Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[dead0man]

I'm still convinced that the reason for this invasion is because Putin's on borrowed time. He usually thinks fairly long term, but he has been taking more and more risks lately, including this war, and wants to be remembered as the man who rebuilt Russian dominance.

He looks more like a man who destroyed the well-being of Russia.

Yeltsin is dead.

doesn't that curve kind of follow the price of crude oil?

[dead0man]

You actually hear this point come up much more incisively from South Africans much much more than Indians or Brazilians. Africans in general feel this global marginalization much more strongly.

https://twitter.com/GUnderground_TV/status/1661344074018725889

isn't the ANC one of the most corrupt political parties in the entire world?  "how many crimes have you committed in your own country, to your own people Fikile?"

[dead0man]

Чемодан-вокзал-Россия!

https://twitter.com/alinavictoriaw/status/1661745047279398915

we shouldn't get upset when people do this, we should thank them for letting us know they are horrible people.  Would her neighbors prefer to NOT know they have a monster living in their neighborhood?

[dead0man]

https://twitter.com/kozako01/status/1661852178804363267

I do not approve of this.

[dead0man]

I've got a crazy theory...Prigozhin has been "turned" and is secretly working for Ukraine (or other western intel service).  He says and does crazy sh**t way too often, and not random crazy sh**t, crazy sh**t that actively harms Russia's goals in the "special military operation".  It seems like every third day he is either verbally attacking the Russian Army and it's leadership and every 6th day or so, he's actually attacking them with bullets or fists.

To be clear, I don't actually believe this theory.  Probably only a 20% chance it's true, I just wanted to be the first person to publicly push the idea.

[dead0man]

A week has now passed since the counteroffensive begun.

Thanks for the update Bob!

[dead0man]

"NATO Allies Would Run Out of Ammo Within Days of War With Russia: Report"

and the fact that "Russia Would Run Out of Ammo Within Hours of War With NATO" is meaningless to these people?

[dead0man]

https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/1669720472714354692?s=20

to be fair, maybe the sirens were in Ukrainian (and the explosives, obviously, where in Russian) and he didn't understand them.


seriously though, I'm looking forward to Bob's take on this.

[dead0man]

https://twitter.com/olliecarroll/status/1669720472714354692?s=20

to be fair, maybe the sirens were in Ukrainian (and the explosives, obviously, where in Russian) and he didn't understand them.


seriously though, I'm looking forward to Bob's take on this.

Lemme get this straight. Each time a European leader visits Kyiv, Russia stands down.. but the moment one of their allies go for a vist, they suddenly go guns blazing? And you expect people to believe that?

I have no idea what Russia is thinking, but that's not what I was on about.  I was hoping for something regarding the lying South African official

[dead0man]

https://news.yahoo.com/lukashenko-says-russia-ukraine-could-112608038.html

"Lukashenko says Russia and Ukraine could have agreed on "leasing" Crimea"

"Putin has given me a document that was initialled by both delegations. It’s alright, even with regards to Crimea –  there was some sort of a lease involved; as for Donbas, in the east…It’s an alright agreement.

Lukashenko seems to infer that Russia-Ukraine talks back in March 2022  centered around a deal where the Donbass Republics go back to Ukraine with Russia "leasing" Crimea from Ukraine in return for political reorganization and realignment for Ukraine.

a country should have the right to not lease out land if they don't want to.  It's a very stupid excuse to invade another country.  A non-stupid reason to invade another country is if they invade yours first, which is why Ukraine should attack Russia far more often and we should provide Ukraine a plethora of tools to do that (and should have done it a month before Russia invaded).

[dead0man]

https://twitter.com/rshereme/status/1671942614906535961?s=20

Woody doesn't see the problem here as he is one of those sucky fish that swim along side the shark and clean it's teeth and wipe it's ass.

[dead0man]

using 50 year olds to defend the homeland makes way more sense than using 50 year olds to invade a neighbor

[dead0man]

I've got a crazy theory...Prigozhin has been "turned" and is secretly working for Ukraine (or other western intel service).  He says and does crazy sh**t way too often, and not random crazy sh**t, crazy sh**t that actively harms Russia's goals in the "special military operation".  It seems like every third day he is either verbally attacking the Russian Army and it's leadership and every 6th day or so, he's actually attacking them with bullets or fists.

To be clear, I don't actually believe this theory.  Probably only a 20% chance it's true, I just wanted to be the first person to publicly push the idea.

does my theory sound better now?

[dead0man]

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1672590242803597313

One drunk man attacked the soldiers, is being held back by other civilians who support Wagner

that dude at the end that took him away was a head taller and 50lbs heavier than everyone else.

[dead0man]

they'd be a lot further along if we had given them more advanced weapons sooner.  Why were there not 100 Ukrainian pilots in a western F16 flight school within the first week of the invasion with maybe a dozen or so advancing to learning how to train future pilots on the platform?  Why were they not given more, better and sooner anti-missile systems?  Why are we still counting their number of modern armor in the hundreds?  Who argues against these things?  Blame those cowards (or traitors) for Ukraine's lack of offensive successes.

Life I've said before, every dollar (Euro,Pound,etc) spent killing Russians in Ukraine is a dollar well spent.

[dead0man]

We are now all-in on a Ukrainian victory.

We're not all-in on Ukrainian victory. All-in on Ukrainian victory is we deploy our troops on the ground. If supporters don't want to do that, okay, but you're not all-in on Ukrainian victory. Otherwise as the WaPo op-ed above makes clear, there's been no Ukrainian progress on taking back their territory the last 18 months outside of the retaking of Kherson.

we can do way more than we are doing now without putting boots on the ground and history will not look kindly on us for not doing it.

[dead0man]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHNLzAV5Xso

The counteroffensive has failed. Russia will win, leading to World War III.

It sucks about the counterattack but even if the conflict was ended along the current lines Russia doesn’t “win” the whole point of the conflict was the to turn all of Ukraine into a puppet state which they failed to do in 22 and don’t have the ability to do now so unless you think Russia is going to magically produce an army that can take Kyiv you should calm down with the WW3 bed wetting

WW 3 bedwetting is a by product of his only character trait, extreme pessimism

[dead0man]

I guess Bob didn't die in that plane crash with Prigoizan.


meanwhile
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1725849014791250209
Finland closing border crossings due to a bunch of regular Russian men trying to get in without documentation.  All of them, allegedly, arrived at the various border crossings on the exact same model of bike.

[dead0man]

are there still people who don't think Ukraine should attack Russia proper?

[dead0man]

Putin said there are 617k  Russian soldiers in Ukraine right now.

and they still can't accomplish anything?  They are even more incompetent than we have been assuming then.

[dead0man]

https://twitter.com/ELuttwak/status/1756019858603438431

Provocative but right...

prison is probably too much.  I'd just not let them back in country or tax the hell out of them if they do come back.  How can a young healthy dude flee his country when it is attacked?  Sure, maybe you're scared, fine, don't fight, there are other tasks that need accomplished (ya know, 'cause all the men with heart are fighting).  Stay and do those.  Or, if you don't like your country, fine, leave, but don't plan on coming back.  Those that flee like children and then want to come back home because they love their country?  eff that noise

[dead0man]

Imagine if there was a Mexican-American war and the Americans celebrated the capture of Ciudad Juarez after eight years of fighting and huge losses.

Americans really don't have good track record in recent times in actually fighting the wars on the ground.

America isn't well prepared for a peer-to-peer fight right now.

false (or, at worst, we are far more prepared to fight a peer-to-peer fight than any of our peers)


edit-I'd be curious to know which wars America didn't "fight well on the ground",

[dead0man]

Imagine if there was a Mexican-American war and the Americans celebrated the capture of Ciudad Juarez after eight years of fighting and huge losses.

Americans really don't have good track record in recent times in actually fighting the wars on the ground.

America isn't well prepared for a peer-to-peer fight right now.

false (or, at worst, we are far more prepared to fight a peer-to-peer fight than any of our peers)

The Navy hardly has a shipbuilding strategy for its surface fleet with less than 0.2% of global shipbuilding capacity inside the U.S., and one thing that has come out of this war is our procurement system for military items is seriously effed up. At least in this instance we discovered this in a war we were not in, and the Pentagon have noticed.

For future, we need to be able to procure military goods cheaper and faster, have some level of inventory builds, with multiple supply options instead of a limited defense industry base that has monopolized whole industries, and what we buy doesn't need to be the A plus plus plus article, a la the F-35. Just because we win the Super Bowl this year doesn't mean we automatically will in 10 years.

sure, but that doesn't change the truth of my post.  Maybe we aren't as prepared to fight a peer to peer as we should be, but we are still more prepared than either of our peers (if they even are peers, which I don't believe they are).

[dead0man]

hm. afghanistan?

who has fought an insurgency in mountains better?

[dead0man]

hm. afghanistan?

who has fought an insurgency in mountains better?

that's pretty much irrelevant

I disagree.  If someone does a thing better than everyone else, ever, it's kind of stupid to say "you're bad at that".  Wayne  Gretzky didn't win every game he played, "you don't really have a good track record Mr Gretzky".