I am completely serious. I'm afraid you will not stop this revanchist war, let alone restore the internationally recognised borders of Ukraine by "defunding", only when the supply of Putin's 'single-use soldiers' runs out will it end.

This war might not be the fault of ordinary Russians, but it is their responsibility. When a people hands control of the levers of power to a dictator and that dictator brings the whirlwind down on them, as happened to the German population in 1944-5, then they, the people, pay a terrible price, just as Russian Mobiks and their families are paying one now. Of course that is sad, but I feel for the non-agressor population and its brave defenders more. Knowing that peace can only follow victory in the field, I find I am unsentimental concerning enemy casualties.

Glory to Ukraine.

I feel that not only our British friends, and of course the Ukrainian government, feel like this, but also the 'other side'.

They see that neither the government of Ukraine, nor the UK, and their European buddies, are willing to stop the war. They feel morally entitled and are willing to kill, kill, and kill some more. Soldiers, Civilians and children alike. They will be walking in the blood of their victims, like the Huns, the Avars and the Mongols before them. (Now allied with the heirs to the Persian and Han empires...)

Do you really want to fight them?????????? Are you ready for this?????

I know the Brits are very brave, very smart and very ruthless. They celebrated victory many times over many enemies, by wiping out the tribes of Native Americans with Smallpox infected blankets, enslaving the populations of Africa and India, the Middle East, by committing Genocide against Maori and Aboriginal tribes on the Australian continent, by carpet bombing the cities of France, Italy and Germany, and by killing over a hundred thousand Boer and African Civilians in concentration camps.

Of course I do hope that the Brits, and their Ukrainian allies, would succeed against the Russians and their allies as well, if they cannot come to a peace agreement. Just I cannot imagine such a victory would occur.

When you write: 'Knowing that peace can only follow victory in the field, I find I am unsentimental concerning enemy casualties.', have you considered that the UK+EU+Ukraine might not be on the winning side???? WW3 would be hard to win. There might be nobody left to watch the victory parade, besides drones.

I respect your decision to fight, if that is what you choose to do. I will vote for peace in the next elections. That is all I can do.

"have you considered that the UK+EU+Ukraine might not be on the winning side????"

Don't make me laugh.

Jan, the Russian Federation frightens no one these days. We all thought it had the second best army in the world, but now we know it has the second best army in Ukraine. There is a tragi-comic irony there as the RF's revanchist aggression was fuelled by resentment that the West did not take it's mightiness seriously! It took 10 months and tens of thousands of casualties to take the last city they captured, so no there is no possibility of them winning anything but their own rigged elections. Poland alone could end them (and is probably quite looking forward to doing so), but no Western country is alone; the only one alone here is Russia. Leaving aside Putin's pet dictator Lukashenko, if your only friends are the Taliban, the Ayatollahs, Kim Jong Un and Elon Musk, well, you truly are the kid no one talks to at parties.

Putin has made Russia a pariah for a generation, impoverished it, weakened it and slaughtered or driven away enough of its youth to exacerbate the problem of its aging population. For all his callous ruthlessness, Putin is demonstrably incapable of realising his imperial dreams and has only succeeeded in making the Russian Federation a joke.

For months Putin has been snubbed by countries the Kremlin thought of as friends or client-states. The leaders that Putin made wait for him now leave Putin waiting, if they'll see him at all. At least a couple have indicated they would arrest him! When Lavrov went to India, they laughed in his face. The 'friendhip without limits' is no more than being Bejing's be-atch, for China has bought the RF at the cost of a few barrels of cut-price oil. No one wants to buy Russian armaments; no one wants their jack-in-the-box exploding tanks. The RF has even lost all influence in its own back yard. Armenia has found Russia's Wish.com version of NATO fell apart the moment it was needed, and has turned its back on the Kremlin. Azerbaijan feels free to take the territory it claims and to ignore or kill any Russian peacekeepers that get in the way.

The only question is how long, and how much blood and treasure it will take, for Ukraine to defeat the Russian Federation and drive its forces out of Ukraine. Arguably Germany spent longer losing WW2 than it did winning it to begin with, these things take time. However, the German army in WW2 was the best army with best doctrine and equipment, whereas the Russian Federation's army has pre-1918 tactics, rusty Cold War armaments that it cannot replace and the war-fighting capability of a reluctant snail. It's just that there are, still, rather a lot of them and Putin cares not how high their bodies are piled.

And Jan, you do sound like a Kremlin bot when you present a false equivalence between things one country did in the distant past and the evil another country is perpetrating now. How the f- the fact that Britain once ruled an empire justifies Russia waging a war of agression in Europe today ... well, it makes as much sense as flat earth theory. Modern Britain remains an influence for good on the world stage, and you should be grateful for that and for the other nations that share its values and committment to the international rules based system. All countries did bad stuff in the past, some of them, however, have learnt from past mistakes. It's the ones still doing evil I'd worry about.

Ukraine understands that, however terrible war may be, there are yet worse things. I for one would not wish upon Ukraine the sort of 'peace' Stalin visited upon Poland, the Baltics etc at the conclusion of WW2. Really, peace-at-any-price is a shameful doctrine. We are lucky that Uhraine and enough people in the West have the backbone to fight for a world that gives us the freedom to espouse our views, even those views that undermine our very freedom to hold them!

We, the global West, face war in Europe, we did not want it or start it, but we do need to help Ukraine to win it and wars are won with determination and sacrifice, not by hand-wringing, moaning and indulging in navel-gazing, appeasing Russia and selling-out Ukraine in the name of "peace".

Vote how you want, Jan, but remember, those in the occupied territories of Ukraine don't get to vote as they choose. Will your vote be cast to help change that for them?

Edwardian,

all humans make mistakes. Every day. All the time. Regardless of our national origin or of our cultural heritage, we fail on a regular basis, to uphold our own moral values, and to treat others in the same way that we would like to be treated ourselves.

The tragic loss of our beloved Strelets sculptor is still very painful for me, and I cannot help but mourn, whenever I look at my Strelets figurines. I do not want any more people to die, no matter if those people are Ukrainian, Russian, or holders of other countries' passports.

Committing ethnic cleansing to drive out millions of pro-Russian (former) Ukrainians from the disputed territories in Crimea and the Donbass would not be any better than committing mass killings of Civilians at any other point in time in history. I oppose such actions strongly.

Looking at the role of Britain in the Ukraine conflict, I cannot help but being sad and disappointed, as the UK seems to promote aggressive nationalism, interethnic violence and intercultural hatred in Eastern Europe. Look at Crimea, for instance. Historically a part of Russia for many hundreds of years, it was given as a 'gift' to Ukraine in 1954 by the Communist Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, himself a Ukrainian, a bolshevik terrorist, and a mass murderer. Now we see British soldiers in Ukraine, training Ukrainians to kill their neighbors, to 'take back' Crimea, in support of Nikita Khrushchev's political decisions. I am surprised to see that the UK acts as enforcer of Soviet political doctrine, but this is what is happening in 2023. Mr. Krushchev would have loved it!!!

In the 21st Century, we should strive to coexist in harmony with those who don't share our values, instead of killing them to take their land, and we should certainly not spend our tax money on enforcing the will of cruel communist dictators.

Please correct me, if you feel that what I write is wrong.

The tragic loss of our beloved Strelets sculptor is a focus for the sadness many of us feel.

However, I believe it necessary to respect his sacrifice and respect the decision of his country to resist invasion, repression and genocide. You should too. Sadly, as I have said, they are things even worse than war and there will be no peace or freedom until Russia is defeated and driven back within its borders.

Alas I see you merely doing the Kremlin's job for it and if I have not convinced you of the error of your naive and dangerous views by now, I never will, so will waste no further time.

Better, I think, to read the spoof adds. Despite the somewhat po faced reaction - which shows that this community is, inter alia, just too humourless for me - I have found them hilarious. Well done to the poster(s), who I think does better than I have with my earnest essays, because they have realised that the one thing tyranny cannot stand is mockery.

Truly, this community never fails to dissappoint me. You fiddle with toy soldiers while the world burns and live in denial, impatience when reality has the temerity to intrude into your cosy delusions. I was right to leave you sad ostriches.

Dear Edwardian,

on the 'other side' of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict we have civilized human beings as well. Needless suffering, unnecessary killing, destruction and devastation of human life is never ok.

As toy soldier collectors, we too have a shared responsibility towards our fellow humans. And I do believe that many of us have a very thorough understanding of global politics, warfare and its impact on humanity. Personally, I believe that most of us are much better human beings than the average guy on the street.

Of course the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation was wrong. Nobody disputes that. That is not the point, and we cannot turn back in time to reverse that.

Now it is about making peace, and to avoid greater destruction, greater suffering and greater loss of human life. Setting realistic expectations and looking at all aspects of the truth can only be helpful. The truth is not usually determined by only looking from one single perspective.

As for you, I do hope that you stay. I value you as an honorable fellow toy soldier friend. No matter some minor differences that we may have on ONE subject, we probably agree on many others. So Cheers to you, and THANK YOU for entertaining us with your perspective of events. Our hobby is going through rough times, due to a horrible war, and analyzing those events helps to heal our wounds, which will hopefully help us to get us back to better times.

Dear Edwardian,

Your posts are well written and extremely articulate. Thank you for writing them.
It is true that sometimes in life we need to choose sides. As they say, for evil to succeed, it is enough that good men do nothing. Thankfully people and governments are standing up and supporting Ukraine. I pray for peace, but peace can only come with a Ukrainian victory. If Putin's invasion of Crimea had been opposed, maybe he wouldn't have invaded Donbas. If the world had done more to punish him after Donbas, maybe he wouldn't have invaded Ukraine in 2022. Whether or not Crimea was Russian in the past, Ukrainian, Turkish, Tatar, etc, is irrelevant. It belonged (and still legally belongs) to the nation of Ukraine. If countries feel that they can just redraw borders by invasion and force then it will not end well. Glory to Ukraine and glory to the heroes.

It is clear Edwardian that we will not change each others minds, but I did appreciate hearing your side of the argument. I simply think that there are far too many societal issues at hand right now, to blindly support the “victory at all costs” camp in Ukraine. You would also be correct that I am incredibly suspicious of the federal government, but I have absolutely no reason not to be. And lastly, the Bible makes it quite clear to us the Lords thoughts on homosexuality. You can read the entire book of Leviticus if you think it’s all “being taken out of context.” One verse states “If man lies with another man as he would lie with a woman, both men have committed an abomination and should be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.” But I take the same stance on all sexual sin. Hookup culture, adultery, premarital sex… it’s all the same. We can’t simply let people be “who they actually are.” At some point we have to draw a line with logic and reason on what is normal and what isn’t. And things such as changing your gender are quite literally impossible. It’s time we stop pretending like it is.

I don't like black people. What's a Strelet?