Originally Posted by
glad rag
What, like bend over and take it up the harris? Go ask the UK army, training Ukrainian recruits of two weeks to fight against those Russian holidaymakers [and worse] in Eastern Ukraine, about the dirty reality, or even, lord forbid, stop believing what the media, in general, wants you to believe!
Glad rag, please don't try to teach your grandmother how to suck eggs. A result of the relationships having gone from not great to bad to worse is what went on in Ukraine. Having seen the warm and thaw up close and in person when I was in NATO in the 90's, when the post Cold War world was finding out what it was going to look like, there were some signs that we would find a way forward after having been foes for so long. I got to meed colleagues who, a few years earlier, would have been the people trying to kill me, and people I'd have been trying to kill, had things gone bad a decade earlier. Here we were, working on a collaborative exercise and in another case operations. It's twenty years or so later, and the progress I saw hasn't borne fruit. Granted, within the past couple of years we've had some weird things happen due to the multi sided conflict going on in Syria. Because I saw what could be, it's been a disappointment to see how things have gone.
The major was doing his thing, as any of us would have been doing were we in the flight suit that day and been on task to do ... whatever it is that military pilots do. RIP, Major Filipov. There but for the grace of God go I, or one of a few dozen of my friends. At root, it's the bollocks the politicians make of things that set up the conditions that turn out this way.