Ukraine and the Russian invasion, Feb 2022 - tangentially related crap

[HAL9000]

I thought part of the reason for 2014 invasion was Ukraine wanted to join the EU



Now it looks like Ukraine will the start the process to get membership, Putin says he not against Ukraine joining the EU. Hmmmmmmmmmm
(interesting to see if full membership is achieved)

 

[agricola]

I thought part of the reason for 2014 invasion was Ukraine wanted to join the EU



Now it looks like Ukraine will the start the process to get membership, Putin says he not against Ukraine joining the EU. Hmmmmmmmmmm
(interesting to see if full membership is achieved)

I think it was more the coup far than the wish to join the EU that kicked that off (they'd been negotiating the association agreement that Yanukovych ended up rejecting before then without a conflict emerging).

 

[Rimbaud]

An idle thought - is Putin's invasion of Ukraine not a perfect example of Marx's old adage, history repeats first as tragedy, then as farce?

The idea of historical repetition that Hegel came up with is that something can fail once and be viewed as an accident or circumstantial, but it must happen twice before it is confirmed to be part of the trend of history. So the first time is a tragedy, second as farce.

Stalin's revival of Russian imperialism under a Soviet guise could rightly be called a tragedy, both from the perspective of colonised peoples and from the Russian perspective - it fell far short of its promises and came to an ignoble end.

Putin is a man who still has not recognised that the age of great powers expanding territory by force is gone, so his attempts to return to Russian Empire come across as farcical.

 

[HAL9000]

 

[8ball]

I guess it makes as much sense as bombing freedom into people.

 

[HAL9000]

I think in the past Putin didn't want Ukraine to join the European union, now he says he doesn't care.

Putin now says enlarged NATO is not a problem.

 

[The39thStep]

I've been reading NATO's Secret Armies by Daniele Ganser ( there's a pdf you can download at LibCom https://files.libcom.org/files/NATOs_secret_armies.pdf ) Its a brutal read on the founding of NATO and its development of Gladio (the 'stay behinds', normally right wing or fascists, set up in countries to oppose Communist Parties)

Quite amazingly a bare three years five years after the defeat of the Axis Powers, the USA made preparations to use its dummy party the Christian Democrats, who were on government in Italy, to go to NATO and call the Americans in to invade if the Italian Communist Party was elected.

 

[HAL9000]

 

[Pickman's model]

An idle thought - is Putin's invasion of Ukraine not a perfect example of Marx's old adage, history repeats first as tragedy, then as farce?

The idea of historical repetition that Hegel came up with is that something can fail once and be viewed as an accident or circumstantial, but it must happen twice before it is confirmed to be part of the trend of history. So the first time is a tragedy, second as farce.

Stalin's revival of Russian imperialism under a Soviet guise could rightly be called a tragedy, both from the perspective of colonised peoples and from the Russian perspective - it fell far short of its promises and came to an ignoble end.

Putin is a man who still has not recognised that the age of great powers expanding territory by force is gone, so his attempts to return to Russian Empire come across as farcical.

I think that it's a very great mistake to think that the age of great powers expanding territory by force is over. China certainly doesn't seem to have had that memo. We are at a very peculiar moment in history, this is a time when everything is in flux

 

[HAL9000]

Russia failed to perform encirclement 1 and 2, now reduced trying to do 3

 

[HAL9000]

Lithuania's view of Belarus is clear

 

[IC3D]

Reassuring this, New wave, punks on postcards, Spudulike and nuclear attack public information broadcasts.

 

[8ball]

Reassuring this, New wave, punks on postcards, Spudulike and nuclear attack public information broadcasts.

Shit, petee wasn't kidding about New York at the moment.

 

[teqniq]

As it says in the article the timing of the release of this info is interesting:

US: Iran aims to send drones to Russia for use in Ukraine

White House releases intel linking Iran to Russia's war on Ukraine just days before President Joe Biden is set to meet Israeli, Arab leaders.

www.al-monitor.com

 

[HAL9000]

Probably Ukrainian propaganda, but if true, its one of many examples that have hurt russian operation, like not having enough rations to feed the troops in the early days.

 

[Yossarian]

More than four months into the war, I think people are getting numb to headlines like "25 killed, including three children, in Russian attack on civilian area" - the Guardian is taking a different approach with a look at the last hours of one particular victim, 4-year-old Liza Dmitrieva.






Liza never made it home. Just after 11am, three missiles of seven, reportedly fired from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea, smashed into the square, exploding near the cultural centre, blowing out windows in a multi-storey building and setting dozens of cars in a nearby car park on fire.

Amid the carnage, more footage – which the Guardian is not publishing – shows Liza lying dead in her overturned pushchair. Nearby is a severed foot.

Social media posts chart life and death of girl in Russian strike

Liza Dmitrieva, four, was killed in a strike in the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia on Thursday

www.theguardian.com

 

[HAL9000]

 

[HAL9000]

 

[HAL9000]

 

[agricola]

as is pointed out on that thread, they've never stopped making it and it is for their conditions a very decent car

 

[HAL9000]

You Need To Know How To Shoot': Lviv Students Are Taught The ABCs Of Self-Defense

A youth creativity center in Ukraine's western city of Lviv is having summer classes to teach high-school students basic self-defense, weapons handling, and shooting. The mayor’s office plans to introduce similar classes and first aid as part of the regular school curriculum next year.

www.rferl.org

 

[IC3D]

Has this been posted? It can't be real. Allegedly released by the Russian embassy to promote immigration.

 

[8ball]

Has this been posted? It can't be real. Allegedly released by the Russian embassy to promote immigration.

Pretty funny. A bit of Poe's Law, but I'm calling fake.

 

[IC3D]

Beautiful women..hang on

 

[8ball]

Beautiful women..hang on

There's that first shot, which was... uncomfortable, and the second shot (of the adult woman) is actually a Ukrainian singer - it's nicked from one of her videos.
One of the authors in the "great literature" bit is also Ukrainian, so it's following the "Ukraine is a part of Russia" schtick and makes me second-guess myself a bit...

 

[HAL9000]

Interesting short vid. I would say that the discussion about Germany seems over optimistic, the expert thought europe might be able to make up the short fall in gas by the end of the year. I suspect its going to be a difficult winter and we will have to see if Germany does some sort of deal with Russia to get more gas.

Having said that, its not a smart move by Russia using gas as a political weapon against Germany, if Russian gas is seen as unreliable, may be Germany will be unable to break its depence on Russian gas this year I would suspect Germany will want to become indepent of Russian gas in the coming years.



In the long term if Germany needs little or no gas who will Russian sell it to? The infrastructure for sending gas to Germany was partly paid for by Germany

In exchange for the gas, West Germany would supply pipes as part of a much wider arrangement known as "pipes for gas." Gas imports from the Soviet Union were paid with steel pipe exports in the other direction.


By 1973, Russian gas had begun to flow to West Germany, the same year as it began coming to East Germany, which was part of Europe's East bloc and a satellite state of the Soviet Union.

Russian gas in Germany: A 50-year relationship – DW – 03/09/2022

For 50 years, Russian gas has powered German homes and businesses. From the start, the trade link was controversial, but it established deep economic ties between the two countries.

www.dw.com

How will Russia export gas in the future.. (lng = liquid natural gas)



Will it increase its LNG output and/or build a pipeline to a new customer? I assume Russia will need outside investment to change its gas infrastructure, given its current behaviour investors may see it as too risky. Like helping itself to leased planes..

Putin changes law on leased jets to keep them flying

The Russian president signs new law allowing foreign-leased jets to keep flying in Russia.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Yossarian]

What a clown Roger Waters is - I was never a Pink Floyd fan, but wasn't 'The Wall' a concept album about an isolated rock star who descends into insanity and embraces fascism?

Pink Floyd’s Waters backs Russia, calls Biden a ‘war criminal’ over Ukraine

Roger Waters is defending dubbing Joe Biden a “war criminal,” accusing the president of “fueling the fire in the Ukraine.” “That is a huge crime,” the Pink Floyd co-founder said in an interview tha…

thehill.com

 

[8ball]

What a clown Roger Waters is - I was never a Pink Floyd fan, but wasn't 'The Wall' a concept album about an isolated rock star who descends into insanity and embraces fascism?

Pink Floyd’s Waters backs Russia, calls Biden a ‘war criminal’ over Ukraine

Roger Waters is defending dubbing Joe Biden a “war criminal,” accusing the president of “fueling the fire in the Ukraine.” “That is a huge crime,” the Pink Floyd co-founder said in an interview tha…

thehill.com

Doesn’t seem to be backing Russia from a first scan - just seems to be pointing out all the fucking about by NATO leading up to it.

 

[Dystopiary]

There've been a series of explosions near Ziabrauka airfield in the Homiel region of Belarus. (The airfield is used by Russian troops to attack Ukraine.)

 

[yield]

Henry Kissinger Is Worried About ‘Disequilibrium’
WSJ. Aug. 12, 2022 archive.ph

Mr. Kissinger sees today’s world as verging on a dangerous disequilibrium. “We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to,” he says. Could the U.S. manage the two adversaries by triangulating between them, as during the Nixon years? He offers no simple prescription. “You can’t just now say we’re going to split them off and turn them against each other. All you can do is not to accelerate the tensions and to create options, and for that you have to have some purpose.”

On the question of Taiwan, Mr. Kissinger worries that the U.S. and China are maneuvering toward a crisis, and he counsels steadiness on Washington’s part. “The policy that was carried out by both parties has produced and allowed the progress of Taiwan into an autonomous democratic entity and has preserved peace between China and the U.S. for 50 years,” he says. “One should be very careful, therefore, in measures that seem to change the basic structure.”

Mr. Kissinger courted controversy earlier this year by suggesting that incautious policies on the part of the U.S. and NATO may have touched off the crisis in Ukraine. He sees no choice but to take Vladimir Putin’s stated security concerns seriously and believes that it was a mistake for NATO to signal to Ukraine that it might eventually join the alliance: “I thought that Poland—all the traditional Western countries that have been part of Western history—were logical members of NATO,” he says. But Ukraine, in his view, is a collection of territories once appended to Russia, which Russians see as their own, even though “some Ukrainians” do not. Stability would be better served by its acting as a buffer between Russia and the West: “I was in favor of the full independence of Ukraine, but I thought its best role was something like Finland.”