Ukraine

[surrifox]

Place is nothing more than a banana republic except without the bananas but with nukes 

[Spiritwalker]

17 minutes ago, fox_favourite said:

All this would have surely weakened Putins position? Can't get my head around the whole thing. Haha 

Gorbachev and Yeltsin both survived coups but were gone a few months later.

[weller54]

Today started like watching 15/16 Leicester City and ended like the 22/23 version! 

[weller54]

Prigo sleeping tonight.... 

[Trav Le Bleu]

Never have the words "damp squib" seemed more appropriate.

 

 

(Except when actually failing to ignite a moist small explosive)

[MPH]

Prigozhin surely isn’t stupid enough to think he’ll get to Belarus and live out a happy life?   He will probably get arrested/ shot just stepping off the plane

[Innovindil]

7 minutes ago, MPH said:

Prigozhin surely isn’t stupid enough to think he’ll get to Belarus and live out a happy life?   He will probably get arrested/ shot just stepping off the plane

Reckon he's safe until Putin is done with the Wagner troops. I wouldn't want to speculate on what 25000 murderers, rapists etc etc would do if their leader was assassinated after a deal was made tbh.

[gerblod]

2 hours ago, Zear0 said:

Yup, do wonder if he was expecting mass defections en route north that didn't manifest and then backed out.

This is really worth a look. Broe has been covering the Russo-Ukraine war since early on. His in-depth knowledge is comprehensive.

[MPH]

31 minutes ago, Innovindil said:

Reckon he's safe until Putin is done with the Wagner troops. I wouldn't want to speculate on what 25000 murderers, rapists etc etc would do if their leader was assassinated after a deal was made tbh.

 

it’s very possible he will make his way to Africa where Wagner group is prevalent and martial his troops  to re-start the rebellion from there,  where he is in a safe place to do so.

[Jattdogg]

2 hours ago, Torquay Gunner said:

Prigozhin better steer clear of any open windows in Belarus. 

Gotta love the falling out of windows thing.

 

Perhaps he could flip the script somehow and become a window cleaner with an assumed identity from one of the many wagner soldiers killed by the russians.  

 

Gets a job cleaning the office of putin and seizes his moment of glory 5 years later.

Edited 24 June 2023 by Jattdogg

[WigstonWanderer]

13 hours ago, HighPeakFox said:

Anyone suggesting the entire Russian people are somehow inferior or inherently evil can get firmly in the bin. 

On the surface they appear to be a nation of nationalists comfortable with being ruled over by gangsters, and generally fairly indifferent to the brutal cruelty that they can see being dished out to their neighbour.

 

Of course that doesn’t apply to all of them, and they are subject to authoritarian rule and propaganda, but it isn’t a good look for a country that seems to have a habit of succumbing to authoritarian leadership.

[leicsmac]

3 minutes ago, WigstonWanderer said:

On the surface they appear to be a nation of nationalists comfortable with being ruled over by gangsters, and generally fairly indifferent to the brutal cruelty that they can see being dished out to their neighbour.

 

Of course that doesn’t apply to all of them, and they are subject to authoritarian rule and propaganda, but it isn’t a good look for a country that seems to have a habit of succumbing to authoritarian leadership.

I see that as no worse than a lot of other places - some of which are democracies where the gangsters are actually voted in by democratic process by virtue of talking a good game. And where the cruelty is exported to the other side of the world rather than kept in-house or neighbourly.

 

For me either all humans are inherently flawed in this way, or none (and it's all down to circumstances) - it doesn't matter what patch of land you currently inhabit.

 

 

[WigstonWanderer]

43 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

I see that as no worse than a lot of other places - some of which are democracies where the gangsters are actually voted in by democratic process by virtue of talking a good game. And where the cruelty is exported to the other side of the world rather than kept in-house or neighbourly.

 

For me either all humans are inherently flawed in this way, or none (and it's all down to circumstances) - it doesn't matter what patch of land you currently inhabit.

 

 

No it doesn't but some cultures seem to embrace these type of regimes more than others.

[leicsmac]

5 minutes ago, WigstonWanderer said:

No it doesn't but some cultures seem to embrace these type of regimes more than others.

I can't say that I agree that there's some kind of inherent cultural quality there, there's simply too many other variables. But I could be wrong there.

[marbles]

5 hours ago, Innovindil said:

Reckon he's safe until Putin is done with the Wagner troops. I wouldn't want to speculate on what 25000 murderers, rapists etc etc would do if their leader was assassinated after a deal was made tbh.

Cue 25000 people falling out of windows

[Countryfox]

Could always turn his hand to a bit of body double work ..  

 

 

[gerblod]

4 hours ago, WigstonWanderer said:

On the surface they appear to be a nation of nationalists comfortable with being ruled over by gangsters, and generally fairly indifferent to the brutal cruelty that they can see being dished out to their neighbour.

 

Of course that doesn’t apply to all of them, and they are subject to authoritarian rule and propaganda, but it isn’t a good look for a country that seems to have a habit of succumbing to authoritarian leadership.

I once chanced upon a quote which I believe was attributed to Leon Trotsky. The gist of it was that a repressed people will never have the will to revolt.

The significant revolutions in modern history, England in 1641, France and America in the late 1700s and Russia in 1917, were each generated by middle-class activists.

From a democratic pov, it's easy to sneer at people who appear to like living 'under the yoke' and who appear to be indifferent to the suffering of others, countrymen or 'foreigners' alike. It's also easy to paper over the cracks when ones own 'democracy' is threatened by rogue individuals like Johnson and Trump.

Russian egalitarianism resulted in starvation, midnight arrests, torture and executions of complete innocents and deprivations in all walks of life...from 1917 until now. One set of political gangsters (Lenin, Stalin et al) gave way to free-market gangsters (Yeltsin, Putin). So why would a repressed proletariat feel there was anything to be gained by another revolution - why would they even consider another revolution? They know, from grim experience, the costs of revolution.

 

[HighPeakFox]

I'm uneasy about making judgement from afar on a people I actually know little of, when I live in a country that tolerates a 'democracy' that entrenches power in the hands of the rich and privileged because of the arcane voting system that cannot be shifted. 

 

And why can't it be shifted? Because as a people, we just cannot be arsed - we've been worn down by our own media and political gangsters to the point that we think they're all as bad as each other and are unable to discern fact from propaganda. What does that say about us? 

[grobyfox1990]

17 minutes ago, HighPeakFox said:

I'm uneasy about making judgement from afar on a people I actually know little of, when I live in a country that tolerates a 'democracy' that entrenches power in the hands of the rich and privileged because of the arcane voting system that cannot be shifted. 

 

And why can't it be shifted? Because as a people, we just cannot be arsed - we've been worn down by our own media and political gangsters to the point that we think they're all as bad as each other and are unable to discern fact from propaganda. What does that say about us? 

Agreed, agreed, and agreed again. On the Russian people, I feel guilty saying it now, but they were terrific when we were there to play spartak in 2021. I felt a little uneasy going, especially as my ethnicity often causes problems abroad, but of the scores I interacted with, all were friendly, welcoming and helpful. I’ve felt much more uncomfortable in many places in the Uk. Hundreds of times 

 

On your second paragraph, spot on 

[Collymore]

1 hour ago, HighPeakFox said:

I'm uneasy about making judgement from afar on a people I actually know little of, when I live in a country that tolerates a 'democracy' that entrenches power in the hands of the rich and privileged because of the arcane voting system that cannot be shifted. 

 

And why can't it be shifted? Because as a people, we just cannot be arsed - we've been worn down by our own media and political gangsters to the point that we think they're all as bad as each other and are unable to discern fact from propaganda. What does that say about us? 

Although if any russian bots end up liking your post I'm afraid I'll have to remove mine! 

[ClaphamFox]

[ARTY_FOX]

He moves to Belarus and his soldiers get absorbed into the russian army. Man he doesn't realise he's dead yet. 

[Wymsey]

5 minutes ago, ARTY_FOX said:

He moves to Belarus and his soldiers get absorbed into the russian army. Man he doesn't realise he's dead yet. 

Reckon he's going to get brutal treatment over there, sadly.

Belarus are basically one of Russia's few best mates.

Edited 25 June 2023 by Wymsey

[leicsmac]

You'd think that Prigozhin knows as well as anyone that he's on a very high tier of the shit-list from now until the end of his natural, and he'll have taken measures to try and ensure he isn't landed with a polonium suppository.

 

Of course, whether or not those measures work is another matter entirely.

[SpacedX]

This is actually a very good outcome. Prigozhin, a ruthless, unstable, vicious and dangerous fanatic is now on borrowed time even if he goes back to selling hot dogs in St Petersburg. His 'private' paramilitary mercenary force, which had grown to be a sizeable unit are nonetheless now full of poorly trained ill-disciplined troops where they used to be purely battle hardened veterans. The Russian military have absorbed a large rabble of disaffected criminals that will be arguably far less effective going overnight from being branded as 'elite fighters' to knowing that they are simply cannon fodder - a disaster for morale. Meanwhile the attempted coup has significantly weakened Validimir Putin's leadership and credibility.