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Cugel the Clever posted:Do you think that Ukrainians are loving slow? That they're some 6-year old sitting on a stoop with a baseball and pair of gloves, credulously waiting for a deadbeat dad to show up like he'd half promised? No, but I also don't think the average Ukrainian knows how NATO accession works, because most people anywhere don't know how NATO accession works. I think the Ukrainian government and people quite understandably saw NATO as a potential protector from the genuinely scary empire next door that was eyeing them, and went with what they thought was the best chance available to guarantee their safety. I think they thought they could work on the German and French governments, and prove to them that letting Ukraine into the alliance would not risk dragging them into war with Russia. I don't fault them for a second for taking that chance; like I said, the Ukrainians are blameless in this matter. I do fault the Bush Administration and NATO leadership for promising them membership when it was pretty clear it would not be forthcoming. And here's the thing - so does Ukraine's president. Just five days ago, Zelensky was demanding to know when NATO was going to let them in. As we've seen throughout this crisis, he's not a stupid man - he's been one of the smartest people on the scene. So he wasn't actually demanding that timetable because he thought Ukraine was going to get in anytime soon. He was demanding that NATO either poo poo or get off the pot, because the alliance has been playing a two-faced game with them for fourteen years now.
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Feb 24, 2022 09:46
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Cugel the Clever posted:Do you think that Ukrainians are loving slow? That they're some 6-year old sitting on a stoop with a baseball and pair of gloves, credulously waiting for a deadbeat dad to show up like he'd half promised? No one (here) is blaming the Ukrainian people for what the Russians are doing. Some of us are pointing out that despite the incredible efforts of the Ukrainian people, especially since 2014, they’ve been abandoned by NATO and they were always going to be abandoned by certain NATO votes. How can anyone deny that some NATO actors have been actively involved (Intensified Dialogue) in Ukraine, offering a hand to people who desperately want to grasp it? The West refused to take Putin seriously and once again, just like Georgia, we loving abandoned the people who expected our help.
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Feb 24, 2022 09:47
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Taiwan must be the only other country so analogous to Ukraine’s situation. I know China hasn’t been backing Russia but one imagines they look upon all this with some level of contentment. There’s undoubtedly more clarity now on what happens when a military giant pursues irredentist claims with force.
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Feb 24, 2022 09:48
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Sally Sprodgkin posted:The hour-long speech Putin gave on the 22nd or so in response to his NSC cabinet meeting makes it very obvious that he sees Ukraine as not a sovereign state but instead a client state owing any sovereignty it had to 'gifts' it received from the USSR and Tsars. The only way Ukraine would have been safe from Russian aggression since Putin came to power is effectively acting as a puppet/client state a-la Belarus, and probably rolling over to Russian land grabs if Moscow felt like it. since putin emphasized "lenin's mistake" a lot, is it reasonable to assume he's going to take the south purple part? that would probably make the most strategic sense since it would link up with transnistria and crimea and leave the west, north and center mostly intact?
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Feb 24, 2022 09:48
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https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1496768493588725764?t=pPoXyWltGBg112Ik65Whbw&s=19 Holy loving poo poo
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Feb 24, 2022 09:50
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FishBulbia posted:misinfo probably. Same with the aphib landings in odesa Misread this as ‘Airbnb’ and thought drat, that’s pretty unorthodox
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Feb 24, 2022 09:52
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GABA ghoul posted:https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1496768493588725764?t=pPoXyWltGBg112Ik65Whbw&s=19 Putin's oligarchs may be putting him out to pasture sooner than I expected.  (probably not, but I certainly wouldn't blame them)
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Feb 24, 2022 09:52
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In half an hour I'm supposed to have my morning stand up with our Ukranian dev team, based in Kiev. None of them have posted anything since yesterday afternoon. This is loving madness.
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Feb 24, 2022 09:52
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GABA ghoul posted:https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1496768493588725764?t=pPoXyWltGBg112Ik65Whbw&s=19 buy the dip (you can be absolutely certain people with money domestically are)
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Feb 24, 2022 09:52
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bad_fmr posted:Leftists especially in USA seem to have absolutely massive blind spots about Russia in general and Putin in specific. Modern Russia is and has been an aggressive ethnonationalist authoritarian state committing war crimes and assassinating people wherever they choose. That you would choose to give benefit of doubt to Russia seems insane. Yes I understand that CIA is bad and NATO/USA has done dumb poo poo, but these do not change the facts. Holy poo poo, this. Online leftists have been poisoning this well for weeks. I understand where those RT fucks are coming from, they’re literally plants. The problem is that a lot of leftists - many of whom starting down this path when they “discover” the true history of US foreign policy - are literally incapable of separating criticism of the US/“West” and the rest of the world. I understand that tankies will always support, say, China, and decry any criticism of the CCP as CIA/State Department propaganda, but the number of leftists that have and continue to support Russia is staggering, incomprehensible.
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Feb 24, 2022 09:53
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Putin is actively murdering Ukrainians this very minute. Can't we thread ban the Putin apologists making GBS threads up the thread with their crocodile tears and incessant whining about NATO? At least silo off that bullshit to its own thread. It has no place here. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) Cugel the Clever fucked around with this message at 09:57 on Feb 24, 2022 |
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Feb 24, 2022 09:54
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FishBulbia posted:I think it's not to much to speculate that the Ukrainian military is basically in disarray right now. Basically every known hq and base has been leveled. I think this addresses your point properly - I mean you're only responding to Tweets/posts/whatever claiming "something has happened". But then there's no reports about things that haven't happened. Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
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Feb 24, 2022 09:54
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Sally Sprodgkin posted:I was going to write a longer post about why the whole NATO argument is an absolute poo poo take and a red herring while there are literal Russian boots on the ground in Ukraine but this poster above me said it better The so called NATO argument is the simple explanation of what is happening right now: look at the last 20 years, every decision/action made by Russia was in responce to NATO projection towards east. Even in the last few days, Putin said that if Ukraine would abandon their will to join NATO or the European Union ( which is just a masked organization for the U.S. international power), the whole crisis would end. The ongoing russian military operations are just a reality check for Ukraine: the reality that they are just an ant beside the russian big bear.
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Feb 24, 2022 09:55
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Vegetable posted:Taiwan must be the only other country so analogous to Ukraine’s situation. I know China hasn’t been backing Russia but one imagines they look upon all this with some level of contentment. There’s undoubtedly more clarity now on what happens when a military giant pursues irredentist claims with force. The U.S. is legally bound to defend Taiwan through the Taiwan Relations Act, though. There is nothing similar for Ukraine. Quite frankly, I expect this makes China less bullish on absorbing Taiwan militarily, at least in the near future, since we've shown we aren't as ready to tie down our forces in multiple wars at the same time as we were, say, 20 years ago.
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Feb 24, 2022 09:57
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Herstory Begins Now posted:On a related note, it seems remarkable, at least to me, just how much popular sentiment there seems to be that actually we should be military confronting Russia over invading Ukraine. There seems to be a lot more will to militarily stand up to Russia than I ever would have expected.
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Feb 24, 2022 09:57
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KillHour posted:My take is that countries are selfish and they wanted to pay lip service to Ukraine but also wanted to appease Russia for cheap oil and gas so they wagged their finger for a decade without actually taking any real steps towards preventing Russia from doing exactly this. This is kind of obvious in retrospect - Western Europe is full of rich, liberal countries who believe in words and agreements and cheap gas. Putin wants power and to take back the glory of the old Russian empire that he believes the communists squandered. He believes in sharp, pointy, high explosive sticks, and using words and agreements and cheap gas to get sharper, pointier, more explodey sticks. I suspect not even most Ukrainians are terribly interested in risking a nuclear war over this.
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Feb 24, 2022 09:59
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Majorian posted:No, NATO should not have promised Ukraine and Georgia membership if they knew France, Germany, and probably other member-states would without a doubt veto their accession. NATO requires a unanimous vote from all member-states to accept a new member. That was never going to happen for those two countries. How the gently caress is this a broken promise? Grumbling from two member at the same summit where the suggestion was made is not a broken promise! But this doesn’t even answer the issue at all. What does this have to do with justifying a loving Russian invasion? Why should the vague and obviously non-committal suggestion Ukraine join NATO justify Putin deciding to invade in 2014? E: to be clear, NATO acted incredibly STUPIDLY. But they are not at all culpable in what happened, is my point.
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Feb 24, 2022 09:59
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Cugel the Clever posted:Putin is actively murdering Ukrainians this very minute. Can't we thread ban the Putin apologists making GBS threads up the thread with their crocodile tears and incessant whining about NATO? A true champion for the freedom of speech. So classy. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 24, 2022 09:59
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Knightsoul posted:The so called NATO argument is the simple explanation of what is happening right now: look at the last 20 years, every decision/action made by Russia was in responce to NATO projection towards east. So using a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, you're claiming Russia's enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak?
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Feb 24, 2022 10:00
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Cugel the Clever posted:Putin is actively murdering Ukrainians this very minute. Can't we thread ban the Putin apologists making GBS threads up the thread with their crocodile tears and incessant whining about NATO? How the hell do you keep coming to the conclusion that people are apologists for Putin when many of us are expressing frustration that NATO isn’t helping? We’re not saying Putin’s justified in his actions, gently caress that monster, we’re profoundly frustrated by the fact that NATO members knew this invasion was at least possible, that he would use NATO talks as justification, but NATO was never going to allow Ukrainian accession? Do you not see there are two separate problems here?
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Feb 24, 2022 10:00
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bad_fmr posted:From finnish perspective, following the news and discussion in the recent weeks have been really perplexing. Leftists especially in USA seem to have absolutely massive blind spots about Russia in general and Putin in specific. Modern Russia is and has been an aggressive ethnonationalist authoritarian state committing war crimes and assassinating people wherever they choose. That you would choose to give benefit of doubt to Russia seems insane. Yes I understand that CIA is bad and NATO/USA has done dumb poo poo, but these do not change the facts. It's not hard to find reactions from European leftists have looked over appalled at the how naive the American lefts reaction to this conflict has been. Where the far rights allegiances lie is the same across the two continents in question, but I guess we didn't expect the American left to be this naive. Swedish here and I fully agree with the sentiment of the last sentence of the quote.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:00
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I wouldn't trust anything you see right now unless it's confirmed by the Ukrainian military, and they're kind of busy. The vast majority of info coming out is rumors and speculation. Even the videos I've seen are mostly misattributed, or edited, or just old clips from 2014 - 2015.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:01
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Hey all, this is a gentle reminder to try to keep your posts substantive and on-topic. The invasion of Ukraine is obviously a tense issue, especially considering the good number of Eastern European goons itt. This thread is gonna get a ton of traffic. Specifically, the mod team would like to discourage:
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Feb 24, 2022 10:02
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forum and being an rear end in a top hat to other users is not allowed. If someone makes a dumbass post or has a lovely opinion, by all means roast their terrible take. Please refrain from going after posting personalities. Also, CSPAM has its own rules, if you don't like something there then PM the CSPAM mods or you could even post in a CSPAM thread and argue against whatever take you don't like!
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Delthalaz posted:I just want to underline how vast Ukraine is in terms of territory. Even assuming the worst case scenario for Ukraine and their military is obliterated instantly, I think it's going to take some time just to reach and establish control over a country of this size. This assumes that they plan to take and hold the entire country, rather than pulling a 2008 Georgia and crippling/paralysing the military so that they can annex their preferred target regions unopposed. There's nothing in this war that's forcing Putin to deal with an expensive, bloody, and unending insurgency if he doesn't want to.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:03
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bad_fmr posted:From finnish perspective, following the news and discussion in the recent weeks have been really perplexing. Leftists especially in USA seem to have absolutely massive blind spots about Russia in general and Putin in specific. Modern Russia is and has been an aggressive ethnonationalist authoritarian state committing war crimes and assassinating people wherever they choose. That you would choose to give benefit of doubt to Russia seems insane. Yes I understand that CIA is bad and NATO/USA has done dumb poo poo, but these do not change the facts. I feel like its an issue of distance. Americans can very easily see, and verify, that the USA does bad things, but its harder to get accurate information about what happens abroad. Its very easy to recognize that mainstream US news sources have a bias, for example, but when you don't really understand what's going on a few thousand kilometers away, its pretty hard to figure out what news sources are actually reliable and comprehensive. Like there was somebody posting stuff from one of the MV-lehti psychos, unless you actually know the background on that, it doesn't immediately read as illegitimate. I can't really think about any other reason for it, besides maybe a dash of bad old american exceptionalism, except this time employed in the sense of "only the bad things the USA does matters".
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Feb 24, 2022 10:03
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Rob Rockley posted:How the gently caress is this a broken promise? Grumbling from two member at the same summit where the suggestion was made is not a broken promise! I said they made a promise they could not keep, and it was. Those two "grumbling" members were saying that they would veto Ukraine's accession, making them becoming members impossible. There was little chance that anyone was going to get them to change their mind over the next fourteen years, and that also is quite understandable, because if I were French or German, I also would not want to get in an energy war, or, God forbid, a real war with Russia over Ukraine. quote:But this doesn’t even answer the issue at all. What does this have to do with justifying a loving Russian invasion? Why should the vague and obviously non-committal suggestion Ukraine join NATO justify Putin deciding to invade in 2014? I literally just posted this a few minutes ago: Majorian posted:I am not justifying anything Putin has done, either to Ukraine or to Georgia. There is no justification. He is a warmonger. gently caress him, his kleptocratic system, and his imperialist aims. I don't know how I can possibly be more clear - Ukraine wanting to join NATO in no way justifies Russia's aggression.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:04
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Cirvot posted:It's not hard to find reactions from European leftists have looked over appalled at the how naive the American lefts reaction to this conflict has been. Where the far rights allegiances lie is the same across the two continents in question, but I guess we didn't expect the American left to be this naive. GaussianCopula posted:That's a German issue too. Darth Walrus posted:This assumes that they plan to take and hold the entire country, rather than pulling a 2008 Georgia and crippling/paralysing the military so that they can annex their preferred target regions unopposed. There's nothing in this war that's forcing Putin to deal with an expensive, bloody, and unending insurgency if he doesn't want to.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:06
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How many men did the US have to invade Iraq? 120,000 doesn't seem nearly enough to control a country the population and size of Ukraine.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:09
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Wasn't the closest thing to a promise they got was just a verbal statement that some day they could become nato members? No timeline, no membership action plan or whatever they're called, just a 'yeah someday' https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_185000.htm That’s from a 2021 NATO summit. Check out article (whatever) 69. My point in general here is no, NATO wasn’t making vague gestures toward Ukrainian accession. A lot of us here are frustrated by NATO actions like these - separate from Putin’s loving invasion - when we know certain NATO members were never, under any circumstances, going to let Ukraine join.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:10
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I don’t think discussing the supposed failings of NATO — or anyone else — in any way diminishes Russia’s moral culpability. Put another way, there are surely legions of American and European diplomats who are genuinely questioning themselves on what more they could have done. It’s too facile to say “Russia wants what it wants and nothing could have stopped the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.” About a million minute and major decisions were made in the years and months leading up to this. If you’re a diplomat worth your salt you take the broader view and look for areas where choices could have been made differently and things could have turned out differently. Again, none of this takes away from the moral culpability of an imperialist state launching an invasion, and those arguing than it does should, well, gently caress off.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:13
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mobby_6kl posted:Well about that Could just be trying to move the buffer zone inward. Create an unstable no-man's-land but make it Ukraine's problem rather than his. If the secessionist areas have been absorbed into Russia, creating new secessionist areas to distract and weaken their previous owners does make a certain kind of sense.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:13
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Comstar posted:How many men did the US have to invade Iraq? 120,000 doesn't seem nearly enough to control a country the population and size of Ukraine. Russia is probably using about 200,000 troops, coalition was about 300k against 1.3 million Iraqi troops.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:14
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GABA ghoul posted:https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1496768493588725764?t=pPoXyWltGBg112Ik65Whbw&s=19
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Feb 24, 2022 10:14
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polling in Europe (including Ukraine) show generally receptive views toward Russia as late as 2013-2014ish Euromaidan marked a huge shift in polling regarding NATO vs CIS it's not hard to suppose that some combination of more enthusiastically Europhile leadership in Kyiv could have pushed President Clinton to back membership in NATO, or sympathetic states in Eastern Europe to back EU accession; I don't get the argument that it was never on the table. Indeed there are Russian boots on the ground precisely because further movement into the European camp seemed very likely in the 2020s.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:16
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It turns out that the seat should have gone to the first republic in alphabetical order. Armenians start cheering too soon, as all of a sudden an oddly familiar, mustachioed and bespectacled gentleman named Aaaaaaazbekistan enters the room.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:16
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Comstar posted:How many men did the US have to invade Iraq? 120,000 doesn't seem nearly enough to control a country the population and size of Ukraine. 177,000 for the initial invasion in 2003. With the US airforce and navy providing massive amounts of support and against a far less equipped and organized opponent. Today is where Ukraine shows how they intend to fight back, and we'll start to get a glimpse of what this will cost Russia one way or another.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:16
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I still maintain that attempting to occupy Ukraine would be incredibly stupid, but 1) major powers have made stupid decisions before, 2) the Putin Rant Speeches, and 3) pulverizing the cities of 5+ million people and then leaving would achieve pretty much all of Russia's objectives if they were willing to risk even more international outrage so who the gently caress knows, this all sucks and i'm currently sad
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Feb 24, 2022 10:17
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There's some pretty terrible photos in Czech online newspapers already. loving awful  Czech Republic is allowing any Ukrainian with biometric passport to enter the country without visa. Also any Ukrainian with unresolved visa status can stay in the country.... theghostpt fucked around with this message at 10:20 on Feb 24, 2022 |
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Feb 24, 2022 10:17
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Ghetto Prince posted:I wouldn't trust anything you see right now unless it's confirmed by the Ukrainian military, and they're kind of busy. The vast majority of info coming out is rumors and speculation. Even the videos I've seen are mostly misattributed, or edited, or just old clips from 2014 - 2015. The KKKonvoy in Canada recently demonstrated a lot of the American left is out of touch with Canada, let alone Europe.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:18
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The core issue has never been, and still isn't NATO membership. Putin's grievance is that former Russian imperial subjects have chosen to break with Moscow and align West. Those former subjects applying in due course for NATO membership is a symptom of that process, but it isn't the process itself. There was no real chance of Ukraine actually applying for NATO membership in 2014, there was no realistic prospect of Ukraine joining anytime soon in 2021. NATO enlargement is a real and honest grievance in the Kremlin, but nothing NATO has or hasn't done has been the proximate cause for anything Putin has done in Ukraine in the last 8 years. e: If anything, I suspect the consensus outlook will not be that Russia was not given enough respect and concessions by the West, it will be that Russian aggression has been repeatedly ignored or rewarded and that this has emboldened Putin each time. A sharp relearning of the lessons of the 30's, this is what happens if you let a militaristic revanchist ethnostate have a few little invasions with no consequences. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Feb 24, 2022 |
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Feb 24, 2022 10:19
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