Russian Foreign Policy

They dont welcome them.
They invaded and have threatened, killed and murdered those who opposed them. Any vote is a corrupt sham.
Such actions cannot be allowed to stand.
Holding these referenda is illegal and straight out of Hitler's playbook. All the same the majority of people in Crimea and Donbas probably would prefer to be part of Russia especially after the Orange revolution.
 
Holding these referenda is illegal and straight out of Hitler's playbook. All the same the majority of people in Crimea and Donbas probably would prefer to be part of Russia especially after the Orange revolution.
We don't really know what the wishes of the majority are or who is this 'majority', or is it a rump.
Russia has deported people, threatened other into silence, murdered those that stood up. Others have fled as refugees.
 
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Holding these referenda is illegal and straight out of Hitler's playbook.
And others.
All the same the majority of people in Crimea and Donbas probably would prefer to be part of Russia especially after the Orange revolution.
That's the problem with regions which have seen vast movements of people over the last few hundred years; who are natives and who are the "planters"?
Then there's the question of where you draw the lined to define a region or a country.
Then there's the question of who is actually being represented. The Irish Parliament voted for the Act of Union with Britain but that Parliament wasn't representative of the people.
 
Has there ever been aa war in which there wasn't executions, torture and sexual violence?
The "greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history" occurred in Russian occupied Germany after the Second World War where up to 2 million women and girls, ranging in age from 8 to 80, were raped. Some women were raped 6 or 70 times. Female deaths in connection with the rapes in Germany, overall, are estimated at 240,000. Children and fathers who tried to protect their mothers and daughters were shot, Jewish women and girls who has spent the war in hiding were raped as well.

While British, French and American soldiers were also guilty of mass rape (in addition to the 2 million cited above), the Soviet forces accounted for the overwhelming majority of it.

The Russians have form in this area.
 
The Russian conduct seems also reminiscent of Bosnia, where it was almost used as a weapon; or medieval sieges.
 
Ukrainian investigators have discovered a box of gold teeth, pulled from victims at a Russian torture chamber where people were buried alive.

The violence was allegedly inflicted on residents, veterans and soldiers at a makeshift facility dubbed “mini Auschwitz” by investigators in the liberated Pisky-Radkivski village in the eastern Kharkiv region.

“Neighbours constantly heard screams from there,” wrote Serhii Bolvinov, head of Ukraine’s national security service investigations wing in Kharkiv, on Twitter.

The torture chamber – one of dozens discovered in formerly occupied areas of the war-torn country – was found by police earlier this week.


https://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/ukranians-find-box-of-gold-teeth-pulled-from-victims-by-russian-torturers-42044065.html
No public outcry....it is Russia afterall
 
Yes I read a twitter quote today something to the effect of... Russia loses on the battlefield and takes its vengeance on civilians.
 
According to this, they were stolen from a dentist, he believes they were stolen as they thought they were gold.

Locals did confirm torture though.

 
The story sounded a bit fishy. The first victim of war and all that. The Russians aren't all monsters and the Ukrainians aren't all saints. The Nazi ones certainly aren't (and yes, there are Nazi ones).
 
Russia is now shelling residential areas in region they annexed where supposedly 97% of the population wanted to be Russian...
 
According to the Financial Times (behind a paywall) Europe has already replaced it's gas supply from Russia with increased supplies from Algeria and Norway and a massive increase in LNG. The EU now consumed 40% of the world's supply of LGN.
While there will be significant increased costs there will be no shortage of supply. Heavy industries such as Fertilisers, Coke production, Metals, Chemicals and Paper account for a quarter of our natural gas consumption but only contribute 3% of our GDP and employ 1% of our workforce.
Russia on the other hand is down $100 billion a year in lost gas sales. The pipeline that have with China only has 10% of the capacity they have with Europe and the Chinese aren't building any more of them.

Putin's energy supply blackmail has failed and failed spectacularly.
 
We don't have an LGN terminal here because of a certain Green Party minister not fulfilling his duties... will we in Ireland be ok I wonder.
 
What was the EU's share of LNG before the war? I wonder has the EU increase in LNG purposes pushed up prices/caused shortages elsewhere in the world and what will be the unintended consequences of that?
 
What was the EU's share of LNG before the war? I wonder has the EU increase in LNG purposes pushed up prices/caused shortages elsewhere in the world and what will be the unintended consequences of that?
I don't know but the article in the FT says that consumption is dropping in the rest of the world.