Jimmy_D

This should be about 5-3 this half alone. Shocking finishing on display.

Leeds right in it now, bad luck on top of leaking goals that badly...

It’s not just Chelsea. The funds behind Everton seem to be in danger of being affected by sanctions. Also to a lesser extent Newcastle, that’s probably just down to PIF having a wide portfolio of investments, something was probably going to be hit.

Shots blocked by defenders don’t go in either.

Two great goals for different reasons. Adams reacting extremely quickly in the way he did to take that chance, and Romeu with one of the cleanest and sweetest hits of a football you'll see all season. Romeu MotM for me, but only just in front of Salisu and KWP. One of the most comfortable wins we've had since, uh, Everton at home?

Getting bogged down in a drawn out war would be a disaster for Putin, I think he might have been caught slightly off guard by the level of resistance that's been shown. He's been appealing to the Ukraine military to overthrow the govornment too.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1149 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2549

The USA is already sending more forces to NATO countries and pledging to fulfil its article 5 obligations.

So we should base whether we honour treaties on whether we think Putin is nuts enough to directly attack a nuclear power with the ‘Moscow Criterion’ as part of its Nuclear Policy?

‘If’ we get into military conflict with Russia? The minute NATO is attacked we already are.

The NATO treaty means that we wouldn’t be making a decision to go to war, we’d be making a decision to break up NATO. That’s something we wouldn’t have an appetite for. All this assumes that Putin thinks he can take on NATO, or gambles that NATO will break up. Even without having to go through Ukraine first, that would be a massive leap.

Defending NATO is something Putin will fully be expecting. If that results in an attack on the UK, it’ll be because Putin is crazy enough to want to attack the UK anyway.

You think Putin is ready to face the consequences of an attack on the UK?

What do you think the world’s response would be to an attack on the UK? What makes you think Putin would think he had anything to gain from an attack on the UK? Biden is currently pledging to defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of the USA’s military. What makes you think Putin will believe it’s a bluff?

You keep framing the invasion of a NATO country as something small. Surely then, defending said country would also be ‘small’, but then you say that that could result in military action against the British Mainland, an action that would decidedly NOT be small. The invasion of a NATO country would NOT be small, and the breaking of the NATO treaty would be a massively unpopular move. It’s ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

Imagine that the level of protesting being reported will have taken Putin by surprise a bit, considering what they’re risking. As for here, I can only speak for myself and the people I’ve spoken to today, but it’s been unanimous that any leader that broke the NATO treaty would lose our support.

Like I said, the ramifications of breaking the NATO treaty would be too big to ignore. If we didn’t want to be obliged to defend them, the time to decide that was when they were admitted to NATO.

I don’t think removal from SWIFT is off the table, but regardless of that, sanctions currently in place are having a massive impact on the Russian economy already.

That’s not a good sign for Ukraine, but it in no way indicates that NATO wouldn’t respond to an invasion of a NATO country.

I don’t think they want to stop at Ukraine. I do think that a united response against Russia over Ukraine is likely to make Putin calculate it’ll cost too much to go up against NATO.

Waiting isn’t going to make NATO any smaller or move its borders though. Invading, and perhaps more importantly, holding Ukraine, will have significant cost as well.

The cost of (possibly) losing some approval ratings with the USA electorate would be far less than every USA ally questioning the worth of any treaty the USA is party to.

Because they don’t want to break a treaty that obliges them to? I’m really not sure why you think it’d be such a small thing to do that.

Putin could probably have occupied the separatist regions in the same way he has Crimea. A full scale invasion of the whole of Ukraine has rapidly put everyone opposing him on the same page.

Obviously very early at the moment, but a long drawn out guerrilla war in Ukraine with Ukraine forces quietly bolstered by Special Forces for the foreseeable future. If Putin still has support after that I think he’ll calculate the risk of invading NATO too high.