Millbrook Saint

Agree and it's absolutely disgusting that it's happened, NATO should welcome the rest of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden into the fold if that's what they wish, place troops at the borders and send a message to Putin that he can go no further, Russia should then not be dealt with until the return of Crimea and the East of Ukraine, don't suppose it will happen with the guy sleeping at the wheel of the US though.

I know the ramifications of sending them, possibility of ww3, china possibly getting involved, putin justifying what he's doing, but I don't see any other option, other than letting him get away with what he's doing, he's already starting to threaten other non NATO countries, the only reason he invaded Ukraine, not matter what he says was because he wanted their land, what happens when he wants some of Finlands' land, we just let him take it?

The end game is nigh, Putin has settled for the land bridge to Crimea..... for now, this he will achieve just with sheer numbers and the terror inflicted on civilians, 21000 estimated to be killed in Mariupol alone, rapes, executions and chemicals all used as weapons on civilians and all he west do is talk of charging him with war crimes, I bet he's scared. At some point bullies need to be stood up to, the very least we should be doing is supplying the weapons Ukraine have asked for, I'd even think about deploying troops to stop this land being stolen, it's a criminal act of aggression, he messed up this time with his lack of preparedness, a mistake he won't make again, we should have taken advantage of that, yes soldiers will be killed but stopping him now may well cause less deaths long term than letting him get away with it. Defending Ukraine is a noble cause unlike Iraq or Afghanistan.

Don't really care about Germany's self inflicted problem, it's nothing compared to the raping of women and children and the executions of civilians they're funding, they should end all business with Russia now and ration gas if need be till they can sort their shit out, if I was German I'd be more than happy to have my gas rationed if it would help. I agree, we should have invested in nuclear years ago and even when we did we tried to outsource it to China ffs, what could possibly go wrong there, though I'm not even sure what the greens policy on nuclear is? I agree with pretty much this, though a lot of the renewables are heavily subsidised with levies added to our bills. You can't blame any country for taking the cheapest option, at the time it seemed reasonable and no one was complaining, with hindsight it doesn't look so great and we should have set ourselves up to be self reliant. I personally think things like energy supply should not be in the hands of private companies, it should be state owned, but run like a private company, the sole aim should be to keep prices down and the bosses get big bonuses similar to the private sector bonuses but performance is measured on how self sufficient and how cheap the bills are, not how much profit is made. Any profit made can then go back in to funding research. The one thing I'd do though is keep the unions away and not have it run like the NHS where it's just a money pit and bad management is piled on top of bad management. Well that's my 3 for today

It's shameful how the West have allowed this to happen, I'm not sure how much we use but I'm pretty sure it'll be a fair amount more than we produce, the fault of this lies fully at all governments in the past 30 odd years who have not planned ahead and pushed green agendas before national energy safety. It wouldn't surprise me if some putin's propaganda machine pushed some of these green agendas in an attempt to make us more reliant on them. Would love to see who was behind the lobbying of the government to stop fracking.

Listen, I don't want to get into Trump did this or that, fact of the matter is, they were warned and just scoffed at the person warning them, by the way he talked of reducing his NATO commitment because certain countries weren't paying their agreed amount. Regardless, the EU have sent the same amount of military aid, $1b dollars to Ukraine as they send to Russia EACH DAY for oil and gas. Nice one EU, keep funding the genocide in Ukraine.

I have little sympathy for the Germans or the EU for that matter, they were warned that they were too reliant on Russian oil and gas and they're opening themselves to being blackmailed and so it's transpired, unfortunately the guy warning them was Trump so they just laughed at him. Goes to show, don't play the man, play the ball.

This is one of the reasons why I think Putin will get his land bridge, either that or we'll all be getting involved, there's no way Ukraine can keep this up long term, no matter how well they're fighting Russia will just wear them down with a war of attrition, unless of course we significantly increase the supplies to them. All the while Germany and the EU are still funding Russia's genocide machine with billions of dollars for gas and oil supplies, they should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves

Whilst this is a problem, you can't just let Putin, or any scumbag get away with this by using the get out of jail free card of 'see told you they were the aggressors' if anyone dares comes to the defence of a country being invaded and war crimes are being committed. One of 2 things will likely happen, Putin will get his land bridge to Crimea, or the West will be drawn into a war with Russia, I think the maniac would be happy with either. I just can't see how Putin will step back now, he has too much to lose and I can see him thinking if I go I'll take the West with me.

Don't get fooled into disregarding what someone says just because you dislike them, he makes completely plausible arguments in his report, seems like putin's main aim was to get this land corridor down to Crimea, he seems to have arrogantly thought he could take over the whole of Ukraine at the same time with little or no resistance, we all know what happened next, he could well be falling back to his initial aim to save face and even this is something that should not be allowed. I also think he's correct in his assertion that placing NATO troops in Ukraine before all of this may well have have angered putin, but he would not have dared invaded with them stationed there.

Which NATO states have been invaded by Russia then? You know full well Russia would think twice about chucking nukes into any NATO country, or for that matter any other country which have them for the simple fact they'd get them back. It may or may not have stopped conventional wars in that time, but my thinking is that if Russia thought they had the upper hand over NATO ie they had nukes and NATO didn't they would be more encouraged to invade, threatening a non nuclear country with their nukes if they dared fight back. You seem to be a bit of a contrarian who would argue the sky is green, I guess it's up to people whether they think you're a cock or not

I agree with this, Zelenskyy is having to use anyone who can fight at the moment but at heart he is a democrat and reformer and was trying to stop the corruption, after this war is over and if he survives, he will have the whole nation behind him and will find it easier to root out the far right and corruption, the whole country will have a common enemy in Russia and I'd like to think the West will help rebuild the country and they can be welcomed in to the fold

I agree with a lot of that, especially about the closer economic ties creating a better relationship with Russia, what I would say though, we had a massive red flag in 2014 when he invaded Crimea, we should have started backing off then. Also Germany and France were democracies and not run by gangsters, even a cursory glance at the way Russia was run would have revealed this, but I guess the West were too complacent. As for Trump, the bloke is clearly an egotistical twat, but I would say he viewed what he was doing as best for the US, whether you agree with that or not is up to you. Not sure Putin wanted Trump in power (has this even been proved?) for any other reason than he knew how much division it would cause in the US, he probably gambled that the division would be so great he would only be in power for a single term taking the focus off him, how did the Russians even support Trump, I've never seen any proof of it, there was 4 years of trying to prove collusion with Russia and none was found, if anything I suspect the Russians supported both sides, trying to stir as much division as possible.

that bit of wisdom was laughed at by German diplomats when he tried to warn them and I don't see any leaders of any political party doing, or suggesting anything about our reliance on china/russia, the greens don't count as they probably want to stop us using any gas whatsoever and all sit around in jumpers to keep warm. I never once said I was a Trump fan, I just don't let the fact I dislike someone stop me from listening to what they have to say and making my own mind up. Unlike you who it would seem just writes off anything someone says because you dislike them. Or is it anyone on the right is an idiot, whilst anyone on the left is an educated well informed person, seems like bigotry to me.

Say what you want about Trump and mostly he is a dick, but he called out the Germans for relying on gas from russia and they laughed at him, not so funny now is it, he also called out the West's reliance on China and has been pretty much ignored. We need to start moving away from the reliance on both these countries, once this is over russia will just sell gas to china, who will be using money made from the west to pay for it, which in turn will just go back towards building russias' military again.

Salisu seems to think he's better than he is, trying to spray balls around which don't reach the intended recipient, fannying about at the back and losing the ball, he's definitely got potential but he isn't there yet, his agent needs to get out his ear and let him learn his trade, then the real big clubs will come calling

Come off it, he clearly said in his post that it wasn't a reflection of those serving, but more a reflection of how we've allowed our armed services to dwindle down over the years and I tend to agree, we've got complacent, thinking that we've cured war and peace will be around forever, we forget that peace is only achieved through keeping people like putin in check, the moment you give them an inch and they smell complacency they will move, we need to increase our armed forces to how it once was

Nope bring back fracking and make it state owned with profits going back in to research for renewables and become self sufficient, this war should be a lesson to us all that we cannot rely on other countries, particularly those with maniacs running them

As revolting as it sounds, what happens in a months time when people can't afford to heat their homes, there's already been protests on the streets about the cost of living, the government has to factor this in, of course they have to discuss unpalatable things, to not do so would be negligent, personally I don't mind taking the hit if it helps the Ukranian people, but there are people who won't be able to, then it will be all about those nasty tories not helping them when fuel prices go up. The government needs to come out and explain to people why their bills are going to get higher and it's a small hardship we're going to have to endure to help end the war.

Pretty sure we want to take that action but the scumbag lawyers are holding it up, I believe there will be new legislation coming through in the next week or so to allow this, seems fair enough getting new legislation to me, people need to have protection from their government just deciding to take peoples property and money from their banks for no good reason, or you end up like Canada, with that madman Trudeau just taking your money as he doesn't like what you're protesting about

And meanwhile the coward and his family are hiding in a nuclear bunker in the middle of Siberia, though granted he probably needs to watch his back now

warriorsaint, is that keyboardwarriorsaint? can just see you sat there now, gurning at the screen as you tug one out, you pathetic, intellectual pigmy

Hope you're right, but you telling me the Chinese won't like what's happening, I'm sure they'll be more than happy to buy more gas from them, to help prop them up whilst they give the west a bloody nose, as you say China will take them to the cleaners but not before using them to the full extent they can. You think it was a coincidence they waited till the winter olympics finished before invading, one whole day they waited, I heard on the news this morning Chinese citizens have been told to place Chinese flags on their cars, I wonder why. Russia and Chine are fully in cohoots over this, the Chinese may not be directly involved but they will be fully onside with the Russians behind the scenes.

You tell me, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, getting away with this will just embolden him

This is the beginning of the end of the West holding the power, China will now be watching to see how we respond, when they see that a few rich Russians have their banks frozen they'll see that as a green light for Taiwan. Does anyone trust Putin to stop at Ukraine, anyone who does are probably the same people who thought it would stop with Crimea. In a few months Ukraine will be another Belarus and people will move on, then in a few years his troops will be on a 'peacekeeping mission' to another country, meanwhile our politicians will talk of sanctions and negotiations, at some point we will have to face up to the bully and the sooner the better, problem is, he's a lunatic, if he's losing will he press that big red button? At the very best we will be heading into a cold war, this time though Russia will be propped up by China and the middle east buying their commodities. China are then propped up by the West and our lust for cheap goods and outsourcing everything to them. The US no longer has the economic muscle to bankrupt Russia like they did in the last cold war.