The Ukraine Question

[xerx]

I think NATO’s mistake was in their wishy-washiness. Following Putin’s invasion of Georgia back in 2008, NATO made a half-hearted promise that Ukraine would join “someday” without issuing Ukraine any invitation or real protection. NATO was considering allowing Ukraine in back then, but there was concern over how Putin would react, and so NATO took a middle ground—which might not have been the best path looking back now. Maybe Russia would not be invading Ukraine now if NATO had never made that promise. Maybe NATO could have let Ukraine in back in 2008 without Russia attacking.

Yeah, if Ukraine was going to join NATO anyway, it really should have in 2008 (or even in 2004, at the same at time as the Baltic states), while Russia was much weaker. But I think that Ukrainian internal politics may have prevented that, since it has always been divided into pro-Russian vs. pro-European factions.

But even if could join NATO, that still may not have been the wisest move. I remember reading an influential strategist (Zbigniew Brzezinski) who supported Ukraine's economic integration with Western Europe, but who didn't want it to join NATO. He wanted to end Western-Russian antagonism knowing that it forced Russia to turn to China.

If Russia is forced into an unsustainable arms race with the West, the fear is that Russia could fracture. The central Asian 'stans' would automatically turn to China; eastern Siberia (and its vast mineral wealth) would become a Chinese protectorate. There are worse things than a strong Russia.

[Poptart]

https://mobile.twitter.com/marcorubi...Cy-cvW-cUpAAAA

[ouronis]

@ouronis, Here's an overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRUc4gTO-PE

Here's a map: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/...fig4_259538116

The Yangtze watershed is not exactly a small area, but I guess you could poison the land around its source with radioactivity and that'd do the job too.

edit: yellow not yangtze. it's more clumped up but same sq mi

[Sol]

Officials say that the last point of tolerancy was the intention to allow that "borderland" region (which is under USA control since 2014) to use nuclear weapon. As that territory has regular antirussian hithlerists style propaganda since 2014 and is situated close to RF, to remove its illegal terroristic occupation USA-hithlerists rule was decided as obligate in near time.

As USA provoked Russians by different ways on military actions (including even by nuclear weapon threat), I'm not sure the situation is going to better. USA may steal contracts for energy shipments to EU, as example (today RF unlike USSR produces not much products and has much lesser ways of material incomes, so it's significant loss). Or to do other shit.
8 years Russia allowed USA to kill civil Russians living in borderland near RF until recently it started to do many provocations from different sides and on higher levels. Now we should see the aim what USA wanted to get as the result.
Borderland itself means a few to USA and EU, the aim is the harm to Russians and China.

[Poptart]

Zelinsky looks SLE to me. He'll stay and fight. Putin will put him on display in a cage, because that's what LSIs do. Then, off to the Gulag and eventual death by poisoning.

Apparently Russian soldiers are dropping into the edge of Kyiv. Godspeed Zelensky. Slava Ukraini.

[Anglas]

Time to invest into companies which manufacture weapons. Massive stonks

[Baqer]

https://twitter.com/Sc0ttishKoala/st...-aOPqyOHPYuRYQ
https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/st...66982436065287
https://twitter.com/AVindman/status/1496954024914046978
https://twitter.com/IsItStillThe90s/...82478203940869

Ukrainians holding up surprisingly well.

[Poptart]

https://twitter.com/Sc0ttishKoala/st...-aOPqyOHPYuRYQ
https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/st...66982436065287
https://twitter.com/AVindman/status/1496954024914046978
https://twitter.com/IsItStillThe90s/...82478203940869

Ukrainians holding up surprisingly well.

Real or not, Ghost of Kyiv is a legend

(also TIL the meaning of “flying ace”)

[xerx]

I wonder whether NATO special forces have been secretly deployed to Ukraine.

[Adam Strange]

https://www.grid.news/story/misinfor...os-in-ukraine/

[xerx]

Some brave people:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...raine-invasion

Thousands join anti-war protests in Russia after Ukraine invasion

[Baqer]

Some brave people:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...raine-invasion

Considering how little support there is for this war domestically, internationally, and within their own army, I'd reckon that this won't be going on for very long. I do not think that there are realistic realities out there which would've put Russia at more of a disadvantage than now.

Feel like making a bet, assuming no invading of NATO countries and nuclear war, this'll be over before April. I hope.

[Rusal]

It seems Russia is on the verge of a swift takeover of Kiev. A well-planned action and quite possibly successful in the short term as its strategies in the upcoming years depend on it. Biden and local analysts where I live have hinted at it: Russia will most likely continue expansion and try to recreate the URSS (edit: or USSR if you prefer...) in some form as NATO would allow it.

It remains to be seen what form the invasion will take. A change of regime and departure from Kiev is a bit dangerous; Putin must've gone in really sure about the results he would get, the people he will install in power. That means once Ukr is humiliated (demilitarization) Putin will leave a puppet regime in his wake and they will deal harshly with dissenters.

Protracted occupation is another option as the region can be used as a base for further incursions into the continent and places like Moscow are far away, allowing the invader's spreading of misery without feeling any domestic heat to stop the aggression. It is a horrible thing to say, but the invader can keep this up indefinitely unless the invaded population gravely affects its assets and that means embassies blowing up, buses going up in the air in central Moscow.

In the end, it depends on the Ukrainian's sense of self love and memory and what they want. Will they go silently about their life as their college classmates, relatives are imprisoned and vanished for “anti-Russian” activities; will they plead lacrimously as they are killed while muscovites live in idiot land with no consequences?

[As that territory has regular antirussian hithlerists style propaganda since 2014 and is situated close to RF

Don't kid yourself. Glory is reserved for the 18-60 year old men who stayed in Kiev and other regions to resist. Even if reunification isn't a reality in the next 10 years, the heart-felt monuments will go to them. Your fallen ‘soldiers’ will be scurried back into Russia in the cheapest wooden box they can find and ignominy will cover their dead-ass sack of bones, long before serious revisionism even sets in.

[xerx]

Considering how little support there is for this war domestically, internationally, and within their own army, I'd reckon that this won't be going on for very long. I do not think that there are realistic realities out there which would've put Russia at more of a disadvantage than now.

Feel like making a bet, assuming no invading of NATO countries and nuclear war, this'll be over before April. I hope.

Well, wars, like any complicated maneuver, tend to be highly unpredictable. Sometimes this is even by design, because acting unpredictably is needed in order to gain the element of surprise. Nobody made exactly correct predictions about how this war has turned out so far, or the scale of the invasion, or whether there would be invasion at all (how do you even define "invasion" --- do missile strikes and border clashes count, or does Putin have to siege a few Ukrainian cities?). Because he keeps his cards close to his chest, many mutually contradictory assessments of Putin's motivations were about equally credible. Everyone got it a little bit right, a little bit wrong.

[xerx]

Considering how little support there is for this war domestically, internationally, and within their own army, I'd reckon that this won't be going on for very long. I do not think that there are realistic realities out there which would've put Russia at more of a disadvantage than now.

Feel like making a bet, assuming no invading of NATO countries and nuclear war, this'll be over before April. I hope.

I hope that you're right, though.

[leckysupport]

US thinks the Russians made a mistake and are taking advantaging of situation, American appears to be looking for a pretext to weaken the Russians and re-establish Western dominance, while risking the lives of millions in a far away country.

Ok, I was wrong, US involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen has clouded my perception. Western governments are terrified, and they're likely terrified for a good reason.

[Rusal]

Russian tank very deliberately targets and flattens civilian car (yes, with someone inside).

https://mobile.twitter.com/golub/sta...11332571107332

[xerx]

Kind of hoping that Putin somehow gets thrown out of office as a result of this, as a silver lining to this mess.

[Adam Strange]

Kind of hoping that Putin somehow gets thrown out of office as a result of this, as a silver lining to this mess.

Sure. That always happens with guys who are simultaneously in charge of the secret police, the army, the navy, the air force, the government, and the press.

[xerx]

Sure. That always happens with guys who are simultaneously in charge of the secret police, the army, the navy, the air force, the government, and the press.

Maybe not. But if his invasion is foiled, for how long would the police and army let him stay in charge?

[Adam Strange]

Maybe not. But if his invasion is foiled, for how long would the police and army let him stay in charge?

If Stalin is any example, indefinitely.

xerx, with all due respect, I don't think you understand how dictatorships work.

Or how power in society works, to be honest.

The only person or group that can displace another in any society is one which has more power or wealth than the person or group being replaced. The only exceptions to this are when someone is displaced by a foreign power, which is not really even an exception, because the foreign power is more powerful than the person being replaced.

Saddam was not voted out after he spectacularly lost the first Gulf War. Instead, he was overthrown by superior force and violence.

Leopold II was the absolute owner of the Bengian Congo and he killed 10 million people for personal profit because he had no restraints on his actions, but at home in Belgium, he was a constitutional monarch who built public works and supported women's rights, because he had people who were powerful enough to restrict his power.

Honestly, it's all about power.

[xerx]

The only person or group that can displace another in any society is one which has more power or wealth than the person or group being replaced. The only exceptions to this are when someone is displaced by a foreign power, which is not really even an exception, because the foreign power is more powerful than the person being replaced.

Adam, I'm not actually expecting him to be overthrown. It's just the kind of thing you say when hoping for a salutary outcome.

But it isn't an impossible scenario either. Russia is composed of different elites with different levels of power and wealth (including secessionist regional elites), some of which no doubt feel that they have a historical destiny to rule.

There are also many patriots inside the Russian bureaucracy who want to live in a corruption-free country, want Russia to comply with international norms, and resent the fact that it's led by a violent kleptocrat. And now that he's invaded a sovereign country and turned Russia into an international pariah, even his main selling point, of being a crafty mastermind, seems to have been overly charitable — even if the West was forcing his hand by expanding NATO (which I still believe, and which we should be ashamed of), there were still more rational and intelligent, let alone ethical, ways to counter that threat.

[ILoveChinchillas]

Russian tank very deliberately targets and flattens civilian car (yes, with someone inside).

https://mobile.twitter.com/golub/sta...11332571107332

A draft would be more popular if more people saw this.

[Poptart]

Former Pres. Poroshenko on the streets with a rifle, ready to defend Kyiv alongside the territorial defense battalion -

https://twitter.com/CNN/status/14971...9bQiRn6CaeYsaQ

[VewyScawwyNawcissist]

i have a very insightful take. putin and the rest of his sociopaths were born unable to be moral. putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kysputin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys putin kys tho

rip
https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane...wn_killing_14/

[Toro]

It is weird how Trump was a puppet of Putin who supposedly let him do whatever he liked, yet he chose now when Biden was president to invade Ukraine. Maybe Putin didn't know about Biden's plan to Build Back Better™ and is mistaken about the fact that we are weaker with him as our president.


U.S. Officials Repeatedly Urged China to Help Avert War in Ukraine


Americans presented Chinese officials with intelligence on Russia’s troop buildup in hopes that President Xi Jinping would step in, but were repeatedly rebuffed.

Each time, the Chinese officials, including the foreign minister and the ambassador to the United States, rebuffed the Americans, saying they did not think an invasion was in the works. After one diplomatic exchange in December, U.S. officials got intelligence showing Beijing had shared the information with Moscow, telling the Russians that the United States was trying to sow discord — and that China would not try to impede Russian plans and actions, the officials said.

[ILoveChinchillas]

rip
https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane...wn_killing_14/

"Savvy"...

[xerx]

* The Ukrainians have resisted better than expected; Russia has experienced setbacks. But Russia hasn't deployed its entire forces yet (only one third to one half of the amassed forces have been deployed).

* The United States is definitely helping Ukraine defend itself (this doesn't include ground forces or a 'no fly zone' for the moment).

[xerx]

Some strange Ukrainian shit-talking.

https://twitter.com/peedutuisk/statu...10882069581824

[Not A Communist Shill]

[Not A Communist Shill]

[xerx]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1497328665209757699

Russian invasion progress.

[ouronis]

Some strange Ukrainian shit-talking.

https://twitter.com/peedutuisk/statu...10882069581824

Beautiful

[xerx]

Russian sources claim that half of Kiev is under Russian control. The Ukrainians counter-claim that half of Kyiv is actually under Ukrainian control. Truth really is the first casualty in war.

[Sol]

USA-hithlerists occupation soldiers use terroristic tactics against people of own "nation". Practically they use them as hostages.
They place artillery close to living houses (hundreds may live in single such house). They do same even in Kiev. So RF has lesser wish to attack it (by rockets, shells) and may do not attack, to avoid death of many civil people and civil structures destruction. While to use infantry in towns leads to redundant death, so it's not good option and needs longer preparation.

[Not A Communist Shill]

[Santa Claus]

[Baqer]

Hungarian man with good takes' assessment of the situation, since I don't want to try to explain things now.

"Ukraine situation update - 22:30 CET


The offensive is slowly becoming a disaster show for the Russians.


According to local sources, Russian soldiers are knocking on locals' doors in villages in the Northeast, wanting to buy food, fuel and booze "for whatever money". There are reports of tankers going around with empty fuel canisters asking for fuel, also there is looting of local stores by Russian soldiers.
https://www.unian.ua/war/ne-diyshli-d...


Also in other places, things are looking increasingly grim for the Russians. As I've said before, they indended this to be a blitzkrieg, which obviously didn't happen. At the start of the offensive, their primary objectives were the following:


1. take out Ukrainian comms and break the chain of command via a series of preemptive missile strikes


2. break through the Donbass line of demarcation and press westward, link up with troops crossing the border north of the line


3. encircle Kharkiv and pacify the local defenses and/or force a quick surrender


4. break out of Crimea and press westward towards Odessa and eastward towards Mariupol, the latter group was to link up with the troops breaking through the demarcation line, encircle Mariupol and establish a land passage between Russia and Crimea


5. quickly take over the northern cities of Chernihiv and Sumy, then proceed towards Kyiv


6. take Hostomel airport next to Kyiv and use it to land elite paratroopers, then as a staging ground for the siege of Kyiv


7. link up approaching forces and encircle Kyiv, then force a surrender


These were the Russian plans, roughly speaking. Out of these 7 goals, ZERO were achieved.


1. Ukrainians got intel in time about the incoming missile strikes, and shuffled everything around. Consequently, Russian missile strikes only had limited effect, the Ukrainian chain of command and much of their hardware remained operational.


2. The Donbass demarcation line holds still, Russians couldn't break through anywhere. Moreover, the Russians breaking through above the line were PUSHED BACK by Ukrainians, who launched a counterattack, with Russian forces fleeing back towards Russia.


3. The Kharkiv encirclement failed, Russians got bogged down, that's where they suffered their first significant losses. Kharkiv is on Ukrainian hands even now.


4. While the southern breakout from Crimea was inutially successful, Russians were once again held up at Kherson and Melitopol, thus couldn't advance much or link up with any other groups. Consequently the Crimea land bridge project failed.


5. Russians got bogged down both around Sumy and Chernihiv. In the end they decided to bypass the two cities altogether, and move towards Kyiv instead.


6. Russians first took Hostomel airport with a huge helicopter deployment, which was considered reckless at best by military experts. Later Russian paratroopers were dropped in, who are considered their elite forces. Ukrainians managed to defeat them and kick them out of the airport, which is a huge loss of face for the Russian army.


7. Troops from the Northeast and Northwest are trying to link up for an assault on Kyiv while bypassing cities, but in the process are taking losses due to Ukrainian harassment. As of the writing of this, Russians are still not ready for encirclement, let alone siege. Currently the indiscriminate shelling of Kyiv is underway instead.


We can draw the following conclusions:


> Russians greviously underestimated the Ukrainian defense forces.


> The Russian army was given very unrealistic objectives they couldn't complete, suggesting strong political pressure instead of rational planning.


> Russian missile strikes and air forces are very poorly organized, therefore ineffective. With such overwhelming air superiority they should have already decimated Ukrainian defenses. This did not happen so far.


> Russian logistics are very poorly organized, as illustrated by the info in the beginning. Soldiers' morale is low, and lack essential supplies such as food or fuel.


> Putin is slowly realizing the extent of the problem. As a sign of this, he called on the Ukrainian Army to rise up against their government, and told Kyiv he's ready for negotiations. As a rule of thumb, you don't do this when your victory is certain.


> The more time passes, the more desperate Russians get, and the more brutish methods they'll resort to, such as the aforementioned indiscriminate bombing of cities. This in turn causes massive discontent both at home and among the troops. Even according to Russian propaganda, their troops are there to liberate Ukrainians from the "evil nazi junta", not to murder their Ukrainian brethren. This is where the myriad cross-border familial and cultural connections seriously backfire for Putin.

[xerx]

Both China and India abstained from voting on the American-drafted UNSC resolution to condemn Russia.............. interesting.

[Baqer]

Zelinsky looks SLE to me. He'll stay and fight. Putin will put him on display in a cage, because that's what LSIs do. Then, off to the Gulag and eventual death by poisoning.

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/...52921063194624

Balls of steel SLE