I have lost loads of followers over my comments on Ukraine.
GOOD. If you think Russia “has a point” in its barbarous war on Ukraine, then kindly fuck off and never return.
Victory to Ukraine!
A sentiment I strongly share.
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Agreed.
By the way, if Russia is “liberating” Ukraine, how come we haven’t seen streets full of people throwing garlands of flowers at the Russian soldiers, as when the Allies drive through France in 1944?
The Russians are supposed to be good at propaganda and all that stuff. So what’s happened? Have I missed something? Can all those Putin fanboys on here enlighten this simple Suffolk farmer’s son?
They are throwing flowers at the liberating Russian troops, it’s just the MSM refuse to show it… not really, but guaranteed some fucking binlord Putin fanboi is gonna say it.
If Mr Putin is the answer, what on Earth was the question?
I do not think that Putins intention is to ‘liberate’ Ukraine. But considering that Zelensky’s political role model is Justin trudeau, (and his ties to the WEF, Soros and Biden) one does have to wonder if there are really any ‘good guys’ in this conflict.
Good lord, ragingnick, if that is the sort of argument the ‘other side’ is making (& you are the other side), then thank you for putting it beyond a doubt that I am right to think what I do. Yes, Justin Trudeau is an utter cunt. So. What.
Related.
Biden – “It would be fine it we left things up to the Nordic countries”
Finnish President – “Well we usually don’t start wars”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScjajJBZTd8&t=150s
what link was that Snorri? I just get ‘blocked’ even on brave private browser and I use a vpn
Sleepy Joe Biden didn’t start this war, so I don’t get the point you’re making Flubber.
Putin has lost the war the minute he invaded
[Ex Cathedra statement from the management: Fuck off & do not come back]
When I try to “steelman” or “devil’s advocate” for a pro-Putin position, the arguments I come up with are still very weak. And when the best available pro-Putin arguments deserve derisive laughter…
What worries me is the pro-Ukraine cheering becoming both silly and dangerous. Leftists pervert everything they touch, including perversion, and Joe Biden is notorious even by leftist standards for his ability to f- things up.
Also, how many ethnic Russians in Ukraine (and the Baltics, etc.) have the attitude of “God bless and keep Tsar Putin – far away in another country!”? I’ve heard rumblings that there are more than a few.
My apologies, i did not test my link before posting.
Linking to a picture on Instapundit does not work, so i am linking to the post that contains it.
Here is the picture that Snorri was trying to show.
Click on it to be led to an ugly story that reminds us of another way in which Trudeau channels Putin. Just now he echoes the latest narrative (the surprised and hastily rewritten narrative; ten days ago they had written the Ukraine off, sure Putin would roll over it like a dose of salts), but, well, how to put it – Trudeau is a liar (he channels Putin in that too – alas, so do many).
Perry.
No, a cunt has a purpose. Trudeau does not, and would probably need a Satnav to find one in a brothel.
“If you think Russia ‘has a point’ in its barbarous war on Ukraine, then kindly fuck off and never return.”
Yes. I’ve actually given up on two or three sites I’ve been visiting for years because of this very sort of nonsense.
The question I inevitably find myself asking these people as I go out the door is:
“You do realize that no matter how you try to paint this situation, you end up in the unenviable position of being an apologist for Russia?“
Many. Look at changes in voting over years in Ukraine: each time pro-Russian vote declined as more and more Russian speakers became disillusioned with Moscow oriented parties.
There was a NY Times article about Russians in Estonia. The reporter visited a class in Narva (just across the border from Russia, 88% Russian population) and asked the pupils whether they’d like to live in Ivangorod (on the other side of the border). The pupils burst out laughing.
Or so the reporter wrote: I am sure that some people here (and you know which people i mean) will rush to remind me that we cannot trust the NYT.
According to Wikipedia, Canadians with Ukrainian ancestry are more than twice as many as Canadians with Russian ancestry.
This might explain Trudeau’s position in the current crisis.
Query: since a legacy Russian population within another post-Soviet country’s borders seems to be the only excuse Putin needs to intimidate and potentially invade that country, would it not be in the interests of those countries to now formally recognise their own longstanding breakaway areas as separate independent countries (Transnistria, South Ossetia, etc.), and urgently to start strengthening the borders with those areas?
Those territories do not seem likely ever to be persuaded to rejoin the country of which they are officially supposed to be part, so why not limit the threat they pose by making their de facto independence de jure?
ragingnick
A certain Mr Putin was also a student of the World Economic Forum – I know the WEF have scrubbed their website (to remove all references to his name), but some of us have long memories.
Mr Putin (not “Russia” – Mr Putin) has attacked the people of the Ukraine, he has NOT attacked the international establishment (who, privately, may be delighted with what has happened – as it gives people such as Mr Trudeau a perfect excuse for their agenda), Mr Putin has attacked THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE.
Neither you nor me may agree with who the people of Ukraine voted for in 2019 – but that is not our decision. They voted for Z – and that is the end of the matter.
Mr Putin must go. He was always an evil man, but now he has a rabid dog – and must be put down.
“But the international establishment….” – I know, I know, I know. It can not be helped.
Ok. Bye.
Have fun with the Uke Nazis.
When you chose the lab you know you are wrong.
I, too, denounce the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and I hope it fails. But I also condemn the following attacks, invasions, and coups:
Afghanistan, Belarus, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Egypt, Granada, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Iran, Kazakhstan, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Serbia, Somalia, Sudan Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen…
and assassinations,
Lumumba, Hammarskjold, Suleimani, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, al-Awlaki (and 16 yo son), JFK, RFK, MLK (?), Sammy Weaver, Vicky Weaver, Waco…
Do you condemn these, too, or don’t they matter, or do you even support some of them?
By lab I, I mean kgb dam computers.
I don’t think we are doing ourselves any favours by pretending that Putin is simply a latter-day Hitleresq megalomanic. Ukraine is really Georgia 2.0 (with almost exactly the same motivation behind it), which itself was sort of Russia’s version of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It’s certainly not justifiable in any moral sense, but it is understandable from a (very cold-blooded) strategic perspective.
Or you could do what Ukraine did and lob artillery and mortars into those areas at civilians for 8 years…
The proportionate response by Russia was the initial one – send ‘peacekeepers’ into the region and secure it, with an intent to incorporate them into Russia itself proper. I’ve commented elsewhere this is why Trump said it was ‘genius’ – everybody would have lived with that outcome. Ukraine would bitch and moan, but they would have accepted it. So would NATO and the US.
But Putin gave away his game by attacking other parts of Ukraine. He was not just content with just those supposedly ‘pro-Russian’ regions.
That says a lot about what he really wants.
Russia’s ‘point’ and to be fair there were a number of valid concerns about NATO expansion and separatists in the Donbas (Hitchens goes into some of these in his comments at the Mail), all evaporated when tanks crossed the border. Invading a sovereign nation is a moral wrong that trumps all the ‘issues’ that Russia might have had.
And to Bob Sykes with his underlying accusations of hypocrisy – like Hitchens, I do object to those incursions. As I said, invasion is a moral wrong, whoever does it, so the whataboutery is a distraction.
Bob Sykes refers to the killing of JFK in his piece of whataboutism.
Now we are in the realms of lunacy.
I’m surprised we haven’t been told that the Moon landings were faked at this point.
Depends. Some are entirely legit overthrow of manifest tyrants, others just geopolitical shenanigans. One size does not fit all.
Claims the 2014 overthrow of a Ukrainian government that had imprisoned (& poisoned) opposition politicians & killed over 100 protestors was somehow a bad thing (or a CIA plot) & comparable to the appalling Waco Massacre… yeah right, that is a bit bonkers.
Cool, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
As has been extensively documented on here, how many western citizens died when their governments restricted treatments for Covid?
If we’re talking body counts….
The west hasn’t a leg to stand on in its moral grandstanding
Bob Sykes – please give an example in detail of what you mean, do not just give us a list of places and names. For example, it is good that you condemn the rigged election in “Belarus” – but are you suggesting that it is the West that is keeping the dictator in Belarus in power?
Pick out a place from the list you have given us – and explain-what-you-mean. In some cases you may have a case against the United States – and, in a spirit of helpfulness, I will give you an example (and it is not on your list).
CANADA – the American government campaign to support the Canadian Liberal Party against the Canadian Conservative Party in the 1960s.
Canada was a democratic country and an ally of the United States – what the American government did, starting with the orders of President Kennedy, was clearly unjustified interference.
Flubber – you are illustrating a point I have often made, the REAL Mr Putin is nothing like the Mr Putin that people in the West have in their minds.
Clearly, in your mind Sir, Mr Putin followed a fundamentally different policy to the international establishment on Covid 19.
But he did not Sir – he really did not.
The same blunders (or worse than blunders) of Covid lockdowns, smearing Early Treatment, and pushing mass injections, have been made by Mr Putin as have been made in most Western countries.
Some dictatorships did not have Covid lockdowns – for example Nicaragua and Belarus, but Mr Putin DID have a Covid lockdown. And some democracies did not have Covid lockdowns either – not just Sweden, but (and hardly anyone seems to have noticed) even large and densely populated JAPAN did not have a Covid lockdown – there were some local restrictions, but even they were normally NOT backed up by threats of fines and imprisonment.
As for Early Treatment – you were far more likely to get good Early Treatment for Covid 19 in a very poor country such as the Dominican Republic than you were in Russia.
Remember what the NHS is really based on – not a “Welsh mining village” or “the fraternal society of the Great Western Railway” (or all the other nonsense stories the BBC push), the British NHS created in 1948 was based on the Soviet health service that was created some 20 years before.
The idea that most Russians get wonderful free market health care is total Moonshine.
bob sykes (March 5, 2022 at 8:01 pm) is using the well-known propaganda technique of making a lot of ill-defined accusations at high speed, so for any would-be responder attempting to define and then debate them all would need pages. I recall once hearing a (literally) fast-talking Labour MP in a radio debate get 15 accusations into his very short slot, leaving his (not very) Tory opponent no chance of addressing them all.
The up-side is that you can pick the one you prefer to answer, and ignore the rest. What the FBI and the MSM did to the Weavers then meant I’m less surprised at how they treat critics of woke education now.
However this does not have any relevance to the topic. The scattershot propaganda technique is also intended to trick people into talking about anything and everything except the point.
Agree completely.
Utterly irrelevant.
Yes Niall – it is a well know propaganda technique.
Make lots of different accusations – list lots and lots of things, without going into detail on any of them (because if one actually explained an example, one might be shown to be wrong).
And also the method of trying to distract attention away from bad behaviour, such as the attack on the Ukrainian people by Mr Putin, by pointing to other (alleged) bad behaviour.
“Do not punish me for murdering this person – because someone else killed someone some time ago”.
Killed who? Under what circumstances?
“Oh you are just being so UNFAIR – you are PICKING ON ME”.
I haven’t heard anyone say Putin has a point, just like nobody ever said the Soviets had a point. But we had the sense to know what the Soviets would go to war over, and not to cross those red lines unnecessarily.
Bringing NATO into Ukraine was always an unnecessary provocation. Neutrality was a perfectly acceptable settlement for the West, allowing broad freedom and continued life for the Ukrainian people.
If the Ukrainians want more freedom than that, if they want the freedom to oppose Russia militarily, I would say they are very unwise, but in any case that would only be their own preference, not an interest of the West or NATO, and nothing the West should fight for.
NATO itself is not benefited by NATO expansion into high conflict areas. It should be trying to avoid unnecessary conflict, since those conflicts will be with NATO.
But going non-neutral is craziest for the Ukrainians. Negotiate for neutrality and live vs. insist on allying against Russia and die. I very much want them to live.
NATO is a strictly defensive alliance. There was never any danger of NATO deciding one day to start rolling across the border toward Moscow. Calling Ukraine joining NATO a “provocation” is to completely turn the situation on its head. The provocation is Putin’s amply demonstrated policy of of expanding Russia’s borders.
NATO was NOT brought into Ukraine.
The Ukraine did NOT join NATO.
Anyone who is saying that the Ukraine was allowed in NATO, in order to try and justify Mr Putin’s attack on the Ukrainian people, is not telling the truth.
No, but in November the US and Ukraine signed an agreement indicating US support for that possibility. This was insanely stupid and constituted geopolitical malpractice.
To be absolutely clear, this absolutely does not justify Putin’s invasion. In a just world, an independent country could join any other group or association of countries for whatever non-aggressive purposes they liked. We do not live in a just world. This agreement didn’t justify Putin, but it clearly lays the mess at the feet of the Biden administrtion.
Correct. I should have said more clearly that “the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO” was not a provocation.
“NATO is a strictly defensive alliance. ”
I don’t like Putin but surely you can see how he, and many other Russians if not most, don’t see it that way. Anymore than we saw the Warsaw Pact as defensive. Whether or not the Russians are paranoid in this regard does not affect their perceptions, right or wrong.
Much as I loath the Biden administration (not that they seem capable of administering much), this really is an example of the Americocentric delusion.
Putin is not doing this in response to the actions of the USA in any strategic sense beyond his often stated perception of moral and intellectual weakness in the west. He is doing this to recreate the Russian Empire. The NATO element is an excuse that makes sense to people in the west who think everything revolves around them (which is why Russia Today keep trumpeting it), but that is clearly just one of many issues, not the core motivation.
Putin has hardly been keeping what he thinks a secret, but many in the west did not want to hear it, preferred their own explanation, such as fantasies about the CIA. As I have commented before, it is a bit like attributing all manner of complex geopolitical motivations to fundamentalist Islamists who blow themselves up shouting “Death to all infidels! Allah Akbar!” rather than just taking them at their word why they are doing what they are doing.
Putin is just doing what he has said should be done in Russian for Russian audiences. All the rest is obfuscation aimed at foreign ‘useful idiots’ (technical term).
On my own Facebook home page I posted the famous photo of Mussolini, his mistress, and another pair of Fascist party leaders handing by their heals after they were hung by their necks. I very much look forward to seeing a similar photo of Vlad Putin.
I also have suggested to friends that a statue to Zelinsky should be erected in Manhattan in a location where those attending the UN General Assembly cannot help but see it on their way work.
I have also been noticing, in case there is someone else who has not, that the Ukrainians are handing Putin his head on a platter. The Russian logistics effort has been abysmmal They have lost hardware due to lack of fuel. They have an army stuck on a road where it has to be resupplied and probably is not being resupplied. The Ukrainians have a limited air force but it is still operational and still effective. The Russians have taken huge losses in material, tanks, planes, helicopters and personnel carriers. It is difficult in the fog of war to get any realistic numbers, but I suspect the Russians have lost 4000 dead at least; some sources give 10000. Russian internal documents have been leaked.
There is good reason to believe that although Ukraine will be devastated, that it will pay a terrible price in blood, it will succeed in ejecting the invader.
I very much doubt Putin will long survive the war. The only question in my mind is whether he gets a retirement dacha that is above ground or not.
Incidentally, I highly recommend the Stoic Finance youtube channel. The guy who runs it sounds like someone who belongs on Samizdata.
The timing of the attack – perhaps influenced by the hope that the west would be particularly in need of Russian energy for heating – was rather close to the spring rasputitsa. The Ukrainians are reported to have enhanced the effect with deliberate flooding.
As they are also said to have damaged border railways and be defending railway junctions, resulting in Russian columns backed up on roads, the inconvenience to the Russians of boggy ground and higher fuel use churning through mud may be significant.
Dale Amon says: “There is good reason to believe that although Ukraine will be devastated, that it will pay a terrible price in blood, it will succeed in ejecting the invader.”
This is the danger of filtering your news consumption to just the things that confirm your wishful thinking. You end up believing things that are delusional. Ukraine’s military has been unable to reclaim the territories in the Donbass from mostly unorganized irregular forces in 8 years of trying. In the last two weeks they now have all of the pre-existing adversaries plus a healthy chunk of the Russian army controlling a much larger portion of eastern Ukraine and columns of Russian troops nearly encircling their capital. This is not what successfully repelling an invasion looks like, even if the Russians are indeed taking losses in the operation. Anyone familiar with the Russian way of war knows they have a high tolerance for losses and there’s no real indication yet that the losses they are suffering are beyond what they are willing to bear once they’ve set on a mission. By all accounts they are achieving their stated war objectives even if the costs are higher than they may have expected.
But part of their reason for invading has been Ukraine’s close cooperation with western militaries, including their importation of western defence systems and western training of the army. And in fact these air defence systems and anti-tank missiles have proven effective in combat. What actual evidence do we have that Russia didn’t expect that, given that this was one of their stated reasons for invading?
Seems like a straw man. The term “has a point” has too many meanings that can ve equivocated on in order to straw man opponents. Having a point doesn’t entail much when some action requires much more justification than one or two points. I csn be opposed to Putin and cheer on Ukrainians use of Trump’s javelin missiles against Russian tank, while still thinking Putin has made some valid points. How about some nuance.
I can think Putin is evil as are his actions plus consider this guy, Mearsheimer had lots of valid points about how we got here.
https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4