Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24

[existentialist]

There's reports of Americans turning up and complaining they can't bring their pets to a war lol. In general I think what Ukraine probably doesn't need is a bunch of ideologically motivated, tooled up yet clueless westerners lol

There's an interesting Guardian (I think) article which tracks a few volunteers on their way to Ukraine. There does seem to be a certain...filtering (sometimes self-filtering) process underway as they head further East. I suspect most of the dreamers and the walts get sidelined fairly early on into the recruitment process.

There also seems to be a separate channel for militarily-experienced types who are, effectively, going to join the Ukrainian army proper, which seems to involve a certain about of checking before they even get there.

Among the Americans fighting in Ukraine: ‘I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t come’

I joined four Americans who dropped everything to travel across the world and risk their lives defending someone else’s country

www.theguardian.com

 

[8ball]

So you briefly lost control of your bile and tried to cover with a rapid edit, and you even got a like from 8ball. Impressive. But your new argument rests on Putin's plan NOT being to prevent Nato's eastward expansion. Which actually IS his plan. Really, you'd have done better to cut your previous post down to a full stop.

Not sure which side of the edit my like was, but the like was because I agree with PM about the outmanoeuvring stuff.
We could maybe be a bit less combative generally.

 

[maomao]

We could maybe be a bit less combative generally.

No fighting on the war thread!

 

[8ball]

No fighting on the war thread!

Jaw, jaw etc. etc.

 

[tommers]

Another mysterious fire I see.

 

[emanymton]

Another mysterious fire I see.

I'm not sure which looks worse for Russia really, Ukraine sinking it, or them doing it themselves by accident.

Probably the second.

 

[FabricLiveBaby!]

As I said 2 pages ago ...

 

[AverageJoe]

Who the fuck brings their pets to a war zone? Owners of armoured attack grizzlies?

Elves. And their friends.

I've seen the ancient war documentary "The Lord Of The Rings" and its sequel" The Hobbit".

Place was chockablock with hooved and wingey things.

#fact

 

[Cid]

From the full RIA article you get the impression that there was a minor fire that may have caused a bit of a detonation, nothing uncontrollable like, but dinged the hull a bit. And then the storm sunk it. Nothing to see here, move along please. Crew? Er... No, we're not even going to mention them.

 

[LDC]

Fucking. Hell. That is big news.

 

[frogwoman]

That explanation sounds worse than Ukraine hitting it tbh. How can their flagship war ship 'sink in a storm' ? The Russian state has form for insultingly covering up disasters at sea though

 

[Cid]

They do actually mention the crew very briefly ('fully evacuated')... Full text run through google so no-one has to give RIA the clicks:

MOSCOW, April 14 - RIA Novosti. The Moskva missile cruiser, which was damaged by detonation of ammunition, sank while being towed, the Defense Ministry said.

"During the towing of the Moskva cruiser to the port of destination, due to damage to the hull received during the fire from the detonation of ammunition, the ship lost stability. In the conditions of stormy seas, the ship sank," the military department said.

On the night of April 14, the Ministry of Defense reported that a fire had started on the Moskva cruiser, causing the ammunition to detonate. The crew was completely evacuated. At the same time, the main missile armament was not damaged, the source of ignition was localized and the ship remained buoyant.

 

[elbows]

That explanation sounds worse than Ukraine hitting it tbh. How can their flagship war ship 'sink in a storm' ? The Russian state has form for insultingly covering up disasters at sea though

Well its a combination of being badly damaged and then sinking later. The extent of any lying depends on how much time really passed between it being damaged and sinking, and whether it would have sunk without stormy conditions being present.

 

[Dogsauce]

I almost expect the Russian coverage is designed to fool the boss, not the rest of the world. An accident, could have happened anytime, break it to him gently with a tale of yes-it’s-mostly-OK then oops it sank in the storm, not a result of your foolish war guvnor.

Glad it’s out of the war. Unfortunately still plenty of other missile cruisers raining death on innocents.

 

[skyscraper101]

Maybe P&O could lend them one of their ships seeing as they’re doing shag all else right now.

 

[agricola]

They do actually mention the crew very briefly ('fully evacuated')... Full text run through google so no-one has to give RIA the clicks:

Hope that is true (that all the crew got off), though it is really hard to square an ammunition explosion that causes a vessel to sink with no-one aboard getting killed.

 

[maomao]

Unfortunately still plenty of other missile cruisers raining death on innocents.

That was the only one in the black sea.

 

[elbows]

As I said 2 pages ago ...

You suggested the US were lying about it avoid 'severe repercussions' or as some part of a game involving shielding Putin from reality.

What is more likely is that the USA lacked the right info, or had a lag in that info, or sought to disguise how much they really knew, or quite plausibly not wanting to be the ones to confirm it had sunk, perhaps as part of some etiquette involving letting nations confirm their own major losses first. Such etiquette is often going to seem rather bizarre given what else happens in war, and Im very far from being knowledgeable about such things, but I expect it exists.

I will still partially concede to your point, since the aforementioned etiquette is a part of diplomacy, and such diplomacy does have an 'avoiding severe repercussions' dimension. Just not quite the flavour of it that you were getting at. ie its more about giving Russia more control over the timing and detail of the announcement of the loss of this ship, rather than completely enabling Putin to totally deny that the ship was lost, or enabling other parts of the Russian regime to hide the truth from Putin.

 

[elbows]

I almost expect the Russian coverage is designed to fool the boss, not the rest of the world. An accident, could have happened anytime, break it to him gently with a tale of yes-it’s-mostly-OK then oops it sank in the storm, not a result of your foolish war guvnor.

Its probably obvious by now that this sort of thinking drives me mad. Us not having access to Russian inner circles info and the private thoughts of their leadership is not a good reason to try to use their public messaging as a guide. Their official statements are for domestic and/or international public consumption, we cannot reliably decode these crafted messages in order to ascertain what they are really thinking privately or how information flows in their upper echelons.

 

[_Russ_]

 

[Spymaster]

You suggested the US were lying about it avoid 'severe repercussions' or as some part of a game involving shielding Putin from reality.

What is more likely is that the USA lacked the right info, or had a lag in that info, or sought to disguise how much they really knew, or quite plausibly not wanting to be the ones to confirm it had sunk, perhaps as part of some etiquette involving letting nations confirm their own major losses first. Such etiquette is often going to seem rather bizarre given what else happens in war, and Im very far from being knowledgeable about such things, but I expect it exists.

I will still partially concede to your point, since the aforementioned etiquette is a part of diplomacy, and such diplomacy does have an 'avoiding severe repercussions' dimension. Just not quite the flavour of it that you were getting at. ie its more about giving Russia more control over the timing and detail of the announcement of the loss of this ship, rather than completely enabling Putin to totally deny that the ship was lost, or enabling other parts of the Russian regime to hide the truth from Putin.

I very much doubt there's any question of etiquette at play here. Biden's just called Putin a war criminal and more, so I doubt releasing news of a warships sinking a bit early is going to bother anyone too much.

I suspect that the reason they didn't release the information earlier was that they either didn't know, or they did know but shouting about it immediately would have compromised the source of the intelligence.

 

[Supine]

Good thread on the sinking. Guy seems to know his stuff.

 

[David Clapson]

Navalny wants the West to buy ads on social media to inform the Russian public about the war. How would this work? Putin's already blocked Facebook and Instagram. Presumably he could block any other platform if he wants to? Is Navalny talking about ads in Google search results or something?

Kremlin critic Navalny calls for Google and Meta to turn their adtech into an anti-war weapon | TechCrunch

Jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny has called on tech giants Google and Meta/Facebook to help circumvent Putin's grip on the media and get information

techcrunch.com

Alexei Navalny calls for social media ‘information front’ against Russia

Jailed opposition leader urges west to support huge ad campaign in order to break through Kremlin Ukraine war propaganda

www.theguardian.com

Edit: perhaps we English speakers haven't fully understood Navalny's request, which is in 31 tweets

 

[Supine]

Trolling or just photoshop. Ukraine produced a stamp one day before they sunk the ship. Kudos.

 

[agricola]

I very much doubt there's any question of etiquette at play here. Biden's just called Putin a war criminal and more, so I doubt releasing news of a warships sinking a bit early is going to bother anyone too much.

I suspect that the reason they didn't release the information earlier was that they either didn't know, or they did know but shouting about it immediately would have compromised the source of the intelligence.

Not sure about that latter bit - I assume the Black Sea is the same as the oceans themselves (or possibly even more so) in that there will be seismic monitors (or more advanced things) all over the shop that could pick up and triangulate explosions of this kind (certainly they could for the Kursk and the San Juan). They might even have been able to pick up sinking / breaking up noises and it hitting the sea-bed.

 

[donkyboy]

'flagship' carrier sunk

 

[Spymaster]

Not sure about that latter bit - I assume the Black Sea is the same as the oceans themselves (or possibly even more so) in that there will be seismic monitors (or more advanced things) all over the shop that could pick up and triangulate explosions of this kind (certainly they could for the Kursk and the San Juan). They might even have been able to pick up sinking / breaking up noises and it hitting the sea-bed.

Possibly. Or satellite tracking of some form. But given the quality of the British and US intelligence since the start of the campaign, I strongly suspect there's some pretty high-level leaking going on somewhere in Moscow.

 

[8ball]

Possibly. Or satellite tracking of some form. But given the quality of the British and US intelligence since the start of the campaign, I strongly suspect there's some pretty high-level leaking going on somewhere in Moscow.

Another explanation for Generals regularly going missing.

 

[agricola]

Possibly. Or satellite tracking of some form. But given the quality of the British and US intelligence since the start of the campaign, I strongly suspect there's some pretty high-level leaking going on somewhere in Moscow.

Not sure the quality of intelligence has been that good TBF, or at least is the sort that could only have come from some high level source(s).

 

[elbows]

I'm sort of curious when I see how much of the twitter etc commentary has spoken about how shocking the loss of this ship was, what implications it has for other navies etc.

Because to my mind the loss of such a ship being seen as shocking is just a consequence of quite how ridiculously lopsided so many of the other wars in my lifetime have been, tending to feature one side which lacked the capabilities to inflict that sort of damage on the enemy.

I'll be the first to admit that in the opening weeks of this war, things had been framed in my mind in a manner which broadly followed that template, with Ukraine in the almost helpless underdog role. But its been a while since the reality was shown to be different enough that such a template wasnt a great fit, thankfully. So now I have adjusted, and Ukrainian victories and Russian losses are not shocking. But elsewhere is it fair to say there still seems to be giddy reactions of surprise that suggest some have been much slower to move beyond the narrow template which lopsided conflicts of this century made the norm? How long will that persist before expectations expand sufficiently to fit the real spectrum of possibilities that conflicts can actually feature?