Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Splash]

https://twitter.com/HenryJFoy/status/1573378102469738497

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/HenryJFoy/status/1573378102469738497

The Baltics have already closed their borders. The options are dwindling for Russians.

https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1573340115874652161?s=20&t=dPiZE_zuyJ6Y...

https://twitter.com/jason_corcoran/status/1573341402444210177?s=20&t=dPiZE_z...

[Badger]

I assume if people post articles doubting the legitimacy of these referendums on Facebook, Facebook will use labels to redirect users to accurate information about the referendum from the Russian government.

Likewise, I assume Twitter will apply misinformation labels or remove posts that undermine confidence in the electoral process.

Well, they absolutely should, no?

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1573218156985958400?s=20&t=XelWIQx1veJ2oR...

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1573292958480228352?s=20&t=XelWIQ...

https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1573383958595014657?s=20&t=_zKkB5kZI3wh-8...

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

China ready to promote sound, steady relationship with NATO: Chinese FM

Stoltenberg is trying to patch things up as the US-China relationship circles the drain. Talk is cheap, but considering this and the Chinese statements over the last few days regarding the Ukrainian conflict, there seems to be a slight warming of relations (some of the lower-level officials are making more pro-Russia statements, but Xi and the FM are tacking in the opposite direction).

In the long term, I doubt this will be sustainable as the US-China relationship continues to worsen, but it matters an awful lot while there is war in Europe.

[Anti-Trump Truth Socialite JD Vance Enjoying Juror]

I assume if people post articles doubting the legitimacy of these referendums on Facebook, Facebook will use labels to redirect users to accurate information about the referendum from the Russian government.

Likewise, I assume Twitter will apply misinformation labels or remove posts that undermine confidence in the electoral process.

Where's that microwave-brain picture when you need it...

[Storr]

Russian mobiks are sleeping outdoors without tents:

https://twitter.com/golub/status/1573393388506087429?s=20&t=_zKkB5kZI3wh-8Es...

and on the floors of their barracks:

https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1573381780601974784?s=20&t=_zKkB5kZI...

[Middle-aged Europe]

https://mobile.twitter.com/TheNationalNews/status/1573371234687008768

[The Dowager Mod]

Sounds like a perfectly legit vote to me. 
https://twitter.com/maksymeristavi/status/1573356436091969536

[Darthpi – Anti-Florida Activist]

https://mobile.twitter.com/TheNationalNews/status/1573371234687008768

Can we ...do that?

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

I assume if people post articles doubting the legitimacy of these referendums on Facebook, Facebook will use labels to redirect users to accurate information about the referendum from the Russian government.

Likewise, I assume Twitter will apply misinformation labels or remove posts that undermine confidence in the electoral process.

Something is deeply wrong with you.

[Omega21]

Open up Babushka, time to vote!

[nicholas.slaydon]

https://mobile.twitter.com/TheNationalNews/status/1573371234687008768

Can we ...do that?

Well, the UN charter states that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics should be the permanent member of the Council. It says nothing of the Russian Federation (of course it also mentions the ROC and not the PRC as well). So really, any former Soviet member state could claim the USSR seat on the Security Council.

[Person Man]

https://mobile.twitter.com/TheNationalNews/status/1573371234687008768

Can we ...do that?

Well, the UN charter states that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics should be the permanent member of the Council. It says nothing of the Russian Federation (of course it also mentions the ROC and not the PRC as well). So really, any former Soviet member state could claim the USSR seat on the Security Council.

They could put Ukraine up there.

[AndyHogan14]

https://mobile.twitter.com/TheNationalNews/status/1573371234687008768

Can we ...do that?

Well, the UN charter states that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics should be the permanent member of the Council. It says nothing of the Russian Federation (of course it also mentions the ROC and not the PRC as well). So really, any former Soviet member state could claim the USSR seat on the Security Council.

They could put Ukraine up there.

I don't think Ukraine could be seen as the successor to the USSR (nor could Belarus) because they were founding members of the UN despite being part of the USSR. After independence, they just continued their existing membership. The General Assembly could, however, say that any of the other former Soviet republics are the legal successor to the USSR. In fact, one could make the argument that Kazakhstan should have the spot being that it was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence. It should just take a majority vote in the General Assembly being that that is all it took to switch recognition from the ROC to PRC for China.

[Middle-aged Europe]

^^ Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on "Soviet Union" states:

Following the dissolution, Russia was internationally recognized[62] as its legal successor on the international stage. To that end, Russia voluntarily accepted all Soviet foreign debt and claimed Soviet overseas properties as its own. Under the 1992 Lisbon Protocol, Russia also agreed to receive all nuclear weapons remaining in the territory of other former Soviet republics. Since then, the Russian Federation has assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations. Ukraine has refused to recognize exclusive Russian claims to succession of the USSR and claimed such status for Ukraine as well, which was codified in Articles 7 and 8 of its 1991 law On Legal Succession of Ukraine. Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has continued to pursue claims against Russia in foreign courts, seeking to recover its share of the foreign property that was owned by the USSR.

[Middle-aged Europe]

^^ Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on "Soviet Union" states:

Following the dissolution, Russia was internationally recognized[62] as its legal successor on the international stage. To that end, Russia voluntarily accepted all Soviet foreign debt and claimed Soviet overseas properties as its own. Under the 1992 Lisbon Protocol, Russia also agreed to receive all nuclear weapons remaining in the territory of other former Soviet republics. Since then, the Russian Federation has assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations. Ukraine has refused to recognize exclusive Russian claims to succession of the USSR and claimed such status for Ukraine as well, which was codified in Articles 7 and 8 of its 1991 law On Legal Succession of Ukraine. Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has continued to pursue claims against Russia in foreign courts, seeking to recover its share of the foreign property that was owned by the USSR.

To furthermore quote Article I of the "Lisbon Protocol" to the START I treaty, signed in 1992 by the governments of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States:

"The Republic of Byelarus,[a] the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine, as successor states of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in connection with the Treaty, shall assume the obligations of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics under the Treaty."


Source: https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/27389.pdf

[Frodo]

They are barbarians.  Russia does not belong in the civilized world:

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1573369372910944256

[Person Man]

^^ Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on "Soviet Union" states:

Following the dissolution, Russia was internationally recognized[62] as its legal successor on the international stage. To that end, Russia voluntarily accepted all Soviet foreign debt and claimed Soviet overseas properties as its own. Under the 1992 Lisbon Protocol, Russia also agreed to receive all nuclear weapons remaining in the territory of other former Soviet republics. Since then, the Russian Federation has assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations. Ukraine has refused to recognize exclusive Russian claims to succession of the USSR and claimed such status for Ukraine as well, which was codified in Articles 7 and 8 of its 1991 law On Legal Succession of Ukraine. Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has continued to pursue claims against Russia in foreign courts, seeking to recover its share of the foreign property that was owned by the USSR.

To furthermore quote Article I of the "Lisbon Protocol" to the START I treaty, signed in 1992 by the governments of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States:

"The Republic of Byelarus,[a] the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine, as successor states of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in connection with the Treaty, shall assume the obligations of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics under the Treaty."


Source: https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/27389.pdf

So why not?

They are barbarians.  Russia does not belong in the civilized world:

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1573369372910944256

They all should be treated like naughty children after this.

[NOVA Green]

So not sure if anybody out here has more detailed info of *where* the draft notices are hitting hardest, but saw this snippet thus far from the NYT:

Reports of large numbers of men receiving draft notices arrived from across the country, but regions in Siberia and in the largely Muslim Caucasus Mountains appeared to be among the hardest hit.

On social media, activists in regions like Kabardino-Balkaria in the Caucasus and Yakutia in northeastern Siberia kept a running tally of the summonses that had arrived in various villages. A woman who has already lost one son in the war told a New York Times reporter that three buses carrying newly mobilized soldiers had left her town in Dagestan, in the Caucasus, one of Russia’s poorest regions.

A regional activist in Yakutsk, the capital of the Yakutia region, described draftees being taken by airplane out of remote Arctic villages. “They have planted panic and fear everywhere,” she said in a phone interview, asking that her name be withheld for fear of retribution.

Also reports regarding protests in more remote regions of Russia:

In the city of Baksan in the North Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria, more than a hundred people gathered near the city administration to protest the conscription of their loved ones, said a local activist who asked that his name be withheld for his security.

“Kabardino-Balkaria, like the rest of Russia, woke up yesterday in horror,” Ibragim Yaganov, an activist from the region who is now in Poland, told The Times. “The war, which was somewhere far away on TV, suddenly came to people’s homes.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/world/europe/putin-russia-military-ukraine-war.html

Update to this story:

Some of the greatest anguish played out hundreds or thousands of miles away from the front line, in the Caucasus Mountains and the northeastern region of Yakutia, a sparsely populated expanse that straddles the Arctic Circle. Community leaders described remote villages where much of the working-age male population received conscription notices in recent days, leaving families that subsist off the land without men around to work ahead of the long winter.

“We have reindeer herders, hunters, fishermen — we have so few of them anyway,” Vyacheslav Shadrin, the chairman of the council of elders for a small Indigenous group known as the Yukaghirs, said in a phone interview. “But they are the ones being drafted most of all.”

In Yakutia, an association representing the region's main ethnic group, the Sakha, warned the draft could have dire consequences there. The group circulated a letter to Mr. Putin saying that the mobilization could lead to a “denuding of the male component of the already sparsely populated northern districts of Yakutia.”

And even a member of Russian Parliament who represents the region, Sardana V. Avksentieva, wrote on social media on Thursday that she had heard of a 300-person village in which 47 men were called up.

“What is the logic of these numbers?” she asked, asserting that people in rural regions were being drafted at a higher rate than in the cities. “What proportionality are we talking about?”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/world/europe/russia-draft-ukraine-putin.html

[NOVA Green]

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1573314121285734401

These numbers jive with several previous articles linked which I posted Yesterday and Today--- large Metro areas are generally getting heavily spared from the mobilization efforts while poorer, remote, and ethnic minority regions appear thus far to be receiving the disproportionate brunt of Russia's "Mass Draft".

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=469771.msg8778958#msg8778958

[HillGoose]

I assume if people post articles doubting the legitimacy of these referendums on Facebook, Facebook will use labels to redirect users to accurate information about the referendum from the Russian government.

Likewise, I assume Twitter will apply misinformation labels or remove posts that undermine confidence in the electoral process.

if u think russia is so great y dont u move there

America, love it or leave it u hippie!

[Virginiá]

[Storr]

Russia isn't sending their best:

https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1573420510092087297?s=20&t=QQ92q3a0...

[NOVA Green]

Russia isn't sending their best:

https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1573420510092087297?s=20&t=QQ92q3a0...

RIP...