Atreiden posted:

Putin has managed to piss of Serbia, one of the most pro Russian countries in Europe, by comparing his fake peoples republics with Kosovo.

Payndz posted:

The video of the 'hypersonic missile obliterating an arms depot in Ivano-Frankivsk' turned out to show a large barn or similar being blown up, as it was very quickly geolocated - and found to be considerably closer to the Russian lines, like half the width of Ukraine, than claimed. (That it was being filmed by a slow-moving drone even though it was supposedly well within Ukraine's air defence zone was a dead giveaway.)

PerilPastry posted:

Tbf Solovyov is hardly representative for the whole Russian mediasphere. As I understand it his evening show is so chockful of venomous propaganda, unbridled chauvinism that it's an outlier even for Russian state TV.

Atreiden posted:

Putin has managed to piss of Serbia, one of the most pro Russian countries in Europe, by comparing his fake peoples republics with Kosovo.
https://twitter.com/srdjancvijic/status/1519485739523788800

quote:

On top of that the antics in Transnistria have moved Moldova further towards the EU, with Moldova now joining sanctions on Russia and sending aid and sappers to Ukraine. Moldova had up til now tried to stay neutral as far as I know.

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1519588544016261120
https://www.republicworld.com/world...rticleshow.html

cinci zoo sniper posted:

Edit: We have EU clarification on the “rouble payment” scheme. As speculated earlier, it is fine, but only if Russia considers the payment executed when the euros are deposited.

cinci zoo sniper posted:

I think this is a matter of semantics. All TV on air in Russia can be considered state TV, as far as the topic selection talking points are concerned. The channels staffed entirely by government employees will tend to have more decorum - yet at the same time, Solovyov’s evening show is on Russia-1, which is such a government channel, and happens to be the second largest TV channel after the First Channel.

Underscoring their “firehose of poo poo” approach to messaging, the most outrageously chauvinist rubbish does also come from a government TV channel - Zvezda, operated by Ministry of Defence. This is where you go off the deep end about Slav terminators punching holes in Abrams tanks with their bare fists.

Saladman posted:

Risky Bisquick posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1519595000148938762

Risky Bisquick posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1519595000148938762

Dick Ripple posted:

Foreign policy was not why Scholz was elected, and unfortunately for him Russia decided to start the largest crisis in regards to German foreign policy since the collapse of the USSR. I would not characterize him as weak, as he has just started to get his feet wet in trying to lead the German government. Time will tell though.

Der Kyhe posted:

I do not agree with this; the damage is already done and Scholz will be remembers as "that craven one" who got on to the program only after being basically forced by the EU and the rest of the western world.

That, or "active collaborator to Putin" whose policies were finally overturned by the German parliament.

PerilPastry posted:

And we still don't know the specifics of this announcement by Hungary, right?

Cheers. You don't happen to have an article handy that gives an overview of their media landscape/strategy by any chance?

PerilPastry posted:

Russia is now claiming Poland is preparing to deploy peace keepers to western Ukraine as political cover for
annexing its "historic territories" in Ukraine. Supposedly Polish intelligence is already seeking out Warsaw friendly puppets to counter the resistance to such a move by Ukrainian nationalists.

Does this sound familiar to anyone else? The projection levels here are just absolutely staggering.

"Russian intel chief exposes US-Warsaw plans for Polish takeover of part of Ukraine.

(...)

The Polish leadership hopes that this preventive deployment in western Ukraine will most likely lead to Ukraine’s break-up, while the territories that ‘Polish peacekeepers’ enter would come under Warsaw’s control."

(It's Tass so don't give them your clicks: https://tass.com/politics/1444887)

Comstar posted:

You can't just stop the story there. What happened?


Hollywood will need to know the details, and EA will for the next Call of Duty.

KitConstantine posted:

Very Normal Russian Propaganda
https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1519647048009666561?s=20&t=nBLp7tXJypLQ0Qx39NFhTA
video in question
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1519417943955808257?s=20&t=D93j6RfDzDZ5wjKYkrDh1Q
Related: Russian government outright buying the news arm of nominally independent Yandex
https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1519638499363897344?s=20&t=CEf1O7NWGb6Fuv1fyimbcQ

CommieGIR posted:

Yeah my view is Scholz and other PMs had a history of active collaboration with Russia in self-interest. They hobbled their ability to project geopolitical power in the name of 'stability' and 'business' and its finally coming back to bite them

Dapper_Swindler posted:

https://twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/1519641801581383680
https://twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/1519642363924209665
https://twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/1519644230318231552
https://twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/1519645626908172289

seems putins taking some pages out of history now.

the popes toes posted:

Disagree. What's coming back to bite them was the belief that economic engagement is the only effective and rational prevention of military conflict. When the good burgers of Berlin offered deals with hands full of cash, they believed with certainty the replying hands were in friendship, as if it were part of the natural order of men. Commercial deals, are sacrosanct, above petty military squabbling. Who would break such a contract? It is not permitted.

Kraftwerk posted:

It seems like Ukraine is going to be too late to recover this territories before Russia completely changes their demographics into something ungovernable.

Official news seems to be repeating that Ukraine is outgunned and gradually losing territory and weakening in defense against the Russian attacks. Are they just saying that on purpose to keep pushing arms shipments?

It seems like there's no real way to dislodge Russia from Luhansk and Donbass before they achieve their genocide/forced deportation/social engineering.

The Guardian - Angus Roxburgh posted:

Few people in the west doubt that Ukraine is fighting a just war. Russia’s invasion was entirely unprovoked. Whatever complaints it may have had about Nato expansion or Ukraine’s mistreatment of Russians in Donbas, nobody had attacked Russia, and nobody was planning to. Vladimir Putin launched a straightforward war of aggression and territorial conquest.

It follows that supporting Ukraine is the right thing to do. But it is not at all clear that the kind of support we are giving (and not giving) is the right way to go about preserving the Ukrainian nation.

The longer this war rages on, the more Ukrainians will flee their homeland, and the more devastation will be wrought upon their homes, cities, industry and economy. Yet the west’s current approach of supporting Ukraine’s war aim of defeating the aggressor, and providing arms for that purpose while pointedly avoiding direct military intervention, is guaranteed to prolong the war. Russia’s progress may be slowed, but it’s highly unlikely to be stopped, far less pushed out of Ukraine, and in the meantime the grinding destruction and hideous war crimes will continue.

No day goes past without some senior western politician proclaiming that Ukraine will be “successful” and that Russia is “failing”. This is certainly morale-boosting. But it is clearly nonsense.

The fact is, as time goes on, more towns and cities are destroyed and then fall to the Russians. In two months, the area under Russian control – originally just the breakaway parts of Donbas – has grown to perhaps five times the size. If Russia continues to suffer “defeats” at this pace, then in another two months the entire south of Ukraine will be in ruins, cities such as Odesa will resemble Mariupol, and thousands upon thousands more Ukrainians will have died.

Worse, as the war goes on, and more towns are destroyed, it becomes less likely that Ukrainians who have fled to other countries will ever return, because they will have no homes or workplaces to come back to. How many citizens of Mariupol will ever return? If Russia’s aim was to exterminate the Ukrainian nation, then the west’s approach is helping to do just that.

Surely, if the lives of Ukrainian people are our concern then the west has to do something to stop the war – now. Encouraging the Ukrainians to continue, however just their cause, is merely making their country uninhabitable.

The trouble is, there are only two ways to stop the war quickly, and neither is palatable to most western leaders.

One would be for Nato to enter the war and make a quick, massive and decisive strike to cripple Russia’s invasion forces. Unlike with Russia’s actions, it would have every right under international law to do so. When Putin intervened in Syria, he very carefully framed this as a response to a request from Syria’s legitimate and internationally recognised government. The west could do the same in Ukraine. Putin himself has no such justification for his invasion.

The risk involved in this – of a third world war – is obvious, and it’s why the west refuses to intervene directly.

The other option is to persuade Putin to implement an immediate ceasefire, by inviting Russia to comprehensive peace talks. Western leaders are disinclined to parley with a butcher such as Putin. But they did it with Serbia’s Slobodan Milošević, only months after the massacre at Srebrenica, and the result was the Dayton agreement that put an end to the war in Bosnia in 1995.

To get Putin to the negotiating table at all, everything would have to be up for discussion – including Ukraine’s borders, Russia’s age-old security concerns, perhaps even the very logic of basing today’s international frontiers in that part of Europe on what were internal borders in the USSR, drawn up by communist leaders precisely to prevent Soviet republics and regions from being viable independent states. The outcome of the talks does not need to be predetermined. The important thing is to talk rather than fight.

Western leaders cannot bring themselves to broach these matters, which would seem to reward Putin for attempting to redraw the map by force. They would rather fight – or more accurately, let Ukraine fight, in the hope of defeating Russia. But if one thing is certain it is that Putin will never accept defeat. He is already too deeply invested in this war to back off with nothing to show for it. If western leaders think that their arms-length encouragement of Ukraine will bring about a Ukrainian military victory, then they are fatally misreading Putin’s intentions and resolve. For Ukraine’s sake, we need to stop him now, one way or the other, before nothing is left of the country we want to protect.

Angus Roxburgh is a former BBC Moscow correspondent and former consultant to the Kremlin. He is the author of The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the Struggle for Russia and Moscow Calling: Memoirs of a Foreign Correspondent.

quote:

Berlin had been concerned that sanctioning Sberbank would disrupt energy-related transactions, according to diplomats and documents seen by Bloomberg. But in recent weeks, Germany has moved quickly to tap alternative suppliers for energy and is now preparing to back a phased-in ban on Russian oil, according to people familiar with EU discussions.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said earlier this month that the EU would take another look at Russian banks, including Sberbank, as they debate a sixth round of penalties.

“We are looking further at the banking sector, especially Sberbank, which accounts for 37% of the Russian banking sector. And, of course, there are energy issues,” she told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag.

CommieGIR posted:

They can scream about World War 3 all they want, but they don't have the forces and are not going to push the button. This is pretty much just Putin trying to find any lever that will get people riled up.

Owling Howl posted:

I think this opinion piece in The Guardian pretty well encapsulates the narrative the Kremlin is trying to push.

Stop arming Ukraine and use the inability of Ukraine to resist Russia as a platform for negotiations where we redraw the borders of Ukraine and dictate Ukrainian foreign policy and then Ukraine will stop fighting and the war will be over.

Alchenar posted:

Note the author declares the Daytona Accords with Milošević a success and a Good Thing and does not invite the reader to consider whether leaving a genocidal dictator in charge of Serbia may have contributed to any later Unfortunate Events.

Alchenar posted:

Note the author declares the Daytona Accords with Milošević a success and a Good Thing and does not invite the reader to consider whether leaving a genocidal dictator in charge of Serbia may have contributed to any later Unfortunate Events.

Kraftwerk posted:

It seems like Ukraine is going to be too late to recover this territories before Russia completely changes their demographics into something ungovernable.

Official news seems to be repeating that Ukraine is outgunned and gradually losing territory and weakening in defense against the Russian attacks. Are they just saying that on purpose to keep pushing arms shipments?

Kraftwerk posted:

It seems like Ukraine is going to be too late to recover this territories before Russia completely changes their demographics into something ungovernable.

Official news seems to be repeating that Ukraine is outgunned and gradually losing territory and weakening in defense against the Russian attacks. Are they just saying that on purpose to keep pushing arms shipments?

It seems like there's no real way to dislodge Russia from Luhansk and Donbass before they achieve their genocide/forced deportation/social engineering.

Dapper_Swindler posted:

https://twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/1519641801581383680

KitConstantine posted:

Russians are unleashing tactical dolphins
https://twitter.com/CovertShores/status/1519409214787145728?t=oAMKcN7C3C78c6NVBHmLgQ&s=19
Not a joke. The linked article is very interesting but a wild ride

Edit:
https://twitter.com/CovertShores/status/1519415153497886723?t=i0DGFYJCbbpw4C0QE_VhPw&s=19
That blob just screams "dolphin pens"

KitConstantine posted:

Very Normal Russian Propaganda
https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1519647048009666561?s=20&t=nBLp7tXJypLQ0Qx39NFhTA
video in question
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1519417943955808257?s=20&t=D93j6RfDzDZ5wjKYkrDh1Q

Willo567 posted:

Is there a reason why we should be keeping up with the insane bullshit propaganda Russia keeps feeding its people when they don't mean a word of what they say?

Charlz Guybon posted:

I don't think the word works like that. If he truly did it of his own free will, he'd be Russian ally or collaborator.

mobby_6kl posted:

They also seem to be missing the part where NATO bombed the poo poo out Serbia. Which is, logically, what should be done here as well.