Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

is there any way this is even close to true?

https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1497217263161823232?s=21

Frosted Flake posted:

spacemang_spliff posted:

Zelensky is basically if Jon Stewart became president right

fits my needs posted:

is he doing this while doing the funny voice and making faces

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/salahzhang/status/1496930388261941255

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/salahzhang/status/1496930388261941255

Frosted Flake posted:

Exactly.

What scares me is that since this exact scenario was predicted to be how a Cold War would go hot - Mobilization and Wargames during tense crisis negotiations - would NATO leadership have done the same thing in say, 1972?

the holy poopacy posted:

I dunno, if your strategic goal is to isolate Russia this turn of events seems like it's working, or at least probably preferable (in a coldhearted pragmatic sense) than letting Ukraine gently slide into Russia's sphere.

Gumball Gumption posted:

Imagine Martin Sheen was president off the strength of the West Wing

Torpor posted:

I disagree the US looks like warmongering spineless idiots who betray their allies


edit: Biden can’t even organize sanctions against Russia

Sinteres posted:

I will say that this could all be catastrophically bad for Biden if oil and gas remain expensive, and the EU resolve on sanctions could fall apart for the same reason, but so far traditional US Blob foreign policy goals are going really well.

Sinteres posted:

Russia invading Ukraine doesn't make the US look like warmongers to anyone other than people who already 100% view the US that way. As for spinelessly betraying their allies, I think pretty much everyone understands that starting WW3 to defend Ukraine wouldn't have made any sense. Yeah, hanging Ukraine out to dry in terms of making them believe NATO was a realistic choice but denying them actual membership is "a bad look," but it's not the US that was standing in the way of NATO membership. And the sanctions really are ramping up pretty significantly at this point with Germany saying SWIFT is on the table now.

I will say that this could all be catastrophically bad for Biden if oil and gas remain expensive, and the EU resolve on sanctions could fall apart for the same reason, but so far traditional US Blob foreign policy goals are going really well from a super cynical perspective.

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

lol

https://twitter.com/barnes_joe/status/1497194009038626842?s=21

Chonchon posted:

It is very comedic and funny that westerners freak out over minor losses like this, and even funnier that they think russia is bothered and that this is somehow a propaganda coup, even if the bullshit Ukrainian figures about russian casualties are true.

I’d be more interested to know the losses suffered by Ukrainian Volksturm this far.

Nothus posted:

I mean, NATO did do a big wargame in 1983 that almost started a nuclear war.

the holy poopacy posted:

I dunno, if your strategic goal is to isolate Russia this turn of events seems like it's working, or at least probably preferable (in a coldhearted pragmatic sense) than letting Ukraine gently slide into Russia's sphere.

Wraith of J.O.I. posted:

is there any way this is even close to true?

https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1497217263161823232?s=21

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1497230379807383553

hahahahahahahahha

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

DiscountDildos posted:

https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1497162914586898475?s=20&t=qNo3vbwo_vaIO21LHjaxFA

Cao Ni Ma posted:

The biggest problem Putin gets out of all this is probably domestic if it lasts too long.

Le Saboteur posted:

It feels like Russia has had some significant set backs in this invasion so far, but thats a pretty drat big body count. I'd believe maybe a third of that but even that is a lot. That puts Ukraine killing like 10 Russians for every Ukrainian loss.

Niedar posted:

Large amount of Ukrainian vehicles either destroyed or abandoned on the road near Kherson.

https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1497227095847620614?s=20&t=WpAUk3JnqJqiM3AJVdJjZA
https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1497238568418349062?s=20&t=WpAUk3JnqJqiM3AJVdJjZA

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1497230379807383553

hahahahahahahahha

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

quote:

KYIV, Ukraine—If Russia launches an all-out war with Ukraine, one of its most dangerous weapons will already be in Kyiv: a network of potential turncoats and moles that Moscow has cultivated for decades within Ukraine’s military, intelligence and security forces.

That network is certainly much smaller than when the conflict began in 2014 with Russia’s grab of Crimea and covert invasion of the eastern Donbas region. At the time, two successive commanders of the Ukrainian navy switched sides to Russia, handing over most of the fleet, as did key security officials across the south and the east.

Since then, counterintelligence investigations, purges of people with Russian government connections and the promotions of combat veterans of the war against Russian-backed forces in Donbas have significantly reduced Moscow’s infiltration, Ukrainian authorities say.

Still, officials in Kyiv warn, a formidable challenge persists.

“The Russian intelligence network operating here has been installed a long time ago. We haven’t yet eliminated all of it, there is more work to do,” said Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine’s national security adviser. “Their mission from the Moscow center is simple: destroy, destroy, destroy. They have no other mission except destroying us as a nation.”
...
Under Mr. Yanukovych, there was an unspoken order to Ukraine’s intelligence services not to try limiting Russian influence, said Anton Gerashchenko, a former lawmaker and an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister. “Our special services simply did nothing.”

In 2015, Ukraine’s SBU domestic intelligence agency was hit by scandal when it sent a covert team to capture a Russian-backed militant leader in Donbas and word of the classified mission leaked out. The three Ukrainian operatives were themselves captured and thrown into a separatist jail where Russian-controlled rebels stripped them to their underwear, bound their wrists and blindfolded them, then paraded them in front of Russian journalists. Eventually the officers were released in a prisoner exchange. Ukrainian counterintelligence officials believe their capture was an inside job, the result of a betrayal by another high-ranking SBU employee.

In 2017, the SBU arrested an interpreter for Ukraine’s then-Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, accusing him of collecting sensitive government information on Moscow’s behalf. He had previously served as a translator for Mr. Yanukovych.

In 2020, Ukrainian authorities arrested Maj. Gen. Valeriy Shaytanov, the chief of the SBU’s Unit A, a counterterrorism special-operations branch, on charges that he had secretly helped Russia’s intelligence operatives prepare the assassination of a Chechen dissident in Kyiv. He remains behind bars awaiting trial.

Russia’s FSB intelligence agency created a special directorate to focus solely on Ukraine in July 2021, the month when Mr. Putin published a long article questioning Ukraine’s right to exist as a separate nation, Western officials said.

Many current and former Ukrainian security officials openly suspect that some of their colleagues, including in high positions, secretly work for Moscow. “A shadow structure has emerged inside the Ukrainian government to move information around known Kremlin assets,” said a report this month by the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank, citing interviews with Ukrainian security and intelligence officials.
...
Oleksandr Danylyuk, who served as Mr. Zelensky’s national-security adviser in 2019 and oversaw intelligence matters at the time, said Russia still retains a large network, including within the SBU intelligence service. Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence service, the one that would be most critical in case of war, however, is the least affected, he said.

“GUR had a very good cooperation with our Western partners, and with the operations that they were performing they were very professional,” said Mr. Danylyuk. “I’ve had a chance to give the green light to some of them. Information wasn’t leaked, and when they performed everything was successful.” Ukraine, he added, has its own network of intelligence assets behind Russian lines.

Many Ukrainian citizens, including senior military and intelligence officers, have close relatives in Russia. Some maintain cross-border ties despite eight years of conflict. Many security officials who aren’t currently on Moscow’s payroll are likely to defect to the Russian side if they believe it has the upper hand, Mr. Martsenyuk warned. “There are a lot of people who can convert after it’s clear that they think there is a new ruler,” he said.

Political parties that advocate close ties with Russia while supporting Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity won about 16% of the national vote in the latest parliamentary elections, in 2019. The leader of the biggest of them, Viktor Medvedchuk, has been under house arrest since last year as he is being investigated on treason charges that he denies. Mr. Zelensky’s government has also shut down Mr. Medvedchuk’s TV channel and several others, labeling them as Russian propaganda. Russian TV has been taken off the air in Ukraine after 2014.

“The fifth column is a public institution, even represented in our parliament, because our nation is too democratic,” Mr. Danilov said.

Suspicion about loyalties spills across national politics. Last year Ukrainian prosecutors announced an investigation of Mr. Zelensky’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, on suspicion of high treason because of his alleged role in the coal trade with Russian-led authorities in Donbas. Mr. Poroshenko, who is not allowed to leave Kyiv and its region following a court hearing in January, has denied wrongdoing and said he is the victim of a political witch hunt.

In 2014, despite a large network of Russian agents, attempted pro-Moscow uprisings in several Russian-speaking cities of southern and eastern Ukraine, such as Kharkiv and Odessa, ended in failure even though local law-enforcement officials sided with rebels.

“The Ukrainians have been pretty good in rooting them out,” said John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who is now at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “And the evidence for that is the failure of the Russians to launch a serious diversion effort where they have tried.”

Grapplejack posted:

Why did Biden think china would help the us after the last three years

Niedar posted:

Large amount of Ukrainian vehicles either destroyed or abandoned on the road near Kherson.

https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1497227095847620614?s=20&t=WpAUk3JnqJqiM3AJVdJjZA
https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1497238568418349062?s=20&t=WpAUk3JnqJqiM3AJVdJjZA

Agean90 posted:

Wars have disputed body counts decades after the fact, I'd take any released while it's on going with a heavy amount of salt.

fits my needs posted:

is he doing this while doing the funny voice and making faces

Asproigerosis posted:

I don't like this volkssturm stuff. There is no point, they will be slaughtered for nothing

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1497230379807383553

hahahahahahahahha

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

Grapplejack posted:

Why did Biden think china would help the us after the last three years

GlassEye-Boy posted:

For whoever was asking about Huawei earlier, saw this today, great documentary on how Huawei is doing in 2022 with the US sanctions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpetgKrZj54

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1497230379807383553

hahahahahahahahha

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

Frosted Flake posted:

If you were Ukrainian, why would you fight room by room, building by building, block by block, just so your government doesn’t sign Minsk II?

Grapplejack posted:

Why did Biden think china would help the us after the last three years

GreenBuckanneer posted:

Why did Biden think china was the good guys lol they only like us because we buy their products