ska invita
back on the other side
Who can?
Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-24
- Thread starter kebabking
- Start date
teqniq
DisMembered
Grim:
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Thread by @ChrisO_wiki on Thread Reader App
@ChrisO_wiki: 1/ Dozens of Russian soldiers who have been imprisoned and starved in a basement have been forced back to the front lines at gunpoint by the Russian Army, according to relatives. Some are reportedly si...…
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Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
Not unbelievable tbh, Ukraines ability to defy the Russians, Zelenskys oratory and leadership all saw a stark change in the standard response of western countries to Putins aggression over last twenty years.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
You can see why Russia is so keen to personalise the conflict around Zelenskyy - he's been a gamechanger. The gerontocracy must really fucking hate him!
Surely counterproductive too? At some point, having suffered like that, far from fighting harder you'd be ready for it all to be over.Grim:
Thread by @ChrisO_wiki on Thread Reader App
@ChrisO_wiki: 1/ Dozens of Russian soldiers who have been imprisoned and starved in a basement have been forced back to the front lines at gunpoint by the Russian Army, according to relatives. Some are reportedly si...…
I don't really understand what Russia thinks the endgame looks like for their own society. They're going to have a lot (or at least a few) heavily combat hardened veterans returning to a country that did this to them and their friends, for nothing. Is it considered likely they'll just fade back into the towns and families they were ripped from, and occasionally turn out to gratefully salute their commander in chief?
nogojones
spelling is overrated
From my understanding most of the conscripts have been mostly plucked from out of the way places like Dagestan and relative backwaters. I guess the thinking is that any who do make it back to cause trouble can be put down much more easily than if they were from more "important" places like Moscow and St Petersburg.
DownwardDog
Riding a Brompton with a power meter.
As if Ukraine hasn't suffered enough the UK is sending them Sea Kings. I bet the Fleet Air Arm Museum is doing an emergency stock-take.
At least the Ukrainians will become expert in stop drilling fatigue cracks.
At least the Ukrainians will become expert in stop drilling fatigue cracks.
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
I'm not even sure it's a thought through, deliberate decision worked out on a blank sheet of paper - it's simply how the Russian Army works, and has always worked. It's their military and political culture, and always has been. It's a culture that's survived the political and philosophical changes from Empire to Soviet Union, and from Soviet Union to kind-of-democratic liberal Russia of the 1990's, through to whatever the hell Russia is now.
Brutality and repression does, sometimes,stop working, but while it's working it works.
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
Russian rulers have consistently not given a toss about the physical or mental well being of their subjects, particularly outside of the Great Russian heartlands. Why should Putin be any different?
StoneRoad
heckling from the back!
He isn't, that's the problem [or one of them !]
gosub
~#
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I'd say that brutality and repression inevitably stops working, but it quite often takes a long time.
editor
hiraethified
Fuck, that is awful. What shitty, pointless war and what pointless suffering while Putin lives in luxury.Grim:
Thread by @ChrisO_wiki on Thread Reader App
@ChrisO_wiki: 1/ Dozens of Russian soldiers who have been imprisoned and starved in a basement have been forced back to the front lines at gunpoint by the Russian Army, according to relatives. Some are reportedly si...…
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
The place is the poorest country in Europe, way worse than the most deprived places in the UK with no social support etc to speak of. Over half of Moldova's power was knocked out by Putin's missiles and they're heading into winter
ska invita
back on the other side
Not questioning that at all, it's a tragedy...I can't imagine it's going to be much easier elsewhere in much of Ukraine this winter
Well yes, why should he? Equally, why shouldn't he? For the first decade and more, he was largely viewed as a benevolent dictator - and he could've chosen to be exactly that. He'd be living less fearfully for start. And he must worry for his children (not least after he's gone) which wouldn't be so necessary had he not gone in this direction. They could've been set with multi generational wealth and no particular enemies who really hate the name itself. There was self interest in not acting the way he has. Who knows.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
The Exeter anarchist scene will be turning in their graves
I'm sure, internally. From the outside it seemed like one, but kind of a comedy lite version of one (if you ignored Chechnya, and some other particularly glaring deficiencies) - and quite interesting, somewhere with appeal. And there, at the head of it all, was the inappropriate uncle - a bit of a rogue, given to outbursts like ironically barebacking wild animals to demonstrate his hetero credentials, maybe pushing the joke a little too far sometimes but still usually with a cheeky smile. Now, not so much. That was actively his choice, and it seems like a strangely self limiting one.
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
Firstly, there's no such thing as a benevolent dictator. Not really. Some are better than others. That's all you can say.
Secondly, he has been down the route of militaristic adventurism for quite some time, with suppressing Chechnya, and then invading Georgia, supporting secessionists in South Ossetia, Transnistria,Abkhazia etc, turning Belarus back into a client state. The direction of travel was obvious some time ago. It's the acceleration that is something of a surprise, and more than a bit scary.
Yes, I know, and was cognizant of all that and more. It's just that besides that, it was a disconnect to be truly scared of someone so eccentric, with bad plastic surgery and a taste for parody rococo interiors.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Putin's way of keeping the population subdued was to disengage them from politics or wanting to overthrow him rather than relying on massive amounts of repression. There definitely was repression and I don't want to minimise that but it was quite possible to criticise Putin in opposition media outlets or academic articles, or attend political meetings criticising him for example without many problems, even today there are limited places for debate. Although a lot of it is staged by the Kremlin itself like with those awful talk shows, but that was always the case with Putin's hall of mirrors
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Well a lot of people weren't scared until it was too late, maybe they should have been.
Putin propagated the idea very successfully that 'its nothing to do with me'
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
It's the rococo interiors that first aroused my concerns.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
I did my work experience with 22 squadron. Most of it was spent crawling around in the tail of a sea king with a tube of epoxy.
Yes, exactly. He's an interesting live case of the genre, that's all. And in addition to the millions of lives he's fucked up, and the millions more he will fuck up, his own life must be included in that tally. Not in a sympathetic way at all, just in a kind of breathtaking way. Breathtaking at him, at myself in spite of myself, at others - so many others. He was really good at what he was doing, and really good at doing it in plain sight, until he just wasn't.
I like to think of him driven mad with envy. He must've thought Zelensky was some kid from the sticks. He'd seen off so many, he'd quickly see off this one too. How astonishing it must've been when so many people actually and very rapidly came to the opposite conclusion. For a man of such vanity, even the very blatantly petty stuff of how many people wanted Zelensky to throw them against the nearest wall for a fuck must've stung like hell.
It's a tragedy that he's dragged everyone else down with him, but it's also a curious individual case of totally fucking up everything in your life, including your own psyche, for absolutely nothing. That's the really amazing bit - this was all for absolutely nothing. Of course we know that some people do that, some attain leadership, and go on to destruction and spectacular implosion. But the scale of his own personal implosion is absolutely breathtaking.
He is a real life Bond villain for the social media age. Stranger than fiction.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Zelensky had a reputation as being pro Russian or at least neutral (he pissed off Ukrainian nationalists with his opposition to a cultural boycott of Russia) and was from a largely Russian speaking region, also he didn't believe American warnings of an invasion initially. I think the role hes taken on has probably taken him by surprise tbh
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