Quote from: DaRude on July 23, 2024, 11:55:21 AM

Quote from: paxmao on July 23, 2024, 10:00:37 AM

Quote from: DaRude on July 23, 2024, 09:46:30 AM

Quote from: TwitchySeal on July 23, 2024, 07:01:21 AM

Quote from: DaRude on July 22, 2024, 11:47:56 PM

What a silly claim, and how much are you going to put where your mouth is? When is anything current Ukrainian president/government promised going to happen? Any timelines on the bridge, Crimea, or 1991 borders? Any bets on how long that UA law about no negotiations with Putin will stand? Bottom line is Russia continues to take more land everyday, and the only comeback to that is, why so slow?

Why so slow, or....

Russia was so confident that they'd be able to steam roll Ukraine, take Kyiev, kill Zelensky, etc. that before they invaded in Feb, they had already planned a parade for that May and even packed special uniforms to wear in the parade.

They even made it illegal to call it a war. It was just a special operation. No big deal. The global general consensus was maybe it would take 3 weeks for Kiev to fall, probably two though.

Imagine if you could go back in time and tell Russians that in 2024, Putin would travel to North Korea to beg for weapons and rumors of a second mobilization were starting to spread
The Orc army could have chosen

...

How confident are you that when US staged coup detat/regime change in Ukraine that they just didn't know that it would breach on Russia's national interests, and they just miscalculated? Or do you think they knew pretty well what they were doing by giving out cookies and saying Fuck the EU, and this is all is just a collateral damage in a bigger plan?

You mean exactly the same reasons why US and NATO didn't call any of their military "operations" wars, in the past 60 years?

If Cuba was an existential threat to US, Ukraine is definitely an existential threat to Russia. Russia loosing Ukraine would follow with a loss of Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus... Without it's sphere of influence, it would seize to be a regional power and would collapse once again.

Imagine if you could travel back in time to Ukraine in 2013 when everything was fine and educate these people about the Judas kiss and tell them not to accept these cookies. How many Ukrainians would you save by not sending them to be pawns in a larger global conflict?

Quote from: paxmao on July 23, 2024, 08:24:44 AM

...
Re Zelensky's "political suicide", the person is not that relevant. A true peace that leaves Ukraine with means of defence and most of the territory intact, with access to sea, is not ideal, but there is still a country named "Ukraine" with all the means required to be a viable nation.

Again, peace itself is desirable, but the question is what peace. A good peace gets statues of Zelensky in the city square and peace for decades, a bad peace gets you another war in 5 years.

Can't say i'm surprised that you won't put your money where you mouth is. But really nice to see you start accepting the reality and pivoting from "1991 borders". Now comes the hard part, do you really think that such end result for Ukraine, couldn't be reached without loosing so many Ukrainian lives? What do you think was in that written response in 2021 before all this started? Would you want Russia to declassify and publicize it? Because i doubt the US would do it in the next 50 or so years.

Quote from: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/26/us-russia-ukraine-written-response-00002414

January 2022
The United States has delivered a written response to Russia addressing Moscow’s security demands, Secretary of State Antony
Blinken announced on Wednesday, as Washington continues to pursue diplomacy aimed at diverting a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine.
...
U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan delivered to Moscow, was “fully coordinated” with Ukraine and European allies, Blinken said, and it “sets out a serious diplomatic path forward, should Russia choose it.”

Please, state your bet. And make sure it is about something I have said little liar.

There is nothing to discuss about the borders - whatever was internationally recognised before Ruzzia invaded is what should be and whatever comes from a negotiation - if there is one ever - is what we will have to live with. I leave you to your theories on why somehow invading a sovereign country is OK if it suits your interests.

Your are overusing the picture about cookies. Would you like to try convincing us that Ruzzia is a corruption free country with no "cookies"? You have a hard task ahead.

Are you really sure you want to go that way?

Blowing the Nord Stream II looks like the RF army doing to kind of "make a point" on regards to EU aid and aligns well with a country that is under a Junta. In my view, this is an act of war. The Orc army could have chosen any other target right? A bridge in France, a factory in Germany... Why do you think they would hit NS II? The answer is very simple: it is not in NATO territory and does not grant a NATO mobilisation which would end any expectation of even a technical "victory" in the invasion

Meanwhile, the disconnect between the RF army chief Psychos and the diplomatic and civil side of the government is show again in the terrorist attacks against Nord Stream II.

as the RF has destroyed the Nord Streams "outside NATO territory".

The Nord Stream was mainly a RF doing...Bottomline, as it is now, it looks like international terrorism from Adolf Putin's Psychos and the Chief Orcs.

Let's see how things are going with that as of 15.07.2024

Quote from: Google Translate of https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/plus252370644/Nord-Stream-Anschlag-soll-schon-vor-zehn-Jahren-geplant-worden-sein.html

Nord Stream attack is said to have been planned ten years ago
...
WELT AM SONNTAG now has new information. The focus: a Ukrainian group.
...
The attack on the two Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea is said to have been planned by a Ukrainian group before Russia occupied Crimea in 2014. WELT AM SONNTAG learned this from German investigators. Accordingly, such considerations did not only arise with Russia's war of aggression. This is indicated by the results of investigations by German and foreign authorities, which also included intelligence information.
...
Denmark and Sweden have closed the investigations. Only in Germany are the Federal Police and the Federal Criminal Police Office investigating the background to the act of sabotage on behalf of the Federal Prosecutor General. "The investigations are still ongoing," the Federal Prosecutor's Office said.
...
The energy project had been publicly rejected by Ukraine time and again. Former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, for example, had voiced criticism. "This project is anti-Ukrainian and anti-European," he warned in September 2015.
...
The focus of the German investigation is a sailing yacht called "Andromeda" that was chartered in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania at the time of the attack. The six-person crew is said to have been in Ukraine before and after the attack. New evidence has since emerged that strengthens the suspicion that the attack on the pipelines was carried out by the ship's crew, said an official familiar with the investigation.
...
A week before the explosions, the "Andromeda" was checked by border guards in Kolberg, Poland. According to security circles in Warsaw, the visit on board was not a random act; a secret service tip had apparently been received in Poland shortly beforehand. Agents from the USA were also said to have been on site.

In addition, video recordings of the ship and the crew are said to be available. In Warsaw, it was reportedly initially considered making the images available to German investigators. But no handover took place. One reason is said to be that the recordings may not only show the "Andromeda" crew, but also Polish and American agents.
...
Meanwhile, there is growing concern among the opposition that the investigations are coming to nothing. CDU foreign policy expert Roderich Kiesewetter fears that no result will be achieved or that it will not be published for reasons of state security. "I do not see any real interest in finding out the truth in the Chancellery, which is the only one with a complete overview of the investigation results of the services and the Federal Prosecutor General," said Kiesewetter.

So how much are you willing to bet on this claim of yours that "RF has destroyed the Nord Streams"? With the rise of the right party, doubt Germany will be able to conceal/classify or hold out from releasing the findings for much longer But Xal0lex has been censoring me on this, so fully expect he'll delete this post just as he did with my previous posts on this topic.

Looks like we have a new update on the biggest sabotage on EU critical infrastructure, and the largest-ever recorded release of natural gas, equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of Denmark.

Quote from: https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explosion-real-story-da24839c

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
...
One of the most audacious acts of sabotage in modern history, the operation worsened an energy crisis in Europe—an assault on critical infrastructure that could be considered an act of war under international law.
...
The Ukrainian operation cost around $300,000, according to people who participated in it. It involved a small rented yacht with a six-member crew, including trained civilian divers. One was a woman, whose presence helped create the illusion they were a group of friends on a pleasure cruise.

“I always laugh when I read media speculation about some huge operation involving secret services, submarines, drones and satellites,” one officer who was involved in the plot said. “The whole thing was born out of a night of heavy boozing and the iron determination of a handful of people who had the guts to risk their lives for their country.”
...
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky initially approved the plan, according to one officer who participated and three people familiar with it. But later, when the CIA learned of it and asked the Ukrainian president to pull the plug, he ordered a halt, those people said.
Zelensky’s commander in chief, Valeriy Zaluzhniy, who was leading the effort, nonetheless forged ahead.

The Journal spoke to four senior Ukrainian defense and security officials who either participated in or had direct knowledge of the plot. All of them said the pipelines were a legitimate target in Ukraine’s war of defense against Russia.
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In June, Germany’s federal prosecutor quietly issued the first arrest warrant in the case for a Ukrainian professional diving instructor for his alleged involvement in the sabotage. The German investigation is now focusing on Zaluzhniy and his aides, people familiar with the probe say, although they have no evidence that could be presented in court.

The findings could upend relations between Kyiv and Berlin, which has provided much of the financing and military equipment to Ukraine, second only to the U.S. Some German political leaders may have been willing to overlook evidence pointing to Ukraine for fear of undermining domestic support for the war effort. But German police are politically independent and their investigation took on a life of its own as they pursued one lead after another.

“An attack of this scale is a sufficient reason to trigger the collective defense clause of NATO, but our critical infrastructure was blown up by a country that we support with massive weapons shipments and billions in cash,” said a senior German official familiar with the probe.
...
A sitting general with experience in special operations would oversee the mission, which one participant described as a “public-private partnership.” He would report directly to the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, the four-star Gen. Zaluzhniy.

Within days, Zelensky approved the plan, according to the four people familiar with the plot. All arrangements were made verbally, leaving no paper trail.
...
The CIA warned Zelensky’s office to stop the operation, U.S. officials said. The Ukrainian president then ordered Zalyzhniy to halt it, according to Ukrainian officers and officials familiar with the conversation as well as Western intelligence officials. But the general ignored the order, and his team modified the original plan, these people said.
...
One of them was Roman Chervinsky, a decorated colonel who previously served in Ukraine’s main security and intelligence service, the SBU.
Chervinsky is currently on trial in Ukraine for unrelated charges. In July, he was released on bail after over a year in detention. Reached after his release, he declined to comment on the Nord Stream case, saying he wasn’t authorized to speak about it.
In a subsequent broadcast interview, he said that the sabotage had two positive effects for Ukraine: It helped loosen Russia’s grip on the European countries supporting Kyiv, and it left Moscow with only one main avenue for channeling gas to Europe, pipelines traversing Ukraine. Despite the war, Ukraine collects lucrative transit fees for Russian oil and gas estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
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In September 2022, the plotters rented a 50-foot leisure yacht called Andromeda in Germany’s Baltic port town of Rostock. The boat was leased with the help of a Polish travel agency that was set up by Ukrainian intelligence as a cover for financial transactions nearly a decade ago, according to Ukrainian officers and people familiar with the German investigation.
...
Germany and other nations scrambled to nationalize energy companies that handled Russian gas but collapsed after the pipelines were destroyed. Even today Germany is paying around $1 million a day alone to lease floating terminals for liquefied natural gas or LNG, which only partly replaced the Russian gas flows channeled by Nord Stream.
...
Days after the attack, in October 2022, Germany’s foreign secret service received a second tipoff about the Ukrainian plot from the CIA, which again passed on a report by the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD. It offered a detailed account of the attack, including the type of boat used and the possible route taken by the crew, according to German and Dutch officials.
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Due to rules governing the sharing of classified intelligence, German police investigating the case weren’t allowed to see the Dutch report that linked Zaluzhniy and the Ukrainian military to the attack, but they were made aware of it by intelligence officials.
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They had one lucky break. In rushing to leave Germany, the sabotage crew neglected to wash the Andromeda, allowing German detectives to find traces of explosives, fingerprints and DNA samples of the crew.
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They struggled at one point to secure the cooperation of Polish authorities despite the fact that the saboteurs used Poland partly as a logistical base and stopped in the Polish port of Kolobrzeg.

A port official suspicious of the yacht’s crew alerted police. Poland’s border guard checked the identification of the crew, who produced passports from European Union members.
...
The entire port was covered by extensive video surveillance, they found. However, despite a history of close cooperation between Warsaw and Berlin in police matters, Polish officials initially refused to hand over the CCTV footage of the port. This year, they told their German colleagues that the footage had been routinely destroyed shortly after the Andromeda departed.
...
By November 2022, German investigators believed Ukrainians were behind the explosion.

Earlier this year, Zelensky ousted Zaluzhniy from his military post, saying a shakeup was needed to reboot the war effort. Zaluzhniy, who has been viewed domestically as a potential political rival, was later appointed Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.K., a position that grants him immunity from prosecution.

In June, German officials issued a confidential arrest warrant for a Ukrainian citizen who the Germans believe was one of the crew members. According to people familiar with the investigation, a van driving the Ukrainian sabotage team from Poland into Germany in 2022 was snapped by a German speed camera, and the man, a diving instructor living with his family near Warsaw, was in the photo.

Authorities in Poland didn’t act on the warrant. The instructor is believed to have since returned to Ukraine. Poland’s failure to arrest him is a major blow to the German probe, because he and other suspects have now been tipped off and will avoid travelling outside Ukraine, people familiar with the investigation said. Ukraine doesn’t extradite its own citizens.
...
“None of them will testify, lest they incriminate themselves,” one former officer said.

So how exactly could this Ukrainian leave to Ukraine from Poland with EU warrant , don't laugh but ...

Quote from: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-issues-arrest-warrant-ukrainian-diver-nord-stream-probe-media-report-2024-08-14/

Polish National Public Prosecutor's Office spokeswoman Anna Adamiak said German authorities sent a European warrant to the District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw in June for Volodymyr Z in connection with proceedings conducted against him in Germany.

"Ultimately, Volodymyr Z was not detained because at the beginning of July he left Polish territory, crossing the Polish-Ukrainian border," she wrote in an emailed statement in reply to Reuters questions.
"Free crossing of the Polish-Ukrainian border by the above-mentioned person was possible because German authorities ... did not include him in the database of wanted persons, which meant that the Polish Border Guard had no knowledge and no grounds to detain Volodymyr Z."

And what exactly is Poland saying, you won't believe it but

Quote from: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-17/poland-s-tusk-weighs-into-controversy-over-nord-stream-sabotage

Separately, August Hanning, a former head of German foreign intelligence, told the Die Welt newspaper this week that the attack must have been carried out with the support of Poland and with approval from the highest levels in Ukraine and Poland.

Tusk didn’t directly address allegations of Polish involvement, saying only that “initiators and patrons” of Nord Stream should apologize and “keep quiet.”

Wondering how Germans are taking it, they must have a laugh about it, after all they're known for their humor right, right?

Quote from: Google Translate https://www.bild.de/politik/inland/ukraine-krieg-bundesregierung-friert-hilfszahlungen-an-kiew-ein-66c04faf286b5b3e50c84216

Traffic light government turns off Ukraine’s money tap

This news could cause resentment in Kiev: The German government will no longer provide Ukraine with any further aid payments - because according to the current budget planning, there is no more money.
...
The good news for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (46): Payments that have already been approved are to be made and materials are to be delivered. Funds for Ukraine amounting to around eight billion euros have already been earmarked for 2024.

tl;dr
Putin personally dove down on a dolphin and blew up 3 Nord Stream lines, and EU countries are making up lies and covering for Russia Grin