Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Russia

You believe that Putin should be rewarded for invading a country that has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousand of people by being granted land from the country he is destroying?

Won't that send a wonderful lesson for future aggressors!

This topic really belongs in the Soap Box now,

Jens, I understand your concerns very well and many people in Germany share your concerns. But if Ukraine is not supported with everything we could do, Putin will be an example for all dictators to allow themselves any inhuman mess just because he has nuclear bombs. And he will continue, Jens. The war will not stop with the destruction of Ukraine. After that, the Baltic States and Poland and Moldova will be invaded. In the end, maybe even East Germany will become part of Putin's empire again.
Ukraine is also fighting for our freedom. It sounds paradoxical but in my view Germany is guilty once again if we don't do everything now. Today, the new Minister of Defence announced, under flimsy explanations, that he would have the Leopards' inventory investigated. Sorry Mr. Pistorius...then call the Kremlin, then you will know in a minute how many tanks you have instead of inventing more and more delays.

It doesn't sound popular to everyone in Germany, we are according to surveys ca. 50:50 pro and con, but we have to risk something more. Above all, Scholz must not seriously prevent many many other NATO countries from giving some of their Leopards to Ukraine...just because Germany sold them to these countries.

No! I absolutely disagree.

As I have said before the only way we have to influence any of this is t make ourselves part of "public opinion ".
This is too important to hide from public view as though we are ashamed of our sentiments.

Morally I support this moving as quickly as possible.

Is there an issue with the Russians gaining access to a Leopard/Challenger2 and so being able to learn more about them which would be more difficult for us should it escalate. I am not aware of how much they really know vs what we/they think they know etc ?

Putin is going to become more and more repugnant as pressure increases, or if it becomes even more embarrassing for him.

It does seem odd that given the generous moves made by Germany in the last year that Mr Pistorius was the chosen person at this point?

Heinz I agree 100% with your post

Ms Lambrecht was a complete failure as Defence Minister. It was the same with Ms von der Leyen and Anette Kramp Karrenbauer before from the CDU. But Lambrecht was so wanted in the autumn of 2021, like vdL and KK before from Merkel. The Bundeswehr should simply continue not to play a major role. And if there was something to decide, it was done by Scholz anyway. Now the Bundeswehr is moving into the limelight because of the war. Lambrecht is not suited for this. A new defence minister was needed. One with competence but one who is loyal to Scholz. Sorry if this sounds stupid, but I think that Schröder is sitting on Putin's lap and Scholz is sitting on Schröder's lap.

The press statement by Austin and Milley was telling. They were totally pissed off but they had to give the impression of NATO unity. I hope that behind the scenes the pressure on Scholz will be increased.

Of interest, recorded before present conflict. Who’s to blame

And more recently- More Mearsheimer

You can find Putin's speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 with English subtitles on youtube. In principle, this speech had already predicted much of what later came to pass. At that time, Ms Politkovskaya had already been poisoned for three years. I can completely understand Mearsheimer's reasoning. But it is not a black and white game. It was not "NATO" that expanded towards Russia, it was the former Russian-occupied states that wanted to join NATO. Nevertheless, a lot of things went wrong, already in the 90s. Other members here may be much more familiar with recent history than I am, and it would go beyond the scope of this article to go into all possible aspects. But to come back to Mearsheimer. Ukraine has had a very troubled history for centuries. It was the majority of the Ukrainian population that saw annexation to the West as the only alternative. It was not the Americans who had to tempt them. And yet, I was not comfortable with the way the Maidan was derailed in 2014. But that was Putin's wake-up call to become a mass murderer because he couldn't stand a pro-European Ukraine. Not only because of strategic threats but because he was already a nationalist psychopath in 2014.

Now let's think of what we are asking of the Ukrainians when we speak of conceding Ukrainian territory for the sake of giving Putin an "off-ramp." We are asking the people who are the victims of a genocidal war to comfort the perpetrator. We are expecting Ukrainians, who know that Russian politics is all about fiction, to make sacrifices in the world where their families and friends live and die. We are asking Ukrainians to sentence their own people to ethnic cleansing in order to make life slightly easier for Russian television producers whose genocidal hate speech is one cause of the atrocities. Timothy Snyder.

some of the so called news/comment programmes are quite extraordinary vitriolic.