badgerx16

Do away with internal markets and keep it well away from interfering politicians.

What a load of tripe.

2 items of interest on the news today; First, Rishi Sunak's wife is a 'non-dom' for tax purposes, but nobody knows where she actually does pay tax, ( if at all ). Second, Kwasi Kwateng says that in this country 'we do not impose infrastructure on people, it requires local consent'. So that rules out any chance of reopening the fracking wells. Good.

If the stories of the Explosive Reactive Armour pads on some tanks actually effectively being empty cardboard boxes as the explosives and electronic components have been stripped out for the black market, that wouldn't help.

Ukraine has no experience with modern US armour so would need extensive training, and the engines on the M1 require specialist engineering tools and facilities. Much better to go with the Poland proposal; any NATO member with Russian tanks passes them to Ukraine and the US then backfills their units with reserve M1s. The only issue there might be where countries like Poland, Slovenia, and Bulgaria have upgraded T-72s etc. with modern western tech that NATO might not want to risk falling into Russian hands on the battlefield.

Considering there are plenty of images coming out of Ukraine showing troops with WW1 rifles and pre-WW2 machine guns, they have issues throughout their armoury. According to some reports only 1 in 10 of the thousands of tanks in long term storage have been capable of being brought up to operational status.

Maybe Trump's imposition of trade tariffs and talk of reducing US commitment to NATO, as demonstrated by his reduction in troop numbers stationed here, led European countries to think of looking for security elsewhere, including closer economic ties with Russia.

It is comparatively easy for the UK to remove Russian energy supplies from it's services. It is also easy for us, on our anti-Eu Brexit island, to criticise European countries that are far more heavily dependent on those same Russian fuels. Where is the evidence that the UK is providing assistance to countries such as Germany to help them wean themselves off the Russian gas and oil, or should we simply continue to sit back and criticise ?

The problem is that almost all EU members are also members of NATO and any more overt military assistance would be claimed as evidence of NATO aggression by Putin.

Maiden

From the videos posted on Reddit I reckon one of the most useful things we could send to Ukraine is more John Deere tractors to help with recovering abandoned Russian kit.

There should be a process whereby the full Council of the UN can convene and over rule a Security Council veto with a given majority, say 80% of member countries.

The UN can, and do, act. Just not when one of the 5 permanent members of the Security Council is involved.

The Czechs are sending T-72s and BMP-1s to Ukraine, Sweden is intending to send a number of their BMP-1 clones, and Germany is to approve the export, via a private dealer, of former East German BMPs.

TBF, they would still be stuck in Poland waiting for visas.

Shows how easy it is to control public opinion when you have total control of the media it all it's forms.

With Russia it isn't just running down of inventory, it's the servicability and reliability of what they have.

A film where Elena Eleniak comes out of a cake topless. ( And Steven Segal plays a US Navy cook ).

Have you never seen Under Siege ?

The only thing Alexei is sure about is that nobody ought to stand up to Putin.

Putin can do what the fuck he wants as long as you don't have to pay 5p/litre more at the pumps.

Hazelnut 🙂 🙂 🙂

Yes, unless you don't want to be occupied or dominated by Russia.

Hell no !!! Give the Little Red Hitler everything he wants, and allow him to go wherever he wants to overrun and sequester all of Greater Russia without any form of opposition. Appeasement is the easy, cheaper, and least painful option every time.