Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[lfromnj]

Kinda annoyed the Storm Shadows came without any American support. The Russians are dumb but they do learn. I expect them to properly position in a month or 2 against longer range missiles just like with HIMARS. If Ukraine got a glut of longer range missiles they could have caused mass chaos.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Kinda annoyed the Storm Shadows came without any American support. The Russians are dumb but they do learn. I expect them to properly position in a month or 2 against longer range missiles just like with HIMARS. If Ukraine got a glut of longer range missiles they could have caused mass chaos.

The US most likely sent the MALD decoys we’ve seen fired in tandem with (some?) of the Storm Shadows.

It is going to be more challenging to move supply points hundreds of km back than e.g. 50km, but there would always have been fewer tactical missiles to contend with even if the US had sent ATACMS.

[Woody]

The Chechens have stated they have established a goal of seizing Marinka from the Ukrainians. Important to watch this Donetsk suburb the next few days/weeks.

[Storr]

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

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-2-2023
Who are these guys?

[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?

[Storr]

Note the blackout that occurs in the second video:

https://twitter.com/revishvilig/status/1664760275818381314?s=20

[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).

[NOVA Green]

An image of a fed up looking cat sheltering from yesterday's missile attack in a Kyiv Metro station has gone viral:

https://twitter.com/Nidi7562/status/1664649981200941056?s=20

https://twitter.com/Churcheebs/status/1664651306835877890?s=20

So much Baby Yoda in these memes...

Naturally cats are inherently subversive and relatively autonomous from Humans compared to other mammals such as dogs, and cows.

Russia will lose war in Ukraine, since the overwhelming majority of cats oppose their invasion and occupation, and are ready to fight back by any means necessary....

Cisco Houston had a song way back in the '30s: "Cat Came Back"

Meanwhile you got "cats" in Vietnam walking around with BF Goodrich Sandals:

Naturally we have "Black Cats" floating around from the dayz of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Labor Movement from way back in the late 1880s and early 1900s, although arguably this look perhaps more like a "Furry Convention" than a traditional labor anthem:...

Interestingly enough back in the USA in the late '60s / early '70s we had this whole African-American Political Movement called the Black Panther Party....

There were elements of the ancestral legacy of the BPP within revolutionary communities even within the relatively early days of the hip-hop movement...

[Storr]

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.

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

[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.

[Woody]

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?

[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.

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://twitter.com/tendar/status/1664972810383507458?s=12

[Hollywood]

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.   

[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.

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1664983003737587718?s=20

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1664986772592291840?s=20

[Storr]

Meanwhile, at the Belarusian-Ukrainian border...

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1664994640494247936?s=20

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1664995771870052358?s=20

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1665034016209395712?s=12

[NOVA Green]

Interesting...

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1664922561400938496

[NOVA Green]

Benjamin has done a geolocation of the explosion in Russian occupied Berdyansk:


https://twitter.com/COUPSURE/status/1665026179072401409?s=20

[Storr]

Benjamin has done a geolocation of the explosion in Russian occupied Berdyansk:


https://twitter.com/COUPSURE/status/1665026179072401409?s=20

New explosions in Berdyansk:

https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1665062283716829184?s=20

https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1665051596139446272?s=20

[2952-0-0]

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

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.

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://twitter.com/tendar/status/1665111550258978817?s=12