As Jim says, you are welcome here. You’re entitled to your views, whatever they are. Most of us are anti-war in general, no matter the cause, but also strongly support Ukraine’s right to independence, no matter the regime’s flaws, because whatever those flaws are, they are very much less than those of Putin’s Russia.
Personally, I have been intensely dismayed by the West’s weakness in response to Russia - dating all the way back to the effective occupation of Transnistria in Moldova, but most especially since 2014. We have tolerated murders on our soil, murders of our nationals overflying supposedly safe territory, and the invasion, brutalisation, child-abduction, and mass murder of civilians in UA; many of our businesses continue to openly trade with RU. Our weakness has been a HUGE help to Putin.
Even now RU’s weakness is exposed for all to see -
…and I believe most of these figures are not massive exaggerations, still the West displays nothing but weakness and cowardice. This is something I am confident we will come to bitterly regret. He will not stop at Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Third Army Corps deployed a ground robot armed with a 12.7mm Browning machine gun: it held a frontline position for 45 consecutive days. Operated remotely and equipped with thermal vision, it repelled Russian assaults without a single Ukrainian casualty.
On the same front, Russian soldiers are attacking on horseback.
Footage from the 92nd Separate Assault Brigade at Pokrovsk shows Russian troops advancing on horses – a tactic not seen on European battlefields for over a century. Ukrainian drone operators, caught off guard at first, soon devised a method: buzz the horses to throw their riders, then neutralize the dismounted soldiers while sparing the animals.
The cavalry isn’t symbolic. Russian vehicle and armour losses have grown so severe that even units on the most contested front are resorting to horses to move troops forward.
Ukraine has authorized over 40 domestically produced ground drone models for use this year and recruited 10,000 new drone operators in under a month. (I have no doubt that gamers from around the world are signing up!) Russia is sending men on horses against machines with thermal sensors.
So Trump invaded Venezuela—what does that mean? Does he want to seize the oil? What’s next? Canada? Antarctica? What else will they start doing in 2026?
Could this turn into Trumps Ukraine? “We’ve got the President - it’s all over” is likely to be met with some very strong resistance, especially given the very recent statement the Bolivarian State of Venezuela has made. That amounts to little less than a countrywide call to arms.
I suspect any attempt by the US to ‘run’ Venezuela may be met with considerably more force than anticipated.
They will run the govt via the proxy president, he’s already warned her that if she doesn’t do what she’s told she’s going in a very dark hole for a very long time (the sort of thing Maduro and other dictators do/did)
Donald Trump warns Delcy Rodríguez she could “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro” if she “doesn’t do what’s right”
The only ‘honourable’ thing they could do is organize a fair and free election and respect the results.
the conspiracy nut in me does wonder if some sort of deal was done with Russia.
Putin agrees not to do anything when Trump takes over Venezuela, compromises on Ukraine to make Trump look good and in return Trump also takes Greenland which will effectively destroy NATO.
Trump gets his bullshit Monroe doctrine and Putin gets the equivalent with the obliteration of NATO.
There must be some seriously squeaky bums in NATO and the UN Security Council at the moment.
Presumably Trump’s hoping they’re squeaky enough that we’ll cut a deal to give him Greenland (or whatever he wants of it) for fear of him otherwise taking his nuclear ball and going home with it. Which would leave us with the French stuff and ‘our’ Tridents if we can get ChatGPT to work out how to hotwire them.
Curious to see how the Saudis will react to what’s unfolding in Venezuela. On the one hand, they’ve got oil interests everywhere — including serious stakes in US refining — so it wouldn’t be surprising if they mostly shrug and carry on, or quietly find a way to take a cut. But geopolitics isn’t just about refineries; it’s about alliances and leverage, so how they position themselves will be telling.
What really sharpens my interest (and not in a cheerful way) is looking at what BRICS is actually doing collectively. It does feel like the world is being re-carved. Between China’s Belt and Road push, Russia’s grip on energy and security ties, and Brazil and India trying to assert more regional weight, the old order isn’t exactly standing still. Add the slow drift away from dollar dependence and the US no longer looking like the uncontested superpower, and the direction of travel seems pretty clear.
Where good old England fits into all this once the dust settles is anyone’s guess. If Brexit and the rise of figures like the almighty Nigel are any guide, it doesn’t exactly scream strategic heft on the world stage.
The idea of the UK ending up as a kind of US satellite — aligned, dependent, and calling it independence — feels depressingly plausible. Squeaky cheese and not getting ill might be about the best booby prize on offer. And none of these greedbins seem particularly interested in doing much about the planet either, which will have its own say in all this. Cold comfort when the flooding really gets going.
Maybe launcher reliability didn’t matter much in terms of MAD. The resulting mess just needed to be bad enough that neither side was prepared to risk it. As long as the nukes detonated somewhere it would only be a matter of a few days before global wind systems had spread the fallout over the whole planet, as Welsh sheep farmers discovered to their cost after Chernobyl.
So it was important that the warheads worked, but in a large-scale exchange the fireworks they were mounted on could have ended up anywhere with much the same effect TBH.
The other question is, how long will “peace” with Russia last ?
