-TSS-

Either way they will lose. Even if they can overthrow the Ukrainian regime they would have to stay there in order to secure their installed puppet-regime which wouldn't last a day without Russians supporting it and that costs a lot of money while the sanctions are eating away the Russian economy. A lose-lose for Putin all around.

Russia is weak but it is also desperate. That's a dangerous combination.

In Russia you must be well over 40 years of age, at least in the big cities, to have any memory of serious economic difficulties and shortages of all basic things. The younger generation is used to an almost western kind of lifestyle. It is going to be a rude awakening to a cabbage soup-economy and certainly not going to make them supporters of the regime and its policies.

When Russian leaders say they are going to restore the Soviet Union you think they mean the borders but actually they mean the standard of living.

When I travelled by train today I noticed that on the fences around the railway there were a lot of Ukrainian flags and signs saying slava Ukraini. That is here in Finland where we don't even have many Ukrainians at all. Over there in Canada you have hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. This must be a very big thing over there.

There is speculation about the oligarghs wanting to topple Putin in order to end the international sanctions. Even a name has been mentioned as a possible successor to Putin. You couldn't imagine a more certain death-sentence than to mention someone's name in a plan to topple a dictator.

I'm beginning to see that people are going absolutely insane over this war. Even here in Finland.

The Russians will no doubt demand in the future peace-deal that the sanctions would be lifted. However, that doesn't change the fact that private investors won't touch Russia with a barge pole for years to come.

Even though I'm on the side of the right I can't help feeling sorry for many Russian people who are my work-mates who really are between a rock and a hard place and have nothing to do with this issue. Funnily, when talking to them the casual chitchat there seems to be some unwritten contract that you don't mention the U-word.

This conflict can be compared to a football-match. The role of Ukraine in that match is to be the ball.

Russia is not a similar super-power like the Soviet Union was. I would say that Russia is a third tier super-power. The USA alone is the first tier, China alone the second tier and Russia together with the UK and France are third tier.

When the Warsaw Pact was dismantled 30 years ago many people said that NATO should return the favour and do the same. I guess there aren't a lot of people today who think that it would have been a good idea to dismantle NATO.

The train-service between Russia and Finland still operates, which is a kind of surprising really. The trains bound for Finland are absolutely packed full when as the trains bound for St.Petersburg are almost empty. I wonder how long Russia will allow its citizens to flee the misery. The ones fleeing are usually the best and the brightest people whose contribution would be needed in Russia. A new Iron Curtain rising up.

It appears that the plan was to invade on Thursday and have a victory-parade in Kiev on Sunday. As it didn't work out like that there was no plan B.

What would NATO be for if Russia were part of it? A force against an invasion of space aliens?

People who have cars absolutely need cars. They don't have cars for fun. If the petrol-price goes up it is away from something else. A bit hard to compare to the US-prices as they have the dollar and the unit of measurement is gallon but the average price of petrol in the US is 4.4 dollars per gallon. According to my calculations that equals 1.10 euros/litre and Americans think that is already too expensive. In Europe petrol is everywhere already above two euros per litre.

Get out of Ukraine and kick the dwarf out of the Kremlin. That's all takes to for Russians to get their old life back including all those nice western items on the shelves of their shops. Russians below the age of 40 have no memory of real hard times. This complete international isolation is going to hit them very hard. Previously they had got used to an almost similar life like we in the west have.

I can understand Putin-trolls on Finnish or other European discussion boards but on a Canadian forum? What is there to achieve?

30 years of hard work has gone down the drain in two weeks. I mean work branding Russia as just like any other country but also one which offers limitless opportunities and which is safe to invest in and to do business with. They made good progress but now it's all gone. No matter what kind of new Gorbachev will be Putin's successor convincing people that Russia is safe for your business again it's going to take years, perhaps decades, before the trust comes back. Putin hasn't only ruined the lives of people in his neighbouring country but the lives of millions of people of his own country as well.

I don't disagree with you. Even if Russia overthrows the Ukrainian regime and installs its own puppet-government they would have to stay there because the puppet-government couldn't last one single day on its own. That in turn costs Russia still more while the sanctions already are destabilising the Russian economy. All this in public knowledge that it didn't have to be this way and it doesn't have to go on this way.

Of course Russia will win the war. The bigger and stronger one always ultimately wins. But Russia will lose the economic war with devastating consequences. They will remain an isolated pariah-state for as long as they are in Ukraine. Their economy is going to collapse. No chance that is going to be allowed to happen. Russians have been used to have something reminiscent of normal life of a capitalist country for 30 years now. There are millions of people who have no memory nor experience of really hard times of empty shelves in shops and long queues outside them. The economic sanctions will break Russia. Some sort of a palace-coup is inevitable.

Soon Putin will be shovelling coal in a very hot place but will he take the whole world with him? However, even if things turn out fine Putin's successor will have some hell of convincing to do that he isn't Putin 2.0 and the western investments are more than welcome back to Russia.

There is a difference between attacking a country in the hope of conquering it and annexing it to your territory and attacking a country in the hope of just defeating it at war. If you only want to beat a country at war there are no restrictions how much you can destroy it. If you hope to conquer a country you don't want to conquer a pile of rubble, do you?

The sanctions are already starting to take effect. Lukoil, the country's big petroleum-company, has issued a statement demanding the end of the war.

The sanctions will bring the Russian economy down on its knees. Now it is clear that not only stopping the war and withdrawing from Ukraine but also demanding Putin out of power should be the condition for lifting the sanctions. On the other hand the western leaders may think that Russia must not be overhumiliated and will settle for only stopping the war as a condition to end the sanctions. Putin could stay. He must have known in advance that if he starts the war this is exactly the kind of response he gets. It would be strange if he hasnt any plan how to deal with the situation.