meanwhile Russian troops kept arriving in Belarus to Ukraine’s north and on its eastern frontiers where heavy weaponry had been stockpiled since the spring.

Zelenskyy continued to play down the troop movements, noting that Ukraine had been facing threats from Russia and the separatists since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. On Jan. 10, Russia’s deputy foreign minister insisted there were “no plans, intentions or reasons to attack Ukraine.”

The U.S. did not believe it.

Two days later, the United States and NATO rejected Russia’s demands, and the movement of troops and weapons accelerated. Ukrainian government websites went down en masse, many displaying a warning from the suspected Russian-linked hackers: “Be afraid and expect worse.”

On Jan. 20, Russia announced sweeping naval drills off the coast of Ukraine and Biden said publicly he believed Russia planned an invasion.

On Feb. 4, Putin flew to Beijing, ostensibly for the Olympic Games although Russian athletes were banned from competing under their nation’s flag because of years of doping scandals. He and Chinese President Xi Jinping reaffirmed their support for each other’s foreign policy, including Russia’s backing of China’s claim to Taiwan.

The unspoken message: These two world powers were on the same page or a similar page, and China would not stand with most of the rest of the world against Putin’s designs on Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron arrives for an extraordinary meeting of EU leaders to discuss Ukraine at the European Council building in Brussels, Feb. 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert, Pool)

MACRON TRIES

By then, 150,000 Russian troops had all but surrounded Ukraine and the United States had all but abandoned hope for a diplomatic solution. French President Emmanuel Macron attempted a last-ditch intervention. Flying first to Moscow to meet Putin, where the men sat across an absurdly long marble table, then to Kyiv, Macron tried fruitlessly to stave off war.

Publicly Macron said Putin assured him that Russia would not escalate the crisis. But privately he described the Russian leader as “more rigid, more isolated and fundamentally lost in a sort of ideological and security drift,” according to a senior French official.

The American warnings grew increasingly frantic, but life in Kyiv — Ukraine’s capital and its largest population center — continued as usual because, Zelenskyy insisted, Ukrainians would not yield to panic.

On Feb. 16, a Wednesday, Ukraine held a “day of national unity” after a date floated as the potential Russian attack failed to materialize. Russia’s ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, accused Westerners of “slander” for alleging an invasion was afoot and joined other Russian officials in ridiculing Biden’s prediction that it could start as soon as that Wednesday. “Wars in Europe rarely start on a Wednesday,” Chizhov said sarcastically.

But Zelenskyy ordered Ukrainian soldiers to be restrained and give Russia no excuses to attack. Shelling and gunfire at the front lines with the separatists increased exponentially, according to international monitors, but Ukrainian troops were told not to return fire.

Cars move down a street in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

A woman holds her baby as she gets on a bus leaving Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

BLINKEN: ‘IT’S UNFOLDING’

On Feb. 17, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid out “what the world can expect to see unfold. In fact, it’s unfolding right now.”

First, he said, there would be a staged provocation. Then would come a theatrical high-level meeting of the Russian government, followed by a proclamation that Russia must defend ethnic Russians in Ukraine. Then, he said, the attack would begin, with Kyiv a main target. Events would largely, perhaps fully, prove him right.

“We’ve been warning the Ukrainian government of all that is coming,” Blinken said, looking directly at the camera. “And here today, we are laying it out in great detail, with the hope that by sharing what we know with the world, we can influence Russia to abandon the path of war and choose a different path while there’s still time.”

On the night of Feb. 19, the separatist leaders released near-simultaneous videos announcing a general evacuation of women, children and the elderly. One of those pro-Russia separatists showed video of what he said was a car bomb exploding his personal vehicle — ostensibly, proof that Ukrainian troops were provoking a war.

The destroyed 4X4, however, was a suspiciously older model and metadata showed the videos were actually filmed three days earlier.

continues.....

23scidoo

https://newsbulletin247.com/opinion/54355.html

Spiritual_Chaos

Germany stepping up

https://twitter.com/herszenhorn/status/1497594179526008840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1497594179526008840%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=

23scidoo

Meltdown99 said:

If NATO gets involved militarily then it is  WW3,  is there something stopping non NATO countries from supplying troops to Ukraine?  

Slovenia, Belgium and Czech Rebuplic sending today military and economic aid..

dignin

No idea if true but I want to believe. It kinda fits what's been happening so far. Read whole thread.



Riho Terras (@RihoTerras) Tweeted:

THREAD 1/7 Intel from a Ukrainian officer about a meeting in Putin’s lair in Urals. Oligarchs convened there so no one would flee. Putin is furious, he thought that the whole war would be easy and everything would be done in 1-4 days. @EPPGroup @general_ben @edwardlucas @politico https://t.co/8AoelUDWM9

https://twitter.com/RihoTerras/status/1497537193346220038?s=20&t=38rxAOUfO15uG0y0nzgTOw

Gern Blansten

https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1497604118550044674

I posted that "I really want to punch him in the face" on this tweet and within 15 seconds I was suspended....crazy

Meltdown99

23scidoo said:

Meltdown99 said:

If NATO gets involved militarily then it is  WW3,  is there something stopping non NATO countries from supplying troops to Ukraine?  

Slovenia, Belgium and Czech Rebuplic sending today military and economic aid..

Military and economic aid is a lot different than American fighters shooting down Russian war planes…

joseph33

mrussel1 said:

joseph33 said:

This is just an obersavation,but it seems Russia only steals back territory lost with the dissolution of the Soviet Union under a US Democratic administration. 2016-Obama and now 2022 under Biden. Wonder why this is?

No you're incorrect. Putin invaded Georgia in 2006, during the Bush administration.  

I appreciate that insight,I was unaware. Looks like the dictator has been pushing the world's buttons for sometime now then.

mcgruff10

This was a very insightful article:

Biden's Republican critics are wrong about U.S. gas production, experts say

https://www.yahoo.com/news/more-us-gas-production-wont-affect-russia-ukraine-or-europe-experts-say-200717731.html

The Juggler

mcgruff10 said:

This was a very insightful article:

Biden's Republican critics are wrong about U.S. gas production, experts say

https://www.yahoo.com/news/more-us-gas-production-wont-affect-russia-ukraine-or-europe-experts-say-200717731.html

Insightful, but not surprising.