Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Russians often call Kaliningrad by its old German name Königsberg. They believe that Germany has a right to this city, but it will be very strange for them if Poland claims this right.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

having Russian troops and nukes stationed in the Kaliningrad enclave is a security risk for NATO and if there's any chance of getting the territory transferred to Poland it should be welcomed.

it was quit sensible to remove the Germans from Eastern Europe, one of the best results of WW2. Like the Russians the Germans had spread over far too great an area and were blocking legitimate interests of many other nations like Polish access to the Baltic Sea and the Czechs having a natural border with a loyal population. Forcing big and aggressive nations to concentrate their population is different from expelling people from small nations with limited territory, which is why removing the pro-Russian population from Crimea would be a legitimate goal.  

the fewer people identifying as Germans and Russians in this world the better so any assimilation of Germans and Russians into other nations should be welcomed.

Be careful with this. The Russians carry out powerful propaganda to the German nationalist movements, and such speeches about the forced assimilation (ethnocide?) of the Germans give this propaganda a reliable support.

And what will remain of the European Union without Germanics?

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Russians often call Kaliningrad by its old German name Königsberg. They believe that Germany has a right to this city, but it will be very strange for them if Poland claims this right.

wtf? literally who? I've been there, meet numerous Russians whenever and wherever. Not once have I ever heard someone utter Konigsberg.

Why such self-confidence that you, being an American, can argue with the Russian about how Russians call this city on the sly among themselves?

Oh wait, I think I guessed...

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Ironic coming from the guy that hosted and "mediated" the peace talks in 2014-15 to now claim that they shouldn't have been held in the first place.

https://twitter.com/POLITICOEurope/status/1664658651708104706?s=20

This word for word is what the Russian ultra-nationalists cried about at the beginning of a full-scale invasion, when large losses and fails became known in the internal political circle. It looks like Lukashenko is the same Belarusian as Limonov was a Ukrainian (Savenko's real surname).

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

15,000 Soviet soldiers were killed (official Kremlin number) during the Soviet War in Afghanistan.

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1664864773220057088?s=20

And the Kremlin officially claimed only 5,937 dead in a "special military operation". It is about faith in the official numbers of the Kremlin. In the First Chechen War, the Kremlin claimed only 5,732 dead, although there is evidence that there were more than 14,000 dead.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Russians often call Kaliningrad by its old German name Königsberg. They believe that Germany has a right to this city, but it will be very strange for them if Poland claims this right.

wtf? literally who? I've been there, meet numerous Russians whenever and wherever. Not once have I ever heard someone utter Konigsberg.

Why such self-confidence that you, being an American, can argue with the Russian about how Russians call this city on the sly among themselves?

Oh wait, I think I guessed...

Can you not be a weirdo and answer the question?

Weirdo is a nickname that you wanted to give yourself, but mixed up Latin letters that are unusual for you. How to answer your rhetorical question? To name every Russian who, in a personal conversation with me, called Kaliningrad Königsberg, so that you can ask your brother to get a uniform from the wardrobe and walk through their apartments?

I think despite your confidence that you can judge the opinion of Russians on any issue better than the Russians themselves, you are not particularly aware of Kaliningrad, because in this case you would at least know that the issue of returning to Kaliningrad the German name has been discussed frequently, and Kaliningraders tried to do this a couple of times, while it still seemed that there was freedom in Russia.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Russians often call Kaliningrad by its old German name Königsberg. They believe that Germany has a right to this city, but it will be very strange for them if Poland claims this right.

wtf? literally who? I've been there, meet numerous Russians whenever and wherever. Not once have I ever heard someone utter Konigsberg.

He's trolling you.  No one calls it Konigsberg anymore.  Konigsberg was a town founded on an 'Old Prussian; settlement that was invaded by the Teutonic Order during the Baltic Crusades.  The 'Old Prussians' were Latvians and Lithuanians.    

It may seem strange to you, but the Russians do not care who exactly founded this city eleven centuries ago. As a Russian, I can tell you that the Russians would prefer the name Königsberg, because it is the proud name of a great military trophy captured from the Germans. "Kalinka-malinka-grad" i.e. "Hillbilly-town" does not sound so proud at all.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Oh nope, it will be far worse. Ukraine (literally meaning "the border regions") holds such a central place in the Russian consciousness, that its loss would provoke a collective identity crisis. Afghanistan? That's a faraway land full of weird, bearded people. The Kievian Rus' was the spiritual ancestor of Rus', and a Russia that permanently lost it would be unworthy of its name.

That's why Putin has been claiming that the West wants to use Ukraine to destroy Russia - he's not wrong that a Russia that lost its spiritual heartland and its "border regions" in a war would face an existential crisis.

You are completely right about this imperial attitude of Russians towards Ukraine, but etymologically this name does not mean the border region of Russia, which simply did not exist before Peter I, but the border region of Kievan Rus. And in fact, Moscovia was one of the border regions of Kievan Rus, and not vice versa.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

I found this letter interesting, since despite living in a country with an independent media and freedom of speech, this guy can't help but make a false equivalency between Russia and "the West" in terms of responsibility for the "senseless killing":

"Pavel
30 years old, Germany

I don’t support the war, but I decided to write a response, because people who try to find justifications for the war are being equated with those who support it.

I’m angry at both sides of the conflict. I’m angry at Russia because it started a stupid, bloodthirsty war that leads to senseless killing every day. I’m angry at the countries that support Ukraine because they’re not insisting on an immediate cessation of hostilities, on an end to the senseless killing. Instead, they’re supplying the country with weapons, understanding all the while that it’s only increasing the number of victims."

https://twitter.com/DrJadeMcGlynn/status/1665070006655131648?s=20

A mindset that has been so destroyed that it is ready to tie together absolutely opposite things is fertile ground for such an insanely eclectic ideology as fascism.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

15,000 Soviet soldiers were killed (official Kremlin number) in the Soviet War in Afghanistan.

You wouldn't be allowed to make a song like this in Russia today:

I wonder at what point, if ever, the current war starts to be seen similar to Afghanistan in the Russian public consciousness.

 

I have long pondered that same question, and actually posted a similar Russian Anti-Afghan War video a year or so back.

Although the Russian Invasion & Occupation of Ukraine 2.0 is still in its early days, compared and contrasted with the much longer Russian Invasion and Occupation of Afghanistan, there are a couple key items which distinguish these two different elective Wars of choice:

1.) The sheer length of the Russian Involvement in Afghanistan led to an extremely vocal political movement of Russian Mothers putting pressure on local Soviet authorities to challenge the fundamental nature of the mission.

2.) Russian media was much more open to alternative perspectives regarding the War in Afghanistan in the latter days of the Soviet Union.

Hence the fact that we have music videos and books and journalists who extensively described what was actually "going down" in Afghanistan.

3.) The Russian Media has actually become even more centralized controlled by the official state regime, vs more independent outlets allowed to flourish early on before the Soviet Union collapsed, as a direct result of internal contradictions, including not only the myth that the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc could out produced the West in terms of MFG capability.

Lack of computerization and automation of Factories, even within one of the largest GDP producers in the World (East Germany), effectively created a bit of a crisis of confidence among the elites when it came to the superiority of the Centrally Planned Economic Model, which arguably would have been one of the strongest arguments for the Eastern Bloc.

4.) Most of the former Republics of the Soviet Union have moved well on from the systems of the past.

Naturally the Baltic Republics would go their own way...

Central Asian Republics start to become even more complicated, but yet even there Russia can't really hold onto control, despite their "peace keeping operation" in kazakhstan, as exhibited by the forced attendance from Putin a Month or so back for May Day or May 9th Celebrations...

Down in the Caucus region, Russia doesn't have tons of friends, regardless of the GVT in power in Georgia. War with Armenia and Azerbaijan, Russia looks powerless.

Hell... if Ukraine didn't want a divorce from Russia in '14, pretty clear that even within the Russian speaking communities of Central, Southern, and Eastern Ukraine, that people are totally wanting to move on.

Putin has consistently tried to rope Belarus into the War, but even there the concept of somehow a "pure ethnic Russian Slavic" state, appears not to be something which excites the population.

Instead Belarus and Ukrainian Border Guards are arguing about Borsch recipes...

Even with all that it does boggle the mind a bit with the disturbing high level of tolerance for the causalities the Russian people have right now. 60k Americans died over a decade plus in Nam and it traumatized/defined an entire generation but 200k dead in little over a year and Putin has enjoyed even for a totalitarian regime little domestic pushback up until the recent Wagner complaining and the Free Russia Legion raids

Because the Maoist state is much more terrible than the Soviet one. Having surrendered to the PRC, the Russians have taken the path in which the deaths of millions of fellow citizens are perceived as "30 percent wrong."

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

What I still find interesting is how compucomp STILL persists on reccing pretty much every single remotely pro-Russian post here in this megathread. In fact, I don't think I can recall him EVER reccing a pro-Ukrainian post IIRC. Reflexive hatred of the West is hell of a drug.

Obviously, Compucomp's recommendations are very convenient for the customer to see what to give 5 jiao for.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

The counter offensive began today, but before people get too excited, this isn't even the main thrust. The Bradley, Leopard and Stryker armed brigades are yet to be committed into battle.

Sounds like it’s more probing than the actual counter offensive though

It's logical that RIF will be carried out first.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Ummm..... (The propagandists know what they're saying, this isn't some mistranslation.)

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1665235585324154883?s=20

She said "Единственное, что приходит в голову, это уничтожить всё живое в Харьковской области к чёртвой матери, чтоб неповадно было". I.e. "The only thing that comes to mind is to destroy all life in the Kharkiv region to hell, just as a lesson". So that translation was correct.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Looks like a Dam just blew up in Ukraine, just in time for the 78th Anniversary of D-Day, and Russians are allegedly worried about a potential Ukrainian Offense from across the River...

https://twitter.com/CasualArtyFan/status/1665882882412363777?s=20

The Russians were going to do this last year to flood Kherson when this city was liberated by the ZSU. The only thing I don't understand about this case is why they took so long. Based on this precedent, it can be assumed that they will also blow up the Zaporizhzhia NPP, but also in a year.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

https://twitter.com/faytuks/status/1665905176140554243?s=12
My god those Russian bastards actually blew the dam

Wow, the Russians are just that stupid.

They are flooding the eastern Kherson region that they currently control and cutting off water to Crimea.

Initially, the plan was to flood the southern regions of Kherson along with the Ukrainian military who had come there, as well as to prevent the pursuit of the Russian military who had retreated across the river. After so much time, this plan lost its meaning, so these Russians are completely non-humanoid for me, I stopped understanding them.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

I'm surprised I've managed to beat Woodbury's take, which will quite obviously be that the heartless Ukrainian monsters blew up the dam to murder Russian civilians as revenge or something. This dam blowing up looks like a big deal and at this moment there are plausible cases for both Ukraine and Russia being the culprit to disrupt the other's plans. Either way, its going to be very bad for civilians on both sides of the river. Even if we don't have official word, I think a good indicator that it was actually Ukraine would be the use the floods and chaos to amphibiously cross the Dnieper.

Why would Ukraine flood Kherson city itself and make any counterattack south of Kherson all the more harder? This has Russian ecoterrorism all over it. Not to mention Russia ridiculous explanation for how Ukraine supposedly blew the dam

Regardless of whoever attacked the dam, fact is that dams can be effectively treated as legitimate war targets by either side. That's neither straightforwardly morally wonderful nor completely fair, but such is war.
If Ukraine blew up one of its own dams to try to stop the Russians I don't think I could indict them for alleged "ecoterrorism" either.

I can't remember exactly where or how, but in 2022 on the Voice of America news, I saw that the Ukrainians opened one dam to conduct a controlled flood to cut off the Russian military from one village. The village was not damaged, except for a little water in the gardens and the destruction of part of the collective farm land.

Obviously, Ukraine allows such tactics, but not at all on such a catastrophic scale a la Death Star as Russia, which is a cardinal difference.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

The cardinal difference is that this is Ukrainian soil, so Ukrainians would be markedly less likely to do something like this.
I'm sure there are dams on Russian soil that they, if they occupied the territory they wanted and sought to take the fight to Russia, could attack.

These words sound too much like Russian propaganda patterns. "Yes, we piled a bunch of sh**t under their door, but they didn't the same only because they don't know where we live."

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

The cardinal difference is that this is Ukrainian soil, so Ukrainians would be markedly less likely to do something like this.
I'm sure there are dams on Russian soil that they, if they occupied the territory they wanted and sought to take the fight to Russia, could attack.

These words sound too much like Russian propaganda patterns. "Yes, we piled a bunch of sh**t under their door, but they didn't the same only because they don't know where we live."

I think that this might subconsciously be due to me being an American whose nation bombed Iraq in 2003. I don't want to (correctly) look hypocritical by getting on a soapbox and say "it's only bad when Russia does it". Which is a valid criticism of how many in my country think, all things considered.

Russian whataboutism about Iraq is completely discredited by the actions of the Ruscists. It's just ridiculous to say that the coalition punishment for Saddam M. Bison fully justifies the suicidal fascism in Russia and the idiotic war to exterminate Russian speakers in Ukraine under the guise of protecting Russian speakers in Ukraine. The Ruscists also justified this war by the number of children accidentally killed in the bombing of Serbia, now the Russians have exceeded this number many times over through the deliberate killing and also kidnapping of children.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

Another reason why Ukraine wouldn't do this:

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1665959896481685507?s=20
3.4 meters from disaster

https://twitter.com/Wolfe321/status/1665922317053202433?s=20

Ruscists are actually not interested in measures to save the Zaporizhzhia NPP. Even if the water level never drops below acceptable levels, they can blow up the NPP from the inside and convince everyone around that it happened because of the falling water level. At the same time, they will claim that this is because of Ukrainian missiles, American drones, meteor showers, the curse of Genghis Khan, Vanga's prediction, reptilian flying saucers from Nibiru, and about a thousand other things.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

So how does Russia now plans to get water to Crimea?

The Russians first let water to Crimea from Ukraine last April by (you won't believe it) blowing up a dam. I think nothing will happen to the North Crimean Canal, because the Dnieper will not dry up anyway. It's the same huge river as the Volga or the Mississippi.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

So how does Russia now plans to get water to Crimea?

The Russians first let water to Crimea from Ukraine last April by (you won't believe it) blowing up a dam. I think nothing will happen to the North Crimean Canal, because the Dnieper will not dry up anyway. It's the same huge river as the Volga or the Mississippi.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1666001260175056897

According to reports from the Russian side, the North Crimean Canal is operating normally. As far as the photos at your link show, the water level has dropped, but within normal limits, and will most likely recover soon. In the worst case scenario for Crimea, the Russians can simply dig through the mouth of the canal.

These are trifles in comparison with how the Russian media rejoice about the loss of opportunity of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kherson region, not forgetting to blame the Ukrainians for blowing up the dam, which actually deprived the Ukrainians of this opportunity.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

So how does Russia now plans to get water to Crimea?

The Russians first let water to Crimea from Ukraine last April by (you won't believe it) blowing up a dam. I think nothing will happen to the North Crimean Canal, because the Dnieper will not dry up anyway. It's the same huge river as the Volga or the Mississippi.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1666001260175056897

According to reports from the Russian side, the North Crimean Canal is operating normally. As far as the photos at your link show, the water level has dropped, but within normal limits, and will most likely recover soon. In the worst case scenario for Crimea, the Russians can simply dig through the mouth of the canal.

These are trifles in comparison with how the Russian media rejoice about the loss of opportunity of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kherson region, not forgetting to blame the Ukrainians for blowing up the dam, which actually deprived the Ukrainians of this opportunity.

See what happens when you trust a Russian source?

Another Russian source said differently

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-dam-blast-could-threaten-crimean-water-supply-says-top-russian-official-2023-06-06/

When a source reports something that is UNprofitable for him to report, you can trust him even if it is a Russian source. According to your link, Peskov simply blames the Ukrainians in advance even before the dam exploded. Yes, before the explosion of the dam, their accusation was harmonious and logical.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

So the blowing of the dam in 1941 killed a few thousand people...not a significant number as it would be, given this was a front where around 20-25 million people died. (Probably low-balling it)
These Ukrainian activists criticizing the NKVD for its blowing of a dam do not have perspective. I almost wonder if they know what Generalplan Ost even is.

It is pseudo logic. "Each of the eight billion people on Earth will die anyway, so it's okay if I hit with my Land Cruiser just twelve of them on my way to work."

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

So the blowing of the dam in 1941 killed a few thousand people...not a significant number as it would be, given this was a front where around 20-25 million people died. (Probably low-balling it)
These Ukrainian activists criticizing the NKVD for its blowing of a dam do not have perspective. I almost wonder if they know what Generalplan Ost even is.

It is pseudo logic. "Each of the eight billion people on Earth will die anyway, so it's okay if I hit with my Land Cruiser just twelve of them on my way to work."

That doesn't even work by its own faulty logic because we'll never know how many lives blowing the dam could have saved compared to if it never happened.
By this standard, the Dutch, by breaching the dikes in an effort to stop the Germans, are responsible for vile actions against themselves. Categorically and innately.
We know what the Nazis had planned for Eastern Europe. If they would have had their way, there would be far less Ukrainians today.

Dnipro Dam is not just another dam. It was a gigantic project that required the Russians to bring in the best American engineers to manage. You again purposefully ignore the fact that in the current war, both Ukrainians and Russians have already destroyed dams, and this did not produce any effect comparable to the destruction of this dam.

As for the supposedly hypothetical saving of lives by blowing up this dam, which led to the actual death of people, Ukraine is not a small Netherlands, it is endless steppes and endless forests, there is always where to put hundreds of tanks.

[Oleg 🇰🇿🤝🇺🇦]

But comparing this rather needless human suffering that is occurring right now because of Putin's war to what the NKVD did, to the point one is likening the NKVD's actions to it, is historical illiteracy.

No one made this comparison, except for yourself, when you started throwing in a bunch of things to prove that there was nothing criminal supposedly in blowing up Kakhovka Dam.