Russia hasn’t captured Kiev in 3 days and now Ukraine is winning the war and can dictate the terms of surrender…..


Last saturday we were pandemic experts, now we’re all military experts

I am a universal expert. Like all of us.

looking at BNO news and their vid of ukraine.


seems thermobaric weapons are now in play :S


(TOS-1 were deployed in Belogrod 9 hours or so ago, so it is possible)
I hope this isn't the case.

Musk's Starlink is now available in Ukraine. It's heartwarming how alone is now Putin in his lunacy.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b2024184.html
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1497701484003213317

If Ukraine survives tonight, NATO will apply for membership to Ukraine

Cool thought. But this is not going to be decided in one night.

Office calls now - people freaking about Swift ...

Well, they're not cutting off the country, rather some banks only. I guess the remaining banks will have quite a booming business

They want to ensure that Russia cannot finance further their illicit campaign. What a waste of resources instead of helping already impoverished nation.

Another nasty night which Ukraine’s survived with huge explosion after Russian missile hit an oil depot in Vasylkiv. Apparently toxic fumes all over and also invading Russian troops have blown up a natural gas pipeline in Kharkiv.

Unfortunately, they are not doing that. Excluding some banks only is as good as nothing in achieving this objective. With SWIFT it's binary: either you exclude the whole country or you don't do it at all. What will happen is that the funds will be channeled through the banks which are still connected.

Even with the avalanche of propaganda from both sides, it's clear that the Russians are comitting war crimes. Eg, they are using cluster bombs, which are banned but then again, when was Russia a responsible and law-abiding global player?

They got plenty of mining rigs for Bitcoin so does Ukraine have and accept crypto in the country. All needed equipment can be purchased and channeled as it suits.

Exclusion from SWIFT is kind of like “damned if you do and damned if you don’t”. It will hurt economies either way. Financial markets are already trying to shake off deep corrections since the beginning of the year and there’s more such surprises to come.

Are you seriously suggesting that Russia can run it's budget (a couple of hundred billion dollars on the spending side) by mining bitcoins?

Russia is the third-largest country for bitcoin mining, the energy-intensive and mathematically complex process by which new bitcoins are harvested, according to August 2021 data from the University of Cambridge. Total crypto market at peak was about $3T now maybe only half of it with Bitcoin dominant near $1T.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian...ns-11645902740

They want to block them from Ethereum mining though:
https://decrypt.co/93778/bitcoin-min...raine-invasion

Unfortunately, since the North Korea already doing it so the others can do it too:
https://www.voanews.com/a/north-kore...s/6455347.html

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Isn’t the assault on Ukraine is the war crime already? They went to attack another country, unprovoked, didn’t declare war, didn’t seek UN resolution. International law is already broken. Russians have to beg ceasefire on ANY conditions and punish their criminals.

This is worth reading for a nuanced view:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archi...n-the-war-end/

Russian invasion of Ukraine, this live streaming news update by The Guardian is keeping up with the latest news as they are reported from Ukraine.

The Guardian - Russia, Ukraine latest news

Btw, the West will impose sanctions on Russian banks, companies and oligarchs, great. But, what about scumbags, like Gerhard Schroder who is STILL on the board of Gazprom and has been instrumental in shaping Germany view on Russia? Would be great for Germany to do some soul-searching and force him to either leave the board or sanction him. It might be symbolic, but it's a powerful message. We should be honest to ourselves, that the criminal in the Kremlin had accomplices in Western Europe.

Thanks for the article, indeed a few important points and well-balanced as you say. However, there's a very risky point I will try to make in the hope that I will not be misunderstood and it relates to his point that "As for denazification – which certainly is needed in Ukraine..." and I believe he is wrong.

I am not Ukrainian, but I am Eastern European. Eastern Europe generally suffered brutally during WWII both ways: occupied by the Nazis and then occupied by the Soviets. However, the pain from the Soviets was much much larger and of course, longer. Combine this with the fact that big parts of Eastern Europe way before WWII have oscillated towards Germany and one can understand people who supported the power which is AGAINST the USSR. It's a very subtle and important distinction and many many people of my grandfathers generation supported Germany as an opposing force against Russia without being Nazis in any shape or form because they understood that one will win against the other and they can't fight it as the West already abandoned this part of the world. Call it cold and sad pragmatism if you will, but this is not nazism.

Today, Ukraine is not in need of de-nazification, this is overblown. Ukraine is seeking ways to distance itself from Russia. If this was a nazi dominated state, they would have had territorial claims towards it's neighbors, they wouldn't have had a Jewish president. With this yard stick, one can make the much more credible claim that Russia is a nazi state: it lies about it's intentions, it doesn't believe in diplomacy, it has territorial claims based on completely fabricated "evidence" and has geared the whole state apparatus towards warfare.

The nazis are in Moscow, not in Kiev.

Bitcoin should be banned from the face of our planet. It only promotes criminal activity and climate change.

He'll get suicided?

Nothing will happen to this guy or to others like him, don't get very optimistic. Western Europe will never acknowledge their guilt or persecute his ilk. It's only EE who are corrupted, haven't you been taught this by now..
I would rather see concrete actions for debunking Russian propaganda*, it's been going on for decades and they (the "west") were fed with it very generously.
*funny memes with Putin is....Hahaganda, don't debunk anything.

In the conclusion in his article, rather than end on Ukraine, he just had to have a dig at the Tories, and got it so wrong:

The ten year law has been around for centuries.

The new law is not to stop Protests and Marches at all but to prevent the infrastructure of the U.K. being crippled like it was with the "professional" protesters who recently blocked the U.Ks motorways.

Pretty sad to use an article on Ukraine to make a political statement unconnected with Ukraine.

Photoshopped fake news.

Not true. Pornhub blocking not true either.