Russia Invades Ukraine

[Jambo-Jimbo]

27 minutes ago, Jim_Duncan said:

 

So it’s more complicated than a simple ‘youse invaded us’. Obviously, at some point, however, it was/is sovereign Ukrainian territory. Perhaps Ukraine will have to give up some land that, as you guys point out, hasn’t been ethnically Ukrainian for some time. Hopefully whatever resolution comes to pass, it comes sooner rather than later. 

 

As is the often the case, these things can be traced back hundreds of years, read something about Catherine the Great's time about her invading Ukrainian territory and anexed Crimea.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-catherine-great-invaded-crimea-and-put-rest-world-edge-180949969/

[Cade]

1 hour ago, Cruyff said:

The reality is that the US & US are not going to fund Ukraine forever and Europe needs cheap Russian gas.

 

The US & EU countries have helped Ukraine secure their Independence, their freedom and their Identity through self defense. It was never their intention to destroy Russia or help re-take land lost from 2014. 

Most of Europe has already moved away from Russian supply and is now getting its gas from elsewhere.

Which is yet another reason to lean heavily into renewable energy produced at home, so you're not reliant on having to buy oil/gas from hostile nations.

It's a national security issue every bit as much as it's an economic and environmental one.

That's a lesson we did not learn in the 70s with the OPEC embargo and it's a lesson we're facing again with Putin's Russia.

Russia should be kicked out of the entire Donbas region.

Crimea is a tricky one; it's changed hands numerous times and has been independent for a few other times. 

But under international law it's Ukraine.

And international law should be upheld.

[Jambo-Jimbo]

1 hour ago, Cruyff said:

The reality is that the US & US are not going to fund Ukraine forever and Europe needs cheap Russian gas.

 

The US & EU countries have helped Ukraine secure their Independence, their freedom and their Identity through self defense. It was never their intention to destroy Russia or help re-take land lost from 2014. 

 

I'm not so sure that's the case anymore, as @Cade says Europe has moved on and are getting it's gas supplies elsewhere, besides I think there won't be the appetite to fill the Russian coffers anytime soon, even post Putin, too many bridges have been burnt by the Russians.

[Jim_Duncan]

2 hours ago, Jambo-Jimbo said:

 

As is the often the case, these things can be traced back hundreds of years, read something about Catherine the Great's time about her invading Ukrainian territory and anexed Crimea.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-catherine-great-invaded-crimea-and-put-rest-world-edge-180949969/

Indeed. Ultimately, modern day borders are, like olden day borders, semi-arbitrary lines on a map. Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea are, of course, Ukrainian territory. But it'd be defiantly ignorant to dismiss how Russia views things differently and how the west's perspective is one among many. I would still love to see the Russkis kicked out of the country altogether, but I honestly don't see that happening any time soon.

[Cade]

International consensus should be the final arbiter of national borders.

 

People and borders have moved around over time, some more recently than others.

You cannot simply point back to a specific point in history that you like and say "well that land used to be ours so give it back" otherwise we'd have Italians demanding the return of England as part of their Empire and Mongolians demanding most of Asia.

Likewise you can't say "the people living there share genetic stock with us so it's our land" otherwise the USA would have to be broken up and handed out piecemeal to most of the nations of Europe (or Cuba, in the the case of Florida).

 

International consensus and binding treaties now set the borders (well, they're supposed to), backed up and policed by the rest of the world.

This is specifically to prevent wars of conquest and silly little border disputes flaring up into all out war.

Right now that rule of law is under threat.

In Ukraine, on Taiwan, in Kosovo and many more places, old grievances about who lives where are being bought up and used as excuses for all manner of shitehouse behaviour.

 

Maybe Germany should demand the return of the Kaliningrad exclave, as that used to be part of Germany before being given to Stalin in 1945.

I mean, that does go along with Putin's shitehouse excuses about who should live where, right?
 

[Ulysses]

6 hours ago, Cade said:

 

Aye in 2014 Putin annexed Crimea and the rest of the world did nothing because Crimea had only been signed over to Ukraine in 1954. 

And Russian backed militias took over parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and declared themselves as sovereign republics and the rest of the world did nothing, classing this as a civil war.

Turns out that appeasing Putin was a shite idea.

 

As others have pointed out, these regions were only pro-Russian because their original inhabitants had been ethnically cleansed by Stalin and replaced with Russian settlers in the 30s/40s/50s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars

 

6 hours ago, Jim_Duncan said:

 

So it’s more complicated than a simple ‘youse invaded us’. Obviously, at some point, however, it was/is sovereign Ukrainian territory. Perhaps Ukraine will have to give up some land that, as you guys point out, hasn’t been ethnically Ukrainian for some time. Hopefully whatever resolution comes to pass, it comes sooner rather than later. 

 

Don't forget that these "settlers", these "Stalin plants" voted by 84-16 majorities to leave the USSR for an independent Ukraine in 1991.  That was only marginally lower than the pro-independence votes further west in the country.

 

I've regularly seen the line trotted out that Luhansk, Donetsk, Crimea and Sevastopol weren't in favour of independence and would prefer to be "reunited with the Motherland".  I've even seen it here.  It's Putinist propaganda used to justify the Russian invasion.  There is a slight question mark over the 1991 result in Sevastopol and Crimea in my mind because of the turnout.  That doesn't invalidate the outcome, but it does make me wonder how the vote might have gone if the "pro-Russian" figures of the time had actively campaigned against the proposal.  The same question marks don't apply in Donetsk or Luhansk, where even allowing for a slightly depressed turnout over 64% of registered voters voted for independence.

 

But even if there were questions about 2 of Ukraine's 27 regions, that doesn't justify an invasion by Russia.

[Cruyff]

 

 

[Dirty Deeds]

A sobering piece from the Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/412c6c23-1bb4-42e0-a703-dfe7f0f5f10e

[Cade]

The guy's not wrong, but he's not exactly right either.

He's right that Russia has ramped up production of ammo and artillery barrels but their economy is at the limit of what it can provide and has required executive orders from Putin a few times in order to prevent a capital flight and total collapse.

They're buying back ancient weapons and ammo that they sold to North Korea in the 1970s, just to be able to hold the front lines where they are.

He's right about Russia still having huge reserves of manpower, but badly trained conscripts led by badly trained officers and armed with ancient obsolete weapons will only result in even higher casualty rates than we've already seen.

And as previously mentioned, the Russians have been conscripting mainly from ethnic minorities, immigrant workers and citizens of the occupied territories who were forced to accept Russian passports (and therefor Russian call-up papers).
When they eventually have to start calling up white Russians from the big cities, you'll see a turn in the Russian civilian attitude to the war.

 

He's right that Ukraine also has training problems. Because it's had to very suddenly exponentially increase the size of its army. They're having to throw units into the front lines without full training just to give them time to train up other units to replace them. Slowly but surely they are getting better trained.

We see this by the relatively few errors their commanders have made on the ground, especially compared to the clusterfeck that is the Russian army.

He's right that the western equipment doesn't have many spare parts and the service life is relatively short. But Ukraine does know this and are building new factories to produce their own kit (and ammo) as fast as they can so they're not purely reliant on western equipment.

 

He's also right about the war not being a stalemate. Both sides are on the move and both sides are putting up strong defences against those moves. Russia continues to obsess over strategically unimportant towns and is wasting thousands of lives and hundreds of machines in order to take them. Ukraine on the other hand hits strategic targets, like supply lines and ammo dumps and ships in harbour and oil refineries and air bases, which will further reduce the effectiveness of the Russians in the future.
The Black Sea fleet has been scattered. The Russian ground attack helicopters have had to be relocated deep within Russian territory where they cannot react to events on the ground as they happen.

 

Yes, if The West suddenly withdrew support right now, Ukraine would lose.

But then if the Russian economy imploded, then it would lose.

 

I'm not sure how he reckons that Ukraine is losing the war of attrition, one look at the casualty and machinery losses will tell you who's winning from that perspective.

Russia has lost a great deal of its most advanced gear, and due to the international sanctions, it cannot replace it.

It's been forced to replace quality with quantity. If anything, Ukraine has gone the other way. It began the war with old Soviet gear but now has advanced, modern Western kit....just perhaps not enough of it. We'll see what difference the coming F-16s make, as Russian air power is almost unchallenged at the moment and is the only area in which they do have superiority, even if Ukraine has blown up most of their air bases within reach.

In 2014, The West (and the rest of the world) did nothing when Russia annexed Crimea and occupied half of the Donbas. We thought Putin would be happy with that. 

Nope.

Do we really think he'd be happy with half of Kherson and Zaporizhzhya as well this time around? Don't think so. He'd just re-arm, invent some other gobshite excuse and go again in a few years time.
The West can choose to betray a new ally which has openly stated it wants to join both the EU and NATO and then have to go through all this again when Russia re-invades for the third time, or it can choose to keep supporting Ukraine and degrading the Russian military machine to the point where it poses no further threat to either Ukraine or anybody else on its borders.
 

[Taffin]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67120904

 

 

The messaging for buy in to a withdrawal of support is starting.

 

In fairness, it's hard to justify the optics of the cost when people are financially rooked at home. 

[Jim_Duncan]

3 minutes ago, Taffin said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67120904

 

 

The messaging for buy in to a withdrawal of support is starting.

 

In fairness, it's hard to justify the optics of the cost when people are financially rooked at home. 

Perhaps all the people in the west who changed their social media pictures to Ukraine flags (until whatever next came along) could be conscripted instead?

[Taffin]

16 minutes ago, Jim_Duncan said:

Perhaps all the people in the west who changed their social media pictures to Ukraine flags (until whatever next came along) could be conscripted instead?

 

Certainly a lot of non-Ukranians presented themselves as more devoted to the cause than those in that article.

 

It's far from unique to Ukraine though, mind. It does make selling the funding the war whilst people domestically struggle that but harder though.

[Cade]

If the UK government can write off billions in defrauded Furlough payments and PPE contracts, then I'm sure we can continue to support Ukraine in fighting off the most direct threat to peace on the European continent since WW2.

 

 

[Taffin]

8 minutes ago, Cade said:

If the UK government can write off billions in defrauded Furlough payments and PPE contracts, then I'm sure we can continue to support Ukraine in fighting off the most direct threat to peace on the European continent since WW2.

 

 

 

They can, it doesn't mitigate the optics with the public though. Wasting money on one hand doesn't automatically make largesse on another popular.

 

It's clearly the start of the withdrawal of support and articles like that will ensure it has public support. What monies been wasted on other things previously will be neither here, nor there when it comes to public perception imo.

[Ulysses]

1 hour ago, Taffin said:

 

They can, it doesn't mitigate the optics with the public though. Wasting money on one hand doesn't automatically make largesse on another popular.

 

It's clearly the start of the withdrawal of support and articles like that will ensure it has public support. What monies been wasted on other things previously will be neither here, nor there when it comes to public perception imo.

 

There have been articles like that in various Western media since the war started.

[Taffin]

4 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

 

There have been articles like that in various Western media since the war started.

 

I'm sure there have. I've not seen any so readily pushed on our national broadcaster though. It also sounds like the BBC have only just recently had the data to articulate that story. 

 

If you don't think it's part of a narrative to change public perception on Ukraine support...what is the purpose of the story being placed so high? It's not particularly interesting or surprising in isolation.

[Ulysses]

3 hours ago, Taffin said:

 

I'm sure there have. I've not seen any so readily pushed on our national broadcaster though. It also sounds like the BBC have only just recently had the data to articulate that story. 

 

If you don't think it's part of a narrative to change public perception on Ukraine support...what is the purpose of the story being placed so high? It's not particularly interesting or surprising in isolation.

 

I did a quick search.  The BBC also published "dodging the draft" stories in June and August this year, as well as September 2022.  They also did a radio documentary in June this year.  I think there's now a  video documentary out; the latest BBC story includes viewing directions. To be fair to the BBC, they've run at least the same number of stories about Russian deserters and draft-dodgers.

 

[Mikey1874]

15 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

 

I did a quick search.  The BBC also published "dodging the draft" stories in June and August this year, as well as September 2022.  They also did a radio documentary in June this year.  I think there's now a  video documentary out; the latest BBC story includes viewing directions. To be fair to the BBC, they've run at least the same number of stories about Russian deserters and draft-dodgers.

 

 

The main ongoing story the BBC has run has been on proving Russian army casualties visiting towns and seeing the memorials etc. 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-829ea0ba-5b42-499b-ad40-6990f2c4e5d0

[Cade]

Seems that the Ukrainian bridgehead over the Dnieper is strengthening.

 

They've been using counter-battery fire and heavy-duty drones to destroy all the Russian short range artillery and hidden tanks in the area.

As usual, they've also been identifying and hitting Russian troop concentrations as they assemble for attacks.

Russia is still attacking but they're not being all that effective due to the weakened state of their forces.

Ukraine is continuing to deliver men and supplies over the river in a constant rotation of fast boats and have also thrown up two light pontoon bridges.

They're getting quite firmly established on the left bank.

They won't be able to advance beyond the range of their own artillery on the east bank until they can install heavier bridges or bring in landing craft to deliver their own artillery and tanks, but so far so good.

Nobody expected them to open another front, and especially not across the river.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

On 17/11/2023 at 09:12, Jim_Duncan said:

Perhaps all the people in the west who changed their social media pictures to Ukraine flags (until whatever next came along) could be conscripted instead?

I think most are now in Gaza fighting the good fight.

[Jim_Duncan]

18 minutes ago, Ron Burgundy said:

I think most are now in Gaza fighting the good fight.

23rd Volunteer Virtue Signalling Brigade?

[Mikey1874]

Back to reality on the ground

 

 

[Jeffros Furios]

2 minutes ago, Mikey1874 said:

Back to reality on the ground

 

 

[Cade]

That's the first winter snows falling in Ukraine now.

Both sides will be making last ditch efforts to take ground before digging in deep for the winter.

Russia has been stockpiling cruise and ballistic missiles (by not firing any for ages) so they can do their usual thing over the winter and target Ukraine's electricity grid.

Ukraine will just continue to hit barracks, HQs, ammo dumps, airfields, train lines, oil refineries, artillery, e-war systems and other such actual strategic targets.

 

Russia seems to have over-extended itself north of Avdiivka.

For some reason they've stopped using tanks and IFVs up there and are attacking with purely infantry. The armour seems to have been moved to the south of Avdiivka.

Their advance heading north is wedged between two fortified railway embankments and they're not getting very far, as they're being gunned down from both sides.

They did try to storm the small village of Stepove to the west but were very quickly eliminated.

Ukraine has launched a counter attack eastwards out of Stepove, pushing the Russians all the way back to the treeline on the Russian side of the railway line, which is threatening to outflank their push north. 

Avdiivka may well still turn out to be this year's Bakhmut.

Around Bakhmut itself, things are relatively static, with Russia launching attacks towards the liberated town of Klishchiivka but are being repulsed each time. They're still using all their best equipment on this front, so there's been a fair few T-90M tanks, Terminator IFVs and other such fancy toys being blown up here. Things which Russia cannot replace.

Up in Luhansk, things are likewise static.
Same goes for the Zaporizhzia region.

Kherson continues to be very interesting with the Ukrainian marines and other special forces widening their bridgehead over the river and linking up the different landing zones.
Russia, having lost hundreds of men and machines in counter attacks, is now resorting to air power and trying to just carpet bomb the entire left bank.

Ukraine is mitigating this by keeping the special forces on the move and never clumping together, so all the Russians are doing is wasting bombs blowing up empty ground.
Two small pontoon bridges have been thrown across the river and these are being used to bring over more supplies like food, ammo, man portable anti tank and anti air systems and building materials for winter entrenching.
A few IFVs have been brought over by landing craft.

Ukraine will need to push the Russian aircraft away with bigger and meaner air defences if they want to turn this beachhead into a proper invasion and build heavier bridges.

Watch this space.

[Jim_Duncan]

20 hours ago, Mikey1874 said:

Back to reality on the ground

 

 

 

20 hours ago, Jeffros Furios said:

Nowt better than dead Russian singers, eh. 

[Jeffros Furios]

34 minutes ago, Jim_Duncan said:

 

Nowt better than dead Russian singers, eh. 

She's performing  in another country infront of a bunch of murdering and raping pigs ..

So aye **** her ! 

[Jim_Duncan]

13 minutes ago, Jeffros Furios said:

She's performing  in another country infront of a bunch of murdering and raping pigs ..

So aye **** her ! 

Like Taylor Swift doing a gig in EH7. 

[Mikey1874]

48 minutes ago, Jim_Duncan said:

 

Nowt better than dead Russian singers, eh. 

 

She wasn't the target. Russian soldiers were. Unlucky. You can contribute to her memorial. I've quoted her theatre so you can contact them. Her final moments if you want to do your own grieving. 

 

 

 

[Jeffros Furios]

Just now, Jim_Duncan said:

Like Taylor Swift doing a gig in EH7. 

I'd abduct Taylor Swift before she steps foot in the piggery. 

[Jim_Duncan]

17 minutes ago, Mikey1874 said:

 

She wasn't the target. Russian soldiers were. Unlucky. You can contribute to her memorial. I've quoted her theatre so you can contact them. Her final moments if you want to do your own grieving. 

 

 

 

Nah, preferred her early work and felt she’d jumped the shark recently. 

[Cade]

NATO says that Ukraine will join the alliance after the war.

Which is a double-edged sword.

It means that Ukraine will be untouchable if they win.

But that very same fact means that Russia will just go even harder, so they win and destroy the entire Ukrainian state so there is nothing TO join NATO.
Putin now knows that he either wins this war or Ukraine becomes untouchable.

Which is kind of a trap for him. Will he increase mobilisation and risk instability and unrest at home? Will he throw even more Russian lives away in reckless actions? Will he achieve a pyrrhic victory but have basically no military left when it's all over?

Both sides have gone all-in.

If this wasn't an existential war for Ukraine before, it is now.

 

UK intelligence says that Ukrainian claims of 1,000 Russian dead per day throughout November is "plausible", which shows the scale of Russian losses on the ground.

 

On the ground itself, Avdiivka continues to be the main hot spot.

In the north, Ukraine has been utterly demolishing the Russian supply lines, assembly areas, command posts, barracks, artillery, ammo dumps and so on, resulting in only 25% of the Russian attackers on that flank even making it to the front lines.

And on those front lines the Russians are only attacking with human wave infantry attacks, which simply get mown down as they charge across open fields.

Ukraine has also launched some fairly substantial raids towards the main logistics hub town of Horlivka which is further hampering Russian efforts on this northern flank.
 

In the centre front of Avdiivka, Russians have finally launched some attacks from the 2014 line of contact along the highway.
Having been shelled for nearly 10 years, the nearby industrial estate is a tangle of wreckage.

Ukraine knew that trying to hold that was a waste of time so they withdrew to fortifications to the north, south and west of that.

Russian infantry then entered the industrial estate and got cut down from all three sides.

 

The southern flank of Avdiivka is the only vector where the Russians are still using heavy armour, but they're getting demolished by mines, artillery, drones and ATGMs without gaining any ground.

 

Just like Bakhmut last year, Russia seems obsessed with taking towns and doesn't care how many of its own people get killed in taking them.

Only this time they don't have Wagner to do the fighting and they don't have the prison battalions to do the dying. 

Just their own badly trained, poorly equipped, mostly pished and incompetently led army.

 

One other thing of note over the last few days was the sighting of some Abrams tanks up near Kupiansk in the north, where Russia has all its most modern gear in use.

Maybe we'll see Abrams taking out some T-90s which if nothing else would be a nice bit of propaganda for Ukraine.

Tank-on-tank action has been very rare in this war despite both sides fielding large numbers of them.

 

Some reports say that Russia has been stripping its border stations and bases of air defence systems and sending them to Ukraine.

This includes the Kaliningrad enclave in the Baltic.

So this indicates that they're unable to build new systems to replace destroyed ones.

 

Snowfall has hit eastern Ukraine already so things will be grinding to a halt in the near future.

A giant winter storm with 9 metre high waves smashed Crimea a couple of days ago, resulting in around 50% of the peninsula losing electricity.

[Sawdust Caesar]

At least the storm washed away some of the Russian defences.

 

 

Guerillas at work. Not much left for the firemen to put out.

 

Don't know if a uniform warehouse is all that great a target, unless it was full of winter gear destined for the front lines.

[Hagar the Horrible]

It said on the radio earlier, a rare thing on the radio that this is still active, but Russia has has lost the highest amount of troops in the last 6 weeks than in relative terms over the same time scale since the war started.  Its as though there is no end game in this apart from losing a vast number of people for no gain, and nobody will mourn nor remember them.  At what point will the russian people say enough is enough?

[Cade]

3 minutes ago, Hagar the Horrible said:

  At what point will the russian people say enough is enough?

 

When they run out of private mercenary companies, prisoners and ethnic minorities to call up.

The problems for Putin will start when he starts calling up white Russian laddies from the big cities.

[Mikey1874]

Since Wagner was mentioned.

 

 

[Mikey1874]

Also

(US Congress Speaker)

 

[cosanostra]

I'm in Thailand at the moment. South of Phuket. The place isn't busy but about 90% of people here are Russian. Very surly, unhappy looking people who don't really understand friendly. 🤣 

The chicks seem to be hugely breast augmentation surgery though. I don't mind that so much. They kind of have this outraged facial expression all the time though. Like someone has farted directly under their nose. 

The guys seem to love steroids. 

Definitely a weird contrast to the incredibly friendly, smiley Thai people.

[manaliveits105]

2 hours ago, cosanostra said:

I'm in Thailand at the moment. South of Phuket. The place isn't busy but about 90% of people here are Russian. Very surly, unhappy looking people who don't really understand friendly. 🤣 

The chicks seem to be hugely breast augmentation surgery though. I don't mind that so much. They kind of have this outraged facial expression all the time though. Like someone has farted directly under their nose. 

The guys seem to love steroids. 

Definitely a weird contrast to the incredibly friendly, smiley Thai people.

Spot on descriptions I was in Thailand earlier in year and they were struttin about with Russia T-shirts they are snapping up houses in Spain now but an equal amount of Ukranians live here too you wouldn't know there's a war on 

The Russians are unhappy people and loud bad drunks but tend to not drink in the bars thankfully 

[Jim_Duncan]

3 hours ago, cosanostra said:

I'm in Thailand at the moment. South of Phuket. The place isn't busy but about 90% of people here are Russian. Very surly, unhappy looking people who don't really understand friendly. 🤣 

The chicks seem to be hugely breast augmentation surgery though. I don't mind that so much. They kind of have this outraged facial expression all the time though. Like someone has farted directly under their nose. 

The guys seem to love steroids. 

Definitely a weird contrast to the incredibly friendly, smiley Thai people.

Broadly speaking, the three worst tourist nationalities are Russian, Chinese and American. It’s no coincidence that, to be rich/successful enough in countries with large populations like them, you have to be a bit of an arsehole. When you visit those countries, they tend to be quite sound, but the nationalistic education systems and exceptionalist mentalities promoted within them don’t produce curious, well-rounded tourists. 

[Cade]

It's also a cultural thing.

Citizens of all three of those nations are raised from birth to believe that they are the best nation in the world with a golden destiny and everybody else is beneath them.

Propaganda is a disease.

[Ulysses]

1 hour ago, Jim_Duncan said:

Broadly speaking, the three worst tourist nationalities are Russian, Chinese and American.

 

[Jim_Duncan]

4 minutes ago, Ulysses said:

 

The Vulcans get GTF, too. Mind melding all over the beaches in Aya Napa and doing their death grips to innocent bar staff in Cancun. 

[Ulysses]

Just now, Jim_Duncan said:

The Vulcans get GTF, too. Mind melding all over the beaches in Aya Napa and doing their death grips to innocent bar staff in Cancun. 

 

Nearly there. 

[Jim_Duncan]

1 minute ago, Ulysses said:

 

Nearly there. 

You keep your garden Sherman updates to yourself, sir. 

[Craig_]

1 hour ago, Jim_Duncan said:

Broadly speaking, the three worst tourist nationalities are Russian, Chinese and American. It’s no coincidence that, to be rich/successful enough in countries with large populations like them, you have to be a bit of an arsehole. When you visit those countries, they tend to be quite sound, but the nationalistic education systems and exceptionalist mentalities promoted within them don’t produce curious, well-rounded tourists. 

 

Honourable mentions for the British and Australians too.

[Ulysses]

8 minutes ago, Jim_Duncan said:

You keep your garden Sherman updates to yourself, sir. 

 

Jealous, eh? 

[Jeff]

2 hours ago, manaliveits105 said:

Spot on descriptions I was in Thailand earlier in year and they were struttin about with Russia T-shirts they are snapping up houses in Spain now but an equal amount of Ukranians live here too you wouldn't know there's a war on 

The Russians are unhappy people and loud bad drunks but tend to not drink in the bars thankfully 

 

Are they still allowed in Turkey?

 

Would see them drinking in one bar at 10am and they'd be at the same seat at 11pm still going strong.

[Ulysses]

2 minutes ago, Craig_ said:

 

Honourable mentions for the British and Australians too.

 

I saw an article that said that the British listed the British as their least favourite tourists, while the Australians listed the Australians.  At least that shows a degree of awareness that other nationalities might lack.

 

I've only once been around large-ish numbers of Russians on holiday.  I'd prefer not to repeat the experience.

[cosanostra]

1 hour ago, Ulysses said:

 

I saw an article that said that the British listed the British as their least favourite tourists, while the Australians listed the Australians.  At least that shows a degree of awareness that other nationalities might lack.

 

I've only once been around large-ish numbers of Russians on holiday.  I'd prefer not to repeat the experience.

 

That makes sense. Most of the times I've met other Scottish tourists in weird places they tend to be the most cringeworthy, embarrassing type. 

The Russians are an extremely weird bunch. I can occasionally see glimpses of humanity and kindness in the ones that have young kids the same age as my rabble but most of them just look angry and like they're going to be beating someone up in their near future.

The way they treat the locals is pretty poor as well. 

[Ulysses]

13 minutes ago, cosanostra said:

 

That makes sense. Most of the times I've met other Scottish tourists in weird places they tend to be the most cringeworthy, embarrassing type. 

The Russians are an extremely weird bunch. I can occasionally see glimpses of humanity and kindness in the ones that have young kids the same age as my rabble but most of them just look angry and like they're going to be beating someone up in their near future.

The way they treat the locals is pretty poor as well. 

 

I have a bit of a tendency to avoid the Irish abroad, mainly because they make too many assumptions about me.

 

You meet nice people and fuds in all nationalities.  But I get a sense that there's a higher percentage of aggressive headbangers among Russians - and a lot of other former Soviet bloc nationalities as well.