Why the heck are there Shia fighters in the conflict?
militarizm:
In the first photo you see a fighter with " Ya Hussein" shia symbol in arabic on his head. First time I see this style. This is not an arab fighter and I am not aware aware of Shia presence in Chechnia.
Lord knows. There are volunteer fighters from all over the ex-USSR. There are Shia's in Russia for example. Not huge numbers... but it's certainly possible one of them ended up there.
Can I ask do you think it would be justified for western governments to find this SA-11 and eliminate it as it is clearly in the wrong hands. I've said this before we can't just sit around and hope this will not happen again. The Ukrainian forces must be struggling to maintain air cover so what then does this system go back to Russia or do they sell it to finance their conflict which means it could end up in anyones hands
Which one? It's still not clear which system was used. There is some info that a rebel system that may have been used, is now back in Russia. So it's unreachable. There's the question of how you find it, and the question of how you verify it's the right one. Finally, does it solve anything? Russia can provide the rebels with a replacement quite easily. And this is without even considering the wider context of your suggestion.
Ukraine is delivering weapons to all kinds of questionable customers already, and destroying a single SAM launcher isn't going to change that.
Of course svoboda is crazy but that was just an example to make my point. But to address Ukraine in particular, right now parties representing a bit over 50% of their parliament have made similar statements in the last 2-3 months so it's not it as if this is an out of the mainstream idea in Ukraine. Now having said that, If Ukraine eventually wants EU and NATO membership they will never go down that road.
Nuclear weapons are expensive. Reliable deterrence against Russia or the US requires a complete triad and an early warning system. This isn't even close to being affordable. Ukraine can't pay their soldiers a decent wage, can't give them modern tactical gear, or decent vehicles. But they will suddenly afford a nuclear arsenal? Come on.
It's a shame those realities are gone, isn't it? But again it just reinforces my point. It sends a number of messages one of which is give up nukes, get bombed, invaded and/or destabilized.
That's one way to interpret this. Not the only way. There are huge complications that come with WMDs.
Except Assad just switched to other chemical weapons and we've yet to see if Assad's head ends up hanging on someones wall. They didn't get bombed but they are suffering an invasion from outside forces supported by other countries, much like Ukraine, right?
Again that's one way to look at it. It's not the only message you can take away from it. Generally the issue is that if your country is large, wealthy, and stable enough to afford a nuclear arsenal
and all the things that go with it, you're probably not a high risk for a US invasion in the first place.
