Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[CumbrianLefty]

Quite apart from the fact they can't send their *entire* army to Ukraine, for obvious reasons.

[Storr]

This will be an ongoing problem for Russia as long as they occupy the Southern regions of Ukraine. Zaporizhia and Kherson Oblasts are not like the Donbass or Crimea.

https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1528347402528247809?s=20&t=A0gRZa...


Percentage of people with Russian as their native language by Oblast in the 2001 Ukrainian Census (the only one conducted since independence):



Oblasts annexed or (to varying degrees) under Russian occupation:

Sevastopol: 90.6%
Crimea: 77.0%
Donetsk: 74.9%
Luhansk: 68.8%
Zaporizhia: 48.2%
Kharkiv: 44.3%
Mykolaiv: 29.3% (only Snihurivka is currently occupied by Russia)
Kherson: 24.9%

[Storr]

The Ukrainians have been very tight lipped about their casualties. The MoD only releases (inflated) numbers on Russian losses. Last I remember, Zelensky estimated "around 4,000" casualties. He usually speaks about Ukrainian losses in general terms; such as "heavy", "tough", etc. Afaik, this is the first time Zelensky has specifically mentioned the magnitude of casualties suffered on a per day basis.

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1528405346179764224?s=20&t=yidZ3l...

[Hindsight was 2020]

A great 🧵 by one of the better analysts of the war about the state of affairs on the ground
https://mobile.twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1528388686169223168
https://mobile.twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1528389227612098560
https://mobile.twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1528389610321354752
https://mobile.twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1528390343418576898
https://mobile.twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1528392860521082886

[BG-NY]

#EndForeignAidToAllCountriesNow

https://twitter.com/wsmartin218/status/1527375701594484736

[KaiserDave]

#EndForeignAidToAllCountriesNow

https://twitter.com/wsmartin218/status/1527375701594484736

#StopPostingInThisThreadNobodyCares

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

#EndForeignAidToAllCountriesNow

https://twitter.com/wsmartin218/status/1527375701594484736

This is a trend to watch, and probably not too surprising either.

[Middle-aged Europe]

A quarter of the Republican base probably believes that the Ukraine war happened because of Hunter Biden's biolabs in the Donbas. Their so-called "opinion" is pretty much irrelevant and giving them any credence is like listening to the raving of a mentally ill person.

[Person Man]

A quarter of the Republican base probably believes that the Ukraine war happened because of Hunter Biden's biolabs in the Donbas. Their so-called "opinion" is pretty much irrelevant and giving them any credence is like listening to the raving of a mentally ill person.

Do you know why that is? The reason why they sound that way possibly is because they are that way? I bet there are a lot of downed power lines up in there.

[John Dule]

#EndForeignAidToAllCountriesNow

Better that we use this money to kill Russians than shovel it into the black hole of welfare.

[Horus]

#EndForeignAidToAllCountriesNow

https://twitter.com/wsmartin218/status/1527375701594484736

This is a trend to watch, and probably not too surprising either.

We're not doing too much in Ukraine, but we're also not doing enough at home. Of course, I doubt most of these Republicans support big investments in social services or universal healthcare.

[Storr]

Oxymoronically, Solovyev is Jewish. But no the author's matter ethnicity or religion, mentioning "Jewish colonization" in Eastern Europe is always going to get a yikes from me.

https://twitter.com/DmitryOpines/status/1528408453231824896?s=20&t=tX9gApHeO...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

#EndForeignAidToAllCountriesNow

https://twitter.com/wsmartin218/status/1527375701594484736

This is a trend to watch, and probably not too surprising either.

We're not doing too much in Ukraine, but we're also not doing enough at home. Of course, I doubt most of these Republicans support big investments in social services or universal healthcare.

There will be some pretty major consequences most likely, if the "aid Ukraine" bipartisan status quo loses enough support among Republicans.
And you're right, write large. I do feel there's something to be said about how money is used as opposed to whether it is used at all.  I don't think Rs care enough about the investments to our pre-existing universal healthcare system or social services.
Rs are on better grounds criticizing aid to Ukraine on inflation grounds than they are on at least most others, imo.

[Middle-aged Europe]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Roland_Sieber/status/1528406334210818048


https://mobile.twitter.com/littlehawk463/status/1528426194932072448

[NOVA Green]

This was at a concert for the St. Petersburg based punk pop rock band Kis-Kis. The band's drummer, Alina Olesheva, has been publicly anti-war on her twitter account.

There have been previous reports of Russian police raiding and shutting down rock concerts. Maybe this one was simply too large to try shutting down?

Olesheva's twitter: https://twitter.com/Etopizdetc

https://twitter.com/MicheleBerdy/status/1528084525057974272?s=20&t=VL7hP3rfl...

Pretty clear the verdict is in... in the classic words of The Exploited song: "Punks Not Dead"

This was perhaps a direct answer to the Crass Song "Punk is Dead"

Either way....as the Russian casualties mount up, Russian dissidents can and will fight back against the War Machine...

Their Holiday in Cambodia isn't working out so well...

Now we have increasing stories of Russian Military Recruitment Offices being hit with Molotov Cocktails and various other forms of IEDs as part of an increasing militant form of struggle against what appears to be likely a stealthy form of conscription, where increasingly Russians under 40 years likely have a good grasp, while meanwhile their fellow friends and "comrades" are getting chewed up like Donkey Meat, while meanwhile the leaders lie and deceive, mass media supports the machine, but younger tech savvy Russians know their way around a VPN and are helping to telegraph the news even in what is becoming a real hardcore authoritarian state.

[CumbrianLefty]

From the start, older Russian people - who are often USSR nostalgics - have been this war's strongest supporters. Though a minority of younger folk have fully bought into the "Z" thing.

[Middle-aged Europe]

https://twitter.com/HillelNeuer/status/1528668629482541057

[Woody]

Russians are storming Lyman right now. Also to the South-West of the Popasna front they are taking a few more settlements..

To the South of Sieverodonetsk, Toshkivka's eastern part has been occupied by Russians for a while now, but they might have captured the whole town/the highway leading from Zolote to Sieverodonetsk.. status still unknown there
https://twitter.com/Guderian_Xaba/status/1528670821820030976
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPR/status/1528688439297814530
https://twitter.com/girkingirkin/status/1528703136096976897
https://twitter.com/uawire/status/1528733549582503937

[Woody]

From yesterday. ISW's estimation:

[Stranger in a strange land]

Edit: additionally, if Russia "wins" land by even more barbaric and dangerous tactics (i.e. nukes), it loses even more internationally. China, for instance, would not want Russia to suggest to Taiwan etc. that they must develop their own nuclear programs or get nuked, but this is what nuking Ukraine would do.

That is already explicitly part of the PRC's red line on an all-out assault on ROC.   The PRC has been very public, clear, and explicit that ROC getting nuclear weapons or making consituatonal changes to the ROC Constitution that cuts territorial ties to Mainland China would automatically mean an all-out PLA assault on ROC.  

There was actually a secret ROC nuclear weapons program that got started in 1967 under Chiang Kai-Shek.  It was so secret that when ROC Prez Chiang Ching-Kuo's health deteriorated in the mid-1980s his stepmother Madame Chiang Kai-Shek stepped in as the head of an alternative chain of command to help move this nuclear weapon program along to make sure most of the military and political leadership is kept in the dark about it.   Had it progressed I think ROC would have had nuclear weapons by the early 1990s.  In 1987 this program was discovered by the CIA which pressured the ROC to terminate the program for fear that the PRC will find out soon and launch an all-out assault on ROC.  There was talk in the KMT administration in the 1990s of restarting it but it was decided that it was KMT policy to prioritize negotiations with CCP as the long-term solution to PRC-ROC problems.  A core DPP value is anti-nuclear power and DPP administrations have done everything to remove nuclear material from ROC including shutting down all nuclear power plants.  As a result, we can safely assume that a DPP or KMT administration would not have anything to do with nuclear weapons. 

PRC-ROC relation is a flashpoint for conflict but ROC getting nuclear weapons can be safely ruled out as a source of open conflict.

Even if Taiwan didn't, there's a high chance that Vietnam, South Korea, or Japan would, all of which would make confrontations between these countries and China MUCH more dangerous in the future.

And also, Russia actually using nuclear weapons in Ukraine might very well cause the Taiwanese to think differently about nuclear weapons. Even if the probability is low, it's still high enough to be a major reason why Russian use of nuclear weapons would be a danger to China.

[BG-NY]

So this is something I’ve been wondering about for a while. PNTR with Russia was pulled months ago. But there hasn’t been any movement on tariffs.

Why won’t Biden place tariffs on Russia? Is he going to soon?

[GeneralMacArthur]

So this is something I’ve been wondering about for a while. PNTR with Russia was pulled months ago. But there hasn’t been any movement on tariffs.

Why won’t Biden place tariffs on Russia? Is he going to soon?

We blocked oil imports from Russia, which was already like 80-90% of our Russia imports.

As for what else we import, I'm not sure of its current status.  I know platinum is one thing we import in a pretty small quantity, but it may be critical enough to be impossible to ban at the current time while simultaneously being small enough to not have a significant impact on Russia's economy one way or another.

Oil & gas was an enormous part of Russia's economy.  Everything else is basically just nibbling at the edges.  But I wouldn't be surprised if most of the other imports have been cut off one way or another as well.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://www.twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/1528777927965523970

After the sinking of the Black Sea Fleet’s best air defence (the Moskva), this could well be the decisive step in bringing an end to Russian naval superiority. Anti-ship missiles tend to be significantly cheaper than warships, and the Montreux convention restricts what Russia can bring into the Black Sea to smaller warships (through Russia’s internal waterways - if they still work - or overland, in the cases of very small boats).

Sinking the Russian surface combatants will greatly reduce the cruise missile bombardment, among other things. The long-term goal, I imagine, is to completely break the maritime blockade, allowing the export of Ukrainian grain that could save millions from starvation over the coming months (along with much of their own economy). That will require a demining operation afterwards, and something else to deal with Russian submarines - but this is an absolutely necessary, cost-effective step. Hopefully, other countries follow suit.

[Storr]

Lyman currently being Grozny’d

https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1528769229025058818?s=20&t=E03Vt9lk...

[KaiserDave]

So this is something I’ve been wondering about for a while. PNTR with Russia was pulled months ago. But there hasn’t been any movement on tariffs.

Why won’t Biden place tariffs on Russia? Is he going to soon?

I know you have an obsession with 19th century economic policy, but big tariff walls are not actually a good idea. And why would Biden do that when we already have a high prices crisis? This wouldn't do much additional damage to the Russians anyway.