Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[jojoju1998]

Glad that now there will be talks.  Most things Putin has been demanding are reasonable in my view and Ukraine should try to meet him halfway on that.  

What is not reasonable and I hope Putin drops are

a) Ukraine demilitarization (not even clear what that means, does it mean no Ukraine army or a Ukraine army with no weapons) - this is not a reasonable demand on a sovereign nation  
b)  Zelensky has to go - this does not benefit Russia anyway.  Unless Putin wants to annex Ukraine whole (then why have talks at all) Putin will need someone on the Ukraine side to make the deal (which most in West Ukraine will be negative on) to make it stick.  Zelensky sounds like the man for the job.  For sure a Russian puppet cannot make the deal stick in Western Ukraine

I mean I don't get the purpose of wanting a closer Ukraine to Russia but annexing the most Russian parts of Ukraine. With Crimea and Donbass out Yanukych loses in 2010 right ?

By a lot. A 800000 votes win becomes a 3 million votes loss. Crimea was 78-17, Donetsk was 90-6 and Luhansk was 89-8.

So this makes no sense at all. If Russia wanted to keep influence in Ukraine why are they trying to remove the most Russian parts of Ukraine?

Because humans are imperfect perceivers and judges of the world around them? Because a territorially-fragmented Ukraine cannot join NATO? Because maybe it was expected the Maidan government would agree to the terms of Minsk and basically grant the east of the country substantially more power?

We cannot hold against Ukraine the fact it didn't kept its part of Minsk, given no side really did even try to keep its part.

That deal was bound to fail.

[jojoju1998]

I'm not an expert at military stuff, but it seems as if Russia/Belarus thinks this is the 1940s all over again, and so Putin was planning this massive 1940s style invasion, which hasn't gone well...

[jojoju1998]

Should Biden bend over on this one as the lesser evil?

No. The Saudi-caused humanitarian crisis in Yemen is still way worse than the Russian-caused one in Ukraine and will probably continue to be so through several more rounds of potential escalation of the latter conflict.

But unironically, Guess who's buddies with Saudi Arabia ? Russia, people.


I wonder why we're still friends with Saudi Arabia, because it's obvious that they have dangerous ties with Russia and other hostile states. It's the oil isn't it ?

[jojoju1998]

Should Biden bend over on this one as the lesser evil?

No. The Saudi-caused humanitarian crisis in Yemen is still way worse than the Russian-caused one in Ukraine and will probably continue to be so through several more rounds of potential escalation of the latter conflict.

But unironically, Guess who's buddies with Saudi Arabia ? Russia, people.


I wonder why we're still friends with Saudi Arabia, because it's obvious that they have dangerous ties with Russia and other hostile states. It's the oil isn't it ?

Of course it's the oil, plus sheer Cold War inertia from when the overall American Middle East policy was to prop up despotic monarchies against nominally-socialist authoritarian republics. What else would it be?

But they're all the freaking same. Anti Democratic. No Freedoms.

[jojoju1998]

All the hyper miltaristic parades on youtube, that Russia does every year seems to be a facade.

Their military is crap.

Hell Ukraine is dominating in the social media wars even, they have memes on Twitter for goodness sakes. And Zelensky is a pop star on Tik Tok.

[jojoju1998]

According to estimates, Russia has 175k to 190k troops in Ukraine.

If 2,6014 are either killed or injured, that's 13.69% to 14.87% of the total number of troops in Ukraine.

You may correct that comma? Anyway, I skeptical the number is actually this high, though they certainly lost way more than the US did in 18 years in Iraq. A massive failure for a so-called "superpower".

Keep in mind the US and Russia militaries operate very very different tactically . The US military before focuses on doing these 3 things :

1. Taking complete control of the skies

2. using air power to destroy communication systems of the opposing military

3. Destroying other military infrastructure important for logistics


The US accomplished the first in day 1 of OIF and the other two simultaneously in the first ten or so days of the invasion. By the time the US got to Baghdad much of the Iraqi military didn’t even know the US had reached Baghdad which  made taking it much easier .


The Russian military strategy in the other hand is based on trying to break the other side’s will to fight which :

1. Is far more immoral

2. Also is far more deadlier for your own military



Just compare this to the Russian invasion :

 

The Russian Army is stuck in the 1940s. Their tactics assume that everything is like WW2 where dramatic battles are the norm.

[jojoju1998]

I would rather be a LGBTQ person in Ukraine than Russian just saying. Ukraine, there is no where to go  but up after this, if and when they win.

They have the capacity to improve.

[jojoju1998]

At what point will see a full-blown split within the Eastern Orthodox Church, which naturally would be a major religious schism, the like of which has not been seen in some time... ??

Thoughts Atlas Hive???

Ukraine war: The priest gunned down at a checkpoint

On the afternoon of 5 March, Rostyslav Dudarenko, the village priest, was at the Yasnohorodka checkpoint. His role was to check approaching vehicles. But like all military chaplains he was also there to offer the group spiritual support. He was dressed in civilian clothes.

It is not possible to establish exactly what happened, but one survivor of the attack, Yukhym (not his real name), told the BBC he had been manning the checkpoint with Dudarenko and around a dozen others when they learned three Russian tanks had driven through the village. He says the group decided to hide in the woods, ready to confront them if necessary.

As they approached the checkpoint, the Russian troops started "firing in all directions", Yukhym told the BBC. "When they realised we were hiding in the grass, they went off road to run us over with tanks."

He says the tanks had driven back to the road when Dudarenko decided to break cover.

"I saw Rostyslav raise the cross above his head, get up from his hideaway, screaming something and walking towards them. Perhaps he wanted to stop them. I tried to call him."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60778909

Other articles...

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-invasion-splits-orthodox-church-isolates-russian-patriarch-2022-03-14/

https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/03/21/russias-orthodox-church-paints-the-conflict-in-ukraine-as-a-holy-war

https://www.timesofisrael.com/local-clergy-affix-letter-calling-for-end-to-ukraine-war-to-jerusalem-russian-church/

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/250692/pope-francis-discusses-ukraine-war-with-russian-orthodox-leader

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/13/nyregion/russian-ukrainian-orthodox-churches.html

In an unusual move, more than 150 Russian Orthodox clerics have called for an immediate stop to the ongoing war in Ukraine in an open letter issued on March 1.

At least 176 Orthodox clerics said that they "respect the freedom of any person given to him or her by God," adding that the people of Ukraine "must make their own choices by themselves, not at the point of assault rifles and without pressure from either West or East."

The letter says the clerics “bewail” the suffering that has been “undeservingly imposed on our brothers and sisters in Ukraine.”

It is very rare for such a large number of religious clerics of the Orthodox Church to openly challenge President Vladimir Putin's government. In recent years, the Russian Orthodox Church and its leader, Patriarch Kirill, who did not sign the letter, have fully supported Putin's policies.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-orthodox-clerics-stop-war-ukrane/31730667.html

The Russian Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarch already declared each other to be in schism in 2019 over the status of the Orthodox Church in you guess it, Ukraine. There are technically two Orthodox Churches in Ukraine now..

[jojoju1998]

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1593645321070026754?s=20&t=WUhfYl...

And we still don't have reliable Amtrak service between the Bay Area and Los Angeles and there is *no* service between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Whenever I see stories like this it reminds me how terrible public transit is in this country.

This also reminds me of a tweet that I read a couple of months ago saying that the Kyiv metro was running a slower schedule with trains ran every 7-8 minutes while I was waiting 30+ minutes for a train at the Berkeley BART station.

30 minutes isn't so bad considering the Metrolink trains here in Southern California only run every hour, even during the busiest times of day. God I wish we had better public transit in the US, especially better commercial trains, the rest of the world really puts us to shame.

The irony is, we excel in cargo rail.

[jojoju1998]

This is Tom Clancy or Call of Duty sh**t.