What to do about Russia?

It's not really a binary choice between talks or war though. There's nothing to stop actions like freezing assets, or sanctions against specific people or regimes.

If Trump does make a move I expect we'll be towed along in his wake. But he already backpedaled today. He's a reality star not a politician, he's just playing a game of "mine is more impressive than yours" with Putin.

I hope Mrs May doesnt get Britain involved, as for the Russians, I am not sure about their views on Putin, I think they are terrified to do anything against him, remember the voting a few weeks ago, they were cheating at the polling stations, voting twice etc. being brain washed thinking Putin is a great leader (dictator)

Niggleynellie, America also used barrel bombs and chemical warfare when they targeted Laos many years back. And no they were not involved in the Vietnamwar, they were a neutral country. So let’s keep out of it.


So before

Over many centuries the Russians have become accustomed to strong and often despotic rulers, and have never really taken to democracy. Putin is very much in that mould, and seems very popular with the people. Perestroika and Glanost certainly set the stage for the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but Russia itself has now returned to an aggressive Cold War stance. As for what we can do about it, the answer is "very little", and Putin knows that. Frankly, I'm far more worried about the loose cannon buffoon in the White House with his government by "tweet" approach, and his school playground language.

Yes micme you spot on. I think there is very little we can do. I am also very worried about May, I just hope she doesn’t do a Tony Blair and just go ahead without a full debate. As awful as the war is, we can fight and intervene in every conflict.

The question you all need to ask yourselves is, what's the British, US and Nato up to? Do you know?
It's an easy ruse to go branding this country and that leader and those people as bad, troubled, dangerous, corrupt, unstable, tyrannical etc etc. But that's exactly what you're supposed to do after this whitewashing of manipulated media coverage that tells you all that 'they' over there are bad and 'we' over here are good and pure and blameless.

The reason why Russians vote for Putin, can be seen very clearly and very easily with the last 8 years of consistent threats, sabotaging, manipulations, sanctions, accusations and antagonizing by the West. He has never bit back, he has not returned threats, he has not jumped to retaliative preemptive strikes; no, he has remained civil, calm, reserved, unwavering and rode this consistent wave of demonization from the West and has kept his country and its people out of a catastrophic world war.
He has not bombarded his people with falsehoods, propaganda, erroneous claims and silly blame games like what the UK, US and EU have done for years now.
He has made wise deals with the right people, made rational choices against this latest attack and has simply prompted the accusers to provide proof of this latest Salisbury attack and voting scandal in the US which they refuse to oblige. Because they are all lying and they want to trigger more war because the UK are just as hungry for the profits and soils of war as the maniacal US are and they use their minions in NATO to stir up the pot.
Just like Obama, Putin, although slightly more unwound, has not risen to the pressures to bring about war. He is preventing it. He has no plan for war. He has successfully improved his Country and its people are relatively happy. Everything involving the Ukraine, Syria, Iraq etc he has never risen to the lies and propaganda spewed by the western governments and media which feedback to the public, and they believe it like naive fools without questioning a thing they're told.
When he is blamed for something horrific, he replies by demanding the Western leaders blaming him, to come up with the evidence, and makes it clear that he has evidence of western involvements in those crimes and that's when the west backup and plan a new point of entry.
Putin isn't stupid. And the reason why now western media networks no longer broadcast any of Putins live press statements is that they cannot have the western public watching a man clearly and rationally calling the western powers out to prove their unsubstantiated and slanderous claims.
People in their voluntary amnesia, fail to connect the dots to the paralleled methods of every other illegal and colluded war created by these Psychos in power, and they whip people up in a frenzy to look at the perceived enemy as a real enemy, and Putin is the latest Saddam.
Assad may not be a nice person, but he is not the one causing so much death and destruction in Syria. Just as it was in North Africa. This is the work of the West and the secret militaries they have working there to purposely cause nothing but unrest and chaos there, so the western media can report back with doctored stories, omitted to mention the necessary data that could ever affiliate Assad. The last time they did this, genuine reporters linked the weapons and chemical weapons used to the West and suddenly media stopped reporting anything more in Syria.
Now the dust has settled and the amnesia has set in enough, they're back for another go and incredibly people have forgotten about the last scandal concocted by the West and the thousands they killed and lives they ruined just to topple Assad. It's truly remarkable how well they can manipulate the western public and how they know to distract and make them forget in order to believe the same thing they had once realised was not at all true. All they have to do is change the narrative, tweak the scandal, bring about more images of suffering children and wham, you're back in the palm of their hand.

Understand one thing. The reason why ISIS were able to form and become a globally threatening death squad, was because the US, UK and EU forces removed Saddam Hussein who was never the target for the terror attacks on the US and UK. They removed a man and his regime, created, funded and empowered by the west to destabilise the Middle-East, who kept those extremist groups contained and unable to formulate their regimes. Once the west removed him, they left the vacuum for ISIS to grow.
They are about to do this again with Assad. Assad's Syria is actually the wall of protection against ISIS having a free route into Europe through Turkey. If Syria falls, there is no longer a barrier against the worlds deadliest death squads flooding into Europe. Not just ISIS but all the others. That's not a few thousand, that's more than a Million of them. That the equivalent of our western armies without humanity, rule and order who are out to kill and die for it under any circumstances!

The reason why the West want another Cold war, is because Russia found an enormous Arctic oil boon north of Russia, far bigger than the one in the Gulf of Mexico. Putin sent secret Military movements in 2010 to Arkhangelsk and have been conducting military training there ever since. That's training soldiers in the harshest, mountainous and dangerous Arctic conditions. This is because the oil location borders the North American/Canadian borders and EU borders too. Western oil drillers missed it, but the Russians found it. Now, the West want that oil and that's why they have all colluded with one another to go against Russia.

Regarding this latest false flag operation. I suggest you go and watch the RT interview with John Pilger. And while you're at it, purchase the books by Pilger, Mark Curtis and Ernst Wolff to fully understand what the UK, US and Europe are involved in with those big banks and the IMF, what they've done, still doing and what their objectives are while feeding you, the joe public, nothing but lies, lies, lies on a mass scale of deceit so they can go on with their evil machinations across the world and what they are doing to put every man, woman, and child in grave danger, and not at all unintentionally.

It's also why this Brexit break off has become a farcical circus, because it is an intentional ploy to misdirect and distract people in order to keep Britain in the European bag so they can achieve this current wave of military moves on the countries they planned years ago to invade and conquer.
The thing is, Theresa May is actually fairly level-headed, but it's the people feeding her information and have her hands tired leading her up the garden path to act on behalf of those like Blair who only ever comes out of his cave when he wants to convince The British that we should go to war with this country and that country and trying to sabotage democracy to over-rule Brexit. These are the barbaric monsters who got us into the worst times in history and they are the ones prodding those like Theresa May to do their evil bidding. They manipulate those who want her to do and say what they need her to say.

She was basically repeating the same sermon Boris Johnson and the other sycophantic avaricious scumbags in politics coming on TV and trying to sell war and sell the UK into one of the evilest dictatorships to ever exist on this Earth, and now, Johnson and the rest of the lunatics have crawled back into their rat holes while May has to mop up after them.
The difference is that a lot of people are not so quick to believe unsubstantiated claims anymore because of what they did with Iraq etc. But there are still far too many who fail to think, to question and go back years to recall the same games and plays used to dupe the public into agreeing to their war crimes and crimes against humanity.

People need to start looking at what their own country is evidently doing and has been doing now for decades, rather than what other countries are being blamed for doing without a single shred of evidence to use as our scapegoats.
Remember also, that British media networks are owned by very corrupt Corporate oligarchs who have profited from war for decades, and also own the news networks in the USA who are the biggest lying propaganda machines on Earth.
The UK, USA and EU have issued demands to ban Russia Today from being broadcast on their UK/US/EU TV networks, and coincidentally, they too are owned by the same owners of the British/US tabloid Media networks.
And yet, RT have been the ones who have broadcast the truth to all this with journalists like John Pilger etc, and have dissected this Salisbury false flag piece by piece.

Just remember, these are the same networks who told you all with absolute certainty day in day out that Saddam Hussein had WMD's whilst omitting to report 99% of the truth of what was going on there and in every other country where our evil tentacles had impacted.
The lie for example that Assad had and was using biological weapons etc and after all of that, was found to be flat out lies and were used as the catalyst to bring about an illegal war that cost the lives on tens of millions of innocent men, women and children across the middle-east and destroyed countries to rubble where children in their thousands are currently dying from cancers because of the depleted Uranium dropped by Bush and Blair, and the sanctions placed on them through the UN to stop all medical aid being flown in. You'll never hear of this, because the volunteers, aid workers, doctors etc from other countries have also all been dying form ferocious cancers, because the Uranium had settled is in the dust, and everytime a bomb was dropped, sent that radioactive dust into the air which people would breathe in. Yet you NEVER hear of this. Basic medicines denied to sick children by the US because they assert they can be used by terrorists to make biological weapons. That hypocrisy is too enormous to even think about!

These are the most evil monsters to ever walk this Earth and they purposely concoct lies and false propaganda to breed a false reality into the Psyche of every joe in public. They want you to live in fear, using the suffering of children to trigger your emotions into anger and find an enemy they themselves place on their guillotine in order for you all to lay down your principles and agree to another bloody war and then succumb to helplessness when they all turn on the west and come for their vengeance.

I ask you. When will people wake up and realise 'them' out there aren't the terrorists. We are! We've killed around 30 Million innocent human beings since 2000, and still, we believe what they tell us!

Hmmmmm. I wonder where that outburst originated.

Gosh, so they have it right then. We are the despots. You should move there then!

Excellent post Welshwife. The whole Syrian situation puzzles me too. So many"Why? " thoughts. And an excellent response nigglynellie. I fully agree.

Sonofanarchy, you give us the other side of the coin as you see it. It sounds like a conspiracy theory penned by ????

We usually go to war to stop the perpetuation of evil, not for selfish reasons or because we are motivated by greed. I'd like to hear a defence of Assad because I would not be able to provide one.

I do agree that flattening Syria provides a doorway into Europe via Turkey and that ISIS is the biggest threat to world peace.

Should we stand by and allow mass murder, genocide, the use of chemical weapons act to flourish? Is the answer to watch and wait? What about a show of might as a form of defence? Is that not appropriate? What's that saying about evil flourishing because of good people doing nothing?

Your post is interesting but it offers no solutions to the horror of the Syrian situation.

In fairness, I am glad I don't have to come up with answers. I cannot see a solution because I haven't a clue as to what outcome any of the involved parties are seeking. Innocents are dying. Should we let the warlords blow each other and that part of the world to smithereens? Would we get world peace that way? I am being facetious but that's because the situation is akin to the surreal confusion at the bottom of Alice's rabbit hole.

Jura, I have exactly the same thought as you, and probably the all the other Gransnetters on here, I am afraid for my grandchildren. We are living in dangerous times, especially with Trump and Putin in charge of their respective countries. I don’t trust either of them at all, and I’m very afraid of what is going to happen.
Loopyloo, I can’t really answer your question because I really don’t know if the Russian people still like and support Putin, but judging by the recent election, despite the alleged vote rigging, Putin still won a large majority, so I assume he must still be at least reasonably popular. A few years ago, when I was in Russia, when speaking to Russian people ( a very small number) it appeared that he was well supported then, and his wars (Ukraine) were viewed positively. His views on homosexuality were supported, despite one person I spoke to claiming to be ‘bi’, so I’m assuming he is still popular overall.
I hope that Theresa May does not persuade the cabinet to agree to any air strikes or any other action. This question should be put to parliament in my opinion. Parliament voted against air strikes five years ago and I would hope they would do so again. After Iraq and Afghanistan I would prefer the U.K. to stay out of it. I do not want to support America. Dangerous times indeed.
Question Time should be interesting tonight.

I didn’t see any reference of Putin cutting of the gas supply to Ukraine in that piece - using it as a threat when they would not do as he wanted.
Assad started the war against his own people when the ‘Arab Spring’ reached Syria. Russia has done much to support him.

Sonofanarchy, who are you? I have never seen a post from you before. You express your views with little evidence. On a few points I agree with you, in particular re ISIS. Marieeliz, you’re right, apparently we’re the despots. Jane10, I too wonder where all that came from.

Welshwife, indeed! Very true.

Would love to know who sonofanarc81 really is. Pure propaganda. Hilarious. :-)

Was that a message from the Kremlin by any chance?

son-of-a-narc. Not anarchy. I'm also not a conspiracy nut, because i only deal with the information from the most credible sources which are seldom ever given their just credibility.

Instead of replying any further than what i've already written, i refer you to the literature.

Ernst Wolff 'Pillaging the world'

Mark Curtis 'Web of Deceit' & 'Unpeople'

John Pilger 'The New Rulers of the World'

The solution is to remove all of our troops from foreign countries and form a defense of our own nations, or a global peace army which does not go overseas as aggressors but as defenders of our own shores. If every country on earth did that, as part of the same unified defense for peace.

The problem these powers have created now in their pursuit of global domination is a vacuum of retaliating fighters who want revenge for what we have done. Because what people fail to realise is that 9/11 and 7/7 was a retaliation for the invasive gulf war and what we, alongisde the US and Nato did in the middle-east. Things which you'll discover when you read these pieces of literature above. The appalling crimes against humanity which are kept secret and hidden from the British public, which have existed as far back as the secret collusions of Churchill with Hitler.
The world wars which were formed as part of the plan to form a new superpower which has risen today as the evil EU dictatorship.

These things, are the things you need to give to your children and grandchildren, otherwise they will always be at the mercy of the incomprehensible lies fed into them through their new technological devices and the plethora of mind-numbing entertainment distractions which send them into a confined world of belief and ignorance where any touch on the truth is impossible to come by.

The one thing all parents and grandparents here should be absolutely petrified of, is how the children are being picked off one by one. They are being sideswiped to rely only on what their smart devices tell them and day to them. They are being brainwashed with confusions and falsehoods across these smart device platforms, social media dictates how they think, feel, interpersonalise, learn, question reality, etc etc.
They are being forced to grow up too quickly, exposed to things they should not and cannot deal with as children which robs them of their essential childhoods. Their education and self-learning corrupted in favour of non-creative systemic subjects which set out to remove all forms of nuances and cultures, designing males to become emasculated and perfect candidates for cold blooded killer soldiers. Every kind of successful future i.e career, family, marriage, love etc is being anhialated by the pursuit of money, greed and materialism and only very few who have a rational steady and decent head on their shoulders actually make it through.

The young know nothing of the dangers that await them, and this naivete puts them all in grave danger and thus parents who fear this reality and future try to deny it exists and try to go about their lives with the sentiment that those who wish to do us harm will not stop them from living, is a very stupid, reckless way to look at things, because these people who do wish to do us harm, are copying the unrelenting merciless killers who came and destroyed their loved ones and peoples without a shred of conscience. Us!

You have people here responding to be saying 'oh, so i guess we are the despots?' The answer is yes, but the facade has always existed under the delusion of patriotism and what people are willing to really accept as the truth. Until these people realise that those who wish to do us harm, are coming in retaliation of what we've done to them, and learn why, they'll realise that it's those who sit in the High Castle who are the despots and are all part of a group of powers who are orchestrating all this and using things like prime ministers, presidents etc as their public puppets while they get on with r*ping nations and slaughtering people in mass genocides without a drop of sweat.

Once you read these books, and watch the film by Michael Ware, only then will you begin to appreciate the sheer scale of what we are involved in and who we really are. The majority of the people are not evil people who want war and mass killing, but they are in one way or another contributors to the Thirs Millennia Holocaust of Middle-Eastern human beings which out scale the Nazi Holocaust by at least 4 times and is still going on.

It is the duty of every man and woman, to look into the actions of their own country as playing a part to the worlds most horrendous and barbaric suffering and crimes against humanity. There is always cause and effect, and if you go back decades you'll find that those they have told us are our enemies, never have been. And the unrest that now exist, is the making of what the west has caused over the last 50 years in the middle-east.

It has been a shocking week for discoveries. Facebooks' Mark Zuckerberg revealing he didn't really know what outside agencies were doing with our data. Cambridge Analytica who are out to destroy democracies all over the world ( Russia?) had gathered 83 billion FB members' data, and also their friends and family/ Plus medical information; they could access other devices you have even when switched off. Those who have demanded to see what info was stolen were very shocked they found out stuff from before they joined Facebook. Cambridge Analytica were ordered to delete this data but others also collected information. Facebook seems out of control. The information they gathered was more or less hacked. The final shock was while everyone was happily posting Russia was also gathering info and we have no idea for what or why, or how long. Yesterday we found out that Cambridge University has a link to CA (and poss the Tories) and Russia which I really hope the Govt will look into. We are losing or possibly lost our democracy through brexit and there's nothing we can do about it.

What could have helped? Well 5 years ago before Assad really got going, the rest of the world could have taken in the Syrian refugees, and charged Assad for looking after them, by really serious sanctions.. No-one to fight, no money. No military intervention.
Russia would have had to take refugees too, if the rest of the world did. Making them part of the good guys.

MaizieD I thought Russia had massive military strenght - more than Europe and possibly US put together! And it is modern. Submarines patrolling the North Sea, aircraft taunting us on our borders and those of Eastern Europe, tanks and army so big that they would take all day to march past one point. But it is a huge country - nearly twice the size of USA, China or Canada, and Putin cannot keep tabs on it all, so he is paranoid.
Welshwife my understanding is that the trouble started after several bad harvests, crops failed, people flocked to the cities, not enough jobs to go round, activists fomented a rebellion against the dictator government living in luxury while the masses starved. Assad reacted cruelly and harshly, not willing to see his riches disappear. Etc etc

endrel123

Furthercto your poist we also have another problem to deal with . Russian bots, trolling farms.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41982569
'How Russian bots appear in your timeline'

But who is behind these bots and how do they operate?

"Many bot accounts have been traced to the Internet Research Agency, in St Petersburg. The Russian government-backed agency reportedly runs social media accounts disseminating "disinformation".

I keep banging on about fake news/bots / links to goodness knows who but it is a fact there should be caution applied at times as to who we 'choose' to obtain our information from.

POGS how coincidental that two new “Grans” (?) , endre123 and * sonofanarc81* whatever should appear on this thread.
Apart from the fact of taking over several column inches (feet?) of iPad screen I do wonder when e they came and what they are about

PS I blame the bots for my typos.
“Whence they came”

Watch what you say MawBroon or ladyMawBroon10 will pop up from nowhere!