Russian army casulties

[svenrico]

Originally Posted by Bibio

Putin is a tough, intelligent and rich individual who has clawed his way up the ranks himself so give the man some credit.

I can't believe you are saying that when we see every day on tv what he is doing in Ukraine shelling and destroying towns and murdering civilians.

[svenrico]

Originally Posted by Bibio

not even close.....
how long ago was it the Russians sailed their aircraft carrier past the UK? we never seemed to mind the Putin or the Russians then...
do i condone what Putin is doing NO as i'm a peace loving person but boys will play with their toys. its just that Putin has a lot of BIG toys.
i personally think what the west is doing to Russian bank accounts and media is despicable.
lies and propaganda is everywhere........... on both sides................

Sanctions are the alternative to going to war with Russia and risk madman Putin starting a world war and obliterating us all.
Do you believe the blatant lying propaganda put out by Putin and his lying foreign secretary. If it wasn't so serious the things they come out with would be just taking the p*ss.

[svenrico]

Originally Posted by Bibio

but hey we in the west have been conditioned to believe that the ruskies are bad and not to be trusted. they could say the same about us.
The Russian state is bad ,not all Russian people.
its all a political game but the "people" always come out the worse of their games.
Bit more than just a political game in Ukraine, but yes, the people do come off worst.

if politicians were all to be put in a ring to fight it out we would all be speaking Russian. Putin is a tough, intelligent and rich individual who has clawed his way up the ranks himself so give the man some credit.

And how do you think Putin got all his money ?

[Bibio]

war and murder is happening all over the world. in places like Africa they are butchering each other with machetes this includes hanging babies up like a pinata and cutting them to bits but do you hear about that in the media.... NO. but we are all picking on the Russians.. why? simple answer is media and selling weapons. if it was not so overblown and all over the media then we would not be going so mad about it.

i may seem like i'm uncompassionate but nothing could be further from the truth and i would love nothing more then the world at peace and everyone get along but thats never going to happen but i live in hope.

lets face facts, whats the worst that would happen if the Ukraine surrendered and joined Russia.. nothing apart from a power change. things would go on just as they did but they would be part of Russia. so would it not be in the best interest of Ukraine to surrender for the sake of its people or do they want the bloodshed to keep happening. its the politicians that dont want to give up power and war is always about politicians/monarchy.

[Ruffy]

Originally Posted by Bibio

war and murder is happening all over the world. in places like Africa they are butchering each other with machetes this includes hanging babies up like a pinata and cutting them to bits but do you hear about that in the media.... NO. but we are all picking on the Russians.. why? simple answer is media and selling weapons. if it was not so overblown and all over the media then we would not be going so mad about it.

The difference is the national context for the conflicts. In Africa, it has tended to be "tribes" fighting each other within, or ignoring, national borders, whereas Russia as a nation has attacked another nation. The international 'rules' are only set up to support the existing national boundaries and the media tends to follow national governance structures because that's where the rules are set that enable them to be profitable.

Originally Posted by Bibio

lets face facts, whats the worst that would happen if the Ukraine surrendered and joined Russia.. nothing apart from a power change. things would go on just as they did but they would be part of Russia. so would it not be in the best interest of Ukraine to surrender for the sake of its people or do they want the bloodshed to keep happening.

Let's face facts, what's the worst that could happen if Scotland surrendered and joined England...? Bibio, do you dispute that many of your countrymen would be appalled at that? (I'm just using simple substitution.) Or is it just your 'leader'?

Alternatively: Let's face facts, what's the worst that could happen if Russia surrendered and left Ukraine alone...? Again a straightforward substitution and surely an equally straightforward way to end the conflict?

The problem is getting consensus on what is the best outcome out of a change: Status quo or new arrangement?

Originally Posted by Bibio

its the politicians that dont want to give up power and war is always about politicians/monarchy.

On this I agree with you in general. I would add that war mostly seems to be about control/money nowadays. Having said that I do think there's a place for making a stand from time to time based on principles and values. Sadly, though, elected representatives have often become far too detached from the reality of who they serve so it's difficult for many to discern what those principles and values are.

[svenrico]

Originally Posted by Bibio

war and murder is happening all over the world. in places like Africa they are butchering each other with machetes this includes hanging babies up like a pinata and cutting them to bits but do you hear about that in the media.... NO. but we are all picking on the Russians.. why? simple answer is media and selling weapons. if it was not so overblown and all over the media then we would not be going so mad about it.

i may seem like i'm uncompassionate but nothing could be further from the truth and i would love nothing more then the world at peace and everyone get along but thats never going to happen but i live in hope.

lets face facts, whats the worst that would happen if the Ukraine surrendered and joined Russia.. nothing apart from a power change. things would go on just as they did but they would be part of Russia. so would it not be in the best interest of Ukraine to surrender for the sake of its people or do they want the bloodshed to keep happening. its the politicians that dont want to give up power and war is always about politicians/monarchy.

I doubt whether things would go on just as they did, millions of Ukrainians have already been displaced and we don't now what further atrocities the Russians would carry out against the Ukrainians if Ukraine became part of the Russian Federation. They might not let the refugees who have fled back into Ukraine for all we know. The war should stop by the Russians withdrawing, paying reparations for all the damage they have caused and Putin and others being tried for war crimes.
Whatever happens, assuming we all survive, I hope the world never forgets what the Russians are doing in Ukraine.

[svenrico]

The Independent
Voices: Putin’s next task will be the Russianisation of Ukraine – he has only just begun the horrors
Sean O'Grady 9 hrs ago
One of the most disturbing of developments in Ukraine in recent days – admittedly of many barbarities and atrocities – has been the claim by Mariupol Town Council that thousands of its citizens have been forcibly taken from there to Russia.
Bombing has destroyed a shopping centre in Kyiv - REUTERS© REUTERS
Bombing has destroyed a shopping centre in Kyiv
- REUTERS
This is not been completely independently verified by reliable news sources, and it is difficult to do so, but it is sadly plausible. The propaganda value of hungry Ukrainians fleeing supposed neo-Nazi persecution is obvious.
Mostly women, children and old folk, you’d imagine the traumatised exiles of Mariupol are headed for camps and may never go home; as far as we know there is no programme in Russia for people’s homes to be opened up for the refugees; not least because the bombed-out refugees might start spreading the truth about war crimes.
In the grand scale of the 10 million or so Ukrainians displaced from the homes, the expulsion from Mariupol is a relatively small number. The wider significance lies in what it may tell us about Russian intentions towards those parts of Ukraine it occupies or may continue to occupy during and after the war. It may herald the destruction of Ukraine as a recognisable state. And, more to the point, the west will do precisely nothing militarily to prevent it.
The fear is that Russia will inflict on Ukraine what was called during the Tsarist and Soviet eras “Russification” and “Russianisation”. This means the forcible transformation of a whole region via social and cultural changes, favouring the Russian language, state ideology, religion and way of life.
The most potent weapon was a combination of compulsory deportation of troublesome indigenous peoples and their replacement through state-sponsored migration of a large population of ethnic Russians. The aim was to change the whole character of the a region, supposedly cementing the area inside the Russian/Soviet empire.
If Putin wants to set up Russianised puppet “people’s republics” states in the south and east of Ukraine, or join them into the Russian Federation, this is one method he could deploy. Along with vote-rigging and propaganda, a large transfer of population would secure a pro-Putin majority in any referendum, and legitimatise the dismemberment of Ukraine. In due course it would leave Ukraine at best as a rump state – landlocked, almost surrounded by Russian satellites, permanently menaced by Russia – with many hundreds of thousands of its citizens effectively held hostage in Russia.
How many of the three million Ukrainians, overwhelmingly women and children, will Putin allow back into Ukraine if he wins this war? We assume they’ll be allowed back, to be with their husbands, sons and brothers – but will they? They might be regarded by the Kremlin as unpatriotic renegades and “neo-Nazis”, and the west can have them. They could be replaced by Russians looking for a new life, with land and homes promised to them in new territories controlled by the Kremlin. Language, art, culture – all would be diluted through Russification. Ukrainians would be facing something adjacent to genocide.

[embee]

Originally Posted by Bibio

.... whats the worst that would happen ....

I'll go off at a slight parallel, but something I feel strongly and passionately about.
There is one big, huge, difference between the UK and the rest of mainland Europe. The UK has not been occupied (in the last millenium).

I've spent quite a bit of time in Europe over the years, working and social, and have met and made friends with quite a few people of different generations.
I have a good friend in Hungary, his mother came out of Auschwitz as a teenager at the end of WW2.
There are plaques and stones dotted around France listing names of 19 and 20yr old resistance fighters who were rounded up and shot in the village square. There are concentration camps, not just the big name ones, sitting in countryside in the Ardennes. Picardy is littered with tens of thousands of graves in carefully tended cemeteries. Near the Pyrenees there are memorial stones listing names of Jews who were taken and giving their fates, shot while escaping, deported to concentration camps, died under torture. Oradour-sur-glane is a preserved ruined village in France where civilians were rounded up into a church and blown up, burned, shot, a total of 642 village folk died.

Here in the UK we don't get it. We don't understand what it is about. Apologies for mentioning the Brexit word, but the whole "raison d'etre" of the EU is to prevent a repeat of the previous horrors. People in Europe remember and don't want to go back there. The EU is a union of peoples, many folk in the UK saw it as something "done to us" rather than something we were "a member of". That reflects the lack of understanding of occupation. Johnson's comments drawing parallels between Ukraine's (Ukraine, not "the Ukraine") current fight for freedom from occupation and the UK referendum to leave the EU shows how he has no concept of what freedom, or oppression, actually means. He thinks having straight bananas (such inventions as he made up while working for the Times as EU journalist before being sacked for lying) is oppression. I had the freedom to travel, work, live in the EU along with the other EU members, now I don't. I don't see it as freedom, but that's another issue.

I'm sure Bibio is being genuine in his comments, but we need to try to see the world from a different perspective, the UK view is not only introvert and sheltered but it sometimes creeps into the realms of nationalism, jingoism, popularism, even bigotry and xenophobia, summed up in the "little Britain" mentality that "we" are somehow better than "them". When we ruled India we didn't have damned foreigners telling us what to do. Strangely the Indians did.

The Berlin wall stood for just 28yrs, it was a short lived aberration, but it represented an ongoing hatred and brutality, insecurity and oppression. Let's not go back there.

[Luckypants]

Well said.

[garynortheast]

Very well put Embee. That sums up very well what I and quite a few others feel I think.