Typical Barry bollocks spouted every time someone says anything that isnāt Barry-speak. Ffs
Before jumping on that as you do on my every posts akin to a 12 year old doing playground bullying Iād suggest you at the posters posts. From my view itās seems that way.
Iām openly pro Ukrainian and want them to win their freedoms back. Itās their nation.
I think 8% is crude oil imports. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/russia-oil-fuel-imports-energy-gas-b2032907.html
Isnāt diesel made from crude oil?
I am half Russian Barry as I made clear some time ago now. I have family in Russia. I am pro Russian in as much as I donāt want my family in Russia to suffer and I donāt want to see you or anyone else propagate Russophobic Western propaganda unchallenged because it impacts me in my everyday life and concerns me to see these attitudes expressed. Having said that, Iām not a nationalist Iām a humanitarian and I donāt want to see ordinary Ukrainians suffer either.
Russia has a wealth of resources that the rest of the world is desperate for. Itās Europe that is skint only able to stay afloat by pillaging resources from the rest of the world.
Russia is skint in as much as the West have thieved their wallet recently but their bank account is still full to bursting.
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Iām not half Russian and I agree, Russians are in the dark about their despot leader. Ukrainians are suffering in their 1000ās due to Putinās behaviour.
What is Europe pillaging? And where from?
Please explain that baseless accusation.
The standard of living in Russia before this was poor, after this itāll be enough start a revolution, every cloud.
Itās changed its goals because itās already won!
Itās secured Ukrainian NATO neutrality, itās well on itās way to securing the Donbass, itās destroyed the majority of the Ukraineās military infrastructure and mechanisation with more destruction still to come, its defeated Azov.
It wasnāt an invasion with the intention of taking all Ukraine, it was 200k soldiers against a Ukrainian army of 250-600k, the numbers for a full invasion were never there.
I suggest that you look at the BP, Shell, Total, ENI websites as a starting point.
Yes it is. We have fewer refineries than we used to, only 6 now (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_refining_in_the_United_Kingdom), and not all are set up to produce diesel fuel.
According to Gov.uk 18% of our road diesel and 1% of our red diesel came from Russia (2020 figures) https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-phase-out-russian-oil-imports
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The average Russians standard of living has increased far more over Putinās tenure than yours has.
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What are they in the dark about? Russians know what Putin is about far better than you do. According to you heās a pantomime villain.
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Ukraine joining the EU.
For a ceasefire thereāll have to security guarantees on Ukrainian sovereignty.
No puppet leader.
Massive military losses.
Loss of face.
Ukraine becoming a more progressive open society on Russias doorstep.
NATO on Russias doorstep.
NATO aligned.
And many more, this will speed up Russias dependence on China, itās a functioning state only because itās sells minerals and you canāt run a successful economy solely on that.
Putin has turned Russia into a pariah state and if there is antagonism towards Russians thatās bad but if theyāre pro Putin what can they expect? This country has a great tradition of sticking up for the underdog and wronged.
I think you have a low opinion of Russians for if they knew Putin bombed kindergartens and civilians indiscriminately theyād be different Iām sure.
Why does he censure anti war protests?
What about Navalny?
He is a despot tyrant.
Sorry youāll have to expand and explain clearly, this is a forum not a classroom exercise to find your point somewhere on the web, you post where European pillaging is and we can discuss it, forum is a great word.
From a low base and now itās regressing, heās taken the countries resources to do it, why do so many Russians leave? They also have a huge issue with recruitment from Europe and the US, no one wants to go and live there for an extended time.
Think why I do - child 
Itāll ve very interesting to track the rouble price over the next week.
It should never have come to this, events have overtaken the reasons for the start of this conflict, and no amount of pretending otherwise can change that. No amount of ridiculous taking of sides as if it is an ideological fight as Barry sees it, good v evil changes that. OK, Putin bit, and of course, once heās taken the bait and committed heās put himself in a situation where he canāt back down. But letās be honest, this could all have been avoided.
Eight years ago, after the US/CIA led coup that overthrew the legitimate government of Ukraine which blindsided Russia and caught them on the hop the Minsk Agreement was agreed and signed by Russia and Ukraine, in good faith, which agreed a peaceful solution in the ethnic Russian Donbass and Luhnask regions of Ukraine, several million people who were being ethnically cleansed by Ukranian forces, led by the extreme right wing Azov Battalion, an estimated 20,000 plus of them over the past eight years. Like it or not, Putin, as the legitimate leader of Russia continually called for this agreement to be implemented, growing ever more belligerent over the years, making it quite clear that Russia would not stand by for ever and allow this state of affairs to continue, eight years and counting was long enough. Culminating in a show of strength with a build up of Russian forces on the Russian side of the border with Ukraine, which of course was meat and drink to the ideologues of NATO, ātold you so, Evil Putin is going to invade Ukraineā. We can all remember this went on for weeks, Western governments and their media telling us every day that Putin was going to invade next day, it could only ever end in a self fulfilling prophecy, which for our lot was just fine and dandy. There was never any intention on the part of NATO and the West to allow any get out, any wriggle room for Putin, once heād committed they would settle for nothing less than total capitulation, which, in the real world is never going to happen.
Three days before the Invasion of Ukraine Putin telephoned and spoke with Biden asking for the Minsk Agreement, signed in good faith by all parties eight years before, which would secure the safety of ethnic Russians in Donbass/Luhnask region, to be implemented. He was dismissed out of hand. By this dismissal Biden must have known what the next step would be, it was a game of chicken. Note that it wasnāt Ukraine who were calling the shots here, it was the US, thousands of miles away on a different continent. As per usual!
I am old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was only a young teenager so of course I didnāt comprehend the ins and outs of it but I remember the fear of my parents and everyone else, the sudden realization that what happened to the countless thousands of innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be coming our way. It was the same old narrative, evil Kruschev, the new Hitler,(yes really Barry, sound familiar?), out of the blue woke up one morning, went mad and sited missiles in Cuba in an unprovoked threat to America and āThe free Worldā. Of course as we all know common sense prevailed but the truth of the matter was completely different to the narrative we had been sold. Russia sited missiles in Cuba as a RESPONSE to The US siting missiles in Turkey. After much cock waving a quiet agreement was reached whereby Russia would remove their missiles from Cuba and the US would, ever so quietly, remove theirs from Turkey. They even had an agreement written in that this would not be disclosed, of course it got out eventually but I know to this day there are countless Americans and British who believe that Russia"backed downā when threatened with the mighty American war machine. I still see this stated regularly on comment forums on various news sites. Much of what is going on today re Ukraine has shades of this. Ignorance is bliss I suppose.
This has fast developed into a proxy war between NATO, ie The US, and Russia, which has been eight years or more in the making. And the US, thousands of miles away, supported by their subordinates, because thatās what we are, will fight it down to the last Ukranian. As sadly It would seem will President Zelensky, who I suspect is bought and paid for. Twice during the last couple weeks, as soon as there were noises about peace talks and negotiations the US immediately upped the anti, calling Putin a war criminal was one, knowing this would scupper any talks before they got off the ground. Itās almost as if they donāt want a peaceful solution!
None of this detracts from the tragedy which is being wrought on the people of Ukraine, who are just pawns in the geopolitical games. Nor does it detract from the fact that Russiaās actions are deplorable and yes, barbaric and wholly wrong. Nor does it mean that if you question the given narrative you must by definition be a āPutin supporter who hates his countryā. But letās be honest, this is nothing new, itās what powerful countries do, and have been doing for generations in pursuit of their perceived interests. Just over the last thirty odd years we have seen the Middle East razed to the ground, their infrastructure deliberately destroyed, hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of innocent people blown to smithereens. Depleted uranium bombs used, (a designated war crime) which still results in babies being born with deformities to this day. As a race weāve learned nothing. And trying to run a narrative in the current crisis that one side is good and has right on itās side, and the other is evil and the devil incarnate, is delusional. The people running the show all fall from the same tree. All decent people deserve better.
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Why was the Minsk agreement in place in the first place? After a backed Russian insurgency.
Why was their a popular uprising (and since there has been open and internationally backed and verified elections where only 1.6% voted for the far right) in Ukraine in the first place?
You deny with all of that what the people of Ukraine want and simply are looking for western blame and equivalence, thatās not right fully, totally or really in anyway at all, this isnāt about good and bad its about points of view, history and perspective.
You also fail to mention Putin doesnāt recognise Ukraine as a people or nation but more of a slav enclave of mother Russia (on that I can assume from that post youād be ok with England retaking the whole of Ireland as the principle is exactly the same or even stretching at history Calais).
You all didnāt mention at all (Iāve seen this a lot with posts and thoughts on this an awful lot and it says a lot about proxies arguments and distractions) and its the most important part of this terribly sad episode is what do the Ukrainian people want?
Its ok for us to see the carving up of a nation as it staves of war but what do the people of Ukraine want? For that matter what do the people of Georgia want? Why are they different? Does democracy stop when it could offend a neighbour?
And if you think if Minsk was implemented then Putin would have stopped then history isnāt on your side at all, greater thinkers than us also believe Minsk was a weak excuse to invade, or was it NATO? Or was it fascists? Heās thrown out so many excuses now for his invasion, what was his for Crimea? Georgia (he is still there as well)?
This could have been avoided if Putin simply let his neighbours get on with their lives, eastern Donbas and Crimea were never an issue before 2014 were they? Coincidence that after the coup/revolution call it what you want all this trouble started donāt you think?
If the people of Ukraine want to join NATO or the EU or whatever they want its them to decide not Putin, heās Russian not Ukrainian.
Putin is a war criminal by the way, in what way isnāt he?
And if you want to throw around 30 years of the Middle East as an example then we could discuss that on another thread, the Middle East has only ever been kept under ācontrolā via hard measures and dictatorships as sectarianism is quite simply a way of life and the Iranians and Saudiās have been having proxy wars for years, if I recall also there is huge discrimination between these faiths, no western powers needed, from owning property, marriage and many other things. Did you know there more walls, hard borders being put up there between āneighboursā than ever before, why? Maybe we could discuss that as well.