Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[John Dule]

Can someone who understands strategy better than me explain what's happening with the Crimean Bridge? Has Ukraine made any moves to destroy it? If not, why not?

[Logical]

American volunteer with a captured BMP-2. The inscription on the side is a Buddhist mantra written in Buryat. "Arya Baala goncok sume" It invokes the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. It's sad to see colonized Asians fighting for Russian dreams of empire.
https://twitter.com/jmvasquez1974/status/1521471813594849283

A bit disparaging to think that Buryats cannot be Russian?

Russian by citizenship and Russian by ethnicity are two different things. They even have different words for it, "русские" and  "россияне". The Buryats are being sent as to die as cannon fodder as you can see from casualty lists compiled by the media because they aren't "Russian" enough.

[rc18]

Can someone who understands strategy better than me explain what's happening with the Crimean Bridge? Has Ukraine made any moves to destroy it? If not, why not?

No sign of that yet. The answer to why is likely that they do not have the capability.

The bridge, being an obvious target, it thought to be well defended - particularly with air defenses. To bring down the bridge you'd need something with 1) the range to get there (it's a long way from the front lines), 2) the precision to hit the bridge, 3) that can penetrate the air defence, 4) has a warhead large enough, 5) and a warhead that is specialised for the anti-structure role.

I'm not aware of anything in Ukraine's inventory that is public knowledge with such a capability. About the closest would be the Neptune cruise missile, but it's still underpowered for the job in the warhead department and is just a standard frag warhead, it's not clear if it could get through, and we don't know if Ukraine has any left anyway.

At the moment the issue is slightly moot since Russia has a land bridge across southern Ukraine.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

American volunteer with a captured BMP-2. The inscription on the side is a Buddhist mantra written in Buryat. "Arya Baala goncok sume" It invokes the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. It's sad to see colonized Asians fighting for Russian dreams of empire.
https://twitter.com/jmvasquez1974/status/1521471813594849283

A bit disparaging to think that Buryats cannot be Russian?

Russian by citizenship and Russian by ethnicity are two different things. They even have different words for it, "русские" and  "россияне". The Buryats are being sent as to die as cannon fodder as you can see from casualty lists compiled by the media because they aren't "Russian" enough.

Related: Buryatia is the only Buddhist territory in Europe.

[rc18]

American volunteer with a captured BMP-2. The inscription on the side is a Buddhist mantra written in Buryat. "Arya Baala goncok sume" It invokes the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. It's sad to see colonized Asians fighting for Russian dreams of empire.
https://twitter.com/jmvasquez1974/status/1521471813594849283

A bit disparaging to think that Buryats cannot be Russian?

Russian by citizenship and Russian by ethnicity are two different things. They even have different words for it, "русские" and  "россияне". The Buryats are being sent as to die as cannon fodder as you can see from casualty lists compiled by the media because they aren't "Russian" enough.

Related: Buryatia is the only Buddhist territory in Europe.

Buryatia is in Siberia, very far east, I think you may be confusing it with Kalmykia.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I assume there also was no Soviet Domination of Eastern Europe, Mr Ford?
Seriously equal partners?! How in the literal f**k does Holodomor mean equal? The math isn’t mathing.

1. I did not say "always equal", I said "full and total". Which makes no claim about equality or lack thereof. Ukrainians were very active in helping build up (and defend!) the Soviet Union, and anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant or lying. And the Soviet Union built up Ukraine - particularly its power supply, with the immense amounts of nuclear energy (Zaporizhzhya, and yes, Chernobyl). Also, I've made note that Ukrainian cultural things were subject to oscillating policies over the course of the Union's existence, going from being promoted immensely, to being discouraged, to being accepted again, etc.
2. The fact a (man-made and completely preventable) famine occurred in Ukraine and caused very considerable deaths in Ukraine's rural areas (while the Soviet government was keeping Kiev and other big Ukrainian cities well fed) does not in any way refute point #1.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

American volunteer with a captured BMP-2. The inscription on the side is a Buddhist mantra written in Buryat. "Arya Baala goncok sume" It invokes the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. It's sad to see colonized Asians fighting for Russian dreams of empire.
https://twitter.com/jmvasquez1974/status/1521471813594849283

A bit disparaging to think that Buryats cannot be Russian?

Russian by citizenship and Russian by ethnicity are two different things. They even have different words for it, "русские" and  "россияне". The Buryats are being sent as to die as cannon fodder as you can see from casualty lists compiled by the media because they aren't "Russian" enough.

Related: Buryatia is the only Buddhist territory in Europe.

Buryatia is in Siberia, very far east, I think you may be confusing it with Kalmykia.

Oh yeah, I was. Thanks for pointing that out.

[Woody]

Civilian evacuations happening in Lyman as the Russians are shelling and assaulting the city.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-05-03-22/h_7bf7e3a57d39d36109199befdc6a7e73

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In terms of the Russian Empire, the Ukrainians and the Russians (using terminology customary at the time, Little Russians and Great Russians), had a relationship very much akin to the Scottish and English respectively.
That's why you have Ukrainians settled all over Russia, not unlike how you had Scots living in all major sections of the British Empire. Ukrainians lived as far east as what is now Primoskiy Krai, in the lands that were host to Russia's equivalent of European settler colonialism over the centuries. There is, undeniably, a shared cultural background that Ukraine and Russia share, one that England and Ireland really don't, at least on the same level.

This is incorrect on several levels. It makes sense to break them down:

1. Scotland entered the Union as an explicitly equal partner with England, having existed as a sovereign state in personal union with England for the previous century. Much of what had made Scotland distinctive before the Union remained in place afterwards: it continued to have its own legal system, its own theologically distinct Established Church, its own system of local administration, and even its own banknotes. Scotland's elite became an integral part of the new British elite and Scottish influence was strongly felt in politics, the economy, and (especially) the military and imperial administration. Scottishness carried no social stigma (quite the opposite in certain upper class social circles by the 19th century) and Scottish culture was celebrated at the highest possible levels.

2. In complete contrast, Ukraine was conquered, bit by bit, by the Russian Empire and swallowed up into it wholesale. There were no separate Ukrainian institutions and no formal recognition that the place was any different to Muscovy. The Ruthenian people (as Ukrainians, along with Belarussians, were generally then known) were regarded as dull-witted muzhiks, useful only for tilling the soil and as cannon fodder for the ever-expanding Russian army. The general view was that they had no culture to speak of and that their language was not a real language, but a form of peasant Russian corrupted by Polish influence. The old landlord class in Ukraine had largely been Polish: they were now replaced by Russians who established estates across the land and brought with them the horror of Russian serfdom (in reality a form of slavery). It is highly notable that while the Baltic German aristocracy were allowed to retain their estates (and, indeed, were incorporated quite seamlessly into the Russian elite) after their conquest, this was not the case in Ukraine. When the wild steppe of South Eastern Ukraine were finally brought under Russian control and intensely settled in the manner of North America, this pattern was replicated: Russian aristocrats ruling over vast estates worked on by a largely ethnic Ukrainian peasantry. In Ukraine itself the terms 'Little Russia' and 'Little Russians' were rarely used except by a small minority: the older terms 'Ruthenian' and even 'Rus' remained current until they were replaced by 'Ukrainian' towards the end of the 19th century as national sentiment grew.

3. Your understanding of the depth of cultural ties between Ireland and Britain (note that I used this word and not England: the two terms are absolutely not interchangeable) and, yes, Ireland and England specifically is deficient. Irish emigration to industrial districts in England and Scotland in the 19th and 20th centuries was extensive and a degree of Irish ancestry is as common (probably more so) in Britain as a degree of Ukrainian ancestry is in Russia. And did not the Irish emigrate also to all corners of the Empire? Famously they did, particularly to Australia (Britain's balmy Siberia) but also to Canada and New Zealand in large numbers. Ireland was also one of the main infantry recruiting grounds for the British Army in the 19th century. In fact the main drawback with the Irish analogy here is actually that there were always elements in Irish society who were not regarded as mentally deficient peasants or subhuman for reasons of being Jewish: the old Anglo-Irish elite were heavily represented in politics and the military (a figure like the Duke of Wellington has genuinely no parallel in a Russo-Ukrainian context: a Russian aristocrat who owned an estate in Ukraine was a Russian and that was that, whereas the Anglo-Irish were generally seen as Irishmen of English ancestry rather than as English) and middle class Ulster Protestants were heavily represented in the officer corps throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

Various Russian states, for as long as there has been a Russia, have typically not been built mainly by (Great) Russians alone. Present-day Russia still isn't, despite it being more ethnically homogenous than most other versions of "Russia" have been. There's a reason the Russian language distinguishes between Russian by nationhood and Russian by ethnicity.

Serious question, how long do you think there has been 'a Russia' for? Do you date it before or after the Golden Horde?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Always a useful and instructive map in many ways, if we're discussing the history of all this.

[Hope For A New Era]

are the russians literally trying on purpose to make israel stop being neutral and side with ukraine

[Logical]

Heaviest missile barrage since the beginning of the war tonight. 50+ cruise missiles according to the Ukrainians. Reports of explosions in Transcarpathia (for the first time ever), Odessa, Kryvyi Rih, Lviv, Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Mykolaiv.

[KaiserDave]

The notion that Ukraine was an equal partner in the Russian Empire is wrong.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

In terms of the Russian Empire, the Ukrainians and the Russians (using terminology customary at the time, Little Russians and Great Russians), had a relationship very much akin to the Scottish and English respectively.
That's why you have Ukrainians settled all over Russia, not unlike how you had Scots living in all major sections of the British Empire. Ukrainians lived as far east as what is now Primoskiy Krai, in the lands that were host to Russia's equivalent of European settler colonialism over the centuries. There is, undeniably, a shared cultural background that Ukraine and Russia share, one that England and Ireland really don't, at least on the same level.

This is incorrect on several levels. It makes sense to break them down:

1. Scotland entered the Union as an explicitly equal partner with England, having existed as a sovereign state in personal union with England for the previous century. Much of what had made Scotland distinctive before the Union remained in place afterwards: it continued to have its own legal system, its own theologically distinct Established Church, its own system of local administration, and even its own banknotes. Scotland's elite became an integral part of the new British elite and Scottish influence was strongly felt in politics, the economy, and (especially) the military and imperial administration. Scottishness carried no social stigma (quite the opposite in certain upper class social circles by the 19th century) and Scottish culture was celebrated at the highest possible levels.

2. In complete contrast, Ukraine was conquered, bit by bit, by the Russian Empire and swallowed up into it wholesale. There were no separate Ukrainian institutions and no formal recognition that the place was any different to Muscovy. The Ruthenian people (as Ukrainians, along with Belarussians, were generally then known) were regarded as dull-witted muzhiks, useful only for tilling the soil and as cannon fodder for the ever-expanding Russian army. The general view was that they had no culture to speak of and that their language was not a real language, but a form of peasant Russian corrupted by Polish influence. The old landlord class in Ukraine had largely been Polish: they were now replaced by Russians who established estates across the land and brought with them the horror of Russian serfdom (in reality a form of slavery). It is highly notable that while the Baltic German aristocracy were allowed to retain their estates (and, indeed, were incorporated quite seamlessly into the Russian elite) after their conquest, this was not the case in Ukraine. When the wild steppe of South Eastern Ukraine were finally brought under Russian control and intensely settled in the manner of North America, this pattern was replicated: Russian aristocrats ruling over vast estates worked on by a largely ethnic Ukrainian peasantry. In Ukraine itself the terms 'Little Russia' and 'Little Russians' were rarely used except by a small minority: the older terms 'Ruthenian' and even 'Rus' remained current until they were replaced by 'Ukrainian' towards the end of the 19th century as national sentiment grew.

3. Your understanding of the depth of cultural ties between Ireland and Britain (note that I used this word and not England: the two terms are absolutely not interchangeable) and, yes, Ireland and England specifically is deficient. Irish emigration to industrial districts in England and Scotland in the 19th and 20th centuries was extensive and a degree of Irish ancestry is as common (probably more so) in Britain as a degree of Ukrainian ancestry is in Russia. And did not the Irish emigrate also to all corners of the Empire? Famously they did, particularly to Australia (Britain's balmy Siberia) but also to Canada and New Zealand in large numbers. Ireland was also one of the main infantry recruiting grounds for the British Army in the 19th century. In fact the main drawback with the Irish analogy here is actually that there were always elements in Irish society who were not regarded as mentally deficient peasants or subhuman for reasons of being Jewish: the old Anglo-Irish elite were heavily represented in politics and the military (a figure like the Duke of Wellington has genuinely no parallel in a Russo-Ukrainian context: a Russian aristocrat who owned an estate in Ukraine was a Russian and that was that, whereas the Anglo-Irish were generally seen as Irishmen of English ancestry rather than as English) and middle class Ulster Protestants were heavily represented in the officer corps throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

Various Russian states, for as long as there has been a Russia, have typically not been built mainly by (Great) Russians alone. Present-day Russia still isn't, despite it being more ethnically homogenous than most other versions of "Russia" have been. There's a reason the Russian language distinguishes between Russian by nationhood and Russian by ethnicity.

Serious question, how long do you think there has been 'a Russia' for? Do you date it before or after the Golden Horde?

Lots to unpack here, too much for me to give a thorough response it deserves at the moment. Please send me a PM in a few hours' time to remind me to do that, lest I potentially forget.
But I will say: I would consider the notion of "a Russia" in any at least somewhat recognizable sense dates to the later years of the Golden Horde. It itself built on the legacy of the Kievan Rus, which was a long thoroughly defeated and subjugated entity by then.

[The Dowager Mod]

I am still in awe of Russian military ineptitude.
https://twitter.com/Arslon_Xudosi/status/1521607988414406658

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://mobile.twitter.com/AggregateOsint/status/1521626772319752203

[Storr]

https://mobile.twitter.com/AggregateOsint/status/1521626772319752203

Region wide map showing the area reportedly retaken by Ukraine near Kharkiv (in light/pale yellow):

https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1521641954869661697?s=20&t=_a6kvPxUx9U...

[Person Man]

Day 69 of the special military operation to denazify Ukraine because Hitler was a Jew:

A day after Lavrov's controversial statemens, the Russian Foreign Ministry doubles down on the "Nazi Jews" narrative. Russia seems hellbent on burning the bridges with Israel now.


https://twitter.com/maryilyushina/status/1521424337538064384

https://twitter.com/AOL/status/1521438036537622529

The Russian government of 1904-1905 called, it says this is rank incompetence.
(Good lord. I was 25% joking about Israel likely not wanting to mediate the next round of peace talks, when they come. What a move this is. Wouldn't blame them if they refused now, out of hand.)
Hubris must find a very ready home for itself in the Kremlin right about now.
Is this some kind of misguided gambit to get support in the Arab countries?

The most brain dead part is where they claim Jews were complicit in their own extermination in the Holocaust.

https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1521451290710220800?s=20&t=f1jxfxXr...

It would really rock if they attacked Russia in Syria.

[Storr]

Russian artillery moment:

https://twitter.com/paulmcleary/status/1521595280138846216?s=20&t=_a6kvPxUx9...

[dead0man]

[Middle-aged Europe]

EU plans to put Kirill on its sanctions list.


https://mobile.twitter.com/AFP/status/1521747145774497792

[CumbrianLefty]

Its the very least he deserves.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Germany has a lot to talk about. Or in other words, it's the era of open letters.


Following an open letter by 28 artists and intellectuals led by feminist journalist Alice Schwarzer, urging an end to arms shipments to Ukraine and the negotiation of a cease-fire (https://www.emma.de/artikel/offener-brief-bundeskanzler-scholz-339463) there have by now been three rebuttals:

- An open letter by an alliance of Ukrainian immigrant organizations in Germany:
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/antwort-auf-offenen-brief-von-prominenten-ukrainer-in-deutschland-erschuettert-und-entsetzt-ueber-schwarzer-brief/28296092.html

- A rebuttal (titled "We won't surrender") by Wladimir Klitschko, ex-German resident, ex-professional boxer, brother of the mayor of Kyiv:
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/wladimir-klitschkos-antwort-auf-offenen-brief-zu-waffenlieferungen-18002508.html

- An open letter by 57 intellectuals led by retired Green party politician Ralf Fücks and Nobel laureate in Literature Herta Müller urging the continous support of Ukraine with weapons and ammunition:
https://libmod.de/ein-anderer-offener-brief-an-bundeskanzler-olaf-scholz-pressemitteilung/

That last letter is maybe also of interest because it was signed by a few of the most prominent Germans of Russian descent: Maxim Biller, Olga and Wladimir Kaminer, Igor Levit.

[It’s so Joever]

Is it more or less near certain Russia is going to further escalate their presence on May 9th?

[Oryxslayer]

Is it more or less near certain Russia is going to further escalate their presence on May 9th?

The theory right now is that Russia will announce general mobilization during their military holiday. One should wonder less about its immediate military effects, since it will take time to get the untrained into uniform and to the front, and more what type of effect it will have on the homefront. Putin has so far avoided such a declaration for a reason.