READ OP! War in Ukraine: a distressed blender making too many margaritas at once

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d64: Jan 15, 2003

This was yesterday already so might have been posted on the previous pages, apologies if this is the case, but a survey of Russians found 68% in support of the Ukraine "operation", 22% against and 10% unsure.

https://wciom.ru/analytical-reviews/analiticheskii-obzor/specialnaja-voennaja-operacija-v-ukraine-otnoshenie-i-celi

TV is the most important news media for most Russians. Picture presented on Russian TV of the conflict is decidedly different from western media.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2022 19:16

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 11:12

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Sir John Falstaff posted:

Does anyone know the current general reliability of this polling company? According to Wikipedia, it is state-owned. Given the general reliability of Russian state-owned media, the recent tightening of state control over it, and the clear incentive to show that the Russian people support the invasion, should we consider these results as reliable at all?

I can't answer this question, but the experts interviewed by media in my country don't seem to find the results incredible. Further, I hear the same story from Russian expats: many of their relatives and friends back home have a completely different understanding of the conflict and support it.

There will certainly be more polling pretty soon.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2022 20:33

d64: Jan 15, 2003

spacetoaster posted:

Honestly I have no idea what they're seeing/hearing.

I'd ask, but they're kinda scrambling right now with the Russian economy tanking. It's late there now, I might call in the morning and try to suss out more.

I feel like eventually it'll become very obvious to them at some point, I just don't know when.

You have a more direct view to this than I, but I read many people had the idea that the sanctions were mostly put in place because the west again wants to victimize Russia for whatever nefarious reasons, and the Ukraine crisis is just an excuse for it. Meaning there's a lot of people who won't soon start thinking "maybe we should think again about this invasion, so we could get rid of some of these sanctions."

# ¿ Mar 1, 2022 20:55

d64: Jan 15, 2003

ethanol posted:

Apparently the usa has the largest rail network in the world. Not having passengers on it kinda makes it feel invisible. Fortunately for me I have a Canadian pacific cargo line that runs through my backyard so I never forget

It's true that USA is huge on rail transport and this is not commonly known. Compared to Europe, USA moves much more freight by rail both in tonnage and as a percentage. One reason often given is that the US does not have much of a network of usable rivers and waterways for bulk freight, so there's been a huge demand for rail links.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2022 19:44

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Naive tactics, unrealistic expectations of a quick rout, equipment and logistics problems, unprepared manpower, it all remind me of the Winter war a lot. But: after a couple of months of very big losses, Soviets put their heads together, probably got some of the most incompetent officers out of the important positions, revised doctrine and started doing a lot better. Soon they were winning and could dictate the peace terms.

Hoping I'm wrong but militarily, the Russians can afford to lose a lot of stuff. They are losing men but their cities, bases and airfields are not being shelled. The sanctions are huge but their economy went off the cliff in 1998 too and the world did not end, I'm hoping they have the desired effect but I'm all but certain on that. I think only internal political pressure can bring a solution in the short term, and it's really extremely hard to tell how the regime in fact works, and what factions and pro escalation / de-escalation pressures exist in the small and opaque circle of people who have any real say in matters of the state. Every newspaper and twitter pundit is churning out pieces on what Putin is thinking and why, takes of every kind and variety, only thing for certain is that most of them are mostly wrong.

I'm hoping the Ukrainians succeed in staging a miraculous defense and the Russians give up, as much as anyone, but really I'm very depressed by the outlook today.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2022 01:23

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Lead out in cuffs posted:

The Soviet Union in the Winter War was fighting a defensive total war, with the entire country on a war footing, and basically the entire populace backing the war effort. They were also being propped up by lend-lease.

Didn't lend-lease begin in 1941, while Winter war ended in March 1940? Also I don't quite follow who you say was fighting a defensive total war, when also the German invasion of Russia started only in 1941.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2022 01:50

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Franks Happy Place posted:

You don't need to go back to the Winter War for an analogue; this is the First Chechen War all over again, more or less.

The "less" being, Ukraine is a vastly superior opponent to a bunch of Chechen rebels.

I've been thinking of this too. At the time of the second war it seemed impossible the place could ever be anything but a war zone, with the asymmetric conflict just smoldering forever, but hey, today it is a part of Russia, more or less, and the resistance is no longer much of a problem for the larger nation. A huge money sink, but it still turned out better for the Russians than I ever thought it would.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2022 02:11

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Scapegoat posted:

The can dictate all they want. The west isn't going to drop sanctions just because they bullied the hell out of Ukraine.

Sanctions or no, that seems like an extremely lovely outcome from the Ukrainian perspective.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2022 02:39

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Torrannor posted:

I've read that too, and thought it pretty interesting. But on the other hand, Iran was never as integrated into the Western economic order as Russia is/was until now.

But the general point stands. Iran has a higher GDP/capita in PPP than South Africa for example. It's by no means a rich country, but still has a modicum of wealth despite being under some of the harshest sanctions in the world. And one of the main reasons is them being a petro-states. And it should be noted that their oil and gas industry is targeted by these harsh sanctions as well, while the West until now has explicitly excluded Russia's energy sector from the sanctions regime. And in the blog you linked, one author claimed that the increase in price for Russian gas has more than offset their losses due to nobody buying their oil.

Of course the shock of a much more globally integrated Russia being cut of from much of the global economy could destabilize Russia's economy much more than Iran's economy was disrupted when the Mullahs took over that country. And certain military (and civilian) products will be difficult for Russia to make themselves as long as they are cut off from certain high-tech goods that are currently only produced in the Western aligned world. But as much as I also hope that the sanctions will contribute to force Russia to withdraw from Ukraine, it wouldn't surprise me if they failed to do so.

Even though I'm the last to claim that anything certainly is the case one way or another in this crisis, I think this is very reasonable thinking. The most optimistic takes, that in short to medium term Russia will be too broke to wage this war, are to me very much unrealistic. They absolutely don't need dollars or euros to pay soldiers or purchase more weapons. Besides, EU will be buying their oil and gas probably for at least some years, and after that, there's still half the world's population outside the sanctions entirely.

The sanctions will hit regular people for sure, and some of them will make the conclusion that the war was a mistake, but I'm not sure if that's a very large part. Many will rather think "Those western counties sure are assholes for sanctioning us this way, using the special operation as a pretext - as if denazifying Ukraine was a bad thing! We will just have to soldier on."

Again, it comes down to how well the people in power stay in line. Putin has little worry that elections or, I think, even unrest would soon be a threat to his power. In autocratic regimes this threat only comes from power structures of the regime itself. Do the people who could have any actual leverage on him think that this war is a terrible idea, and the sanctions ruinous, or do they think Russia must assert itself this way, no matter the cost? Who the hell knows.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2022 18:39

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Random Integer posted:

https://twitter.com/nolanwpeterson/status/1504861555703353357?s=20&t=QCOKj0mbLKPdk_wb7H_J5g

The latter picture is from a Prisma store, a Finnish chain of supermarkets that is pulling out of Russia. It being empty would more probably be because the store is closing for good and they have just sold whatever was left on the shelves. I doubt there is a big shortage of daily goods in Russia yet.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2022 00:34

d64: Jan 15, 2003

DekeThornton posted:

Well, the fact that a True Finn representative is pro NATO is rather notable, since they, like most Euro far right parties, including our Swedish one, has been NATO sceptics. We start to see the same switch for the Swedish Democrats here, as they try and clean their pro Putin image off.

Halla-Aho has (I think) always been for NATO membership, only up until recently that was a minority view both among the public and among politicos.

To previous posts on this: parliamentary committees are not advisory, laws have to clear appropriate committees before they can be voted on by the parliament. Memberships and leads of the committees are distributed according to seats in parliament regardless who is in coalition and who is in opposition. Head of committee on defense is a key position when it comes to defense policy, though the role is different from minister of defense.

As for Sweden joining if Finland does or vice versa, probably all the pro-NATO people in both countries would hope so, but it is not clear at this moment. While there's been a big pro-NATO membership swing in public opinion in Sweden too, the govt has not been very enthusiastic about it.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2022 19:08

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Source levada.ru

Sure, people might be increasingly wary of saying they oppose the president, but I still don't doubt that's the general direction of it

# ¿ Mar 30, 2022 19:14

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Many news sites have reported that 130000+ conscripts have been called into service, noting Russia is saying it is not an action related to the war but routine biannual intake of conscripts. All the articles I checked left it vague if this matches previous years, i.e. if these are usual numbers for conscripts taken in in the spring. Anyone have an idea?

Not looking for speculation on how they surely will be pushed into the fire after two weeks of drills. Just if there's a source confirming that this is something that would be happening on every year.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2022 19:09

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Deteriorata posted:

According to: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/explainer-russian-conscription-reserve-and-mobilization

So 130,000 is pretty average.

Thanks, exactly the info I was after.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2022 19:18

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Even after the sanctions do start having a big effect on daily lives, whenever that is, I think it'll take a long time before they start being a political problem. At first if anything they probably instill more patriotism - from what I have read, the idea that the west hates Russia and Russians because of their freedoms has been very successfully driven in.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2022 14:45

d64: Jan 15, 2003

IMO the Winter war was some bullshit but Finns took the lost lands back already in the Continuation war, just could not keep them. They're gone.

Twenty years ago there were more activists, many of them older people, calling for Karelia to be returned but no political party of any consequence took the idea seriously and the discussion has practically ended since.

A lot of Finns probably think that yeah, in a perfect world Karelia should be returned, but only a small minority believe it's something that could ever realistically happen.

To not make this completely off-topic: Finns need often need to remind themselves that Finland lost the Winter war. It was a failure for the Soviets, sure, but Finland still lost. Many people (not here, but on Twitter etc) are making comparisons between 1939 and this war, and I just wish I could remind them that despite pulling off the "miracle", the result was still a tragedy that I would not wish on anyone. I can't get excited over the prospect no matter how humiliating it would be for Russia. Also the loss fomented a lot of revanchist attitudes which I think Finns would have done better without and think Ukrainians would too.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2022 07:37

d64: Jan 15, 2003

ZombieCrew posted:

Slightly aside. My grandma lived in romania during ww2 as a child. When the russians "liberated' their farm, they shot all the men and sent everyone else packing. Thats the very short version of my family history with russians.

Being aware of these histories it's a little bit unsettling to go on Twitter today and see tankies say it'd been good if the Soviets had put every Romanian (and every Balt, Finn, etc) to death back then since they had been allied with nazis. With that level of brain poisoning, how would they NOT support this invasion.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2022 09:06

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Orb�n, having secured a clear victory in the polls tonight, apparently cited a longish list of enemies of Hungary in his victory speech; the list included the left, the bureaucracy in Brussels, international Media, and president Zelenskyy.

:thaoldme:

# ¿ Apr 3, 2022 23:46

d64: Jan 15, 2003

gay picnic defence posted:

acidx posted:
I think there is a degree of this as there are some lefties who romanticize the USSR, but I think the bulk of it is just a simplified framing of the world where the US is the worst actor in the world in every situation. In that situation, Russia is just the de facto beneficiary of people who are siding against whatever they perceive the US to be doing. All Russia needs to do is make some vague statements about the West forcing their hand and opposing imperialism, and they'll get the support of this group. The irony of course is that it's in the west where these people are free to feel this way about their governments. Go try and proclaim that the Russian government is the source of all the worlds evils in Moscow and see what happens.

I think that�s laid the groundwork for a lot of the pro Russia tankie poo poo we�re seeing. There�s been plenty of examples of Russia backing the victims of unjustified US/western fuckery and it�s gradually morphed into a US bad/Russia good dichotomy in some left wing circles. That�s made them far more susceptible to Russian propaganda regarding Ukraine and its nazis because they�ve already been primed to assume that Russia is the good guy and whoever the US is backing must be the bad guy.

It�s a shame because a strength of the left is it�s propensity to actually analyse complex situations but instead some of the most committed leftists have sunk to the same goodies and baddies poo poo I expect from chuds.

I think that to many older communists, "imperialism" is a loaded word that always implicates western powers. Just as an example, Kim Il Sung in his speeches and writings hardly mentioned "Americans" as such, always "American imperialists". He had a lot to say of those. "Peace" was another word Soviets tried to claim for their own purposes and at times succeeded. At some point student demonstrators in Helsinki chanted "Soviet missile! Missile of peace!" - enemies of the Soviet union were a destructive force in the world and "peace" meant them being kept in check.

In the US many tankies seem to be younger people but in Finland, most of the hardcore putinists are older people. Many of them used to be communists, but I don't see much of an ideology behind it anymore. It's just whatever Russia does is good and what EU and US does it bad. Already some years ago I started to suspect that to most of these people the good and constructive messages of socialism and communism probably didn't mean much, they just were elated to be on the winning team with big and strong USSR against imperialist bogeymen.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2022 07:46

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Shibawanko posted:

what are the odds right now that the eastern push by russia will be successful? people here have been fairly optimistic about beating the russians back but thats not what most of the major newspapers and zelenskyy himself seem to say

Personally I'm somewhat optimistic, but on the other hand, Russians could have some low-hanging fruit in terms of getting their act together. Experts are saying they have been fighting not according to their doctrine nor to their strengths; who knows if they'll manage to put their heads together and start doing more of the stuff that has a better chance of working. Again, it did happen in the Winter war.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2022 10:41

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Before the invasion, many putinists claimed Putin's speech on Feb 21st was being intentionally mistranslated and misrepresented in western media to make it seem warlike. Interested in seeing if the same train of reasoning will be used with Sergeitsev's essay.

E: Someone on twitter pointed out - don't know if it's true - that the guy himself lives in Italy.

d64 fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Apr 5, 2022

# ¿ Apr 5, 2022 14:20

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Various sources are reporting material is amassed on the front around Izyum area. We'll see if the Russians will try to straighten the front line with a push towards the south.

https://twitter.com/Cen4infoRes/status/1513066078179635203

https://twitter.com/georgewbarros/status/1513006114861985798

E: don't know why the first tweet preview shows two tweets. Linked to the bottom one.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2022 10:04

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Feliday Melody posted:

As a Swedish home guardsmen. The war in Ukraine really ran home the reality of war with Russia to Sweden as a whole.

There's no pulling back, over extending them and then ambushing them. Russia can't be spared a single meter of Swedish ground. Because any community they lay their hands on will result in genocide and mass graves.

I don't know about that, to my knowledge Finland's defense against an invasion would very much involve defense in depth type of warfare. Trying to keep the fight at the border seems like a hopeless idea and would discard advantages the terrain and the distances give.

It is a question that I have been thinking about, could more people from the areas north of Kyiv been evacuated before those areas were lost. As I remember the news, many thought the invasion would not happen up to until it did.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2022 09:59

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Chalks posted:

I'm sure this is due to internal politics, every commander wanted his troops represented when they crushed Ukraine and you don't need to take unit composition seriously when the enemy is just going to roll over.

I thought this was how they do it, most units have three battalions and they pulled in two for the war, the remaining one continuing to train conscripts and being a presence on the borders, etc, what they normally do. I understood this was by design.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2022 12:30

d64: Jan 15, 2003

It would be a timeline: Russia uses chemical or biological weapons in the war, the NFZ is established... all the while we're still paying them for gas and oil.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2022 08:54

d64: Jan 15, 2003

I really do hope the optimists are right regarding how this is going to go on. This far even taking back territory lost in the south has not seemed very easy.

But at least if it does turn out worse than we hoped, we'll always have the back-stabbing Germans to blame for it.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2022 08:11

d64: Jan 15, 2003

I don't have faith in these proposed arrangements involving a neutral Ukraine, since I think what Russians mean with "neutral Ukraine" is pretty far from what I think of as "neutral".

Sad, since it's pretty hard to see a good way to peace otherwise atm. I still think peace sooner rather than later would be good.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2022 15:17

d64: Jan 15, 2003

The articles I have read say sanctions have not yet had a large effect on most Russians. Most unavailable products at this point are luxuries - a big exception being some prescription drugs that are harder to find than before. Matter of perspective if it's good that Russians with rare health issues can no longer get the medications they need.

As for takes saying "Russia can't afford to --- so they won't do it" - I'm fairly skeptical about those. Russia could not afford to launch this invasion, it was a terrible idea, but they did it anyway. Only thing I think they really really cannot afford to do is start a nuclear war. Most everything else is in my eyes on the table.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2022 21:32

d64: Jan 15, 2003

I'm reading that a Russian default on their foreign debts could put financial institutions in jeopardy. What a joke if Russia does not pay, so taxpayers abroad need to pay instead to save those poor precious banks.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2022 09:25

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Der Kyhe posted:

On Chomsky; Maybe some people need to find the new John Steinbeck, who infamously was on the wrong side of history openly supporting and advocating for the Soviet Union and Stalin during the Winter War, where SU invaded Finland and its democratically elected government?

A detail that was conveniently forgotten later.

quote:

In the first days of the war Pravda marshalled many British names who were willing to testify to the loftiness of the Soviet and Finnish Popular case. On 4 December there was Stafford Cripps, who allegedly considered Russia's conduct wholly logical and understandable. (Others included Professor Haldane of London University, who held that the Soviet Union had a right to defend herself. News about solidarity with the new Finnish 'popular government' abroad was published almost every day throughout the war. There were such names as G. B. Shaw, John Steinbeck and Jawarharlal Nehru, not to speak about the domestic luminaries, who included the cream of Soviet literature.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2022 11:20

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Valtonen posted:

This is one hell of a red-hot take, and requires absolutely bonkers interpretation of �fate worse than Vietnam.�

I have a suspicion that take employed hyperbole to drive the point opposite to that it stated.

In a small way I agree with the disruptive poster there, sure finlandization was a crock of poo poo, but I don't believe small nations next to big nations often have true independence in choosing their paths. Going at it alone leads to getting bullied or caught in crossfires, but alliances can also limit sovereignty, plenty of examples in Europe.

I've always thought of Cuba when the most hot-headed critics of finlandization demanded Finland to always act contrary to what USSR would want, as if any other option would mean the country was not truly independent.

E: missing words

d64 fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Apr 17, 2022

# ¿ Apr 17, 2022 21:51

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Play posted:

I know everyone in the thread probably already understands this, but it is funny to periodically see things like this from clueless Congresspeople on both sides. These takes really seem divorced from reality.

This is what politicians do. They call for and argue for stuff they know isn't gonna happen, to get attention and votes from the block of voters wanting that thing to happen. They know what they are doing.

Not exactly the same situation but during the Obama years, republicans spoke absolutely endlessly about how they are going to cancel obamacare in its entirety as soon as possible. Then, when they actually should have had the votes to do it, it wasn't so simple anymore. As long as it wasn't a practical possibility, it was safe to talk about.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2022 09:11

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Interesting mention that Continental is resuming production in their Russian tire factory. Their statement is that keeping it shut would expose their Russian personnel to criminal liability.

Would be interesting to know if it's actually hard to divest the facilities and operations, or if it's just "hard" because obviously all the Russian buyers are offering pennies on the dollar for them. Just write it off and be done with it.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2022 20:05

d64: Jan 15, 2003

It's a short article, but it may give some perspective to "why don't the Ukrainians simply push the Russians out?"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/23/motivated-but-outgunned-ukrainian-soldiers-discuss-life-on-the-southern-front

# ¿ Apr 23, 2022 14:00

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Nenonen posted:

Well now here's an interesting angle on Finland's NATO membership. I bet this will go well.

https://yle.fi/news/3-12418999

This seems very silly. The worst part of it is that it could open the can of worms of more NATO members coming up with stuff they want to happen before they can ratify Fin/Swe membership.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2022 19:13

d64: Jan 15, 2003

dr_rat posted:

So possibility this funding might be delayed a bit due to political shenanigans. Hopefully that's been taken account for and whatever funding's still around for Ukraine related stuff last till then.

Wait till they move to attach $30 million to the perverted arts.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2022 17:49

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Probably been asked before, but why does the payload (I presume) bob up on the video a few times before being released? Is it swinging on a tether?

# ¿ Apr 29, 2022 19:46

d64: Jan 15, 2003

This war makes it easy to see how a lot of headlines and articles in the afternoon papers work on the basis of creating anxiety. A lot of things discussed in this thread as pretty much rumors, like the May mobilization here, are run as basically true and confirmed. At least on the level of headlines, and many people will not read the article, just see the headline and think "oh gently caress this is turning into a nightmare."

There's also lately been headlines speculating on Russia having managed turn the tide in the war that would be prime examples of Betteridge's law.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2022 06:51

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Discendo Vox posted:

Yes, a lot of people have really lovely media literacy, or, indeed, literacy in general.

More annoyed at the papers exploiting that. A lot has been written about various trolls domestic and abroad working hard to create discord and confuse people on what is happening in the world, we don't need msm helping them. This is not reporting on the latest drama in reality tv, really they should stick to straightforward writing.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2022 07:16

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 11:12

d64: Jan 15, 2003

Gejnor posted:

https://twitter.com/Nordic_News/status/1520465709515657216

Next time i hope we follow Turkey's lead and shoot the fuckers down.

This is not unusual, Russian planes have flown, usually fairly momentarily, into Finnish and likely Swedish airspace with some regularity for many years.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2022 21:51

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > READ OP! War in Ukraine: a distressed blender making too many margaritas at once

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