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Josef bugman posted:Does this mean that there is a disdain for a variety of western media outlets in Ukraine or just amongst the people at the top of the government atm? Or is it just a personal opinion sort of thing. War hysteria in Western media caused Western investors to pull out, and contributed to the economic damage that Ukraine is suffering. So there's definitely some truth that Western media sensationalism assisted in achieving Putin's objectives, if that's what he wanted all along. You can defend this by saying the Russian military operations were indistinguishable from a real prelude to invasion. But yeah, Western media coverage, as far as I'm aware, has not given sufficient attention to the possibility that this was/is an exercise in brinksmanship, rather than proof that Putin has completely lost it. And sure, things aren't over yet. but there's a lesson there.
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Feb 16, 2022 17:33
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KillHour posted:Did... did they think the 3M population capital of a European country would consist of a dirt road and a few confused-looking farmers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mYqY5YELd0&t=13s
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Feb 17, 2022 04:03
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 knox_harrington posted:Pretty good RUSI article on the Ukraine situation
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Feb 17, 2022 18:38
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That's part of it, maybe even the major part, but if Putin leaves Ukraine alone and it should ever become an economically successful functioning democracy, Putin runs the significant risk of being color-revolutionized himself. Russians must perceive themselves to be threatened by NATO and the EU, in order to justify letting Putin run their country.
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Feb 20, 2022 03:15
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Yeah, I know Ukraine’s been in the pits economically since before the revolution(s). That's why I qualified that statement. But the reason Ukrainians want to orient towards Europe is that remaining a Russian client would mean things stay like this forever, Westernizing at least is a change. They've probably put way too unrealistic hopes in that, even if Putin would let them.
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Feb 20, 2022 03:33
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Alchenar posted:One of the things this NSC demonstrates is how there really isn't any sort of collective government going on - Putin is the indispensible centre of the state in Russia and his cabinet are all absolutely terrified of him. I'm going to assume Putin has to worry about dissent in his own lines by now, and this exercise is meant to insure none of the people in it can claim they were against his little adventure later on. I suppose in a way that's reassuring.
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Feb 21, 2022 16:48
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This feels like 9/11, if it had been announced beforehand on state television. I've had the same certainty of history changing for the worse when the towers fell. Back then, the Americans lost their minds in nationalistic fervor, and they still haven't stopped. This time around, Putin gave a speech showing the entire world he's done the same. The only uncertainties are if the Russian people will follow him down that path, or if it's even going to matter when they don't.
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Feb 24, 2022 01:59
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the popes toes posted:Any sanction has to consider "Then what?" if it doesn't work. The West is powerless and it's humiliating. (1) Our first step must be to apprehend, and recognize for what it is, the nature of the movement with which we are dealing. We must study it with same courage, detachment, objectivity, and same determination not to be emotionally provoked or unseated by it, with which doctor studies unruly and unreasonable individual. (2) We must see that our public is educated to realities of Russian situation. I cannot over-emphasize importance of this. Press cannot do this alone. It must be done mainly by Government, which is necessarily more experienced and better informed on practical problems involved. In this we need not be deterred by [ugliness?] of picture. I am convinced that there would be far less hysterical anti-Russianism in our country today if realities of this situation were better understood by our people. There is nothing as dangerous or as terrifying as the unknown. It may also be argued that to reveal more information on our difficulties with Russia would reflect unfavorably on Russian-American relations. I feel that if there is any real risk here involved, it is one which we should have courage to face, and sooner the better. But I cannot see what we would be risking. Our stake in this country, even coming on heels of tremendous demonstrations of our friendship for Russian people, is remarkably small. We have here no investments to guard, no actual trade to lose, virtually no citizens to protect, few cultural contacts to preserve. Our only stake lies in what we hope rather than what we have; and I am convinced we have better chance of realizing those hopes if our public is enlightened and if our dealings with Russians are placed entirely on realistic and matter-of-fact basis. (3) Much depends on health and vigor of our own society. World authoritarianism is like malignant parasite which feeds only on diseased tissue. This is point at which domestic and foreign policies meets Every courageous and incisive measure to solve internal problems of our own society, to improve self-confidence, discipline, morale and community spirit of our own people, is a diplomatic victory over Moscow worth a thousand diplomatic notes and joint communiqués. If we cannot abandon fatalism and indifference in face of deficiencies of our own society, Moscow will profit--Moscow cannot help profiting by them in its foreign policies. (4) We must formulate and put forward for other nations a much more positive and constructive picture of sort of world we would like to see than we have put forward in past. It is not enough to urge people to develop political processes similar to our own. Many foreign peoples, in Europe at least, are tired and frightened by experiences of past, and are less interested in abstract freedom than in security. They are seeking guidance rather than responsibilities. We should be better able than Russians to give them this. And unless we do, Russians certainly will. (5) Finally we must have courage and self-confidence to cling to our own methods and conceptions of human society. After Al, the greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Russian imperialism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping
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Feb 24, 2022 07:44
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Framboise posted:Is there somewhere I can read an unbiased timeline on what led up to this monstrosity? I've been trying to educate myself but media is so heavily skewed and I want to be able to understand why this is all happening as someone completely clueless on the nuances of foreign affairs. Don't know if 90 minute long academic lectures are your thing, but I found these two videos pretty perceptive and relevant if you want a deeper understanding, even though, or maybe especially because, they're years old. The first is by John Mearsheimer with a heavy realpolitics focus that discounts European and Ukrainian agency, but is useful for understanding the Russian point of view. The second is by EE historian Timothy Snyder, and complements the first one very well, pointing out how conflict between the EU and Putin's authoritarian Russia was inevitable, and NATO doesn't have much to do with it. https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4 https://youtu.be/_Glhke6e2Io
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Feb 24, 2022 15:28
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ZombieLenin posted:Also Putin has threatened to use these twice in the last 24 hours, and Russian doctrine is pretty open to their use against peer to peer opponents. (CW: War) Ukraine v Russia: peer to peer opponents
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Feb 25, 2022 03:30
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ZombieLenin posted:I would say from what we are seeing from just one day, this is a near peer conflict. This is not, for example, the American invasion of Iraq. Sure, but "peer to peer" has a quite different meaning. I didn't want that pearl to go unnoticed.
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Feb 25, 2022 03:43
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That's after the Russian response that they're willing to negotiate? How do you say 'Russian president, go gently caress yourself' in Russian again?
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Feb 25, 2022 16:16
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Sinteres posted:Most of France's Jews survived the Holocaust, which may not have been the case if Germany had occupied the entire country. Not to give anyone wrong ideas who's less well versed in the Holocaust, most jews with French citizenship survived. Vichy bureaucrats were happy to cooperate with the Germans when it came to Jewish refugees in France. Also, a few thousand more were denaturalized and handed over because they weren't French enough.
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Feb 25, 2022 17:03
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I would take that bet. The accuracy of U.S. intelligence does seem to indicate a bunch of Russian officers weren't happy with Putin's plans and had hopes this would keep him from giving the green light.
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Feb 25, 2022 17:17
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Hiro Protagonist posted:Dumb question, but is "Russian Oligarch" an actual government title or a catch all term for industry leaders in Russia who have a huge sway in politics? Most of them were in positions of power/influence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and bought (sold themselves) state industries for a nickel.* * may be a gross oversimplification, at least for the current crop of oligarchs.
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Feb 25, 2022 17:54
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CommieGIR posted:I've added you to the list, its done. I'm in.
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Feb 25, 2022 23:34
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Shooting Blanks posted:Haven't seen this posted here yet, but it looks like NATO is gearing up. Xibanya posted:But came in here to talk about Romania. I have a bunch of friends in Romania who are extremely nervous because if NATO gets drawn in they’re not in a very defensible position. Since they aren’t Slavs it doesn’t make sense for them to factor into Putin’s ambitions, but they do have all that nice coastal real estate. Doubt it would come to that but then, a lot of us doubted it would come to this. If I was in Moldova, I'd be getting worried Putin will just keep his tanks rolling. 
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Feb 25, 2022 23:49
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cr0y posted:I would lose all of my poo poo if they started bukkake'ing tanks with Ukrainian flag colors and said tanks just started running into each other blinded while they were trying to flee. Zelly's Heroes
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Feb 26, 2022 12:16
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quote:A new world is being born before our eyes. Russia's military operation in Ukraine has ushered in a new era - and in three dimensions at once. And of course, in the fourth, internal Russian. Here begins a new period both in ideology and in the very model of our socio-economic system - but this is worth talking about separately a little later. Please guys, do me a solid and give me some context who this Feldman lunatic is, and how relevant the site it's posted on is.
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Feb 27, 2022 01:30
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:gently caress it lets be legends dnd can choose my new name I'm still catching up with the thread, so this is probably far too late, but if not, I'll throw REFUGEE CAMP GIGOLO in the ring.
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Feb 27, 2022 13:29
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Twincityhacker posted:Also a talked a bit with my father about this since we are reading vastly different sources - both Pro-Ukrainian, but very different otherwise - and he was surprised that Marco Rubio was the talk piece of the US goverment. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense, and Rubio might have been carefully chosen - he's someone far-right Putin shills and isolationists can't easily outflank in the battle of public opinion.
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Feb 27, 2022 13:36
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ZombieLenin posted:The failure is the Imperial Russian navy in the Russo-Japanese war, a war fought in 1904 and 1905, between Tsarist Russia and Imperial Japan does not really tell you much about the current capabilities of either the Russian or Japanese navies. I'm wondering if the current generation of Russian sailors has ever seen Battleship Potemkin.
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Mar 2, 2022 14:38
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Szmitten posted:Am I dumb and naive for finding it strange for Ukranian officials to ask for no-fly zones they know can't be granted and for insisting the west acted too late and are abandoning them while receiving supplies from them? I feel like it only fuels the anti-Nato/pro-Putin right/left messaging. It's an indication that they're pretty worried about losing their remaining AA and aircraft. Supposedly, Russia has been holding the majority of its airforce in reserve, but the question is if they simply don't have the maintenance and supply capacity to get all of it in the air. But if the Russians can establish air supremacy, things will go badly, and that may only be a question of time. I wonder if there are any realistic escalations of Western military support, that fall short of a NATO no-fly zone. The supply of planes seems to have become a no-go, and Western planes being flown by Western pilots who have volunteered for the Ukrainian Air Force would be an escalation of that. Other than that, certain European nations (Poland? France?) entering into a bilateral defensive treaty with Ukraine would be less escalatory than full NATO intervention, but still pretty Clancy, so I'll stop there. Hannibal Rex fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Mar 4, 2022 |
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Mar 4, 2022 15:42
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This thread moves pretty fast, but there's something universal that I've been thinking about, and want to talk about. There's still a dozen different ways that this might turn out to be a short war, if Putin's military, the home front, or his inner circle turn out to be more brittle than he expects. But a bunch of military experts and analysts are more sober about the prospects, and present either a conflict that will last years or even decades, or a peace settlement that will result in at least a split country, as it seems highly unlikely that Russia will give up territory without having its military forcibly removed. So if stable front lines develop (still a big if!), that still won't be enough for Ukraine to successfully defend its territorial integrity. There's a psychological effect, that some management author has a bit hyperbolically termed "the Stockdale Paradox." What it boils down to is, if you're stuck in a miserable situation for an indeterminate duration, the optimists give up hope first. James Stockdale was a U.S. naval aviator and a high ranking POW in Vietnam. He was an organizer of prison resistance, and held a strong Stoic personal philosophy. When asked about what distinguished the prisoners who didn't make it until the end of the war, he said this: quote:Oh, that's easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart. This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. A lot of posters in this thread have friends or family in Ukraine, Russia or Belarus. So if there's anything practical I can contribute by posting, that they might be able to share, it's this advice. Don't be an optimist. Temper your hopes for a quick success with the endurance and discipline necessary for the long haul. It took 45 years for the divided Germany to unite again, and Korea is still separated.
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Mar 4, 2022 16:19
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Qmass posted:Ides of March Hell March.
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Mar 5, 2022 18:55
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Cimber posted:Ivan Please don't do that.
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Mar 5, 2022 20:37
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https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500209804878430208?s=20&t=k7ZyXUPiLZkPRreP0P4Bbw My brain is stuck in a simulation, and the AI has been trained on 24 reruns.
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Mar 5, 2022 21:52
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ronya posted:https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500196510054637569 some FSB analyst posted:...I made up the report.
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Mar 5, 2022 23:05
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punk rebel ecks posted:I watched the video and didn't find anything that objectionable. Actually the only thing I titled my head over was when he said "America overthrows countries and makes them democratic" which had me roll my eyes. Yes I know he followed up with "because our government believes that those countries will then ally with us", but still. It's been a bit that I watched it, so i might get some of his wording wrong, but a pretty glaring mistake he makes is that he conflates America and the EU as "the West". It's easy to declare Russia a regional power that's of no threat to America, and that the real focus of America should be on China. But Russia and Ukraine are very much an existential issue to Europe. Either Europe expands democracy East, or Russia expands authoritarianism West. It's been the assumption that Europe can afford to be patient, eventually Russia would acculturate, and Ukraine could serve as a bridge between them in the meantime. Putin has categorically taken that option of the table, as long as he and his clique remain in power. Europe really, really can't ignore that. Mearsheimer seems to think America can afford to ignore Russia and abandon Europe, in order to focus on China.
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Mar 5, 2022 23:33
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UCS Hellmaker posted:Is the last part real? If so please link it. It'll it's part of the article it may be a translate error also My quote was from Sphere, because there's a scene where Dustin Hoffman's character admits to a fellow scientist that he basically made up the super important First Contact protocol because the government offered him big bucks and he needed the money. In this case, the whistle-blowing FSB analyst all but admits that the analysis Putin based his decision to start a war on was all but him writing whatever his boss wanted to hear because he wanted to get back to real work, not figuring out the details of some pie-in-the-sky fictional scenario that someone higher up dreamed up. Putin and his inner circle were keeping things so close to their chest that no one, not the soldiers, not the economists, not even the FSB analysts, knew this was really going to happen. quote:you are asked (conditionally) to calculate the possibility of human rights protection in different conditions, including the attack of prisons by meteorites. You specify about meteorites, they tell you - this is so, reinsurance for calculations, nothing like this will happen. You understand that the report will be just for show, but you need to write in a victorious style so that there are no questions, they say, why do you have so many problems, did you really work badly. In general, a report is being written that when a meteorite falls, we have everything to eliminate the consequences, we are great, everything is fine. And you concentrate on tasks that are real - we don’t have enough strength anyway. And then suddenly they really throw meteorites and expect that everything will be according to your analytics, which was written from the bulldozer. Maybe some Russian speaker can translate this paragraph better and clarify what "written from the bulldozer" means, but I take it as "completely made up".
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Mar 6, 2022 00:01
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Grouchio posted:So you're saying most of the anonymous FSB tip was bunk. Not the whistleblowing - the analysis Putin & Co ordered to decide whether or not they could afford to start a war in Europe.
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Mar 6, 2022 00:11
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Boris Galerkin posted:From that translated letter: Yes, and they've also been told it doesn't matter, because the scenario is entirely fictional.
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Mar 6, 2022 00:35
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gay picnic defence posted:Is that a TOW or something? It's the wrong flight profile for a Javelin. Javelins get all the press, but Ukraine also has a domestic anti-tank system, the Skif. I assume this is it.
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Mar 6, 2022 02:52
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the popes toes posted:All the Germans are asleep they would know Putinversteher
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Mar 6, 2022 12:08
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PerilPastry posted:Speaking if which, Ukraine will apparently be getting quite a few days of seriously hard frost now. Wonder if it matters in terms of opening up new avenues of advance for the Russians or if they're increasingly stuck due to supply issues no matter the weather Im guessing if the Ukrainians have planned and are still capable of any kind of large scale counter-attack, that would be the time.
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Mar 6, 2022 16:45
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Adam Tooze ha been writing good analyses of the economic side. The tl;dr seems to be that since Iran managed to adapt to sanctions, Russia might too. Gas & oil sanctions would be important. The EU is working to prepare for them, which won't be easy for some countries. https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-93-russias-720m-per-day
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Mar 7, 2022 12:56
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Moon Slayer posted:I didn't get a chance to ask when it was first posted, but what was that bald guy with the "Z" t-shirt yelling about in that tweet? Zieg Heil.
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Mar 8, 2022 13:55
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Nosre posted:The 17% arsenic place is actually an even higher level of damage than normal western front action - it's the result not of shellfire, but of being the spot where they burned all the unused gas shells after the war Yeah sorry, the 17% figure comes from American journalists being unable to understand a decimal comma. It's 170mg/kg.
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Mar 9, 2022 14:33
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Often Abbreviated posted:I wonder if Putin interprets these calls as signs he's moments from total victory. Like, "They're asking for peace! We're winning! Push on!". I'm no diplomat, and maybe this would have been too much of an escalation, but I'd have preferred if our leaders would have stopped talking to Putin directly after the invasion. Just to send a signal to his inner circle that the West does not consider him a valid negotiating partner any more.
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Mar 10, 2022 15:07
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Boris Galerkin posted:Why should anyone find this race car driver credible again? For those who are just tuning in, the pedigree of the letters is this: 1) Russian human rights activist (gulagu net) with contacts and sources inside the Russian administration gets the first letter from a pre-existing FSB whistleblower, and posts it on Facebook. 2) Bellingcat ran the first letter past two of their FSB sources, who confirm that it seems to be genuine. 3) Russian race car driver (who's also connected to gulagu?) posts English translations on Twitter, and it blows up. 4) More letters appear from the same source, and get disseminated quickly. (Without vetting?) I haven't followed things more closely than that, and you might be able to find more details if you speak Russian. You can read all letters here: http://www.igorsushko.com/ My Le Carré-ish takeaway is, even if the first letter(s) are genuine, if the Russians did/do find the leak, there's a chance they will turn it into a disinfo psyop, rather than simply plugging it, to discredit all the genuine intel contained.
Hannibal Rex fucked around with this message at 11:31 on Mar 12, 2022 |
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Mar 12, 2022 11:22
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