Is there going to be a war?

The Russian propaganda machine rolls on, what a silly little boy 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/motorsport/61071954

Russian flagship being hit by two Ukranian cruise missiles is a huge development as the assumption is that they'll seek to use beach landings to secure the south and attack Odessa.

The Neptune cruise missile system was developed and is made in the Ukraine.

Russia is denying that the ship was hit but claims that munitions on board exploded. So far 50 of the 510 crew have been rescued.


Story here

US now supplying Ukraine with 11 helicopters and 300  "loitering munitions" which are basically kamikaze drones.

In addition to the helicopters and Switchblades, the US will also provide the Ukrainian military with 500 Raytheon/Lockheed Martin FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missiles as well as unmanned vessels for coast defense, howitzers, and armored personnel carriers.

Russians admit their Black Sea fleet flagship - the Moskva - has sunk.

Having initially claimed that it was just a fire on board (which in itself would be a statement of incompetence) they then moved the fleet away from the Ukranian coast to a safer distance - just in case another ship spontaneously combusted presumably.

Reuters is just reporting that powerful blasts have been reported in Kyiv and many key Ukranian cities in the last hour or so.
Wondering if Putin has reacted to the sinking of his flagship and ordered the mass bombing of Ukraine in retaliation?
Nobody else has reported it yet, but Reuters are usually first off the mark.
Hopefully he hasn't gone nuclear

wanderlust wrote:Reuters is just reporting that powerful blasts have been reported in Kyiv and many key Ukranian cities in the last hour or so.
Wondering if Putin has reacted to the sinking of his flagship and ordered the mass bombing of Ukraine in retaliation?
Nobody else has reported it yet, but Reuters are usually first off the mark.
Hopefully he hasn't gone nuclear

BBC reported it nearly two hours ago!!!

0:13
Explosions reported in Kyiv
Several loud explosions have been heard in Kyiv in the past few minutes.

Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko wrote on Twitter that she heard three explosions "one after the other".

"The air raid warning has been on for an hour. Most likely #putin gone livid because of the #Moskva sinking," she added, referring to the reported sinking of a Russian warship.

One eyewitness told a BBC correspondent that the explosions took place in the south-west of the Ukrainian capital.

Explosions have also been reported in the southern city of Kherson, according to Ukrainian media.

It comes after Russia threatened on Wednesday to strike Ukraine's command centres after claiming that Ukraine had attacked Russian territory.


The BBC even reported 0n the all clear an hour ago as well!

0:49
All clear in Kyiv after reported blasts
It's "all clear" in Kyiv now after several loud overnight explosions were reported in the Ukrainian capital.

"Please keep an eye on reports and return to shelter if the siren sounds again," the Kyiv authorities said in a Telegram post.

Blasts were also earlier reported in Kherson - Ukraine's authorities have so far made no public comments on the situation in the Russian-occupied southern city.

Ukrainian officials usually do not rush to either confirm or deny media reports of blasts: the key reason is that they do not want to give Russian forces any information about whether they have hit or missed their intended targets.

Social media users have also been warned not to publish any photos or videos from blast sites or share geolocation details.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-61101906

Some guy on Twatter saying the Russians have launched a wide scale thermobaric attack on key cities.

They are banned under International Law and are the most destructive non-nuclear bomb.

".... a fuel-air explosive detonates the very air itself: a small explosive inside the FAE munition spreads a chemical cloud in the air through an aerosol effect. The gaseous cloud seeps effortlessly into buildings and caves, and down into slit trenches. A secondary explosive then ignites the cloud, causing a massive and long-lasting explosion.
While the heat generated by FAEs causes lethal burns in a wide radius (roughly two hundred by three hundred meters) the overpressure created by the sudden combustion of the air is even deadlier. The fiery blasts create a partial oxygen vacuum that kills and maims in a variety of grotesque ways and cannot be mitigated with body armor or hard cover"


If this is true, they may be after Zelenskyy.

Maybe Putin feels he may as well get hung for a sheep as a lamb, if he’s going to be tried for war crimes. I think he just needs to achieve some goal before May 9th so he can seem to have some success? It will be interesting to see when this is over, just how much of the truth comes out on both sides. Obviously the parading of the captured British Soldier will play well to his Nazi propaganda which was one of the governments fears in the meantime?

Whitesince63 wrote:Maybe Putin feels he may as well get hung for a sheep as a lamb, if he’s going to be tried for war crimes. I think he just needs to achieve some goal before May 9th so he can seem to have some success? It will be interesting to see when this is over, just how much of the truth comes out on both sides. Obviously the parading of the captured British Soldier will play well to his Nazi propaganda which was one of the governments fears in the meantime?

Russia and Putin won't "lose". They have way too much firepower not to get to a point where there is a scenario that Putin can sell to the Russian people as a victory. The Russian people are already demanding they nuke Kyiv because of the coverage.
War crimes? No chance. Political coup - maybe.

As a byproduct of the war, there seems to have been a seismic shift of opinion in Finland and Sweden regarding NATO membership.
Both countries have always been against joining and in December only 24% of the Finnish public was in favour - but that has since risen to 68% and with it, a new majority of pro-membership MPs has emerged. The PM said that Russia had "turned out not to be the neighbour they thought it was."
There is a lot to be discussed but by all accounts both countries are now on a path to join NATO and an expansion of NATO is exactly the opposite of what Putin wants.

To quote the Guardian:
"...by Nato’s Madrid summit in June, Nato will be on course to expand its population by 16 million, its GDP by €800bn and its land mass by 780,000 sq km. Ukraine, by contrast, has a population of 41 million, a land mass of 603,000 sq km and a GDP of €155bn. A new 1,300km border with Nato could be formed, the precise opposite of what Putin set out to achieve in the treaties designed to shrink Nato that he ordered the west to accept last year. What is worse for Moscow, Nato could have strengthened itself in the Baltic Sea, right next to Kaliningrad enclave, the strategic Russian naval base.
By invading Ukraine, Putin thought he had hurled a missile at the west. It has emerged to be a precision-guided boomerang. To have turned two stolidly non-aligned countries into Nato members would join the pantheon of great strategic blunders of wartime."

It's still a long way from happening and there is much to negotiate as neither country would want nuclear weapons or standing foreign armies on their territory - but they both have impressive military strength in their own right and whilst Putin may posture, there is little chance of him opening a war on a second front.

In this sense, Putin may lose.

Seems like a case of unintended consequences for Putin. His actions in Ukraine have obviously proved beyond any doubt, if there ever were any, that he can’t be trusted. I think the fact that NATO can not intervene militarily itself has obviously just encouraged Norway and Sweden to consider their own positions. Whether it will encourage Putin to back off in Ukraine is unlikely but at least it firms European consolidation against him and if we can wean the Germans and Austrians away from Russian gas and oil in the future, cause them financial problems as well.

I still can't get over how in the UN, the Russian guy keeps coming out with this veiled threat about using nukes and NOBODY asks him what the Russian people think about Putin gambling with the assured annihilation of every major Russian city and it's people followed by nuclear winter starting with Moscow if they did it.

If nukes are a "deterrent" maybe Putin needs reminding why.

After a devastating assault over six weeks, there are growing signs that Russia is close to fully capturing the port city of Mariupol.
Thousands of people have been killed in the siege, which began when Russian troops started encircling the city in early March.
But why is Mariupol so important to Russia’s plans? The BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner has broken down the reasons:

• Securing a land corridor between Crimea and Donbas
  

Geographically, Mariupol occupies only a tiny area on the map but it stands in the way of Russian forces from the Crimean peninsula. Securing the city will allow Russia to build a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, a major strategic and military success.

• Strangling Ukraine's economy
  

Mariupol is the biggest port in the Azov Sea region and home to a major iron and steel works. It was also a key export hub for Ukraine's steel, coal and corn. Losing it would be a major blow to what is left of Ukraine's economy.

• Propaganda opportunity
  

Mariupol is home to a Ukrainian militia unit called the Azov Brigade, which contains far-right extremists, historically including neo-Nazis. Although they form only a fraction of Ukraine's fighting forces, this has been a useful propaganda tool for Moscow. If Russia manages to capture alive enough Azov Brigade fighters they may be paraded on Russian state-controlled media to discredit the Ukraine government.

• Major morale boost
  

President Vladimir Putin sees Ukraine's Black Sea coastline as belonging to something called Novorossiya (New Russia) - Russian lands that date back to the 18th Century empire.
Putin wants to revive that concept, "rescuing Russians from the tyranny of a pro-western government in Kyiv" as he sees it. Mariupol currently stands in the way of him achieving that aim.

Interesting US perspective about the importance of May 9th to the Russians and how Putin has become billy no mates in the Kremlin:

I know it's only symbolic in the scheme of things but Ukraine has attacked an oil storage and military base on Russian soil.

Potential implications for the Russian forces and the Russian media.

Beau has another interesting take.

On the one hand, Russia's war isn't going well.

If our intelligence reports are to believed, 30% of the first wave of invading forces i.e. 20 to 25k Russian soldiers have been killed.
Loads of tanks, planes and military vehicles have been destroyed or captured.
Attempts to take Kiev and Kharkiv have been repelled and the war is heading towards 3 months.
Now it looks like this attempt to thwart the expansion of NATO has backfired and both Sweden - and more strategically from a border perspective, Finland - are set to join the club i.e. the opposite of the desired effect.
And to top it off there are multiple reports of Putin struggling to fight against cancer.

On the other hand, Russia isn't in any hurry.

Sanctions are pathetic in the scale of things as western money continues to pile into Moscow.
Large swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine are occupied by the Russians including the pro-Russian Donetsk and Luhansk self-governing People's Republics
They have established a tentative land link with the already annexed Crimea cutting Ukraine off from the sea to the south
They are bombing the crap out of the cities, the military camps, the power generating systems, the rail and transport infrastructure, the airports and the main Ukranian economic breadwinners, decimating Ukraine's economy to the point that it will be a shell of a country if they ever stop.
They control the media and have the backing of the Russian people - and many other countries in the East and in Africa.

And the Russian's have an almost limitless supply of money, soldiers and weapons to throw at the problem - for as long as they want to.

It's difficult to see Ukraine ever retaking the East - they'll do well to hold what they have left - and equally it's difficult to see a face saving exit strategy for Putin so it looks like this war could drag on interminably.

But as one Russian oligarch said today they reckon the best chance of ending it is simply for Putin to die and hope that the old KGB and mafia colleagues Putin has  systematically installed in power over the last 20 years will call time on it. I'm not confident they will.

Russian journalist suggests nuking Eurovision after Ukraine win.

I'm 50 -50 about this - depends on whether Rylan wotsit and Graham Norton are there or not

McDonalds have announced they are pulling out of Russia, if that doesn't cause a revolution against Putin nothing will