ukraine

Nobody will launch a nuke. They all know what will happen next.

Tell me where Putin would aim the first one?...

USA... No

Ukraine... No

Anywhere... Nope!

What would be the point?... There will no winners. And Putin will be seen as a failure of Hitler proportions and nearly as bad as Jacinda.😜

can't argue with that logic .
Surely there is a point at which even Putin can see the pain he is inflicting, just to grab territory for ego reasons, is wrong and he would be the ultimate loser.

For Putin to stop he’s got to achieve something significant otherwise his prolog and a machine will have nothing to show.

We’re seeing signs that Ukraine is prepared to agree to never seek to join NATO if it helps bring the ear to an end. But if that was the sole concession it would be a tragedy because that condition was previously in place but was dropped in the last couple of years - meaning it was a preventable faux pax by both Ukraine and NATO / West.

There would have to be a couple of other territorial concessions alongside the non-NATO promise to give Putin a face-saving way of wrapping this up, methinks.

we read about how various European countries are freezing Russian oligarchs assets, seizing their boats etc.
Wondering what the legal basis is to do that - is their a declaration of war between these countries and Russia to enable this?

Good question. I’m guessing that these fall under the same category as other ‘suspiciously obtained assets’ that are seized by authorities everyday in normal life eg drug-related assets. But in this case the dubious nature of those assets has been ignored for diplomatic reasons to maintain relations with Russia but that motivation has now gone. Hence the legal machine has been set free to target them too now.