Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

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At this point it's abundantly clear that Russia should have shut off its internet for the duration of the war and that if they had the capacity to knock out Ukraine's internet, they should have done so. How the hell is an army supposed to keep operational security and secrecy if anybody with a smartphone can record troop and vehicle movements and upload it to Twitter/Telegram/etc immediately?

Cope.

I don't need to cope, I'm not Russian. China is not a party to this conflict. However there are surely valuable lessons to be learned, and the PLA should be carefully studying and analyzing this campaign to figure out what worked, what didn't, and what should have been done, and to adjust accordingly.

Okay, so you're not actively unhappy with Russia running a campaign worthy of a second-string He-Man villain; you'd just be actively happy if it weren't. Congratulations, I think that might actually be more depraved and uncompassionate than just being a saber-rattling Russian nationalist.

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Has anything come of those alleged Belarusian paratroopers?

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I sort of wonder if the Suez crisis felt a little like this in real time. On one hand, the stakes here are obviously higher due to the extreme irrationality of the aggressor power. On the other hand, at least in this case there was already a general sense among sane people that Russia's glory days were behind it, whereas my understanding of the events of 1956 was that many people still thought of Britain as a more or less equal partner to the USA and USSR until it tried to intervene in Egypt and got soundly thrashed by a bunch of pissed-off Arab nationalist boat pilots.

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Some more devastating news on the southern front, the Russians have reached Zaporizhzia. Even worse, Mariupol has been completely surrounded and is now sieged from land.

My best guess is that the Russians are attempting to reach Dnipro, but maybe they are going to try and cross the river? No matter what the situation in Southeastern Ukraine has been deteriorating rapidly.

They have two Dnieper crossings already.

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Bolsonaro is not on Russia's side. He just refuses to take Ukraine's side.
Maduro on the other hand...

In Bolsonaro’s case, in opposition to the stance of literally every other presidential candidate in Brazil*

*At least, I think Lula is taking Ukraine’s side; the statement of his on Wikipedia is a little ambiguous but I await more information about that.

His own VP too, who if anything is TOO cavalier about attempting to blast Russia to kingdom come.

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1, I learned two Chinese characters (千 and 百)! Thank you!

They mean the same things in Japanese too btw. 千 is sen and 百 is hyaku.

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Regarding Red Velvet's defense of Brazilian neutrality, he gets that the forces that drive his part of the world to (rightly) see American hegemony as an especially serious threat are the same forces that drive Volodymyr Zelensky's part of the world to (rightly) see Russian hegemony as an especially serious threat, doesn't he? That being the case, a "moral ruler" that actively objects to one but not the other only really makes sense if one sees Latin America as a proper Brazilian sphere of influence (or something), or else see the world outside Latin America as too far away to be any of one's concern.

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Unlike the Russians, Ukraine is having "good" problems to deal with. AK-47s are the most produced military rifle in history, right? You'd think it shouldn't be too difficult to get some surplus ones from friendly ex-Warsaw Pact nations.

https://twitter.com/JacquiHeinrich/status/1498499510049427457?s=20&t=q2PhVpX...

I've heard from Congolese refugees I've talked to that you can make a decent AK-47 analogue yourself if you remember enough of high school shop class.

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https://mobile.twitter.com/RALee85/status/1498491928471654400

The US has solid intelligence that Putin is frustrated and expressing unusual bursts of anger at people in his inner circle over the state of the military campaign so far and the worldwide condemnation of his actions

Oh boohoo.

Tbf, this isn't just interesting because "Putin's mad." It's interesting because the West is releasing this knowing full well that it'll feed into Putin's paranoia about a rat in his inner circle. Recall, he just spent the weekend convening the top oligarchs to him at his Ural mountain lair, so at least one of said oligarchs in the room with him must not like him anymore.

Or we just tapped the phones.

But please Mr. Putin, do start turning on those guys. I’m sure none of the basically mob bosses you’ve cost millions and now are physically threatening will do anything rash.

It's waaay more likely that we have an asset in play. Most of these convos wouldn't be conducted on any kind of an electric system, & any that are would obviously be heavily encrypted. Additionally, most of these oligarchs have some kind of American ties, so it wouldn't be all that difficult for our intelligence apparatus to find one who'd be willing to cooperate.

Is it obvious, given how loose the military's infosec in the field has turned out to be?

That aside, I do agree with you that we've probably turned at least one of the oligarchs by now, in addition to any signals intelligence or bugging work going on.

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

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?

It's not an issue of censorship versus freedom. Besides, this forum is not averse to censorship in concept, after all it cheered feverishly when Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook which may have been a more effective act of censorship than many  governments are capable. It's an issue of national security and not allowing critical media of communication to be controlled by foreign companies that may turn hostile. Facebook and Twitter are clearly enemies of Russia right now, that's their right as a private company but then Russia shouldn't be tolerating an enemy operating in their country during wartime, or anytime for that matter.

There is an obvious difference between private censorship and state censorship. For instance, I might think that you should be permanently banned from this site because you are a fascist useful idiot, an authoritarian stooge, a Wumao 50 cent shill, a gutless bloodthirsty keyboard warrior, and worst of all a Jerseyite. Nevertheless, I would still think you should be free to say what you want in the public sphere though. Hypothetically.

Hey now, New Jersey deserves better than its inhabitants, or at least most of the subset of its inhabitants that post regularly on this forum.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't it been speculated that Putin's bunker is at or near Yekaterinburg?

It's almost definitely in the Urals, and any given part of the Urals is a lot closer to Yekaterinburg than to most other places, yeah. It really maeks u think, considering the place's history.

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This is how it's going to be, folks:

"Near ODA Kharkiv"
https://twitter.com/_tredecim_/status/1498547328655020035?s=20&t=nzsoGLgYsRT...

I'm not sure what's going on here. Is that a Russian column getting BTFO in Kharkiv, Russian artillery hitting Kharkiv, or both?

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British MoD intelligence update, there's less in this one than compared to previous days:

https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1498551511445553158

We've never seen an advanced modern military operate without air superiority.

The most recent I can think of would be the USAF in Korea. Soviet pilots secretly began flying for the Chinese resulting in heavy American losses in the infamous "MiG Alley". But, it's a teeny stretch to call Korea a modern conflict. Maybe one of the Pakistan-India wars didn't involve one side with air superiority? I'm not sure. Even if neither nation gained air superiority, it's a questionable argument to make that they had "advanced modern" militaries.

We never held air superiority over North Vietnam, but I wouldn't even call that modern.

We didnt even invade North Vietnam

We did bomb it, though.

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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.

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Ugh, what an embarrassing climbdown. It looked like it was finally time to stand up to the West and challenge them but didn't even last a week. It pains me to admit it but the Americans pushed us around on this. Now this is something I need to cope over.

China ready to ‘play a role’ in Ukraine ceasefire

China signalled it was ready to play a role in finding a ceasefire in Ukraine as it “deplored” the outbreak of conflict in its strongest comments yet on the war.

Beijing said it was “extremely concerned about the harm to civilians” in comments that came after a phone call between Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba.

“Ukraine is willing to strengthen communications with China and looks forward to China playing a role in realising a ceasefire,” the Chinese statement said on Tuesday.

It added that it respected “the territorial integrity of all countries”, without indicating whether Beijing accepted Russia’s claim to the Crimean peninsula or shared its recognition of separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Needing to cope about this is mutually exclusive with insisting you don't have a dog in the actual fight, bootlicker.

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

Ugh, what an embarrassing climbdown. It looked like it was finally time to stand up to the West and challenge them but didn't even last a week. It pains me to admit it but the Americans pushed us around on this. Now this is something I need to cope over.

China ready to ‘play a role’ in Ukraine ceasefire

China signalled it was ready to play a role in finding a ceasefire in Ukraine as it “deplored” the outbreak of conflict in its strongest comments yet on the war.

Beijing said it was “extremely concerned about the harm to civilians” in comments that came after a phone call between Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba.

“Ukraine is willing to strengthen communications with China and looks forward to China playing a role in realising a ceasefire,” the Chinese statement said on Tuesday.

It added that it respected “the territorial integrity of all countries”, without indicating whether Beijing accepted Russia’s claim to the Crimean peninsula or shared its recognition of separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Needing to cope about this is mutually exclusive with insisting you don't have a dog in the actual fight, bootlicker.

I definitely have skin in the part of the game where China is involved. The people at the Foreign Ministry know more than me, they're the experts, so I defer to them, but damn it looks a lot like we took an L here and let the Americans push us around.

You ought to have skin in the part of the game where human rights and the rule of law are involved too.

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Gonna take this with a grain of salt until it is actually confirmed but if true, HOLY SH!T

https://mobile.twitter.com/OccupyDemocrats/status/1498715490197274624

Oh my gosh if true that’s amazing and a major blow to Russian morale.

I just thought about it. Those National Guard types are completely nuts and probably coated their ammunition and weapons with lard. Sucks for them, I guess.

Hell yeah, I love when the side I'm on engages in anti-Islamic bigotry, this is the good stuff.

Evil vs evil, perhaps? Not a shred of sympathy for Kadyrov’s bloodthirsty brutes.* Which doesn’t make this right, but sending these two groups at each other is a win-win.

*Who have committed most of their vile crimes against other Muslims, BTW.

This war is creating an impression that's definitely false that Ukrainian nationalism is civic and liberal in character. It's not, at least not inherently; Zelensky is actively developing it in that direction, which is one of his most important symbolic contributions right now, but it has historically had deeply unsavory ethnic and religious components. Bogdan Khmelnytsky, possibly the most successful antisemitic genocidaire in history prior to the twentieth century, still has a whole oblast named after him. Part of why Ukraine is so worthy of support in this war is precisely that the war's cultural and historical dynamics are pushing Ukrainian nationalism towards a more civic framework.

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Time for your meds Mr Green. You can post in the Ukraine thread again in the morning.

NOVA, despite his odd posting style, has been posting some of the most helpful and substantive information in this thread. Lay off.

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Don't know if this has alredy been reported on here, but the 40-mile long Russian mega convoy (I guess Putin would call it a Freedom Convoy ) that was advancing on Kiev from the north has come to a halt apparently. They've run out of fuel.


https://twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/1498690292568018952


https://twitter.com/TristanSnell/status/1498774395644428296

"What if Visser Three from Animorphs got really into the Keystone Kops, then became real and was put in charge of a real military?"

This was supposed to be the logistics convoy!

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Loved the show and have since watched everything that Shawn Ashmore and Brooke Nevin have been in. Didn't read the books though.

You might be the only person in the world of whom this is true, something which, to be clear, I respect immensely; I'm always in favor of unusual takes on children's sci-fi.

Good analysis in this Twitter thread.

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

Between analysis like this showing how Russian victory isn't a done deal, analysis showing how Russian victory is a done deal, analysis showing how it might take a month for Kiev to fall, the halting & logistical problems of the Kiev convoy, Belarus troops seemingly entering Ukraine + the destruction of Kharkiv & the Russian economy, I have no clue what to make of the trajectory of the conflict.

I think it is pretty clear that absent a coup in Moscow (or a stunning reversal by Putin), Russia will win conventionally in the short term. With that said, if the Ukrainian people's morale remains high and the entire country remains mobilized for an insurgency, then they will win they long run because Russia will not be able to afford hold the entire country.

While that's certainly possible, after what we've seen I don't think it's guaranteed. I'm not so naive as to believe the logistics of Putin's invasion are a complete disaster, but it seems plausible that they're insufficient to support what he's trying to do. In which case, the Russian invasion is going to run out of steam at some point. How soon that might happen, I have no idea. But if they reach insufficient levels of supply to keep advancing soon, while Russian economically falls apart, that will not be a win for Russia in any real sense.

Depends on what "winning" is. If that's taking the whole country, I agree that is questionable. But Russia could take Kiev and Kharkov, take Mariupol and encircle the Ukrainian forces facing Donetsk, and then call a ceasefire and negotiate from there. It's not a certainty but I think Russia is still more likely than not to succeed at this limited goal. In this hypothetical Russia will have taken Ukraine's largest city and capital, second largest city, most of their Black Sea coast, and neutralized their fortifications in the east, which is still quite a bit that could be given back to Ukraine in exchange for the neutrality guarantees they are looking for.

If that's even the reason why Putin started that war.

It’s blatantly not, but ole compy is working from Russian propaganda as read through Chinese state filters.

The only neutrality guarantee Putin actually ought to have needed was the fact that Ukraine has active irredentist claims against a nuclear power--the one he rules--and current NATO accession protocols do not allow countries with active territorial disputes to join. The fact that that never even entered the formal diplomatic conversation is in turn all the evidence any of us ought to need that it was never about that.

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If anyone's interested, every episode of Servant of the People is on YouTube. It's a decent show; good production quality and Zelensky is a very charismatic and sympathetic lead.

Episode 1:

My roommate is four episodes in and enjoying it a lot.

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"Fringe extremist"? My view is on the fringe when it is shared by 1.4 billion people, and another 1.3 billion or so people share similar views, at least when it comes to how their respective governments have responded to the war? If you think my support for the CCP is "excessively weird", does it pain you to learn that by and large, Chinese people support the CCP and the government, particularly when the West and the USA are held up as an alternative?

I don't care if I have any support or no support. As I meet the standards of decorum on this forum, if you get me banned I will have been banned for my views and opinions and you will have shown your hypocrisy about free speech, a freedom deemed so important it is the First Amendment in the US Constitution. There is a saying in the US about free speech, or at least there used to be: "I disagree completely with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it."

This forum is not bound to follow the Bill of Rights, lol. I know you have contempt for the Constitution and everything it stands for, but your claim to free speech (1) Does not apply in this context, and (2) Is invalidated by the moral code you supposedly adhere to.

Sure, I don't deny that. This forum is free to ban me. But that is the ultimate display of hypocrisy; while arguing for "democracy and freedom" in supporting Ukraine, you're kicking me out because you disagree with my views.

I don't agree with this forum's banning policy, but you have indeed violated the TOS, and people have been banned for much less than what you've said in this thread. The height of hypocrisy would be banning Sanchez while allowing a genocide denier like yourself to remain.

No?

Sanchez was banned for personal attacks not for his political views. Usually this forum is fairly lenient on political views except when it comes to trans people because anything that can be seen as even barely disparaging towards trans people is considered genocidal against them . Other than that  I think most stuff is free game. Sanchez was a good poster but he got what was coming to him. Compucomp clearly has not engaged in any personal attacks even in "self defense"

Sanchez was banned in connection with supporting 1/6. His posts about it did involve personal attacks but it absolutely had to do with him adopting unacceptable political stances as well. Let's not rewrite forum history here.

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All of Zaporizhzhia's remaining reactors have been shut down.

Does this mean blackouts for southern Ukraine?

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I've been thinking of this quote (which I've also seen attributed to people other than Bradley) for days:



jao

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I think I might just stop posting on this thread or minimize, since it doesn't really appear anybody gives an "eff".

Maybe better to shift and share news to my social network on Facebook, where at least it will get a much greater reach both domestically and internationally.

I have enjoyed your work in here for whatever that's worth.

Same here.

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https://twitter.com/LucasFoxNews/status/1500167936203534339

Something's wrong, all right...