Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[DaleCooper]

Freudian slip?

https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1570386579172085761?s=20&t=hzY80qSE9-6f...

I imagine Xi is terrified. Putin obviously thought that he'd steamroll Ukraine in a week and that turned out to be a total delusion. I'm sure Xi has (or had) similar delusions about his own army's capabilities.

[DaleCooper]

Now is really the time to amp up financial and military support for Ukraine. With all these conscripts coming in, the goal should be to kill as many Russians on the battlefield as possible. This is a chance to really make the Russian people suffer for their worship of Putin.

[DaleCooper]

snip

I'm seeing scattered posts (some with videos) on protests in Dagestan as well. It would make sense that the people there would be 1) targeted for mobilization and 2) vehemently opposed to mobilization considering that the population is only around 3-4% ethnic Russian. Would love to finally see some *real* domestic pushback in Russia and it certainly is not going to come from the ethnic Russians.

Well then what do you call the thousands of Anti-War protesters arrested in Moscow and St. Pete then if not "Ethnic Russian"?

Still, generally agree with what I suspect your post intended to state regarding why massive protests are breaking out in certain ethnic populations who had to deal with not only Catherine but then Stalin later on.....

Putin and his fellow elites in the Kremlin and FSB have been *very* careful when it comes to mass mobilizations in Moscow and Leningrad (St. Pete).

A mere sprinkling. The protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg are quite pathetic (and telling of where the Russian mindset is) when you consider the size of those cities. I don't discount the few that have gone out to protest, but most of their fellow Russians are either cowards, indifferent, or supportive of their nation's war.

The Russian people themselves deserve most of the blame for all this violence. The small minority that speaks out against Putin is admirable, but it ultimately just makes the rest of the country look even worse.

[DaleCooper]

Unambiguous talk is essential when responding to belligerent nuclear powers. I would be concerned if the Biden Administration wasn't making it clear that Putin would be killed immediately if he uses any nuclear weapons.

One of the few good things Trump said in the White House was when he made clear that he would annihilate the Kim dynasty of North Korea if he started a nuclear war. Of course brain-rotted liberals were offended by that then and the hypocritical conservatives that supported Trump then will hate Biden for this now, but that's a reflection of American foolishness. In reality, both were correct to respond unambiguously.

[DaleCooper]

Unambiguous talk is essential when responding to belligerent nuclear powers. I would be concerned if the Biden Administration wasn't making it clear that Putin would be killed immediately if he uses any nuclear weapons.

One of the few good things Trump said in the White House was when he made clear that he would annihilate the Kim dynasty of North Korea if he started a nuclear war. Of course brain-rotted liberals were offended by that then and the hypocritical conservatives that supported Trump then will hate Biden for this now, but that's a reflection of American foolishness. In reality, both were correct to respond unambiguously.

Should Harry Truman have been killed? Let me guess, that was different.

Also, all Putin has to do to respond to this is to have a trigger that nukes will fire on the event of his assasination.

America was waging a defensive war in World War II so yes, that actually is very different.

Initially yes, but not by late 1945. We were on the offensive and looking for total victory, not just a return to prewar borders. Anyway if you ask the Russians they will give you some mental gymnastics about being the "defenders" of people in Donbas. Sure it's a load of crap, but the thing is they are earnest and actually believe it.

Lol, why would the Allies have looked for a return to prewar borders? Germany and Japan made it pretty clear that they needed to be occupied and completely disarmed. I don't want to re-litigate the use of the atomic bombs on Japan, because I actually do think that's a totally fair debate to be had, but you're just being silly with all of your comments lately.

[DaleCooper]

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.

[DaleCooper]

Lol, people are just now figuring out that jaichind is a disgusting creep?

[DaleCooper]

Lol, people are just now figuring out that jaichind is a disgusting creep?

Figuring out that jaichind is a skin-crawlingly depraved human being to a degree unrivaled by anyone else currently on the forum is liking figuring out that you're in love with your wife of fifty years. No matter how many times it happens there's always something new to remind you.

I guess since I haven't been around that long he doesn't stand out to me as anything other than a boring guy notable only for his degeneracy. (I would go so far as to say he's almost as boring as he is depraved, lol.) I guess he occasionally posts interesting election data, but even that is usually selective to push whatever narrative he's going for in the given moment. He's one of the only people on my ignore list, and absolutely nothing of value is lost from not seeing his posts.

[DaleCooper]

Nothing can sum why Russia is and will lose this war better than the fact that with there artillery and missile stockpiles quickly drying up they decided waste them with wave attacks on civilian targets in a failed attempt to break Ukrainian public resolve (when historically its always done the opposite)

Russia has always been incredibly sadistic and bloodthirsty. This is nothing new. This war was as much about asserting their authority and murdering people as it was about stealing territory. It's a sick country.

[DaleCooper]

I'm scared (not in the faux Woodbury way) that public opinion is turning against Ukraine. They used to get consistent support and now their twitter posts are full of pro-Russia commentors.

It’s less likely that public support is shifting then it is with Musk in charge that Russian bots and trolls feel emboldened to come out

I don't think they're emboldened, I think more spam and bots are able to tweet now that Musk has trashed the company.

[DaleCooper]

d) The deadlock of a) and b) could also be broken by regime change in Russia in which case there is not more need for Ukraine to join NATO

that's not how the Ukrainians will view it, they'll never be able to trust Russia again and will want NATO membership regardless of who is in power.

I think the entire world outside of Russia wants Ukraine in NATO, even if they can't admit it, just to make sure this crap doesn't happen again.

[DaleCooper]

Ukraine Territorial Defence Force transgender spokesperson Sarah Ashton-Cirillo announces that: " Ukraine will hunt down "Russian propagandists" around the world."

https://twitter.com/ducaena/status/1701741396363792650

https://voz.us/senator-vance-is-urging-the-biden-administration-to-clarify-whether-it-has-any-links-to-the-spokesman-of-the-ukrainian-militias/?lang=en

"Senator Vance is urging the Biden administration to clarify whether it has any links to the spokesman of the Ukrainian militias"

I guess Senator Vance also caught on to this threat from the Ukraine Territorial Defence Force spokesperson.  If she is just some random person on the internet it does not matter.  But she is the official spokesperson of a branch of the Ukraine government.  If you take what she says seriously then Tucker Carlson would have to start doing his show from an undisclosed location.

When she talks about "Russian propagandists" who are information agents, she is talking about people like you.

https://twitter.com/SarahAshtonLV/status/1703766677475766329

Omg what if we had it backwards this whole time and Ukraine took out Woodbury? 😱

I’m still going with the theory that he was on the plane with Prigozhin. Either way, lesson for vatniks, if Ukraine doesn’t get you, uncle Vova will do it himself when you’ve outlived your usefulness

He stopped posting because he got embarrassed after accidentally revealing that he is in his early 50s and has been unemployed since before this website existed.

[DaleCooper]

Fully 1/3 of the posts in this thread over the last month are by one person, who does not even write proper posts, he just does a daily dump of every single link/image/tweet from his news feed.

Not only is it spam, it also prohibits any real conversation by breaking up any attempt at dialogue with the clutter of a bunch of enormous images and tweet embeds.

Why do the mods continue to allow this?  It is just spam.  Endless, endless, spam.

While I also find it annoying, blocking that specific poster is enough for me.

It's not really sufficient because his spam still has the effect of destroying this thread's capacity to support conversation, because unless everyone collectively blocks him, others trying to have a conversation will be filibustered into submission by his human wave attack of spam posts.

This is hands down the biggest problem on the forum at the moment, across all different discussion boards.

[DaleCooper]

Speaks to how much the war has changed that we’ve gone from fighting for Kyiv to our biggest vatnik cheerleader flexing over Russia going into greyzone on the Kharkiv border

It is really bizarre how much Russia's mentally ill supporters have moved the goalposts over the years. This mess is obviously an endless stalemate and a tremendous waste of resources and human life (something Russians historically have never seemed to value). But the cheerleading kind of reminds me of how in the late 2000s and 2010s, the Dubya cheerleaders or US military fans would post about how some random terrorist (not a big name bin Laden or Saddam) got killed by a US drone strike, as though that was going to mean anything. It's the same here. Big deal, the Russians advanced through another empty field. Weeks worth of effort for that.