Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

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https://twitter.com/BeijingPalmer/status/1504551175747784704?s=20&t=xZU0kT80...
More China stuff. Apparently the line from the censors is to avoid content that is clearly pro or anti Ukraine/Russia and just present the situation. Which matches what Bejing seems to be signaling: neutrality with the aim of exploiting the eventual outcome to its fullest.  

Yeah for all compucomp claiming to be a CCP hack he is being quite weird here. It seems his opinion is more pro Russia than anything. China rn is in a very strong position to just stay out of this and enjoy cheap Russian resources while not taking major relationship hits with the west. Compucomp is instead arguing for aid to Russia when that would cause actual relationship degradation. Now the US may be more hostile to China but China could definetely lose a lot of relation with the EU if they actively support Russia.

I'm aware that the situation is fluid and that China is adjusting its stance moving towards being more accommodating towards the West. Yesterday it was announced that China will work with the SEC to establish standards for Chinese firms to list in the US (disclaimer, I hold MCHI which went up 20% on this news), and while this has nothing to do with the war, this is a signal on China's attitude on it since with China the level of cooperation with the West is tightly correlated on everything. If you read my posts carefully I'm not expressing pro-Russian views but rather views opposing Western hegemony and bullying behavior; unlike the actual Russians here that got banned, I never made any comment on how Ukrainians don't deserve their own country, that they're a bunch of Nazis, defending Russia's conduct in the war, etc.

If our leaders judge that the right thing to do is to beat a retreat, back away from Russia, and repair relations with the West, then I'll suck it up and adjust my views since they know better than me. Sometimes one just has to accept an L. Up until last week or so the official stance of the Foreign Ministry was quite bellicose and anti-Western so I'm not the only one that has to make an adjustment. We'll see how the Biden-Xi call goes, if Biden really wants to encourage Xi down this path then he will retreat a bit on some of his other anti-China stances, or he can push Xi back towards Putin by not doing so.

Pretty sure you specifically argued that China should send aid to Russia. This makes no sense from a Chinese perspective as China is getting great deals from Russia. This is also the first event in a long time which has truly united the West. Seeing Germany go to 2% GDP spending on military spending finally is a huge step.  Meanwhile as it stands the US is generally quite anti China as a whole from either party but the EU is much more mixed. Trying to push the EU back towards the US is utterly idiotic. The only answer for wanting China to send aid to Russia is either to actually help Russia or literally owning the libs where liberal means the collective West as a whole.

After how the West has treated China for generations, you're damn right China wants to stick it to the West. This has even extended to how they have treated China during this war, almost as if it were a belligerent, as compared to India which has received kid gloves, despite the actions of their governments being the same. Of course China wants to support Russia to spite the West. There will be a day when China stands up and challenges the West rather than accommodating them, and honestly I'd rather see that sooner rather than later since it's tough to watch China get pushed around and bullied. Clearly the West is not interested in genuinely dealing with us on equal terms as a partner nation.

Well, the 21st century seems to mostly consist of neoliberals giving China everything it wants so that it's too powerful to stand up to. American Neoliberals seem very good at growing the Chinese economy.

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Ahnold's message to the Russian people:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Schwarzenegger/status/1504426844199669762

I like it! He's actually good at this, just like his post-January 6 address.

Too bad Ahnuld was never able to run for president.

He's a Republican

Ahnold was a bad governor, is a bad person, and is a mixed bag as an actor, but he's consistently nailed foundational issues of democratic self-rule and its discontents.

I think it's incredibly unfair to say he's a bad person. What prompted you to say that? I've never heard anything but positive stories/anecdotes about him.

Back when "grab them by the pussy" was cool.

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Again what exactly does sending aid to Russia give you? If you truly do want better US China relations but are also willing to balance other factors how will China sending aid to Russia benefit either America or China or their relations ?

Your position is merely one of wanting to own the libs.

I don't disagree with your approach or questions.

Keep in mind China can just lie and say they are not sending aid to Russia.

Then they just send aid to Russia.

That appears almost obvious to the point it is most likely already happening.

True, I think China wouldn't mind helping Russia as long as they don't have negative consequences. There will probably be a lot of "independent" Chinese businessmen importing things and then exporting them to Russia to circumvent the sanctions. China said they are still mad at NATO for the bombing of their Belgrade embassy.

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Zelenskyy bans the biggest opposition party, will the EU reject UA admission request due to democratic backsliding?

Montenegro has far fewer issues than Ukraine, and they applied over 13 years ago.

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Speaking of Gorbachev, has anyone heard from him lately?

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Kadyrov seems to be becoming more important to the war.

https://www.twitter.com/neilphauer/status/1508426419273142278

Ukrainian snipers: 👀

Honest question to those with more knowledge of Moscow-Chechen relations.
Is this Putin deploying a trusted ally to “try get the job done”, or has he just pushed Kadyrov to the front line in order to speed up a change of leadership in Chechnya?

Or is this a “little of Column A, little of Column B” situation?

The first. Kadyrov is ruthless. And after describing him as such, I saw that the word appears twice in his Wikipedia article.

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Crazy times that we're looking at some of the most significant attacks on a nuclear power.

There was 9/11, but that wasn't a government.
There was the Falkland islands, but that's some far flung territory.
There's that glacier that India and Pakistan fought over, but it's a disputed area with no residents.

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https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1512733846911041541

Cartoonishly evil.

S--t like this makes me glad I'm not POTUS, because I probably would have hit the "NUKE MOSCOW" button immediately after I read it.

I mean, if this is real, this is like a Nazi propaganda poster about the Russians made flesh and blood.

I have some bad news for you: "Nazi propaganda" about Russians even in WW2 was not always false.

The rape of German women during WW2 by Russian soldiers is probably the greatest mass rape in human history.

When Churchill said we were making a deal with "the Devil" (referring to Stalin) to fight Hitler, he wasn't kidding.

Russians are and always have been absolute barbarians. Obviously there are exceptions. But the sad, cold, hard, reality is their culture has scarcely advanced from the pillaging and plundering of the Mongols, let alone their own Imperialist 18th and 19th century history.

Estimates of German deaths from the expulsions after WW2 range from 500k to over 2 million.

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Not quite sure what's going on here, but looks like some sabotage on railroad tracks within Russia close to the war front?

I was just wondering if Ukraine had considered trying to blow up the Crimean bridge. Technically it would be an attack on their own internationally recognized territory.

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What is Macron thinking? The Serbs were closer to Bosniaks than the Russians are to Ukrainians, but that didn't stop them from doing the genocide at Srebrenica.

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1514174397577367555

I'm guessing most people would have a very hard time telling Tutsis and Hutus apart.

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Still not the low point of the Russian Navy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzGqp3R4Mx4

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https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1515633540129558530?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7C...

Moldova joining Romania would make a lot more sense.

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There are a variety of steps in applying to the EU. One of them is candidate responds to questionnaire. I think Ukraine might be the fastest ever at 9 days for that step. Georgia and Moldova have taken over a month already like everyone else. Of the countries on this page, Croatia's 3 months is the second shortest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_enlargement_of_the_European_Union

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Rezekne (Latvia) - Moscow (Russia) - 674 km
Kharkiv (Ukraine) - Moscow (Russia) - 761 km

Anything else?

Yeah, this buffer state sh**t never made any sense since the Baltic states joined NATO. Like it or not, NATO is already at your doorstep, Russia. It's probably safe to say they don't have to worry much about Belarus, but whether Ukraine is or isn't in NATO doesn't have any major strategic effect on Russia, in practice. They aren't needed to park nukes or missile defense systems on Russia's border.

It's all about Russia's desire to continue dominating Eastern Europe. And I think I speak for many when I say that Russia has spent long enough destroying and holding back the countries along its borders.

Norway always touched Russia, but these are more populated areas.

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Funny thing that occurred to me... unlike Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union largely managed to break up peacefully in 1991. Except that the war that didn't happen back then happens now, thirty years later.

If the instigators of the August Coup had been more successfully though, it could have already occurred in the 90s.

What I'm trying to say is... perhaps it was more or less inevitable, and it only needed the right wrong person to be in charge in Moscow.

There was the Transnistria War.

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Movement towards becoming an official candidate for EU membership:

https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1537476093611069442

Even besides being actively invaded, Montenegro has far fewer issues than Ukraine, and they were where Ukraine is now 12 years ago and still have a while to go.

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RTL poll in Germany on "should Ukraine give up territory for peace?" has Yes/No at 47/41

I assume they'd also be in favour of giving East Germany back too?

Crimea has been occupied for 8 years, I don't think Ukraine is getting it back.

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RTL poll in Germany on "should Ukraine give up territory for peace?" has Yes/No at 47/41

I assume they'd also be in favour of giving East Germany back too?

Crimea has been occupied for 8 years, I don't think Ukraine is getting it back.

"Alsace-Lorraine has been occupied for 43 years there is no way France is ever getting it back"- Central Powers appeaser in 1914.

So basically Ukraine isn't getting it back without a world war? As bad as WW1 was, at least it didn't have nukes.

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Territory is changing hands, but just not that much any more.

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Let's be honest. It is a question of Time now that Russia fully loses the War.


How would the peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine would look like ? Huge reparations ? Or maybe annexing some russian territories?

Russia would have to return Crimea and the puppet states in the Donbass. The war started with Russia occupying Crimea, so it should end with Crimea returning to Ukraine.

I don't think Russia would agree to reparations, you would have to seize Russian assets. The West has already seized hundreds of billions in assets.

Russia isn't going to give up Crimea willingly.

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Well, this is interesting.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_map/status/1578592665129869312?s=46&t=NvGk5r6-yS...

Obvious target is obvious.

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I like in his speech to Congress, Zelensky framed this as a war of independence, which was obviously meant to tie the current conflict to the American War of Independence. He even specifically compared the Battle of Saratoga to the current fighting in Bakhmut, claiming it will be the turning point of the war just like Saratoga was in 1777.  

So we have 6 more years of war?

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thats just commie propaganda

Russia hasn't been communist for 31 years.

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I can't believe I'm saying this, buy Kadyrov makes a good point. Europe and the West ignored Chechnya in the 90s to avoid worsening relations with and angering the recently established Russian Federation.

Yes, towards the end the West avoided Chechnya because it became a haven for Islamic extremists and terrorists. But, it became so after it received no help from the West and only received any from Islamic fundamentalists and wealthy Gulf oil families.

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1620383222025850881?s=20&t=PYeEvK...

Jeremy Corbyn didn't ignore it.

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What’s the most realistic (as in likelihood of happening) path to this conflict ending with minimal future bloodshed?

Korean style ceasefire