Ukraine war mega thread

[sabang]

You'd better fill in your Pentagon then, who came out and said the Russian missile attacks are mainly targeting military infrastructure. Are they scumbags now too?

[bsnub]

You'd better fill in your Pentagon then, who came out and said the Russian missile attacks are mainly targeting military infrastructure.

Do you have a link there, dippy? You do have a lack of credibility on this forum.

[Buckaroo Banzai]

FFS Bucky, more apologist shyte.

In the absence of contradicting evidence, why don't we play the "Apologist" card?
In the first paragraph he says that both sides lie,
Then he says: "Faced with Putin’s outright lies and disinformation, what would you do if you were Zelensky? "
Who is the Apologist here? wasn't the above statement an apology for Zelensky?
The truth of the mater is that the west was warned by credible sources, (please google Burns)
William J. Burns (diplomat) - Wikipedia
"Ukraine war follows decades of warnings that NATO expansion into Eastern Europe could provoke Russia "
"The opposing view argues that Russia’s security concerns are in fact genuine, and that NATO expansion eastward is seen by Russians as directed against their country. Putin has been clear for many years that if continued, the expansion would likely be met with serious resistance by the Russians, even with military action.

That perspective isn’t held just by Russians; some influential American foreign policy experts have subscribed to it as well.


Among others, Biden’s CIA director, William J. Burns, has been warning about the provocative effect of NATO expansion on Russia since 1995. That’s when Burns, then a political officer in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, reported to Washington that “hostility to early NATO expansion is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here. "
Ukraine war follows decades of warnings that NATO expansion into Eastern Europe could provoke Russia

So am I an "apologist" ?do you have contradicting evidence that Russia was not provoked?

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Re:^^^
"In his memoir, Duty, Robert M Gates, who served as secretary of defense in the administrations of both George W Bush and Barack Obama, stated his belief that “the relationship with Russia had been badly mismanaged after [George HW] Bush left office in 1993”. Among other missteps, “US agreements with the Romanian and Bulgarian governments to rotate troops through bases in those countries was a needless provocation.” In an implicit rebuke to the younger Bush, Gates asserted that “trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into Nato was truly overreaching”. That move, he contended, was a case of “recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests”."

"Moscow’s patience with Nato’s ever more intrusive behavior was wearing thin. The last reasonably friendly warning from Russia that the alliance needed to back off came in March 2007, when Putin addressed the annual Munich security conference. “Nato has put its frontline forces on our borders,” Putin complained. Nato expansion “represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? "

" History will show that Washington’s treatment of Russia in the decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy blunder of epic proportions. It was entirely predictable that Nato expansion would ultimately lead to a tragic, perhaps violent, breach of relations with Moscow. Perceptive analysts warned of the likely consequences, but those warnings went unheeded. "

Many predicted Nato expansion would lead to war. Those warnings were ignored | Ted Galen Carpenter | The Guardian

[sabang]

It would seem to me a pragmatic outcome for those parts of eastern Ukraine that clearly do not wish to be part of post Maidan Ukraine to be allowed to secede cujo. This specifically means the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, and there is no problem (to me) if they are required to hold a Referendum. Ukraine not to join Nato- but that is already confirmed by Zelensky. Also, not to be weaponized- defence forces fine, but not a nuclear or biological weapons base for foreign powers.

Enough for big bad vlad? I seriously do not know. Waiting to see. He may want Odessa province too- but I would say 'let the People decide'.

[Reggie]

In the west there seems to be a view of "lets use a proxy war with Russia to justify the massive inflation, unsustainable debt, mass unemployment, and all kind of shortages". Mean while the rest of the world understands that Russia is not trying to occupy Ukraine, they are forcing Ukraine to kick the Nato fools out along with their Nazi breatharian. Coke boy has already agreed that there will be referendums in the dombass and luhansk regions, the same as was in Crimea, and if they chose to leave Ukraine, from the country criminalising their native language of Russian, then that is fine. So the solution is to turn the fecking TV off and stop beleiving the spin. If you want to fight against illegal occupation, then put your Free Palestine t shirt one and get protesting.

[Backspin]

According to Western media and NATO, Russia has lost 15,000 men. That would mean Russia lost the same amount of men since February 24 th as the USSR lost in 10 years in the Soviet Afghan war.

Soviet–Afghan War - Wikipedia

[pickel]

According to Western media and NATO, Russia has lost 15,000 men. That would mean Russia lost the same amount of men since February 24 th as the USSR lost in 10 years in the Soviet Afghan war.

Soviet–Afghan War - Wikipedia

Official Russian numbers are 1,351 KIA. That's about 10% of Afghan war losses in just one month. And you know those numbers are bullshit.

[misskit]

Kremlin TV Descends Into Screaming Match Over Putin’s War Failures

As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its second month, the grim picture of destruction and suffering is breaking through on state-controlled television. Before the invasion, military experts predicted a rapid takeover of Russia’s peaceful neighbor in a matter of minutes. Now that the reality is starting to set in, they’re grimly surmising that it will take several decades to subdue freedom-loving Ukraine.


State TV’s talking heads have tried in vain to paint a rosy picture of the Kremlin’s invasion, but the cracks are starting to show. On Thursday, with screens depicting dramatic images of demolished Mariupol flashing behind them, hosts of the state television show 60 Minutes, Olga Skabeeva and Evgeny Popov, tried to point out the “positives.” They noted that Russia promised to pay compensation to some Ukrainians from the “affected” territories—10,000 rubles each, amounting to a mere $100 dollars.

To make matters worse, Ukrainians forcefully deported to Russia might end up in places like the Russian island of Sakhalin in the Pacific, with freezing cold temperatures and stark landscapes. After discussing news reports about ongoing relocations, Evgeny Popov helpfully pointed out: “But in Sakhalin, the salaries are the highest in the country!”


The chorus of concerned voices in Russian state media blamed their country’s information war failures on the fact that the Kremlin’s propaganda channels have been banished in Ukraine. State TV pundit Nikolai Starikov proposed: “When we talk about the organizers of the info-war, I’m convinced that their place is on the same bench where Nazi criminals will be tried.” The hosts, who for years agitated for war against Ukraine under false pretenses, nervously looked on without commenting.


State Duma Deputy Gen. Vladimir Shamanov—who is the former commander of the Russian Airborne Troops—accused the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky of being a “war criminal” for not surrendering to Russia. Shamanov argued: “He has the right to say, “Stop this war,” lay down the arms and save all the people.” This bizarre upside-down narrative is meant to hide the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin, seen by the civilized world as a war criminal, is solely responsible for starting and continuing his unprovoked invasion of a neighboring country.

MORE https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia...ine?ref=scroll

[sabang]

The Washington Post has a new article out bemoaning the fact that Russian military commanders are declining calls from the Pentagon to discuss their operations in Ukraine (I dunno guys, might have something to do with the fact that the US is sharing extensive military intelligence on exactly those operations directly with the Ukrainian government). Tucked all the way down in the eighteenth paragraph of the article, we find a much more interesting revelation: that Washington’s top diplomat has made no attempt to contact his counterpart in Moscow since the war began on the 24th of February.

“Secretary of State Antony Blinken has not attempted any conversations with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, since the start of the conflict, according to U.S. officials,” The Washington Post reports.

So the US government is continuing its policy of refusing to attempt any high-level diplomatic resolutions to this war despite its public hand-wringing about the horrific violence that’s being inflicted upon the people of Ukraine. This revelation fits nicely with a recent report by Bloomberg’s Niall Ferguson that sources in the US and UK governments have told him the real goal of western powers in this conflict is not to negotiate peace or end the war quickly, but to prolong it in order “bleed Putin” and achieve regime change in Moscow.

Building on an earlier report from The New York Times that the Biden administration “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire,” Ferguson writes that he has reached the conclusion that “the U.S. intends to keep this war going,” and says he has other sources to corroborate this:

“The only end game now,” a senior administration official was heard to say at a private event earlier this month, “is the end of Putin regime. Until then, all the time Putin stays, [Russia] will be a pariah state that will never be welcomed back into the community of nations. China has made a huge error in thinking Putin will get away with it. Seeing Russia get cut off will not look like a good vector and they’ll have to re-evaluate the Sino-Russia axis. All this is to say that democracy and the West may well look back on this as a pivotal strengthening moment.”

I gather that senior British figures are talking in similar terms. There is a belief that “the U.K.’s №1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” Again and again, I hear such language. It helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire. It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.

Earlier this month when The Intercept’s Ryan Grim was able to get a word in edgewise at a White House press briefing amid the throngs of mass media reporters demanding to know why Biden still hasn’t started World War 3, Press Secretary Jen Psaki gave a very revealing answer.

“So, aside from the request for weapons, President Zelensky has also requested that the US be more involved in negotiations toward a peaceful resolution to the war. What is the U.S. doing to push those negotiations forward?” asked Grim.

“Well, one of the steps we’ve taken — a significant one — is to be the largest provider of military and humanitarian and economic assistance in the world, to put them in a greater position of strength as they go into these negotiations,” Psaki answered, completely dodging the question of whether the US was actually doing anything to help negotiate peace.

As we’ve discussed previously, the US government has a well-documented history of working to draw Moscow into costly military quagmires with the goal of preoccupying its military forces and draining its coffers. Former US officials are on record publicly boasting about having done so in both Afghanistan and Syria. This is an agenda geared toward sapping the Russian government, manufacturing international consent for unprecedented acts of economic warfare designed (though perhaps ineptly) to crush the Russian economy, to foment discord and rebellion, and ultimately to effect regime change in Moscow.

The US empire doesn’t care about Ukrainian lives, and it’s insulting that its operatives continually pretend to. The empire will happily feed every man, woman and child in the entire nation into the mouth of this war if it means unseating a disobedient leader from a nuclear-armed seat of power which has become unacceptably cozy with Beijing and intolerably comfortable with intervening against US imperial agendas. And all the Ukrainian-flag-waving propagandized westerners with their #StandWithUkraine Instagram activism and blue and yellow profile pics will cheer for it every step of the way.

I hope this brutal proxy war ends and peace comes to Ukraine very quickly. But from what we’re seeing today there appears to be an immense globe-spanning power structure holding its foot against the door of the only exit from this horror.

https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/mo...r-daff615f5ece


Lets fight to the very last Ukrainian and show our solidarity on Twitter!

[bsnub]

In the west there seems to be a view of "lets use a proxy war with Russia to justify the massive inflation, unsustainable debt, mass unemployment, and all kind of shortages". Mean while the rest of the world understands that Russia is not trying to occupy Ukraine, they are forcing Ukraine to kick the Nato fools out along with their Nazi breatharian. Coke boy has already agreed that there will be referendums in the dombass and luhansk regions, the same as was in Crimea, and if they chose to leave Ukraine, from the country criminalising their native language of Russian, then that is fine. So the solution is to turn the fecking TV off and stop beleiving the spin. If you want to fight against illegal occupation, then put your Free Palestine t shirt one and get protesting.

Why must TD be a magnet for the most idiotic dim bulbs? This clown is mentally deficient.

State Duma Deputy Gen. Vladimir Shamanov—who is the former commander of the Russian Airborne Troops—accused the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky of being a “war criminal” for not surrendering to Russia. Shamanov argued: “He has the right to say, “Stop this war,” lay down the arms and save all the people.” T

Madness.

More Evidence That The US Is Trying To Prolong This War

The US is trying to help Ukraine win the war. Anything else is capitulation. Once again, you are posting up shit tinfoil blogs run by morons.

[sabang]

help Ukraine win the war

How sweet, but all you are really doing is prolonging it's suffering. I'm sure your feelings are from the heart, but I can assure you the motivations of your opinion masters are entirely more callous, and less humane. The Ukrainian people are being used as pawns in your countries 'Great Game'. Frankly, I don't see anyone being the victor- except China. Having no real skin in the game, the USA will probably come out second best (but with weakened hegemony). Everyone else is an outright loser.

[panama hat]

More Evidence That The US Is Trying To Prolong This War

Except that it isn't evidence . . . it's pandering to weak-minded lemmings like you, Backspit and Ohwoe

[Buckaroo Banzai]

It seems that those on either side of this debate have staked out a position and will say anything to defend it. They are all frantically searching for articles that will confirm their bias. All shouting epithets at each other,
while disregarding anything that contradicts their position.
What if there is a third position? and that both sides are wrong? What if war is terrible and by definition atrocities are committed. Does anyone know of a polite war? And what if there are agent provocateurs that stand to gain by a conflict fanning the flames of war?
If what I say is true, are we going to sit here and argue who is worst? or are we going to hold all those responsible accountable and be an agent for resolution rather than escalation?
Will rational thinking prevail ?

You got to be kidding, when has it ever? why would it start now?

[sabang]

both sides are wrong?

I have certainly said that enough times. But you will find the 'Group Think' here is that Putin is entirely wrong and 100% to blame- but the Zelensky regime and US/ Nato foreign policy are as pure as the driven snow. But that's TD for ya. It is quite a fascinating clinic in group psychology really, then again so was the McCarthy era.

[sabang]

I would be quite happy for both sides to claim they won, and throw a ticker tape parade. But of course, neither side actually will.

[harrybarracuda]

More Evidence That The US Is Trying To Prolong This War

Unfortunately dreary blogs by attention seeking harpies do not constitute "evidence".

[Switch]

Your first paragraph is very true IMO.
But the second paragraph can be turned around . The question can also be asked, what would you do if you were Putin.
It takes two to Tango.

Putin’s obvious desire for a return to the old Soviet days is clearly an anachronism.
His people deserve much better. The choice for Putin is a fair trial or a bullet. Those choices are determined by his obvious paranoia, and backward looking prospects. Russia is not allowed the option of a democratic leadership choice, so he gets what’s coming due to his intransigence and unrealistic desires.

Someone or something has to drag the country into this century. In the past, they have always had to resort to revolution!

[harrybarracuda]

How sweet, but all you are really doing is prolonging it's suffering. I'm sure your feelings are from the heart, but I can assure you the motivations of your opinion masters are entirely more callous, and less humane. The Ukrainian people are being used as pawns in your countries 'Great Game'. Frankly, I don't see anyone being the victor- except China. Having no real skin in the game, the USA will probably come out second best (but with weakened hegemony). Everyone else is an outright loser.

So it's the Ukrainian people who are "pawns" rather than the Russians who live under the rule of a murderous dictator, and who are told to think this is a "special military operation" to defeat "Nazis" rather than a full on invasion of a sovereign country with the intention of stealing yet more territory.

Duh

[harrybarracuda]

It seems that those on either side of this debate have staked out a position and will say anything to defend it. They are all frantically searching for articles that will confirm their bias. All shouting epithets at each other,
while disregarding anything that contradicts their position.
What if there is a third position? and that both sides are wrong? What if war is terrible and by definition atrocities are committed. Does anyone know of a polite war? And what if there are agent provocateurs that stand to gain by a conflict fanning the flames of war?
If what I say is true, are we going to sit here and argue who is worst? or are we going to hold all those responsible accountable and be an agent for resolution rather than escalation?
Will rational thinking prevail ?

You got to be kidding, when has it ever? why would it start now?

This isn't a war, it's an invasion.

There aren't "both sides" in this.

There is a country doing the invading, and a country being invaded.

The country doing the invading needs to be punished.

[Switch]

The Washington Post has a new article out bemoaning the fact that Russian military commanders are declining calls from the Pentagon to discuss their operations in Ukraine (I dunno guys, might have something to do with the fact that the US is sharing extensive military intelligence on exactly those operations directly with the Ukrainian government). Tucked all the way down in the eighteenth paragraph of the article, we find a much more interesting revelation: that Washington’s top diplomat has made no attempt to contact his counterpart in Moscow since the war began on the 24th of February.

“Secretary of State Antony Blinken has not attempted any conversations with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, since the start of the conflict, according to U.S. officials,” The Washington Post reports.

So the US government is continuing its policy of refusing to attempt any high-level diplomatic resolutions to this war despite its public hand-wringing about the horrific violence that’s being inflicted upon the people of Ukraine. This revelation fits nicely with a recent report by Bloomberg’s Niall Ferguson that sources in the US and UK governments have told him the real goal of western powers in this conflict is not to negotiate peace or end the war quickly, but to prolong it in order “bleed Putin” and achieve regime change in Moscow.

Building on an earlier report from The New York Times that the Biden administration “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire,” Ferguson writes that he has reached the conclusion that “the U.S. intends to keep this war going,” and says he has other sources to corroborate this:

“The only end game now,” a senior administration official was heard to say at a private event earlier this month, “is the end of Putin regime. Until then, all the time Putin stays, [Russia] will be a pariah state that will never be welcomed back into the community of nations. China has made a huge error in thinking Putin will get away with it. Seeing Russia get cut off will not look like a good vector and they’ll have to re-evaluate the Sino-Russia axis. All this is to say that democracy and the West may well look back on this as a pivotal strengthening moment.”

I gather that senior British figures are talking in similar terms. There is a belief that “the U.K.’s №1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” Again and again, I hear such language. It helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire. It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.

Earlier this month when The Intercept’s Ryan Grim was able to get a word in edgewise at a White House press briefing amid the throngs of mass media reporters demanding to know why Biden still hasn’t started World War 3, Press Secretary Jen Psaki gave a very revealing answer.

“So, aside from the request for weapons, President Zelensky has also requested that the US be more involved in negotiations toward a peaceful resolution to the war. What is the U.S. doing to push those negotiations forward?” asked Grim.

“Well, one of the steps we’ve taken — a significant one — is to be the largest provider of military and humanitarian and economic assistance in the world, to put them in a greater position of strength as they go into these negotiations,” Psaki answered, completely dodging the question of whether the US was actually doing anything to help negotiate peace.

As we’ve discussed previously, the US government has a well-documented history of working to draw Moscow into costly military quagmires with the goal of preoccupying its military forces and draining its coffers. Former US officials are on record publicly boasting about having done so in both Afghanistan and Syria. This is an agenda geared toward sapping the Russian government, manufacturing international consent for unprecedented acts of economic warfare designed (though perhaps ineptly) to crush the Russian economy, to foment discord and rebellion, and ultimately to effect regime change in Moscow.

The US empire doesn’t care about Ukrainian lives, and it’s insulting that its operatives continually pretend to. The empire will happily feed every man, woman and child in the entire nation into the mouth of this war if it means unseating a disobedient leader from a nuclear-armed seat of power which has become unacceptably cozy with Beijing and intolerably comfortable with intervening against US imperial agendas. And all the Ukrainian-flag-waving propagandized westerners with their #StandWithUkraine Instagram activism and blue and yellow profile pics will cheer for it every step of the way.

I hope this brutal proxy war ends and peace comes to Ukraine very quickly. But from what we’re seeing today there appears to be an immense globe-spanning power structure holding its foot against the door of the only exit from this horror.

https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/mo...r-daff615f5ece


Lets fight to the very last Ukrainian and show our solidarity on Twitter!

Based predominantly on ‘an overheard private conversatio’, and the fact that Blinken knows already the kind of response he will get from Lavarov, these conclusions you and others have drawn seem largely irrelevant.

Keep on extrapolating nonsense please. You assumptions are as frightening as they are amusing. Once again you resort to supposition in place of much harder to acquire facts.

[sabang]

OK 'arry- the Russian people (especially the soldiers) are pawns too. You are right there.

^ recommend you pay more attention to the actual sources being quoted rather than the blogger that quotes them switch.

[Switch]

That's not quite what i meant. The bank will convert your money into Rubles. Before the special military operation, gas was sold for Euro's and USD. And the Ruble wasn't a factor. The gas and pipeline companies capex was in Euros too. That's all changing.

The Russian cannot change the contract just because payment terms don’t suit them! You fooking imbecile.
The unilateral decision to change any contract is not acceptable or legal practice.

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Putin’s obvious desire for a return to the old Soviet days is clearly an anachronism

What is it in your opinion that makes the above statement "obvious" to you?

[bsnub]

But you will find the 'Group Think' here is that Putin is entirely wrong and 100% to blame

There is a consensus of agreement here because Putin is entirely to blame and there is nothing that can justify this illegal invasion.

Keep on extrapolating nonsense please.

Something that Sabang excels in. Nonsense is his stock-in-trade.