Looking at what’s been happening in Ukraine in the last 24 hours is honestly extremely disturbing and frustrating to see. That muppet Putin is actually willing to kill innocent people and ruin a perfectly functional country in order to get more powerful and return to the irrelevant relic that was the USSR and old school Communism. Just a pathetic act from a pathetic old dinosaur.
Wishful thinking but I wish that China (who’s probably looking at this with anticipation and consideration of what they could do to Taiwan, which I shudder at the thought) would tell Putin to get stuffed and impose sanctions and punishments for Russia. They said they want to keep world order and respect peace right? Well right now their biggest ally is the one undoing everything the world has worked for post USSR. Putin won’t be shaken by any threats from NATO, USA, EU or anyone, but China joining them could potentially have much bigger implications for Russia. I hope they do take action even if my chances of winning the lottery is higher.
I agree. Putin’s ultimate aim is to re-create the old USSR by conquering Ukraine, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, with support from pro-Russian countries like Belarus and members of Collective Security Treaty Organization (former Soviet states of Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan).
Jon O’Brien, father of Jack who was one of the 298 people killed when MH17 was shot down over Ukraine in 2014, has written an opinion piece for the websites of The Age and SMH. Worth a read.
Absolutely agree. This is one example where leaving the ambiguous threat of military intervention on the table would make much more sense. The current approach will only be seen as a weakness by Putin and I fear will embolden him to go further such as the Baltics (which actually are “NATO on Russia’s doorstep”). Sanctions won’t do too much, Russia will just pivot more to China economically to try and make up for it.
i don’t know how to keep going on and hold on to hope with all this all this bad news, all the lives lost from this already - i know it’s not worth worrying about something that might not escalate to the rest of the world, but i can’t help feeling helpless
i can’t go on with life as per usual knowing that all this is happening. how do you feel hopeful after this happens, covid, national politics, and now this.
Conceptually, international law is about as useful as speaking with a cow and expecting them to understand what you said.
The main reason why the West is hesitant to act harshly is because Putin has nuclear weapons and seeing what he’s done so far he’s likely to invoke that option if the West fought back. China and India are not acting directly because they don’t want to damage their relationships with Russia but I can sense some hesitancy (at least from a face value, who knows what the CCP is thinking on the inside) from China about what Russia is doing.
Besides, if Russia is allowed to run amok against international law, the West not reacting will only justify their move into Ukraine and throw any law and order into irrelevance.
Heck, even my Russian mate is in shock of this and doesn’t agree 100% with Putin. From what I’m sensing on social media, there’s a sizeable number of Russians are who not happy at all.
