The Russians are admitting to 464 deaths. Still quite high for what they originally sold their public as a peace keeping operation. The true figures can not be verified for the moment, but one has to assume its somewhere between the 2 figures. Zelensky made a speech in which he felt so sorry for the young Russian soldiers, most around 19 years old who are dying with no idea what they were dying for. He begged their mothers to stop them from coming.
It’s a strange thing to do as is giving their prisoners phones and getting them to phone home. I have never heard of this happening before.
Peter wrote:
However, it never surprises me how things can be viewed differently according to the chosen historical cut-off year. I learnt that at univ when I was 18 As another old saying goes: if you are 20 and not a communist, you haven’t got a heart, and if you are 40 and are a communist, you haven’t got a brain. And everyone there was 18-21.
Well, I’m not a communist, if that’s what you want to imply. You know, one can be critical of the USA foreign policy without being a communist.
(Well, maybe I am. A well-known Swedish comedian and author once wrote a story with a person who believed that everyone who voluntarily gives something away is a communist.)
Where did you get these figures? I’m not put these in question but I suppose this is coming from Ukraine.
Yes the West in general and the US have made mistakes in the past. Yes the US has done stuff which came close to this, like the 2nd Iraq war and it is not surprising that sentiments about NATO are not the fondest in Serbia.
None of it justifies anything going on right now though.
gallois wrote:
It’s a strange thing to do as is giving their prisoners phones and getting them to phone home. I have never heard of this happening before.
Quite a brilliant move though, especially as it was done obviously without any publicity in mind. I do hope that video makes it into the Russian public and goes viral there.
Not in reply of any of those, but there is one thing where people need to be careful about. There is a lot of Russians living abroad these days, MANY of whom left Russia due to Putin’s more and more repressive regime. Not many of those are oligarchs, but normal people who made a decision to get out of dodge while they could. More are leaving now via Finland and other routes.
If we sanction Russians who support Putin we should not fall into the trap of sanctioning everyone left-right and center who happens to have a Russian passport left. Instead we should encourage them to make their voices heard. Many still will not, maybe because they have relatives at home and fear for retribution. That doesn’t make them accomplices just because they kept their passport.
On the other hand, there are many non-Russians who are openly for Putin, who are openly demonstrating their support. Well, you take your pick and make your choices. I don’t see why people and countries like that should escape sanctions. Scenes like where football fans of one eastern European team chant Putin and Russia should have consequences, particularly if the governments concerned have aspirations to join the EU.
Well, I’m not a communist, if that’s what you want to imply. You know, one can be critical of the USA foreign policy without being a communist.
I wasn’t implying you were a communist.
To me it is necessary to understand that these former-USSR countries want to be in the West. IOW, one could say, in the “American sphere”. To deny that would be a form of imperialism, as bad as any other. Yet all the anti-American arguments relating to Ukraine are based on that. I’ve just read one long diatribe which – among a load of irrelevant “parallels” like the Middle East wars – basically says that the West should have told Ukraine to sod off and keep it in the Dark Ages, because Putin would feel “less threatened” i.e. it is right to sacrifice freedom on the altar of political convenience / appeasing a big bully. That will never be the right thing to do.
The Czechs would have given anything in ~1947 to be in the American sphere and not the Russian sphere which turned them into a banana republic without bananas and without most personal freedoms.
These countries’ free will is to be free. One can’t suppress it.
And that means being in the West.
Sure, this provokes Russia’s leaders, partly because of the pragmatic issue of freedom being a nasty disease which has a habit of spreading everywhere, and partly – in this case – because Ukraine’s being in NATO (formally or de facto) considerably lengthens Russia’s border with the nasty imperialists who in Russia’s (totally misguided) view are determined to invade Russia and smash it up.
In reality everybody with a pair of eyes knows that the West is totally uninterested in invading Russia. It would like some perverted form of ideology to want to do that – like Hitler’s living space. But doctrine is doctrine and once you built a career on it you have to run with it.
This is one of many going around, and is accurate. Similar forms of perverted ideology driving both
Where did you get these figures? I’m not put these in question but I suppose this is coming from Ukraine.
Here and elsewhere, but not from the BBC 
Unverified, sure, but they “smell right” because the Russians haven’t got very far, in what was supposed to be an overnight CZ-1968-like job.
Peter wrote:
Unverified, sure, but they “smell right” because the Russians haven’t got very far, in what was supposed to be an overnight CZ-1968-like job.
We used to say the reality is somewhere in between both claims…
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Quite a brilliant move though, especially as it was done obviously without any publicity in mind. I do hope that video makes it into the Russian public and goes viral there.
During Tchetcheny war, this has also been done by the former resident people, creating corridor to send back dead bodies to Russian mothers because Russia completely denies losses, and this is also the case in Ukraine war. Ukraine add also a free telephone line to communicate the name of dead people, or talk to prisoners.
Ukrainian knows that Mothers of Russia have created a huge syndicate that has some power. Unfortunately today, no one in Russia has right to say, and this syndicate will surely be dismantled in short terms…
What I heard yesterday is that actually very few people were informed of the attack (except fiddle generals of the chain of command), and most of the Russian army have been mobilised for a great exercise…
I’ll add that Zelenki knows it’s also a communication war, and that Ukraine doesn’t have the military power to stop and kill putin… only Russian can.
Putin says sanctions over Ukraine are like a declaration of war
Scenes like where football fans of one eastern European team chant Putin and Russia should have consequences, particularly if the governments concerned have aspirations to join the EU.
Let me guess – the country which capital is full of murals dedicated to war criminals including Putin since yesterday.
Putin says sanctions over Ukraine are like a declaration of war
1/3 of Russia is not even aware there is a war in Ukraine…VP does not want to raise RU to state of emergency, after all he is telling his people that “3 of his soldats went to Ukraine to pick up some milk”?
The current sanctions don’t qualify yet as “economic war”, they may do if it’s about Russia oil & gas, then we should expect these to follow:
- Economic wars
- Technology wars
- Military wars
“No fly zone” by NATO will be a war declaration though (it involve blowing Russian vehicles & aircraft), I doubt things will go that far
Ibra wrote:
1/3 of Russia is not even aware there is a war in Ukraine…
The other 2/3:
I guess the cubs are the newly born Donetsk and Luhansk.
