The West Is Deliberately Prolonging Russia's "Special Operation"...

[mushroom25]

apparently the slow progress by Russia is all the west's fault.......
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-is-methodically-carrying-out-its-plan-eastern-ukraine-defence-minister-2022-04-19/

[youngmafbog]

Of course it is. Why not everything else is. And usually especially ours(UK).

[davebro]

Well it's true really & supplying the Ukrainians with arms has obviously caused Putin to rethink his original plan (to subdue the whole of Ukraine) and limit his attention to the south and east regions.
I think we should keep up supplies until there is a peace negotiated or the Ukrainians themselves decide to throw in the towel.

[jno]

of course the West is doing so, in hope that they can help Ukraine win. Is this a surprise?

[Zacs-Master]

Do the Russkies actually believe this themselves?

[ToraToraTora]

Right oh!
It's Ukraine's fault for not surrendering to mad Vlad straight away!

[Old_Geezer]

Probably true. Had "the west" taken part there'd be no Russia now, just Greater Ukraine.

[ichkeria]

Complete tosh as always from Shoigu et al.
Looks like the rumours of his massive "close to death" heart attack are sadly untrue.

I did wonder about the situation in the Azovstal factory in Mariupol, though, where there are a lot of familes with kids holed up underground with the Azov battalion continuing to hold out.
I suppose the prospect of ending up in a Russian concentration camp, rape, torture and murder makes them continue to prefer the hell they already endure.
Makes you think ...

[ichkeria]

Ukrainian forces have this afternoon driven Russians out of Mariinka on the front line near Donetsk.
So that’ll hold them up even more

[Peter Pedant]

well they have a point: we have been arming the ukrainians in a classic proxy war

and if we took away their power to resist, ukraine wd fall !

I am surprised Putin hasnt declared that western arms supply was an aggressive act = cause for war

[ichkeria]

He knows if he followed through on the threat to act on weapons there’d be no reason for NATO to stay out if the conflict.

[Peter Pedant]

// I suppose the prospect of ending up in a Russian concentration camp,//

I am in a position of "my father said, ....." rather than my great grandfather ( Nina Kruscheva is knocking around, Nikita being an architect of the victory at Stalingrad)
and if my father said - - - the choice is death in a gulag or death in azovstal
I wd choose azovstal

[Peter Pedant]

at present the main war aim is to take a city any city ( favourtie Mariupol) so that he can celebrate something on May 8th

[ichkeria]

You have to wonder what sort of country would hold a parade to celebrate a “victory” that constitutes taking 8 weeks (and counting) to take control of what now amounts to little more than a pile of bricks and upwards of 20,000 hastily cremated civilian bodies.
The US is considering classifying Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. Should have happened years ago

[perseverer]

If Russia is purporting to be liberating the Donbas region, how do they square that with destroying large chunks of it?

[Peter Pedant]

they say they arent
NATO and or Ukrainians fascists and Nazis are

Problem is the Azov battalions ( you know who are killing all those russians) did rather like goose stepping and doing hitler salutes

[ichkeria]

The nightmare for Donbas started in 2014 when Russia’s proxies started attacking pro-West demonstrations and taking over government buildings by deception.
Since then they’ve cynically used the region as an excuse to cause trouble.
I’m pretty sure Putin knows fine well what he’s doing.

[Peter Pedant]

i wondered what the Arabs made of Azov
and here is al Jazeera having a go

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/1/who-are-the-azov-regiment

most readers will be east of suez, well, east of Gibraltar
hence the need to try to explain "semite led untermenschen"

[Gromit]

So says a man who won’t be in his job for much longer.
Approaching 2 months of a conflict that was supposed to be over in a few days. The loss of the the flagship vessel in the Black Sea, the humiliation of the failed assault on Kyiv, the war crimes and atrocities.
The war is going badly for Moscow, Putin cowering in his bunker, sending out halfwits to justify the indefensible.