Ukraine war mega thread

[hallelujah]

Should "our" moron be allowed to continue this disinformation pattern he is on now? Perhaps restrict his posting ability in certain threads. Many a precedent for this. I believe Ant is still barred from certain forums..

If you were gonna go for Backspit for this, then you'd have to go for OhOh too. Arguably, given the amount the latter posts, he's even worse.

Disinformation is what they do. The lot of them.

[OhOh]

then you'd have to go for OhOh too

[aging one]

Fair enough Hal, I do agree with you.

[hallelujah]

Fair enough Hal, I do agree with you.

You make a perfectly valid point in your first post about Ant, who has seemingly been banned from various forums when the aforementioned two take absolute liberties with the stuff they post. We've spoken about the importance of maintaining freedom of speech on here, but it's no wonder Ant is pretty peeved when he sees the stunts they repeatedly pull with their spamming of the board.

[bsnub]

It is just that. Spam. I just exposed one of Skiddys lies last night when he posted a fake quote of Otto von Bismarck. Almost nothing he posts in these threads is true at all. He is a full on fake news cool aide sipper.

[hallelujah]

It is just that. Spam. I just exposed one of Skiddys lies last night when he posted a fake quote of Otto von Bismarck. Almost nothing he posts in these threads is true at all. He is a full on fake news cool aide sipper.

And he just moves on to his next one. Just the same as OhOh does. It's repeated spamming of the board with Twitter/Youtube nonsense and state propaganda.

Beyond the comedic value of their posts, I normally just scroll past. I suppose mods would say we can all do the same, but it doesn't exactly say much for consistency around these parts.

[bsnub]

I normally just scroll past.

As do I put, it is still annoying.

This is a video well worth watching. It shows that the Russians are indeed getting pushed back by the Ukrainians.

Excellent piece by Nick Paton Walsh (CNN) on the Ukrainian counterattack in the Mykolayiv area. It contains interviews with soldiers who survived the airstrike on the military barracks a few days ago. : UkraineWarVideoReport

[misskit]

The heads begin to roll in Russia

European media report that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the house arrest of two senior Federal Security Service (FSB) officers. Colonel-General Sergei Beseda, Chief of the FSB’s “Fifth Service,” reportedly was detained along with his deputy, Anatoly Bolyuk, charged with providing flawed intelligence about Ukraine and their improper use of operational funds. Separately, Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine’s national security council chief, claimed that several Russian generals have been fired. The implications portend more suffering yet to come, but likewise opportunities to increase pressure on the Russian leader from within.


Perhaps emulating Joseph Stalin, this could be the onset of a purge and Putin’s desperate ploy to provide his domestic audience with a fall guy for self-inflicted wounds. His call to rid Russia of “scum and traitors” as “a necessary self-purification of society” might be Putin’s theatrical unveiling of not merely a further crackdown against the Russian people, but also his version of a “cultural revolution” to bring further to heel those around him on whom he has counted to take and maintain power. If I were one of the oligarchs or “siloviki,” those from Russia’s intelligence services who profiteered on Putin’s kleptocracy, I’d be more than just a little worried.


Putin’s rhetoric is victimization, villains and heroes. He casts himself as the people’s champion. Putin chose the FSB, a machine organized and conditioned to execute his autocratic vision and tell him what he wants to hear — whether or not it conforms with reality.

Putin has relied on the FSB as his principal source of power and protection, not merely at home, but also across the former Soviet states over which he is determined to restore Russia’s dominion. His reorganization of the FSB from the KGB’s ashes should have told us precisely the direction he planned to take.

Putin’s outlook was made clear to me during my first meeting as the CIA’s chief of station in a former Soviet state with the local FSB chief, the “Rezident,” a general known for crushing the anti-Russian rebellion in Chechnya. He looked the part of a film noir Cold War villain, comically uncomfortable in the posh local restaurant. FSB protocol required that he bring another officer; Moscow prohibited its officers from meeting alone with the CIA.


Our contact was an education for me, a Russian-speaking CIA operations officer who had worked the target beyond Russia’s borders. The FSB chief wanted to let me know whose turf this was and how the game was played in his house. While we toasted collaboration to fight the evils of terrorism, he depicted the local officials as “members of his team” and the territory as an extension of “greater Russia.”


Although the CIA’s natural official counterpart is Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, it was the Kremlin’s internal security agency, the FSB, that ran the show across the former Soviet states. Putin, while FSB director in the 1990s, structured it as such, providing what had been the KGB’s former counterintelligence directorate with a disproportionately larger share of its parent organization’s power and influence. The KGB’s Foreign Intelligence directorate would become the less muscular SVR.


The “Fifth Service, or Operational Information Department, was established as a new FSB branch to collect intelligence on the former Soviet states and conduct “active measures” to assure they continued to gravitate around Moscow’s orbit. That meant everything from propping up pro-Kremlin regimes to neutralizing threats from those aiming to move their countries closer to the West.

From 1999 to 2009, the Fifth Service grew and took charge of Russia’s brutal war in Chechnya, where the FSB, not the army, called the shots. It was the Moscow apartment building bombings in September 1999, which killed 300 and wounded over 1,000, that then-Prime Minister Putin used to justify that war, claiming the attacks were undertaken by Chechen militants. The bombings, as it turned out, allegedly were the FSB’s handiwork under Putin’s direction.

Putin does not trust the army, a sentiment likely validated by its poor performance and his natural KGB-era disposition. The KGB spied on Russia’s armed forces, to purge them of “reactionary” elements, often the country’s best and most faithful officers. Putin’s FSB is modeled after Stalin’s chekists, the secret police, his most trusted means to reconstitute a Soviet-era structure that keeps the public’s civil liberties and those possessing any power within his tent well in check.


My FSB counterpart preached the need to target families who offered leverage against “hooligans,” as he referred to Russia’s enemies. “Better to preempt them early,” he said, ridiculing America’s “surgical” approach. He argued that such enemies were “cockroaches” whose nests had to be destroyed. The “pests” turned out to be his own people. The general was ethnically Chechen.


Whatever value Putin might believe exists in casting aside his most important supporters has no upside for him — but possibly does for us. Colonel-General Beseda, the reportedly detained Fifth Service chief, had been in his job for years and was the driver behind Putin’s strategy. He literally knows where the bodies are buried. That Beseda’s reporting and counsel likely was spun to align with Putin’s own warped view of the world and misguided expectations for the invasion of Ukraine is a product of the Russian leader’s own making. In such a system, who’s going to tell Putin anything different? But having done Putin’s dirty work and placated his demand for absolute obedience, only to be thrown to the wolves, Beseda’s removal will reverberate throughout the Kremlin, even if Putin leaves in place his FSB boss, Gen. Alexander Bortnikov.


Unlike Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and SVR Director Sergey Narayshkin, Bortnikov might enjoy greater protection as a career officer, rather than a professional politician. Bortnikov’s elimination could pose too great a risk, given his network and command over the safety net on whose survival Putin depends.

The heads begin to roll in Russia | TheHill

[misskit]

The Russia I know is being erased. What’s coming next is darker

When the first McDonald’s restaurant appeared in the Soviet Union in 1990, my parents bundled my 9-month-old sister up and waited in line for hours in the brisk Russian winter so that they could get their first taste of a Big Mac and those famed French fries. The line snaked all around Moscow’s iconic Pushkin Square: Reports say that 30,000 people showed up on opening day alone.


It was a very exciting moment, my parents tell me: the first taste of liberty, a glimpse of what eating out could be like beyond the Iron Curtain, a symbol of bigger change to come.

Less than two years later, the USSR ceased to exist, opening the door to all kinds of democratic freedoms. The Russia I grew up in came with dubbed Disney cartoons and Argentine soap operas. Everyone suddenly had a crush on Leonardo DiCaprio. My mom’s new eye-shadow palette encompassed every shade of neon. I went to concerts, bought posters and cassette tapes and, unlike my parents, did not have to wear a five-pointed-star badge with a portrait of Vladimir Lenin on my chest every day at school.


Of course, there was an insidious side. With new freedoms came new challenges: a deep economic crisis and a sharp rise in inequality, an explosion of organized crime. After decades in which the state dictated nearly every decision for its subjects, from housing to place of work to taste in movies and music, the new era also brought with it uncertainty and chaos.

Still, I felt lucky to grow up in a vibrant, thriving society; I certainly didn’t want to go back to Soviet times. The stories my family told me were bleak.


They spoke about prohibited literature (anything perceived to go against Soviet values or written by émigré writers who had fled Soviet Russia), the difficulties of travel (impossible without the party committee’s blessings), the incessant shortages of food and consumer goods. I’m too young to remember, but my parents would line up for hours for the rare furniture supply that appeared at shops every few months. In 1990, when consumer items were still only sporadically available, my mom bought us a pair of tights sized for every age up to 16 because she assumed they would no longer be in supply as we grew older. Films were censored, foreign radio stations jammed.


I was fascinated by these stories but also relieved I never had to experience them. I was eager to unearth the trivial elements of Soviet people’s day-to-day existence, the ones that did not make it into the history books: a long-forgotten home music video, an awkward wedding photo, a leaflet, a questionable fashion choice. I started collecting remnants of the Soviet era, rummaging through old VHS tapes, friends’ photo albums, magazine cutouts and obscure flea markets to gather visual artifacts from a country that was no more.


In 2016, while living in Singapore, I created a Twitter account, @sovietvisuals, to share my makeshift Soviet archive with the world. Others started contributing their own photographs, videos and personal stories, and the project became a repository for our shared past. It also provided an opportunity to reflect critically on the social and cultural norms of the time while acknowledging the brutalities of the U.S.S.R.’s ideological constructs and oppressive practices. I never imagined how prescient it would be.


Vladimir Putin’s cynically named “special military operation” on Ukraine has thrust my country into pariah status — rightly, given the atrocities, human rights violations and brazen disregard for sovereignty that he has unleashed on Ukraine. Impossibly, in the past few weeks it’s felt as if we’d been yanked back to the Soviet era, except this time it’s even more horrifying, more repressive than we could have imagined. Russia is not just losing the comforts that Western capitalism offered, owing to severe sanctions, but Mr. Putin is also doubling down on closing off any expression of dissent.


For Ukrainians, the war has meant hell on earth. Countless lives shattered. I watch in horror as my friends there hide out in bomb shelters. Schools, hospitals, residential buildings destroyed by bombs, innocent people reportedly shot dead in the street as they attempt to escape to safety. It is immeasurably cruel, unfair and devastating.


For Russians, there is the fear and disgust at watching Mr. Putin’s ruthless campaign, which will inevitably raise the civilian death toll. There’s also the feeling of helplessness of not having been able to stop it and the shame of being from the country of the aggressor.


And unsurprisingly, Russia has been catapulted into a dark hole. Many foreign companies — clothing and credit card brands, car manufacturers and tech corporations, fast food and retail chains — have suspended operations, affecting every corner of the economy. The West’s sanctions have mostly cut Russian civilians off from the global economy.


Meanwhile, Mr. Putin has ensured that Russians who express opposition to the invasion face persecution: A new law punishes anyone spreading anything it deems “false information” about the war with up to 15 years in prison. This crackdown on freedom is not new to Russians, but it has reached a peak of absurdity: Standing in the street with a flower or a blank sign now gets you loaded into a police van.


Between arrests for speaking out, censorship, rumors of martial law and relentless propaganda, it’s as though we had landed straight in the Stalin era.


The Russia I knew has been erased. What’s coming next is dark. The U.S.S.R. gives us some clues of what it might be like — but even then, there were some flickers of hope.


As my parents’ stories and my archive show, many Soviet citizens found ways to thrive in what was essentially a giant social experiment. Yes, they had to deal with bread lines, news (and propaganda) supplied by the state-controlled, Orwellian-named Pravda (Truth) newspaper and a persistent fear of nuclear war. But they continued to create art, make scientific discoveries and build families and architectural masterpieces. There was a great deal of humor, beauty and creativity behind the Iron Curtain.


When l learned that McDonald’s had joined the long list of international companies suspending operations in Russia, I couldn’t help but think about my family’s first visit to the burger joint. Could any of the people lining up for their first cheeseburger in 1990 have imagined that modern Russia would find itself sliding all the way back to where it started?


We will remake Russia, of course, slowly and patiently, just like the generation before us. But not before this one crumbles first.

The Russia I know is being erased. What’s coming next is darker, Opinions & Blogs News | wionews.com

[misskit]

10,000 Soldiers Killed In Ukraine, Says Pro-Russia Paper, Then Backtracks

Ukraine war: The Russian casualty figures were carried by Komsomolskaya Pravda, which quoted officials from the Russian Defence Ministry.


Russia has lost nearly 10,000 soldiers in the Ukraine war, the website of a pro-Kremlin tabloid claimed in a report. The figure was quickly removed by the publication in a damage control move, but not before its screenshots started circulating on the internet.


The pro-government website, Komsomolskaya Pravda, published a story on Sunday which quoted officials from the Russian Defence Ministry disputing the casualty numbers reported by Ukrainian counterparts.


While Ukrainian officials claimed more than 15,000 Russian soldiers have lost their lives in the war, the Russian side said that 9,861 soldiers had died in Ukraine, with 16,153 injured, according to the tabloid.

According to The Daily Mail, it was believed to be the work of a pro-Ukrainian employee. Russia officially acknowledged 498 deaths on March 2.


The article, though removed by the publication, has been archived and that version talks about the casualty figures revealed by Russian military officials.


A newer version of the article on Pravda does not carry any figure. It carries a positive account of Russia's progress stating that "two tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles, six field artillery pieces and mortars, as well as about 60 militants of a Ukrainian nationalist formation were destroyed."


Russia's invasion of Ukraine will soon reach the one-month mark and till now, Moscow has not been able to capture Ukraine's capital Kyiv. The assault, however, has been heavy with tanks and missiles destroying many Ukrainian cities.

Ukraine war: 10,000 Soldiers Killed In Ukraine, Says Pro-Russia Paper, Then Backtracks

[Switch]

^Its an interesting perspective Miss Kit. I have no doubt that some of it rings true. It’s quite appalling in this day and age when he can get away with such political manouvering. Yes, Backspin, this kind of thing has been happening in Russia for many years now. You have been hoodwinked by lazy propaganda. Happens to frustrated teenagers everywhere.

Putin should be in an Ill fitting jump suit, shackled to armed guards at a war crimes hearing, but he still believes he can get away with crap like this.
Hes getting desperate now, and it won’t be long before he takes it too far, and Putin ends up in an asylum, complete with strait jacket.
The Ukraine leader is no saint, but Putin will make him a martyr, and suffer for it.

[Ravers98]

The Russia I know is being erased. What’s coming next is darker

Thank you Miss Kit. Very good post

[sabang]

US Signals It’s Discouraging Zelensky from Making Concessions to Russia That Could End the Fighting


The State Department says the war is 'bigger' than Russia and Ukraine and is about universal 'principles'by Dave DeCamp Posted onMarch 21, 2022

On Monday, the State Department signaled that the US is discouraging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from making concessions to Russia in negotiations that are aimed at ending the fighting in Ukraine.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said Zelensky has “made it very clear that he is open to a diplomatic solution that does not compromise the core principles at the heart of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.”

When asked to elaborate on his point, Price said that the war is “bigger” than Russia and Ukraine. “The key point is that there are principles that are at stake here that have universal applicability everywhere,” he said.

Price said Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to violate “core principles,” including “the principle that each and every country has a sovereign right to determine its own foreign policy, has a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships, and what orientation it wishes to direct its gaze.”

Putin has made clear that one of his main motivations for the invasion is Ukraine’s alignment with NATO. Leading up to the invasion, he asked the US for a guarantee that Ukraine won’t ever join the military alliance, but the US refused to make the promise even though President Biden publicly admitted Kyiv wouldn’t be granted a membership anytime soon.

Even Zelensky has said that he was told Ukraine wouldn’t be a NATO member. “I requested them personally to say directly that we are going to accept you into NATO in a year or two or five, just say it directly and clearly, or just say no,” he said in an interview with CNN on Sunday. “And the response was very clear, you’re not going to be a NATO member, but publicly, the doors will remain open.”

Instead of pushing Zelensky to declare neutrality, the US continues to arm Ukraine. When asked if the US is counseling Zelensky on the negotiations with Russia, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that the US is in touch with Ukrainian officials every day. But she said the role the US can play the most “effectively” in the process is to send more weapons into the warzone.

“The role that we feel we can play most effectively is by continuing to provide a broad range of security assistance, military assistance to them as well as economic and humanitarian assistance to strengthen their hand in these negotiations,” Psaki told reporters. Last week, President Biden announced a new $800 billion weapons package for Ukraine, which includes shoulder-fired anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles and armed drones.

The US is also leading a Western sanctions campaign against Russia that Psaki and Price said helps Ukraine’s leverage in the talks with Russia. Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Russia stopping its invasion wouldn’t be enough for the sanctions to be lifted. He told NPR that it would take an “irreversible” Russian troop withdrawal for Moscow to receive sanctions relief.

Ukrainian and Russian officials have been holding intense negotiations via video link, which continued on Monday. Zelensky and other officials have made it clear that they are willing to discuss neutrality, although they do want security guarantees from the West.

When it comes to Russia’s other demands, the Ukrainians are more stubborn. Russia wants Ukraine to recognize Crimea as Russian and recognize the independence of the Donbas republics. An aide to Zelensky told Politico on Monday that a deal on neutrality would be “easy,” but any talk of Ukraine giving up territory is “not going to go anywhere.”

https://news.antiwar.com/2022/03/21/...-the-fighting/

[thailazer]

The big question: Will one or more of these dudes decide it is time to put Putin to pasture.

[NamPikToot]

Should "our" moron be allowed to continue this disinformation pattern he is on now? Perhaps restrict his posting ability in certain threads. Many a precedent for this. I believe Ant is still barred from certain forums..

If you were gonna go for Backspit for this, then you'd have to go for OhOh too. Arguably, given the amount the latter posts, he's even worse.

Disinformation is what they do. The lot of them.

You make a perfectly valid point in your first post about Ant, who has seemingly been banned from various forums when the aforementioned two take absolute liberties with the stuff they post. We've spoken about the importance of maintaining freedom of speech on here, but it's no wonder Ant is pretty peeved when he sees the stunts they repeatedly pull with their spamming of the board.

Is this a Mods meeting?

[sabang]

^^ The one on the left is Sergei Soigu, the Minister of Defence and a long term Putin loyalist. I think they'd have to get past him first.

Sergei Shoigu - Vladimir Putin's likely successor (msn.com)

[helge]

Uninformed because I saw this war coming for months, while others on here who claim to be "intellectual" railed like lunatics for months that I was wrong and the west was lying.

Ya sure, just go with that.

Yeah; you'll go with that.

Took most of the world by surprise, that it was a "full on" invasion, but Bsnub knew ?

Why didn't you warn Zelensky; he didn't know.


This has nothing to do with being "intellectual"; but you do come across as a child, who's trying to adorn himself with borrowed feathers:

"Hitler only fought conventional wars".


Go ahead and tell people in Ukraine about your......theory.


You oughta tone it down, son

[pickel]

Larpers please stay home. What you've heard about the Russian military just isn't true.

We know he went there. It's not confirmed if he's dead yet.

Elite Canadian sniper joins Ukraine in fight against Russia

More of socals shit debunked. Stop relying on internet memes for your info dumdum.

A former Canadian Armed Forces sniper now fighting Russian forces in Ukraine says he was the last to learn of his own death.
The former CAF member — who goes by the nom de guerre Wali — told CBC News he returned to a safe location in Ukraine Monday after a week spent battling Russian forces on the front lines in the Kyiv region. When he turned on his phone, he discovered hundreds of urgent messages from people convinced he'd been killed in action.

'''I'''m alive''': Former Canadian Forces sniper debunks rumours of his death in Ukraine | CBC News

[thailazer]

^^ The one on the left is Sergei Soigu, the Minister of Defence and a long term Putin loyalist. I think they'd have to get past him first.

Sergei Shoigu - Vladimir Putin's likely successor (msn.com)

Who is the guy third from the left? He sure looks like a crusty old-world Russian.

[Backspin]

Ukraine war podcast if anyone's interested

Sputnik - Ukraine President Bans Opposition Political Parties; Assad Visits UAE

[panama hat]

More of socals shit debunked. Stop relying on internet memes for your info dumdum.

Just more and more lies - it's now clear why Ant has been banned from news . . .

if anyone's interested

No, fuck off.

The Russia I know is being erased. What’s coming next is darker

How does anyone know what's coming next and that it is 'darker'. Russia will become ore liberal after this, when Putin is gone . . . but what many here don't realise is that many Russians have a third-world mentality, a morose and paranoid outlook on life.

[Backspin]

More of socals shit debunked. Stop relying on internet memes for your info dumdum.

A former Canadian Armed Forces sniper now fighting Russian forces in Ukraine says he was the last to learn of his own death.
The former CAF member — who goes by the nom de guerre Wali — told CBC News he returned to a safe location in Ukraine Monday after a week spent battling Russian forces on the front lines in the Kyiv region. When he turned on his phone, he discovered hundreds of urgent messages from people convinced he'd been killed in action.

'''I'''m alive''': Former Canadian Forces sniper debunks rumours of his death in Ukraine | CBC News

I specifically said it was unknown if he was dead. He's probably not even in Ukraine and the whole thing is a propaganda exercise

[Troy]

^ ...and yet you still don't consider your sources and think before you post.

You're just a sad little troll.

[Backspin]

Jesus christ. Rumors are, Poland wants to jump in. Biden is traveling there.

[HermantheGerman]

Not at all. You don't really think the Russians are threatened by the Ukrainians? The Russians are threatened by those the Ukrainians want to bring behind them.
Whom the cartoon artist conveniently left out.

And at the end Russia still has more nuclear weapons then NATO (U.S., France, U.K.) combined and has threatened to use them.
Did I leave anything out? Better yet, do you know how to count