Farke - too close for comfort

[chicken 2,604]

On 31/01/2022 at 14:04, Worthy Nigelton said:

The truth is none of us know. It is very, very possible this is just an expensive, protracted threat/game playing from Putin and the likelihood is that diplomacy will probably work out in the end - that's where my money would be if I was betting on it. However, how anyone can find it 'highly, highly unlikey' that he will invade is bizarre at best and insane at worst. He has already killed people in London, annexed Crimea and had an incursion into Georgia in his tenure. It is 100% possible he could invade and the west are rightly concerned about it. This is nothing to do with approval ratings. Its obvious why German and French media are reacting the way they are and that's because the EU (Germany in particular) relies heavily on Russian gas, so they will always downplay what Putin is doing to keep the lights on.

Industrial militarised complex in action.

People see moving troops around as expensive. In reality, the expense is the cost of employing them. It's actually pretty cheap to move them around, after all, they frequently get moved around for exercises.

Russia has probed for a while now, not just in Ukraine. We have had several instances of unauthorised Russian air force incursions into UK and EU air space. Non-aggressive, but had escorts back out again after jets scrambled to address it.

There are lots of games going on further afield. China involved in political positioning too, criticising NATO etc.

There'll be all sorts of things going on, motivations, reasons for now etc. Although folks may not like it, Britain having left the EU will be one. It suggests that there is unrest within the EU itself and plenty of distrust and support within other nations to break away from it. On it's own, Britain isn't a threat etc, but as part of the Union it was a bigger player. To have that leave, which we know the Russians wanted, weakens the EU a bit politically. So it could be seen that it isn't a bad time to see if more "wobble" can be caused.

Then you have the pandemic and the impact on Europe of that. Nato nations as well.