Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Frodo]

Lukashenko and Putin are getting ready to reopen the northern front, this time including Belarussian troops as well as their Russian counterparts:

Belarus’s Lukashenko announces troop deployments with Russia amid escalations in Ukraine

At this point, the overthrow of Lukashenko's regime moves from an idle fantasy to a military imperative.  

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Lukashenko and Putin are getting ready to reopen the northern front, this time including Belarussian troops as well as their Russian counterparts:

Belarus’s Lukashenko announces troop deployments with Russia amid escalations in Ukraine

At this point, the overthrow of Lukashenko's regime moves from an idle fantasy to a military imperative.  

There's enough ambiguity in this for Lukashenko to wiggle out of a deployment of Belarusian troops to Ukraine, especially considering that Belarus is now a significant source of military aid for Russia. He's achieved this for months and seems, in some ways, to be craftier than Putin.

It is more likely, in my view, that the standing Belarusian army is used to fix Ukrainian troops near the border as they have done for months. If there is to be any deeper involvement on their part, it could come in the form of them providing training infrastructure/services for the newly mobilised Russians. Belarusian training is probably crap but Russia needs mass and it's surely better than nothing.

[Frodo]

Lukashenko and Putin are getting ready to reopen the northern front, this time including Belarussian troops as well as their Russian counterparts:

Belarus’s Lukashenko announces troop deployments with Russia amid escalations in Ukraine

At this point, the overthrow of Lukashenko's regime moves from an idle fantasy to a military imperative.  

There's enough ambiguity in this for Lukashenko to wiggle out of a deployment of Belarusian troops to Ukraine, especially considering that Belarus is now a significant source of military aid for Russia. He's achieved this for months and seems, in some ways, to be craftier than Putin.

It is more likely, in my view, that the standing Belarusian army is used to fix Ukrainian troops near the border as they have done for months. If there is to be any deeper involvement on their part, it could come in the form of them providing training infrastructure/services for the newly mobilised Russians. Belarusian training is probably crap but Russia needs mass and it's surely better than nothing.

Maybe.  Another possibility is that Putin wants Lukashenko to put all his cards on the table, and finally deploy his army for an all-out invasion so that untrained (and undertrained) Russian conscripts will at least have professional soldiers alongside them as they attack Ukraine from the north.  

[GeneralMacArthur]

Yall don't have Woodbury on mute? Wildin

I know, I have no sympathy for anyone who still engages with all his leading questions. The people that are owning SirWoodbury with facts and logic, or whatever it is they think they're doing, are a million times more obnoxious than SirWoodbury himself could ever hope to be.

This is in general how I feel about discourse in these kinds of threads and it frustrates me to no end that so many hot-button-issue threads get derailed by one or two obnoxious trolls posting provocative, edgy, stupid crap.  It's not the stupid crap itself that derails the thread, it's the six dozen white knights who are all chomping at the bit to be the one who dunks on Fuzzy the hardest, or finally makes OSR see the light, or receives an apology and mea culpa from SirWoodbury, or whatever.  It's just never gonna happen!  But we get pages and pages of people responding to the trolls, which diverts the thread into a rabbit hole of whatever hill the troll chose to die on.

I am 100% pro Ukraine so why did you bring me up in this thread

I'm speaking of a phenomenon that is Atlas-wide, not specific to this thread.

[Torie]

I cannot imagine the "Belorussian army" facing hot bullets at this juncture given the war criminal's track record at waging war so far. He will give the criminal whatever blow jobs that he wants, and let the criminal use the "country's" territory as a staging ground within limits, but that is about it. Nobody wants to get in bed with a loser going down with an increasingly short half life. And when the war criminal goes down, the Belorussian clown is most probably going down with him in rather short order.

[Torie]

Sir Woodbury is largely but a conduit for whatever he posts of the Putin perspective, and his PR campaign. And that is information. It is a contribution to the public square, which is what in my idealism I envision this place being. Having all agreeing with me would be utterly execrable for example in so many ways. In fact, I pine more for precisely the opposite, particularly if the knife is slipped in, and turned with skill and elan.

The young also tend to be pack animals who predate on those who seem vulnerable, and that is true in this case. May you all over time as one's hormones wane, find that not self actualizing.

Leave Sir Wood alone, other than thanking him for his conduit services, as I do now.

cf Fuzzy bashing, but that is another matter. Other than to say, that person bashing as opposed to hard analysis and research, is at once the pubic square and the mosh pit. Pity that the concept of a bunch of wise philosopher kings is the greatest myth of all. So thus we are consigned to wallow in our own perhaps existential inadequacies. Good luck to you all.

[NOVA Green]

What a waste of missiles. They could have aimed for the <10 rail bridges over the Dnieper, for instance, but high command is full of manchildren.

This seems to be for domestic reasons. Putin's concerned with looking weak in the eyes of anti-Ukraine hawks within Russia.

This likely seems to be the correct take.

New York Times article from earlier today:

On Monday, state television not only reported on the suffering, but also flaunted it. It showed plumes of smoke and carnage in central Kyiv, along with empty store shelves and a long-range forecast promising months of freezing temperatures there.

“There’s no hot water; part of the city is without power,” one anchor announced, describing the scene in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.

The sharp shift was a sign that domestic pressure over Russia’s flailing war effort had escalated to the point where President Vladimir V. Putin believed that a brutal show of force was necessary — as much for his audience at home as for Ukraine and the West.

With Monday’s devastating escalation of the war effort, Mr. Putin appears to be responding, in part, to those critics, momentarily quieting the clamors of hard-liners furious with the Russian military’s humiliating setbacks on the battlefield.

“This is important from the domestic political perspective, first and foremost,” Abbas Gallyamov, a Russian political analyst and former Putin speechwriter, said of Monday’s strikes. “It was important to demonstrate to the ruling class that Putin is still capable, that the army is still good for something.”

But with his escalation, Mr. Putin is also betting that Russian elites — and the public at large — do indeed see it as a sign of strength rather than a desperate effort to inflict more pain on Ukrainian civilians in a war that Russia appears to be losing militarily.

In his speech, Mr. Putin made one notable omission: He did not mention the West as the ultimate culprit behind Saturday’s Crimean bridge explosion or other suspected Ukrainian attacks. That was a departure from the typical Kremlin rhetoric that portrays Washington and London as the puppeteers behind Ukraine’s resistance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/10/world/europe/russia-putin-ukraine-strikes.html

Wall Street Journal had an article:

President Vladimir Putin’s missile strikes on cities throughout Ukraine Monday drew condemnation from the West but praise from a growing chorus in Russia—critics who say that Moscow, despite the brutality of its invasion, hasn’t shown enough toughness.

Monday’s barrage didn’t inflict large-scale damage on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, suggesting that shortcomings of the Russian military, which has a limited number of missiles at its disposal, could crimp Mr. Putin’s ability to react.

Russia’s state-run TV celebrated the attacks on Ukraine by replaying footage of smoldering Ukrainian cities. It showed one British television journalist fleeing at the sound of explosions as he did a live stand-up broadcast from Kyiv. Several Russian commentators said they hope such retaliations become a key Russian tactic in the war going forward.

“The hope is that this is not a one-time act of vengeance, but a new system of warfare,” wrote Aleksandr Kots, a prominent Russian war correspondent on his Telegram channel. He called for continued bombing “throughout the depths of the Ukrainian state…until it loses its ability to function.”

While the missile attacks might have satisfied some demand for revenge among Russians who back the war, the intensity likely reflects Mr. Putin’s personal rage at setbacks in the war, said Andrei Kolesnikov, senior analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow.

The bridge spanning the Kerch Strait and connecting Crimea with Russia was built at a breakneck speed at a cost of $4 billion after Russia’s seizure of the peninsula in 2014, and is Mr. Putin’s “favorite child” of the war, he said. While the missile attacks Monday pleased Russians who favor the war, Mr. Putin doesn’t need their encouragement, Mr. Kolesnikov said.

“He himself is an extreme hawk and is capable of making monstrous decisions,” Mr. Kolesnikov said. “This is his war and his personal revenge.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-putin-seeks-to-escalate-with-ukraine-strikes-as-pressure-builds-at-home-11665429686

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

Lukashenko and Putin are getting ready to reopen the northern front, this time including Belarussian troops as well as their Russian counterparts:

Belarus’s Lukashenko announces troop deployments with Russia amid escalations in Ukraine

At this point, the overthrow of Lukashenko's regime moves from an idle fantasy to a military imperative.  

There's enough ambiguity in this for Lukashenko to wiggle out of a deployment of Belarusian troops to Ukraine, especially considering that Belarus is now a significant source of military aid for Russia. He's achieved this for months and seems, in some ways, to be craftier than Putin.

It is more likely, in my view, that the standing Belarusian army is used to fix Ukrainian troops near the border as they have done for months. If there is to be any deeper involvement on their part, it could come in the form of them providing training infrastructure/services for the newly mobilised Russians. Belarusian training is probably crap but Russia needs mass and it's surely better than nothing.

Maybe.  Another possibility is that Putin wants Lukashenko to put all his cards on the table, and finally deploy his army for an all-out invasion so that untrained (and undertrained) Russian conscripts will at least have professional soldiers alongside them as they attack Ukraine from the north.  

If they do move, I suspect the new Belarusian soldiers in Ukraine will be heavily out numbered by the Belarusians setting up a new anti-Russian regime in Minsk.

[NOVA Green]

Lukashenko and Putin are getting ready to reopen the northern front, this time including Belarussian troops as well as their Russian counterparts:

Belarus’s Lukashenko announces troop deployments with Russia amid escalations in Ukraine

At this point, the overthrow of Lukashenko's regime moves from an idle fantasy to a military imperative.  

There's enough ambiguity in this for Lukashenko to wiggle out of a deployment of Belarusian troops to Ukraine, especially considering that Belarus is now a significant source of military aid for Russia. He's achieved this for months and seems, in some ways, to be craftier than Putin.

It is more likely, in my view, that the standing Belarusian army is used to fix Ukrainian troops near the border as they have done for months. If there is to be any deeper involvement on their part, it could come in the form of them providing training infrastructure/services for the newly mobilised Russians. Belarusian training is probably crap but Russia needs mass and it's surely better than nothing.

Maybe.  Another possibility is that Putin wants Lukashenko to put all his cards on the table, and finally deploy his army for an all-out invasion so that untrained (and undertrained) Russian conscripts will at least have professional soldiers alongside them as they attack Ukraine from the north.  

This is possible...

The Belarusian strongman, who has so far resisted pressure from Moscow to send in his own troops, accused Ukraine, which shares a long border with Belarus, of planning attacks from the south, without citing evidence.

He gave no details on Monday of the size or precise purpose of the new joint force, stirring speculation that Belarus might send troops into Ukraine to help Russia’s flailing military campaign. Alternatively, he could be preparing his country for the arrival of thousands of freshly drafted Russian soldiers, some of them former convicts and many of them ill trained.

“Be ready to receive these people in the near future and place them where necessary, according to our plan,” Mr. Lukashenko told his military chiefs.

Artyom Shraibman, a Belarusian political analyst now in exile in Warsaw, said Mr. Lukashenko would likely try to resist deploying his own troops in Ukraine because that “would be so dangerous for him on so many levels. It would be catastrophic politically.”

But, Mr. Shraibman added, “it is clear that what is left of his autonomy is eroding as we speak.”

Andrei Sannikov, who served as deputy foreign minister under Mr. Lukashenko during his early period in power but fled into exile after being jailed, said Mr. Lukashenko was “running scared,” caught between pressure from Russia to help its demoralized forces in Ukraine and the knowledge that sending in Belarusian troops would be hugely unpopular, even among his loyalists.

He predicted that ultimately “his boots will inevitably be on the ground in Ukraine” because Mr. Lukashenko “has no real choice.”

“He is not taking decisions on the war. Putin takes all the decisions and tells Lukashenko what to do,” Mr. Sannikov said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/10/world/europe/belarus-russia-ukraine.html

[NOVA Green]

Meanwhile in Washington DC:

This thread is so busy that I literally spent (20) minutes going back to 10/01/22, since I could have sworn that Virginia posted about this topic somewhat recently.

Couldn't find it, but in context of Russian Terrorist assaults using missiles against defenseless Ukrainian Civilian Population and Infrastructure, wanted to reply to her latest post regarding these weapons systems.

For its part, Ukraine has long combined its profuse gratitude for Western weapons aid with demands for stepped up delivery of more, and more sophisticated, supplies. The counteroffensive on the ground brought calls for battle tanks to move into contested territory, which the United States and its allies have been reluctant to send. This week, Kyiv attached new urgency to sophisticated air defense systems.

A Ukrainian official, referring to a list provided by the senior military command, said Ukraine’s priority items include the Patriot surface to air missile system, MIM-23 Hawk missiles, attack drones and NASAMS (National Advance Surface-to-Air Missile Systems) as well as Israeli air defense systems.

Ukraine’s pleas found new resonance in some quarters of Washington after the Monday attacks, with senior Democrats, in particular, demanding that Biden move more quickly to supply Ukraine. “I am horrified by Russia’s depraved and desperate escalation against civilian infrastructure across Ukraine — including in Kyiv,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said in a statement. “I pledge to use all means at my disposal to accelerate support for the people of Ukraine and to starve Russia’s war machine.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/10/russia-ukraine-war-turning-point/

Musical Interlude from Southern Oregon Folk Artist Alice Di Micele: (Saw her perform live a couple times and bought a couple of her cassettes way back in the dayz).

I used to play it sometimes when I was a DJ in our Pirate Radio Station when I was in College in the Industrial Midwest in the early '90s.

Meanwhile Black Sabbath: War Pigs appears to represent the Russia Military Machine these days...

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Yall don't have Woodbury on mute? Wildin

I know, I have no sympathy for anyone who still engages with all his leading questions. The people that are owning SirWoodbury with facts and logic, or whatever it is they think they're doing, are a million times more obnoxious than SirWoodbury himself could ever hope to be.

This is in general how I feel about discourse in these kinds of threads and it frustrates me to no end that so many hot-button-issue threads get derailed by one or two obnoxious trolls posting provocative, edgy, stupid crap.  It's not the stupid crap itself that derails the thread, it's the six dozen white knights who are all chomping at the bit to be the one who dunks on Fuzzy the hardest, or finally makes OSR see the light, or receives an apology and mea culpa from SirWoodbury, or whatever.  It's just never gonna happen!  But we get pages and pages of people responding to the trolls, which diverts the thread into a rabbit hole of whatever hill the troll chose to die on.

I am 100% pro Ukraine so why did you bring me up in this thread

You support a political party focused on putting back into power a man who already abused his office to try and blackmail Ukraine, and who has repeatedly taken the side of the government currently invading Ukraine, and who, if they win control of the House in November may well cut aid to Ukraine, or use it as a political tool. So the only question about your claim of being "100% pro Ukraine" is, are you lying to us, or to yourself?

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Yall don't have Woodbury on mute? Wildin

I know, I have no sympathy for anyone who still engages with all his leading questions. The people that are owning SirWoodbury with facts and logic, or whatever it is they think they're doing, are a million times more obnoxious than SirWoodbury himself could ever hope to be.

This is in general how I feel about discourse in these kinds of threads and it frustrates me to no end that so many hot-button-issue threads get derailed by one or two obnoxious trolls posting provocative, edgy, stupid crap.  It's not the stupid crap itself that derails the thread, it's the six dozen white knights who are all chomping at the bit to be the one who dunks on Fuzzy the hardest, or finally makes OSR see the light, or receives an apology and mea culpa from SirWoodbury, or whatever.  It's just never gonna happen!  But we get pages and pages of people responding to the trolls, which diverts the thread into a rabbit hole of whatever hill the troll chose to die on.

I am 100% pro Ukraine so why did you bring me up in this thread

You support a political party focused on putting back into power a man who already abused his office to try and blackmail Ukraine, and who has repeatedly taken the side of the government currently invading Ukraine, and who, if they win control of the House in November may well cut aid to Ukraine, or use it as a political tool. So the only question about your claim of being "100% pro Ukraine" is, are you lying to us, or to yourself?

People's views aren't always 100% in line with their party. For instance, OSR has bad views on plenty of subjects (i.e. Reagan) but he has decent opinions on things like health care and Ukraine.

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

U.S. States That Wish to Join Russia Will Be Considered, Says Duma Member

Hahaha, oh wait, they're serious?

Let me laugh even harder.

HAHAHAHHA.

[Blue3]

Hell of a quote from the Estonian PM:

The price of stopping a dictator always goes up. Meeting evil halfway is still a victory for evil.

That's a quote for the ages.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

U.S. States That Wish to Join Russia Will Be Considered, Says Duma Member

Hahaha, oh wait, they're serious?

Let me laugh even harder.

HAHAHAHHA.

I mean I could see West Virginia or Alabama voting to join Russia.

[NOVA Green]

U.S. States That Wish to Join Russia Will Be Considered, Says Duma Member

Hahaha, oh wait, they're serious?

Let me laugh even harder.

HAHAHAHHA.

I mean I could see West Virginia or Alabama voting to join Russia.

Uhmm... NO.

In theory Russia might be able to make overtures towards Alaska, plus scoop up some major domestic propaganda support, but even there quite frankly the vast majority of the Alaskan Independence Movement, will likely not want to touch Russia within a 300 Mile Fishing Zone, regardless of whatever dirty money Russia might try to pour into an Alaskan split-off mvmt.

Even the Russian fantasies of support American Green and Leftist Parties looks a bit bunch, since even if we go our own route "Ecotopia Style", we sure as hell are not gonna be Putin's Pawns.

[NOVA Green]

Meanwhile in the trenches... take it with a grain of salt or two but still...

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1579565983647559680?s=20&t=ABGvY-jMK0...

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1579565999044452354?s=20&t=ABGvY-jMK0...

[NOVA Green]

Now let's go back briefly to the Kerch Bridge Explosion, that might well be the equivalent of the Kennedy Assassination decades later for future generations...

Interesting thread... but just linking to the Finnish Military Guy, so something to put in your collective Gandalf Hobbit Pipes to ponder over...

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1579511898080321538?s=20&t=ABGvY-jMK0...

[Storr]

[Presumably mobilized] Tuvans express their unhappiness with equipment they receive. Fun fact: Tuva was an independent country until the Soviet Union annexed it in 1944. https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1579710488354906112?s=20&t=iizYXv3WlbR...

[CumbrianLefty]

Well it was "officially" independent from 1921-44 but in reality a Soviet vassal.

But yeah, I have a globe from the inter war years that shows it in its full glory

Will be remembered by philatelists for the several exotic postage stamps produced on its behalf.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

[Presumably mobilized] Tuvans express their unhappiness with equipment they receive. Fun fact: Tuva was an independent country until the Soviet Union annexed it in 1944. https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1579710488354906112?s=20&t=iizYXv3WlbR...

For all the talk of the balkanisation of Russia, Tuva is one of many formerly colonised regions which probably couldn’t succeed as a state in the modern era. Only ~300k people and entirely landlocked, it’d likely be a vassal of Russia and a prime target for violent irredentism. I do it it could resist as well as Chechnya did. The only other country bordering it would be Mongolia.

[Person Man]

[Presumably mobilized] Tuvans express their unhappiness with equipment they receive. Fun fact: Tuva was an independent country until the Soviet Union annexed it in 1944. https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1579710488354906112?s=20&t=iizYXv3WlbR...

For all the talk of the balkanisation of Russia, Tuva is one of many formerly colonised regions which probably couldn’t succeed as a state in the modern era. Only ~300k people and entirely landlocked, it’d likely be a vassal of Russia and a prime target for violent irredentism. I do it it could resist as well as Chechnya did. The only other country bordering it would be Mongolia.

Would Mongolia be a better fit?

[Lord Halifax]

[Presumably mobilized] Tuvans express their unhappiness with equipment they receive. Fun fact: Tuva was an independent country until the Soviet Union annexed it in 1944. https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1579710488354906112?s=20&t=iizYXv3WlbR...

For all the talk of the balkanisation of Russia, Tuva is one of many formerly colonised regions which probably couldn’t succeed as a state in the modern era. Only ~300k people and entirely landlocked, it’d likely be a vassal of Russia and a prime target for violent irredentism. I do it it could resist as well as Chechnya did. The only other country bordering it would be Mongolia.

they'd be better off as an autonomous region of Mongolia.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

I don’t think there are that many Tuvans in Mongolia and Mongolia would be extremely reluctant to absorb an area it probably couldn’t defend from Russia.

[jaichind]

Just to be clear.  The official ROC position is that Tannu Tuva which we call 唐努烏梁海 is part of Outer Mongolia which is a part of ROC.