LongTimeLurker

He can see which way the wind is blowing right now.

Significantly fewer of these guys around now if all the info about severely botched airborne attacks on airports around Kyiv (changing the habits of a lifetime with that spelling but why not I guess) is accurate: Hopefully the next generation in Russia and elewhere won't fall for that kind of recruiting pitch any more but I'm old enough to be well aware that they probably will.

Not that there was much chance of it happening, but today's Lowland League results mean that there is now absolutely no possibility of an LL club getting relegated to the WoS this season so only a maximum of seven clubs can now be relegated from the WoS.

There's plenty of reports today that the Ukrainians have been taking back territory that was lost early on close to Crimea in the Kherson area which was the area where they had done most poorly so far and is very much part of Putin's "Novorossiya". The Ukrainian military can still easily be resupplied with armaments like stingers and javelins by road through Poland and Romania so a quick knockout blow was what the Russians very much needed.

Apparently it's only Hungary standing in the way of a SWIFT ban for Russia now.

Kharkiv is the one I find most surprising as there was an attempt in 2014 to turn that oblast into another breakaway republic, so I would have expected there to be scope for a significant fifth column element to emerge there. Putin probably thought they have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down in that sort of context.

Ukraine's ability to resist is exceeding expectations so far. If that can be sustained I think the big thing to watch is the demonstrations in Moscow and how effectively Putin can keep a lid on internal dissent.

That was aimed more at other countries who interfered.

Bear in mind this happened very close to the DNR/LNR contact line where a large portion of Ukraine's best troops were stationed when this all kicked off.

Would have been completely insane before the invasion started. At this point the two countries are at war and Ukraine certainly isn't in demoralised retreat from the little green men mode by the looks of things so far. They've had eight extra years to prepare so this was never going to be a cake walk for the Russian military even if Putin & Co are still likely to ultimately win if they are willing to pay the price involved in soldiers killed, civilian casualties and international reputation completely eviscerated. Guess the stiff resistance is predicated on the premise that they might not be.

^^^Haven't been in Shetland for a very long time but the name has always been Lerwick Spurs, as far as I'm aware. Their local rivals are Thistle and Celtic. Unless things have changed drastically since I was last there the quality of the club level football looks like pub team level stuff if you are from the central belt although it's better not to tell the locals that. It would need to be the Island Games team becoming licensed if Scottish Cup entry was ever going to be seriously contemplated and participating in a few cup games only every season is all that might be doable.

The bizarre angle to all this is that Putin had the chance to try to prop up his favoured regime in Kiev relatively easily back in 2014 when the Ukrainian state apparatus was riddled with Yanukovych supporters and its armed forces were still relatively weak. Now with Zelenskyy in place with a clear democratic mandate, stingers, javelins and drones supplied from the west along with effective command and control...

Looks like it. Lukashenko is offering to hold talks:

Mariupol and Kramatorsk still being very much under Ukrainian control is a sign it isn't even a full scale invasion of the Donbas yet. Long way to go on this, but I think it's safe to say that it's a good thing that the Scotland vs Ukraine game is at Hampden.

Not stated explicitly but the implication was there.

David McCallum in the Man from Uncle?

That's what we were told at the time but it's very dubious on closer inspection. Slobo was up to no good but western media reports were grossly exaggerated. It's important to remember that the KLA were no choirboys as well on ethnic cleansing once the boot was on the other foot and that the Kosovo that gained western recognition as an independent state was far from being a multiethnic shangri-la of tolerance. It's close to impossible for Serbs to live safely in most of Kosovo even to this day, while there are still plenty of ethnic Albanians living in Serbia and a large Bosnian Muslim population was able to live there in the Sandzak region right through the conflict in Bosnia. The reason genocide gets talked up a lot in contexts like that (Vlad was at it a few days back where the Donbass is concerned) is that it makes military intervention legal in international law terms under the Genocide Convention. Whether anything is happening that actually fits the definition is another matter entirely.

The island of Ireland was and in part still is integral to the UK, so international law isn't really applicable in that context. Check out Spain and Catalonia on referenda for what that means in practical terms in the present day. What won't be talked up in the western media is how the recognition of Kosovo as independent set a dangerous precedent in a European context.

Debatable, pre-2014 pro-Russian candidates often won Ukrainian elections precisely because they were pro-Russian. Lopping off Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk from participation in those elections wasn't the smartest thing Vlad has ever done because it tipped the balance of Ukrainian politics more heavily towards pro-Western nationalism.

He wanted to use the Minsk accords to have the breakaway republics do to Ukraine what Gagauzia and Transnistria do to Moldova and make it very difficult for Ukraine to have a fully pro-Western foreign policy. Instead of meekly playing along Zelenskyy purchased the Turkish drones that decimated the armed forces of Nagorno-Karabakh.

If Viktor Yanukovych hadn't been toppled in an extra-constitutional manner none of that would have happened.

He aleady did that previously with Crimea and Sevastopol. What they have in common with the DNR and LNR controlled areas is that they are majority ethnic Russian and pro-Putin. Trying to control Lviv would be a very different kettle of fish.