Lighthouse

I wouldn’t say, “all the cards,” as such either. Clearly there is an advantage to them with the contract lengths but everything else is still in play. They risk KWP losing interest and taking a deal elsewhere, whilst we will have options other than Downes. Overall is say £15m each is probably a fair price.

Those are the key words there. What they’ll admit to knowing, who they were really after and how they knew they were there, we’ll never know.

Yes but in Gaza there is actually likely to be some merit in what the IDF are saying. Knowing the way all three of those organisations operate I'd say it's possible, bordering on likely that: Hamas deliberately places militants in schools and hospitals The IDF will go after them, not giving a f**k who gets hurt. Russia is quite happy to blow up a hospital full of children with cancer with no military objective, simply because they're c**ts. Who (and how many) the IDF were actually after we will probably never know.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg3j8y6vnw4o

Trump doesn’t lead to a negotiated settlement. Trump leads to a weaker Ukraine and Russian success on the battlefield.

They’re in a weird paradox where their games get progressively easier as they go on. Germany were the next best team in the tournament, that game should have been the final. If they make it to the final, Eng/Ned are both worse than France.

Neither side would agree to anything remotely close to that. Ukraine won’t concede any territory as being legally Russian and Russia wouldn’t give the rest of it back and allow a stack of NATO troops to occupy it.

We’ll have a whole range of potential targets in every position, precisely so that we don’t get ‘bent over a barrel’. We’ll probably be willing to pay a little bit extra for FD because he’s a known quantity but we won’t be throwing silly money at him.

No doubt we have looked at him. He could be a good buy or he could just be a very good Championship player, it’s hard to say.

So your solution is basically that Russia gets everything that it’s taken so far, Ukraine gets nothing any Russia just gets to attack all over again when they’ve spent a couple of years reorganising. I can’t for the life of me see Ukraine agreeing to that.

An indefinite stalemate. North and South Korea are still technically at war, the front line just ground to a halt at the current demilitarised zone. The west stops backing Ukraine, they run out of weapons and Russia occupies the whole country. The west keeps helping Ukraine, Russia eventually runs out of weapons from its allies and gets pushed back to their own borders. NATO/EU membership is then pursued with more rigour. Which of these outcomes transpires will mostly be a question of western appetite to support Ukraine.

And your (rough) proposed agreement is…

Similar sentiments were mooted with ISIS ten years ago. As it was then, nobody can actually propose any kind of agreement that both Russia and Ukraine would agree to. That’s why there hasn’t been one and why there isn’t going to be one, at least one that’s in any way robust.

Russia has gone cap in hand to Kim Jong Un, that's not the action of a nation flush with abundant military supplies. Who is WILLING to supply who with how much of what is all a matter of political sensitivity. If you think NK and Iran are CAPABLE of out supplying the combined US and EU arms industries, you're on a different planet. They're both under massive sanctionsto the point that they have 50 year old commercial airliners held together with gaffer tape. If Trump is elected, thousands of Ukrainians will pay for it with their lives. It's a grim outcome I've got everything crossed doesn't happen.

Which wont be worth the paper it's written on, see my reply to egg, above.

The west haven’t depleted their supplies at all, that’s nonsense. Western supplies are limited by how much money our leaders are willing to spare on this war, which is a politically sensitive issue. Hence why Russian stooges are trying to control the narrative abroad and turn people against the idea of supporting Ukraine. SA is a complete guess on your part. There is no diplomatic solution, they tried that in 2015 with the Minsk agreements. There is nothing Ukraine can, would or should agree to in all of this and even if they did, it would just be a useful convenience for Russia. All they’ll do is regroup, resupply, then tell their own citizens Ukraine is attacking them and attack again in self defence. This war ends when someone loses. We need to make sure it’s Russia.

Sadly they won’t stop dying until Russia is no longer able to attack them. That’s the problem really.

The only language Russia understands in strength. They can see it however they like, they aren’t going to win a fight with NATO so it’d be absurd starting one.

You can respond to that with small scale retaliation, without escalation. I don’t think it’d ever come to that, you’re underestimating how big of a stretch it would be for Russia to launch an unprovoked attack on a NATO position.

What greatly contributed to WW2 was Europe’s most powerful nations sitting around doing nothing except write strongly worded letters, whilst a fanatical dictator seized land from other countries, promised not to do it any more but pretty much did exactly that when he realised everyone was too weak to try and stop him. What’s going on now is the 1938 Anschluss. We’re not talking about punitive sanction on Moscow. In what way is being told to leave a country you’ve invaded and stop bombing hospitals full of children with cancer ‘punitive’?

You say that like it would just happen. The whole point in them being there is that Russia wouldn’t then attack that area for fear of starting a war on their own doorstep.

You’re conflating sending troops into Ukraine with sending troops into Russia. Troops in the large part of Ukraine not occupied would ensure security, not start WW3.

Agreements are worthless. All they would mean is Ukraine signing some paper saying they legally agree to what Putin is doing, whilst he carries on has he pleased. Putin wants control of Ukraine and he’ll keep throwing tens of thousands of men into the meat grinder to try and get it. All Ukraine can do is fight, that’s their only option. NATO should be sending in troops to at least the western 2/3 of the country to maintain peace but they’re too scared to do it apparently. The next best thing is to send Ukraine all the weapons and training we can and hope that it’ll be enough. If we show weakness or reluctance on this, there’re many more parts of the former Soviet Union he’ll go after next. Many Russians interviewed think they should go as far west as Berlin.

Still banging that drum eh.

Speak for yourself, I wasn’t voting based on Brexit in 2019.