Putin Testing NATO Borders Security Chiefs Warn of Russian Probing in Estonia and Finland

[stoner]

8 hours ago, Excogitator said:

You sound like one of those spoilt, entitled rightwing Karens, criticizing everything about the free and democratic welfare states you comfortably grew up in, now pining for autocratic rule just because you feel your 'privileges' are somehow in danger of being 'taken away' from you..

 

how long did it take you to memorize this drivel ? what self respecting grown man calls another man a karen. grow up. 

 

 

[MalcolmB]

29 minutes ago, Gweiloman said:

It’s been over 2 years. They’d better get a move on before they become a laughing stock, if they aren’t already.

The mighty USA and allies were in Afghanistan for 20 years and lost. 
it is hard invading countries.

 

The US would be better off just shooting Putin like they did to Osama Bin Laden.

i have been thinking about doing myself.

[stoner]

2 minutes ago, MalcolmB said:

i have been thinking about doing myself.

 

don't shoot yourself. there is still hope in life. be strong. 

[AreYouGerman]

14 hours ago, Tug said:

help Ukraine push that subhuman criminal out of their country!

 

Yes, Zelensky should finally leave the Ukraine and go to his passport country to end this complete disaster.

[MalcolmB]

3 minutes ago, stoner said:

 

don't shoot yourself. there is still hope in life. be strong. 

Yeah you are right. 

[MangoKorat]

Its totally mind boggling that one man, a lunatic at that, can hold the whole world to ransom.  How has this been allowed to happen? It seems we learned nothing from WW2.

 

The signs have been there for years - nobody with good intentions needs to control the press, convince their people that the West is against them and the cause of all their problems. A reasonable and decent person doesn't need to dispose of their opposition, rig elections and raise nationalism to huge levels. Its plain and simple 'conditioning' of the people. There are clear echoes of the manipulation that Germany experienced from 1933 - 1939.

 

People may say that Putin wouldn't dare 'push the button', that he would not be able to do it alone. Does anyone believe that Hitler wouldn't have used nuclear weapons if he'd had them?  Who in Russia, would have the guts to stand up to Putin?  Most of those who might have already been dealt with and the rest live in fear.

 

It must be remembered that we are not dealing with a reasonable person - Putin knows exactly what his destiny is.  If he loses the war in Ukraine, he loses power in Russia.  If he starts something bigger and loses, he'd ultimately die.  To use the words of Winston Churchill - 'Beware of driving men to desperation. Even a cornered rat is dangerous'.

 

I wouldn't put anything beyond Putin and I think the West will regret not standing up to him sooner.

[Excogitator]

1 hour ago, Gweiloman said:

The fact is that Russia doesn’t want to occupy Ukraine. When you get such a simple fact wrong, the rest of your post is just nonsense.

Really? So why did they invade Ukraine then? Just for sh!ts and giggles, and a bit of sadistic fun for their evil little dictator..?

 

I believe you are the purveyor of nonsense around here...

[Excogitator]

33 minutes ago, stoner said:

 

how long did it take you to memorize this drivel ? what self respecting grown man calls another man a karen. grow up. 

 

 

Ah, another rightwing Karen..

 

I didn't have to memorize anything Karen, I wrote it all down, Karen..

 

 

[stoner]

Just now, Excogitator said:

Ah, another rightwing Karen..

 

I didn't have to memorize anything Karen, I wrote it all down, Karen..

 

 

 

ok.

[Excogitator]

Just now, stoner said:

 

ok.

By the way, what kind of self respecting grown man calls himself 'stoner'? 

 

You know you're not supposed to drink the bong-water, right?

[stoner]

1 minute ago, Excogitator said:

By the way, what kind of self respecting grown man calls himself 'stoner'? 

 

You know you're not supposed to drink the bong-water, right?

 

ok.

[herfiehandbag]

7 hours ago, billd766 said:

I doubt that Putin would die immediately in any nuclear holocaust because he would immediately be moved to a safe place before it started.

 

However, if I remember my training it may be years before it would be safe enough to even go outside and that would be wearing complete nuclear protective gear. There would be few, if any survivors, no food could be grown and safely eaten, there would be no electrical or water supplies, no manufacturing of anything.

 

Sure he would be the undisputed leader, but of a destroyed nation of ashes and nuclear waste.

If I may suggest - and I understand you were RAF, then your training was based on the supposition that any nuclear strike on airfields and their surrounds would be accompanied/ followed by a massive saturation of persistent chemical agents. The nuclear attack would destroy or damage infrastructure, the persistent chemical would result in personnel not being able to operate to repair or replace infrastructure for a long period. So the effect would be to take the airbase or whatever "fixed facility" out of the game effectively permanently.

 

The current scenario is rather different. Firstly NATO, even if the US chooses to sit things out, still has with the UK and France an effective deterrent and counterstrike capacity, submarine based and invulnerable to destruction in an initial strike. Secondly modern forces are more agile and better equipped and able to survive on such a battlefield.

 

Massive strikes on civilians targets would be counterproductive, and the size numbers of and dispersion of population centres throughout Europe is much greater than in Russia, where they are much more concentrated. The same is true of fixed defence installations like airfields or naval bases.

 

Nuclear war would be terrible, it would cause massive damage to society, infrastructure and cause huge civilian casualties, but it would basically be survivable, and more so in the West than for Russia.

 

Don't for a minute go away with the idea that I am endorsing it, of course I am not, but like @billd766, my training and professional education gives me a clear understanding of it. For much of my long, if not particularly glorious, military career, in several posts I served in, it was a field which I both studied, planned and trained for. Thank God I never had to test my training or planning.

 

It would be terrible. We would survive.

 

[AreYouGerman]

1 hour ago, MangoKorat said:

The signs have been there for years - nobody with good intentions needs to control the press

 

So true!

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/world/europe/zelensky-journalism-law-free-speech.html

[Gweiloman]

1 hour ago, Excogitator said:

Really? So why did they invade Ukraine then? Just for sh!ts and giggles, and a bit of sadistic fun for their evil little dictator..?

 

I believe you are the purveyor of nonsense around here...

I don’t think you can handle the truth. But just in case you’re genuinely wondering, I direct you to an interview conducted by Mr. John Anderson, former Deputy PM of Australia and leader of the National Party with Professor Mearsheimer whereby the latter gave his views.

 

I’m expecting some ad hominem attacks by the usual vile posters on these two gentlemen. It takes a seriously under developed mind to favour the arguments of retirees living life on the cheap in Thailand compared to the thoughts and knowledge of two internationally known personalities.

 

 

[Excogitator]

32 minutes ago, Gweiloman said:

I don’t think you can handle the truth. But just in case you’re genuinely wondering, I direct you to an interview conducted by Mr. John Anderson, former Deputy PM of Australia and leader of the National Party with Professor Mearsheimer whereby the latter gave his views.

 

I’m expecting some ad hominem attacks by the usual vile posters on these two gentlemen. It takes a seriously under developed mind to favour the arguments of retirees living life on the cheap in Thailand compared to the thoughts and knowledge of two internationally known personalities.

 

 

I sort of expected you to take the ramblings of braindead radical rightwing lunatics seriously.

 

Wake up man, and find your way back to reality, if you can... 

[billd766]

1 hour ago, herfiehandbag said:

If I may suggest - and I understand you were RAF, then your training was based on the supposition that any nuclear strike on airfields and their surrounds would be accompanied/ followed by a massive saturation of persistent chemical agents. The nuclear attack would destroy or damage infrastructure, the persistent chemical would result in personnel not being able to operate to repair or replace infrastructure for a long period. So the effect would be to take the airbase or whatever "fixed facility" out of the game effectively permanently.

 

The current scenario is rather different. Firstly NATO, even if the US chooses to sit things out, still has with the UK and France an effective deterrent and counterstrike capacity, submarine based and invulnerable to destruction in an initial strike. Secondly modern forces are more agile and better equipped and able to survive on such a battlefield.

 

Massive strikes on civilians targets would be counterproductive, and the size numbers of and dispersion of population centres throughout Europe is much greater than in Russia, where they are much more concentrated. The same is true of fixed defence installations like airfields or naval bases.

 

Nuclear war would be terrible, it would cause massive damage to society, infrastructure and cause huge civilian casualties, but it would basically be survivable, and more so in the West than for Russia.

 

Don't for a minute go away with the idea that I am endorsing it, of course I am not, but like @billd766, my training and professional education gives me a clear understanding of it. For much of my long, if not particularly glorious, military career, in several posts I served in, it was a field which I both studied, planned and trained for. Thank God I never had to test my training or planning.

 

It would be terrible. We would survive.

 

It would be far worse than terrible and if I were in the UK or the EU and it went nuclear, I am not sure if I would want to survive. I was based at RAF Wildenrath and my primary task in the event of a war was to be dispersed with the Harrier field force. We figured that they would make the first wave OK, the second wave would be any surviving aircraft of the first wave and what could be quickly repaired to make the second wave. There might have been something left for a 3rd wave, but the 4th wave would most likely have been us with our 7.62 SLR rifles but no aircraft.

 

As for the nuclear deterrent in the navy, the UK does not have that many and the last test firing of a missile with no warhead was a spectacular failure. It went up and came down very quickly and fortunately it didn't hit the submarine it was launched from.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68355395

 

The UK has no airborne nuclear weapons of any large size since the V bomber force was disbanded.

 

The Royal Navy has only 2 aircraft carriers, 1 around the Red Sea, the Arab Gulf and around Aden. The other covers the rest of the world, The peacetime Army AFAIK is thinly stretched and has little in the way of assets in Germany and the EU. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army#:~:text=As of 1 January 2024,for a total of 110%2C029.

 

From the link

 

 As of 1 January 2024, the British Army comprises 75,166 regular full-time personnel, 4,062 Gurkhas, 26,244 volunteer reserve personnel and 4,557 "other personnel", for a total of 110,029.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Air_Force

 

Royal Air Force
Size    31,025 active personnel 3,028 reserve personnel 404 aircraft.

 

I am not giving any secrets away as all this information is freely available on the internet.

 

For this you can that the UK politicians going as far back as Harold Wilson in the 1960s.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_of_Suez#:~:text=Both the United States and,the Middle East and Asia.

 

In January 1968, a few weeks after the devaluation of the pound,[1][8] Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Defence Secretary, Denis Healey, announced that British troops would be withdrawn in 1971 from major military bases in South East Asia, "east of Aden", primarily in Malaysia and Singapore[12][13][14] as well as the Persian Gulf and the Maldives[15] (both of which are sited in the Indian Ocean), which is when the phrase "East of Suez" entered the vernacular. In June 1970, Edward Heath's government came to power and retained a small political and military commitment to South East Asia through the Five Power Defence Arrangements.[16] Prior to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China, Britain based several units in Hong Kong.

 

However UK politicians of all parties still have dreams of grandeur and aspirations far beyond the the capabilities of the UK forces and are committing them far beyond what they can deal with, with what they have.

[Gweiloman]

9 hours ago, Excogitator said:

I sort of expected you to take the ramblings of braindead radical rightwing lunatics seriously.

 

Wake up man, and find your way back to reality, if you can... 

As expected, ad hominem attacks when you are unable to rebut. Came much sooner than I expected though, barely an hour since my posting.

[jayceenik]

1 hour ago, Gweiloman said:

As expected, ad hominem attacks when you are unable to rebut. Came much sooner than I expected though, barely an hour since my posting.

I'm 100% on Russia's side and 100% against those who sabotaged NS1-2 and now are licking their chops at the idea of NATO going after Russia and launching a nuclear WWIII. So the ad homineen attacks at @Gweilomancan be directed at me too!. 😉 Thank you!

Always amusing to see that Herr Goebbels has left such a very active Russsophobe progeny. Ach! Time for a Barbarossa redux with NATO leading the charge this time. 

 

 

[Excogitator]

1 hour ago, Gweiloman said:

As expected, ad hominem attacks when you are unable to rebut. Came much sooner than I expected though, barely an hour since my posting.

This was not an ad-hominem attack. You are referencing radical rightwing extremist sources. Can I not call a spade a spade anymore?

Rightwing wokeism is alive and kicking...

[Excogitator]

11 minutes ago, jayceenik said:

I'm 100% on Russia's side and 100% against those who sabotaged NS1-2 and now are licking their chops at the idea of NATO going after Russia and launching a nuclear WWIII. So the ad homineen attacks at @Gweilomancan be directed at me too!. 😉 Thank you!

Always amusing to see that Herr Goebbels has left such a very active Russsophobe progeny. Ach! Time for a Barbarossa redux with NATO leading the charge this time. 

 

 

Ridiculous. There was no ad-hominem attack directed at 'Gweiloman' at all. At least not from me. You should look up the meaning of the word again in your dictionary. Then maybe you will also be able to spell it right next time...

[Roo Island]

18 hours ago, Gweiloman said:

The fact is that Russia doesn’t want to occupy Ukraine. When you get such a simple fact wrong, the rest of your post is just nonsense.

What. Wow. Can you show a link proving this? Putin desperately wants Russia to return to its former glory.

 

https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-fall-russia-empire-ukraine-war-armenia-azerbaijan/

 

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, he was hoping to restore the glory days of the Soviet Union in the 1950s, when it was at the peak of its power. Instead, he’s ushered in chaos on a scale not seen since the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

[Roo Island]

17 hours ago, Bkk Brian said:

Why has it illegally annexed parts already then if it doesn't want to occupy it? 

Exactly. Russia started occupying Ukraine years ago. Along with many other countries.

[Gweiloman]

11 hours ago, Roo Island said:

What. Wow. Can you show a link proving this? Putin desperately wants Russia to return to its former glory.

 

https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-fall-russia-empire-ukraine-war-armenia-azerbaijan/

 

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, he was hoping to restore the glory days of the Soviet Union in the 1950s, when it was at the peak of its power. Instead, he’s ushered in chaos on a scale not seen since the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

It’s sad how many people nowadays depends on links as the gospel truth instead of using their god given senses to critically evaluate and analyse facts and to reach a credible conclusion.

 

Any article by a western based, government sponsored media is tainted with bias, prejudice and an agenda. I’m sure there are links from pro-Russian media that would equally support my statement but I don’t trawl the internet for such and in any case, such links will not be allowed on this forum.

 

If you can show me a video or a transcript of Putin saying that he wants to occupy Ukraine, then I’m more than willing to retract my post. Instead, I arrived at my conclusion based on the actions I have seen taken for example the size of the military force, the willingness and intention to arrive at an agreement within days of the first shot being fired and till today, the express intention from the Russian side to have an acceptable negotiated settlement in spite of their inevitable victory.

[Roo Island]

18 minutes ago, Gweiloman said:

It’s sad how many people nowadays depends on links as the gospel truth instead of using their god given senses to critically evaluate and analyse facts and to reach a credible conclusion.

 

Any article by a western based, government sponsored media is tainted with bias, prejudice and an agenda. I’m sure there are links from pro-Russian media that would equally support my statement but I don’t trawl the internet for such and in any case, such links will not be allowed on this forum.

 

If you can show me a video or a transcript of Putin saying that he wants to occupy Ukraine, then I’m more than willing to retract my post. Instead, I arrived at my conclusion based on the actions I have seen taken for example the size of the military force, the willingness and intention to arrive at an agreement within days of the first shot being fired and till today, the express intention from the Russian side to have an acceptable negotiated settlement in spite of their inevitable victory.

Have you ever been to Armenia? Moldova? Georgia? Ukraine? Spoken with people there? I have. All of them. Most hate Russia

[rabas]

On 6/3/2024 at 9:34 PM, Gweiloman said:

I don’t think you can handle the truth. But just in case you’re genuinely wondering, I direct you to an interview conducted by Mr. John Anderson, former Deputy PM of Australia and leader of the National Party with Professor Mearsheimer whereby the latter gave his views.

 

I’m expecting some ad hominem attacks by the usual vile posters on these two gentlemen. It takes a seriously under developed mind to favour the arguments of retirees living life on the cheap in Thailand compared to the thoughts and knowledge of two internationally known personalities.

 

 

Excellent video. 

 

Prof John Mearsheimer argues that there were two camps from the 1990s in Clinton's time, one pro NATO expansion and one against NATO expansion that included Ukraine and Georgia. He was against and argued that attempts to include (independent) Ukraine in NATO would trigger Putin to react in the way that happened. In that he was right.

 

The bedrock of his argument in the video (listen) is based on Putin, not Russia, not the Russian people, not the well being of the world, but Putin.  Now read what he says in one of his books [wiki]

 

"Mearsheimer's first book, Conventional Deterrence, addresses the issue of how the decision to start a war depends on the projected outcome of the war, i.e., how the decision makers' beliefs about the outcome of the war affect the success or failure of deterrence. Mearsheimer's basic argument is that deterrence is likely to work when the potential attacker believes that an attack will be costly and is unlikely to succeed."

 

So the reason we are here is 1) despot Putin remains in power and 2) The West, starting at least with Obama, failed to deter him. NOT because there is anything good about Putin for the Russian people or the world. 

 

Anyone selling this video to mean Putin is good either lacks understanding or is pushing propaganda. 

[Tug]

On 6/3/2024 at 5:29 AM, stoner said:

 

how long did it take you to memorize this drivel ? what self respecting grown man calls another man a karen. grow up. 

 

 

Well ok then Darren there ya go I fixed it for ya now quit blubbering!😭 

[stoner]

3 minutes ago, Tug said:

Well ok then Darren there ya go I fixed it for ya now quit blubbering!😭 

 

blubbering ? 

 

have you read some of your own trump comments. 

[Tug]

12 minutes ago, stoner said:

 

blubbering ? 

 

have you read some of your own trump comments. 

I’m not blubbering I’m angry and deeply disappointed in many of my fellow Americans for not putting country before political party I’m also concerned that we haven’t found a way to stop all the disinformation coming from (news) organizations ie fox oan …….

[stoner]

4 minutes ago, Tug said:

I’m not blubbering I’m angry and deeply disappointed in many of my fellow Americans for not putting country before political party I’m also concerned that we haven’t found a way to stop all the disinformation coming from (news) organizations ie fox oan …….

 

i'm not blubbering i'm amused at the divide that people keep putting between themselves. speaking like some do on here is only making it worse. 

[placeholder]

On 6/3/2024 at 6:46 PM, Gweiloman said:

The fact is that Russia doesn’t want to occupy Ukraine. When you get such a simple fact wrong, the rest of your post is just nonsense.

So the Russians are just vacationing in Crimea?