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Well, that makes it seem much less likely that anything of substance will happen now, which is great. I wasn't super psyched to have rationed heating in my apartment for the next two winters, plus whatever other Russian and Belorussian exports being axed would affect. I guess only Putin and maybe a handful of other people know if it was really just an exercise and Western hysteria, or if it was a potentially bigger move.
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Feb 15, 2022 10:49
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GABA ghoul posted:. Or the US president, who famously even gets their turds collected from a portable toilet by a secret service agent out of the same fear. Really? God drat, I thought South Park was a parody of real life, not a documentary comic. (Episode: Turd Burglars.)
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Feb 15, 2022 17:19
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:The thing is the recent political changes in Ukraine have been brought up by young people who don't want to be closer to Russia for both economic and social reasons. Refusing to let them into NATO, the EU or develop these relationships simply because it removes the "buffer state" is well... kind of lovely. Not to mention that the concept of a "buffer state" with modern technology is about as outdated as worrying about springtime mud. The US invaded Afghanistan just fine despite it being landlocked and supplied only through neither a largely hostile state (Pakistan) or by air. Also the US is never going to invade and try to conquer a nuclear state, so there’s also that the concept of Russia being openly invaded by American tanks has no chance of occurring, buffer or no.
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Feb 18, 2022 08:06
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Rodiel posted:May I see the declassified intelligence? Energy prices in the EU have been skyrocketing for weeks, well before the Ukraine tensions ratcheted up. Late October: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/amp/2021/10/28/why-europe-s-energy-prices-are-soaring-and-could-get-much-worse Early Jan: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/01/05/european-energy-prices-are-surging-creating-frightening-uncertainty.html I don’t know LNG prices but like regular car gasoline has gone up by like 60% at the pumps where I am within the last 12 months. I don’t think it has anything to do with Russia, or not more than a tiny fraction. Electricity prices have also gone way up, also since way before this issue. If there IS a conflict then prices will go up certainly, but tbh I’d rather pay more for heating (and use less) than contribute to the Kremlin war machine on a nearby country that will likely lead to other direct impacts on my life (albeit far far less than it would affect Ukrainians). For Americans I imagine the consequences of a Ukrainian invasion and sanctions would have about as much impact as if India invaded Myanmar or whatever (that is, very marginal). E: you also have an impressively low post count for someone with an account for 15 years.
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Feb 19, 2022 16:50
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Smeef posted:I crossed the border near Lugansk in 2008. It was a muddy patch in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by high fences and a gate at each end with a few small buildings made of cinderblocks and the kind of thin plywood used in old mobile homes. I had to bribe the Ukrainian side like $20 to let me out and the Russian side a pack of Marlboros to let me in. The landscape was pretty similar to what's in that video but the infrastructure was far more built up (which isn't saying much). There was at least a road, gates, fences, and so on. It felt like a set from a low-budget 80s or 90s action movie. This forum has wayyy less comedy gold than it used to, but this post definitely brings back the old laughs from SA. I got such a good mental image from reading this. Possibly a largely inaccurate mental image, but I like it anyway.
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Feb 21, 2022 13:18
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Gripweed posted:For the past couple days it seemed like the general vibe was "Putin is a MADMAN who is risking WW3 and the future of his entire country, any move he makes now will be a massive mistake" And then he went and did it and it's like, there might be some sanctions but otherwise there's nothing we can do about it. This isn’t what people were worried about. What people were worried about is that he does this and then it sets an irreversible set of events in motion that lead to Russia and Ukraine starting to actively shoot at each other, and not in the vague deniable mortar fire sense but in the sense of tank bataillons rolling over the line of contact in Donbas (or elsewhere). Two weeks ago I would have said yesterday’s events are the worst possible outcome and I still think it will stop there, but … I’m now like 51% sure instead of the 98% sure I was two weeks ago.
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Feb 22, 2022 08:16
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Tias posted:What are the, no bullshit, odds this will lead to a longer shooting war? I can't see Russia doing more than a week or two of firing this time around, but I'm really not an expert. A) no one knows, except maybe Putin and maybe a few high level Russian commanders B) sounds very doubtful. They’re likely all vaccinated since they’re military, and also the soldiers are all young. It’s not dysentery.
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Feb 22, 2022 12:16
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Tias posted:Denmark. NATO isn’t going to get involved. Our only worry in W Europe is electricity and heating prices going way up, and maybe lots of refugees depending on how things go, basically Yugoslavia 2.0 seems like the worst case scenario (which would be pretty bad). The whole Russian military probably did get COVID but it’s not going to take units out of action.
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Feb 22, 2022 12:33
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CommieGIR posted:Just replace all the "Moscow" subtitles with "Washington DC" and its easily countered. Thats really not the point of the meme. It would just prove that Kiev is older than DC which literally everyone would agree with. The point is to counter Putin’s claim that Ukraine didn’t exist before 1920.
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Feb 22, 2022 15:46
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Groda posted:After what happened when Poland convinced us to change the English names for their cities, it's probably just best to glass the next Slavic city that puts in a request for a name change. It's not the fault of the Polish language that Germans and Russians kept invading and took all their vowels away. E: Actually maybe less bad than I remembered. Just Wroclaw, Rzeszow, Szczecin, and Bydgoszcz that stand out as needing more vowels. Saladman fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Feb 22, 2022 |
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Feb 22, 2022 20:15
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Wuxi posted:Outside of the immediate impact the war will have on Ukraine, Russia proving that giving up your nukes for concessions is pointless is the biggest downer of this. I hope Russia gets a nose so bloody that smaller states realize that they don't need nukes to deter aggression. Or maybe the international pressure will amount to something. I doubt it will, but I hope it does something. Gaddafi's Libya already tested and proved that hypothesis in one direction, while Apartheid South Africa tested and proved the hypothesis in the other direction. I also hope the war doesn't extend beyond Donbas, but that's looking increasingly unlikely. I'm surprised we haven't seen a formal Russian announcement for Ukranian forces to leave "occupied independent Donbas", but maybe they're still working on the wording of the declaration of war past the line of actual control. I'm surprised that Putin only supported the legal boundaries of Donbas so far, and not a "greater Donbas" that includes everything east of the Dneiper, plus the Odessa area and the full Black Sea coast. Maybe he doesn't think he can take that much? Or maybe he just thinks the frog in boiling water trick will continue to work.
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Feb 23, 2022 11:13
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cinci zoo sniper posted:That means I’m not particularly good at posting. The tweet is joint Polish-Lithuanian declaration in support of granting Ukraine the status of an EU Candidate State. Turkey is an EU candidate state too since forever, but it has probably about as much chance of becoming an EU state as Ukraine, even if Russia rolled over and decided to leave Crimea and Donbas and stop interfering effective immediately. Ukraine would likely still be a pretty corrupt and undeveloped mess even without Russian meddling. I mean, Romania and Bulgaria aren't even really fully in the EU yet (they are neither part of Schengen, nor Eurozone), and god knows when that will happen, but it's taken them way longer than Croatia, which officially joined way later. And yeah, I know those things are separate, but they're not supposed to be in the long run. I don't think territorial disputes with Crimea or Donbas existentially prevent Ukraine from joining NATO or the EU though - you just can't have a territorial dispute with an existing member of NATO or the EU.
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Feb 23, 2022 17:28
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Wasn't the closest thing to a promise they got was just a verbal statement that some day they could become nato members? No timeline, no membership action plan or whatever they're called, just a 'yeah someday' North Macedonia is a NATO country now. They didn't really get led on and baited, they were repeatedly told they have to rename their country and stop irredentist claims to parts of Greece. Which they did, and then they got into NATO like super fast after renaming themselves to N Macedonia.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:20
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Knightsoul posted:Even in the last few days, Putin said that if Ukraine would abandon their will to join NATO or the European Union ( which is just a masked organization for the U.S. international power), the whole crisis would end. That's bullshit. He said that the whole crisis would end if NATO pulled out of every country that joined it after like 1994. https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-unveils-security-guarantees-says-western-response-not-encouraging-2021-12-17/ If NATO had absolutely kowtowed to Putin (impossible in that timeline, and anyway stupid) then I'm sure he still would have gobbled up eastern Ukraine "to prevent genocide", he just would have switched to some other bogus reason. Exactly like literally nothing Saddam Hussein could have done would have stopped the US invasion, at least no choices he could have made as of like January 2003.
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Feb 24, 2022 10:42
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theghostpt posted:There's some pretty terrible photos in Czech online newspapers already. loving awful But... Ukrainians don't need visas to enter the Schengen zone anyway? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_...20Index%202022.
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Feb 24, 2022 11:22
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Yeah if I lived in Finland I would be pushing hard for NATO now. I'm not sure here, Switzerland, really needs it. I'd probably support us joining if Putin goes and does a ground attack on Kiev and takes much of the country, but probably be lukewarm if he "only" takes Donbas. I wonder if we'll join sanctions in any meaningful way, or if all the oligarchs will still be able to ski in Gstaad next winter. Zotix posted:loving christ, I just watched a video of a rocket/ missile whatever the gently caress just kill a kid on a bike. That's enough of this for tonight. gently caress all of this. I don't want to see that in particular, but where are those kinds of videos posted now that LiveLeak is gone?
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Feb 24, 2022 11:40
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Random Integer posted:The thing that always struck me about cyberattacks on infrastructure is, why is critical infrastructure even connected to the internet? Like most power stations have been around for decades, presumably they were able to operate just fine without an internet connection in the past, what advantage was there in hooking them up? Id have thought most govts would mandate no public network connections for critical infrastructure given how obviously vulnerable it makes them. It's also possible to take things down that are never Internet connected, like the Iranian centrifuges. The computers were on an intranet and the Israelis (and CIA?) were able to take them out anyway. Cylons don't need the Internet to gently caress poo poo up; an Intranet will work just fine. I guess you could try running without even an Intranet, but that sound pretty complicated and any time outside of cyberwarfare would be way more expensive and probably more error and damage-prone.
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Feb 24, 2022 19:44
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Vaginaface posted:Will someone answer the poor reporters? Why *NOT* sanction Putin directly? And what does that even look like? I watched the press conference - first time I've seen Biden talk in years I think - and I was wondering: what's the point of sanctioning Putin? He's obviously not going to any Western countries any time soon, and he won't have any meaningful assets in Western countries. I guess it's symbolic? He'd still be able to travel to New York and Geneva even if sanctioned, right? I'm not quite sure how that works though.
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Feb 24, 2022 20:16
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Willo567 posted:How worried should we be about the war spiraling out of control? Depends where you and your family/friends live. If you live in Ukraine east of Kyiv, then 10/10? If you live in Lviv, 9/10? If you live in old Warsaw Pact countries, then probably like... 3/10? VVV: That's also the impression I got.
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Feb 24, 2022 22:26
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Nothingtoseehere posted:Americans forget that gas central heating is a thing, and think it's all going to power plants. I would be fine rationing heating for the next 2 years until we get more LNG terminals if that's what it meant to stop buying Russian gas. Europe is also wayyy warmer than most Americans tend to think; I've never seen anything remotely as cold as it gets every winter in the midwest, even high the Alps. I remember taking a photograph when my (American) car showed a temperature at 0°F, which was at the top of the highest winter-open pass in Switzerland, in late January. We already have systems to ration heat pretty well too--every building I've lived in has the gas heating shut off automatically when the outside temperature goes above... 12°C? 15°C? something like that. Just set gas heating to not work if the outside temperature is above 3° or something. I've also only lived in new buildings, not sure how common this is for places built in the pre-00s. E: Conversely I'd be much less happy to ration electricity, at least not for home or industrial use. I've spent time in enough time in Lebanon, and gently caress that. I can't power my phone by throwing an extra blanket on. Saladman fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Feb 25, 2022 |
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Feb 25, 2022 13:00
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Samopsa posted:For those that want to see details of import/export of goods to Russia, this is a wonderful source: The Netherlands (sorry, maybe that should just be "Netherlands") takes 10x more refined petroleum from Russia than Germany? I mean I don't doubt the data, just that's very surprising. What's the explanation?
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Feb 25, 2022 13:05
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uncertainty posted:Royal Dutch Shell Crazy, I would have thought Germany would have a similarly large petrochemical company - but I know nothing about chemical engineering companies. I also noticed that RT.com is down, and I tried connecting from both my EU and my Swiss IP addresses, and I doubt Switzerland blocked it. Must be under a DDOS? Edit: Oddly, no connection on my phone (Swiss IP), no connection on my ethernet-connected computer (EU IP), but yes connection on my wireless-connected computer that is sitting next to my wired connection (also EU IP, but a different network than the wired network). Saladman fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Feb 25, 2022 |
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Feb 25, 2022 13:36
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Switzerland won't even freeze bank accounts for Russian leaders involved in this invasion. Not surprising, but still wholly pathetic. The proposed measures prevent them from putting more money into their Swiss accounts, but not from spending or using what they currently have. Also apparently 80% of Russian commodities trading goes through Switzerland? https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/switzerland-faces-dilemma-over-russia-sanctions/47376184 I guess taking neutrality seriously has been a thing for 150 years, but still sometimes, god drat.
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Feb 25, 2022 14:18
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mrfart posted:Isn't Moldova landlocked by Ukraine? Kind of but not really - they have a somewhat substantial port at Giurgiulesti where fairly large ocean-going vessels can and do dock. In practical terms they are less landlocked than Bosnia, which does not have a port at all but theoretically has sea access.
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Feb 25, 2022 16:52
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Kavros posted:They probably had an overarching plan along the lines of pulling in good looking video shots and stills of them rolling over the ukranians, likely with specific personnel training and tasking. Yeah but isn't that kind of weird? I remember when the US invaded Iraq for the second time the international new was getting pretty regular footage - albeit it was all professionally done and either US military related, or Baghdad Bob's claims about single Iraqi farmers using a handgun to destroy thousands of US tanks. I just flipped through the wiki article on it again and it seems like it did go as far as I remember - it took about two weeks to take Baghdad and another 2 weeks to finish all organized resistance. Still, it's been 20 years and I doubt many Iraqis had digital cameras, and even those who did would have had a challenge to share those photos back in 2003. Like I just remember the US military absolutely steamrolling Iraq and that even with fog of war we knew pretty quickly. Maybe not 3 days quickly though.
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Feb 26, 2022 11:19
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Al-Saqr posted:All I'm saying is be careful, take with a grain of salt and dont fall into overenthusiastic spirals, I'm speaking from experience here that you dont want to imagine things are going super awesome and then be hit by reality a couple days from now. Just recently the Armenian twitter got victory frenzied like crazy only to find out a week later they lost the war. They did? I was only vaguely following that conflict and everything I ever saw, the entire time, was showing the Armenians getting wrecked. I don't think I saw anything positive for the Armenian side the entire time, except when that Russian helicopter got shot down and they hoped Russia would step in sooner than they did. And the European / English-speaking-internet media I saw was even sympathetic to the Armenians; I didn't have any exposure to Turkish media or whatever that is pro-Azeri.
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Feb 26, 2022 15:21
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Sephyr posted:
The US was also on the correct and fully justifiable side of the conflict in the first Gulf War. Saddam was 1000% the aggressor there. But yeah they did dodge consequences for the second Iraq war despite that being as misguided and evil as this invasion of Ukraine. I hope your interpretation of what will/could happen for Ukraine comes true. That’s what I’m hoping for as best case and remotely realistic scenario this point. E: also people remember Vietnam existed right? And how it is reasonably analogous to this Ukraine conflict, but where the US was the invading army on the side of a dubious puppet government and the Russians were supplying materiel and info? That didn’t lead to nukes either. Saladman fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Feb 26, 2022 |
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Feb 26, 2022 17:50
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Phlegmish posted:While I'm tempted to agree, I remember people earlier in the thread were pointing out that the Battle of Baghdad took several weeks...so I suppose that if Russia achieves its objectives within the following days, that's still arguably a success. Problem is that it's not very clear what those objectives even are. The Battle of Baghdad took 6 days ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Baghdad_(2003) ). It took about 2 weeks from when Americans first started rolling into Iraq until Baghdad no longer had military opposition, but Baghdad is a lot further from the Kuwaiti border than Kyiv is from the Belarusian border. A lot of Iraqis also hated Saddam, probably a lot more than hate Zelensky, so I suspect the Russians will face an even more hostile population in Kyiv than the Americans did in Baghdad. The Americans also hugely overestimated how much the Iraqis hating Saddam meant they would welcome Americans, but even what goodwill (or at least non-overt-hostility) they had to start, they quickly squandered. E: As other people have said though the news coming out before the Americans got to Baghdad also showed huge columns of destroyed Iraqi forces and damage to the US that was so minimal it seemed like absurd war propaganda, but which ended up being actually that lopsided. I'm personally surprised that Russia's military isn't releasing more footage of e.g. destroyed Ukrainian columns, like that one 15 km (non-dense) destroyed supply column that someone posted on Twitter that was iirc somewhere near Kherson. That's the only substantial thing I've seen from the Russian side of the war, while from the Ukrainian side I've only seen videos of extremely isolated Russian units getting hit. Saladman fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Feb 27, 2022 |
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Feb 27, 2022 12:03
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some kinda jackal posted:Dumb question apropos of nothing other than the “flight turned around lol” I suppose.. I guess (a) you can take a Swiss flight from Switzerland to Russia, or from Russia to Istanbul with any airline (I guess they have to detour way around Ukraine), or (b) you can take a bunch of really long bus rides. Both solutions work fine for now.
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Feb 27, 2022 21:50
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Varinn posted:I was told they were targeted sanctions They're targeted at destroying the Russian economy, yes. They were not targeted to just freeze assets of a few people in the Russian government, no. It sucks for regular middle class Russians, yes. Not as much as it sucks to be any Ukrainian, no.
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Feb 28, 2022 10:22
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Even Luxembourg has decided to give military aid to Ukraine too: https://today.rtl.lu/news/luxembourg/a/1870888.html A surprisingly-not-irrelevant 100 NLAWs along with "some" jeeps and... 15 tents. I wonder what Iceland will contribute, hakarl? Or maybe that would be considered a banned chemical weapon.
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Feb 28, 2022 10:47
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Shibawanko posted:selfish question: did russia or japan block eachothers airlines yet? my wife has to fly home, i already told her to consider rebooking through the middle east to avoid russia They have not, but I would have serious second thoughts about flying over Russia right now, and certainly not any flight path that put me anywhere close to Russia's western border. IMHO rebook with Qatar or Turkish, don't end up like those Ukrainians that the Iranians shot down a couple years ago.
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Feb 28, 2022 12:42
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Preoptopus posted:So what they are going to fast track EU membership for Ukraine and then we head to a major war in europe? Welcome a huge, poor, and dysfunctional country into the EU? At high speed? And one currently at war with Russia? Approximately a negative one billion percent chance.
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Feb 28, 2022 17:51
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Putin will end his days with a cushy post at the IOC or FIFA or something, regardless of what happens. Switzerland just sanctioned him personally, so unlikely.
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Feb 28, 2022 18:18
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Paracausal posted:https://twitter.com/COUPSURE/status/1498554157535481856 That red car that was RIGHT at the center of the explosion is gone - so I guess it wasn't disabled and the occupant probably just drove off? That is surprising that such a huge explosion just shattered glass and didn't even seem to kill someone driving a like, 1980s Lada at the epicenter? /insert Lada joke?
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Mar 1, 2022 08:59
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TulliusCicero posted:
Hopefully the US/NATO doesn't squander it by invading some other loving country, like they squandered all the goodwill between 9/11 and March 2003. That was a good 15-ish months of everyone being on the same side. poo poo, wasn't even Iran on the US's side then? The Onion has been so good at predicting the future before: "Biden Vows That If Russia Invades Ukraine, U.S. Will Invade One Country Of Equivalent Value" https://www.theonion.com/biden-vows-that-if-russia-invades-ukraine-u-s-will-in-1848401421
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Mar 1, 2022 15:32
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This might have already gotten posted, but apparently the "go gently caress yourself" Ukrainians on Snake Island are either all or mostly all alive: https://www.facebook.com/navy.mil.gov.ua/posts/324444389723150
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Mar 1, 2022 15:36
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Nobody starts a war to give the invaded country better health care options or free chocolate. Yeah, you start a war in a country to bring the people freedom obviously. I have no doubt that a huge number of high-ups in the US government unironically 100% truly believed they were doing that with Iraq, like they're George C. Marshall. I don't know really anything about Russia, and based on Putin's speech it doesn't look like he's under an illusions of trying to help Ukraine, but definitely a large number of Americans & American government officials truly thought they were bringing peace and love to Iraq, hundreds of cruise missiles at a time. poo poo, maybe even George W Bush thought that. The US propaganda at the time certainly sold it as such.
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Mar 1, 2022 23:06
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1st_Panzer_Div. posted:Especially as he was very open about invading - Western experts were the ones calling it a bluff. Again - none of that justifies the actions of putin who is a warmongering gently caress that deserves to rot in hell. Are you loving kidding? Biden was the one saying it’s war and that he’s not bluffing. Putin was saying it was just military exercises for practice right up until well after tanks rolled across the border and he’s STILL saying it’s not a war. You have your poo poo so absolutely backwards it’s insane.
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Mar 1, 2022 23:51
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William Bear posted:That too. What airlines are those flights that are seemingly still crossing EU-Russian borders? Anyway given the aftermath of two years of COVID tbh this border shutdown is going to be pretty irrelevant for passenger transit. Things like CargoLux and FedEx and whatever seems like it will have a bigger impact - let alone Maersk.
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Mar 2, 2022 01:53
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