|
Alchenar posted:'A good quick bloodless war will make everything better' is very channeling the spirit of Kaiser Wilhelm. Another war started using absurd demands that they knew would be rejected for pretext
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2022 20:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 19:50 |
|
|
Sanguinia posted:Let us assume that NATO is inviting nations bordering Russia into their alliance for this nefarious purpose of getting a securing a land border with them. Why should Russia be allowed to us military force and imperial subjugation to remove their sovereignty as a means to prevent this? Are you contending this recruitment effort is a prelude to an invasion of Russia and this is a pre-emptive strike? Because unless you are contending that I don't see how Russia has any right to stop any country who feels like it from joining NATO. Agreed and to add, unless the US and the rest of NATO were in 100% agreement that the Baltics were "Russian" land, there is absolutely no basis for saying that NATO added the Baltics to "spite" Russia. And even if the Baltics were added to piss off Russia, being pissed off isn't a basis for invading other sovereign countries. Russia is the rear end in a top hat in grade school who gets in a fight because a kid looked at them weird. It's not the west's problem or obligation to keep Russia from having hissy fits. NATO has never invaded Russia. Russia has invaded Ukrainian land twice in the past decade and has "invaded" other neighbors several times before that. Now maybe ethnic Russians in Ukraine want to be part of Russia. If that's the case, then Ukraine and Russia could have sat down and organized a plebiscite. Instead, what, Russia gets to invade "just cause?" Does Germany get to retake eastern prussia or galicia because of historic connections?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2022 22:29
|
|
|
Private Speech posted:Ahh yes going around saying "Russia wants to invade for lovely imperialistic reasons, has been building up troops for months and are actively looking for an excuse to do so" is the driving force behind Russian intentions to invade. Russia is the kid stepping on the back of your shoes in the hallway and then waiting for you to get mad at him before they hit you so they can claim you started it.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2022 22:35
|
|
|
Gripweed posted:Sure, but America has done a lot of bad stuff other than the Iraq War. We have done something about the human rights abuses in Libya, that did not end well. We did something about Syria, that didn't go how we wanted either. We've been doing something about Cuba and North Korea for decades, those countries doggedly refused to stop existing, and all us doing something resulted in was denying medicine and food to the people of those countries. America being involved does not equal "wrong." Countries can be flawed and lovely and still be in the right. This is dogmatic lunacy. Ukraine is a sovereign state. They want to defend themselves, they are accepting arms for many countries, including the United States. Just like Iraq was free to defend itself from the United States, Ukraine is allowed to defend itself against Russia. If they want to accept arms from the United States, they are allowed to. Russia is starting an international crisis and then acting affronted when people react accordingly. They are the bully who gets mad when their target sticks up for themselves. America has been in the wrong dozens of times in the past few administrations. Sending arms to a country asking for them is not one of those times. Basically: Solaris 2.0 posted:American foreign policy is bad an evil. Russia invading Ukraine is also bad and evil.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2022 23:32
|
|
|
Gripweed posted:Sure. But so what? We've given Ukraine the weapons, but we still say Russia is going to invade. SO great, we dumped a bunch of weapons onto the world and didn't even stop the other bad thing. Ya that was bad. That was also 60 years ago and entirely different. Indonesia wasn't getting invaded by Malaysia or some other neighboring country. I think everyone would admit that America sending arms isn't some noble altruistic thing and that America has an interest in containing Russia. But that is not mutually exclusive with the idea that Ukraine is the "innocent" party when it comes to Russian aggression in this particular instance. Ukraine is allowed to defend themselves and are taking any help they can get from other countries offering to send it.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2022 23:49
|
|
|
Gripweed posted:Where have I ever blamed Ukraine? I have always been blaming America. I am the Blame America First crowd, this entire time I have been saying America should not have provided the weapons. OK but why? Because it's a bad look? Like literally just framing? So America should just pay another country like Austria to do it? I don't understand.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2022 23:56
|
|
|
I don't know if I said this on this board or the Eastern Europe board, but Putin really disregarded the long-term implications of annexing Crimea and making eastern Ukraine a puppet or semi-autonomous. Those were the regions most likely to elect a pro-Russia government in Kiev and with them gone, it's going to be pro-EU governments for the foreseeable future. Like everything with Russia since the invention of writing, soft-power and genuine reasons to align with Russia would have accomplished everything he wanted.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 16, 2022 15:38
|
|
|
Love how Russia goes in reverse order to be as transparent as possible about how bullshit this is. Normal countries would plant this story a month or so ago, get outraged, demand concessions from Ukraine, then move militarily "as a last option." Putin throws 1/3 of the army on the border, builds bridges, attempts to get nonsense concessions from unrelated parties, THEN invents a casus belli.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 16, 2022 16:28
|
|
|
Josef bugman posted:Just as a quick thing, but I saw this posted elsewhere and wanted to ask folks here if there is any truth to it? All this drama (according to Ukraine) is making their economy turn to poo poo. Evidence for that is hard to show, their currency has lost a portion of its value (we're talking .38 to USD to .36). I'm not aware of any hard numbers on the economic situation other than that. It doesn't take an economist to know that it is undoubtedly hurting tourism and foreign investment but at the same time, not like winter is the big season for trips to the Black Sea.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 16, 2022 17:32
|
|
|
BoldFace posted:I honestly don't see them even trying to invade anything other than the eastern parts that are already being contested. Russia simply doesn't have the manpower to occupy the whole country. Just installing a puppet government in Kyiv isn't enough because the Ukrainian forces will immediately overthrow it unless Russia has boots on the ground keeping watch. 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.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2022 15:26
|
|
|
cinci zoo sniper posted:There’s video in that thread, with the small caveat that Russian news sources seem to have forgotten to agree to talk about the same version of events: You don't need to have a coherent story, in fact sometimes its better not to.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2022 15:32
|
|
|
GaussianCopula posted: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. I wonder if Ukraine would rather just let the contested areas go and forever remove the issue from ever arising again. Obviously Russia can find whatever nonsense reason it wants in the future, but it's a lot more palatable to the major players if Ukraine wants to just write it off and say it's Russia's problem now. Russia gets to claim "victory," Ukraine doesn't face invasion, the West can claim a de-escalation.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2022 15:38
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:Adobe 2014. How much you want to bet pirated? People pay for Adobe?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2022 20:37
|
|
|
Does everyone not understand that Biden in the United States government doesn't actually care if they're wrong? The point is to put it to Russia to prove them wrong and thus far Russia has not proven them wrong. If Biden and the administration winds up being wrong and there's no war, they'll be a strong argument to be made that it was because the United States kept calling out Russian aggression every time it happened. If on the other hand the United States is wrong, that allows Russia to save face and everyone to say look how we overreacted. It's extremely calculated.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 19, 2022 04:34
|
|
|
Somaen posted:I'm not a military guy but I'm pretty sure huge invasions don't happen spontaneously being lead by a heroic protagonist to charge especially in a highly vertical authoritarian structure. I'm willing to believe that because so far the US intelligence has shown that their sigint was good, e.g. the chlorine false flag Yes the US goal is to dare Russia to prove them wrong. Russia calls it fear mongering but the point is to be "wrong" to give Russia the off ramp if they want it.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2022 19:12
|
|
|
And yet SOMEHOW this will be America's fault according to 20% of this board. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2022 15:34
|
|
|
sexy tiger boobs posted:Who knew there were this many Putin knob gobblers on SA? Big strong daddy can do no wrong! It's partially that, partially people extremely salty at the USA and "the west" to the point where if Biden said the sky was blue they'd go outside to check. Eastern European politics and dynamics are extremely complicated, but there is 100% a "bad guy" in this.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2022 01:43
|
|
|
Why would NATO even want Russia? According to Putin, Russia is just constantly getting attacked by its tiny neighbors, NATO vs would be going to war every 5 years.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2022 07:00
|
|
|
As to the first tweet: lol. Russia has nothing to threaten American diplomats or the political establishment with that will matter in the slightest. Oh no, a few lobbyists and corrupt legislators won't get to invest in Gazprom anymore. Whatever will they do? Russia seems to think that just because their oligarchs run and stash their money in the west that it's bilateral and Americans will be super bummed to not be able to park their yacht in Sochi.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2022 16:38
|
|
|
OctaMurk posted:I don't think its a given that Ukraine ends up being a big Iraq-style insurgency. If Russian security services do have the purported list and can quickly round up any potential resistors then they can mostly crush an insurgency before it begins. The Russian military is hilariously inept at dealing with disproportionate warfare or engagements where its anything but a head-on fight. They've struggled in Chechnya, Armenia, and Syria and repeatedly struggle handling mass protests. Also, if they go all-in on a full invasion, bets are off when it comes to sanctions. The longer things go on, the worse it's going to get for the Russian ruling classes.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2022 16:45
|
|
|
Gatts posted:Like when my father has a few whiskeys he mentions we may be descendant from Ghengis Khan because his son shares our name and there’s some history there (long with like millions of others). So if these bozos have some historical claim bullshit then I lay claim to Russia, China and Turkey. I just need the military to push it through. Where's that picture where certain segments of Koreans claim that the Joseon empire spanned to Britain?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2022 18:14
|
|
|
BoldFace posted:DPR and LPR leaders have written letters asking Russia to intervene. Smart of them to show print-outs rather than Word docs. I'm 100% positive metadata would show the statements were written on a computer in St. Petersburg.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2022 22:02
|
|
|
Conspiratiorist posted:https://mobile.twitter.com/ArkadyOstrovsky/status/1496591824445706244 At least Kharkov has experience completely rebuilding itself after a massive battle followed by ethnic cleansing. Ugh. And to everyone saying Zelensky should just ask Putin to name his price, gently caress off with that nonsense. The only way Ukraine doesn't get the clock turned back to 1985 (or 1920) is to make the experience as painful, long, and expensive for Russia as possible.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2022 22:55
|
|
|
Conspiratiorist posted:Zero. Ya the only "win" possible is to make things extremely painful and drawn out for Russia and hope for internal and external pressures to take their toll. On a long enough time scale, Russian supremacy in indirect fire and air force are going to make a straight-forward fight basically unwinnable. It's always possible that Russia has some military disasters that make a military victory for them not possible, but Russia isn't going to "lose" a full war if that's where this goes. Pook Good Mook fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Feb 23, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2022 23:00
|
|
|
Dapper_Swindler posted:so what are the chances of this being a bloody occupation and turning into another Afghanistan for Russia where everyone pumps weapons into the various resistance groups. 50/50? That's really hard to say because we don't know what approach Russia is going to take to major cities. If they straight up flatten major urban centers using artillery, Russia's gonna have a hard time paying its bills because everyone is going to cut them off militarily and economically. We're really on untrodden ground here. Ukraine isn't like Afghanistan where armed groups can stay "organized" in unreachable parts of the country. There aren't mountain ranges in eastern Ukraine and it's very open land, the only places you can have an organized resistance group that Russia won't be able to readily find will be in cities. The whole thing sucks. Pook Good Mook fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Feb 23, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2022 23:33
|
|
|
marxismftw posted:Iraq. Maybe, but other than idiotic poo poo like "shock and awe," America and its Allies restrained themselves from full-on artillery strikes against populated areas where civilians deaths were the point. And as stated in previous pages, the sectarian and tribal affiliations of Iraq really don't translate to Ukraine, especially when Russia already controls the areas with large amounts of ethnic Russians.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2022 23:51
|
|
|
Despera posted:Always been a problem with that type of warfare Legit the German timetables for the race to the channel were slowed when tank columns got stuck by traffic fleeing them
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2022 02:35
|
|
|
How different are dialects with Russian spoken in Ukraine and Russia itself? Would Ukrainians be able to pick up on a Russian trying to blend in or vice versa?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2022 05:46
|
|
|
GreyjoyBastard posted:Eh, I despise Russia's actions as much as most anyone here but I'm dubious of wide-ranging sanctions... for the first reason, not the second. All their money is in Swiss banks and NATO can't touch it. Maybe they can seize some yachts docked in France or some townhouses in London. They can only really affect their ability to create new money by shutting out investment and profitable trade. Not easy to make them less rich.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2022 06:29
|
|
|
Dog Friday posted:So I'm seeing the old"NATO caused this escalation" argument on Twitter and the media... Is there any nuance to this argument, or is it just total nonsense at this stage of the game? Seems Putin's speech as a bit of a game changer... No it's absurdist performance art but it's literally the best thing they have
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2022 13:56
|
|
|
Sinteres posted:If Ukraine actually manages to recapture the airport it'll make the whole thing look like a stupid overly ambitious stunt by Russia, but obviously failing to recapture it would be devastating. I'm not on the ground, but it seems insane to take an airfield 100's of miles away from the front when your only path to resupply is flying over an unoccupied enemy who still possesses anti-air weapons. And it's not like Ukraine needs to preserve the airport's usefulness, with no Ukrainians present they can just shell it indiscriminately and bring immense force to re-take it. Just seems like overly ambitious PR, but again, I'm a non-military moron thousands of miles away.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2022 15:33
|
|
|
ZombieLenin posted:I wouldn’t say that. While small , the Royal Danish Army was pretty heavily engaged in Afghanistan and handled themselves incredibly well. Denmark's value to NATO has always been its control and recon abilities over the Oresund strait and access to the Baltic. The entire country might as well be one big microphone and sonar array.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2022 15:36
|
|
|
Kaal posted:The Kyiv airport is only about 100 km from the Belarusian border and about 300 km from the Russian border, so it isn't as defensible as you might think. There's a good air route to it along the Dnieper river, which is quite wide and runs directly south from the Russian staging areas in Belarus. Only the most ambitious Russians could cross 100km in a few days and by that point the Ukrainians could make the entire field worthless. Also the quickest path is through the Chernobyl exclusion zone...
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2022 15:42
|
|
|
ZombieLenin posted:Russia will not attack Finland. Finland counts as Western Europe now and would be a bridge too far for Europe if attacked by Russia. "Gotta stop those Finnish Nazis." -Putin, probably
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2022 15:49
|
|
|
Mooseontheloose posted:It seemed he thought that Joe Biden was all talk and that France and GB were adverse to doing anything and being an autocrat didn't bother to think that people would resist. He is EX-KGB after all, I am sure he sees Americans/Britain/whatever as inferior and weak unlike his strong mental and physical capabilities. Well the EU said this morning they're still on the fence about cutting off Russia from international banking 100%, so Putin hasn't yet been entirely wrong. US sanctions can harm international trade and corporate stuff, but it's up to EU and GB to really hit the oligarchs where they hurt.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2022 16:30
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:This is just speculation, but it looked like they were more preparing for the more limited 'rest of the oblasts+mariupol' option rather than all out on to kiev because preparing for the latter would've jeopardized the former. You also can't defend everywhere at once in this kind of war and have to make directed decisions. It's a combination of "He who defends everywhere defends no where" combined with Ukraine being pretty much perfect "invasion country" The best army in the world can't defend a front 200 km wide of steppe. You defend where and when you can and trade space for time. On that note, does anyone have a good idea on Russian logistical capabilities?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2022 16:35
|
|
|
CommieGIR posted:The goal is Ukraine. Putin openly said as much in his pre-recoded speech. Their intention is to do regime change, demilitarize Ukraine, and hunt down "undesirables". And if this sounds like a muddled mess of objectives that could take years and isn't measured in purely military victory, you are 100% right. To "win" the way Putin has described it requires years and Russia will be sanctioned the entire time.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2022 16:37
|
|
|
BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:they haven't even kicked russia out of eurovision, and up until the actual invasion Belgium and Italy didn't loving want poo poo like diamonds or luxury clothes to be on the export ban list. Even now Germany's trying to keep putin off because Scholz still loving thinks he can talk to him and save the gas. They should legit just seize Russian properties around western Europe, pile up all the belongings inside into the town square, and burn them on the BBC. Burn every yacht in Nice down to the waterline. Make it clear that no Russian should ever feel comfortable buying a townhouse in Kensington ever again. Have they even closed their airports to Aeroflot?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2022 16:40
|
|
|
FishBulbia posted:https://twitter.com/teaktreeturmoil/status/1496869993249599496?t=w2w0NSQFw-nyJgr59t9-iw&s=09 Shine on you crazy Ukrainians
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2022 16:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 19:50 |
|
|
The Real Amethyst posted:Are there actually lefty/tankie types trying to defend and justify the invasion or is it just a minority of broke brain freaks? I'm scared to look. Candace loving Owens tweeted last night that the only person to blame is NATO. No I won't link it.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2022 16:50
|
|