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https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1494663679534637056 At this point the question is probably more how much of the Ukraine Russia is going to invade/occupy. Blimey.
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Feb 18, 2022 14:28
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Flayer posted:What's the Russian narrative here? The shelling yesterday was a Ukrainian attack, Russians are having to be evacuated, Russia is 'forced' to launch a defensive strike at the perfidious Ukraine to stop further suffering of loyal Russians? Putin used the magic phrase in his press conference with Olaf Scholz - They will claim it's a "genocide" of the Russian population in Ukraine, which noble Russia had to prevent.
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Feb 18, 2022 14:31
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Pook Good Mook posted:The "smartest" thing Putin has left to do is "invade" the Donbas region to "protect ethnic Russians" and leave the rest of the Army on the border in case Ukraine fights back. The question is whether this scale of invasion would trigger Western sanctions, because if it did it might not be the smartest play unless you can be certain that Ukraine will attack them.
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Feb 18, 2022 15:36
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Trump posted:This is pretty meaningless when Szholz have already confirmed his commitment to follow US sanctions. Sanctioning NS2 doesn't mean that Europe is going to stop buying the natural gas coming through other pipelines.
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Feb 18, 2022 21:33
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Trump posted:It still appears like a desperate and a bit tonedeaf message, after France, Germany, the UK (Not EU, but still) and the nordic countries have all said nothing is off the table. For Germany that's code for "we will touch NS2" - a pipeline that will in any case not be allowed to operate for another 4-8 month. Cutting off all natural gas coming from Russia is simply not a viable option for many European countries at this point.
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Feb 18, 2022 22:25
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https://twitter.com/YanniKouts/status/1494793779437522949
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Feb 18, 2022 23:03
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Conspiratiorist posted:https://twitter.com/michaelh992/status/1494945105110880258 Sounds like Sender Gleiwitz. Now Putin just has to decide when he will announce that they are officially shooting back. Conspiratiorist posted:You misunderstand: I meant after the shooting starts. One important factor is that public perception changes once the tanks roll - especially on live TV - which will hopefully ensure harsh sanctions. GaussianCopula fucked around with this message at 11:21 on Feb 19, 2022 |
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Feb 19, 2022 11:19
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If the US was hellbent on stationing missiles as close to Russia as possible, wouldn't it be much easier to just station them in Latvia?
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Feb 19, 2022 19:46
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Majorian posted:I mean, NATO and Russia are rival empires. It kind of feels to me like you're describing imperial geopolitics and jostling over smaller states in between their spheres of influence. Putin may or may not have those aspirations in his mind, but A, he's nothing if not a realist about his country's capabilities, and B, if it were someone else in power, I honestly don't think Russia would be behaving all that differently from how it currently is. The incentives for Russia to behave like an empire would still remain. What are the incentives for Russia to have an imperial sphere of influence, if it were not for it's autocratic regime that needs to shield itself from the danger of democracy?
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Feb 20, 2022 08:05
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Majorian posted:Well, there's the fact that they've been invaded a hell of a lot of times over the past few centuries, usually during moments of relative military weakness, for starters. The lesson that a lot of Russians have taken from history is that when they have a militarily powerful empire with buffer states on their borders, they prosper. When their military is weak and there aren't buffer states between them and their powerful enemies, they tend to wind up with eras like the Time of Troubles, Napoleon's invasion, the Eastern Front in WWI, Hitler in WWII, and the period of the West dictating their internal policies to ruinous outcomes that we call the 90s. Actually Russia has a history of being unsuccesfully invaded a bunch of times over the last few centuries while most European countries were succesfully invaded a couple of times over the last few centuries, so I would dispute that Russia has this special security need compared to Ukraine, France or Poland. There is no logical reason that the country with the largest nuclear arsenal would need "buffer states" to deter dangers from the outside. Putin needs buffer states because he fears that democracies prospering on the borders of Russia would lead to internal pressures on his regime that might lead to a "color revolution" and maybe because he has the personal ambition of creating an imperial legacy.
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Feb 20, 2022 09:03
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BoldFace posted:My current guess is that Putin will launch something that looks like an invasion of entire Ukraine, but when the smoke clears, only Donetsk and Luhansk will stay occupied. He hopes that the west will accept this as a compromise and only hit him with sanctions. "The West" is only going to react with sanctions whatever he does, because no one wants to start WW3 with nukes over Ukraine.
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Feb 20, 2022 17:42
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Discendo Vox posted:I know Miller, but is there a reason to think this text source is credible other than that he's sharing it? After 7 years of constant war the people not already in the militia are probably not thrilled by the prospect of getting conscripted into invading Ukraine?
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Feb 20, 2022 20:15
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BoldFace posted:Not just sounds anymore. 5 sec with google leads to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV-media quote:MV-media, also known as MV??!!, formerly Mitä Vittua? ("What the gently caress?") and MV-lehti is a Finnish alternative media site based in Spain and from 2018 Finland. It was founded by Ilja Janitskin in 2014. So Russian fake news bullshit
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Feb 20, 2022 21:04
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https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1495491699661025290 This will certainly not lead to accusations and conspiracy theories if anything happens.
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Feb 20, 2022 21:16
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Koos Group posted:What is your reasoning that it's Russian? Beside the fact that their page reads like RT.com getting jailed for defaming a journalist, whose biggest achievement is reporting on Russian Troll factories kinda is a giveaway https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45902496
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Feb 20, 2022 21:37
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https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1496534844960129026 this might be one reason for the current calm before the storm. Oh and they are brining props https://twitter.com/nevedimka123/status/1496523365112238080
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Feb 23, 2022 19:43
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bad_fmr posted:From finnish perspective, following the news and discussion in the recent weeks have been really perplexing. Leftists especially in USA seem to have absolutely massive blind spots about Russia in general and Putin in specific. Modern Russia is and has been an aggressive ethnonationalist authoritarian state committing war crimes and assassinating people wherever they choose. That you would choose to give benefit of doubt to Russia seems insane. Yes I understand that CIA is bad and NATO/USA has done dumb poo poo, but these do not change the facts. That's a German issue too. "Die Linke" issued a statement on Monday where they cited the Kosovo war as an example of NATO aggression that justifies Russian actions towards Ukraine and the former SPD chancellor is a highly paid Russian gas lobbyist.
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Feb 24, 2022 09:45
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At this point both sides are engaged in psy-ops. You can make the argument, that the "West" briefing out that Kiev will fall in hours because they know it will not and can serve as a symbol of resistance... or it might fall.
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Feb 24, 2022 20:08
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Germany’s army is so underfunded the soldiers have been photographed doing rifle drills with painted brooms. It’s the running joke, that Poland could trounce Germany in conventional warfare. It's less underfunding and more mismanagement. Germany has still the 7th highest military budget in the world.
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Feb 24, 2022 21:55
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go play outside Skyler posted:Amazing, who came up with this rule that if a single permanent member of the UN votes no then the motion doesn't pass? UK, USA and USSR mostly, who wanted to protect their influence around the world. France and (Nationalist) China were also in favor, but their influence was much more limited in 1945.
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Feb 25, 2022 23:52
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Upgrade posted:Can someone explain the German helmet thing to me? Is that real? It feels like a joke. What is wrong with Germany? The SPD is the largest party in government and a good share of their leadership is in the pockets of Putin - going so far as to create an "enviromental foundation" to protect NS2 against US sanctions.
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Feb 25, 2022 23:57
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:Dumb question, Long-term that is an option for Russia, with tanks being seen on trains in Brest (Belarus) but at this point they have not attacked western Ukraine. In other news, Starlink is now up and running in Ukraine https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1497701484003213317
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Feb 26, 2022 23:48
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Memil_K posted:https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-lavrov-no-doubt-that-solution-ukraine-crisis-will-be-found-2022-03-03/ He is not wrong. For the Russians it's pretty easy - "we have nukes, therefore NATO will not cross the line of direct intervention... the end" while Western countries on the other hand have to take Russian nukes into account at every step, because they are the one thing that stops them from intervening, given that in terms of conventional war NATO could easily defeat* Russia. * Assumption based on combined military spending/economic power/Russian difficulties in Ukraine today.
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Mar 3, 2022 11:51
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ZombieLenin posted:I disagree; at this point, were I NATO I would be offering concrete public guarantees to non-NATO states in Europe. Maybe read the EU treaty, which already includes a provision stronger than NATO article 5.
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Mar 4, 2022 14:52
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Hammerstein posted:The majority of the missiles that Germany shipped were ancient Strelas from DDR stocks, meaning they have been rotting in some depot for decades. Not a surprise that they are in such condition, considering the overall state of the Bundeswehr. They were officially marked as not save for use in 2012 and there was an article early this year about the fact that the storage of them is a danger for the depot and the people working there. Before that they were used as exercise equipment. I have no idea why we offered them to Ukraine.
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Mar 5, 2022 08:38
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Trump posted:Does the German military have more modern manpads in use? Which also didn't require training? My guess is it was what was available. Germany uses Stingers under the name of "Fliegerfaust 2" as their regular MANPADS. It was suggested by some people on Twitter that the 500 of those we already send to Ukraine were the total stock the Bundeswehr was able to part with without suffering severy lack themselves. But that isn't a very good reason to send a shitload of rotting wood crates with chemical waste to Ukraine.
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Mar 5, 2022 09:16
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quarantinethepast posted:You know Russia's invasion of Ukraine short term is going to strengthen NATO, but I'm thinking that if Ukraine beats the invasion it could give support to the opposite position too. Ukraine is the largest European country by landmass if you exclude Russia and has the largest population of any Eastern European country and if they win this war, which is a huge if, they will only win it because of NATO supporting them in any non-WW3-causing way possible. Not to mention the fact that they are also paying a heavy price for having to fight the war in the first place, which NATO is designed to prevent.
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Mar 5, 2022 22:52
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https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1500800443110281217 If those are the publicly stated demands by the Kremlin, their campaign must be going way worse than everyone thought. No longer talking about denazification and demilitarisation is a big loving deal.
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Mar 7, 2022 13:18
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theghostpt posted:Amend the constitution in regards to what exactly? The current constitution states that joining EU and NATO as explicits goals for the country. Russia wants those provisions striken (and maybe include neutrality language?, not sure)
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Mar 7, 2022 13:25
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Willo567 posted:https://twitter.com/ITVBorderRB/status/1501542514037526529 Scoring cheap points while not having any responsibility to take action themselves. People remember NFZs from Libya and Iraq as something that is a rather riskfree and cheap military action to take in cases of bloodlusty tyrannts. If we translated it properly into "do you want NATO to destroy Russian military assets in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, thereby becoming an active participant in the current war" the question would not even be debated.
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Mar 9, 2022 19:52
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Play posted:However, what I DO agree with is refusing to say that it is categorically off the table. I don't see the harm in letting that remain an unknown, and giving Putin something to think about if he really goes off the rails in Ukraine. At what point would you want to start WW3 with thermonuclear war a distinct possibility? If an city gets the Aleppo treatment? Let's be clear here, a functioning no fly zone would require NATO to bombard Russian AA systems in RUSSIA, as they otherwise can't police the sky over neighbouring Ukraine without fear of being targeted by said Russian systems.
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Mar 9, 2022 21:02
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SaTaMaS posted:It sounds like RU lacks the advanced sensor fusion that the US has been spending gobs of money on, but I'm not sure it matters in this conflict if UA is just making do with off the shelf drones and crowd sourcing for gathering intelligence. "crowd sourcing" with a crowd that includes the US intelligence (and probably all of NATO for that matter) community including most of their fancy toys, as long as they can work from outside UA.
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Mar 9, 2022 21:10
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TulliusCicero posted:This is what is baffling to me Multiple factors: - no one knew the full extent of the graft that toke place and we are know seeing the full cumulative effect of it. - few people believed that a near-peer level conventional war would ever take place. Why get disciplined/fired/"suicided" if you can just pretend everything is fine until your unit is stuck on the road to Kyiv. The invasion actually taking place and Ukraine not faltering in days are two very unexpected events.
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Mar 9, 2022 22:55
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Alchenar posted:One of the little points of note is how for the last 8 years the US has been doing military building operations in Afghanistan and Ukraine, the former with basically unlimited funds and the latter on a shoestring budget and pretty strong policy limitations. Guess which progamme was an utter disaster and which one appears to have been enormously successful? The one where the population is pretty much unequivocally on the US side because of an outside aggressor compared to the vastly more complex tribal system that shapes Afghanistan with multiple outside actors who have a long established influence in the area?
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Mar 9, 2022 23:09
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TheRat posted:I can't believe they thought hotel under fake name would be enough. The thing that astonishes me the most is that they are still trying to pacify Putin's regime by complying with his requests.
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Mar 12, 2022 16:00
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cgeq posted:How much of Germany's increase in military spending is just going straight to equipment getting funneled to Ukraine? Probably not much. You have to understand that the 100billion number is just a vehicle to skirt around the Constitutional debt break while increasing the military spending to >2% of GDP. In effect this will mean that Germany spends around 20bil per year more on the Bundeswehr. Just to demonstrate how underfunded the Bundeswehr is - It will cost around 20-30bil to fill ammo storages to the NATO recommended level of 30 combat days of ammo.
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Mar 12, 2022 21:46
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SourKraut posted:How reliable is the Financial Times for reports such as these? Reliable in so far as they will not make stuff up, but this report is basically a White House staffer telling the FT that Russia asked for stuff from China and the White House is concerned about it. Given that there are high level talks between China and the USA the coming week, they probably have an agenda when giving away these information - e.g. make it look like a win for the White House when China does not support Russia with weapons, which they might never have considered.
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Mar 13, 2022 21:09
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Fame Douglas posted:I don't see how that follows. Then why would Russia be threatened by Ukrainian NATO membership? Russia would not be threatened. But Putin's cleptocracy is threatened by prosperity and security getting ever closer to the Russian borders, both geographically and culturally. That's why he wants to maintain a buffer of autocratic cleptocartic client states around Russia.
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Mar 14, 2022 23:30
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Bar Ran Dun posted:https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1503409411091484677?t=7t0IgNAHGUKEu_fXkt3L3Q&s=19 Probably more "blocking them from crossing passages that are controlled by nation states, e.g. Suez/Dardanelles/Panama Canal" and less "blockading Vladivostok".
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Mar 14, 2022 23:48
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KitConstantine posted:Looks like those crazy bastards are gonna try a landing at Odesa Might be someone highup saying "what has the Navy done this Having your amphibious landing called out on Twitter is not a good look anyway. EscapeHere posted:Ukraine has mud. Who would've thought Russian high command only played HoI4 and never Hoi3 therefore they were not aware of the deadly perils the marshes of Ukraine pose.
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Mar 15, 2022 22:47
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