(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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BabyFur Denny posted:If you want to enter another country, you usually do so via official border checkpoints. You don't sneak in through unauthorised access points. Hence, illegal. Do you think it should be open season on west bank settlers too?
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Aug 19, 2023 15:06
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Libluini posted:If someone hadn't started posting insane creeds about how every Russian in Crimea is guilty and needs to be executed by Ukrainian missiles or whatever, there would be a lot less posts about that one Russian guy killed, I'm guessing. Fair enough. As Russia keeps killing civilians and the war drags on, more and more of the war is going to come back home. Ukrainians have shown massive restraint in protecting civvies, even the bridge op was done at night and had a gigantic material and psychological impact compared to the several lives lost. It's not a gentleman's game, especially when the Ukrainian side has a hundred thousand dead in Mariupol alone
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Aug 19, 2023 15:07
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Meanwhile, couple of days ago Ukrainians shot down another Ka-52 gunship near Robotyne. There's a video of the crashed and burning chopper and the arrival of a two helicopter search & rescue unit to the site in the article. I wonder if the pilots were able to eject in time. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/20645 This brings the confirmed losses of Ka-52's to 42, which is 30-40% of all Ka-52's that Russia is believed to have in inventory. Given the suicidal nature of helicopters there's got to be some more of them wrapped around utility poles and trees that we don't know of. This level of losses is going to start to cripple their operational capability because aircraft need plenty of maintenance especially in continuous combat operations and I would bet that the twin engine double helix rotor layout that the Alligator has is not the simplest setup in existence. In practise only a fraction of them will be usable at any particular time as the rest of the fleet is in the workshop.
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Aug 19, 2023 15:11
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Also, US sanctions against Russia are taking a bite, as ruble is now nosediving globally and even India won't settle in rubles anymore citing illiquidity: from back in May: https://thediplomat.com/2023/05/end-of-the-road-for-india-and-russias-rupee-ruble-trade/ Ruble more recently: https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2023/08/14/russian-ruble-tumbles-past-100-against-dollar-heres-why-thats-significant/ Combined with military crippling, financial crippling is finally starting to really show up. China is also stuck. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-central-bank-cuts-rates-second-time-three-months-support-economy-2023-08-15/ . So we have potential support for Russia waning in a lot of ways, I would think?
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Aug 19, 2023 15:31
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Nenonen posted:Meanwhile, couple of days ago Ukrainians shot down another Ka-52 gunship near Robotyne. There's a video of the crashed and burning chopper and the arrival of a two helicopter search & rescue unit to the site in the article. I wonder if the pilots were able to eject in time. I'd guess the latter point about much of the fleet being inoperable is a large factor. One downside to keeping a big on-paper airforce for the kleptocrat-stronk vibe is that it's very expensive to keep it maintained, especially if the aircraft are actively being flown rather than sitting in a hermetically sealed hangar. They also need to keep the Kamov/Sukhoi factories running, if only for grift and export purposes, so they can't just stop building airframes. Naturally this means the newest airframes get flown and maintained as part of the small operational fleet while the older ones become glorified lawn ornaments in the overgrown corners of airbases to give foreign analysts something to count in satellite photos and put in Wikipedia lists.
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Aug 19, 2023 15:34
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Ukraine is defending itself against a war of extermination. Nothing is off limits... (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 19, 2023 15:58
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I expected some degree of "well it was necessary, but obviously regrettable", but was frankly not expecting "he deserved it". I'm not even touching "nothing is off limits", that way lies Abu Ghraib and far, far worse.
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Aug 19, 2023 16:05
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Every Ukrainian town becomes an Abu Ghraib and far worse if Russia wins. What do you think "filtration camps" are? Of course it's regrettable for the truck driver. None of this is good, but Putin's goal is to make Ukraine and Ukrainians not exist. Should they just accept genocide?
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Aug 19, 2023 16:09
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notwithoutmyanus posted:Also, US sanctions against Russia are taking a bite, as ruble is now nosediving globally and even India won't settle in rubles anymore citing illiquidity: from back in May: https://thediplomat.com/2023/05/end-of-the-road-for-india-and-russias-rupee-ruble-trade/ To be fair, Russia managing to hold on so far by just pretending there is no problem was impressive, considering they didn't have any early conquests they could have squeezed to prop their economy, Germany-in-WWII-style. It could also be an issue of people who have held out hope for the war and the sanctions to end now speedily losing hope: Ukraine gets more and more support and Russia gets more and more stubborn. It could be that now people in the financial sector have finally abandoned hope that Russia would just give up and go home any time soon and Ukraine looks like it's slowly getting stronger, not weaker. With this current situation, it now looks to inverstors like Russia will be sanctioned harshly for multiple years, with no end in sight until Putin suddenly stumbles out of a window or Russia surrenders, whatever happens first.
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Aug 19, 2023 16:11
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Noobicide posted:Ukraine is defending itself against a war of extermination. Nothing is off limits... Agreed to your first point. To your second point: You really, really want a lot of things to be off limits. Posting this might ease that sense of helplessness you might feel while looking at the war, or might make you feel better, but this path leads to Russia and a whole lot of dead people who’s only sin was existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s not a path we want Ukraine (or any country) to go down if they don’t have to. The “if they don’t have to” is the load bearing bit of the sentence there.
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Aug 19, 2023 16:13
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Luckily everyone can rest at ease, since Ukraine has shown it will only kill civilians and deal with the political costs if the material+psychological upsides far outweigh the downsides, like loving up the Crimean bridge or the military factories. The 3 dead civilians on the Crimean bridge last autumn did not lead to Abu Ghraib or Auschwitz popping up, you can let go of the pearls
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Aug 19, 2023 16:19
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It's was a war crime, amoral and a terrible thing to do. It's also naive to think any government in Ukraines position wouldn't do the same and much worse. Russia itself does worse in peacetime ie chemical weapons assasinations just for shits and giggles.
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Aug 19, 2023 16:37
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Owling Howl posted:It's was a war crime, amoral and a terrible thing to do. It's also naive to think any government in Ukraines position wouldn't do the same and much worse. Russia itself does worse in peacetime ie chemical weapons assasinations just for shits and giggles. This is a fair take.
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Aug 19, 2023 16:48
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Ukraine making progress in counteroffensive, U.S. officials sayquote:U.S. officials have told CBS News it appears the Ukrainian military has made progress in advancing on the Russian-held city of Tokmak– a vital barrier city that stands between the Ukrainian forces and the southeastern city of Melitopol. "I'm not dead yet," moaned the Counter-offensive.
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Aug 19, 2023 17:13
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notwithoutmyanus posted:Also, US sanctions against Russia are taking a bite, as ruble is now nosediving globally and even India won't settle in rubles anymore citing illiquidity: from back in May: https://thediplomat.com/2023/05/end-of-the-road-for-india-and-russias-rupee-ruble-trade/ I pulled up a few more articles on this, and to me it looks like this is beginning to cause the Russian regime to pass blame around among one another, which surprised me. Putin seems to be blaming the central bank and they are basically saying "nah, you're an idiot," This seems like a big change in rhetoric and behavior since the last time the sanctions were biting. I remember it was more like "those evil doers on the outside did this to us, but we'll open up our reserves so you can buy gold, stay strong and make your motherland proud!!". Can anyone who has first hand access to Russian media confirm this, or is it simply figment of my imagination?
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Aug 19, 2023 17:26
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Something new from the Zeit Liveblog. It seems Zelensky is in Sweden to talk about Sweden possibly giving Ukraine some Gripen, now that F-16s are on their way and Ukrainian pilots are training. This is important because at the same time, political pressure on Germany's chancellor is mounting to allow the delivery of German Taurus cruise missiles. The F-16 can't carry those. But guess which fighter jet can? 
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Aug 19, 2023 17:39
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Noobicide posted:Ukraine is defending itself against a war of extermination. Nothing is off limits... Can we make war crimes apologism probeable ,please. This is getting ridiculous.
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Aug 19, 2023 18:08
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This poo poo is usually why secret services exist. When a state has to do some quasi terrorist poo poo they obviously will, it's always been that way, but the playbook would be to deny even if presented with damning evidence. I don't know who the hell should benefit from these talks.
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Aug 19, 2023 18:20
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Owling Howl posted:It's was a war crime, amoral and a terrible thing to do. It's also naive to think any government in Ukraines position wouldn't do the same and much worse. Russia itself does worse in peacetime ie chemical weapons assasinations just for shits and giggles. Getting civilians killed when striking a military target in a time of war is not intrinsically a war crime.
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Aug 19, 2023 18:20
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I don't think Poland has the freedom of speech. For example, they recently passed a law making it illegal to teach Polish collaboration in the Holocaust. So holocaust denial was literally enshrined in the law until international pressure drove them to repeal it. I don't think the evidence and the assertion here quite match. Bill's lovely but I don't think we'd describe Germany as not having freedom of speech. 1) The Polish constitution enshrines freedom of speech to some degree (article 54, "The freedom to express opinions, to acquire and to disseminate information shall be ensured to everyone. Preventive censorship of the means of social communication and the licensing of the press shall be prohibited. Statutes may require the receipt of a permit for the operation of a radio or television station."). It's been a jillion years since I was in Poland and I'm not up on the precise legal extent; I'd assume free speech protections are weaker than in the US, because our free speech protections are pretty extreme by world standards. 2) Yes, this means the bill might be unconstitutional. As far as the actual Ukraine-related topic, I can't readily find details on the poster law / fines. The two dudes were detained on suspicion of espionage, which doesn't seem entirely off-base. https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-russia-wagner-group-arrest-krakow-posters-mateusz-morawiecki/ fake edit: foreign recruitment charges, apparently, which also doesn't seem entirely off-base. "Please come join our mercenary group working for a neighboring hostile-ish power" seems like a reasonable free speech exception. https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/08/14/poland-detains-two-russians-over-recruitment-posters-for-wagner-group/
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Aug 19, 2023 18:23
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:Getting civilians killed when striking a military target in a time of war is not intrinsically a war crime. When your plan hinges on a civilian unwittingly doing something that will get themselves killed because you engineered circumstances to do that, you’ve kind of moved beyond just trying to minimise collateral damage. Ukraine could have sent one of their own agents on a suicide mission in the civilians place. Not a choice I’d expect them or anyone else to ever make, but the option was there and they chose to sacrifice a civilian instead
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Aug 19, 2023 18:42
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Deteriorata posted:Ukraine making progress in counteroffensive, U.S. officials say I'm guessing the guy talking to CBS is talking about progress in Robotyne. If there's been a breakthrough towards Tokmak from another direction the Ukrainians are being quiet about it, and the Russians are also being quiet about it. (Though there's been a recent effort on the Russian side to crack down on milblogs, so maybe getting real time updates from Russian telegram is a thing of the past)
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Aug 19, 2023 19:17
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So many people in here who seem to be oblivious to the brutality of war. Did you know the Allies killed over 10,000 French civilians in pre D-Day bombing to soften the German resistance, or deny supply routes? War is hell. E: this is essentially the Trolley problem. Do you sacrifice one innocent person to have a chance to save many? Could you make that call? At least the poor bastard went quickly. As opposed to those in Bucha and Irpin. Kennedy fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Aug 19, 2023 |
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Aug 19, 2023 19:20
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:Getting civilians killed when striking a military target in a time of war is not intrinsically a war crime. Say this in the context of Russia blowing up a drone expo (with advertised military applications) and see if this still sounds okay.
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Aug 19, 2023 19:21
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Chill Monster posted:I pulled up a few more articles on this, and to me it looks like this is beginning to cause the Russian regime to pass blame around among one another, which surprised me. Putin seems to be blaming the central bank and they are basically saying "nah, you're an idiot," This seems like a big change in rhetoric and behavior since the last time the sanctions were biting. I remember it was more like "those evil doers on the outside did this to us, but we'll open up our reserves so you can buy gold, stay strong and make your motherland proud!!". I seem to recall early in the war there were a couple of articles mentioning that the head of the Central Bank of Russia, Elvira Nabiullina, was very good at her job - and also that she tried a couple of times to resign early in the war before basically getting forced to stay at her post and do what she can to keep the Russian economy going. Under those circumstances it doesn't feel incredibly surprising that when she's been desperately spinning plates and doing what most economists seem to have regarded as a remarkable job not crashing so far, she might get a bit testy when Putin blames her for not being even more of a miracle worker. She might even feel somewhat safe to snap back. "OK, cool, throw me out a window, whatever. Then who'll run your economy for you, smart guy? I'm the only reason it hasn't all collapsed already! gently caress, it's not like I wanted to do this in the first place!"
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Aug 19, 2023 19:37
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Libluini posted:To be fair, Russia managing to hold on so far by just pretending there is no problem They built up as big of a foreign currency reserve as fast as they could before 2022 just to try and cope with sanctions that they knew would come. That is pretty much all blown through now and their oil revenues have been cratered since late 2022/early 2023 so they're going to have to start doing more and more shenanigans to keep it together. Most would consider doing that 2nd recent shake down (they did one last year on the common people instead of on the rich) on your own people for foreign currency to be a desperation move. There are still things they can do to keep parts of their economy propped up but they're all of the "robbing Peter to pay Paul" variety that have risks and repercussions of varying degrees that can play out over many years depending on the after war circumstances.
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Aug 19, 2023 19:44
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Tomn posted:I seem to recall early in the war there were a couple of articles mentioning that the head of the Central Bank of Russia, Elvira Nabiullina, was very good at her job - and also that she tried a couple of times to resign early in the war before basically getting forced to stay at her post and do what she can to keep the Russian economy going. Under those circumstances it doesn't feel incredibly surprising that when she's been desperately spinning plates and doing what most economists seem to have regarded as a remarkable job not crashing so far, she might get a bit testy when Putin blames her for not being even more of a miracle worker. She might even feel somewhat safe to snap back. "OK, cool, throw me out a window, whatever. Then who'll run your economy for you, smart guy? I'm the only reason it hasn't all collapsed already! gently caress, it's not like I wanted to do this in the first place!" Yeah, she's really the only individual in Moscow in the position to ask Vova "who run Bartertown?" Because economy is all about trust, and the money touchers really seem to trust Nabiullina to know what to do here. Throwing her from the window would cause considerable panic in the market. Too bad that she seems more loyal than Prigozhin because she could do way more damage than the Wagner uprising...
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Aug 19, 2023 19:55
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Kennedy posted:So many people in here who seem to be oblivious to the brutality of war. Also many people who think anything goes, c'est la guerre and a defender can never be wrong... which is morally a slippery slope. We probably should hold some standards, such as banning the use of child soldiers or torture of prisoners of war. Here's a reminder that there are still 30 prisoners indefinitely held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp without trial even after USA withdrew from Afghanistan already. Many of them would be allowed to go, but no country wants them (and I suppose USA is not in talking terms with Taliban right now). That's the kind of absurdity where you get when you subject human rights to national security. I think this particular murder is water under the bridge now (no pun intended) as it's extremely unlikely that SBU would try the same method again. It would be a whole lot different if it was a standard operating procedure occuring frequently. In theory the driver's family might have grounds to sue the Ukrainian state for compensations. Presumably Ukraine wouldn't address such claims unless Russia also responded similarly to claims by Ukrainian victims, though.
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Aug 19, 2023 20:31
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:Getting civilians killed when striking a military target in a time of war is not intrinsically a war crime. There is a fine line between random civilian casualties who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and deliberately assassinating a particular civilian as part of your attack. Ultimately the guy would be just as dead if they lobbed a missile and his truck just happened to be where it fell, so from a utilitarian perspective you could argue it's all the same, but I think it's understandable why crossing the line makes people uneasy.
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Aug 19, 2023 20:32
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Libluini posted:Something new from the Zeit Liveblog. Another news from the meeting in Sweden is that Ukraine will be allowed to locally produce stridsvagn 90, which while not a bleeding edge tank in any way has been reported to do well for Ukraine as a workhorse afv. It’s another step for making the long term prospect of the Ukraine armed forces improve.
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Aug 19, 2023 20:40
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lilljonas posted:Another news from the meeting in Sweden is that Ukraine will be allowed to locally produce stridsvagn 90, which while not a bleeding edge tank in any way has been reported to do well for Ukraine as a workhorse afv. It’s another step for making the long term prospect of the Ukraine armed forces improve. For clarity CV90 is not a tank, it's a family of IFV's with several armament options. Including a tank destroyer version with a 120mm cannon, but mainly a infantry fighting vehicle with a 30 or 40 mm autocannon. Oh yeah and the AMOK version with dual 120mm mortars, kind of a mini PzH2000!
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Aug 19, 2023 20:51
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adebisi lives posted:Say this in the context of Russia blowing up a drone expo (with advertised military applications) and see if this still sounds okay. I was thinking that didn't seem like a great idea, to promote a drone expo within easy/quick missile range. Not to victim blame or whatever, but why not have that in Poland or something?
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Aug 19, 2023 20:55
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Paladinus posted:The justification by Russia, by the way, is probably going to be that a drone manufacturers expo was held there. Also apartments because surely there's a Nazi living in there somewhere!
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Aug 19, 2023 21:09
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ummel posted:I was thinking that didn't seem like a great idea, to promote a drone expo within easy/quick missile range. Not to victim blame or whatever, but why not have that in Poland or something? Apparently the location was only given to invited attendees shortly before the event started but it's not hard to believe that would be leaked by a collaborator or intercepted by Russian intelligence. They also spent an Iskander blowing up a pizza restaurant/hotel that may have had tens of soldiers in it so the bar is pretty low for ballistic missile strikes these days. To be fair Ukraine is cratering areas with HIMARS if they get a whiff of any kind of troop concentration too or size ammo dump.
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Aug 19, 2023 21:24
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Kennedy posted:So many people in here who seem to be oblivious to the brutality of war. i'm really not up to date on the rules around here but this kind of "it's always been like this!" apologism for horribly reprehensible things should be reportable/bannable (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 19, 2023 21:33
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Chill Monster posted:I pulled up a few more articles on this, and to me it looks like this is beginning to cause the Russian regime to pass blame around among one another, which surprised me. Putin seems to be blaming the central bank and they are basically saying "nah, you're an idiot," This seems like a big change in rhetoric and behavior since the last time the sanctions were biting. I remember it was more like "those evil doers on the outside did this to us, but we'll open up our reserves so you can buy gold, stay strong and make your motherland proud!!". domestic media isn't any more privy to private conversations between Nabiullina and Putin than foreign media, and the latter is mostly going to be translating reports from the former at this point (with their own added analysis) anyway. foreign correspondents in Russia are in short supply these days; specialized economics reporters even more so recent Russian media reports are mostly covering: - an increase in the central bank's key rate, to encourage savings in ruble-denominated accounts downstream (as i understand it, encouraging consumer and commercial banks to offer rates that encourage deposits, since it's less profitable for them to take loans from the central bank to shore up their reserves, overall reducing cash flow) - not requiring exporters sell off foreign currency reserves for rubles (they were required to early in the war) but still encouraging them to do so. this was an effective strategy then, but isn't at present, because the balance of Russian imports to exports has changed so dramatically--requirements to sell off your foreign currency profits don't do much when you don't have much of them to begin with politicians and talking heads have complained about the central bank not doing enough about the exchange rate, which the central bank counters by saying it's effectively out of their control. the more drastic measures taken earlier in the war apparently aren't viable anymore. those were maybe a one-off thing you can do to counter the effects of sanctions using pre-sanctions holdings, and would require a post-sanctions recovery to do again. idk, high-level economics news is complicated basically coverage of the same stories from two outlets: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6162230 https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6162458 https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6162858 https://meduza.io/feature/2023/08/1...ostanovit-obval https://meduza.io/feature/2023/08/1...dprinyat-vlasti https://meduza.io/news/2023/08/17/v...at-kursa-rublya
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Aug 19, 2023 21:40
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Avian Pneumonia posted:i'm really not up to date on the rules around here but this kind of "it's always been like this!" apologism for horribly reprehensible things should be reportable/bannable And if a mod feels the same, I'll take my probation / ban / whatever on the chin. I'd think it was unfair, as I don't think I'm out of line by stating the realities here, or that I have a particularly egregious position, but it's not my place to backseat mod. I'm not being blinkered here. Is what Ukraine did unethical? Yes. If we were perfect moral beings, would we do it? No. Are we perfect moral beings? No. Can a country who is victim of a war of aggression be a perfect moral being? Likely no, as evidenced here. There is no right here. Warfare is immoral. There's only degrees of wrongful actions. Ukraine have generally tried to stay on the "right" side, as they know their political backing is predicated on being seen to be the "good guys" in this war. Russia doesn't care, and we've seen that again today. I'm not excusing anything. I've shown evidence that there are no good guys in warfare, if you zoom in close enough. But just as we wanted the Allies to win because the alternative was worse, I think the same logic applies here. I'm sorry if I offend you or other by saying that, but expecting _this_ war to be different to every single other instance of human conflict is fantasy.
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Aug 19, 2023 21:55
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Qtotonibudinibudet posted:domestic media isn't any more privy to private conversations between Nabiullina and Putin than foreign media, and the latter is mostly going to be translating reports from the former at this point (with their own added analysis) anyway. foreign correspondents in Russia are in short supply these days; specialized economics reporters even more so Excellent point. Proper media analysis is a pre-requisite to understanding news. And a pre-requisite to understanding economic news is to understand... economy. I understand that raising the interest rate to 12% is going to make loans loving expensive and it should have devastating effects on economy, but then again it was temporarily at 20% when the war started and then dropped quickly when it had done its effect. So we'll have to wait to see where it settles. My idiot brain just finds this so difficult to grasp.   
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Aug 19, 2023 21:56
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Kennedy posted:I'm not excusing anything. I've shown evidence that there are no good guys in warfare, if you zoom in close enough. But just as we wanted the Allies to win because the alternative was worse, I think the same logic applies here. I'm sorry if I offend you or other by saying that, but expecting _this_ war to be different to every single other instance of human conflict is fantasy. So no acts are unethical, as long as it's the good guys that are doing it? I'm glad that we have this settled. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 19, 2023 21:58
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I've literally said the opposite. I've said what Ukraine has done is unethical. But I'm not surprised or pretending to be outraged about it.
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Aug 19, 2023 22:00
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