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KitConstantine posted:Interesting move from Moldova. They say that every month, basically every time the issue is brought up. We're a neutral country, but we have a bunch of Russians in Transnistria, and we would like to see them go. It's not very notable.
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May 18, 2022 19:01
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Risky Bisquick posted:I suppose this works Ah yes, the navy's land force's air defense branch.
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May 18, 2022 19:03
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KitConstantine posted:Interesting move from Moldova. Moldova doesn't exactly have an army either. This is probably the only moment Romanian re-unification might be feasible, but I don't know if there's sufficient political will on either end for it.
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May 18, 2022 19:04
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Ynglaur posted:There is zero chance of Turkey getting F-35s if they are using S-400s. Nobody with an F-35 wants to give the Russians flight data they can feed into S-400s to make the F-35 easier to shoot down. I say let them back into the program but never deliver. Blame logistics or whatever. Get Finland and Sweden in and when Erdogan complains tell him tough poo poo for trying to torpedo their accession. Maybe that will blow up in NATO's face later on but at this point there's no love lost on Turkey.
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May 18, 2022 19:14
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Ynglaur posted:There is zero chance of Turkey getting F-35s if they are using S-400s. Nobody with an F-35 wants to give the Russians flight data they can feed into S-400s to make the F-35 easier to shoot down. Yep. I expected the combined demands taken together to be unreasonable. That's very common in the first stage of negotiations. But almost all the individual points in the demand would be unreasonable on their own. You have to put some points on there that the other side can give you if you are negotiating in good faith.
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May 18, 2022 19:15
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Didn't see this shared in the thread yet: https://news.yahoo.com/ukraines-president-replaces-head-territorial-113343826.html Zelenskyy replaced the Territorial Defense Forces head, no reason stated. Wonder if the TDF isn't doing great, or what?
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May 18, 2022 19:21
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Tomn posted:I'm going to guess that a fair whack of this is "poo poo that isn't going to happen," and is merely a first step in negotiations. If they're gonna hold out for the full demands, that's gonna be interesting times I reckon. This is basically the list of pipe dreams, basically trying to use NATO on domestic issues. Some of these things would be pretext to try and use article 5 against Syria (a war that Turkey chose to involve itself in in some dodgy ways), and in Kurdish areas as part of that little genocidal project. Most of the rest are personal political favors to Erdogan's government. Big picture I think Erdogan sees the permanent diminishing of Russian power as a threat to his position in international politics. With Russian power permanently diminished and American intervention in the middle east largely over he goes from the must have ally to a member who's actual qualifications are rather dodgy. A lot of Turkeys forign policy projects are just as jingoistic and racist as Russias.
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May 18, 2022 19:21
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Xander77 posted:Maybe I've been reading too much Russian media, but for real, "bro, have you tried looking at the United States" seems to be a very obvious query. If the US had suffered a costly defeat in Afganistan perhaps the invasion of Iraq would never have happened. It's probably better for all involved if invasions generally result in costly failure. The fact that the US has sometimes managed to get away with it doesn't make it not true.
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May 18, 2022 19:23
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duck monster posted:I kinda retired out of activism a decade ago. I had given it 15 years of my life, and constant scraps with neo-nazis, loggers, cops and lovely council members gets wearying, and I didnt want to end up like those shitful 1970s anarchists who would turn up at our meetings in the 1990s to moan about feminists , disrupt meetings and then gloat about how much more radical it was in the 1970s because some guy once lit a police car on fire or something. gently caress becoming that, the kids have got this, I just wanna play the piano. Not a lot has changed involving that except for how leftist activism is now much better at burning out the young. doesn't even waste time anymore, you have people largely going "gently caress this poo poo" by the time they're 24. russia self-immolating its soft influence abroad in much of the world, strictly on account of pursuing this invasion, actually did a lot to give some visibility to the direct and proximate causes, and created a weird situation in which the visibility of 'useful idiot' leftism lit up like a neon sign, and you got to see how mind-numbing the activist condition is and how much of your potential activist productivity ends up cyclically hijacked or mired by tireless idiots it's one of the reasons why the response to this invasion is so weirdly interesting on all levels, because it turned into a situation of 'anti-imperialists' going all in on indefensible apologism and finally burning out a lot of hijacked breathing room they had for themselves in leftist spaces, starting to just get told to go gently caress themselves, etc
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May 18, 2022 19:25
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KitConstantine posted:Interesting move from Moldova. You and what army is a statement equally applicable to Moldova. Ukraine responded to russias separatist republic poo poo by building up the 2nd biggest military in Europe and modernizing from top to bottom over 8 years. Moldova’s responded by trying to look as non-threatening as possible to Russia over 30.
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May 18, 2022 19:35
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Akratic Method posted:Didn't see this shared in the thread yet: https://news.yahoo.com/ukraines-president-replaces-head-territorial-113343826.html Zelenskyy replaced the Territorial Defense Forces head, no reason stated. Wonder if the TDF isn't doing great, or what? I don't have anything specific to quote but supposedly they weren't nearly as prepared as they should've been so maybe now that things stabilized a bit he decided to change the leadership.
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May 18, 2022 19:45
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Capri Sunrise posted:Moldova doesn't exactly have an army either. This is probably the only moment Romanian re-unification might be feasible, but I don't know if there's sufficient political will on either end for it. Neither political nor public support. Romania is really not the beacon of prosperity and riches in Europe. Nor would anyone of the big powers allow the unification, not with the russians there. It's a non-starter. May have been back in 1991 or whenever Moldova declared its independence, but since romania had a russian dick loving president at a time which was more than happy to recognize Moldovan state immediately, the opportunity vanished. Plus, truly, after 50 years of russification, not that many in Moldova even consider themselves romanian.
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May 18, 2022 19:55
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Barrel Cactaur posted:Big picture I think Erdogan sees the permanent diminishing of Russian power as a threat to his position in international politics. With Russian power permanently diminished and American intervention in the middle east largely over he goes from the must have ally to a member who's actual qualifications are rather dodgy. A lot of Turkeys forign policy projects are just as jingoistic and racist as Russias. Nah, Turkey is still an incredibly important country in relation to EU security, economic interests and immigration vis-a-vis the Middle East. A weakened Russia makes the strong Turkish ties to the Central Asian republics more important to the EU and US. There is a very large Turkish 'diaspora' (which is a poor fit for a very complex situation, but I can't think of a better term) in the EU, which will ever make Turkey relevant. The Middle East is still hot mess with numerous criss-crossed powder kegs. I don't think Erdogan is worried about long-term geopolitical prospects. On the contrary. The challenges faced by his government are near and immediate - an extremely troubled economy. Getting the economy under control is a requirement in order to have the tools available to pounce on the opportunities already visible on the horizon. I expect Erdogan is angling for that kind of payment. The Kurdish stuff is an excuse, but with an added internal propaganda benefit. Economic aid sounds like begging and projects weakness, so of course such demands would never be made center stage of the diplomatic theatre. But I am quite sure they are at the heart of the talks Turkey and power apex of the EU and the US are having right now.
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May 18, 2022 19:56
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mobby_6kl posted:I don't have anything specific to quote but supposedly they weren't nearly as prepared as they should've been so maybe now that things stabilized a bit he decided to change the leadership. Yeah, this either means something very bad happened, or that things are going reasonably well so they have breathing room to change things up. It doesn't seem that things are suddenly going terribly, so this could be a good sign.
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May 18, 2022 19:57
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Risky Bisquick posted:As far as I'm aware Hospitallers was originally under their command up to about 2017/2018 but since transferred to the volunteer army/corps which is not run by Right Sector anymore. If you know otherwise please post with up to date sources, thanks. My bad, they were a part of The Right Sector Ukrainian Volunteer Corps, until the end of 2015. Since then they're a part of former Right Sector leader, Dmytro Yarosh's Ukrainian Volunteer Army. The reason I hastily looked into the background of the Hospitalleers was that the guy in the article I linked stated that he wanted to go back to the Swedish Armed Forces in the future but he's not sure he'll pass the security check.
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May 18, 2022 20:05
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KitConstantine posted:And there are people from Russia that are on board. Russia has never experienced a reckoning with it's actions in both World Wars and during the Soviet purges, and maybe it's time they have. A good article came out from The Spectator on this topic - by a Russian, Sergey Radchenko, who I'm quite certain speaks Russian I think that's not quite being fair to the Russian people who have absolutely experienced a ton of reckonings but haven't been able to get better leadership out of it. Feel like that's been the case since WWI? I feel like maybe some sort of widespread intervention after the fall of the Soviet Union might have been able to turn things around but I don't think a humiliating defeat in Ukraine will do anything positive there.
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May 18, 2022 20:06
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Akratic Method posted:Didn't see this shared in the thread yet: https://news.yahoo.com/ukraines-president-replaces-head-territorial-113343826.html Zelenskyy replaced the Territorial Defense Forces head, no reason stated. Wonder if the TDF isn't doing great, or what? There were complains from several TDF regiments about underfunding and having to rely on volunteers to procure even some basic equipment. Only a couple of videos like that have surfaced on telegram to my knowledge, so it's hard for me to say how widespread this issue is.
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May 18, 2022 20:14
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WarpedLichen posted:I think that's not quite being fair to the Russian people who have absolutely experienced a ton of reckonings but haven't been able to get better leadership out of it. Feel like that's been the case since WWI? I feel like maybe some sort of widespread intervention after the fall of the Soviet Union might have been able to turn things around but I don't think a humiliating defeat in Ukraine will do anything positive there. It's not a question of suffering or punishment. It's a question of view of history and of society's goals that are taught in schools and accepted by the people. You are probably right that nothing likely to happen any time soon will change these things, give a "are we the bad guys?" moment... but honestly, I do think that having government and society that focuses on well-being of the people rather than the size of the national security dick is exactly what's needed to make things better for Russian people. Edit: I can't get over how the ideal of best ruler in Russia is basically Peter I, who had ten of thousand of people die to build him some fancier palaces and whose contempt for Russian culture is viewed as a positive move. OddObserver fucked around with this message at 20:23 on May 18, 2022 |
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May 18, 2022 20:18
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WarpedLichen posted:I think that's not quite being fair to the Russian people who have absolutely experienced a ton of reckonings but haven't been able to get better leadership out of it. Feel like that's been the case since WWI? I feel like maybe some sort of widespread intervention after the fall of the Soviet Union might have been able to turn things around but I don't think a humiliating defeat in Ukraine will do anything positive there. The problem is what are the other options? Letting Russia gain from their imperialist war? What good will that do the Russian people? Allowing them to stay in their current "at least it's not the 90's" bubble isn't doing Russians or Ukrainians any favors. An article was just published via Carnegie Russia - https://carnegieendowment.org/eurasiainsight/87152 - that focuses primarily on the current situation but echoes certain points from the previous article quote:Now, by launching a “special military operation” in Ukraine, Putin has given people a much simpler goal: “victory.” It doesn’t matter over whom, or how such a victory is supposed to be achieved. It’s enough for Putin simply to equate it with the sacred Soviet victory in 1945, though these two events have absolutely nothing in common. If anything, the current “special operation” has plenty of similarities with the Afghan War in terms of the pointlessness and the destructiveness, not only for Ukraine, but for our country, too. The above link is the translation, it was originally published in The New Times, a Russian magazine - https://newtimes.ru/articles/detail/212284 The author has lived in Russia and worked for Russian publications his whole life. His brother is apparently a Kremlin Speechwriter. You can't say he's disconnected from the Russian point of view. As for 'haven't been able to get better leadership' - will continuing to swallow the propaganda they're fed result in better leadership? Who else is supposed to fix Russia's leadership problem other than the Russian people? Western influence on change is certainly not welcome and reasonably so but that still leaves it an open question. At what point can the Russian people be acknowledged to have some responsibility for failing to push for changes? Is the rest of the world supposed to shrug their shoulders and let the Russian government continue to menace their neighbors because "what are ya gonna do, that's Russia for ya!"? KitConstantine fucked around with this message at 20:52 on May 18, 2022 |
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May 18, 2022 20:22
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Owling Howl posted:If the US had suffered a costly defeat in Afganistan perhaps the invasion of Iraq would never have happened. It's probably better for all involved if invasions generally result in costly failure. The fact that the US has sometimes managed to get away with it doesn't make it not true. The US managed to get away with it because it spent stupendous amounts of money on the wars. It only seems like a less consequential failure because we can't see the alternate timeline where those resources were instead spent on building the countries infrastructure and wellbeing (not that it would have been, but you know).
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May 18, 2022 20:28
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OddObserver posted:Edit: I can't get over how the ideal of best ruler in Russia is basically Peter I, who had ten of thousand of people die to build him some fancier palaces and whose contempt for Russian culture is viewed as a positive move. Well, he was hugely influential in terms of modernizing Russia. If he really is worshipped by Russian nationalists, you're right that that's ironic, since so many of his innovations were lifted straight from the West.
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May 18, 2022 20:30
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Remember that Russian military commentator that actually had a reasonable take on the war so far? Well https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1526998913986842624?s=20&t=hdBPtljBFzVKwVhnYFoeFA He managed to make it mostly about Snake Island so he didn't have to lie as much - Ukraine *won't* be taking it back any time soon, especially not with their navy. But it certainly seems like he received a stern late night phone call yesterday.
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May 18, 2022 20:36
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KitConstantine posted:The problem is what are the other options? Letting Russia gain from their imperialist war? What good will that do the Russian people? Allowing them to stay in their current "at least it's not the 90's" bubble isn't doing Russians or Ukrainians any favors. I'm not saying that there's any alternative here. But Russia reminds me of an addict that keeps getting in trouble with the law. It's absolutely his fault and society should absolutely defend his victims but it also seems laughable to suggest that hitting rock bottom again will break the cycle. It absolutely depends on the Russian people but I remind that their loudest activist voices have been getting assassinated/imprisoned by the regime for generations at this point. I think ramping up anti Putin propaganda to isolate the leadership from the rank and file is probably the best thing the Western world can do instead of treating the entire country as the problem. Edit: remember with Garry Kasparov was running for Russian president? Is there an alternate history where clandestine Western support would've changed the current situation?
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May 18, 2022 20:37
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KitConstantine posted:Remember that Russian military commentator that actually had a reasonable take on the war so far? I do wonder to which extent his previous appearance was orchestrated as well. Surely they must have known about his views before they invited him to the show, so did they purposefully allow him to say what he said, the gist of which they could have easily anticipated? I have no idea why they would do this, but I also don't know why they would host a reasonable-seeming known dissenter otherwise.
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May 18, 2022 20:44
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There's no good short or even medium term outcome for Russia at this point, and that's the simple truth. It's about minimizing the risk and building up Ukraine as an alternative.
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May 18, 2022 20:45
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quote:The US managed to get away with it because it spent stupendous amounts of money on the wars. It only seems like a less consequential failure because we can't see the alternate timeline where those resources were instead spent on building the countries infrastructure and wellbeing (not that it would have been, but you know). I think the point here is that the initial invasion went quite smoothly. War was declared against Iraq only a year and a half after Afghanistan; at that point, people were still convinced that things in Afghanistan were going fine. I agree with Owling Howl that if the Taliban had managed to embarrass the US in the first year of the war, then they would never have attempted to invade Iraq as well.
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May 18, 2022 20:46
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We should tell Turkey we'll let them buy F16s, and if that's not enough we'll have Ukraine repay their lend-lease by shipping it to the Kurds when they're done with it. I'm mostly joking... Mostly
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May 18, 2022 20:48
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WarpedLichen posted:
As we've discovered in both Afghanistan and Ukraine, fostering a good ally requires having motivated, competent, caring people in positions of power running institutions that promote good leadership and flush lovely leadership. No amount of resources can turn a bad civil institutions into functioning ones, while comparatively small investments in the right people can yield enormous payoffs. How much did the Afghan war cost us over 20 years? How much has this war cost us over the last 8?
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May 18, 2022 20:49
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New Coke posted:I think the point here is that the initial invasion went quite smoothly. War was declared against Iraq only a year and a half after Afghanistan; at that point, people were still convinced that things in Afghanistan were going fine. I agree with Owling Howl that if the Taliban had managed to embarrass the US in the first year of the war, then they would never have attempted to invade Iraq as well. And things might have turned out differently in Afghanistan if US had never done Iraq Same thing as how if Russia had just poured troops into the Donbas region and annexed that without doing anything, they might have gotten away with it We will never know, because thats not what happened.
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May 18, 2022 20:51
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Unrelated to counterfactuals: This is something I haven't shared before I think - there's a blog that essentially summarizes the various Russian and Chinese twitter propaganda lines of the prior week - this week's link: https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-toplines-may-9-15-2022/ Including a return to the classics https://twitter.com/SecureDemocracy/status/1526985589542772738?s=20&t=hdBPtljBFzVKwVhnYFoeFA Yes, the source is p clearly biased. But it's interesting and the accounts tracked are usually diplomatic or otherwise government-affiliated ones.
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May 18, 2022 20:58
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the popes toes posted:The US is preparing a military aid package for India to deepen security ties and reduce the country’s dependence on Russian weapons, people familiar with the matter said. This seems like a natural consequence of events, Russia won't be in a position to sell weapons for a while, and India certainly isn't gonna buy them from China.
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May 18, 2022 21:04
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Russia will nuke Sweden if it joins NATO. Wow wee scary stuff can you see how terrified I am? Man we should all lay down and let Russia turn our country into the Sochi Olympics
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May 18, 2022 21:07
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:Russia will nuke Sweden if it joins NATO. Not sure this is helpful?
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May 18, 2022 21:11
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WarpedLichen posted:I'm not saying that there's any alternative here. But Russia reminds me of an addict that keeps getting in trouble with the law. It's absolutely his fault and society should absolutely defend his victims but it also seems laughable to suggest that hitting rock bottom again will break the cycle. Russia is a country, not a person. Countries don't behave like people. WarpedLichen posted:Edit: remember with Garry Kasparov was running for Russian president? Is there an alternate history where clandestine Western support would've changed the current situation? Kasparov definitely knows a thing or two about alternate history.
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May 18, 2022 21:11
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Paladinus posted:Russia is a country, not a person. Countries don't behave like people. Perhaps you can elaborate on this point instead of pointing out the obvious.
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May 18, 2022 21:14
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Rust Martialis posted:Not sure this is helpful? You said the same thing when I said Russia would attack Ukraine over and over. And how is responding seriously to Russia's boring sabre rattling that hasn't changed since 1994 helpful? It's boring poo poo. They threaten annihilation when anyone does anything because it's easy to do so when you have no intention of actually doing the nuke dropping.
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May 18, 2022 21:14
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Kallikaa posted:My bad, they were a part of The Right Sector Ukrainian Volunteer Corps, until the end of 2015. Yeah, I wasn't trying to single you out, but Hospitallers generally became just a volunteer EMS brigade, with guns, now afaik. If anyone has sources otherwise I'd like to know because I sometimes donate money to them. It would be good to know in advance before I end up funding ultra nationalists  James continuing full capitalism [a couple pages back was outed as a war tourist] https://twitter.com/jmvasquez1974/status/1526834165358145537 Heavy technicals https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1527001664884027393 I'm not aware of where the 300 number came from, anyone else with other sources? https://twitter.com/expatua/status/1526992825480626178 Maps! https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1527012693978365953
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May 18, 2022 21:17
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How it started/how it's going https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1527023166090100736
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May 18, 2022 21:32
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KitConstantine posted:Unrelated to counterfactuals: Iirc I've tried to use their dashboard, but it's got a limited sample structure, so it's mostly reflecting the central flow of the direct disinformation firehose and not a lot of other routes. Separately, the New Yorker just put out a big article on Russian propaganda. Example grafs (note the second paragraph in particular): quote:Coverage is repetitive not just from day to day, television channel to television channel; nearly identical stories appear in print and online media, too. According to a number of current and former employees at Russian news outlets, there is a simple explanation for this: at weekly meetings with Kremlin officials, editors of state-controlled media, including broadcasters and publishers, coördinate topics and talking points. Five days a week, a state-controlled consultancy issues a more detailed list of topics. (The organization did not respond to a request for comment.) I have not seen these lists myself—individuals with access to them said that they were too scared of being prosecuted under new espionage laws to share them—but they agreed to analyze the lists during the course of a couple of weeks. They said that the lists generally contained six to ten topics a day, which appear designed to supplement the Ministry of Defense’s war updates that constitute mandatory coverage. Those among my sources who have seen these lists work for non-broadcast media, but the talking points they described invariably appeared in the news lineups on Channel One and Russia One. Another key paragraph: quote:I wanted to test my hypothesis—that Russian propaganda is designed not to convince its audience that Ukrainians are Nazis and that Russia is waging a defensive war but to muddy the waters, to create the impression that nothing is true. Does truth exist? I asked. “Truth exists, that’s absolutely certain,” my interlocutor said. It’s just that it is unknowable. Unless one could personally travel to Bucha or Mariupol, one could never learn what happened. “We live in an era of fakes,” the editor said. “It’s hard to identify true information. It’s like believing in aliens, or in God. Everyone decides for themselves.” Unlike most Russians, this person has unfettered access to Western newswires alongside Russian sources, but “it’s impossible to tell which is more true,” the editor said. “Every country has its own interests. Russia is interested in protecting the civilian population of the Donbass. The West is interested in interfering with that, in attacking Russia with sanctions, and giving military aid to Ukraine. It’s very hard, under these circumstances, to think about whose story is more true.” And another: quote:The Russian state and its propaganda machine form a feedback loop. Putin watches his own television and quotes it back to itself, the television amplifies the message, and so on. Messages can originate anywhere along this closed loop. On February 12th, Maria Baronova, a former opposition activist who went to work for RT’s Russian-language service in 2019, wrote a long, unhinged post on her personal Telegram channel, arguing that nato and its allies should be “de-Nazified.” She soon heard from a senior editor who praised her post and encouraged her to write more like it. Twelve days later, Putin announced the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and declared that its goal was the “demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine.” Baronova couldn’t find an instance of the term “de-Nazification” being used by Russians (not in reference to Germany) that preceded her Telegram post. The propaganda machine had been calling Ukrainians Nazis for years, but this word was novel; it had come to her following a fight with a Russian-speaking friend in the United States. “I pulled it out of my rear end for that post,” she told me. “And then, when they were scraping together verbiage for Putin’s speech, they picked it up.” Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 21:39 on May 18, 2022 |
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May 18, 2022 21:32
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:You said the same thing when I said Russia would attack Ukraine over and over. Yes you predicted it over and over, wrongly, for years. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 18, 2022 21:38
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