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MikeC posted:So what are you proposing? That we roll the tanks in to Ukraine, send F22s and F35s to take over the skies? The thing people here don't get is that the free pass has already been given. I am talking about how Ukraine should proceed with trying to survive. All this appeasement is bad talk is just telling the Ukrainians to die and keep the Russians tied up so we don't have to worry about them being able to target someone else next. Which is a bananas proposition and why Zelensky is so bitter when he talks of the West. Reason dictates that the guys who have invaded you in 2014, keep tearing up your agreements and invaded you two days ago will not bother respecting any agreement you make with them now. Any sort of agreement done now is essentially capitulation and total occupation by Russia, because this is essentially what Russia has been telling everybody as their objectives, loud and clear. The alternative is to keep fighting, make occupation as costly as possible, take away any veneer of justification for this war and hope Russian public support (or at least the Oligarchs' support) sufficiently tanks that they have to pull back. Obviously this takes a heavy toll on the Ukrainian population, but any agreement with Russia now means the end of Ukraine today, or a second war for freedom in 10 years.
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Feb 25, 2022 17:52
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kaaj posted:https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1498808782415093766 Sounds like a fabrication in an attempt to get Putin to doubt the FSB, maybe?
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Mar 2, 2022 01:16
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Boris Galerkin posted:Why wouldn’t they sign back dated documents if it meant going home? I’m just not sure what the implication is. Not sure about any other implications from a military or Russian perspective, but in any event signing backdated documents is forgery in a lot of jurisdictions, so you can be thrown in jail for that crime.
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Mar 3, 2022 13:51
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That Italian Guy posted:Good to hear. Diesel in Belgium hit over 2 EUR / litre. Petrol is a bit lower, also around 1,80-1,90 depending on where you go and whether it’s euro 95 or euro 98 grade
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Mar 8, 2022 17:39
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Rad Russian posted:Aeroflot already stole $10 billion worth of leased planes (most are owned by a company in Ireland). Not even sure how Ireland can recoup. Sue for damages instead (Aeroflot will probably be bankrupt though, so who knows if you'll see a penny of that) and/or sell the planes for scrap. Also, the owner should triple check its insurance policies
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Mar 9, 2022 18:27
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DutchDupe posted:I'm sure they would send unlimited weapons, supplies, and money. Questioning whether the EU will go to war, which inevitably drags in the USA and UK, and meaning war between several nuclear powers, I don't think is delusional though. If they haven't stated they'd defend Finland, which it doesn't appear to be, then I'm not going to claim to know "of course" it will happen. Article 42.7 of the Treaty on the European Union: "If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. This shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States." They could not do this, but Finland and/or the EU Commission could drag them before the Court of Justice of the EU. In any event it would spell a death knell for the EU; if you don't respect this article of the TEU, why would you ever respect the rest of the treaties if the going gets too rough?
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Mar 11, 2022 16:51
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evilweasel posted:well the primary purpose of the EU is an economic union not a military alliance, so the military aid part collapsing doesn't really impact the rest of it. it is nato that collapses if it doesn't honor its collective self-defense commitments because that's the point of nato. Getting way off-topic at this point, but the European Economic Community was an economic union. The European Union, since the Lisbon Treaties, is explicitly an economic and political union with common justice, security and defence policies.
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Mar 11, 2022 16:58
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If Russia really wants to spin an Austria model as a win, they can be my guest. Nothing stops Ukraine from tearing up the treaties if they want to join NATO afterwards, and Russia wouldn’t invade the EU (or it might but it would be an even worse plan than the current invasion).
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Mar 16, 2022 12:01
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PederP posted:I really don't think this war has anything to do with security interests, and in particular I disagree with reading that this about buffer states. This war is about territorial and economic expansion. Security is a great pretext for such wars, because it is/was how NATO, USSR, China, India, Japan and pretty much everyone else view such things. The US is likely the only real exception, as the US will also use pretexts (liberation, democratization, anti-terrorism) to secure economic interests, which is probably why Putin seems to have such a weird hate/'notice me sempai!' relationship with the US. Largely agreed, but for what it’s worth, I do not think this is about resources - I struggle to think of any that Ukraine has which Russia does not also have in abundance. It’s all ideologically motivated. It’s dreams of restoring an empire that once was and no longer is, and no longer can be. It’s the death rattle of a state losing its great power status and the past 10 years, it seems to me, were a long game ploy to do one last hail mary on their descent.
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Mar 16, 2022 13:10
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FishBulbia posted:If Putin has no rationality (at least internally consistent rationality, there is no one rationality) then nothing is possible save for escalation. If that is the case I think NATO needs to stop worrying about Ukraine and start setting up hospices for the irradiated right now. I don’t understand this? He is rational, it’s just that his goals are unrealistic. He could escalate ad infinitum or he could realise he lost his gamble / was fed bullshit by his inner circle and look for a compromise to make peace and save some face while doing it.
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Mar 16, 2022 14:31
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Boris Galerkin posted:What exactly is the council of Europe? Human rights NGO. Most important aspect is citizens of member states can claim compensation for human rights violations by appealing to the European Court of Human Rights.
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Mar 16, 2022 14:32
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KitConstantine posted:Member states are also theoretically held to a minimum standard of human rights for their citizens. In practice I'm not sure Russia has been all that compliant even when they were a member Yeah, but the enforcement mechanism for those standards is via the ECHR. In practice a number of countries such as Russia and Turkey have given… less than due consideration to the existence and case law of the ECHR, it is true.
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Mar 16, 2022 14:41
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mobby_6kl posted:I imagine it's this more or less  Tigey posted:Just to be clear - that's not what an NGO is - they are generally voluntary groups/bodies that are independent of governments (mostly, although some do get funding from govts). Most NGOs are like charities, clubs, associations, etc, and can be at local, national or international scale. Apologies, this is correct. I’m phoneposting and mixed up the terms in English Deltasquid fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Mar 16, 2022 |
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Mar 16, 2022 15:19
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Sorry if the thread already discussed this, thread moves fast, but: https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-peskov-putin-nuclear-weapons-biden-1692753 Has this been confirmed? It makes sense, of course, but I feel like keeping anbiguity over the question would have been more in Russia’s favour to cast doubt over the exact red line re: armament of Ukraine.
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Mar 29, 2022 20:25
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Nice piece of fish posted:But really, it boils down to qui bono. Who does this attack help the most? That's who did it. Personal pet peeve time: it's spelled "cui" bono because you're using the dative case in this grammatical structure
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Apr 1, 2022 10:00
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Family Values posted:I would just like the Russians to leave Ukraine and go home. The less murder, pillage and rape that they do as they leave the better. That's dangerous, escalatory rhetoric, my man. Don't you know Russia has nukes? If we do anything other than give the Russians free reign, Putin will nuke us (after all, he claims this and Putin has never lied about anything in the past, ever) so unfortunately we should all just do the rational thing and let Ukrainians get genocided.
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Apr 5, 2022 08:52
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Do we have any military analysis or takes on what the Ukrainians could do to launch offensives in the South ans East? My understanding is that they're asking for heavier materiel like tanks, which the NATO countries are unwilling to provide for now. But in the absence of tanks to launch counter-offensives, and with sufficient man-portable AT and AA weapons to prevent Russian offensives, are there alternatives open to the Ukrainians that focus mostly on infantry? I recall during world war 1, stalemates were occasionally broken with infantry tactics and in particular night raids. Is this something Ukraine could do if they receive good night-vision gear and the Russians are unable to produce their own / have inferior gear, for example? Trying to think of ways that NATO could help the Ukrainians with launching offensives to slowly but surely reclaim lost ground, even if we remain unwilling to provide vehicles (which is a mistake, in my opinion, and I just don't see viable alternatives at this stage except waiting for the Russian economy to collapse and hope they spontaneously implode, which appears to be the current NATO strategy)
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Apr 5, 2022 11:56
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ImpAtom posted:One Russian is but Putin only reads Traditional Games and ADTRW anyway. Putin definitely skimmed over the morale rules in whatever historical wargames he plays
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Apr 5, 2022 14:44
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KitConstantine posted:Trent Terelko of tire/logistics posting fame did a long **extremely optimistic** thread on what a Ukrainian victory in the south could look like that is fairly well reasoned, but definitely take with a grain of salt. Note he has no special sources in Ukraine and openly says this is all a prediction, so while the phrasing is very concrete nothing in the thread itself is Also, thanks, useful read. I hope the optimism is not misplaced
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Apr 5, 2022 15:02
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Threadkiller Dog posted:Oh almost all my funds are ESG, drat this peaceful investing fad! I always invest in cardinal sin funds. Unfortunately it seems mine have blown it all on weed and gambling
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Apr 6, 2022 14:40
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Alchenar posted:This is not how life works. It's about the credible organisations, structures and resources in place. The EU is more credible and has stronger structures than NATO. It also has a Commission enforcing the treaties and a Court of Justice interpreting them (though I must admit I haven't double checked how those relate to the mutual defence clause, which is part of the common security and defence policy and typically carves out Commission and/or ECJ action in that field). Also more generally, there's no unanimity requirements for the mutual defence clause to be triggered so every Member state could a) tell Germany to get stuffed and unilaterally send all the help they can muster to the Finns while any obstructionists pound sand and b) point at this clause to tell the Germans they should do more or else the Union implodes
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Apr 6, 2022 16:37
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Alchenar posted:Cool. Who is the EU's equivalent of SACEUR? Does it matter? If e.g. France wants to send troops to Finland's defence, they can (despite any "German veto" or whatever), and they are legally required to. That was the original point I was making. For whatever it's worth, I imagine it'll be the EUMC or EUMS stepping up to that role in the hypothesis that they need it to.
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Apr 6, 2022 16:55
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evilweasel posted:here's the main issue: these aren't enforceable laws. that the EU's mutual defense pact sounds stronger than NATO's doesn't make it more credible. I sincerely doubt that "the rest of the EU can simply hum along without automatically collapsing like NATO does" because the territorial integrity of the internal market is pretty essential to its functioning. Part or the entirety of a state being occupied is one hell of a non-tariff barrier... And yes, I do agree that NATO has many advantages over the EU simply by virtue of being specialised and having the USA in it. That's beyond dispute. But I do think that the EU mutual defence pact has teeth and assuming that the EU's member states will sit by idly while Russia invades one of them, while at the same time arguing that NATO would more credibly intervene, is both politically and legally unsound. the EU is united on many more things than NATO is, judging by the general reluctance of Member States to engage in American adventurism in the Middle East (comparatively speaking...) and the previous US Administration's questioning of NATO's raison d'ętre...
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Apr 6, 2022 17:30
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Sekenr posted:I was in charge of trying to maintain export controls in my previous job for a while. US treasury at least had the decency to create a search engine where you input the name of company or individual and immediately see if they are on any sanctions lists. EU has nothing of the sort, its a mess of pdf directives and amendments and amendments to amendments. Eventually I gave up on EU and figured if US sanctions someone EU probably does too and rolled with that. Somewhere in my firm, a sanctions lawyer is having a fit I can give some pointers to the eurlex site tomorrow if anybody is interested. Just let me know what you’re looking for / trying to achieve
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Apr 9, 2022 22:49
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FishBulbia posted:That's... not great. This completely hollows out the notion of proxy war to the point of uselessness, though. By that metric, the Pyrrhic wars were a proxy war between Carthage and Epirus because the Carthaginians offered military aid to the Romans, or the US war of independence war a proxy war between the United Kingdom and Poland because Poland sent generals to aid the Americans.
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Apr 14, 2022 18:30
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Ok, I can concede that. But virtually every war shakes up the status quo and will have third parties intervening. I don’t think that means we can use the term “proxy war” to accurately describe the war itself just by account of foreign intervention
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Apr 14, 2022 18:38
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Mokotow posted:It’s 15. The *fifteenth* time.  Also somebody do this meme but with "list of sunk Russian warships" https://twitter.com/MapsPlaces/status/1046439783046811650/photo/1
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Apr 14, 2022 22:53
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KillHour posted:Band name is obviously Ghost of Kyiv. This is the only correct answer
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Apr 16, 2022 00:10
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Gervasius posted:Guess who? I really, truly wonder whether they’re talking in bad faith to be contrarian assholes or paid shills, or whether they genuinely cannot conceive of the reality of the situation right now, namely that Russia is in no place to force a victory and the economic clock is ticking for them as thy are unable to replace losses to materiel.
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Apr 16, 2022 11:27
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Ola posted:Outside of war blog hype about "hypersonic plasma stealth" or whatever, I can't really remember specific things being particularly feared, but more the collective "oh god the Russians are coming". I recall years ago there was quite some hubbub about a Russian tank that could reach “Lisbon within 48 hours” that had otherwise rational people like my father genuinely worried. Lol though, in retrospect. Maybe as scrap parts 
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Apr 29, 2022 11:29
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Just saw a link on facebook to a Le Monde article "why is Russia having so much difficulty advancing in Ukraine?" Out of curiosity I checked out the comments. A surprising amount of people were peddling arguments like "because Russia doesn't want to annex Ukraine" and "They have other goals..." and a bit further on some of them explained that actually, Russia's special military operation is to destroy "secret NATO bases" in Ukraine One clown said "if Russia wanted to annex Ukraine, they would have invaded Kyiv to cut off the snake's head..." as if they didn't try to do that and failed. I just don't understand how it's possible to live in a completely alternate reality like this. Secret NATO bases? They don't think NATO would just engage in open warfare if Russia found + attacked NATO bases in Ukraine? gently caress!!
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May 1, 2022 11:29
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Nenonen posted:The point is that there is no reason in trying to pile additional hurdles to negotiations because it is difficult enough already. As satisfying as it would be to demand Putin to go to the Hague or demanding a full demilitarisation of Russia or just acknowledging that Putin is a poo head with a tiny wee wee, all that would do is unnecessarily lengthen the war for ego. Counterpoint would be that a lasting peace can only exist if the aggressor recognises their guilt. Dragging Putin to the Hague may be what is necessary to enable reconciliation. There can be no justice if we forgive without punishing. In that sense, it would be pointless and very “that’s capitalism!” for Western countries to fumble the ball in a postwar reconstruction process where Ukrainian revanchists will blow it all up in 2050 because Zelenskyy had to agree to an unjust peace or ceasefire while their family got deported and nobody ever wanted to push the Russian ego too much because we hoped to get back to business as usual faster.
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May 10, 2022 17:13
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Despera posted:Russia certainly hasnt drawn clear red lines to regards on nuke usage and even suggested using them on anyone helping ukraine. And yet people are helping Ukraine and the world has not ended Decoupling banks from SWIFT was an "act of war" according to Putin, we did it and jack poo poo happened. The faster we all collectively understand that Putin is full of poo poo because the nuke card is the only card he has left, the better. We shouldn't invade Russia but all this hemming and hawing about whether or not to "humiliate" Russia by pointing out war crimes and lend-leasing arms to a country that is undergoing an unprovoked, illegal war of annexation / genocide is basically the entire point of the nuke waving
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May 10, 2022 23:16
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KitConstantine posted:What is 'Opsec' Regardless of how out of date this map is, I’m kind of surprised by how little activity there seems to be in Mariupol? Or am I misreading the Cyrillic on the city at the black sea coast down the south-east?
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May 12, 2022 13:21
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KitConstantine posted:News from Kherson - it's not good there Awful poo poo. It really just is a plain and simple genocide. 3 months into this poo poo and already they’re shipping in Russians to replace the Ukrainian population. I wonder where they even find people willing to move to an active war zone. They sound like right proper shitheads if they’re like that apartment owner. I hope the Ukrainians manage to recapture their territory fast and these Russians get their dues. They may be civilians, but they’re active and willing participants to a genocide.
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May 12, 2022 16:56
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to lighten things up
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CAT INTERCEPTOR posted:a) How do you know they wont be effective? I think they mean, the Russian units retreating out of Kharkiv will not be effective in the Donbass (general disorganisation, being battered from the battle of Kharkiv, etc.) so any rumors about a Russian counterattack to suddenly capture or re-threaten Kharkiv sounds like horseshit to them
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May 16, 2022 08:42
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Also the term "conscript" definitely has a loaded meaning. It implies the person is not a volunteer and was basically press ganged against their will into service. Meanwhile "professional" implies competence. The UA army might not all be professional (in the sense of full-time) soldiers, but instead of conscripts you can call them a "citizen's militia". Which is essentially what they are, and many of them might even be volunteers! Just not career soldiers. "Roman conscripts are fighting Carthaginian professional soldiers" makes it sound like Rome is about to lose the punic wars. "Roman citizen militia are fighting Carthaginian mercenaries" makes it sound like Romans fighting for their homes are going toe to toe with fighters motivated for gold instead of their country. Both would be accurate, in a sense, but the second is much more generous / has fewer implications re: the quality of the Roman army. Deltasquid fucked around with this message at 22:22 on May 17, 2022 |
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May 17, 2022 22:18
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PT6A posted:No, it does not have "a". Phoneposting, fumbled the post like a Russian river crossing
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May 17, 2022 22:22
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Saladman posted:I'm not an economist but it seems kind of overblown that it would affect Russia's credit in the long run (assuming this war ever ends), since the reason creditors aren't getting repaid is because the US won't let them get repaid rather than that Russia cannot or will not repay them. “Debtor nukes his credit lines for no real reason and misses payments we need” still does not reflect well on the debtor. Deltasquid fucked around with this message at 10:43 on May 25, 2022 |
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May 25, 2022 09:49
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E Depois do Adeus posted:Why is there such a prevalent focus in this thread on Germany and specifically its new leader's personal lack of action? Would these weapons deliveries be particularly large in quantity, or are they otherwise going to stem the Russian advances in the east? Or is the moral opposition to Sholtz related to the EU usage of Russian gas? In my case it's a combination of the following (pick and mix for what other EU citizens might think): 1) Germany and France are considered the "motors" of the EU by virtue of their size, economy and political weight. Especially since the UK left. It makes sense that you would expect them to spearhead any efforts re: EU foreign policy. In that sense ti's disappointing that the EU institutions appear to be so much more proactive than Germany, which is seen to be "slowing down" EU action. 2) German politics went all-in on Russian energy dependency. To the point of shutting down nuclear energy and lobbying to have gas labeled as "green" energy. They made their bed and now they're lying in it. 3) Germany often tries to profile itself as the "rational" actor. The whole obsession with the "Schwarze Nul" during the 2008 financial crisis etc. It's extraordinarily grating for them to try and hold on to such economic "rational" arguments when people are literally getting bombed because their country had the audacity to desire joining the EU. they have the resources to help Ukraine, so why the gently caress aren't they? It seems to me they're trying to "not rock the boat too hard, let's all go back to friendly business dealings with Russia as soon as this little kerfuffle is over" but it rubs me the wrong way. 4) Germany literally has human dignity as the guiding principle of their nation (article 1 of the constitution, even!) but war crimes don't spur them into action? 5) Scholz is trying to keep up Merkel's legacy of being a stable, calming, balancing force in Europe but at least Merkel (for all her faults) had an idealistic worldview at times when it matters. See the "Wir Schaffen das" attitude during the refugee crisis. where is that leadership in Europe's time of need?
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Jun 1, 2022 17:52
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