Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

[gosub]

Christ. Stop telling me what a no-fly zone is. I know. Very well. You’re still arguing something I’m not.

Im disagreeing with you that Russia wouldn’t see the supply of aircraft as just as provocative as a NFZ, and they’re both are a very bad idea.

Now, have you found anything to support your assertion that the EU are still supplying planes to Ukraine, that isn’t from Twitter?

Did you used to post on here as Bungle?

No fighter plane transfers to Ukraine through allied airspace

NATO airspace will not be used to transfer fighter planes to the Ukrainian military, alliance leaders said Tuesday after a meeting in Poland.

www.stripes.com

 

[Yossarian]

Walking Lily along the canal towpath this afternoon, someone said I "looked like a Russian". I have a bushy beard.

I replied that I was a Cossack.

I'm sure it was meant as a joke but it was pretty surreal

Weird - there's only one famous Russian with a bushy beard who comes to mind, and Boney M have a song about him.

 

[Dr. Furface]

Thanks for the article. Shows, whatever one thinks of Putin, there is a logic behind what he's doing.

Article is written from US foreign policy export angle. Still it implies NATO expansion east is something that Putin has grounds to criticize.

Putin regards NATO now as not a purely defensive organisation. It's outlived the Cold war. That now its American led organisation. It's not a benign institution.

Russian requests for promise of no further expansion of NATO have been rebuffed

Also over years Putin has tried to encourage western business to Russia. To undermine any attempt at sanctions. As this would hurt business.

Johnathan steele says similar.

Understanding Putin’s narrative about Ukraine is the master key to this crisis | Jonathan Steele

His bulwark against Nato is to create a ‘frozen conflict’, like those in Georgia and Moldova, says former Moscow correspondent for the Guardian Jonathan Steele

www.theguardian.com

So no Putin is not mad.

Had disagreement today with friend who now thinks Putin wants world domination. Destroy democracies. Afraid some people are getting carried away. Trying to say there reasons behind this conflict is tantamount to "appeasement".

Saying that Putin is not mad reminds me of Apocalypse Now where I think it's Dennis Hopper's character who says to Capt. Willard that Col. Kurtz has a genius mind 'but his soul is mad', or something like that.

Btw Jonathan Steele's last paragraph in that piece hasn't aged well has it?

 

[RD2003]

Weird - there's only one famous Russian with a bushy beard who comes to mind, and Boney M have a song about him.

Didn't know they sang about Solzhenitsyn.

 

[bluescreen]

Apple is suspending its product sales in Russia.

Subscribe to read | Financial Times

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

www.ft.com

 

[smokedout]

Which is why I think it was quite carefully cultivated - youve got to look like you mean it

I'm gonna get me one of those big long tables for the next time the landlord comes round to talk about renewing the tenancy.

 

[Orang Utan]

Apple is suspending its product sales in Russia.

Subscribe to read | Financial Times

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

www.ft.com

How noble of them

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Btw Jonathan Steele's last paragraph in that piece hasn't aged well has it?

This is the problem I have atm with all this kind of analysis. Putin doing all kinds of things makes strategic sense. But laying siege to Kyiv is not one of them. So I'm a bit lost as to what exactly he thinks the endgame is here.

 

[Diamond]

Apple is suspending its product sales in Russia.

Subscribe to read | Financial Times

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

www.ft.com

Yeah, not too keen on big corporates doing this sort of nonsense. It's such bullshit. They don't care about any of this one iota. They just use all the ESG stuff as a way to better control their employees, really. Unbelievably cynical. It's a private company for crying out loud - it only has one duty - to its shareholders! If they tell you anything else, they are definitely lying for some kind of advantage....

 

[Dogsauce]

It’s pretty clear most of the first world is united in making sure Putin can’t ‘win’, even if he takes the country the resultant international isolation will be crippling. I don’t know how he finds a way out of this, I’m kind of minded to think it would be useful if there was a non-humiliating way for him to back away because if there isn’t then he won’t. Then again he probably wouldn’t anyway no matter what. The solution can only come from within Russia I think.

 

[elbows]

elbows you are a hugely valuable poster and I think your work in assessing and analysing the covid pandemic was some of the most useful information on the Internet regarding the subject, that is to say, much respect...but...

It wouldn't hurt you to maybe split up some of your longer posts into paragraphs. I know I sound like a year 9 English teacher but for me at least these long walls of text are hard to read. Tiny bit of concision/brevity would be really appreciated.

I already use paragraphs. The problem is the overall length of the posts. If I adjust the structure of paragraphs and sentences they will still ultimately suffer from this problem, they will just be different variations on the theme of walls of text. Playing around with various spacing wont actually help, I've tried and most of the alternatives actually end up even worse, they hurt the eyes in different ways.

I make plenty of short posts too but people dont usually associate those with me because of the number of long ones I make.

Anyway this thread has taken a toll on me in the last few days so now you wont have to read any posts of any length from me on this subject for a while.

 

[Dr. Furface]

This is the problem I have atm with all this kind of analysis. Putin doing all kinds of things makes strategic sense. But laying siege to Kyiv is not one of them. So I'm a bit lost as to what exactly he thinks the endgame is here.

He hasn't got a fucking scooby, and neither does anyone else.

 

[Cid]

I didn’t think so.
Siege means nobody can leave no food or anything else can enter doesn’t it.

Different to just going in.

From that article .
View attachment 312443

It's confusing. I'm not sure what their wording means... Though tbf I imagine they (the graun rather than officials) aren't either. There are a whole load of implications to siege tactics... I can't imagine Putin wants a sustained siege... So what? just relentless artillery on a city that's unlikely to be fully evacuated? Then street to street fighting? Fucking bleak. Should just go to bed, world gains nothing from me overthinking this.

 

[Humberto]

I already use paragraphs. The problem is the overall length of the posts. If I adjust the structure of paragraphs and sentences they will still ultimately suffer from this problem, they will just be different variations on the theme of walls of text. Playing around with various spacing wont actually help, I've tried and most of the alternatives actually end up even worse, they hurt the eyes in different ways.

I make plenty of short posts too but people dont usually associate those with me because of the number of long ones I make.

Anyway this thread has taken a toll on me in the last few days so now you wont have to read any posts of any length from me on this subject for a while.

I find them easy to read/parse because well written/coherent.

 

[Orang Utan]

This is the problem I have atm with all this kind of analysis. Putin doing all kinds of things makes strategic sense. But laying siege to Kyiv is not one of them. So I'm a bit lost as to what exactly he thinks the endgame is here.

Who knows, insane/imperialist/situationist prankster/a psychopath who just enjoys chaos and discord and just wants to destabilise everything he can before he dies - we’ll just have to see how it plays out. Horrible feeling though.

 

[Cribynkle]

I already use paragraphs. The problem is the overall length of the posts. If I adjust the structure of paragraphs and sentences they will still ultimately suffer from this problem, they will just be different variations on the theme of walls of text. Playing around with various spacing wont actually help, I've tried and most of the alternatives actually end up even worse, they hurt the eyes in different ways.

I make plenty of short posts too but people dont usually associate those with me because of the number of long ones I make.

Anyway this thread has taken a toll on me in the last few days so now you wont have to read any posts of any length from me on this subject for a while.

After a break because of life getting in the way, I came back U75 during covid lockdown to read your posts. They reassured me and felt like I could make more sense of what was going on and I was much more prepared and informed because of what you were saying. This whole shitstorm brought me back. Please keep posting

 

[Pickman's model]

I came back to U75 after a break because of life getting in the way, to read your posts. They reassured me and felt like I could make more sense of what was going on and I was much more prepared and informed because of what you were saying. This whole shitstorm brought me back. Please keep posting

Good to see you back and hope you keep posting

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Ask me anything from a Reuters on the ground

 

[mauvais]

Christ. Stop telling me what a no-fly zone is. I know. Very well. You’re still arguing something I’m not.

Im disagreeing with you that Russia wouldn’t see the supply of aircraft as just as provocative as a NFZ, and they’re both are a very bad idea.

Counterpoint: Soviet Union in the Korean War - Wikipedia

 

[elbows]

After a break because of life getting in the way, I came back U75 during covid lockdown to read your posts. They reassured me and felt like I could make more sense of what was going on and I was much more prepared and informed because of what you were saying. This whole shitstorm brought me back. Please keep posting

Thanks, posts like that in this thread have helped my mental health in recent days but I still need to take a break from this thread right now. I cannot currently predict how many days that will need to last, someone call the main participants in this war and ask them to stall until I am available again

 

[discokermit]

It's confusing. I'm not sure what their wording means... Though tbf I imagine they (the graun rather than officials) aren't either. There are a whole load of implications to siege tactics... I can't imagine Putin wants a sustained siege... So what? just relentless artillery on a city that's unlikely to be fully evacuated? Then street to street fighting? Fucking bleak. Should just go to bed, world gains nothing from me overthinking this.

thats not how a siege works. they encircle and wait for those inside to run out of food and water. in the meanwhile bomb gas pipelines and tv towers and whatever else they fancy to make life harder inside.

 

[spitfire]

Lost SU27 returns home sans missiles, best of luck to him/her.

The Ukrainian Air Force Su-27 That Landed In Romania Flown Back To Ukraine

The Ukrainian Su-27 that landed at Bacau a few days ago with a full load of air-to-air missiles, has returned home (completely unarmed). On Feb. 24, 2022,

theaviationist.com

I hope this meets the approval of the various thread police, I've stopped posting on this thread despite being generally very careful what I post is substantiated, (Russian Jeremy Clarkson vid excepted).

I agree that there can be too many Twitter posts, (guilty as charged, although made a special effort not to on this one), but when a fast moving situation is occurring it can be the best way to get information to those that don't necessarily use twitter or follow the same people others do. It is also the easiest way to post video by far.

We're all doing our best in a difficult situation and people shouldn't be scared to post. They also shouldn't be scared to be corrected if they do as that is how we filter the wheat from the chaff.

Also there are some experts on here, most of us aren't but between us we do know * some * stuff.

I would like to see more threads, not a forum.

Anyhoo, I'll not engage with any comments on this as I don't want to disrupt the thread any more than it has been.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Thanks, posts like that in this thread have helped my mental health in recent days but I still need to take a break from this thread right now. I cannot currently predict how many days that will need to last, someone call the main participants in this war and ask them to stall until I am available again

fwiw your posts during the Arab Spring were super-useful. You've done some great stuff over the years.

Take care of yourself.

 

[Cid]

thats not how a siege works. they encircle and wait for those inside to run out of food and water. in the meanwhile bomb gas pipelines and tv towers and whatever else they fancy to make life harder inside.

That is the bit referred to as 'sustained siege' in my post.

 

[steeplejack]

It's interesting that it seems to be Putin who is getting to draw all the red lines. I wonder if the initial reticence in the invasion was in part to not over commit until he was sure what NATO would do. I can think of more than one former president who might have been minded to call his bluff and go face to face with him, and Biden is an unknown quantity from Putin's perspective*.

No, the reticence was to do with poor command structures, abysmal logistics, and 19 year olds being sent over the border without really being told what their objective was or why they were there. Putin has already cashiered the head of the Russian army. He expected this to be a cakewalk, and it hasn't been.

Now it's clear that NATO is unlikely to lift a finger to help Ukraine miltarily he's got free reign to do what he wants. And not only that but half the West seems convinced that the second a NATO soldier sets foot in Ukraine then Putin is prepared to launch WW3. My guess is that's not the case, and Moscow in ruins - even if everywhere else is too - is pretty far from any of his desired outcomes, but the fact that people think that gives him a huge strategic advantage not just in this conflict but in those to come. In this sense the madman rhetoric may well have actually helped him.

NATO may not intervene directly (which would be a tragic mistake, too) but NATO countries and the EU have been a lot more resolute than most expected. After all ten days ago if you'd said that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would lead to enormous economic sanctions, the indefinite pausing / bankruptcy of Nordstream, supplies of military hardware and civilian aid from around the EU & neighbouring states, Putin careesers being publicly shamed (Gerhard Schröder's entire private staff resigned from under him today), SWIFT deconnection, that a fast track EU membership for Ukraine would not only be discussed but actually put in motion, you'd probably have been thought pretty mad, naive, or both. Yet, here we are.

All of this is of little consolation to folk currently hiding in basements from Mariupol to Kharkiv, I understand. But it is a lot, lot more than could have been expected prior to 24 February- and a lot quicker, by comparison with the international community's sluggish and inept handling of the Bosnian War during 1992-95, let alone the abysmal indifference to Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, & co.

Another thing: Putin is absolutely indifferent to indivdual human life. The ordinary Russian citizen is about as important to him, as an individual grain of sand on the local beach is to us. He's a friendless,greedy sociopath and if there's to be a world without a powerful Russia, according to his perspective, then why have a world at all? He will be more than happy to see Russia's great cities in ashes if he can profit from what's left of the world after.

 

[Pickman's model]

No, the reticence was to do with poor command structures, abysmal logistics, and 19 year olds being sent over the border without really being told what their objective was or why they were there. Putin has already cashiered the head of the Russian army. He expected this to be a cakewalk, and it hasn't been.



NATO may not intervene directly (which would be a tragic mistake, too) but NATO countries and the EU have been a lot more resolute than most expected. After all ten days ago if you'd said that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would lead to enormous economic sanctions, the indefinite pausing / bankruptcy of Nordstream, supplies of military hardware and civilian aid from around the EU & neighbouring states, Putin careesers being publicly shamed (Gerhard Schröder's entire private staff resigned from under him today), SWIFT deconnection, that a fast track EU membership for Ukraine would not only be discussed but actually put in motion, you'd probably have been thought pretty mad, naive, or both. Yet, here we are.

All of this is of little consolation to folk currently hiding in basements from Mariupol to Kharkiv, I understand. But it is a lot, lot more than could have been expected prior to 24 February- and a lot quicker, by comparison with the international community's sluggish and inept handling of the Bosnian War during 1992-95, let alone the abysmal indifference to Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, & co.

Another thing: Putin is absolutely indifferent to indivdual human life. The ordinary Russian citizen is about as important to him, as an individual grain of sand on the local beach is to us. He's a friendless,greedy sociopath and if there's to be a world without a powerful Russia, according to his perspective, then why have a world at all? He will be more than happy to see Russia's great cities in ashes if he can profit from what's left of the world after.

Head of Russian army cashiered - would this be gerasimov whose sacking has been denied? Link pls

 

[Red Cat]

i'd say it's almost certain that all societies have words to describe people who don't appear to conform to a widely shared view of reality. but of course a widely shared view of reality doesn't make it rational - it was i think nietzsche who said that madness in individuals is rare but in groups, peoples, ages, it is the norm.

where i've said 'cod psychology' i've meant it as i understood the term - drawing conclusions about someone's state of mind on the basis of scanty evidence. yeh i may have had that a mite wrong. but i don't think that you can draw accurate conclusions when every image of putin - as it is for so many other leaders - is likely choreographed. i don't suppose he or biden goes on telly and projects their actual persona: george w bush, as another example, famously much more eloquent away from the cameras or gordon brown, equally famously angry away from the cameras. so to try to draw conclusions from what's effectively staged seems to me a foolish ploy. especially at a time when a) there's a vast barrage of propaganda going on saying how putin's losing it, and b) there are of course other explanations for any apparently aberrant behaviour: i've mentioned nixon upthread.

this isn't to say that putin's a cold clinical calculating machine, but that it's in my view very difficult to read him accurately at the moment when the signals that are being sent out may be intentional and we're all subject to campaigns of persuasion.

in addition, there's scores of examples of people saying on threads across the boards 'don't associate mental illness with violence'. i'm surprised to see it's now thought fine to use terms of mental illness when it's someone almost universally detested.

My point was that mad or insane or losing it are colloquial terms about experiences that we all have from time to time, to varying degrees, they're not really psychiatric ones, or not only. They seem to me to be words that aren't only reducible to or synonymous with current notions of mental illness or scientific ideas from 'above' about human behaviour. These words might be pejorative due to attempts to maintain social cohesion in groups, large or small, and to manage/control potential conflict, instability and threat - they put the madness 'out there'. Of course I agree that widely shared does not mean rational and the putting the madness 'out there' is a way of denying the madness 'in here'.

You may well be right about the limits of evidence and your explanation of the choreography/staging is a good one, one that makes me think much more than the criticisms of cod psychology.

I think you do have cod psychology right as a definition, btw, I just don't like it because it seems to elevate, or separate psychology above what it came from, which is people trying to make sense of other people with whatever theories or stories are common at the time, as if psychology the science is quite different to all that, which it isn't really.

However, the thread has long since moved on.

 

[Gramsci]

Saying that Putin is not mad reminds me of Apocalypse Now where I think it's Dennis Hopper's character who says to Capt. Willard that Col. Kurtz has a genius mind 'but his soul is mad', or something like that.

Btw Jonathan Steele's last paragraph in that piece hasn't aged well has it?

What ru saying about Steeles piece? That what he's saying is wrong?

So your saying that Putin is mad? That this is explanation of the background to this conflict?

On Apocalypse Now. I thought the underlying theme of the film is that the whole American involvement was "mad". Kurtz madness was to take the US war to its logical conclusion. Remember the beginning. He was outstanding soldier. Kurtz in the film was critique of US government foreign policy.

 

[Ax^]

ok if this thread is chasing poster's who can give their own view points away from it we need a forum of this on going conflict

not everyone is a Politics poster on the boards but this is more than a small issue for almost everyone


experts on this situation posting on this thread seriously

 

[steeplejack]

Head of Russian army cashiered - would this be gerasimov whose sacking has been denied? Link pls

Yes

rumours crackling away on telegram / twitter on Sunday, denied yesterday. Put down as an "unverified" although the hurried rush to deny it seems a bit fishy to me.

example tweet:



official denial

https://ura. news/articles/1036278272 (link broken)