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Mechafunkzilla posted:You're completely disregarding ethnic and cultural allegiances. Also a decade plus of buildup where they were fed fascist ethno-nationalism propaganda through Russian media.
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Apr 16, 2022 17:54
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Deteriorata posted:My own sense is that Russia doesn't really give that much of a poo poo about Crimea, Russia's intent was to gently caress with Ukraine and Crimea was a weapon to do that. It was a "dog in the manger" sort of thing, where Russia desired it only because it was important to Ukraine. I would disagree with this, Crimea has Sevastopol which is massively strategically important for Russia and has been for centuries, as a warm-water port on an easily defendable peninsula. All the various areas near Crimea are mainly useful as a "buffer zone" for it, I think you're spot on in that case
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Apr 16, 2022 17:54
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PederP posted:Which is probably really wise on the part of the Ukrainian military leadership. Throwing hordes of poorly motivated conscripts lacking proper equipment against the opposing side is a really effective way to crater morale and support for the war effort. As long as weapons, gear and ammo is a constraining factor (which it will probably be until the end of the war) there is no good reason to force those who do not want to fight into doing so. Civic work efforts - like maintaining electricity, sanitation, heating, taking care of elderly/sick, etc. those might see forced conscription at some point. But actual fighting duty is completely daft to force people into. If the rumors are true that DNR/LPR is doing forced conscription, that is just idiotic on their part, and the higher-ups should stop it (if they can, I have no idea how tight control Russia has over them) - it has negative value in almost any situation. There was a tiny bit of not conscription but mass arming in Kyiv. It's anecdotal but the only person I know who's been killed so far was a friend of a friend who joined with one of the TD battalions and was basically immediately killed. I hope stuff like that is over.
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Apr 16, 2022 17:54
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Killer robot posted:Crimea's a valuable port for Russia, isn't it? When relations were good with Ukraine having a base for the Black Sea fleet in a friendly country was probably enough, but that ship has ofc how valuable is Crimea if there's no Black Sea Fleet? Or at least if Sevastopol is constantly screened by anti-shipping missiles? Seems we might be nearing that possibility.
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Apr 16, 2022 17:57
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jaete posted:I would disagree with this, Crimea has Sevastopol which is massively strategically important for Russia and has been for centuries, as a warm-water port on an easily defendable peninsula. The areas near Crimea are mainly useful because the peninsula is wholly reliant on the mainland for important things like water and the ability to economically transport things in and out of it. Pretty much the same reasons the Soviets gave it to Ukraine. For a kleptocracy there's a lot less for you to steal and shake down in Crimea if you don't have these things in place. The port is strategically less important these days insofar as Russia doesn't actually need (and cannot maintain) a super powerful fleet capable of shoving around other states around in the Med. They don't need a big fleet or huge warships to defend their coasts or conduct normal coast guard/defensive operations in the Black Sea or Mediterranean - and anything outside of big ships can be parked and repaired elsewhere on the Black Sea coast. The Black Sea is a bathtub where a slew of regional powers now have the capability to make the sea essentially untenable for any fleet floating in it. A hundred 90's era Harpoons on F-16s or ground launchers could send the entire black sea fleet to the bottom inside a day and even give any US carrier group stupid enough to be floating in it a run for its money - same thing for the entire Mediterranean Sea where it's only teneable for a big fleet if you're friends with practically everyone around it. But if you're a revanchist rear end in a top hat who wants to dickwave big ships at your neighbors and run a mafia state who cannot build facilities themselves and need to ride the success of the Soviets to make that happen - then yeah you need to own Sevastopol. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Apr 16, 2022 |
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Apr 16, 2022 17:57
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https://twitter.com/PjotrSauer/status/1515369619497828359
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Apr 16, 2022 17:58
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Future infantry spotted.
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Apr 16, 2022 17:59
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That's a lot of people, but nowhere near 500? Also, related: https://twitter.com/CarlSchreck/status/1515347152523964418 Tells a lot about the kind of man Putin is, doesn't it?
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Apr 16, 2022 17:59
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Mechafunkzilla posted:You're completely disregarding ethnic and cultural allegiances. Ethnic and cultural allegiances not being valid reasons to move borders is a core principle of international law. History has given plenty of examples why it is really bad to open that door. Russia cannot unilaterally decide that irredentism is actually ok. Especially not when it involves moving people in or out after taking control of foreign territory. Yes, I know this has already been done by other countries. That is not an excuse. There is a significant German minority in Denmark and vice versa - it works out just fine with some laws making sure minority rights are respected and there is opportunity to keep cultural ties alive. It can be done. Ukraine and Russia has so massive ties in the form of marriage, moving around and friendships that it has to work out between those two as well. Otherwise the only alternative is to turn Ukraine into a rump state. I guess that is what the Russian regime wants, but that's not working out well. Crimea isn't changing hands as it looks now, and whether it does or not, a stable normality has to be established. It might involve moving borders - but that cannot be motivated by ethnography. It has to be motivated by practicalities of the status quo when this was is over. Not justice. Not ethnic majorities. We'd have a couple hundred years of warfare in Africa and Europe if nations couldn't function while having ethnic minorities. So that's a no go. Nations have to respect minorities, and that their ethnicity might be a minority in another country. It is the only way to avoid constant warfare and genocide.
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Apr 16, 2022 18:02
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Deteriorata posted:NATO is not a state. Neither is Putin, for that matter. Государство – это я
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Apr 16, 2022 18:02
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PederP posted:Ethnic and cultural allegiances not being valid reasons to move borders is a core principle of international law. History has given plenty of examples why it is really bad to open that door. Russia cannot unilaterally decide that irredentism is actually ok. Especially not when it involves moving people in or out after taking control of foreign territory. Yes, I know this has already been done by other countries. That is not an excuse. You see, a problem is that for certain Russians being ruled by Ukrainians, who they consider their inferior, is "disrespect".
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Apr 16, 2022 18:04
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There's a lot of tricks going on in this. I think someone has counted the line of sailors at being 51, but there's guys behind them, but that 2nd line isn't filled out completely or in clear view, so it's obfuscating the total amount of survivors. Maybe 100 or so.
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Apr 16, 2022 18:04
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Doesn't look like crew of 500, less than half probably, although they are probably not showing those that were wounded. In fact, they all seem to be in a remarkably good condition considering they were allegedly rescued from a ship destroyed in 'an ammunition incident'
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Apr 16, 2022 18:07
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In the Kherson region, the Russian military plans to hold a "referendum" in early May - Ombudsman Denisovquote:This was announced by the ombudswoman Lyudmila Denisova on her Facebook page. Sure is thoughtful for the Russians to bring freedom and open democracy to the oppressed Ukrainians. They seem very appreciative. More to the point, I personally doubt Kherson will still be in Russian hands in early May.
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Apr 16, 2022 18:14
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Deteriorata posted:In the Kherson region, the Russian military plans to hold a "referendum" in early May - Ombudsman Denisov Yeah like isn’t there fighting in the outer regions of the city now. Plus Russia keeps digging more and more mass graves near the city.
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Apr 16, 2022 18:18
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This is only tangentially related to the war itself, but...why was Crimea ceded to the Ukrainian SSR? I've never really understood why that was done.
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Apr 16, 2022 18:31
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Risky Bisquick posted:https://mobile.twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1515363465623482371  Deteriorata posted:My own sense is that Russia doesn't really give that much of a poo poo about Crimea, Russia's intent was to gently caress with Ukraine and Crimea was a weapon to do that. It was a "dog in the manger" sort of thing, where Russia desired it only because it was important to Ukraine. They do care about Sevastopol, it’s their only deep military port outside below the Arctic circle or something. PT6A posted:Are there equivalent factors in play in Crimea/Donbas that I'm just overlooking? Do they appeal to the same tiny sliver of lunatics, or are they more widely held? There’s a question of Russian as an official language, but Russian not being official question only means that you cannot make a legal demand for some government form to be written in Russian, if the government chose to not make it available as such, or that your kid doesn’t take an Ukrainian language class in school. That debate is nowhere near as heated as I perceive the 2nd amendment chat to be, speaking from experience of growing up in country with lots of minority schools and 1 official language. For older people this could be a cultural question, however. USSR is remembered fondly by many of the 50+ cohort, specifically due to how bad the 90s were.
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Apr 16, 2022 18:33
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Doctor Teeth posted:This is only tangentially related to the war itself, but...why was Crimea ceded to the Ukrainian SSR? I've never really understood why that was done. Probably for the same reason Ukraine was able to obliterate their ability to farm despite not actually controlling the region. The only land route to the mainland, and it's largest source of fresh water, all comes from Ukraine.
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Apr 16, 2022 18:35
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Dwesa posted:In fact, they all seem to be in a remarkably good condition considering they were allegedly rescued from a ship destroyed in 'an ammunition incident' Who knows, they could have padded out the group with the healthiest looking guys who happened to be nearby 
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Apr 16, 2022 18:36
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Dwesa posted:In fact, they all seem to be in a remarkably good condition considering they were allegedly rescued from a ship destroyed in 'an ammunition incident'
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Apr 16, 2022 18:47
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https://twitter.com/samramani2/status/1515333016142426112 Interesting take.
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Apr 16, 2022 18:47
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Doctor Teeth posted:This is only tangentially related to the war itself, but...why was Crimea ceded to the Ukrainian SSR? I've never really understood why that was done. kherson, mykolaiv, odessa, sevastopol, etc were major shipyards where ukraine built a large percentage of the soviet fleet. edit: like the moskova everyones been posting about was built in mykolaiv Necros fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Apr 16, 2022 |
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Apr 16, 2022 18:48
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Young Freud posted:There's a lot of tricks going on in this. I think someone has counted the line of sailors at being 51, but there's guys behind them, but that 2nd line isn't filled out completely or in clear view, so it's obfuscating the total amount of survivors. Maybe 100 or so. Well the captain anton kuprin is there, so that particular bit of info was wrong at least.
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Apr 16, 2022 18:54
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jettisonedstuff posted:Well the captain anton kuprin is there, so that particular bit of info was wrong at least. Maybe, maybe not. It's a captain giving a report, but there's obviously no audio, so we don't know when the video had taken place. Russia is well-known for reusing old or post-dated footage. I know there's some discussion that none of these guys look like they've been through a ship sinking a couple days ago, it could be some class of new recruits or something that TASS had as B-roll.
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Apr 16, 2022 18:58
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https://twitter.com/YanaSuporovska/status/1515327315806408712
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Apr 16, 2022 18:59
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Seeing there were maybe 3 Neptun missiles produced conjures an image of three British foreign supply officers giggling their asses off right now. As much as getting a valuable near prototype into position in a storm to hit a distracted Russian ship and make it sit on the dick is a heroic as gently caress story, I bet it was a solid boosted UK Harpoon. I mean, who cares; it just makes it amusing three times over instead of two.
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Apr 16, 2022 19:01
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cinci zoo sniper posted:https://twitter.com/samramani2/status/1515333016142426112 I really, really hope that doesn't happen. It would achieve nothing but add to the devastation, death and instability caused by this war. If he does start mobilizing and shifting to a war-time economy, I really hope that becomes the impetus for someone to coup him and get things somewhat under control. Every month of war adds a year of rebuilding and a decade of reconciliation to the final tally (numbers from my anus, but the general gist is valid). The one thing I can agree with the 'lose faster' crowd about is that prolonging this war is a very, very bad thing. For Ukraine, for Russia, for Europe, and even for the world at large. And while we see the hyped up jingoists on the Soloviev shows - I don't think it is a widespread sentiment yet. I think most Russians want this war to end, and they don't really care too much about what the legal status of Donbas is afterwards (Crimea is maybe a different matter). People will get on with their lives. We're not going to get Weimar-republic revanchism at this point. But after a grueling war of full mobilization? Things aren't going to get better. Noone is going to roll into Russia and shepherd them towards a transformation like Germany or Japan. Stopping now is best. Ugh. I really don't hope he cranks up the gears of war on May 9th. Spout some nonsense about victory being almost achieved - lost embarassingly in Donbass, call it a victory, have everyone agree to the status quo of Crimea being Russian and flush out the recognition of LPR/DNR, then get on with life. Maybe that's naive. But I think anything else will just be horrible and lead to bad things.
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Apr 16, 2022 19:03
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OddObserver posted:That's a lot of people, but nowhere near 500? Similarly the only time Putin got close to suffering consequences for his actions was when he was in the same room as the mother of the Kursk's captain.
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Apr 16, 2022 19:12
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Dwesa posted:Doesn't look like crew of 500, less than half probably, although they are probably not showing those that were wounded. It's almost like the video is actually one of the 90 man crew of the new corvette entering commission in Sevastopol in 2022 from an unspecified date. NTRabbit fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Apr 16, 2022 |
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Apr 16, 2022 19:12
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Tuna-Fish posted:A very interesting piece of information: Worth noting that the article seems to state that they have (or had, at least) more than three after the war began, however (although it's perhaps deliberately vague about how many were ultimately produced): quote:The first money for missiles came at the end of 2021 and production finally began, less than two months before the war. In February, 3 Neptune missiles were ready, and an even larger pile was at different stages of assembly," the ex-people's deputy said. https://censor.net/ru/news/3334018/posle_obstrelov_skladov_kb_luch_vse_sborki_neptunov_obnarujili_nevredimymi_vyvezli_organizovali_dorabotku (machine translated)
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Apr 16, 2022 19:15
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remember waronfakes? https://twitter.com/irgarner/status/1515381030475210753?s=20&t=t-WmnB13I4g3dVX-mSnLcg Somebody fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Apr 17, 2022 |
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Apr 16, 2022 19:17
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PederP posted:I think most Russians want this war to end They do. With Ukraine subjugated by any means necessary. What led you to believe otherwise?
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Apr 16, 2022 19:18
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Rinkles posted:remember waronfakes? Stone's been a Putin apologist for years, maybe not a straight-up tankie but he sure does overlook Russian imperialism compared to American imperialism. Also, it's not the first time he's been taken in by a hoax. Pretty much his entire career was built on Jim Garrison's slander of Clay Shaw for JFK.
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Apr 16, 2022 19:24
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RF annouced control over all of Mariupol outside of the Asovstal factory. They claim to have killed or captured 23k Ukrainian forces during the operation. Actual number of forces encircled in the city was 3-4k including nat guard and territorial defense probably. Unclear how many are still left at Asovstal.
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Apr 16, 2022 19:24
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Mulva posted:They do. The majority of a nation's population prefer they win, even if they consider the war unjust, but it is also the case the majority doesn't really care too much if they lose - if it means they can get on with their lives in a better way. Wars are rarely popular affairs. The vocal warmongers are not the majority. I'm just saying: A Russian loss claimed to be a victory is not going to lead to a Weimar-republic situation. But every week this drags on the long-term prospects get worse. Hence, I would rather not see a full-scale mobilization and Putin dragging Russia further into a very dangerous morass. Most people just want to get on with life - even if they're assholes and cheer for the crazy people on TV. They'll adapt and move on once the war is over. History shows that humanity is pretty good at getting back to normal and developing selective amnesia. The joke of the 'special military operation' moniker is in some ways a small opening for this war to end sooner rather than later. It might be a vain hope. But Russia 'losing harder' is not good for Ukraine, Russia, Europe or the world. Unless it means Putin is couped and someone more peaceful takes office.
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Apr 16, 2022 19:26
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Dwesa posted:Doesn't look like crew of 500, less than half probably, although they are probably not showing those that were wounded. Less than half? You can count them, it's under 100.
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Apr 16, 2022 19:30
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DOOMocrat posted:Seeing there were maybe 3 Neptun missiles produced conjures an image of three British foreign supply officers giggling their asses off right now. As much as getting a valuable near prototype into position in a storm to hit a distracted Russian ship and make it sit on the dick is a heroic as gently caress story, I bet it was a solid boosted UK Harpoon. I mean, who cares; it just makes it amusing three times over instead of two. I'm betting it was just Neptune missiles. They had a handful in service and the Harpoons wouldn't be in place immediately. If the Harpoons had anything to do with this it was just having an incoming shipment of missiles meant the Ukrainian commander could count on having replacement missiles for any they expended in the near future, loosening up the engagement criteria. But it could frankly be that they just saw a perfect opportunity to ace the Moskva with ideal weather conditions and the perfect target doing donuts in range without escorts and took it. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Apr 16, 2022 |
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Apr 16, 2022 19:31
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PederP posted:The majority of a nation's population prefer they win, even if they consider the war unjust, but it is also the case the majority doesn't really care too much if they lose - if it means they can get on with their lives in a better way. Wars are rarely popular affairs. The vocal warmongers are not the majority. I'm just saying: A Russian loss claimed to be a victory is not going to lead to a Weimar-republic situation. But every week this drags on the long-term prospects get worse. Hence, I would rather not see a full-scale mobilization and Putin dragging Russia further into a very dangerous morass. Think of it like the Afghanistan withdrawal. A clear majority of Americans would answer Y to the question "Should we leave within the next six months?" Then everyone saw videos of Taliban fighters partying in bombed out gyms and refugees clinging to airplane wheels and suddenly we're A Country That Lost A War and the mood flipped overnight. I would wager that's what Putin is afraid of more than anything right now.
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Apr 16, 2022 19:34
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I’m not really convinced most Americans cared about or remember the Afghan withdrawal
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Apr 16, 2022 19:45
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i am a moron posted:I’m not really convinced most Americans cared about or remember the Afghan withdrawal Yep, you saw the Republican talking heads go full contrarian trying to whip people up against Biden's decision to withdraw but that didn't really get any traction so it fell out of the news cycle pretty quick. The American public was ready to be done with it.
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Apr 16, 2022 19:48
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