KentVillan

When Bob Mortimer does a train guy video, are other passengers there watching him? Or has he found an empty carriage!?

Maybe where the court case could involve lots of embarrassing / sensitive information being revealed, even though the main accusation is untrue?

I think we're already there to some extent - the question is how long it drags on for, how many casualties there are, and how much the violence and economic damage spreads. If history's anything to go by, this could easily last 10+ years. I hope not, but we have to be realistic. The conflict could outlast Putin.

I guess that was the role of Satan, Mephistopheles, the Bogeyman, etc in most cultures. On the subject of Hitler, I found this article the other day https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-hebron-teacher-named-hitler-palestinians-reckon-with-loaded-names/

This is the whole problem with all this shoulda woulda coulda stuff. As with a game of poker, you can play optimally *with a stronger hand* and still get blown up by an opponent who misplays their weaker hand. All sides have imperfect information and there’s always scope for someone else to play suboptimally. It’s very, very hard to work out what to do. And nuclear weapons introduce “risk of ruin” which just plays havoc with probability calculations. Is it better to take: Option A 80% chance of victory 10% chance of limited defeat 10% chance of nuclear war or Option B 50% chance of victory 45% chance of limited defeat 5% chance of nuclear war These are very difficult calculations, and I don’t envy the guys working overtime trying to map a way through this.

Minsk-2 was 2015, but when Zelensky came to office he tried to get past the stalemate, trying to push through the "Steinmeier Formula" - included stuff like elections in Donbas, and so on. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/11/zelensky-pushes-peace-deal-ukraine-war-russia-donbass-steinmeier-formula/ It was specifically an attempt to break the Minsk-2 deadlock, and involved additional concessions to Russia. Putin just basically let him humiliate himself in front of his people. https://www.rferl.org/a/what-is-the-steinmeier-formula-and-did-zelenskiy-just-capitulate-to-moscow-/30195593.html And Putin just carried on funnelling arms and troops into Donbas. Of course there's two sides to every story, but Zelensky appeared to be acting in good faith - taking considerable risks in the Ukrainian political context - and grew frustrated with Putin embarrassing him.

I meant any leader who didn't view their mission as being Putin's representative in Ukraine (a la Yanukovych). My understanding was that Zelensky negotiated with Putin over Donbas, and the separatists & Russia didn't uphold their side of the bargain... so he got hammered by his own people for being naive... and this all made him lose trust in Putin as a good faith actor. But I too would love to read something more authoritative on this. My feeling is there has been such of deluge of outright lies and one-sided takes from the Russian propaganda machine that some of it kind of gets through our bullshit filter, even when we are sympathetic towards Ukraine.

No, not at all - I'm not saying Ukraine don't have or deserve to have agency. I'm saying that we were so far down this path that whatever Zelensky did was going to get him in trouble with Putin. He still had considerable agency within that, but as I said, it was Hobson's choice - maybe there were some less violent options, but my feeling is Putin just would not tolerate a Zelensky type individual in power in Kyiv regardless of which scenario played out. Of course we can't ever know this, but I was pushing back on the idea that there is a counterfactual where Nato and Ukraine give into Russian demands, and avoid war. I've just not seen a particularly convincing version of this counterfactual (except for the ones that go right back to the 90s / early 2000s, where yes it's true massive mistakes were made by the West & Nato).

What were those demands, though? Putin is a classic bully, he presents his victim with a Hobson's choice. He has a long track record now of using military campaigns to drum up public support. Once he's decided he's going to proceed with one of these adventures, a lot of the "diplomacy" is a facade. I struggle to understand what exactly Ukraine could have done differently, short of agreeing to become a Belarus-style puppet state. There are plenty of reasonable arguments that Nato expansion and US/EU/Russia relations could have been handled better over the last 30 years. But a lot of this stuff has been baked in now for some time. The idea that there was a realistic path out of this in recent history (e.g. opportunities for Biden to handle this differently) seems pretty farfetched to me.

What a monumental **** dickhead Elon Musk is

I think it's far too early to judge Bailey tbh. Probably needs a summer and then a bit of luck with injuries/suspensions to get a run in the first XI before we'll ever really know what he's capable of in the Premier League.

Oh I didn’t mean the attack - I meant the journo saying he’d been there yesterday and seemed to think trainers were based there. It’s not proof, no. Just seemed like an indicator that it could be happening, and I also think NATO’s policy of not coming into conflict with Russia doesn’t preclude them having people in Ukraine in the regions where there is no Russian ground presence.

Yes but NATO instructors = current NATO military personnel Agree with @bicksterit’s unclear exactly what is happening right now vs in the weeks leading up to it, but my guess is Nato would feel fairly comfortable having people based near Lviv since no Russian ground forces will be there any time soon

He’s writing in the present tense and saying he was there yesterday, but agree it’s not 100% confirmation. Guess we’ll never really know until all the intel is declassified in a few decades

@bicksterlooks like confirmation that NATO people have been training and assisting Ukrainians just inside the Ukraine border, hence the unexpected Russian missile attack in the west

A sad but not unexpected development. Brave man

Does anyone know how Rice played against Sevilla? I think a lot will depend on his battle with Coutinho

This looks like it could get pretty bad for Boris

The “Independent”

Mic drop

Some fairly sensible people saying this is hopefully not as scary a moment as it sounds, but not a good thing to be going on at the same time as Ukraine. I’m really struggling to get to sleep atm, just doomscrolling military accounts on Twitter. Maybe ignorance really is the way forward

Hopefully this is correct

The weird sensation that spending more time in On Topic will be better for my mental health

Apparently no casualties, but serious media outlets reporting it as fact, e.g.

It's always been a key reason why very centralised autocracies have failed throughout history. Putin is effectively a king / tsar at this point, and has been for a while. And it's one of the reasons China has been more successful - they have more of an oligarchy model (in the true sense of the word), with multiple power centres, and the leader being replaced fairly often compared with most non-democratic regimes. It's still riddled with corruption, but that churn helps to prevent one person from just accumulating so much power that everything revolves around their whims - although arguably Xi Jinping is trying to push against that.