Tennessee Blue Mike
Player Valuation: £50m
It sounds like Russia under estimated their needs also. Iran and China to the rescue it seems.
Current Affairs Ukraine
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Yarrgh
Player Valuation: £80m
Big question is if they fully or partially support Russia, what's the best avenue to follow?
Escalation of support to Ukraine? Continuation of current level of support? Negotiating a peace deal? Sanctions on China and Iran? All of those have some serious downsides.
What's the least worst option in all this?
Tennessee Blue Mike
Player Valuation: £50m
I don't see a best option. I see and agree with the talking heads this will escalate until Russia and Ukraine are exhausted. I am not sure were that will leave us.
The only benefit I see is NATO has woke up and see the need to increase their budgets for defense. The biggest worry in the future will be China.
Diogenes the Cynic
Player Valuation: £40m
I've said it before but NATO and the West need to be making good friends with India.
The largest democracy in the world and a potential superpower and they hang in the balance.
They are getting a good deal on Russian produce but have border dispute with China.
Right now we back Ukraine to the hilt.
If China back Russia then sanctions need to be imposed. It will hurt Europe immensely but China don't want the financial implications of sanctions either.
I was listening to Radio 4 the other morning where the Archbishop of Canterbury (I think it was, I was running for a bus at the time) said we are paying with money, Ukraine are paying with lives. I paraphrase but the sentiment is exact.
I'd be interested in knowing if the opinions of the GOT Kremin Klub have altered over the past year of conflict.
@bluestevon
@Kev The Rat
I can't remember who the 3rd even was. Sorry comrade.
The largest democracy in the world and a potential superpower and they hang in the balance.
They are getting a good deal on Russian produce but have border dispute with China.
Right now we back Ukraine to the hilt.
If China back Russia then sanctions need to be imposed. It will hurt Europe immensely but China don't want the financial implications of sanctions either.
I was listening to Radio 4 the other morning where the Archbishop of Canterbury (I think it was, I was running for a bus at the time) said we are paying with money, Ukraine are paying with lives. I paraphrase but the sentiment is exact.
I'd be interested in knowing if the opinions of the GOT Kremin Klub have altered over the past year of conflict.
@bluestevon
@Kev The Rat
I can't remember who the 3rd even was. Sorry comrade.
Tennessee Blue Mike
Player Valuation: £50m
davids was the third. Whataboutary of the highest order.
I think Kev the Rat was banished from this thread.
Bluestevon decided to withdraw voluntarily due to nasty shots at him and his family who were Russian. Always interesting I thought even though a bit slanted.
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
TBF I'd have thought that, with sanctions not having worked thus far against a much smaller economy, that any attempt to extend them to China must be strongly opposed - for a start all we are likely to do is wake up the morning after and find that the current global economic system has ended and that nearly all of the rest of the world (including many of our allies) are now in a different economic system. Secondly it removes the threat of sanctions (such as it is) from deterring any attack on Taiwan, right at a time when our stocks are low and attention is focused on Ukraine.
If they do start to supply Russia with arms there should be serious discussions, not more useless gestures, and sensible steps taken that do not cut off our own legs out from under us. First on that list should be to increase industrial production capacity in the West, whilst reducing consumption and eliminating waste (eg: standardization of things like phones, computers, printers, technology etc). Just trading with them less will cause more of an impact, with less damage to ourselves and the world as a whole, than idiocy like failing to impose sanctions will. We will also be in a much better situation to cope with what might follow this, too.
A preview of this can be seen with this mooted ban of TikTok in the US. Why hypocritically ban a platform because it potentially misuses users data (as Meta, Twitter and every other social media firm is set up to do and have done) when you can get legislation which cleans them all up?
Very timely that you mentioned this. Just received an email about this yesterday from DOC Comms
Looks like Putin can't go to the Eurovision final anymore.
Spadge Vernacular
Player Valuation: £70m
Putin's career has been built upon waging war and trying to reestablish the Russian sphere of influence in post-Soviet states. The reality is that we should have intervened or acted forcefully two decades ago. Crippling sanctions might have been enough then but the longer this situation is allowed to continue the closer the free democratic world will move to war with the autocratic, dictatorial regimes that are siding up.
Unfortunately, the west has turned a blind eye to Putin too many times, and Ukraine and the west are reaping what we have allowed to grow - a mafia state.
If you want to live in a world of autocrats and dictators then stepping back from Ukraine would be the right thing to do. If you want democracy to prosper then the opposite is true. The article follows that line, nothing bizarre about it, though Putin might agree with your thinking.
Spadge Vernacular
Player Valuation: £70m
Davids aka, the boss...
Lock him up!
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
This is certainly the prevailing view amongst the media classes, but I am not sure that it is necessarily the best way of describing recent history.
The collapse of the USSR did leave a lot of Russian and pro-Russian people living in what were now independent states. In many cases (including Ukraine pre-2014) there were enough of them to ensure that the new country was friendly to Moscow, and where these populations weren't present geography (lack of access to elsewhere / Russia's size) meant that being friendly to Moscow was eminently sensible economically, strategically and politically. In that sense any Russian leadership, democratic or autocratic, would enjoy a natural sphere of influence and would react when it was threatened.
Where the risk for democracy is (including from Putin) is not that we are not willing to arm another country or even fight for it (lets face it we have done that repeatedly since the end of the first Cold War) the risk is that we are doing nothing to fix the problems in our societies - inequality, political corruption, governmental incompetence, waste - that are the weak points that the autocrats will go for. Does anyone think people in the developing world look at the likes of Trump, MTG, Johnson and the rest and think they are examples to follow? Are there any positive examples at the top level of Western politics at the moment?
Paris
What is love?
Vladimir Putin, so strong and stout
But now the ICC wants him out
Accused of crimes, he cannot deny
His fate now hangs, way up high
The world is watching, with bated breath
Will justice be served, for all to be met?
No one is above the law, they say
Even the most powerful, must pay their way
So Putin beware, your time may come
The ICC's reach, cannot be undone
Your actions have consequences, that's for sure
So let justice be served, and peace restored.
So erm, the ICC (no not cricket!) have indicted putin for war crimes, is this the same bunch that have the Litvanenko poisoners and the Salisbury poisonings on their hit list?
What a waste of time. He's got the main man from china visiting next week doesn't he? They'll have a good old chuckle on this.
What a waste of time. He's got the main man from china visiting next week doesn't he? They'll have a good old chuckle on this.
peteblue
Welcome back Wayne
Yes and no. China will obviously be powerful, but they are upsetting every single country around them, apart from N Korea and Russia (give it time), and those ranged against them will be far stronger……
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