News War with Russia

[Raven]

So it begins...

Ukraine cyber-attack: Russia to blame for hack, says Kyiv

About 70 Ukrainian government websites were targeted, including the foreign and energy ministries.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Wij]

Sanction Putin, sanction oligarchs, arm Ukraine.

 

[Raven]

Social media will be affected next.

 

[Wij]

View: https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/1481870779360976898

 

[Wij]

View: https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/1481874361304895490

 

[Wij]

How to think about war in Ukraine

Start with the Ukrainians

snyder.substack.com

 

[Wij]

View: https://twitter.com/dszeligowski/status/1483921441083043855

 

[Wij]

No doubt to pay Putin back for helping put down the Belarusian people:


View: https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1484192591377694720

 

[Tom]

I know nothing about the situation but I find this to be a pretty interesting read, I wonder if it's true:


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/sadzwm/uk_says_russia_is_planning_to_overthrow_ukraines/htt601v/?context=1

 

[Wij]

I know nothing about the situation but I find this to be a pretty interesting read, I wonder if it's true:


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/sadzwm/uk_says_russia_is_planning_to_overthrow_ukraines/htt601v/?context=1

Pretty much yes. The whole Yanukavich / Manafort stuff is widely documented and Putin-aligned oligarchs slushing dirty money around is what they do every day.

 

[ECA]

Russian corruption in ukraine? cute.

Theresa May stepped in to stop security services probing Arron Banks

The Mail understands that in early 2016 the then home secretary Theresa May declined a request by one of the security services to investigate Banks.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Theresa May STOPPED security services probing Arron Banks in run-up to Brexit referendum - as ex-Culture Secretary says PM 'has serious questions to answer'

Arron Banks ‘bankrolled Nigel Farage’s lavish lifestyle with £450,000 funding’

Ex-Ukip ally paid for £4.4m rented London home, a luxury car, a bodyguard, a private office and trips to the United States, says Channel 4 probe

www.independent.co.uk

Arron Banks ‘bankrolled Nigel Farage’s lavish lifestyle with £450,000 funding’, investigation finds

Ex-Ukip ally paid for £4.4m rented London home, a luxury car, a bodyguard, a private office and trips to the United States, says Channel 4 probe

Revealed: top female Tory donor’s vast offshore empire with husband

Leak raises questions over the ultimate source of some of Lubov Chernukhin’s donations

www.theguardian.com

The star prize at last year’s Conservative party fundraising ball was a game of tennis with Boris Johnson. The party’s co-chair Ben Elliot was enlisted to play too. But when bidding started there was little drama. Well-heeled guests already knew who was going to outbid everyone: a tall, outgoing blond woman from Moscow who – as one person put it – “dominates the room”. “She always gets top prize. She wins every auction,” the guest said, wryly.
The victorious bidder was Lubov Chernukhin, one of the biggest female donors in recent British political history. Since 2012, she has given the Tories £2.1m. This extraordinary sum has paid for two tennis matches with the prime minister, including in 2014 when Johnson was mayor of London, as well as dinner with his predecessor Theresa May.

How the golden visa scheme let Russian money pour into the UK

Greed and loopholes made London the world’s capital of dirty money and dark influence

www.wired.co.uk

In 2018, in retaliation for the Novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, the Home Office promised to review the visas of 700 Russian expats. These Russian citizens, who came to Britain between 2008 and 2015, had benefited from the Tier 1 visa programme – a route to residency – also known as “golden visas” – for wealthy foreigners willing to invest millions of pounds in the UK.

Now, despite several changes in the years following the poisoning, the Intelligence and Security Committee's report into Russian activity in the UK has once again recommended the scheme’s overhaul. It claims that the Tier 1 scheme, and similar previous schemes stretching back to the early 90s, turned London into a “laundromat” for corrupt foreign money, and cemented Russian influence in the UK’s business and social scene as the “new normal”. It is likely, the report states, that such a move would at this point only constitute “damage limitation”.

Boris Johnson and Evgeny Lebedev: a decade of politics, parties and peerages

Pair have been friends since 2009, but security concerns were raised because of the Russian tycoon’s father, a one-time Moscow spy

www.theguardian.com

 

[Wij]

Well yes. We have our fair share of ruble-bought politicians here too.

Germany leads the way in this though. Gerhard Schroeder has been on the payroll for years and the Social Democrats that are now in charge mollycoddle Putin even more than Merkel did.

The French have a former PM fully on the payroll too.

 

[Scouse]

So why do we get pissy about Russian corruption when we haven't got our own house in order?

Getting pissy about Russian criminals using oil wealth to achieve political aims is like getting pissy at OPEC or any of the American oil companies (and their execs) buying the US political system.

There's no difference.

 

[Raven]

Because, right now, our corruption isn't about to enable the invasion of a country.

 

[Scouse]

Because, right now, our corruption isn't about to enable the invasion of a country.

I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.

Same shit. Different excuses.

I'd made the point to @Wij with that map. It's just more of the same shit by a different set of criminals. Not our criminals (well, it kind of is, because we're balls-deep with most of them anyway) - but sort-of not "our" criminals.

 

[Wij]

“I was not saying that that’s the administration’s motive,” Greenspan said in the interview conducted on Saturday. “I’m just saying that if somebody asked me, ‘Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?’ I would say it was essential.”

Anyway, if the Iraq war was bad that doesn't mean Putin invading Ukraine is fine. That's not an argument.

Also, what map?

 

[Gwadien]

I still don't agree with our approach.

If we suggested that they become a neutral buffer zone, then Putin loses his public support as the threat of NATO forces on the Russian border (again) won't be a reality, and protecting his personal investments in Ukraine would be harder to justify a war over.

Our approach feeds the beast which allows control over the people.

It's about time we learn that alliance building always leads to bad things.

I also reject your assertion that it has anything remotely similar to appeasement.

 

[Wij]

I still don't agree with our approach.

If we suggested that they become a neutral buffer zone, then Putin loses his public support as the threat of NATO forces on the Russian border (again) won't be a reality, and protecting his personal investments in Ukraine would be harder to justify a war over.

Our approach feeds the beast which allows control over the people.

It's about time we learn that alliance building always leads to bad things.

I also reject your assertion that it has anything remotely similar to appeasement.

Ukrainians really don't like being told they have to be a buffer-zone rather than a real country who can decide what they want to do through elections and it's not our place to tell them like they are just pawns in a game played between other countries.

They tried being neutral since 1991 and had no appetite to join NATO. That resulted in invasion by Russia in 2014. They can also see that the countries that border Russia that did join NATO for their own defence, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, have not been invaded.

You also misread Putin's motives by thinking that it's actually about NATO being nearby and a threat. It absolutely is not. His problem is that a democratic Ukraine starting to prosper would give a lot of Russians ideas that they could or should have the same instead of putting up with friendly dictators for decades like other post-soviet states Belarus and Kazakhstan did.

 

[Ormorof]

As part of their nuclear disarmament they had a treaty with Russia guaranteeing their independence, Putin pissing all over that.

They are an independent country why should Putin or the US decide what they do or who they ally with? Im a little shocked at how ready to accept the idea that countries should just be puppets and do as they are told people are. This isnt a playground football team selection with two "captains" picking kids for their side.

 

[Gwadien]

As part of their nuclear disarmament they had a treaty with Russia guaranteeing their independence, Putin pissing all over that.

They are an independent country why should Putin or the US decide what they do or who they ally with? Im a little shocked at how ready to accept the idea that countries should just be puppets and do as they are told people are. This isnt a playground football team selection with two "captains" picking kids for their side.

I'm not sure who you're being critical of where tbh.

Either way, I think it's pretty obvious that the West has invested just as much as Russia to get them on side, and the result will be lil Ukraine armed with big weapons defending against a country eager to test out new gear. And the west is equally as interested in trying out their gear against new Russian gear.

War will result in lots of people dying and if enough Russians die, they'll resort to war crimes and after some debate im sure we'll escalate it.

 

[Raven]

Then perhaps the aggressors should be discouraged from being scummy then?

Ukraine absolutely should be able to do what they like, even if that was to join NATO, it is none of Russia's business.

It would be like Scotland going indi and England blocking their entry into the EU.

 

[Wij]

As @Ormorof states, Russia is in violation of its treaty obligations to respect Ukraine’s borders.

Budapest Memorandum - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Ukraine’s defences we’re pretty pathetic and the west had no interest in arming them until the 2014 invasion by Russia. Then Ukraine realised it needed a functional army and begged the rest of the world to allow it to buy anti-tank and anti-air arms, Which is perfectly understandable in the circumstances.

@Gwadien Please stop trying to both-sides this as a both as bad as each other thing between the US and Russia. Putin is the aggressor here and Ukraine is a sovereign country that should be allowed to make its own decisions about its own defence against that aggression.

 

[DaGaffer]

I'm not sure who you're being critical of where tbh.

Either way, I think it's pretty obvious that the West has invested just as much as Russia to get them on side, and the result will be lil Ukraine armed with big weapons defending against a country eager to test out new gear. And the west is equally as interested in trying out their gear against new Russian gear.

War will result in lots of people dying and if enough Russians die, they'll resort to war crimes and after some debate im sure we'll escalate it.

The west isn't supplying Ukraine with new kit, its mostly their old castoffs. They're not interested in really stopping Russia, just slowing them down a bit and making them pay a butcher's bill. I wouldn't be relying on the west if I was a Ukrainian.

 

[Embattle]

If this was to spread even slightly outside of Ukraine I could easily see China going for Taiwan.

 

[Wij]

If this was to spread even slightly outside of Ukraine I could easily see China going for Taiwan.

That’s what weakness now would inevitably lead to.

 

[Wij]

View: https://twitter.com/PopovaProf/status/1485652826034421764

 

[Bodhi]

That’s what weakness now would inevitably lead to.

Good job we've got some strong Western leaders in place. Oh no wait, we've got a dementia patient who can't stop shitting himself and some dude who got brought cake on his birthday.

 

[Wij]

Good job we've got some strong Western leaders in place. Oh no wait, we've got a dementia patient who can't stop shitting himself and some dude who got brought cake on his birthday.

The other dude wanted to pull out of NATO and extort Ukraine.

 

[Bodhi]

The other dude wanted to pull out of NATO and extort Ukraine.

Pretty sure he just wanted NATO to pay their way and get their fingers out their asses once in a while - neither of which seem particularly controversial, especially right now.

And I thought it was the pant shitter's son who was extorting Ukraine?

 

[Wij]

Pretty sure he just wanted NATO to pay their way and get their fingers out their asses once in a while - neither of which seem particularly controversial, especially right now.

And I thought it was the pant shitter's son who was extorting Ukraine?

Wrong and wrong.

He didn't understand how NATO works, thinking that other NATO countries somehow owed the US.

The Hunter Biden stuff is just agitprop. We went through how ridiculous it was months ago. Some random weirdo has his laptop for an unknown reason and has damning emails but won't release them. Just PDFs of them.

Trump made his extortion bid on a taped phone call for fucks sake.