After 2014, one is reported to have a Ukrainian fiancee
Well, at least they can say they’ve live in some interesting times. Moved to a country with an ongoing civil war, joined the armed forces to fight and kill the enemy du jour, which happened to be the ethnic Russians in Donbass.
I cannot comment on their motives for joining the Ukraine armed forces. The point I was making is that they did not go against government advice to go there as you suggested.
Government advice actually depended on who you got it from. Liz Truss said that British nationals should go. I wonder if she’d make the same call now.
EDIT: Just read their histories. Both moved there in 2018 after having fought in Syria with the “Syrian Democratic Forces”. That tag of mercenary doesn’t look far off.
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Tthat’s the 2022 advice, in 2018 there was no advice.
So they are not so different from the Wagner Group who were present in the secessionist areas of Ukraine. The only difference being the Wagner Group operate with explicit Russian government approval
Fair point that.
I suppose participants on both sides have to take the consequences of war - whether we sitting at home approve or not?
There was common sense in 2018. The 48 year old signed a contract with the Ukrainian military to perform services for them. That is a mercenary. The younger one passed out as a Marine after going to Ukraine in 2018, but that was after a tour in Syria with the hilariously monikered Syrian Democratic Forces.
And the only thing we are disagreeing about is whether they defied government advice to go to Ukraine.
I am now going to watch the Hampshire/Essex T20 so this is my last post on the matter.
A point I am happy to concede.
They both went to fight for Ukraine long before it was in a war with any foreign powers. They did not defy government advice.
So it is a land grab then :-
Russia’s President Putin has sought to justify Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine by saying his country is now trying to regain its “original territories”, just as Russia’s ruler Peter the Great did at the beginning of the 18th century.
“Peter the Great waged the Northern War for 21 years, and it would seem that he fought with Sweden and tore away something from it. But he didn’t carve out anything! He was regaining [territory],” Putin told a meeting of young entrepreneurs in Moscow on Thursday, in remarks shown live on Rossiya 24 rolling news channel.
Noting that he was talking about the area on which the city of St Petersburg was founded, Putin added that none of the European countries at the time recognised this as Russian territory.
“Everyone recognised it as Sweden, and Slavs lived there from time immemorial along with the Finno-Ugric peoples. Moreover, this territory was under the control of the Russian state,” Putin said.
"To all appearances, it is our lot as well to regain and strengthen.
“And if we proceed from the premise that these basic values are the foundation of our existence we will certainly succeed in solving the tasks we are facing,” he said in an apparent reference to Moscow’s current invasion of Ukraine.
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So that invokes a question I’ve already raised. If Putin does decide to have a nibble at NATO, can it actually respond or is it going to be another Poland?
By saying that does he mean that anywhere the Slavs lived is fair game?
We’ve got a Russian family who live down the road (not friends of Putin so I think we’ll be ok).
I know and we even recently sponsored the son to get UK citizenship 
He has been uncharacteristically quiet lately and I haven’t sent him to the 15 year gulag.
Has he been captured by the Russians?
Or possibly in secret MI6 training for a covert black-ops mission to take out Putin single-handed?
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Anyone got a spare room?
I’ve said this months ago, I told Pap about Peter the Great last week, he is dying and he wants a legacy, he is mad and batshit crazy.
He does know though if he goes into NATO he’ll lose, fuck he can’t topple his neighbour next door and he’s had years to prepare, on a scale of Russian performance you’d give it 2/10 at best.
Glad to know you’re alright and not captured by Russians.