Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Aurelius]

While I’m waiting for the UNGA Special Session to assemble, debate, and vote on condemning Russia - it’s about the only way to determine the stances of the silent countries out there - and waiting for more information on what’s going on, and to avoid dooming, I thought I’d point out Freedom House came out with their yearly report and for the purposes of this thread I’ll show how various countries and entities rank on their Freedom Scale, for comparison.

This uses the new scale they’ve had since their 2013 edition, -4 through 100, and yes, both perfect scores - hey there Finland and Sweden - and negative scores - hi Syria - have occurred before.

-snip-

Okay, just some context for the “both sides” arguments.

something something neoliberalism, something something American imperialism, something something manufacturing consent, something something propaganda, something something racism, something something Israel, something something capitalism, something something something

[Aurelius]

LOL:

"Russian Foreign Ministry also says German weapons are now supplied to Ukrainian Nazis and we should question whether Germany was successfully cleansed of Nazism"

https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1498356982797017088

[Aurelius]

Also, it's clear that China got it right when it decided to ring-fence its internet, bar Western internet and social media companies that wouldn't meet its requirements, which turned out to be all of them, and develop domestic alternatives. Facebook and Twitter are turning out to be huge national security nightmares for Russia as they are clearly intervening on behalf of the Ukrainians and banning them now could cause backlash as there may not be an alternative (maybe Telegram?) and Russians are used to using them. China would not face this issue at all. Yes it's annoying to use the internet in China particularly to browse foreign websites but national security is more important than my convenience.

Why are you on an election discussion website when you clearly don't think elections should exist?

ChInA iS a WhOlE-pRoCeSs DeMoCrAcY

[Aurelius]

Again, this makes no sense. I'm not Russian. I'm basically watching a football game here. I may have picked a side to support but I have no skin in the game. For some reason the vast majority of the forum, minus a few Ukrainians, thinks they do even though they are in the same situation as me.

In human cultures, the loss of life is generally considered lamentable. Hope this helps!

Yet wearing a mask is an intolerable burden to slow down COVID? While the effect of the sanctions will have a far greater impact on daily life, particularly in Europe where energy costs could surge?

Maybe, just maybe, they should get the f**k out of Ukraine if they want those sanctions lifted.

You misread my post. Westerners will feel the effects of their own sanctions, particularly in Europe with energy prices. They seem to be willing to accept this disruption and cost on their daily lives, even though they have no skin in the game. But they refuse to accept the minimal disruption and cost of wearing masks to slow down COVID, even though there's no doubt they have skin in that game. There's a huge logical contradiction here.

Our COVID policies have been decided individually by the nations in question, not by more powerful neighbors. Those us of in countries like the US with relatively dovish covid policies thus enacted those policies through a process of sovereign democratic will. Ukraine did not choose to suffer the deaths of hundreds or thousands of its young men and civilians, and occupation of swathes of its territory, in service of a neighboring despot's imperial fantasies. It is patently obvious that these situations are not comparable.

[Aurelius]

Who needs logistics and supply lines when you can simply loot the cities you invade?

https://twitter.com/expatua/status/1498668193749118977?s=20&t=9ZC0NkLLiB_eGZ...

To be fair this was part of Sherman's March to the Sea too, but in that case it was a deliberate part of the strategy and he communicated it to his troops beforehand.

And unlike Russia, the Union was doing it in service of a deeply moral cause, and only resorted to such tactics after years of conventional warfare had failed to break the back of the Confederacy.

[Aurelius]

https://twitter.com/PinkNews/status/1498420747752157189

Allahu akbar!

[Aurelius]

Good analysis in this Twitter thread.

https://mobile.twitter.com/NickForVA/status/1498702036363210754

[Aurelius]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/1498707386558824450
Grain of salt because Rasmussen, but support for US entry into the war is both much higher than I thought, and without any partisan correlation.

[Aurelius]

"the 2nd best army in the world"

https://twitter.com/YWNReporter/status/1498943189138685952?s=20&t=XVrdRV54sk...

If Russia didn't have nukes we could have them in the Stone Age in a week, jfc.

Maybe they are bluffing about their nukes LOL

Putin's bluffing about using them, but too many people think he's serious.

An extremely risky bluff to call.

[Aurelius]

United Nations GA resolution condemning Russia has been passed.

Yes: 141
No: 5
Abstentions: 35

No info yet on who the five dipsh**t countries were... probably Russia, Belarus, Syria, ?, ?.

Eritrea and North Korea too.

     Any idea why Eritrea voted against? The other four are obvious, but that one puzzles me.

Perhaps Afwerki has designs on the Tigray region of Ethiopia?

[Aurelius]

Russian Ministry of Defense claims 2,870 Ukrainian soldiers killed, 498 Russians.

https://twitter.com/DrAlakbarov/status/1499073100067000320

[Aurelius]

Maybe this has been put up already, but in a way Putin is causing his worst nightmare perhaps to happen. His invasion has turned the EU into a functional military alliance of its own, with Germany doubling its defense budget and others ratcheting up theirs as well. Why? You guessed it. They pondered what might have been if Trump had been President and one like him possibly being President in the future, and did not like what they "saw." So it is time that they ceased to be tied to the US hp, and be able to act independently, if need be. A new loci of military power has been born, and the EU is willing to pay the price, because free loading off the US has become way to risky a scheme. So ironically in that one sense only, Trump caused something positive to happen by getting elected, and then defeated.

And the EU munitions are pouring in, with the EU in the lead, and the US trying to catch up.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/02/europe/ukraine-putin-europe-security-analysis-intl-cmd/index.html

I did not imagine this would be how we'd finally get Europe to stop freeloading on defense.

[Aurelius]

Rumors flying about a Romanian MiG-21 disappearing a bit north of Constanta, Romania.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1499110909792423938

Romania is a NATO member.

[Aurelius]

The CCP is a demonic institution that is actively engaged in genocide at this very moment. It's not surprising in a country with strictly controlled media and no freedom of expression that most people will default to supporting it, but that does not make it a mainstream or widely acceptable position in countries with free and uncensored media where we can access much more accurate information - nor should it.

And before the inevitable "buh the rise in standard of living!" - plenty of other countries have pulled off massive improvements in the standard of living in the past century without CCP-style mass repression, and it's also important to remember that a large part of this rise early on was simply a bounce back from Mao's man made catastrophes once he was removed from power.

[Aurelius]

We've already gone beyond freedom fries 2.0, sadly.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Oilfield_Rando/status/1499146526404358148

[Aurelius]

We've already gone beyond freedom fries 2.0, sadly.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Oilfield_Rando/status/1499146526404358148

You say "we" but both of those things happened outside of America.

"We" as in the West as a whole. Those are two examples of many. But maybe the US actually learned something from that debacle. Too early to tell.

[Aurelius]

I can't believe I have to say this: please stop posting Marco Rubio tweets into this thread as if he's a credible analyst or commentator. He's a political operator who played a significant role in trying to orchestrate a failed plot to remove Maduro in Venezuela. As part of this, he routinely bluffed and lied, acting as a propagandist along the way. Your instinct should be to see anything he has to say as serving some kind of political purpose. If one isn't a bloodthirsty hawk, your instinct should be to see his political purpose as adding a giant section to Arlington cemetery.

More generally, I encourage just about everyone on here to reflect more about the consequences of significantly ratcheting up tensions further in Ukraine. Would you actually be willing to commit your country's soldiers into this conflict even if that risked potential escalation to using nuclear weapons? Even if that chance was remote, it should make you pause. Even if that chance were nonexistent, would you feel comfortable suffering an actual energy crisis where all natural gas exports from Russia were stopped? Would you feel comfortable with the threat of severe and crippling cyberattacks?

Basically, a lot of the cavalier attitudes that I am seeing here strike me as being utterly irrational, foolish and sometimes unhinged. They disturb me because they reflect the public's mood and, lord knows, maybe with one unfortunate perturbation, some freak accident, we could actually be pulled into this war. At heart, just about none of you should want that. And you should be cautious of politicians who are willing to use soldiers as cannon fodder to advance their political careers. The loss of this skepticism is a terrible thing - cling to it. Never forget what they've done in the past.

I don't disagree with the second and third paragraphs. You're not wrong on the Rubio transgressions in Latam either, however.....

I completely disagree with the original Rubio point. He's on the senate intelligence committee and his tweets have been dead accurate thus far. Senator Murphy of CT, I believe, has been posting some intel as well. He's not willing the US to war or providing any commentary. Its just facts of what Putin has done or is doing.

There is nothing wrong with that. Some moments are larger than Rep/Dem divides. This is one of them. That's how I read Rubio's actions at least.

This, basically. Last time public sentiment was this united we got the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. The blob will seize any chance it gets and we must constantly be wary.

[Aurelius]

https://twitter.com/chollimaorg/status/1499244829846687744

I don't give much credibility to a source I've never heard of that's named after a North Korean symbol. But if true that is ridiculous.

[Aurelius]

https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1499395103957434369?t=f-yAhOUWL77MFl63W...

Crazy legislative proposals in Russia are nothing new. In 2013 or 2014 some Duma member proposed a bill stipulating that gays would be publicly whipped by Cossacks. Didn't go anywhere, but just goes to show that the Overton window in Russia is on a completely different planet than ours.

[Aurelius]

A no-fly zone over Ukraine almost guarantees escalation to at least a general European war if not a world war. I get that because of the way international diplomacy works we had to at least look like we were considering it to humor Zelenskyy, but there were a lot of people not involved in that process who've been stridently advocating for it even though they should really know better. Looking at you, natsec ghouls.

[Aurelius]

https://twitter.com/farhip/status/1499948364988829700?s=21
Russia rushing headlong into totalitarianism.

You're saying this as some sort of gotcha, while at the same time Russia Today is kicked off the air in the West, while everyone is feverishly cheering it (see the thread in USGD). Hypocrisy is an allowed rhetorical technique but it sure makes you look dumb when you try to claim the moral high ground.

The Washington Post is neither owned nor run by the US government, but you already know this. You just choose to come in here to constantly spam the same asinine posts. So  off, kindly.

It's irrelevant whether the Washington Post is run by the US government or not because on this issue they are indistinguishable from an outlet that is run by the US government. They and other Western media have abandoned any pretense of neutrality in reporting and unabashedly doing pro-Ukraine reporting, to the point where they are reporting on Russian military movements while concealing Ukraine's. The Russian government is absolutely right to kick them out, and it is absolutely hypocritical to criticize that while feverishly cheering the ban on RT. Let's put it this way, the Chinese government has not paid me a dime, yet you still want me kicked out of here because I support them.

Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is simply defending itself.

https://mobile.twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312

[Aurelius]

https://twitter.com/farhip/status/1499948364988829700?s=21
Russia rushing headlong into totalitarianism.

You're saying this as some sort of gotcha, while at the same time Russia Today is kicked off the air in the West, while everyone is feverishly cheering it (see the thread in USGD). Hypocrisy is an allowed rhetorical technique but it sure makes you look dumb when you try to claim the moral high ground.

The Washington Post is neither owned nor run by the US government, but you already know this. You just choose to come in here to constantly spam the same asinine posts. So  off, kindly.

It's irrelevant whether the Washington Post is run by the US government or not because on this issue they are indistinguishable from an outlet that is run by the US government. They and other Western media have abandoned any pretense of neutrality in reporting and unabashedly doing pro-Ukraine reporting, to the point where they are reporting on Russian military movements while concealing Ukraine's. The Russian government is absolutely right to kick them out, and it is absolutely hypocritical to criticize that while feverishly cheering the ban on RT. Let's put it this way, the Chinese government has not paid me a dime, yet you still want me kicked out of here because I support them.

Very few things in international relations are black and white, but this situation is. Putin is unambiguously the bad guy here. He is trying to subjugate an independent country to fulfill his delusions of grandeur. He is the only aggressor here, and there is zero justification for what he is doing.

That's your point of view. There's a country of 1.4 billion people who strongly disagree and believe that NATO expansionism and refusal to compromise provoked Russia into the war. There's another country of 1.3 billion or so people that also disagree, maybe not for the same reason or as strongly, but enough that their government's actions are indistinguishable from those of the first. Yes, it's true that the Western world is united in this view, and given their combined economic and cultural clout they're able to intimidate other countries that are not China or India into taking this view, and so it feels like the situation is black and white. In other words might makes right. I thought you guys hated this principle?

The number of people holding an opinion does not in itself give strength to that opinion. And I've already previously discussed the effect of state censorship on public opinion in China, which you continue to studiously ignore.

As far as I can tell you're basically arguing for might makes right here, so I have no idea what you're getting at with that attempted gotcha at the end.

[Aurelius]

https://twitter.com/MenshevikM/status/1500533387999813635?s=20&t=cIh-IKxKNoD...

500$ this is a fake pr post by Russians. I highly doubt NATO would be placing random stickers like this.

When I worked at a large supercomputing center with lots of inventory and resources, we had a very similar inventory tagging system. That in itself is not implausible.

[Aurelius]

Kharkiv is getting pulverized tonight. Bombs, rockets and artillery strikes have all been reported. The sirens have sounded for at least 2 hours without stopping. The Russians are reverting to their Grozny tactics.

And the West STILL won’t do anything. I agree with Zelensky that this is mass murder of the Ukrainian people, with the West watching and being complicit. It took us so long to even come close to sending some f**king airplanes for f**ks sake! And of course any discussion of a real response by NATO is met with “but nukes!” as if Russia isn’t literally only doing this because the worst they will face is sanctions they can survive.
In our couple decades of being an unrivaled superpower alliance, we collectively lost our ability to understand risk is what brought us there in the first place, and our attempts to desperately cling to a “status quo” that doesn’t exist anymore at all will only further enable our foreign adversaries abroad to commit horrid crimes against humanity.

The only cold comfort is that the Western politicians who were complicit in this will be held accountable by the media like with Afghanistan, but this time they actually will deserve it. Of course the bloody tyrant in the Kremlin and the ogres which surround him will remain and will continue this awfulness for years to come, and the worst is what will happen to the Ukrainian people. The best comparison is Syria, which is a horridly grim fate.

We are not obligated to sacrifice the entire existence of our civilization to our own sense of moral obligation. Some risks are too dangerous to take.

[Aurelius]

More complex version of Russian-Ukrainian relations from Odessa, and perhaps indicative of what Russian troops might face as an occupying army in the future courtesy of The Economist:

Sorry don't want to overquote....

"Odessa finds its Ukrainian identity ahead of a Russian advance

But some continue to look both ways

NEON SIGNS advertising oysters and sparkling wine speak of an era that ended abruptly on the morning of February 24th, when Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. The Odessa Food Market on Richelievska Street was once a place of hipsters and flat whites. For 12 days now, it has served as a logistical hub for the war effort. It’s a hive of activity, with dozens of yellow-jacketed volunteers buzzing between the market’s two floors. They sort donations—from food rations and medicine to tampons and shampoo—onto shelves ready to be taken to the front lines. Time may be of the essence, they say. So far the city has been spared violence, though there have been some attacks in its surrounding region. But on March 6th President Volodymyr Zelensky warned of intelligence indicating an imminent rocket-led attack on Ukraine’s third city.

Odessa, a cosmopolitan port founded in 1794 by Catherine the Great on the coast of the Black Sea, would be a big prize for Mr Putin. The city is both a strategic military prize and an important commercial centre. It has huge symbolic value, too: it holds a treasured place in Russia’s history and culture. Odessa featured prominently in Mr Putin’s rambling speech of February 21st, which laid the ground for the invasion. He specifically mentioned the events of May 2nd 2014, when 48 mostly pro-Russian protesters died in the city after clashes with Ukrainian nationalists. It appears that Mr Putin believed that his invasion would find support among the local population. But if it was a debatable proposition then, it is much harder to believe today.

The city, like the food market, has been transformed by war. From an unsentimental place reluctant to take sides, it is now adorned in yellow and blue. Ukrainian flags fly from every street corner, from cars, from apartments. The city’s diverse populations—intellectuals, gangsters, artists, workers—are pulling together ahead of the expected attack. Young volunteers pack sandbags at the beach. Engineers at the tram depot make anti-tank “hedgehogs” from old bits of rail. Some of these barricades have been installed on Deribasovskaya Street, Odessa's central boulevard, and around the nearby opera house and municipal buildings. As bloggers have noted, the scene has more in common with black-and-white prints from the second world war than it does with the reality of just two weeks ago.

Odessa’s heroic struggle against Nazi barbarism—the city lived through a siege, occupation and the mass murder of its Jews—has become a galvanising memory. It is being invoked in the most unexpected of quarters. Gennadiy Trukhanov, the city’s bruiser of a mayor, a man long accused of rooting for Russia, tells The Economist that he believes Mr Putin’s men are “behaving like fascists”. The indiscriminate bombing of residential districts and churches in Kharkiv and Mariupol in the Russian-speaking east is unforgivable, he says. The ferocity of the attacks has shattered any previous illusions he might have had. Mr Putin has become drunk on power and fame. “He seems to think he has supernatural powers.”

The invasion has united most strands of Odessa’s usually fractious politics. Mr Trukhanov not only finds himself acting in unison with political opponents, but also with the city’s usually disapproving intellectuals. They express mild bewilderment at the alliance. Speaking at his bungalow on the outskirts of the city, Boris Khersonsky, a writer and poet, argues that the mayor’s patriotic realignment was partly situational—”Authenticity and Trukhanov do not always go together,” he says—and partly reflects a genuine shift in the Russian-speaking population. Even before February 24th, Odessans were turning their back on Russia, put off by its draconian laws, the banning of free speech, and by “a time machine that only goes backwards”. After 12 days of war, the poet predicts, they will not be waiting for Mr Putin's soldiers with flowers.

...."





https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/03/07/odessa-finds-its-ukrainian-identity-ahead-of-a-russian-advance

Anyway to get around the paywall?

Pay for it.