The War in Ukraine

Macron Refuses To Call Putin's Actions Genocide; Asserts "Russia-Ukraine Are Brothers"


Maybe @Dark Carnival made some points
Putin has already made a fool of Macron, both before and during the invasion. Macron has been the most directly engaged with him but it has achieved nothing.
 
Putin has already made a fool of Macron, both before and during the invasion. Macron has been the most directly engaged with him but it has achieved nothing.
Yeah but I'm not sure that's Macron's fault. I don't think Putin had any intention of ever cooperating with anyone. Although I'm not familiar with what France's relationship with Russia was like prior to the war.
 
Macron is trying to not completely cut the contact by avoiding to be openly hostile., he said in an interview on tv 2 weeks ago that his two main objectives is to stop the war AND protect his citizens and the rest of the world by trying to keep communicating with Russia .
 
Macron isn’t going to be able to stop the war on his own - if his diplomacy, as well intentioned as it has been, was going to achieve that then it would probably have already happened. If the price of keeping this unproductive line of communication open is for a major European power to obfuscate in its criticism of Russia (including not calling a genocide precisely that), it probably isn’t worth it.
 
Macron isn’t going to be able to stop the war on his own - if his diplomacy, as well intentioned as it has been, was going to achieve that then it would probably have already happened. If the price of keeping this unproductive line of communication open is for a major European power to obfuscate in its criticism of Russia (including not calling a genocide precisely that), it probably isn’t worth it.
Hmmm.
More opportunistic than well intentioned if you ask me. :eyes:
 
As long as there is the possibility of communication there is the possibility of change . Once everything breaks down it’s a point of no return. we might have reached that point anyway, but isn’t it better to at least keep trying?
 
The thing is, Ukraine and Russia are not, have never been and most certainly will never be brothers.

Over the last century or so, Russia, in its various guises, has tortured and killed this many Ukrainians:

- WW1+October Revolution (1914-1921): 2,589,000
- Holodomor 1 (1922-23): over 300,000
- Red Terror 1 (1929): 504,000
- Holodomor 2 (1932-33): over 8,000,000
- Executed Renaissance (1933): 30,000
- Purges (1930s): 2,240,000
- WW2 (1939-45): close to 14,000,000
- Holodomor 3 (1946-7) 750,000
- Red Terror 2 (1947-53): close to 203,000
- Since 2014: 17,000

Brothers don't do that. Macron needs to find another, less unpalatable, cliché.
 
It’s starting to look quite worrying for Transnistria/Moldova now :(
 
If they could easily take Odesa/move across to Moldova, they'd have done it by now. They keep losing materiel trying to launch absurd Incheon-style landing assaults around there - it's partly why they lost Moskva. They lost trying to take Mykolaiv the other week, which they'd need first before moving west, and they're having a lot of trouble just holding Kherson because of local civilian resistance.

(they've also had troops in Transnistria already for about 30 years now...)
 
If they could easily take Odesa/move across to Moldova, they'd have done it by now. They keep losing materiel trying to launch absurd Incheon-style landing assaults around there - it's partly why they lost Moskva. They lost trying to take Mykolaiv the other week, which they'd need first before moving west, and they're having a lot of trouble just holding Kherson because of local civilian resistance.

(they've also had troops in Transnistria already for about 30 years now...)

They have now installed a Russian puppet mayor/head in Kherson and for parts of Kherson Oblast, basically a sham referendum away from "legitimizing" the annexion of Crimea. Or that's at least what I presume might be fed to the Russian public on victory day knowing the propaganda machine. :gross:
 
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In the past two days, the Transnistria authorities say, explosions targeted:
  • Their state security HQ in Tiraspol, the main city
  • Old Soviet-era radio masts used to broadcast Russian news
  • A military unit in Parcani, a village just outside Tiraspol
 
I may be wrong, but my impression is that if Russia do push for Transnistria, it's far more likely to fall quickly a'la Crimea, because much of the general populace actually identifies as Russian.
 
How are the Russian forces going to get there though? They don’t appear remotely close to constructing the desired land bridge and, if they do switch focus, it will presumably leave them exposed further east.
 
Following his big speech, no formal declaration of war and no doomsday threats. Looks like we're avoiding nuclear holocaust for a bit longer!
 
They may well be vetoed by Turkey.
To all intents and purposes they are more or less in anyway via the defence pact both signed with UK this week.

Sweden / Finland attacked - UK defends - UK attacked - NATO goes to war
 
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said he will not approve Finland and Sweden joining Nato.

Reuters is reporting he has said Swedish and Finnish delegrations should not bother coming to Turkey to convince Turkey to approve their Nato bids.
 

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