Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[GeneralMacArthur]

It would be very interesting if the Ukraine crisis pushes Venezuela and Iran closer to the US. They wont be US allies for obvious reasons. But both nations abstained in the UN vote and are currently talking to the US about increasing gas production. Venezuela directly while Iran is under the table.

The Biden administration ripped up the Iran deal, so they left a lot of bad blood there. Venezuela might be more willing to have a deal.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_the_Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Action

The United States announced its withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the "Iran nuclear deal" or the "Iran deal", on May 8, 2018.

And Biden didn't seem too interested in reviving it.

https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/biden-betting-republican-senators-lack-votes-derail-revival-iran-nucle-rcna18174

Now that you've been caught in two outrageously brazen and obvious lies in a row, will you apologize?  Or just keep moving the goalposts with a third lie?

[GeneralMacArthur]

It’s amusing that all of these puppet states call themselves “people’s republics”, something Russia itself no longer does. What a throwback.

Anytime I see the word "people's" in a name, today, I automatically despite whatever it is.  It's just never a good sign.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Yes, but depending on what is being imported, it is so easy to cheat via "transhipment."

The idea is to impoverish Russia relatively speaking so that it has less capacity to finance war.

An issue I would appreciate your thoughts on, is the correlation between a free and open society (that hews to the rule of law more or less) and the ability to be cutting edge in technology. China seems able to progress without doing very well on those metrics, unlike Russia. Will that eventually bite China in the butt down the road, or is the respect for authority and obedience in Chinese culture its antidote or offsetting factor to that?

I am not sure Russia's underperformance in this war is due to poor technology.  Russia's military technology is cutting edge.  What Russia lacked was the industrial power to produce a large number of smart weapons to support a precision weapons intensive war AND produce enough low technology armaments to support a manpower-intensive attrition war.  Russia tried the first style of war and just ran out of high-tech weapons and now has to switch to a low-tech war to try to win a war of attrition which they can win if they had the political will to mobilize a larger military force.  So far they do not seem to want to pay a political price for that.

A low-tech war of attrition, against an army backed by the United States with high-tech precision weaponry, is going to result in a lot of deaths.  I'm sure the Russian people will be happy to see their teenage sons conscripted to go get owned by 21st-century artillery in the Great Patriotic War (read: Putin personally wanting to conquer Ukraine and destroy its culture).

[GeneralMacArthur]

What's up with the ruble spiking up?

[GeneralMacArthur]

So this is something I’ve been wondering about for a while. PNTR with Russia was pulled months ago. But there hasn’t been any movement on tariffs.

Why won’t Biden place tariffs on Russia? Is he going to soon?

We blocked oil imports from Russia, which was already like 80-90% of our Russia imports.

As for what else we import, I'm not sure of its current status.  I know platinum is one thing we import in a pretty small quantity, but it may be critical enough to be impossible to ban at the current time while simultaneously being small enough to not have a significant impact on Russia's economy one way or another.

Oil & gas was an enormous part of Russia's economy.  Everything else is basically just nibbling at the edges.  But I wouldn't be surprised if most of the other imports have been cut off one way or another as well.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Actual footage from Ukrainian biolabs:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngdsRt31sIc

[GeneralMacArthur]

I've been getting so many conflicting reports about this whole offensive.  Seems like Ukraine is in fact making progress, but there's heavy losses on both sides?  Anyone have an up-to-date map of where Ukraine has regained territory?  How close are they to Kherson?  Is the Russian position strong enough to prevent Ukraine from pushing through to Crimea if the front collapses?

[GeneralMacArthur]

I'm trying to think of another time a country has instituted "partial" or total mobilization several months into a war due to losing on the battlefield. Does anyone know of another example of this?

I mean this is basically the story of WW1 in every European country.  100,000 boys died in the Somme this month?  That's ok we'll just conscript 100,000 more.  By the end of the war, Germany was sending little children and grandpas to the front lines.

The war didn't end because the German high command gave up or decided to surrender.  The war ended because the people of Germany organized mass strikes at ports and factories, blockaded highways, etc. and the German leadership realized that ending the war was probably the only way to stop a complete economic collapse and subsequent Bolshevik revolution.  It will have to be the same in Russia.  Putin will never end this war.  The Russian people must end it.  Surely sanctions have given them the motivation, but if not, having their boys stolen from them and sent to their deaths for a lie ought to do it.

The Soviet Union seemed invincible at one point.  In 1978, Michael Hart wrote The 100:  A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History and included several prominent Soviet Union figures, with the assumption that the empire would last for centuries.  A little over a decade later, it ended, and not with some grand war or nuclear standoff but with strikes and protests followed by a simple little coup in Red Square.  It may seem that Putin is invincible, that Russia is permanently stuck in its current state, that change is impossible.  But when it does happen, it will seem so simple.

[GeneralMacArthur]

The war didn't end because the German high command gave up or decided to surrender.  The war ended because the people of Germany organized mass strikes at ports and factories, blockaded highways, etc. and the German leadership realized that ending the war was probably the only way to stop a complete economic collapse and subsequent Bolshevik revolution.  It will have to be the same in Russia.  Putin will never end this war.  The Russian people must end it.  Surely sanctions have given them the motivation, but if not, having their boys stolen from them and sent to their deaths for a lie ought to do it.

I mostly disagree with this.  Germany lost WWI because it was defeated on the battlefield. That was very clear by Oct 1918.  The German High command knew this but decided to dump that decision on the civilian leadership claiming a breakdown on the home front made it impossible to fight the war.  It was this cleaver trick by the German military that actually feed the Hitler narrative of "stab in the back" which was clearly not what took place.

Right, well, they were defeated on the battlefield and that defeat on the battlefield led to demographic and economic collapse at home, which led to mass unrest and eventually the end of the war.

Russia's got defeat on the battlefield, it's quickly leading to demographic and economic collapse, and we're starting to see the seeds of mass unrest.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I'm trying to think of another time a country has instituted "partial" or total mobilization several months into a war due to losing on the battlefield. Does anyone know of another example of this?

I mean this is basically the story of WW1 in every European country.  100,000 boys died in the Somme this month?  That's ok we'll just conscript 100,000 more.  By the end of the war, Germany was sending little children and grandpas to the front lines.

The war didn't end because the German high command gave up or decided to surrender.  The war ended because the people of Germany organized mass strikes at ports and factories, blockaded highways, etc. and the German leadership realized that ending the war was probably the only way to stop a complete economic collapse and subsequent Bolshevik revolution.  It will have to be the same in Russia.  Putin will never end this war.  The Russian people must end it.  Surely sanctions have given them the motivation, but if not, having their boys stolen from them and sent to their deaths for a lie ought to do it.

The Soviet Union seemed invincible at one point.  In 1978, Michael Hart wrote The 100:  A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History and included several prominent Soviet Union figures, with the assumption that the empire would last for centuries.  A little over a decade later, it ended, and not with some grand war or nuclear standoff but with strikes and protests followed by a simple little coup in Red Square.  It may seem that Putin is invincible, that Russia is permanently stuck in its current state, that change is impossible.  But when it does happen, it will seem so simple.

I recommended your post, and normally leave it at that, but in this case I also wanted you to know that I found your post extraordinarily well written, almost lyrical really. Thank you.

Thank you! 

[GeneralMacArthur]

So to be clear, Putin's mobilizing an army that's poorly-fit, poorly-trained, poorly-equipped, incredibly low morale, not cohesive at all, and sending them into battle in a war he's already losing, to fight suicidal last-stand battles based on a strategy that Putin himself pulled out of his ass?

Bring it on lol

[GeneralMacArthur]

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-rejects-annexation-as-us-sanctions-russia-threatens-any-who-back-land-grab/

"Israel rejects annexation as West sanctions Russia, threatens any who back land grab"

If I were Israel I would keep a low profile when it comes to complaining about annexations

This is such a bad false equivalence but I feel like you know that and you're just pretending to be stupid and hoping other people won't think about it too much.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Can y'all please stop turning every page of this thread into a giant wall of text that gets quoted over and over in your endless debate with the boneheaded fool Hollywood?  Just ignore him.  Or mods, move his BS to its own thread.

[GeneralMacArthur]

If the crashing of the oil price is in the cards (color me skeptical, but preach it brother), it must be done. SA needs to do what it is told to do, or face the consequences. Enablers of the madman cannot remain on the island, and must be banned.

Clearly, the USA ramping up production can help toward that goal.  The USA in reality has a oil deficit that it has to make up anyway.  I have always said if stopping Putin is a goal then the USA-Canada needs to go on a hydrocarbon new deal with massive subsidies and spending to massively ramp up hydrocarbon energy production.

Not starting a y-axis at 0 = automatic BS.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Once again Russia has escalated the war they illegally started, and done so by inflicting massive damage on civilians.  But when Ukraine defends himself, a bunch of idiots will say that Ukraine is the warmongering country keeping the war going.  And when Putin once again saber-rattles with nuclear weapons, they'll say it's America and Ukraine's fault for not surrendering (a.k.a. "accepting Putin's peace terms").

[GeneralMacArthur]

It's really sickening how certifiable retards like Elon Musk and certain posters on this forum still think that if only we held a referendum in Ukraine, we'd see that ackshually the annexed regions want to be part of Russia all along, and everyone else is just too dumb and ignorant to understand this.  Look at these videos of people suffering while Russia indiscriminately bombs Ukrainian civilian population centers and infrastructure, for no other reason other than to soothe Putin's ego.  Do you really think these people are in favor of this?  That they want to join Russia?  What, because 55% of them voted for a pro-Russia candidate a decade ago?

Of course if Russia heard that such a referendum was to occur they would only accelerate the mass-murders, kidnapping and deportation they've been undertaking in the occupied regions, to try and thin the population of Ukrainians out, while simultaneously moving tons of Russians into those regions, so they can try and shift the vote Bleeding-Kansas-style.  But the Putin cocksuckers are OK with this because they don't see Ukrainians as real people.

The other ridiculous thing about the "referendum for peace" idea is how lopsided it is.  If Ukraine loses the referendum, they lose enormous amounts of vital territory in the east of their country.  If Russia loses the referendum, nothing happens, they just get to return to the pre-war status quo with zero consequences for waging a brutal and unprovoked war of territorial expansion to try and conquer a people who, as it turns out, really didn't want to be conquered.

[GeneralMacArthur]

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1579486349824258049?s=20&t=F70e5ZG...

America's results for Canada would probably be pretty similar today.

If Canada were to invade and conquer all of Michigan, and then a few years later launch a full-scale invasion and conquest of New England, indiscriminately slaughter civilians, kidnap children and deport their parents to Yukon, rain missiles on Cleveland and Washington D.C., give a bunch of speeches about how Americans are animals who have no right to exist, and then threaten to start a nuclear war if we didn't surrender the entire country, my guess is America's opinion of Canada would decline quite substantially!

[GeneralMacArthur]

Yall don't have Woodbury on mute? Wildin

I know, I have no sympathy for anyone who still engages with all his leading questions. The people that are owning SirWoodbury with facts and logic, or whatever it is they think they're doing, are a million times more obnoxious than SirWoodbury himself could ever hope to be.

This is in general how I feel about discourse in these kinds of threads and it frustrates me to no end that so many hot-button-issue threads get derailed by one or two obnoxious trolls posting provocative, edgy, stupid crap.  It's not the stupid crap itself that derails the thread, it's the six dozen white knights who are all chomping at the bit to be the one who dunks on Fuzzy the hardest, or finally makes OSR see the light, or receives an apology and mea culpa from SirWoodbury, or whatever.  It's just never gonna happen!  But we get pages and pages of people responding to the trolls, which diverts the thread into a rabbit hole of whatever hill the troll chose to die on.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Yall don't have Woodbury on mute? Wildin

I know, I have no sympathy for anyone who still engages with all his leading questions. The people that are owning SirWoodbury with facts and logic, or whatever it is they think they're doing, are a million times more obnoxious than SirWoodbury himself could ever hope to be.

This is in general how I feel about discourse in these kinds of threads and it frustrates me to no end that so many hot-button-issue threads get derailed by one or two obnoxious trolls posting provocative, edgy, stupid crap.  It's not the stupid crap itself that derails the thread, it's the six dozen white knights who are all chomping at the bit to be the one who dunks on Fuzzy the hardest, or finally makes OSR see the light, or receives an apology and mea culpa from SirWoodbury, or whatever.  It's just never gonna happen!  But we get pages and pages of people responding to the trolls, which diverts the thread into a rabbit hole of whatever hill the troll chose to die on.

I am 100% pro Ukraine so why did you bring me up in this thread

I'm speaking of a phenomenon that is Atlas-wide, not specific to this thread.

[GeneralMacArthur]

It's frustrating to see that this thread has devolved, as so many Atlas threads do, into an endless back-and-forth between a whole bunch of sane people and a tiny number of very devoted, very obnoxious trolls.

There's literally like 4 people here who are bashing Ukraine and advocating for Russian imperialism to win out.  Just tell them to eat sh-t, block them, and move on.  You don't need to fill page after page of the thread with a pointless argument.  That is just giving them what they want.  Their goal is to create the illusion that this is a valid idea that is worth of discussion.  It is not.

Any sane person can see that allowing Russia to invade and conquer sovereign democratic states and commit genocide in those states with total impunity and zero consequences is a net negative for American foreign policy interests and international peace & security.  This doesn't take a lot of thought, nor does it require a lengthy explanation, nor are you obliged to address all the fake concerns that trolls pretend to have to try and waste your time.

[GeneralMacArthur]

There's nothing "elite" about Ukraine receiving aid.

What's "elite" is the incredibly privileged position of some Americans, where their geographical position means they will never personally have to worry about being invaded by Russia, or some other aggressive imperialist state like China, so defense against Russian invasion is just a theoretical thing that they can use as opportunity to take a contrarian position and talk down to everyone else.  Whether Russia gets away with invading Ukraine, annexing its territory and massacring its people matters so little to them that they pick sides purely based on what gives them that feeling of superiority they live for.

For the last seven years, liberals have constantly had to engage with bad actors on both sides who say absolutely retarded sh-t that they don't actually believe at all, and their smug, equally bad-faith buddies who come along to say "lol you're just so insulated and ignorant that you just can't accept that anyone could reasonably disagree with you." They'll say this about anything from Putin dick sucking over Ukraine, to claims that 2020 or 2016 was a rigged election, to Holocaust denial, to flat-earth-ism, to whatever other nonsense the idiot brigade decides to trot out next week.  It's the exact same argument pattern copy-and-pasted over and over and over again.

[GeneralMacArthur]

So is Russia basically just a client state of Iran now?

Wouldn't be surprised if in a decade or two Russia is dependent on Iran's nuclear technology to keep its arsenal up and running.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Every Russian missile used in these attacks is one not being used on the actual battlefield. The Russians do not have the capacity to do mass attacks on both.

This is most certainly true. Their stocks of Kalibrs and Iskanders are very limited (I will avoid repeating "the Russians are running out", since we've been hearing that since March)

But Iran's weapons complicate the issue somewhat when it comes to static targets, especially if they actually start supplying cruise missiles along with their cheap drone arsenal.

Again, the West cannot do much here, due to the already maxxed out US sanctions on Iran. This is one of the issues where Biden pursued a incomprehensibly stupid policy.

What was the policy you think Biden should have pursued to prevent Iran from selling weapons to Russia lol

[GeneralMacArthur]

Every Russian missile used in these attacks is one not being used on the actual battlefield. The Russians do not have the capacity to do mass attacks on both.

This is most certainly true. Their stocks of Kalibrs and Iskanders are very limited (I will avoid repeating "the Russians are running out", since we've been hearing that since March)

But Iran's weapons complicate the issue somewhat when it comes to static targets, especially if they actually start supplying cruise missiles along with their cheap drone arsenal.

Again, the West cannot do much here, due to the already maxxed out US sanctions on Iran. This is one of the issues where Biden pursued a incomprehensibly stupid policy.

What was the policy you think Biden should have pursued to prevent Iran from selling weapons to Russia lol

Reversed the Trump policy on the nuclear deal, among other things. Iran isn’t the only country which could have supplied Russia with useful weapons, but there are few others under such diplomatic, economic and military pressure.

This literally makes zero sense because (A) the Biden administration hasn't actually reversed any tangible Trump policy, all they've done is try and restart negotiations (which haven't gone anywhere), and (B) even under the full sanctions -- which, I repeat, are what they're under now -- Iran wouldn't be prevented at all from selling weapons to Russia.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Every Russian missile used in these attacks is one not being used on the actual battlefield. The Russians do not have the capacity to do mass attacks on both.

This is most certainly true. Their stocks of Kalibrs and Iskanders are very limited (I will avoid repeating "the Russians are running out", since we've been hearing that since March)

But Iran's weapons complicate the issue somewhat when it comes to static targets, especially if they actually start supplying cruise missiles along with their cheap drone arsenal.

Again, the West cannot do much here, due to the already maxxed out US sanctions on Iran. This is one of the issues where Biden pursued a incomprehensibly stupid policy.

What was the policy you think Biden should have pursued to prevent Iran from selling weapons to Russia lol

Reversed the Trump policy on the nuclear deal, among other things. Iran isn’t the only country which could have supplied Russia with useful weapons, but there are few others under such diplomatic, economic and military pressure.

This literally makes zero sense because (A) the Biden administration hasn't actually reversed any tangible Trump policy, all they've done is try and restart negotiations (which haven't gone anywhere), and (B) even under the full sanctions -- which, I repeat, are what they're under now -- Iran wouldn't be prevented at all from selling weapons to Russia.

If Trump was president there wouldn't have been a war in the first place. Him and them had respect for each other.

if Trump was president, Putin would've invaded Ukraine, Trump would have justified and defended it, Ukraine would receive zero aid from America and we'd probably share intel with Putin, meanwhile most of Europe would still be on Ukraine's side but without American leadership they'd be disorganized and ineffective.  So the divide between America and Europe would widen further, the residents of Kiev would be exported to Siberia and their children kidnapped and sold to wealthy Russian families, and Putin would be emboldened to start planning his attacks on other nearby states as he continues trying to rebuild the USSR, which for some reason you fully support.