Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

[LDC]

i've seen it, if it's the same one. Sadly not all the cars were big shiny ones.

The BBC just stopped a couple of Russians (maybe not in Russia, but can't remember) and asked how much they supported Putin.

"100%" one said. A pause. "200%". Really expected another pause and a nervous "300%" to come next.

The modern day version of clapping Stalin's speech.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

Someone is going to get an extra star and sent to the front , urged on by the bayonets of the commissars

Congratulations! You've been promoted!

Here are your new orders. You're being deployed to the front line.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

this is very annoying but apparently true:

Johnson's a duplicitous cunt, though, a pathological liar who tells everyone what they want to hear. Wouldn't surprise me if Putin also thinks him and Johnson are BFFs.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

This is a bleak piece but has a great line in it.

View attachment 313444

Even if he and others really did think that Ukrainians were just Russians who strayed by mistake, the anger and hatred created this past 11 days will probably last generations now.

Hate for Putin’s Russia Consumes Ukraine (Published 2022)

Much of the bitterness is directed at President Vladimir V. Putin, but Ukrainians also chastise ordinary Russians, calling them complicit.

www.nytimes.com

Well that escalated quickly.

 

[Bingoman]

Micronesia's in the shit.

These are the countries Russia considers ‘unfriendly’

Decision comes after Moscow released a list of countries taking ‘unfriendly actions’ against Russia.

www.aljazeera.com

Russia issues list of ‘unfriendly’ countries amid Ukraine crisis​

According to a government statement, the list includes Albania, Andorra, Australia, Great Britain, including Jersey, Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Gibraltar, European Union member states, Iceland, Canada, Liechtenstein, Micronesia, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, San Marino, North Macedonia, Singapore, United States, Taiwan, Ukraine, Montenegro, Switzerland and Japan

What has little Monaco Andorra done wrong?

 

[ska invita]

That conclusion is basically a complete surrender, I am struggling to see that happening, or how it would help in the long-term.

https://www.jpost.com/international/article-700677

what do you see happening?

 

[cupid_stunt]

https://www.jpost.com/international/article-700677

what do you see happening?

I think you have made clear your view that Ukraine should just surrender to Putin's demands, I am not sure that is currently acceptable, beyond that I have no idea, exactly the same as everyone else, no one knows.

 

[Pickman's model]

Johnson's a duplicitous cunt, though, a pathological liar who tells everyone what they want to hear. Wouldn't surprise me if Putin also thinks him and Johnson are BFFs.

Sure Putin thinks him a terrible bore

 

[LDC]

I have some sympathy for the argument Ukraine should surrender to avoid more bloodshed and a bigger more destructive war. But the people saying that need to be 100% clear that the reason they're advocating that is out of an attempt to avoid more problems, and it's sacrificing Ukraine and Ukrainians to that hope.

And also people advocating that need to then explain what their position would be if that doesn't stop Putin, and what their actual red lines are. Or would it just be surrender again?

 

[bimble]

i don't understand this. Poland is giving fighter planes to America, in Gernmany, and then America will give them to Ukraine, and give other planes to Poland to pay them back.
Why is this a cunning plan what is the thing i'm not understanding?

Statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland in connection with the statement by the US Secretary of State on providing airplanes to Ukraine - Ministry of Foreign Affairs Republic of Poland - Gov.pl website

www.gov.pl

 

[planetgeli]

Ukraine war: Refugee's daughter says there's a risk of riots at visa centre

The daughter of a Ukrainian refugee tells of anger and frustration as MPs criticise the UK visa system.

www.bbc.co.uk

There should be rioting, but that's not really the story. The story is the appalling bureaucratic mess these people are facing trying to get here. Is Johnson really their favourite?

French authorities in Calais repeated their criticism of the UK's "lack of humanity", saying almost 300 Ukrainian refugees have been turned back by the UK Border Force, while hundreds were stuck trying to complete paperwork for visas.

"Yesterday the home secretary told the House twice that a visa centre en route to Calais has now been set up but it still doesn't exist.
"The foreign secretary just said it might be in Lille - nearly 72 miles from Calais.
"The Home Office said this morning that no decision had been taken. Well, which is it? Has it? Where is it? Can people get there yet?"

And even the Tories say it's a shit situation

Conservative Mark Harper, a former immigration minister, said even if security checks were needed, the government needed to "grip the pace of this" and called for a minister to set out the details of the humanitarian sponsorship route within days - not weeks or months..
Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke said the speed of response was a "disgrace" during "a war of the likes that has not been seen for 80 years in Europe".

 

[cupid_stunt]

i don't understand this. Poland is giving fighter planes to America, in Gernmany, and then America will give them to Ukraine, and give other planes to Poland to pay them back.
Why is this a cunning plan what is the thing i'm not understanding?

Statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland in connection with the statement by the US Secretary of State on providing airplanes to Ukraine - Ministry of Foreign Affairs Republic of Poland - Gov.pl website

www.gov.pl

Poland doesn't want to be seen to supply the jets directly, leaving them open to attack from Russia, better to do it via the US & Germany, as there's less chance of Putin attacking Germany.

 

[agricola]

I have some sympathy for the argument Ukraine should surrender to avoid more bloodshed and a bigger more destructive war. But the people saying that need to be 100% clear that the reason they're advocating that is out of an attempt to avoid more problems, and it's sacrificing Ukraine and Ukrainians to that hope.

And also people advocating that need to then explain what their position would be if that doesn't stop Putin, and what their actual red lines are. Or would it just be surrender again?

I disagree - this is not a set of circumstances where there are good options, for them or the rest of the world. If Putin has offered those terms, they are harsh but they could be lived with and - should this look like it was going to happen again - there might be more chance of a favourable international reaction (or at least one more likely to draw in more of the world). There is also what happens when those soldiers go home and tell their friends and family what it was actually like, which is possibly going be more effective than any amount of Western media filtering through over there.

If Zelensky doesn't take it and fights on, there is a guarantee of a war that he is very likely to lose with severe consequences for him and his people. The economic and human damage to the rest of the world is going to be bad as well (if it is prolonged) with Russia able to (entirely hypocritically) claim that they did offer peace and it was rejected.

 

[bimble]

Poland doesn't want to be seen to supply the jets directly, leaving them open to attack from Russia, better to do it via the US & Germany, as there's less chance of Putin attacking Germany.

yeah i see now. someone else has explained that this way the USA can say, “We didn’t give Ukraine any of our planes.” And Poland also can say, “We didn’t give Ukraine any of our planes" but theres a load of new planes in Ukraine.

it does all seem a bit .. ridiculous? Like is this a brilliant ruse that the Kremlin will not read about on twitter cos they're not looking so they'll be totally bamboozle?

 

[SpookyFrank]

yeah i see now. someone else has explained that this way the USA can say, “We didn’t give Ukraine any of our planes.” And Poland also can say, “We didn’t give Ukraine any of our planes" but theres a load of new planes in Ukraine.

it does all seem a bit .. ridiculous? Like is this a brilliant ruse that the Kremlin will not read about on twitter cos they're not looking so they'll be totally bamboozle?

Not unlike Putin and his who knows how those separatists got the Russian-made SAM that shot down that airliner.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

Yes, that's what I mean, the party line doesn't tell you much about what's actually going on. There are also differences between English language press and domestic, so the English language outlets represent a very filtered line... Chinese press is too much to get a proper handle on though, can get a rough idea through google translate, but you really need decent awareness of nuance in language and of how things usually play out at this time of year.

As an example there's been a lot of talk about bolstering the legal systems used in the PLA... But without knowing the background to this, it's hard to say whether this is something expected, or a sign that they're looking at what's happening in Russia and reinforcing to their generals that corruption won't be tolerated. Or indeed both. In turn that needs awareness of wider crackdowns on corruption going on at the moment, and how it might relate to that. Then of course to get anywhere close to what a basic breakfast scan of the Guardian would tell you, you need to understand what the concept of something like 'rule of law' means in China. Which I do not have a scooby about. Also don't like asking friends about politics over wechat. So yeah... It is tricky to really work out what anyone's thinking.

I don't follow China that closely any more, but I worked for the Chinese state media in Beijing for a while in the early 2000s and then as a paralegal for an international law firm there. Chinese laws were relatively fairly loosely drafted in comparison to, say, the laws of England and Wales. A lot of business seemed historically to have been honour-based and through guanxi (connections, like 'old boy network' here and 'wasta' in the Middle East), so I got the impression that business transactions didn't used to have the agreements with the level of small print ours did. They were bringing it more in line with international law, but the legal documentation I drafted and edited in Beijing wasn't as in-depth as, eg, the transaction bibles I'd prepared working on M&As for one of Europe's largest commercial law firms as a PA to a partner. And things like intellectual property law was nowhere near as sophisticated and even the concept of intellectual property wasn't widely understood or accepted by many Chinese people doing business internationally. It was very different. Think I still have a copy of the Chinese company law somewhere, tiny book.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

If Zelensky says to stop fighting he may find a) that the Russians continue to be murderous anyway, b) many of his own people ignore his orders, which means that c) the Russians will get even heavier with them and d) he loses any control over the situation. So he may see no choice but to continue. Some choice, huh?

 

[gosub]

i don't understand this. Poland is giving fighter planes to America, in Gernmany, and then America will give them to Ukraine, and give other planes to Poland to pay them back.
Why is this a cunning plan what is the thing i'm not understanding?

Statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland in connection with the statement by the US Secretary of State on providing airplanes to Ukraine - Ministry of Foreign Affairs Republic of Poland - Gov.pl website

www.gov.pl

How they get across the border.

 

[Artaxerxes]

How they get across the border.

Red Bull

 

[DaveCinzano]

i don't understand this. Poland is giving fighter planes to America, in Gernmany, and then America will give them to Ukraine, and give other planes to Poland to pay them back.
Why is this a cunning plan what is the thing i'm not understanding?

Statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland in connection with the statement by the US Secretary of State on providing airplanes to Ukraine - Ministry of Foreign Affairs Republic of Poland - Gov.pl website

www.gov.pl

I would imagine Poland would rather not be short of combat-ready aircraft by giving them away to a neighbour to use on a mutual neighbour. This way the transfer is underwritten, combat strength is maintained, and there's a cheeky upgrade thrown in too.

 

[Crispy]

Presumably those migs are NATO-compatible and therefore able to talk to the airborne radar planes that have been flying non-stop over Romania and Poland for weeks.

 

[LDC]

I disagree - this is not a set of circumstances where there are good options, for them or the rest of the world. If Putin has offered those terms, they are harsh but they could be lived with and - should this look like it was going to happen again - there might be more chance of a favourable international reaction (or at least one more likely to draw in more of the world). There is also what happens when those soldiers go home and tell their friends and family what it was actually like, which is possibly going be more effective than any amount of Western media filtering through over there.

If Zelensky doesn't take it and fights on, there is a guarantee of a war that he is very likely to lose with severe consequences for him and his people. The economic and human damage to the rest of the world is going to be bad as well (if it is prolonged) with Russia able to (entirely hypocritically) claim that they did offer peace and it was rejected.

Currently those terms haven't been offered, so it's all speculation by anti-war lefties not living in Ukraine from what I can see. That situation could be lived with much easier by some in the UK than some in Ukraine I expect. Have you read much about life under the Russian separatists in DPR and LPR?

 

[LDC]

yeah i see now. someone else has explained that this way the USA can say, “We didn’t give Ukraine any of our planes.” And Poland also can say, “We didn’t give Ukraine any of our planes" but theres a load of new planes in Ukraine.

it does all seem a bit .. ridiculous? Like is this a brilliant ruse that the Kremlin will not read about on twitter cos they're not looking so they'll be totally bamboozle?

International relations and that kinda stuff does seem ridiculous on many levels. I find it weird we can fly fuck loads of effective, modern, and highly useful anti-tank weapons and give them training, but that's kinda in the rules, but some other things are considered a declaration of war.

 

[A380]

Fourth instalment today. Still some good, if not that cheering, analysis of open source material. 20 mins but again recommended.

 

[weltweit]

International relations and that kinda stuff does seem ridiculous on many levels. I find it weird we can flay fuck loads of effective modern and highly useful anti-tank weapons and give them training, but that's kinda in the rules, but some other things are considered a declaration of war.

Yes, there seem lots of anomalies. Personally I think this idea of the warplanes might be pushing our luck.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

This is a fast moving situation and there’s a shit tonne of information to digest. If you want long conversation without up to date info to hand it’s just comforting mental masturbation.

I was watching the thread for many months (when it was called Ukraine 2.0) when most weren’t interested in developments. Then War broke out and BOOM. Every armchair expert and their dog were repeating every last morsel from the 24 hour news channels. I can’t keep up so write it off.
It does raise the question as what is all this for though. Maybe useful for future historians but in the short term only really of use for the online talking heads who are glued to this site.

 

[bimble]

International relations and that kinda stuff does seem ridiculous on many levels. I find it weird we can flay fuck loads of effective modern and highly useful anti-tank weapons and give them training, but that's kinda in the rules, but some other things are considered a declaration of war.

its also all based on the idea that everyone knows and is playing by the intricate established rules, this action means you're at war but this other action doesn't, cos it says so in the rules. which seems a truly bizarre idea to have confidence in to me.

 

[elbows]

Oh I just read this Guardian article, which is based on the Institute for the Study of War stuff that I have posted previous tweets from in recent days. It contains a bunch of elements which are broadly in tune with my previous droning on about Russian regrouping and my view about it still being too soon to make claims about a really elongated timescale of a possible successful attack on Kyiv, prospects for failure etc.

Russia ‘solving logistics problems’ and could attack Kyiv within days – experts

Influential thinktank concludes that invading army’s flawed assumptions are gradually being overcome

www.theguardian.com

Russia’s surprisingly chaotic attack on Kyiv has seen thousands of troops and hundreds of vehicles stuck on the roads to the north-west for several days – but several military analysts believe Moscow is gradually overcoming its logistics problems and could be able to mount an assault on the capital within days.

The influential Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based thinktank, concluded on Tuesday evening that Russian forces were now “concentrating in the eastern, north-western and western outskirts of Kyiv” in preparation for an “assault on the capital in the coming 24-96 hours”.

But, speaking at an event organised by the Rusi (Royal United Services Institute) thinktank, Kofman said he believed “the logistics problem is oversold” and the problem faced by the invaders was more basic – that it was “extremely hard to undo” the traffic jam problem once it emerged. “Militaries often have to learn problems the hard way,” he added.

Gradually, experts believe, Russia has become more careful about keeping its troops within the protection of its air defences – while at the same time, the problems of the north-west, arguably the most direct invasion route to the capital, have not necessarily been replicated elsewhere.

Russian forces appear to be advancing to the east of the capital to the suburb of Brovary, according to video posted on social media on Tuesday, in a developing attempt to encircle the capital.

And, despite the logistics problems in the north-west, Ukrainian forces have not been able to make a significant attempt to destroy the advancing convoy, partly due the limited air power available to Kyiv’s armed forces.

There is still significant uncertainty about how successful Russia will be with this attempt, but I didnt quote those bits as I arguably quoted too much already. Also in typical Guardian fashion they may have fucked up a piece of detail, in that as best I can tell via my very brief and sloppy check, the “assault on the capital in the coming 24-96 hours” is actually from the ISW analysis published on Monday, not Tuesday.

 

[emanymton]

I have some sympathy for the argument Ukraine should surrender to avoid more bloodshed and a bigger more destructive war. But the people saying that need to be 100% clear that the reason they're advocating that is out of an attempt to avoid more problems, and it's sacrificing Ukraine and Ukrainians to that hope.

And also people advocating that need to then explain what their position would be if that doesn't stop Putin, and what their actual red lines are. Or would it just be surrender again?

I would not be 100% convinced that surrender to Russia would be the way to prevent the most bloodshed. In the next few days and weeks yes, but over months and years who knows.

Don't think it out place to say what Ukrainians should accept or not anyway.

 

[Mr Moose]

I disagree - this is not a set of circumstances where there are good options, for them or the rest of the world. If Putin has offered those terms, they are harsh but they could be lived with and - should this look like it was going to happen again - there might be more chance of a favourable international reaction (or at least one more likely to draw in more of the world). There is also what happens when those soldiers go home and tell their friends and family what it was actually like, which is possibly going be more effective than any amount of Western media filtering through over there.

If Zelensky doesn't take it and fights on, there is a guarantee of a war that he is very likely to lose with severe consequences for him and his people. The economic and human damage to the rest of the world is going to be bad as well (if it is prolonged) with Russia able to (entirely hypocritically) claim that they did offer peace and it was rejected.

This largely depends on whether Ukraine would be allowed under the terms to continue to choose its own Government or whether it would be a satellite state, like Belarus with a puppet government. The minimum for Ukraine has to be independent Government otherwise its people will be subject to Russian repression, polonium tea, exploitation of their resources and wealth etc in perpetuity.

What would the future be like for a Country whose citizens would be unable to raise an independent army, independently decide on its own treaties or even laws? It means saving suffering now for more down the line and the possible permanent exile of a large section of the population who will not return under that deal. After all, who could possibly trust the Russians on this? No one will be there to keep Russia to the terms of any agreement, Russia would forbid it.

I’m not cheering on one choice or another, the desire to end the war must be so strong, but I can understand if they do not.