Europe War in Ukraine - Thread 4 - thread rules updated

[Gethelred]

This is the thread for discussing the War in Ukraine. Should you want to discuss the geopolitics, the history, or an interesting tangent, head over here:

Europe - Backdrop to the war in Ukraine

This is the thread for the geopolitics, history and framework around the Russia-Ukraine conflict. If you want to discuss the events of the war, head over to this thread: https://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/war-in-ukraine-thread-4-thread-rules-updated.1376293/page-146

www.bigfooty.com

If a post isn't directly concerning the events of the war or starts to derail the thread, report the post to us and we'll move it over there.

Seeing as multiple people seem to have forgotten, abuse is against the rules of BF. Continuous, page long attacks directed at a single poster in this thread will result in threadbans for a week from this point; doing so again once you have returned will make the bans permanent and will be escalated to infractions.

This thread still has misinformation rules, and occasionally you will be asked to demonstrate a claim you have made by moderation. If you cannot, you will be offered the opportunity to amend the post to reflect that it's opinion, to remove the post, or you will be threadbanned and infracted for sharing misinformation.

Addendum: from this point, use of any variant of the word 'orc' to describe combatants, politicians or russians in general will be deleted and the poster will receive a warning. If the behaviour continues, it will be escalated. Consider this fair warning.

Finally: If I see the word Nazi or Hitler being flung around, there had better have a good faith basis as to how it's applicable to the Russian invasion - as in, video/photographic evidence of POW camps designed to remove another ethnic group - or to the current Ukrainian army. If this does not occur, you will be threadbanned for posting off topic

This is a sensitive area, and I understand that this makes for fairly incensed conversation sometimes. This does not mean the rules do not apply, whether to a poster positing a Pro-Ukraine stance or a poster positing an alternative view.

Behave, people.

 

[Jello_B]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/europeans-win-un-clash-with-us-over-rival-ukraine-resolutions-2025-02-24/

 

[Jello_B]

Security Council and General Assembly diverging

 

[Carringbush2010]

And this one probably needs its own post:

Three years on, Australia stands with Ukraine

https://www.minister.defence.gov.au/statements/2025-02-24/three-years-australia-stands-ukraine

The major takeaway is this bit:
The Australian Government has today imposed further targeted financial sanctions and travel bans on 70 persons, and targeted financial sanctions on 79 entities. This constitutes Australia’s largest sanctions package since February 2022.

Is Australia's contribution in any way staggering? Well, no. Is it a game-changer? Certainly not on its own. What's important, is that Australia did this right now, at this time, when the leader/president/king of the USA has made overt movements in the opposite direction. That Australia didn't just follow suit with the USA, didn't even just take cover and remain silent - that pleases me.

But but Albo is weak remember.

 

[Zidane98]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/europeans-win-un-clash-with-us-over-rival-ukraine-resolutions-2025-02-24/

The way this ends up is Trump turning on Putin and saying "hey look Vlad - I tried everything".

 

[Jello_B]

The way this ends up is Trump turning on Putin and saying "hey look Vlad - I tried everything".

Not sure these resolutions really do much anyways, but agree.

 

[Zidane98]

So many leaders worldwide openly calling out Trump for spreading Russian disinformation.

Macron correcting him on camera. This is all unprecedented stuff for a US president.

 

[peetoo]

So many leaders worldwide openly calling out Trump for spreading Russian disinformation.

Macron correcting him on camera. This is all unprecedented stuff for a US president.

Worse than Reagan?

 

[Zidane98]

Worse than Reagan?

Reagan wouldn't be caught dead repeating Russian disinformation.

 

[Zidane98]

 

[wannabejack]

Ukraine’s Top Military Leadership: We Are Starting to Win, Russia Is Starting to Lose

Head of Ukraine’s national foreign intelligence service – “We have studied…the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy. We are aware of Russia’s long-term plans…at least until 2030.”

www.kyivpost.com

“Russia needs a ceasefire to respite in order to restore the economy, accumulate supplies, and prepare the army,”

“The enemy’s objective is unchanged – the capture of all of Ukraine.”

Ukraine’s transition from a marginal producer to, probably, the world’s most prolific drone manufacturing nation, was held up by officials as a key success. Defense Minister Ruslan Umerov said 96% of all drones fielded by the Ukrainian military are domestically manufactured. Syrsky said during 2024, Ukrainian drone producers delivered more than 1.3 million robot aircraft to the armed forces. About 85% of all Russian casualties and vehicle kills on the battlefield are scored by Ukrainian drones,

The American contribution is significant but by no means dominant, Zelensky said.
“This war [so far has cost] $320 billion. $120 billion - Ukraine, $100 billion – Europe and other partners, $100 billion - the USA. Not $500, not $300, and not $700,” he said
...The figure most recently claimed by Trump was $350 billion.

 

[wannabejack]

[During a meeting with French President] When journalists asked Trump if he would call Putin a dictator after using that term to describe Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump responded firmly.

“I don’t use those words lightly,” the American president said.

 

[wannabejack]

In another speech, he [Boris Johnson] qualified the rare minerals deal as “extortion” while also saying, “But remember our Lend-Lease. We were simply swindled, our military bases were taken away, and we paid for this assistance until 2006.”

 

[Cookie]

Are we seeing the next iteration of the Axis of Evil?
The USA, North Korea, and Russia.

 

[Smeg Head]

We should be putting sanctions on the 'republican' party and their oribiting commercial suck ups.

 

[geoffjennings79]

Macron fact-checking Trump around Trump's face and head:
View attachment 2234375

Utter f***ing moron. I wonder if Macron met with him for just such an opportunity...? To let Drumpf confirm (again!) he has NFI.

 

[IlovethePies]

Macron's meeting with Trump was a grotesque display of imperialist hypocricy. It also confirmed that the lies about concern for Ukraine's freedom and democracy were always a pack of lies.
Gone is the rhetoric about “national self-determination” and the defense of “democracy.” Rather, US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron spent the third anniversary of the war squabbling, both in private and in public, over who will get the spoils of what’s left of Ukraine.

“We must have an agreement with Ukraine on critical minerals and rare earths,” Trump said during his meeting with the French president, citing his efforts to force the Zelensky government to hand over Ukraine’s mineral resources to the United States. French President Emmanuel Macron insisted that the European powers provided Ukraine with aid in the form “of grants, loans and loan guarantees,” which are likewise to be recouped—one way or another.

Gone is the charade of humanitarian concern for the people of Ukraine. Macron is now acclimatising himself to a peace deal afterall (though he had difficulty explaining why, when only months ago he was totally against any negotiations with Russia). His only concern, like all the European NATO allies, is that they don't get frozen out of the Ukraine carve up.


In this falling out among imperialist thieves, all of the lies used to justify the Ukraine war are crashing down. Trump openly stated that Ukraine, not Putin, initiated the war and refused to negotiate a settlement. He admits that America’s interests in the war have been those of raw materials and geopolitics. He openly states that Ukrainian President Zelensky is a “dictator,” ruling through martial law, making a mockery of the claim by the Biden administration that the war was about defending “democracy.”

The French newspaper Le Monde bewailed the Macron-Trump meeting as a "dialogue of the deaf" in which neither side listened to the other, and concluded that the radical rupture that has ripped apart the transatlantic alliance since Trump assumed the Presidency shows no sign of attenuating.

 

[IlovethePies]

Utter f***ing moron. I wonder if Macron met with him for just such an opportunity...? To let Drumpf confirm (again!) he has NFI.

Trump may be a moron, but he is also a very dangerous political figure not because of himself but because of what he represents: a dominant section of the US financial oligarchy that has already drawn the conclusion that democracy within the US is no longer compatible with its class interests.

Hence his resort to openly unconstitutional and illegal measures within the US.

Likewise, any limitations on the use of extorsion, economic threats, and military aggression are no longer to be tolerated by US foreign policy. Hence, Trump has no hesitation in revealing to the world what were always the motivations behind the proxy war in Ukraine: a bid by the US and NATO to plunder the natural wealth of Ukraine (and of Russia itself, but this aim has totally failed. Hence the current frenzy to at least grab the looty in Ukraine). Biden always tried to hide US motivations behind a fake veneer of "concern for human rights and democracy". Trump has done the world a favour by blowing apart that hypocritical smokescreen of lies.

Now all the NATO governments are likewise being exposed as the lying predators they always were. They are rushing to make appointments with Trump to plead their case: they should not be left out of the bonanza of Ukrainian mineral wealth that Trump now plans to seize for the US alone.

 

[IlovethePies]

Albanese recent government statement regarding its "continued support for Ukraine" etc was necessary for domestic purposes.

How would it look if Albanese now openly aligned himself with Trump, after for so long towing Biden's line of Russia starting an unprovoked war, and being a monster which must be defeated in defence of freedom and democracy in Ukraine??

But watch how future Australian government proclamations will be more and more tailored to what Trump wants. Albanese cannot go into open submission mode overnight, he needs time to prepare his capitulation.

 

[IlovethePies]

In another speech, he [Boris Johnson] qualified the rare minerals deal as “extortion” while also saying, “But remember our Lend-Lease. We were simply swindled, our military bases were taken away, and we paid for this assistance until 2006.”

Boris Johnson calling out Trump as an extorsionist expresses his own jealousy of Trump. He wishes he could be the one doing the extorting instead.

 

[IlovethePies]

Look I'm with you on the US empire but this is stretching it. There's nothing in Ukraine that can't be got in other places. The fertile soil of the Donbass is probably it's greatest natural resource, plus the soviet industry

The rare earth title is misleading. They exist in small quantities but everywhere(kinda), modern mining deals with 0.5% for say copper and it's profitable. The refining is the real cost(particularly for the environment), which China does, a lot of the raw ore ore is imported(from aus for one) but it can be had from many places.

There is a few minerals like titanium and platinum that are rare and in Russia but they aren't so important in the electro revolution

I think you are underestimating the rivalry between the US and China for control of supply chains and rare earths throughout the world, and the life and death combat for raw materials and sources of cheap labour that is driving the US to strangle China, whether economically or - ultimately - militarily.

Every nook and cranny is now subject of intense rivalry.

China is the late, but expanding and likely ascendant, capitalist power, and the US is the hegemon in terminal decline.

Critical minerals are the lifeblood of modern technology now and into the future.

 

[Visions]

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24/g-s1-50473/un-ukraine-resolution-russia

The US sided with Russia, North Korea and Belarus in the voting.

Can we officially call the US a terrorist state now?

 

[Visions]

Macron fact-checking Trump around Trump's face and head:
View attachment 2234375

Krasnov isn’t going to take that well!

Can see Macron and France being on the receiving end of some fake tirade.

 

[wannabejack]

Krasnov isn’t going to take that well!

Can see Macron and France being on the receiving end of some fake tirade.

 

[Jamolad]

Are we seeing the next iteration of the Axis of Evil?
The USA, North Korea, and Russia.

Possibly, but only if Trump doesn't get his preferred alliance of Trumplandia (formerly US), Greenland, Canada, and Panama.

 

[IlovethePies]

Can we officially call the US a terrorist state now?

You are very late in making this call. US has been a terrorist state ever since Obama started sending assassination drones into Pakistan, Afghanistan etc, killing US civilians without due process, and anyone else who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time( "collateral damage"" )