Craig wrote: ↑Tue Sep 20, 2022 9:11 pm
plmc135 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 02, 2022 7:33 am
The time has come for Governments to stop these massive arms deliveries to Ukraine and attempt to get the two factions together to sort this mess out. In addition to the Ukrainian populous, we are the ones who are paying the penalty for this and so long as we are arming Ukraine this conflict will continue at our personal expense.
Time to put pressure on the UN to act, they have hardly been mentioned all through. This must be stopped a.s.a.p. and it will only be done by talking.
Absolutely, this war is going to be fought until the last dead Ukrainian though unfortunately.
Giving then weapons and encouraging them to launch counteroffensives against the Russian held parts of the country will not change anything about the outcome of the situation, other than bring about the deaths of many people and perhaps anger the Russians to take the gloves off.
Like I have said before, and I am not supporting them - far from it, just trying to look at things logically; the Russians are not even at war with Ukraine.
What the Kharkov counteroffensive did achieve was a very limited retaliation from the Russians with missiles launched from the Black Sea and Caspian which took out power and water to half of Ukraine. It was a demonstration that at any moment civilian infrastructure can be targeted and Ukraine sent back to the dark ages.
The fact that it happened now, and not 6 months ago at the beginning of the actions in Ukraine shows clearly that the Russian objective is not to destroy Ukraine. If they wanted to have done that they already would have done. Do you really think Ukraine would still have trains running, mobile phone networks operating and Zelensky hosting foreign leaders in Kiev if Russia was really carrying out mass industrialised warfare against it?
I don't know if people are aware, but most of the manpower on the Russian side from what I can tell has not been frontline regular troops, but mainly the separatist forces and effectively military contractors. They have been winning the slow meat grind due to the overwhelming backing of Russian artillery.
What I expect to see in the coming weeks will be referendums inside the Donetsk and Luhansk peoples republic, which will see them join the Russian Federation.
This is the point that the special military operation changes, as the Russians could then put military bases in those territories and will view an attack on those areas as an attack on Russia itself, at which point they may mobilise their regulars and declare war against Ukraine, which by association will be against the UK/US etc who took it to this point.
The whole thing from a geopolitic view appears to have been to create a wedge between Europe (especially Germany) and Russia, whilst destroying EU's reliance on Russian gas and the trade itself. The question to ask is who benefits? Not the Ukrainians that's for sure, and not the people of Britain/West either if energy prices are anything to go by...