Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Gotfan has been muted from this board for a day.

Great. Now do compucomp.

Is it possible Ukraine can create a Stalingrad type trap for the Russians

Making the occupation costly is really the only viable Ukrainian strategy from what we can see at the moment, but it's probably going to look a lot more like the Iraqi and Afghan insurgencies than like Stalingrad.

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https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1496702809097527297

Heartbreaking: The worst person you know just made a great point

As I said in an Atlas-adjacent Discord server an hour or two ago, I can't believe I'm saying this, but thank God for Marco Rubio's Twitter.

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I second changing the thread title. I've edited this post's subject line to my suggestion, which corresponds with Wikipedia's terminology.

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The most tragic part of all of this is that the west could have easily prevented this and chose not to. If there's any justice in history Biden will be remembered in the same breath as Chamberlain. We are hoping hard for the best.

These situations are not at all comparable. There’s no analogue to the Munich Agreement, for one.

Active, violent territorial aggrandizement by a nuclear power is genuinely unusual for the postwar world. The Soviet Union's own borders after 1945 remained stable; they just intervened on behalf of allies and puppet governments. If a year ago you had told me that an acknowledged nuclear weapons state was going to do something like this, I would have guessed India or Pakistan.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

US intel has reported that no ground troops have moved into Ukraine yet and is all bombings so any reports of cities falling is disinformation

What is "US intel" in this context? Rubio's tweets imply things are moving pretty fast.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

May every Russian  Soldier who enters the Ukraine catch a bullet through the eye socket.  Every. God. Damned. One.

There, I said it.

nothing wrong with saying that

If you really want to wish death on someone, perhaps do it upon the leader who sent the young Russian soldiers into Ukraine, not on the young soldiers themselves who are not really the ones responsible for all this, remember that they are pawns in a larger machine.

However it is those pawns as a part of a larger machine that are making this war go on. Without the consent of the soldiers, this war would not be able to go on. The decisions of Vladimir Putin are evil, and so therefore those that uphold those orders and carry them out are likewise just as evil.

Until enough time has passed that most low-level Russian grunts have voluntarily joined up after this particular spate of overt post-imperialist aggression started, spare us the "Universal Soldier" victim-blaming.

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https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1496740935522451457

So looking further at the Tweet sounds like "Geo-Location Gurus" might have been able to actually map to location?

Would love to see this confirmed doing a comparison of geography and plus the exact coordinates if true.

Earlier this evening posted about surprised that Russian Armored Convoys weren't moving towards Kharkiv in the event of a full scale invasion, but maybe they were just softening key targets up before bringing the heavy armor across the borders.

I think as far back as a week or so ago the understanding was that the first salvo would be all strategic bombing, long-range artillery, and cyberattacks, then the tanks would start rolling in once Russia had air supremacy. That indeed seems to be what's going on, although it looks like getting air supremacy was a matter of two or three hours rather than two or three days.

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https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1496751744109346821

Lmao.

Scarsdale currency speculators in SHAMBLES

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Also, where are all the anti-Imperialist leftists in this thread?

"Imperialism is when a country is EU-aligned. The more EU-aligned it is, the imperialister it is."

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BLAME FORMER PRESIDENT OBAMA FOR THIS! Romney warned about it, he wasn't heard and laughed off.

The thought has definitely crossed my mind that that remark of Romney's has been vindicated by history, but blaming Obama solely and individually for this is just silly.

Also, where are all the anti-Imperialist leftists in this thread?

"Imperialism is when a country is EU-aligned. The more EU-aligned it is, the imperialister it is."

You joke but a lot of people unironically believe this.

I know. It's funny because it's true.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I must say that the situation is terrible. But so far I'm fine. At the moment, I am taking my family out of my city to the village where I have a house. Details will be announced later, if possible

Thank God.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

S&P 500 now up 0.7 on the day !!!  I guess the fear of something bad is always worse than that bad thing itself.

I am pretty sure that you have no idea what you are talking about. You've been wrong about Putin's aims and ambitions in Ukraine, you failed to predict this invasion and now you're making pronouncements about "fear of something bad" being worse than "the bad thing" before we even understand the full extent of this war, its meaning, its length, duration, the effect of sanctions etc. The wise thing to do would be to listen and learn from people who aren't fools.

Jaichind's posts have been insightful and a net good for this thread, and tbh, he adds more to this thread than a majority of posters do.
Lay off please.

Both him being very insightful and greedy can be true at the same time.

Of course. Never denied that. Of course, given my inclinations, I don't care about how much he cares about his investments, and him talking about the markets adds variety and informs us of the pulse of the business class at the moment. Fine by me!

"The pulse of the business class" at the moment is mostly concerned with whether or not to boot Russia out of SWIFT, which would have implications for the real economy, especially in Mitteleuropean countries. The pulse of the speculator class, which is what jaichind is interested in, is the same reality-free arrhythmia it always is.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Ukraine's National Guard just beat VDV Spetsnaz at Hostomel? Are ya kidding me?

It's a delay of the inevitable, but that's incredible!

So not only does Putin face crippling sanctions but his army is getting beat by a bunch of Slav squatters with Jean jackets and stingers!

They're not really Slav squatters. They've got plenty of experience, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Slav squatters with plenty of experience are still Slav squatters, and good for them. It's an ancient and noble tradition.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The Ukrainians are going to bleed the Russians until they leave, and they are going to do so with (at least) the funding and diplomatic support of the Western World. The Russian army of 2021 isn’t the Red Army of 1941-45, bound together by ideology and fear of Nazi extermination, it’s cold and hungry and being sent to die in a foreign country for a madman’s vanity. The Russians may conquer Ukraine, but they will never hold it.

The the Russians have already sent in half of their forces at the border and they haven't even taken any major cities yet?
https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1496975432519983107?s=20&t=z4E1xL77...

I hope this is correct about the low morale.

 You and me both, but it frankly sounds like total propaganda.

"Low morale" can mean a lot of things. I'm sure most Russian soldiers do have lower morale than most Ukrainian soldiers, given that the Russian soldiers are ones who've been ordered to invade a culturally similar country based on BS historical axe-grinding and half-assed false flags, but that one desertion/surrender that was claimed earlier in the day seems unfortunately to have been an isolated case (so far).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Wasn't Kiev supposed to be bombed to smithereens an hour and a half ago?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Wasn't Kiev supposed to be bombed to smithereens an hour and a half ago?

CNN reporting explosions in Kyiv

I need to learn when to stop saying things.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This individual apparently has some random ax to grind, a sock to weave, perhaps a bit too much mead (Or perhaps harder stuff) on this evening.

I've had a fair amount to drink myself this evening, so I'm happy to give as good as I get, for the next hour or so at any rate.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

There's been Russian incursion into Kyiv, although so far just two trucks (which were in turn captured from the Ukrainian military) have been confirmed.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

manifesting this energy for the brave slav squatters of kyiv and kharkiv

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm kinda surprised that Russia would try to attack Kiev directly and risk urban warfare instead of trying to surround it and get it under a siege.

Some of their offensive axes (Chernobyl; Kherson; apparently also Sumy) are going a lot better for them than others (Chernihiv; Kharkiv; Donbas). I'm sure the original plan was a siege--all the intelligence and #analysis we saw from people "in the know" like Rubio indicated as much--but no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, just as no philosophy of teaching survives contact with the student body and no strategy for marriage survives contact with the spouse.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Also, my suspicions on Modi's allegiances are basically verified. It's not like its without precedent, the Soviet Indian ties were always there, but this should show to Atlas and American foreign policy analysts that there is more to a country's allegiances than whether they support Xi Jinping or not.

You do realise that Indo-Russian weapons cooperation is implicitly directed to striking (among others) China?

In the past, yes.

If Russia is cultivating closer ties with both China and India then it's separately and as a way to keep its options open, not as part of some sort of Authoritarian Emerging Powers Bloc.

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Clearly that was another flaw with the Ukrainian defense plan, just like France in 1940 with the Ardenne, they planned their defenses around an "impassable" natural barrier that wasn't actually impassable. But first, this was not a surprise attack and the Ukrainians should have been digging trenches and otherwise building fortifications to blunt the expected attack from Belarus. They do have entrenchments in place in Luhansk and Donetsk and thus the attacks from the DPR and LPR have not gotten very far. Second, the "trading space for time" and "bleed the enemy" strategy you refer to implies Kiev needs to be given up and needed to be combined with an evacuation of the capital and Zelensky to Lvov. But Zelensky chose to stay in Kiev, which is good to keep Ukrainian morale high, but it had to be combined with an all-out defense of Kiev or else the result is what we see now; Zelensky is threatened directly within 2 days and is forced to ask for an armistice.

Maybe I'm nitpicking, but do you use the Russian spelling for Ukrainian cities intentionally? "Kiev" is one thing, but no one says "Lvov."

Conpucomp is a contemptible Russia hack, of course he does

I have to make an active effort not to use the Soviet-era names for everything because of where (or, rather, when) my historical interests lie, but I think it's pretty clear that that's not what compucomp's issue is.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Call me a cynic, but I don't trust Putin to negotiate a ceasefire in good faith with Zelensky any more than he "negotiated" a commitment not to invade in the first place in good faith with FBM.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

https://twitter.com/Blake_Allen13/status/1497332333778718720

This does not sound like a leader who's confident in a negotiated peace, as well he shouldn't be.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

https://twitter.com/Blake_Allen13/status/1497332333778718720

This does not sound like a leader who's confident in a negotiated peace, as well he shouldn't be.

He should probably formally ask for an armistice now before this happens and try to get more lenient peace terms rather than what he'll get if he's a POW and major cities fall under Russian control.

Masturbating in public is in poor taste, compucomp.