[deetee]

We all have been discussing left-right , west-east but end of the day, we know no more than what the people with boots on the ground there know. So far, this has been like a turn based strategy play. Each side is making a move with something in their mind and speculating what their opponent is planning. And we all know how it ends - unpredictable unless one side makes a major mistake. Untill then, we are all spectators and speculators of a grand scale geo political chess game. Carry on the discussion without taking anything personally.

[dragracer567]

Originally Posted by das_ren_auto

I wonder what is the source of this information.

The information is generally quoted in western media and is attributed to "Official Russian Military statements". I doubt if they can lie so blatantly using Russian official accounts.

Also, this is something that I heard in the video below which was made way before the Ukrainian invasion. Back then, the western consensus was that the Russian military can indeed pack a punch and this was an one-off and odd observation which is becoming relevant now looking at RuAF's performance in Ukraine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amIQklYDHdM

Russia had travelled far ahead from Boris Yeltsin era. They are able to match 5th Gen US fighters with their 4th Gen "Primitive" jets.

How did you reach that conclusion? The modern 4++ Russian fighters such as the Su-35 aren't even a match for 4++ gen western aircraft such as the Rafale and F15EXs when it comes to BVR combat and EW though they can probably outmaneuver western aircraft WVR. No Russian aircraft even has an AESA radar and all these will make a difference in the real world where electronics and who sees whom first matters. There is a reason why the Indian Air Force and Navy don't even want to consider anymore Russian aircraft, because they know exactly how they perform vis-a-vis western aircraft.

They have S-400 that is way superior than the THAAD.

how did you reach that conclusion? The S400 was used for combat only once to shoot down a Su-27 in Ukraine (reportedly) while the THAAD has only been used to shoot down Houthi ballistic missiles entering UAE. There is no direct point of reference here for comparison.

As told by a fellow Bhpian, it was the Russian forces that made a difference in Syria.

In Syria, they fought an irregular force with no access to SAMs (shoulder fired or otherwise) or an air force of their own. As I had replied to the same Bhpian, fighting an irregular force with no means to control access to airspace is not the same as fighting with a functioning country defended by a functioning military which is supplied with lethal weapons by the West.

What has been widely interpreted as failure/slow progress by the west could turn out to be a planned strategy by Moscow. Let time tell the story

Or it could indeed just turn out to be a miscalculation on Putin's part where he genuinely believed that his forces would be welcomed as liberators. Indeed, only time will tell.

[StarrySky]

Some comments by the President of Finland based on his conversations with his Russian and Ukranian counterparts:

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world...tary-conflict/

[saikarthik]

Was just watching a YouTube channe 'Crux', claims apparantly that Russia is using decoy missiles to minimize interception of it's Iskander missiles by Ukraine 's air defence systems. And these decoys might have been integrated with ballistic missiles (speculative). I was wondering whether Ukraine still posses any air defence systems to intercept ballistic missiles!

Source: CRUX - YT channel.

[sierrabravo98]

Originally Posted by vivek95

Any information on what would be the impact of this war on the medical education that Indian students were pursuing over there ?? I doubt if parents are willing to send their students back to Ukraine after this war ends. Learning medicine is definitely not an online thing, so that's ruled out.

Online Classes seem to have started for Indian medical students who have recently returned from Ukraine. There was talk of Poland allowing these students to continue their education of Polish institutions but I don't know what progress has been made in that direction. Perhaps a deal could be reached with Russia to accommodate these students once Russian operations cease as I doubt much would be left of Ukraine (in terms of infrastructure necessary to support foreign students) after Russia is done with it. They certainly cannot be adjusted in Indian colleges as that would open an completely different can of worms. Let's see how this space evolves.

[NH08]

Some comments by the President of Finland based on his conversations with his Russian and Ukranian counterparts:

Please, everybody put a summary of the video (if you watched it.) It has already been requested in this topic discussion. That would be very helpful. I tried to watch the video, there was an advertisement from Zoya and my patience evaporated. I am neither Zelensky nor Putin.

[thanixravindran]

Originally Posted by CarNerd

Can you please share your sources of information because I don't think these are the demands that Russia has put forward to end the war

I don't have any media links to show that these are demands of war. The closest you can infer is the speech (or rant if you don't like) just before the invasion.

These demands are from Russia for several years, some at least since 2014. On federalism - Click here.

In fact, you can refer this Wiki link when this was agreed as political settlement during the Euromaidan protests and just before Yanukovich fled. It never got implemented.

On the topic of Russian language in Ukraine, it even predates the 2014 protests and from the 1990s. There is a systematic reduction of Russian in Ukraine under all Presidents. A law was passed in 2017 that completely removes Russian as a language in a country which has the largest linguistic minority as Russian but in the process ended up alienating Hungary and Poland also who have small minority population in Ukraine.

Since for EU membership, the laws have to be harmonized and EU prevents discrimination in laws against minorities, Ukraine ended up sending the law to EU but cleverly manipulated it to include European Union languages leaving only Russian out. This led to massive diplomatic protests from Russia which called to roll back the law as well EU which set-up commissions to review and they did not agree on these aspects (which they never will and there is no question of Ukraine joining EU) as well.

Ukraine and Belarus is very differently bonded with Russia as they predate USSR compared to the Baltics and Central Asian SSRs. Ukraine was/is dismantling them at a very rapid pace in the last decade that was existing for few centuries in the name of EU dream. Just there was information hysteria by west that Russia is trying to get back the Soviet empire which is not.

If Russia wins the war, my surmise is that they will extract these political concessions so that this can be shown as people's war and to prevent this situation from occurring again. This is the reason I have compared it to the Lankan 1987 accord.

On the diplomacy, when you talk, however harder the positions may be, it gives a clue what the opponent is up to. It does not mean that there is only one issue and military solution is the only one. There will be multitude of issues and will open a common point through which some concessions can be negotiated though this will keep changing based on the outside environment.
We are talking with our western neighbor for years despite wars. Have we broken off the diplomatic relations with them?

I did not got your point on the Stalin. I posted it to give a reference that the predecessor of these countries in their previous avatar did not chose surrender. At least as per my reading, the non aggression agreement was not broken in 1941 by Stalin.

[NiInJa]

Originally Posted by NH08

Please, everybody put a summary of the video (if you watched it.) It has already been requested in this topic discussion.

Summary as told by Finnish President after speaking to both Zelensky and Putin:
- Negotiations are on, slightly positive on both sides, but the results are far away (in terms of time)
- Changing the government of Ukraine is not on the list anymore, Russia says clearly that it was never the demand.

- Russia's demands:
-- Crimea to be recognised as part of Russia
-- Eastern Ukraine: Wider Donbas than what is under separatists' control.
-- Neutrality: Something is being discussed with Zelensky on that..
-- Demilitarization: That is what Russia thinks they are doing right now!

[vishnurp99]

Originally Posted by NiInJa

Summary as told by Finnish President after speaking to both Zelensky and Putin:
- Russia's demands:
-- Crimea to be recognised as part of Russia
-- Eastern Ukraine: Wider Donbas than what is under separatists' control.
-- Neutrality: Something is being discussed with Zelensky on that..
-- Demilitarization: That is what Russia thinks they are doing right now!

These demands are pretty consistent from day one in the russian media. Denazification seems to have been omitted though.
If you look at the Western media outlets like NYT & DW, you will see all kind of demands and objectives attributed to Russia like occupying all Ukranian cities, regime change, occupation of entire ukraine, rollback of NATO to 1997 status etc.

[Fuldagap]

Originally Posted by NiInJa

- Russia's demands:
-- Crimea to be recognised as part of Russia
-- Eastern Ukraine: Wider Donbas than what is under separatists' control.
-- Neutrality: Something is being discussed with Zelensky on that..
-- Demilitarization: That is what Russia thinks they are doing right now!

In 2019, Ukraine made some amendments to its constitution imbibing joining NATO as a commitment for Ukraine. It was done by then president of Ukraine, Poroshenko.

Nobody seems to mentioning anywhere in the media, as far as I have seen, about the Russian demand regarding that consitutional standing of Ukraine.

IMHO, Putin would definitely want Ukraine to backtrack that amendment even if that amendment means little in time of war/special operation.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by thanixravindran

Russian demands are not just these three things. Russian demands include the reversal of things/policies from 2014 namely

These are tradables, a common technique used in negotiation. Each side may present 20 demands, out of which only 3-4 may be non-negotiable. Rest are used for give and take, which keeps the negotiation moving. If they can, the negotiators don't reveal which demands are tradables and which are non-tradables demands.

[SnS_12]

Looks like China is going to lead the way to abolish the Petrodollar.. Problem for the US just got bigger and right around when they were discussing issues with China in Rome.




It now looks like by the end of the war, US is going to get hit more than Russia or Ukraine.

[Poitive]

Originally Posted by StarrySky

Some comments by the President of Finland based on his conversations with his Russian and Ukranian counterparts:

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world...tary-conflict/

Thank you for sharing this, mate.

Found it good enough to search further and found the whole interview of ~15 minutes. Link:
President Sauli Niinistö speaks to President Putin often. He tells Christiane Amanpour that...

This also touches upon the point I was making below (surprisingly, I missed out on mentioning it was about Finland )

Originally Posted by Poitive

Another perspective could also be that other countries are seeing the 'cost of not being in NATO'. Sharing such a large border with Russia, it might increase the perception of threat to reconsider joining NATO. The counter threat of Russia taking them on would of course also need to be considered. (Had talked about one of the aims of Russia in this war would be to give messages to other countries.)

PS: I do think Christiane was somewhat subtly asking leading questions (same Yes PM clip as before, in the link).

[download2live]

Originally Posted by SnS_12

Looks like China is going to lead the way to abolish the Petrodollar.

This is actually a reason for which US happily/quickly goes to war for. Countries who want to make oil deals in other currencies.

One reason why Iraq was invaded was that it started taking payments in Euro. I have to rejig my memory on that though.

[CarNerd]

Originally Posted by thanixravindran

I don't have any media links to show that these are demands of war. The closest you can infer is the speech (or rant if you don't like) just before the invasion.
These demands are from Russia for several years, some at least since 2014. On federalism -

The points you mentioned are some of the issues Russia used inorder to get the West to negotiate with it. Obviously they were not resolved and hence this war. But at present they have two non-negotiable demands - No NATO & Crimean recognition along with DPR, LPR which I don't think Ukraine will agree to.

I read the article about Federalism and it seems it's the right way for Ukraine despite Russian hypocrisy. Regarding language, I don't think Putin cares about language more than NATO's expansion.

This is the draft prepared by Russia in December 2021: https://https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_po...90818/?lang=en



More than Ukraine, This war is about US and its presence near Russia.

Originally Posted by thanixravindran

We are talking with our western neighbor for years despite wars. Have we broken off the diplomatic relations with them?

And what have we achieved by talking endlessly with our neighbour? Should we talk forever or make some hard decisions and end the conflict? When both sides are not willing to give anything, There won't be any scope for solution.

Originally Posted by thanixravindran

I did not get your point on the Stalin. I posted it to give a reference that the predecessor of these countries in their previous avatar did not chose surrender. At least as per my reading, the non aggression agreement was not broken in 1941 by Stalin.

My point was Stalin before he ordered his troops to fight till death had earlier made a pact with Hitler who broke it. But Zelenskyy made no efforts to make peace with Putin and is now trying to be a hero like Stalin. I may be wrong but that's what I feel.