Ukraine war mega thread

[Reggie]

Word on the ground is that you are FaRT.

Weird - is there a club house or a street corner where all you cool kids hang out?

[OhOh]

NATO already refused Ukraine entry,

NATO Won’t Let Ukraine Join Soon. Here’s Why.


Published Jan. 13, 2022Updated March 16, 2022

"While the Biden administration insists it will not allow Moscow to quash Ukraine’s ambitions to join NATO,it has no immediate plansto help bring the former Soviet republic into the alliance. "

NATO Won’t Let Ukraine Join Soon. Here’s Why. - The New York Times

NaGastan promises



"not yet". Worthless words.

[OhOh]

Other links-

NaGastan "rules", apples to speeches, media, video/text historic treaties, UN presentations of fake vials of talcum powder ad anything else

Rule 1. If it's from a Russian source - Fake.

Rule 2. If it's from an NaGatan source - True.

When will you get with the program, comrade.

[Backspin]

What a disaster. As the locals say, Russia should have went in a lot earlier.

[Switch]

What a disaster. As the locals say, Russia should have went in a lot earlier.

Amateur video, posted by another amateur who thinks this supports his narrative. Dumb boy. You are the disaster here.

[David48atTD]

The Ukraine invasion ... great chance to use up some old weaponry.

Sort of like the Falklands

[sabang]

Surely the thing to do would be to send in a UN investigative team, ASAP. But when Russia tried to call an emergency meeting of the UNSC- following Ukrainian allegations of a massacre committed by Russian forces, it was summarily refused. Why? Questions abound, indeed.



Questions Abound About Bucha Massacre

April 4, 2022


The West has made a snap judgment about who is responsible for the massacre at the Ukrainian town of Bucha with calls for more stringent sanctions on Russia, but the question of guilt is far from decided, writes Joe Lauria.


Within hours of news Sunday that there had been a massacre at Bucha, a town 63 kms north of the Ukrainian capital, the verdict was in: Russian troops had senselessly slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians as they withdrew from the town, leaving their bodies littering the streets.

Unlike their judicial systems, when it comes to war, Western nations dispense with the need for investigations and evidence and pronounce guilt based on political motives: Russia is guilty. Case closed.

Except the case hasn’t even been opened yet and the sentence is already being proposed. French President Emmanuel Macron, for instance, has called for Russian coal and oil to be banned from Europe. “There are very clear indications of war crimes,” he said on France Inter radio Monday. “What happened in Bucha demands a new round of sanctions and very clear measures, so we will co-ordinate with our European partners, especially with Germany.”

Other voices are now perilously calling for the U.S. to go to war with Russia over the incident.

“This is genocide,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Face the Nation on CBS. “Mothers of Russians should see this. See what bastards you’ve raised. Murderers, looters, butchers,” he added on Telegram.

Russia has categorically denied it had anything to do with the massacre.

Where to Start

If there were to be a serious probe, one of the first places an investigator would begin is to map out a timeline of events.
Last Wednesday, all Russian forces left Bucha, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

This was confirmed on Thursday by a smiling Anatolii Fedoruk, the mayor of Bucha, in a video on the Bucha City Council official Facebook page. The translated post accompanying the video says:

“March 31 – the day of the liberation of Bucha. This was announced by Bucha Mayor Anatolii Fedoruk. This day will go down in the glorious history of Bucha and the entire Bucha community as a day of liberation by the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the Russian occupiers.”

Screenshot from Fedoruk Facebook video.

All of the Russian troops are gone and yet there is no mention of a massacre. The beaming Fedoruk says it is a “glorious day” in the history of Bucha, which would hardly be the case if hundreds of dead civilians littered the streets around Fedoruk.

“Russian Defence Ministry denied accusations by the Kiev regime of the alleged killing of civilians in Bucha, Kiev Region. Evidence of crimes in Bucha appeared only on the fourth day after the Security Service of Ukraine and representatives of Ukrainian media arrived in the town. All Russian units completely withdrew from Bucha on March 30, and ‘not a single local resident was injured’ during the time when Bucha was under the control of Russian troops,” the Russian MOD said in a post on Telegram.

What Happened Next?

What happened then on Friday and Saturday? As pointed out in a piece by Jason Michael McCann on Standpoint Zero, The New York Times was in Bucha on Saturday and did not report a massacre. Instead, the Times said the withdrawal was completed on Saturday, two days after the mayor said it was, and that the Russians left “behind them dead soldiers and burned vehicles, according to witnesses, Ukrainian officials, satellite images and military analysts.”

The Times said reporters found the bodies of six civilians. “It was unclear under what circumstances they had died, but the discarded packaging of a Russian military ration was lying beside one man who had been shot in the head,” the paper said. It then quoted a Zelensky adviser, who said:

“’The bodies of people with tied hands, who were shot dead by soldiers lie in the streets,’ the adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said on Twitter. ‘These people were not in the military. They had no weapons. They posed no threat.’ He included an image of a scene, photographed by Agence France-Presse, showing three bodies on the side of a road, one with hands apparently tied behind the back. The New York Times was unable to independently verify Mr. Podolyak’s claim the people had been executed.'”

It is possible that on Saturday the full extent of the horror had yet to emerge, and that even the mayor was unaware of it two days before, though photos now show many of the bodies out in the open on the streets of the town, something that presumably would be difficult to miss.

In Bucha, the Times was close to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, whose soldiers appear in the newspaper’s photographs. In his piece, McCann suggests that Azov may responsible for the killings:

“Something very interesting then happens on [Saturday] 2 April, hours before a massacre is brought to the attention of the national and international media. The US and EU-funded Gorshenin Institute online [Ukrainian language] site Left Bank announced that:

‘Special forces have begun a clearing operation in the city of Bucha in the Kyiv region, which has been liberated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The city is being cleared from saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces.’

The Russian military has by now completely left the city, so this sounds for all the world like reprisals. The state authorities would be going through the city searching for ‘saboteurs’ and ‘accomplices of Russian forces.’ Only the day before [Friday], Ekaterina Ukraintsiva, representing the town council authority, appeared on an information video on the Bucha Live Telegram page wearing military fatigues and seated in front of a Ukrainian flag to announce ‘the cleansing of the city.’ She informed residents that the arrival of the Azov battalion did not mean that liberation was complete (but it was, the Russians had fully withdrawn), and that a ‘complete sweep’ had to be performed.”

Ukraintsiva was speaking a day after the mayor had said the town was liberated.

By Sunday morning, the world learned of the massacre of hundreds of people. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “We strongly condemn apparent atrocities by Kremlin forces in Bucha and across Ukraine. We are pursuing accountability using every tool available, documenting and sharing information to hold accountable those responsible.” President Joe Biden on Monday called for a “war crimes” trial. “This guy is brutal, and what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous, and everyone’s seen it. I think it’s a war crime.”

The Bucha incident is a critical moment in the war. An impartial investigation is warranted, which probably only the U.N. could conduct. The Azov Battalion may have perpetrated revenge killings against Russian collaborators, or the Russians carried out this massacre. (Once again the Pentagon is dampening the war hysteria, saying it can’t confirm or deny Russia was responsible.)

A rush to judgment is dangerous, with irresponsible talk of the U.S. directly fighting Russia. But it is a rush to judgment that we are getting.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/04/0...ucha-massacre/


Surely an impartial UN team needs to be sent in ASAP, before evidence can be tampered with &/or destroyed. The Russian forces withdrew some days ago, the town is safe and no longer a war zone- supposedly. One fairly quick pointer might be to identify as many of the victims as possible, and ascertain who they were- innocent civilians, anti-Russian militia, or Russian collaborators? Could be, all of these.

The obvious question if this doesn't happen urgently is- If not, Why not? It's only about 30km from Kiev central.

[pickel]

^
Oh please fuck off.

Satellite images show civilian deaths in Ukraine town while it was in Russian hands | Reuters

[bsnub]

Oh please fuck off.

+1

He is such a miserable cretin.

[sabang]

1- Do you want an impartial UN investigative team despatched to Bucha ASAP Boneheads, to get to the bottom of these atrocities, or not? Do you want the Truth to be confirmed, independently?

2- If not, Why not?

(nb - My posts are not really aimed at the Boneheads- we should all ask ourself this same question)

[pickel]

Raped, murdered, and burned you fucking apologist.

[sabang]

By whom, Bonehead? That is what is salient, and important to know.

[pickel]

You have lost your moral compass. Go suck a tailpipe.

[sabang]

What fundamental U.S. interest is being served by Biden’s intervention in Ukraine, and at what cost?


Does anyone know what Joe Biden is doing in Ukraine? Americans must feel like a high school substitute teacher. We turn our backs for five minutes and Joe Biden has restarted the Cold War. No grave address to the nation, no white papers, just “Democracy on the line.” Didn’t we used to vote on this kind of thing?

Engagement is somehow taken as a given. But what is the end point for Joe? What does victory look like? In Ukraine, no one knows. By starting this intervention by promising not to send NATO into combat, Biden sent a clear signal to Putin that, if he is willing to make the effort and use his overwhelming military advantage, he will win. Putin’s goal is to create a sort of buffer state between Russia and NATO; Putin can win whether Kiev rules or tumbles. A “win” for the U.S. side requires Putin to retreat in shame. Breaking things is always easier than getting someone to admit they were wrong.

Biden has two weapons to deploy: guns and sanctions. Can either lead to a win?

If a win for Putin includes reducing Mariupol to Detroit, how will any of the weapons the U.S. sends matter? Infantry-based proxy ground warfare can forestall a Ukrainian defeat but not prevent it. Notice how Zelensky showcases photos of kids with guns and old women making Molotovs and then the Russians target “civilians” at an apartment complex? Biden’s strategy is apparently for Ukrainians to stay in their houses and be shelled until the Russians run out of shells and go home.

There are many reasons to be skeptical of claims that 15,000 Russians have died in Ukraine. That would be double the Americans killed on Iwo Jima, or on both sides at Gettysburg. It would equal ten years of Russian losses in Afghanistan, and be about four times the total U.S. losses in Iraq. Ukraine also claims to have killed six generals, six more than were killed in all the wars the U.S. has fought since World War Two.

The theory of sanctions is that they will place such as squeeze on Russian oligarchs that they will force Putin to withdraw from Ukraine. Putin, otherwise portrayed as a dictator who answers to no one, will supposedly listen to these men complain about their yachts and reverse a foreign policy that he otherwise believes benefits Russia in the long run.

The U.S. has been piling sanctions on these same oligarchs for decades, with a new round each time Putin moved against Georgia, Grozny, and Crimea. None of those sanctions compelled a withdrawal and none have stopped Putin from making his subsequent move against Ukraine. Effective, no, but points for creativity: There’s a plan to strip Putin’s “Eva Braun” (you can’t make this up) of her Olympic medals in hopes she’ll withhold nooky Lysistrata-like until Putin withdraws.

Another problem with sanctions is they are nowhere near strong enough to actually hurt. Goofy yacht warfare aside, Biden’s ban on Russian petroleum accounts for only some 1 percent of Russia’s output. NATO allies are not able to participate fully without crippling their own economies. But loopholes amid half-measures are only part of the problem. Having grown accustomed to casually slapping sanctions on defenseless countries like North Korea, Biden has limited understanding of the effects of sanctions on a globally connected economy. Such sanctions have the potential to cause grave fallout because unlike, say, Cuba, Russia can fight back.

Though the goal of sanctions is to punish specific Russians, known by name, in a position to influence Putin, concern from world markets drove up prices of crude oil, natural gas, wheat, copper, nickel, aluminum, fertilizers, and gold. Grain and metals shortages now loom, even in early days of this spillover effect. Biden seems unaware that the world is interconnected. Millions are at risk of starvation in Africa if grain exports dry up.



...... Bad as all that sounds, some of the worst blowback from Biden’s Ukraine policy is happening in China. During the only Cold War years Biden apparently remembers, China was mostly a sideshow and certainly not vying to be the world’s largest economy. By failing to understand that the world is no longer bipolar—NATO versus the Pact—Joe Biden actually may be doing even more harm than he understands right now.

Russia is a big country that has committed only a small portion of its military to the war in Ukraine. It absolutely does not need Chinese help to prosecute the war, as Biden claims. Biden is unnecessarily antagonizing China, who should be more or less neutral in this fight but instead is being positioned by Biden as an enemy of the United States and an ally of Russia. China buys oil from Russia but that does not translate into some sort of across-the-board support for Russian foreign policy à la 1975.

Yet Biden—by threatening China with sanctions, linking Ukraine and Taiwan, and essentially demanding Beijing be with us or against us—threatens to turn China the wrong way. Beijing has, for example, already asked the Saudis to accept yuan over dollars for oil. Economic spillover from Russia is one thing, disturbing one of the world’s largest trading relationships is another.

As the Wall Street Journalpoints out, China’s basic approach of not endorsing Moscow’s aggression but resisting Western efforts to punish Russia has garnered global support. Of the ten most populous countries in the world, only the U.S. supports major economic sanctions against Russia. Indonesia, Nigeria, India, and Brazil have all condemned the Russian invasion, but do not seem prepared to implement the West’s preferred countermeasures. Quite the opposite, in fact. India and Russia will soon have currency swaps in place to finance trade in rupees and rubles, bypassing the U.S. sanctions regime against Russia. Biden seems oblivious to these gaps in U.S. policy.

In my own years as a diplomat I heard often from smaller countries’ representatives about the “America Tax,” the idea America’s unpredictable foreign-policy dalliances end up costing everyone something. Whether it is a military contribution to the Iraq War effort, or a disruption in shipping, nobody gets away free when America is on a crusade. This cost is built in to those smaller nations’ foreign policy. But when the Big Blind Dog, as a Canadian diplomat once characterized the U.S., starts in on sanctions that will have a global impact, the calculus changes. Smaller nations no longer offer a knowing sigh—the Americans are at it again. They feel real fear.

Full Article- https://www.theamericanconservative....will-backfire/

[Switch]

^The sanctions do not belong to Biden. As usual h as you would like this’war’ to be a Russia v America affair, it simply isn’t.
The western world in general has determined that Russia should be sanctioned for the unprovoked war with Ukraine.
The USA certainly has a dog in this fight, but the sanctions are the work of any number of countries who see Putin for the evil authoritarian leader that he is. Unilaterally declaring a brutal war on a neighboring country is unacceptable in the civilised world.
China and India seem to have self interest at heart when abstaining from outright condemnation of the Kremlins acts of violence.

Are you, and a few other loonies, expecting us to believe that Putin and Russia hold the moral high ground?
I was raised in a family that refused to give in to bullying. What changed your mind?

[Hugh Cow]

^ Why bother? he listens to RT as the "unbiased" reporter of news while ignoring Reuters, France 24, euronews, BBC, ABC and a host of others. He is so totally sucked in by Putins propaganda machine he has ignored everything else. What are the limits of free speech? In Russia it is anything that is anti Putin is off limits, yet there are three that somehow think the only countries with free press are wrong.
I believe Backspin, Sabang and OhOh should be jailed at the very least, not for having an alternative view but posting obviously false information. I would like to see whether others agree or not.
My personel preference is a permanent ban. All are rather distasteful creatures.

[sabang]

Are you, and a few other loonies, expecting us to believe that Putin and Russia hold the moral high ground?

^^ No, not at all- but I and many others considerably more prominent than myself have made a quite credible case that neither does the US lead Nato alliance, or the Zelensky regime.

I have no problem with sanctions btw. I do have a problem with the sheer, hysterical idiocy of some of them (Russian Blue?), and the attempted browbeating of other, uninvolved nations to harm their own- often fragile- economies at the behest of uncle sams agenda. But that hasn't worked anyway.

More importantly, I fail to see the point of 'cutting off our nose to spite our face'. Sanctions that end up slowing our economies- perhaps into recession, and weakening our diplomatic prestige in the World just hand victory to- (no, not Russia) your arch enemy China.

what is the end point for Joe? What does victory look like? In Ukraine, no one knows

^ I think you are an idiot, and a Bonehead. But I would not have you jailed, or banned.

[russellsimpson]

I would like to see whether others agree or not.

Please put me down for strongly disagree. I enjoy the back and forth. We're big people, I'm sure we can tolerate differences of opinion.

[Switch]

Please put me down for strongly disagree. I enjoy the back and forth. We're big people, I'm sure we can tolerate differences of opinion.

They should just have postings on the subject placed directly in a doghouse thread so it can easily be avoided, or laughed at/ridiculed.

They have the right to be stupid or gullible, but not to litter all over the forum as they do now. Too much work for unpaid mods.

[sabang]

I suppose you would call Henry Kissinger and Noam Chomsky trolls, if you disagreed with their opinion. Which in fact, you do.

[Switch]

I suppose you would call Henry Kissinger and Noam Chomsky trolls, if you disagreed with their opinion. Which in fact, you do.

Suppose all you want. It wouldn’t be the foirst time you were wrong.

[pickel]

I suppose you would call Henry Kissinger and Noam Chomsky trolls, if you disagreed with their opinion. Which in fact, you do.

Chomsky says it's an illegal invasion, so its you who disagrees with him. And who cares what Kissinger has to say.

[David48atTD]

They should just have postings on the subject placed directly in a doghouse thread so it can easily be avoided, or laughed at/ridiculed.

They have the right to be stupid or gullible, but not to litter all over the forum as they do now. Too much work for unpaid mods.

In the DH you can call each other dickheads/fuckwits/wankers/c*nts etc, in the Speakers Corner, sadly, you can not.

But also, I think there would be less posts in the DH than in the SC.

News in the News Forum, Opinions and commentary in the SC, personal abuse in DH.

Me? ... I can live without the abuse.

[Backspin]

US military Douglas Mcgregor on Ukraine

[Norton]

impartial UN investigative team despatched to Bucha

Seems the UN has concluded they will but clearly in no rush. Basically resolved to discuss the below for 3 weeks starting mid June.

"Action on Decision under Agenda Item One on Organizational and Procedural Matters
In a resolution on the situation of human rights in Ukraine stemming from the Russian aggression, the Human Rights Council decided to establish an independent international commission of inquiry, constituted of three human rights experts, to be appointed by the President of the Human Rights Council for an initial duration of one year, complementing and building upon the work of the human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine, with a mandate, inter alia, to establish the facts and circumstances that may amount to violations and abuses of human rights or violations of international humanitarian law in Ukraine."

Human Rights Council concludes forty-ninth regular session after adopting 35 resolutions | OHCHR

Bottom line there is no impartial investigative organization that will get approval from all involved in this debacle. Stooges and Boneheads here and in the world at large by nature are incapable of agreeing on anything.