Ukraine war mega thread

[Backspin]

Considering all the things going on with his country , Putin seems to be rather relaxed about it all.

https://twitter.com/sahouraxo/status...815700481?s=09

[misskit]

Something wrong with Putin. Why on earth is he sitting so far away from everyone? Afraid one of them will shank him?

[Backspin]

Shares of Western airlines are collapsing due to flight restrictions over Russia.

FinnAir down 30%
https://twitter.com/colonelhomsi/sta...739601409?s=09

[Backspin]

Russian steelmaker Severstal suspended sales to Europe, its biggest export market, after billionaire owner Alexei Mordashov was sanctioned https://trib.al/Iq01CYI

[sabang]

Dima Vorobiev

, Former Soviet propaganda executive
Answered 2h ago




“Why is Russia invading Ukraine?”

In our official propaganda, Ukraine has been a US springboard for future conquering, dismembering and enslaving Russia. An alleged “genocide” of ethnic Russians in self-declared states of Donetsk and Lugansk is a proof to that.

To prevent the ongoing genocide and future threats, President Putin sent the troops that now have been de-Nazifying and de-militarizing Ukraine for the last five days.

This move was based on a following set of working assumptions by our president.

Russia’s Top Five Assumptions for Invading Ukraine:

1. Ukraine is governed by a US puppet regime not embedded in the Ukrainian society.
2. The dysfunctionality of the Ukrainian state and political divisions between their oligarchs make it possible to overthrow them in a swift military operation.
3. Large parts of Ukraine secretly sympathize with Russia and are ready to embrace new pro-Russian rulers.
4. Civil society does not exist. Pro-Western activists are a small group of paid agents that can be chased out of the country, arrested, or killed.
5. The West is too weak and divided to stand up for Ukraine.

---

Below, one of our loyalist political cartoons by Yevgény Samóilov illustrating the core of President Putin’s assumptions.

President Zelenski (center), Mayor of the city of Kiev Klichko (right) and a generic far-right nationalist in a Nazi Stalhelm (left)are addressing an unenthusiastic public.

(Zelensky’s former job was a comedian. Klichko was a professional boxer. There are no prominent Nazis at the forefront of the Ukrainian politics or in the government, but a “Nazi presence” there is the core of our propaganda narrative).

The hydra of Anglo-Saxon globalism manipulates all of them. The poster fixed to the pulpit says “Raise up, Ukraine!” The discarded ones on the floor say, “Raise up, Syria!”, “Raise up, Egypt!”, “Raise up, Lybia”. This implies that the Arab Spring a decade ago was a product of American machinations, just like what happens now in Ukraine.





https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Russia-invading-Ukraine/answer/Dima-Vorobiev?ch=8&oid=341649056&share=956cdeb3&srid=u6 VOf&target_type=answer

[nidhogg]

^check your meds sabang. You have gone full on whack-a-doodle.

[misskit]

Now the Russians are working on pissing off one of their few friends left, India.


Indian student dies in Ukraine, caught in shelling while out for grocery

An Indian student has died in shelling taking place in Ukraine conflict. Naveen Shekaragouda, the deceased student, was out to buy grocery when he met the tragic end. This is first reported death of an Indian student amid ongoing conflict in Ukraine. India's Ministry of External Affairs has confirmed the news to Naveen's family saying that confirmation of Naveen's death had been received from his friends. As per the MEA, the body has been kept in morgue and all out efforts are on to bring Naveen's mortal remains to India.


Naveen's family members said Naveen was in the fourth year of his course in the Kharkiv medical college. Kharkiv is the second biggest city in Ukraine and under heavy Russian attack.

Naveen hails from southern Indian state of Karnataka.




Indian news agency ANI said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke with Naveen's family this morning.


After learning about the tragedy, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai called up Shekaragouda over phone and expressed his sorrow.


Bommai assured Shekaragouda he would make every effort to bring back his son's body to India. He also told him that he is touch with the officials in the external affairs ministry.


The bereaved father told Bommai that Naveen had called him in the morning as well. Daily the son used to ring him up at least two to three times, he told the Chief Minister.


Indian student dies in Ukraine, caught in shelling while out for grocery, India News News | wionews.com

[sabang]

woops again- moved to one of the Loon threads

Mike, below- MK announced this News thread would be News only- which is not to say individual commentary is barred, but 'Editorial' type articles- even intelligent analysis- goes into one of the Loon threads. Sorry, but that's the way it is. That is why I did my own bit of editing.

[sabang]

^^ That is the Russian 'narrative' niddy, as described by an ex-Soviet propaganda executive. You reckon it is insane to look at the other sides Pov, & propaganda narrative? Well I can assure you war planners and the like do not. Deal with it.

[NamPikToot]

^ yeah, there was some retired general on cnn this morning, talking about that. Think the term he used was "salivating" to be able to have a go at that column with a10s....

Armchair General, the thing he forgot to point out is that Russia sees no aerial threat atm which is precisely why they are comfortable exposing a column like that - it don't take genius to work that out.

In other news this is the sort of discourse when i posted this morning and for some reason my two posts and one of PHs got moved to the idiots Ukraine thread? Anyone got any clue about moderation rules for this thread?

[sabang]

The outpouring of (mainly western) clamorous outrage and 'Me Too' virtue signaling re how we should 'punish' Russia and individual Russians even makes the whipped up hysteria in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq look timorous in comparison. But I am starting to see more commentary of this nature too, which while hardly pro-Russian does deal with the Realpolitik of the situation-



In the 1930s, the tops and cuffs of shirts were often made of celluloid for greater durability; decades indeed. So somewhere beneath the floor of Westminster Abbey, under the engraved words “Neville Chamberlain”, a skull in nothing other than a wing collar wears a rictus grin and taunts us: “Appeasement, huh? Czechoslovakia, huh? Not so easy is it, arseholes! Not so easy!”



It is not so easy indeed. Five days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and it is clear there will be no substantial assistance in any form from Europe and NATO to a country which has never stopped pursuing substantial alignment with NATO, despite Russia’s clear indication that it would amount to a casus belli.

Thus on January 17 Ukraine and NATO signed a technology development cooperation initiative, i.e. cyber- and automated-war cooperation, presumably the proximate prompt for Russia’s decision to invade. This was the latest stage in a series of moves towards full European integration, with the Ukrainian government reinstating its official intent to join NATO after the very murky “revolution” against a pro-Russian president in 2014.

In September 2020 President Volodymyr Zelenskyy approved a fully revised national security strategy, including a path to NATO membership. As far as national security goes, that does not appear to have been a success. Leaving aside Vladimir Putin’s traditional rambling press conference, Russia’s decision to invade is clearly rational, though a gamble, in realpolitik terms — to attack and cut the link between Ukraine and NATO, the EU and Europe in general before a new stage of consolidation occurs.


The gamble has worked at one level. NATO has done nothing and can do nothing to help Ukraine in military terms, unless it wants to have direct NATO-Russia military conflict. Even if this were somehow to exclude nuclear exchange by de facto agreement of both sides, this would involve a massive mobilisation.

That can’t and won’t happen. It would have had to begin months ago, and it wasn’t. Its aim would have been to hold Kyiv, two-thirds of the way across the country and 70 kilometres from the Russian border. It would have had to involve either US/Canadian and western European troops invading a Slavic heartland to protect it from another Slavic country, or it would have had to involve nearer troop bodies, which would mean Slavs fighting Slavs.

Did Zelenskyy imagine that NATO would come to Ukraine’s aid if the situation escalated after he signed the NATO technology cooperation agreement? If he did, why did he imagine the situation would be anything different from the plight of Georgia, when Russia launched a quick corrective invasion in 2008? The Georgian leaders — a bunch of 30-something, Economist-reading kids — appealed to the world, and the world turned its back. Two months later, the Russians were out, having made their point and secured Russian ethnic enclaves as self-declared republics.

Zelenskyy has not been so unrealistic, simply appealing for non-troop assistance and getting it in the form of sanctions, materiel and protests. How long the latter will last remains to be seen. Ukraine’s appeal for non-weapons military materiel was well founded; the country, the old USSR’s weapons manufacture hub, has warehouses of AK-47s apparently, but lacks helmets, shields and the like. Ammunition is due to run out in a week or so, it is said.

The resistance by Ukrainians is obviously heroic. How widespread it is remains to be seen. This “plucky little Ukraine” narrative — training with wooden guns, knitting Molotov cocktails, Miss Ukraine with AK-47, etc — has a strong whiff of a PR effort about it. So many grins of people who might be about to die in street fighting! The reality is probably amid the undoubted patriotic gusto many miserable and frightened people debating whether to put up a fight or not.

Now, in response to this global opposition — hardly global really, outside the fevered enthusiasms of the Western mainstream media, as China passively supports Russia, India remains neutral, and much of what was the Third World stays out of it (more on that tomorrow) — Russia has announced that it has put its nuclear forces on “high alert” in line with the “statement of use” it revised last year.


What that means militarily is unclear, since such forces are always on alert. But its purpose may be to remind the West that it has recently changed its “statement of use” on nukes from “only if the existence of the state were threatened” to “achieve victory in a battlefield situation”, i.e. if we want to. Russia has between 6000 and 8000 nuclear weapons, many of them “small” tactical battlefield devices.

Would Russia, facing stasis and defeat of its quick war, use three or four battlefield nukes on Ukrainian military or small cities? It would be a point of no return if it did. Even the Chinese might find that a bit much. But when this time last week you made a restaurant booking for tomorrow, did you think a Eurasian land war would start in the interim?

Even if it escalated to that, what would or could NATO do? Launch direct strikes? With an escalation to where? If Russia is losing this war — as many are suggesting — so too is NATO as any sort of meaningful or credible force. Surely it is now just an anachronism and an absurdity, as are suggestions for mid-scale action, such as Tony Abbott’s pathetic and delusional bleat in The Wall Street Journal for NATO to impose a “no-fly zone” (it would be for the dozens of NATO jets downed by Russian missiles).

NATO’s statement on the invasion called on Russia to “stop this senseless war”, like it was the Macquarie University No Borders Peace collective. Since for Russia the war makes a great deal of sense, it is unlikely to be heeded.

There is more to say, a lot more. This war is obviously rearranging the world — but largely by making visible shifts that occurred some time ago. In 48 hours everything may have shifted again. In the meantime, let Chamberlain, shiny wing collar pointed to heaven, have his Holbeinesque chuckle: “Not so easy is it, jerks! Not so easy!”

Russia’s war is rational, NATO is screwed. Deal with it (msn.com)

[david44]

woops again- moved to one of the Loon threads

Mike, below- MK announced this News thread would be News only- which is not to say individual commentary is barred, but 'Editorial' type articles- even intelligent analysis- goes into one of the Loon threads. Sorry, but that's the way it is. That is why I did my own bit of editing.

But it's so full of new and interesting facts, sadly the interesting ones are not new and new one's are not interesting.

I learned here in this thread today Sweden "seems" to have acquired a new border with Russia. It's 78 years since the port of Pestsamo was stolen from the Finns by USSR.


In places where people learn history and Geography Tampere there is a suburb named after it while the Finnish city was renamed by the commies Pe chenga

Rather like revisionist moderation everyhwere.

I ay lack a spell checker others lack a sense of humour but when lies become truth we really have become Thai

[NamPikToot]

but when lies become truth we really have become Thai

True and i am happy to have my views moved to the "Ukraine War for sub 60 IQs" thread so long as some of the jingoistic idiocy that is starting creep into this thread goes with it. Some here seem to be implying Russia is "losing" and my point that got move is that unfortunately I think Russia has just been testing the water so to speak.

[panama hat]

As with my ice cream preference, the EU prefers vanilla over chocolate.

The quiet part has just been said out loud.

Well, far over one million ME refugees in Germany would perhaps contradict that, from a war it didn't participate in . . . and the EU is not a single entity, it is comprised of over 20 nations with their own immigration policies, refugee policies etc... and compare that to the US and the UK.

[sabang]

I'm afraid on TD you must accept the fact you are interacting with many sub-par IQ lemmings mike- but that isn't to say there aren't several smarter and more balanced ones too. Consider it an exercise in mob psychology.

Yes, I'm in accord with your viewpoint. Endlessly saying "Russia is losing" and "Putin is insane" in a big mob, at maximum volume does not make it so. I think the Russian war planners are, you might say, gradually tightening the screw. Thus I fear this war will only get worse, until some sort of negotiated peace is arrived at- or the Ukrainian government is overthrown.

[Loy Toy]

I can only envisage Russia will eventually take Kiev and it will depend how Putin handles himself at this time will determine whether the west will become militarily involved.

If he captures and kills Zelensky and his family, amongst other innocent civilians, I suspect and fear WW3 is a real possibility.

[NamPikToot]

^^ I think, hope really, that Russia will accept some form of Finlandization, much as I hate the idea and i worry that Ukraine would not accept it in any case but i think that is the best they can hope for. Russia will have to accept that its actions are going generate unwanted military escalation along its borders with both EU and NATO members who will want to deter any idea of further land grabs.

[pickel]

I'm afraid on TD you must accept the fact you are interacting with many sub-par IQ lemmings mike-

I suppose one could say that the parroters of Russian propaganda are low I.Q. as well. Then you have the ones thinking that they know all about NATO, without realizing Canada was a founding member. Even though I gave you an out on that guffaw, you didn't take it.

Endlessly saying "Russia is losing" and "Putin is insane" in a big mob, at maximum volume does not make it so.

I don't know if anybody thinks Russia is losing the war, but they are definitely losing more battles than they anticipated, and by sheer numbers attrition is in their favor. But, then they have to hold it from a society that is 100% against them that will turn to guerrilla warfare. Impossible. Russian mothers will soon be on the streets of Moscow, and Putins cops beating and arresting them will not be good optics for the little tyrant.

[sabang]

I doubt you loonies will ever quite get the wry brit sense of humour pickle- but you are nice, unassuming, earnest folk anyway. I was taking the piss. I think you might find the punchline was contained in my ending post "one mightn't have noticed". Anyway, move on.

a society that is 100% against them

[OhOh]

Tell it to the Afghans and thousands of widows of Russians who died there.

Military targets, as illustrated currently by the Russian military in Ukraine.

No intention to "shock and awe" a la Iraq.

To splatter civilians and flatten cities. Unlike the "unexceptional" countries military actions' year, after year ......

[pickel]

I doubt you loonies will ever quite get the wry brit sense of humour pickle- but you are nice, unassuming, earnest folk anyway. I was taking the piss.

Sure you were sabang, sure you were.

I think you might find the punchline was contained in my ending post "one mightn't have noticed"

I think you might find your post before that one says otherwise.

[kingwilly]

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Russia-invading-Ukraine/answer/Dima-Vorobiev?ch=8&oid=341649056&share=956cdeb3&srid=u6 VOf&target_type=answer

Quora is a news source now?

[pickel]

^^
Your whataboutism is nauseating. I didn't support that, but your propaganda buddy socal did.

[OhOh]

^sheer bombast.

Rather bombast than nuclear war.

If Nato reflags and flies out of Poland etc I imagine they will be attacked by Russian and Belarus AA.

That will be a dangerous step, as Russia has informed NATO of the consequences.

Putin seems to be rather relaxed about it all

I would suggest not.

[pickel]

Aww.... isn't that sweet. Sabang still thinks the Ukrainians want to be "liberated".