poesel

Yes, absolutely.
Yes, 10+ years down the road. Adding the Ukraine to the EU is like adding a slightly smaller and less populated Mexico to the USA (in relative terms). That is no easy task and should not be taken lightly.
Don't get me wrong - it should be done, no question. But it must be done right.

How long will Erdogan resist against Finland & Sweden joining NATO? Or to phrase it better: what does he want for his agreement and will he get it?
 
Sorry, can't let that slip. No, the EU does not act similar to Russia. There are only some political parties who would like to have a more authoritarian kind of state and this is opposed by the EU.
Funnily, the same people who are opposed to the EU are more than happy to take money from it.

How long will Erdogan resist against Finland & Sweden joining NATO? Or to phrase it better: what does he want for his agreement and will he get it?
 
Sorry, can't let that slip. No, the EU does not act similar to Russia. There are only some political parties who would like to have a more authoritarian kind of state and this is opposed by the EU.
Funnily, the same people who are opposed to the EU are more than happy to take money from it.

Yes, absolutely.
Yes, 10+ years down the road. Adding the Ukraine to the EU is like adding a slightly smaller and less populated Mexico to the USA (in relative terms). That is no easy task and should not be taken lightly.
Don't get me wrong - it should be done, no question. But it must be done right.

I can speak only about Germany in this regard. This article is a lot of conjecture. Germany is not wavering in its support for Ukraine. The public isn't and I haven't heard from any serious politician anything in this direction.
About the ceasefire from Scholz - please remember that this whole war thing is pretty new for Germany. Sounds crazy but it is. Public talking about weapon systems would have put anyone in the right wing nut job category in January. Now it is becoming a normal discussion point.
But there is still a significant amount of pacifists who had fought in the 70s & 80s for peace and against weapons. Scholz is also their chancellor and those words are meant for them.
There has been a local election on Sunday and I won't get into the details. But the winners had both a pro-Ukrainian / pro weapons delivery stand.
The public support is there and what has been said about Ukraine being the one to decide how and when it ends is still true.

Just seen this on another site I follow and just made me smile...
 

I can speak only about Germany in this regard. This article is a lot of conjecture. Germany is not wavering in its support for Ukraine. The public isn't and I haven't heard from any serious politician anything in this direction.
About the ceasefire from Scholz - please remember that this whole war thing is pretty new for Germany. Sounds crazy but it is. Public talking about weapon systems would have put anyone in the right wing nut job category in January. Now it is becoming a normal discussion point.
But there is still a significant amount of pacifists who had fought in the 70s & 80s for peace and against weapons. Scholz is also their chancellor and those words are meant for them.
There has been a local election on Sunday and I won't get into the details. But the winners had both a pro-Ukrainian / pro weapons delivery stand.
The public support is there and what has been said about Ukraine being the one to decide how and when it ends is still true.

I can speak only about Germany in this regard. This article is a lot of conjecture. Germany is not wavering in its support for Ukraine. The public isn't and I haven't heard from any serious politician anything in this direction.
About the ceasefire from Scholz - please remember that this whole war thing is pretty new for Germany. Sounds crazy but it is. Public talking about weapon systems would have put anyone in the right wing nut job category in January. Now it is becoming a normal discussion point.
But there is still a significant amount of pacifists who had fought in the 70s & 80s for peace and against weapons. Scholz is also their chancellor and those words are meant for them.
There has been a local election on Sunday and I won't get into the details. But the winners had both a pro-Ukrainian / pro weapons delivery stand.
The public support is there and what has been said about Ukraine being the one to decide how and when it ends is still true.

I can speak only about Germany in this regard. This article is a lot of conjecture. Germany is not wavering in its support for Ukraine. The public isn't and I haven't heard from any serious politician anything in this direction.
About the ceasefire from Scholz - please remember that this whole war thing is pretty new for Germany. Sounds crazy but it is. Public talking about weapon systems would have put anyone in the right wing nut job category in January. Now it is becoming a normal discussion point.
But there is still a significant amount of pacifists who had fought in the 70s & 80s for peace and against weapons. Scholz is also their chancellor and those words are meant for them.
There has been a local election on Sunday and I won't get into the details. But the winners had both a pro-Ukrainian / pro weapons delivery stand.
The public support is there and what has been said about Ukraine being the one to decide how and when it ends is still true.

I can speak only about Germany in this regard. This article is a lot of conjecture. Germany is not wavering in its support for Ukraine. The public isn't and I haven't heard from any serious politician anything in this direction.
About the ceasefire from Scholz - please remember that this whole war thing is pretty new for Germany. Sounds crazy but it is. Public talking about weapon systems would have put anyone in the right wing nut job category in January. Now it is becoming a normal discussion point.
But there is still a significant amount of pacifists who had fought in the 70s & 80s for peace and against weapons. Scholz is also their chancellor and those words are meant for them.
There has been a local election on Sunday and I won't get into the details. But the winners had both a pro-Ukrainian / pro weapons delivery stand.
The public support is there and what has been said about Ukraine being the one to decide how and when it ends is still true.

I can speak only about Germany in this regard. This article is a lot of conjecture. Germany is not wavering in its support for Ukraine. The public isn't and I haven't heard from any serious politician anything in this direction.
About the ceasefire from Scholz - please remember that this whole war thing is pretty new for Germany. Sounds crazy but it is. Public talking about weapon systems would have put anyone in the right wing nut job category in January. Now it is becoming a normal discussion point.
But there is still a significant amount of pacifists who had fought in the 70s & 80s for peace and against weapons. Scholz is also their chancellor and those words are meant for them.
There has been a local election on Sunday and I won't get into the details. But the winners had both a pro-Ukrainian / pro weapons delivery stand.
The public support is there and what has been said about Ukraine being the one to decide how and when it ends is still true.

I can speak only about Germany in this regard. This article is a lot of conjecture. Germany is not wavering in its support for Ukraine. The public isn't and I haven't heard from any serious politician anything in this direction.
About the ceasefire from Scholz - please remember that this whole war thing is pretty new for Germany. Sounds crazy but it is. Public talking about weapon systems would have put anyone in the right wing nut job category in January. Now it is becoming a normal discussion point.
But there is still a significant amount of pacifists who had fought in the 70s & 80s for peace and against weapons. Scholz is also their chancellor and those words are meant for them.
There has been a local election on Sunday and I won't get into the details. But the winners had both a pro-Ukrainian / pro weapons delivery stand.
The public support is there and what has been said about Ukraine being the one to decide how and when it ends is still true.

How did they kill 3 tanks in that kind flat pan, no cover country with a Panzerfaust?

You must be new to the show. It has been always about politics. Who likes whom in Europe. That is the point of it. The music is just to pass the time.

You must be new to the show. It has been always about politics. Who likes whom in Europe. That is the point of it. The music is just to pass the time.

Old Chinese dude:
VII.2. Having collected an army and concentrated his forces, he must blend and harmonize the different elements thereof before pitching his camp.
VII.3. After that, comes tactical maneuvering, than which there is nothing more difficult. The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain.
VII.4. Thus, to take a long and circuitous route, after enticing the enemy out of the way, and though starting after him, to contrive to reach the goal before him, shows knowledge of the artifice of deviation.
VII.5. Maneuvering with an army is advantageous; with an undisciplined multitude, most dangerous....
VII.13. We are not fit to lead an army on the march unless we are familiar with the face of the country--its mountains and forests, its pitfalls and precipices, its marshes and swamps.
VII.14. We shall be unable to turn natural advantage to account unless we make use of local guides....
Zero out of six.

Totally mis understood.  This is part of the Russian space program.  

Tearing down monuments is trying to erase history. It is more important to make sure that those who see these monuments know what or whom those represent.
Judging the past with current morale standards is necessary to understanding. But removing the offending statues means that this discussion will never happen again and the atrocities will be forgotten.

Tearing down monuments is trying to erase history. It is more important to make sure that those who see these monuments know what or whom those represent.
Judging the past with current morale standards is necessary to understanding. But removing the offending statues means that this discussion will never happen again and the atrocities will be forgotten.

A wise decision. Well, in that case you have to accept German 'dominance'. Personally I think Germany is a very respectable and noble country, which learned from it's mistakes and deserves to be forgiven. Apart from that it made the unity of Europe and the avoidance of new European wars for a large part financially possible.
Time to forgive, not forget, Panzermartin. Whether we like it or not, the European countries need each other. Unity is more important than ever.

Tearing down monuments is trying to erase history. It is more important to make sure that those who see these monuments know what or whom those represent.
Judging the past with current morale standards is necessary to understanding. But removing the offending statues means that this discussion will never happen again and the atrocities will be forgotten.

Some of the conversation over the few pages have referenced the former Yugoslavia.  Which brings back... well, not so good memories.
I was a Canadian peacekeeper in Bosnia in latter half of '93.   During the Croatian offensive in the Medak in Sept of '93, I was with the 2 PPCLI when we went into the sh*tstorm to try to stop the ethnic cleansing going on.  The Croatian army attacked our unit during that operation, a thing that the Croatian government denies to this very day.  Despite us photographing the Croatian dead after the battle and collecting their ID, etc.    We had god damn evidence and to this day, the Croatian government position is that they never attacked us.
Part of our job, beside trying to keep the warring factions apart, was to document evidence of ethnic cleansing and I was in charge (I was an officer) of a evidence collection team.  So, literally thousands of photos, videos.  Transcripts of interviews with witnesses and victims.  Six months exposed to that living hell, day after f*n day....
So I had the evidence, because sometimes our official recording devices ran out film or tape and we used our personal recording devices to finish up at a site.
After I got out the military, I found myself sometimes on various military forms about games, such as this one.  Arma forums, military wargame forums... that sort of thing.  And as it happened, I ran into forum members from Croatia and Bosnia Serbs and we would get into it.
Universally, every Croatian or Bosnian Serb forum poster denied what happened there.  And I was called a liar on many occasions for telling them them the truth of that war as I was there and they weren't.  And I have evidence to back up my claims.  No one believed me and if I offered visual proof, they didn't want to see it or they disclaimed it as fake.
I remember a particular Bosnian Serb who was not in the war but we got deep into the weeds discussing what happened during that war.  Deny, deny, deny.  It never happened.  Until videos that the Bosnian Serbs took of them killing civilians and dumping them in mass graves what was recorded by the very soldiers who committed the atrocities surfaced and made it onto their local media and they couldn't deny it any longer.  Those videos were part of the process besides sanctions that resulted in some notable Bosnia Serb / Serbian leaders being turned over to the ICC for prosecution for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.  After the revelation came out, this individual on that forum who I had spent hours engaging with about the culpability of Serbs in the atrocities simply ignored me from that point onwards.  I will never know why.... was it that he discovered that I was right all a long and he was wrong and he was ashamed (as he would have been) or he simply wanted to hang onto his delusion of what narrative he wanted to believe was true and he knew that I would keep chipping away.   
Denial is a powerful thing.   I don't understand why it has such power but it does.  People can dismiss an outright objective reality because to accept the truth is to undermine what they think reality is or should be.   I don't get it and is beyond madding to see the denials in the face of objective reality happen over and over.
Sigh.   I don't know why the hell I rambled on with this.  Maybe it was a story I need to tell to remain sane in light of the same brutality I witnessed back in Bosnia happening in Ukraine now.  Or maybe I still am the greater fool for believing my experiences in Bosnia can be an object lesson to others about holding onto a narrative that is personally comfortable but runs counter to all the real evidence to the contrary.   DMS, I am looking at you....
The truth will come out after all this is over.  At least, I hope it does.  The truth of this war needs to be told and codified so generations that follow can know what really happend.
Now at the end of this and reviewing it, I feel that I should have deleted this or apologize for it.  
I am hitting post. It is my truth.  Let people accept it and learn something from it or ignore it.  I needed to say this for a long time.   
 
 

The Kremlin blinks first in the geo-economic war over Ukraine (msn.com)
On April 29, Russia’s finance ministry announced that it would pay some $650m to foreign creditors on two overdue Eurobonds. And by making the payments before the bonds’ grace period expired on May 4, the Kremlin has avoided falling into sovereign default.
On the surface, this may look like a win for Russia. But in reality, the move was an embarrassing one for Vladimir Putin.
Ahead of the bond’s formal maturity on April 4, the Kremlin announced that it would buy back the bonds in roubles – and pay those who refused to accept the rouble buy-back as well. Nearly 75 percent of bondholders (almost certainly all domestic) agreed to the new terms .
Emboldened, the Kremlin announced on April 6 that it was also depositing roubles into accounts set up for other bondholders. The Credit Derivatives Determinations Committees judged this to be a “potential-failure-to-pay” event, ruling that Russia would effectively be in default if it fails to correct the situation by the aforementioned May 4 deadline. In response, Russian officials accused the West of attempting to force Russia into a default by restricting its access to foreign currency reserves. The US Treasury, which oversees sanctions, however made clear that sanctions do not bar Russia from paying with funds it was earning from ongoing oil and gas sales.
Russia’s recent decision to pay the bonds in foreign currency enabled it to avoid the all-but-guaranteed acceleration of other debts and lawsuits that would have followed a default and further impoverished the Russian people.
However, the move also left the Kremlin in a position of extreme hypocrisy and embarrassment. In the end, what Putin did was to repay domestic bondholders with roubles, which they cannot convert freely into hard currency to spend abroad. And pay foreign holders in full, in dollars – hardly a feat worthy of praise.
To achieve this Putin likely tapped into the record levels of foreign currency Russia accumulated through oil and gas sales since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine.
And it seems, soon it may also lose that crucial income.
On May 4, the European Union proposed plans to phase out the purchase of Russian oil.
Between the launch of its invasion on February 24 and the time of writing, Russia has earned $21bn from oil sales to the EU according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CRE). This record income was partially due to high hydrocarbon prices resulting from the war itself. Russia’s foreign currency stockpile, however, will not keep growing forever as the costs of the war are borne and oil and gas markets readjust. And now, it is also on the verge of losing a key customer.
Furthermore the EU is going after Russia’s oil sales not just within the bloc but around the world.
The bloc’s package of sanctions measures also includes a ban on providing transportation to Russian oil, regardless of where it is destined. This is certainly a fallible measure, given shipping companies set up outside the bloc could avoid it. However, the package will also bar the provision of insurance services for such shipping. This is far more difficult to evade, given the shipping insurance market is so dominated by EU, Canadian and US firms.
In case there is any doubt just how exposed the shipping sector is to Western sanctions, one just needs to look to the actions of Russian state-owned shipping company Sovcomflot. On May 3 specialist maritime industry publication Lloyd’s List revealed that Sovcomflot was looking to sell at least 40 ships from its 121 ship fleet before wind-down authorisations expire and it becomes fully sanctioned on May 15.
If Sovcomflot fails to raise enough cash to honour its debts before then, it will fall into default and creditors will go after its ships. Just like the Russian state, Russian businesses are still fearful of defaulting on Western creditors – even amid a war.
These sanctions are unlikely to be lifted as long as Russian troops remain beyond the pre-February 24 lines of control. For example, none of the sanctions introduced after Russia’s annexation of Crimea have ever been lifted.
Despite these setbacks, there is clearly some fight left in Russia, which is using its gas sales to Europe to try and ensure that the rouble remains convertible even as sanctions are further tightened, and thus that it can at least buy foreign currency if and when needed.
The Kremlin is likely to cut off other EU countries and companies who refuse to comply with the gas-for-roubles demand, as it already has with Poland and Bulgaria. But gas sales to Europe are an even more important source of revenue for the Kremlin. Pipelines are expensive to replace, and the above mentioned shipping sanctions are applied to liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes as well. Europe should prepare to call Putin’s bluff.
The West is winning the geo-economic war. The Kremlin will blink again.
 

You're going to get pounded on here mate, but in consideration of your good service to this community, I will say the following:
1. Most of us here know a fair number of decent Russians (most of them, in fact), and nobody has any doubt you are a decent (Russian) guy. And yes, there are no doubt many decent Russians in the ranks of the invading forces (just as there were in the 1941 Wehrmacht).
2. There are also a fair number of trigger happy "Git Some!" jerks and occasional sadists in the ranks of any army, no matter how highly organised, supplied and disciplined.
3. And, sure, juvenile trash talk on Twitter needs to be substantially discounted unless there's reason to believe it is manifested in action.
.... But Russian soldiers in Ukraine also have many strong incentives to behave brutally and murderously, and few restraints (although there is doubtless also decent behaviour, and probably a fair amount of simply minding one's own business):
a.  weak unit cohesion, bullying NCOs, lack of respect for officers and these days, for the Army itself, given the across the board lousy military performance;
b. Widespread drunkenness in all ranks, including while on duty, with only arbitrary punishments;
c. ranks drafted from the poorest segments of society, not across economic classes and regions (Moscow has suffered few dead, and most are officers);
d. Many of the draftees are Asian and Muslim, with little love for whites, including Russians, who call them 'чурка' (churkas, which is roughly 'wood chips'). It's easy for them to Other the occupied population (and vice versa). That said, the brutality seems to be an equal opportunity recreation; 
e.  the nonstop dehumanising 'Khokol' propaganda being pushed by RU media, probably more on the families than on the soldiers who are in the line. Yeah, that happens in war, even civil wars;
f.  Finally, said pig farmers have caused  many soldiers' comrades know to die horribly, often burning to death in vehicles. Partisan attacks and ambushes -- actual or rumoured -- are particularly resented, as they always are, and used to justify vicious 'reprisals'.
(Yes, of course, they're defending their homeland, but as a combat soldier, you aren't inclined to see things the enemy's way)
g.  I expect the troops get away with war crimes with impunity; there are no disciplinary consequences and officers have more pressing concerns anyway. Feel free to cite counterexamples though, if that is incorrect.
So you'd need to be wilfully blind not to see the toxic mix that makes this behaviour all entirely credible. May this war end swiftly.

Russian say we are "fascists", ok - then here our MG42... ok... M53 or MG3