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OddObserver posted:Looking forward towards your future endorsement of Israeli annexation of West Bank. Last I checked the West Bank was outside of Ukraine.
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Oct 14, 2022 21:13
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I mean if you want to know what a fair democratic independence referendum looks like, the best example I can think of is Brexit . . .and even that was deeply influenced by Russian influence campaigns. Maybe Irish or Scottish independence? surely there's some level of actual, if in the case of Brexit very stupid, popular support where Russia supporting a thing doesn't mean it's illegitimate If Putin had limited his land grab to Crimea, it's possible-to-likely it would have stuck. Support for joining Russia was genuinely reasonably high, Sevastopol was something that in practical terms Russia was never going to willingly lose, and in general it would be a whole hassle for uncertain gain. Unfortunately, Putin decided he also wanted a big chunk of SE Ukraine and/or to ruin it as a demonstration to other nations in the Russian sphere, and also at some point lost the plot and decided Ukraine isn't a real nation and needs to be Russified.
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Oct 14, 2022 21:21
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By extension, if Russia does lose Crimea (which I'm still not sold on but has become significantly more likely), it is entirely because they were boneheaded enough to do all the other horrible things and start this war.
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Oct 14, 2022 21:25
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Regardless of what you feel about Crimean people's wishes for independence, military annexations are illegal, full stop. Russia has no right to annex Crimea or any other part of Ukraine and Ukraine has every right to take Crime back by force if she has to. Crimea's right to self-determination has nothing to do with it.
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Oct 14, 2022 21:26
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This may not be relevant here, but because someone mentioned russian influence in the Brexit referendum, I'm interested: It seems like actual Russian propaganda coming out of the war sucks! I had assumed after the conversations that happened 2016 and 2020 about Russian influence in U.S. elections that the tools they could use to sway opinion or present an alternate narrative to the West's were actually very effective. Is there someone in the thread who's spent a lot of time looking at pro-Russia propaganda media that can explain why their influence on public opinion re: this war seems so... weak?
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Oct 14, 2022 21:29
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NeatHeteroDude posted:This may not be relevant here, but because someone mentioned russian influence in the Brexit referendum, I'm interested: A portion is due to them focusing their efforts elsewhere, they are less trying to influence the US here and more trying to influence China/India to support them.
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Oct 14, 2022 21:32
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For all that Russia's apologists talk about offramps and deescalation, Russia sure denied Ukraine an offramp to end the war without retaking everything when it annexed the occupied territory. It seems fair to say that public opinion is probably different in Crimea vs pre 2022 occupied Donbas vs territories occupied since the invasion, but all of those were illegal and Russia itself says that Crimea and Donetsk have the same status as places like Zaporizhzhia that have never even been on the front line.
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Oct 14, 2022 21:33
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spankmeister posted:Would be nice to see Girkin behind bars, to get a taste of what's coming for him in The Hague. Just saw this https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1580913490533154817 But it probably means nothing
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Oct 14, 2022 21:36
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GreyjoyBastard posted:surely there's some level of actual, if in the case of Brexit very stupid, popular support where Russia supporting a thing doesn't mean it's illegitimate I'm of the opinion the only reason he didn't go for all of Ukraine in 2014 is that his army was in no shape to do so, as shown by the 8 years of prep time for the current stage of the invasion. Also considering the mask falling off this year, it's impossible to have an objective argument about "how much did Crimea want to join Russia?" It was impossible to find out as of 2014. The percent of Crimeans supporting Russia before Maidan became irrelevant information, the revolution changed political realties overnight. But then there was no time after that change to objectively poll anyone because Russia immediately invaded in response. Whatever the truth about sentiment in that short period was is simply lost information. This is all really moot. There's a full-blown war now, Russia can never be trusted to negotiate in good faith, and they can not be allowed to retain anything they tried to take by force. That includes Crimea. Today's practical reality has rendered the questions about Crimea's feelings towards Russia irrelevant. And it's not just avoiding bad precedent, Ukraine has to remove Russian forces from Crimea in order to protect their shipping after the war. If or how that happens is for 2023 to figure out. I'll go as far to say IMHO it is everyone's moral obligation to not even do "devil's advocate" arguments about Crimea and Donbass joining Russia. Russia is conducting genocide in Ukraine, there is nothing we should hand to them even rhetorically, ever.
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Oct 14, 2022 21:44
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Strelkov/Girkin has stopped posting few days ago, which is a pretty good reason to believe that legal threats to so-called "warcors" are real, at least in some wrist-slapping form.
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Oct 14, 2022 21:45
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I think the signal of if Ukraine is serious about retaking Crimea is what happens after they take Melitopol. Because they'll be in rocket range of the Kerch bridge at that point. If they rocket the Crimean bridge into dust then they're serious about retaking it. I think regardless of what happens they will rough it up a bit as a bargaining chip for an end to the conflict. Because once Ukraine retakes Melitopol there isn't much Russia will be able to stop them from retaking everything else. Nelson Mandingo fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Oct 14, 2022 |
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Oct 14, 2022 21:57
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The problem with saying things like thisquote:To make my perspective clear, I believe that Crimea should be part of Russia on the basis of self-determination. Sure, it's certainly possible that, had a free and fair election been eventually had in Crimea, they would've voted to join Russia. But it's also possible that such an election would've resulted in Crimea saying no thanks and sticking with Ukraine. And now with Russia having invaded, we'll never know what would've been the outcome, and there can't be such an election in the future for at least a generation after Ukraine re-takes Crimea, assuming they're able to, given the impacts of the 'annexation'.
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Oct 14, 2022 21:58
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NeatHeteroDude posted:This may not be relevant here, but because someone mentioned russian influence in the Brexit referendum, I'm interested: Since the war started, the west has shut many of their easy channels, for example you can't watch RT in as many places now. The events have also been unifying, so there's no easy way for Russian trolls and shills to make their point. This doesn't mean though that Russian propaganda has been totally unsuccessful globally. In large parts of the world people are either understanding for Russian goals or indifferent. But then, I don't think most people I meet daily have strong opinions about Azeri-Armenian or Indo-Pakistani conflicts because they barely know that those countries exist. And then we have Hungary, a member of EU and NATO that is absolutely drooling for gas from Putin. Russia doesn't even need propaganda in Hungary because Orban does it for them.
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Oct 14, 2022 22:00
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Cicero posted:The problem with saying things like this Besides that, Sevastopol was a huge Russian naval base inside Ukraine, so any polls have to be viewed through the prism of "did people speculate in their responses if the city would just die economically if Russia eventually withdrew" as well as "did Russia spend hundreds of millions of rubles to influence the public opinion to be favourable to Russia". The answer is "yes" to both, probably.
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Oct 14, 2022 22:06
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Chalks posted:Interesting developments that could shed some light on the state of Russia's security aparatus Doesn't Russian still have tons of older less precise cruise missiles they can use? Like if they all care about is hitting civilian targets I don't think the accuracy would matter all that much to them.
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Oct 14, 2022 22:15
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Nenonen posted:Besides that, Sevastopol was a huge Russian naval base inside Ukraine, so any polls have to be viewed through the prism of "did people speculate in their responses if the city would just die economically if Russia eventually withdrew" as well as "did Russia spend hundreds of millions of rubles to influence the public opinion to be favourable to Russia". I mean yeah, that's why self determination of Crimea pre-2022 is an interesting test case for me, particularly to compare against Brexit / Scoxit / Rojava / northern Sri Lanka (don't get me started  )/ what have you. It's clearly either close to or over the "actually, no" line but it helps me try and calibrate my thoughts on other examples.
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Oct 14, 2022 22:16
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Being entirely dependent on Ukraine for drinkable water is one of the issues you would expect to be drawn out in a real referendum campaign. e: hell the existence of any sort of political campaign is one of those big hints as to whether you are looking at a real democratic exercise or a sham Alchenar fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Oct 14, 2022 |
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Oct 14, 2022 22:19
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Are all of these actual C-SPAM mods or something, suddenly "just asking questions"? Russia invaded and staged an illegal, fraudulent referendum. So any sort of discussion about self determination is completely moot. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 14, 2022 22:26
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The only reason why the takeover of Crimea was "bloodless" according to some harebrained pedantic criterion was because the Russians were killing Ukrainians by the hundreds, if not thousands, elsewhere, so they had no resources to resist on Crimean territory, lmao, what's going on Also "bloodless" takeover as long as you don't count the ethnic cleansing
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Oct 14, 2022 22:35
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socialsecurity posted:A portion is due to them focusing their efforts elsewhere, they are less trying to influence the US here and more trying to influence China/India to support them. Also Africa. They're leaning in hard on the anti-colonialist angle (without irony). There's an obviously well justified view in most African countries that the west in general exploits smaller/poorer countries and Russia is pushing the narrative that that's what it's doing to Ukraine.
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Oct 14, 2022 22:39
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steinrokkan posted:The only reason why the takeover of Crimea was "bloodless" according to some harebrained pedantic criterion was because the Russians were killing Ukrainians by the hundreds, if not thousands, elsewhere, so they had no resources to resist on Crimean territory, lmao, what's going on How dare you sir!?! They were doing that at least 200km from the other place and is therefore unrelated to that matter at hand.
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Oct 14, 2022 22:40
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Regarding Russian propaganda, I think one thing worth noting is that in Brexit and the US elections, Russian propaganda didn't NEED to boost a particular position - it was sufficient to sow chaos and say "those guys are pretty bad!" and kinda let the internal hatreds metastasize from there. But now, it's not enough to suggest that NATO or even Ukraine is bad, it's necessary for Russian propaganda to take a position and justify why what they are doing is good. That's proving, well, a bit of an uphill struggle considering that what they are doing is so flagrantly not good, and even if Russia had been studiously avoiding warcrimes it would probably have been trickier anyhow because it's easier to insinuate that someone else is bad and nasty than it is to insist that you yourself are absolutely doing the right thing.
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Oct 14, 2022 22:42
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Crow Buddy posted:How dare you sir!?! They were doing that at least 200km from the other place and is therefore unrelated to that matter at hand. Let's congratulate Mr. Hitler on his brilliant bloodless takeover of Vichy France, things could have gotten hairy, but in the end cooler heads prevailed!
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Oct 14, 2022 22:44
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I mean if you want to know what a fair democratic independence referendum looks like, the best example I can think of is Brexit . . .and even that was deeply influenced by Russian influence campaigns. Maybe Irish or Scottish independence? Ireland already IS independent... we just have to do a little bit of long term reunification with the remaining six counties in my part of the island (all in good time). 
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Oct 14, 2022 22:46
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steinrokkan posted:Let's congratulate Mr. Hitler on his brilliant bloodless takeover of Vichy France, things could have gotten hairy, but in the end cooler heads prevailed! It was brilliantly executed.
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Oct 14, 2022 22:49
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the holy poopacy posted:This seems like the crux of the point--surely any negotiations about self-determination would be between the government of Ukraine and its citizens? It's not really clear to me why Russia would get to be involved at that stage, sovereign states don't get to just negotiate with the people of another sovereign state for territory. Right, yes - I wasn't clear enough because I was bending over backwards to illustrate what should be done if Russia had a legitimate point of some kind and was acting in good faith, but any legitimate referendum would occur prior to even a partial transfer of power and would therefore need to be administered by the Ukrainian government. When I said "explore a referendum together" I meant that Russia would probably want to have some input into the format of the referendum and to have some observers, not that they would be in control of the process. Of course, they aren't acting in good faith which is why they never tried to start the conversation which would have led down this path. Nenonen posted:Regardless of what you feel about Crimean people's wishes for independence, military annexations are illegal, full stop. Russia has no right to annex Crimea or any other part of Ukraine and Ukraine has every right to take Crime back by force if she has to. Crimea's right to self-determination has nothing to do with it. I think this is the essence of the matter - because Crimea was taken by force without provocation, Russia's claim to it is not legitimate. No referendum can make it legitimate after the fact, especially not one run under the shadow of the Russian state. Eletriarnation fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Oct 14, 2022 |
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Oct 14, 2022 22:52
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NeatHeteroDude posted:This may not be relevant here, but because someone mentioned russian influence in the Brexit referendum, I'm interested: "Russian influence" is an easy scapegoat for the centre-left in both the UK and the US for why bad things happened (Brexit and Trump) which run against the cosmopolitan vision they perceive for their countries. In both cases, Brexit and Trump were caused by and won by domestic politicians tapping domestic strains and faultlines, and reviews into russian influence on their campaigns show both funding and influence to be marginal compared to key domestic funders. At best Russia spend 15 years throwing money at fridge groups vaguely in line with their interests and then took all the credit when those groups were successful for reasons unrelated to russian support. It's easier to blame outsiders than reckon with the causes of your own failure.
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Oct 14, 2022 22:55
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E: meh, not worth it
sean10mm fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Oct 14, 2022 |
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Oct 14, 2022 23:00
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Charliegrs posted:Doesn't Russian still have tons of older less precise cruise missiles they can use? Like if they all care about is hitting civilian targets I don't think the accuracy would matter all that much to them. Unless they're incredibly faster than the modern missiles, they'll be shot down in even greater numbers. The terror-bombing campaign once again galvanized foreign sympathy with Ukraine, resulting in more defences being promised. Putin and his army leadership keeps making the same strategic mistakes.
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Oct 14, 2022 23:08
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NeatHeteroDude posted:Is there someone in the thread who's spent a lot of time looking at pro-Russia propaganda media that can explain why their influence on public opinion re: this war seems so... weak? People have already mentioned the different markets they started refocusing their attention on, but there was an additional reason why they scaled back on a lot of their propaganda movements in most democratic republics pretty fast: when it came time for rallying visible activism or commentary to support russia, it really, really, really sucked. It was completely insufficient to task, through a combination of the arguments it was expected to use to encourage cynical nonintervention and the mediocrity of the people and groups that were to rally to the cause. It competed terribly against early messaging successes of Ukraine plus a prompt and steady demonstration of russia being russia
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Oct 14, 2022 23:11
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NeatHeteroDude posted:This may not be relevant here, but because someone mentioned russian influence in the Brexit referendum, I'm interested: I think the war was a big shock. A lot of genuinely antiwar people who contributed to Russian-sympathetic media lost their stomach for it after Putin announced a special operation
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Oct 14, 2022 23:19
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nimby posted:Unless they're incredibly faster than the modern missiles, they'll be shot down in even greater numbers. The terror-bombing campaign once again galvanized foreign sympathy with Ukraine, resulting in more defences being promised. Putin and his army leadership keeps making the same strategic mistakes. The other problem with using older missiles is the range. The Iskander ground-launched short-range ballistic missile has an operational range of 500km. The Tochka, which was replaced by the Iskander, has an operational range of 185km (the last version, the Scarab C) to 70km (the first model, the Scarab A, introduced in 1975). The Luna, which was in turned replaced by the Tochka, had a range of 65km. Switching to shorter- and shorter-range and slower ballistic missiles weakens a lot of their tactics since they're now less mobile and more vulnerable to aerial counterattack, outflanking, etc. For instance, these older ballistic missiles largely have ranges that fall within HIMARS range. Also, these older missile stockpiles have been largely given away or sold over the last fifty years. The Tochka, which was retired in 2019 due to modernization of the rocket forces to the Iskander, has since been reintroduced into Russian service, but most of have been given away to Syria, the Donbass People's Republics, Armenia and other Russian allies.
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Oct 14, 2022 23:25
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I can write about this in more detail when at a keyboard, but the strongest goal and accomplishment of Russian propaganda methods isn’t usually accepting specific pro-Russia positions- it’s civic disengagement. Equivocation about truth mattering in sources and dismissal of things like voting or sharing common civic identity (whether it’s ironic or sincere) are the outcome that Russian propaganda most effectively instilled, domestically and abroad. Propaganda that isn’t direct subject-specific deception is also almost never direct or immediate in its effects- it takes years, and progressive mediation and socialization. Russification (like was done to Crimea, like is being done to the occupied territories) is the product of generations of work. RT or Sputnik materials aren’t intended to directly influence large numbers- they persuade small groups who resocialize around them and who then redistribute and mediate their content as talking points that produce a competing, false consensus effect. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Oct 14, 2022 |
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Oct 14, 2022 23:29
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Kavros posted:People have already mentioned the different markets they started refocusing their attention on, but there was an additional reason why they scaled back on a lot of their propaganda movements in most democratic republics pretty fast: when it came time for rallying visible activism or commentary to support russia, it really, really, really sucked. It was completely insufficient to task, through a combination of the arguments it was expected to use to encourage cynical nonintervention and the mediocrity of the people and groups that were to rally to the cause. A post from the old thread I thought pretty funny showing that even a random Russian milblogger type thought the choice of American experts recruited by Russia somewhat sketchy. I do find it somewhat odd that the guy feels the need to explain that pedophiles are "not forgiven there [in the US]" or that in general, the USA is a society where pedophiles are "generally not considered people." Is that...not the case in Russia, or is the translation garbling a repeat for emphasis or something? Charlotte Hornets posted:Some batshit Russian nationalist's Telegram take on Scott Ritter, I found it a bit funny tbh
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Oct 14, 2022 23:35
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NeatHeteroDude posted:Is there someone in the thread who's spent a lot of time looking at pro-Russia propaganda media that can explain why their influence on public opinion re: this war seems so... weak? One simple issue is that in order to buy political ads or pay off stooges in the media you need to get money out of Russia and into the target country and that's been harder to do since sanctions largely cut off access to Russian banks early in the invasion.
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Oct 14, 2022 23:41
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Ritter is an incredible failure, like even before the pedo stuff he was pegged by the FBI as an unreliable member of the IC who probably passed secrets to foreign intelligence services. As a loving counter intelligence officer, no less.
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Oct 14, 2022 23:43
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NeatHeteroDude posted:This may not be relevant here, but because someone mentioned russian influence in the Brexit referendum, I'm interested: A lot of their propaganda boiled down to taking culture war hot topics and amplifying them. Like there was a time when people were writing and posting articles about manspreading and it turns out a lot of that was being written and boosted by Russian troll farms because it riled up American conservatives. By contrast, creating an actual coherent message surrounding their war is not their forte. Russian propaganda, as many said above, focuses on disengagement: nothing really matters, both sides are to blame, the truth can never be truly known, etc. You still see it pop up half-heartedly with all the NATO whataboutism, which kinda works in Africa and Asia as far as disengagement messaging goes, but obviously does not easily convince a lot of people in Europd and America when it’s such a naked land grab.
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Oct 15, 2022 00:30
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Nenonen posted:Regardless of what you feel about Crimean people's wishes for independence, military annexations are illegal, full stop. Russia has no right to annex Crimea or any other part of Ukraine and Ukraine has every right to take Crime back by force if she has to. Crimea's right to self-determination has nothing to do with it. You're correct that with how international law is currently interpreted, Ukraine would be justified in retaking Crimea. But self-determination would absolutely have something to do with it because Crimea's would be violated, and self-determination is also a guiding principle in international law as well as, more importantly, an arguable human right or consequence of human rights. Eletriarnation posted:I think this is the essence of the matter - because Crimea was taken by force without provocation, Russia's claim to it is not legitimate. No referendum can make it legitimate after the fact, especially not one run under the shadow of the Russian state. True as well, but what I'm saying is that Ukraine's claim to it is illegitimate also. So it comes down to which principle one prioritizes more highly.
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Oct 15, 2022 00:37
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Belteshazzar posted:One simple issue is that in order to buy political ads or pay off stooges in the media you need to get money out of Russia and into the target country and that's been harder to do since sanctions largely cut off access to Russian banks early in the invasion. I hadn't actually heard that take before, I'm sure it's not the majorest reason (other posters have made good arguments) but it certainly seems like a plausible contribution.
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Oct 15, 2022 00:41
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Koos Group posted:You're correct that with how international law is currently interpreted, Ukraine would be justified in retaking Crimea. But self-determination would absolutely have something to do with it because Crimea's would be violated, and self-determination is also a guiding principle in international law as well as, more importantly, an arguable human right or consequence of human rights. What about the self-determination of the Crimean people who fled the invasion or got ethnically cleansed in the 8 years since
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