Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[pppolitics]

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/07/europe/ukraine-hotline-russian-soldiers-intl-cmd/index.html

[CumbrianLefty]

This sounds like a false-flag set up for something horrible:
https://twitter.com/xsovietnews/status/1500856307171135501?s=21
I mean WMD-usage levels of horrible.

So yet another risibly transparent, utterly unbelievable Russian "false flag" which literally nobody out there save for the most brainwashed Putinists will even pretend to believe.

Seriously, what's the point?

And tbh I don't see it as genuine intent to unleash chemical warfare on resisting Ukrainians (which would surely not go unresponed to in some way) rather than more totally desperate flailing to shore up justification for a war which is going worse for them than most on both sides predicted.

[dead0man]

https://twitter.com/bpolitics/status/1500932401215819779

I'm no fan of Iran, but why are they so far ahead of Syria?  A nuclear program is a bad thing and a potential tragedy, but what Syria has been doing is, ya know, actually happening.

[CumbrianLefty]

Iran occupies a special case in US demonology that Syria doesn't?

[(no subject)]

Because Iran took USians hostage once.. the USA never forgives you if you humiliate them.

[MATTROSE94]

Because Iran took USians hostage once.. the USA never forgives you if you humiliate them.

I feel that the hostage crisis was justified given that the US and Israel were planning a counter coup at the time to bring the Shah back into power.

[(no subject)]

Because Iran took USians hostage once.. the USA never forgives you if you humiliate them.

I feel that the hostage crisis was justified given that the US and Israel were planning a counter coup at the time to bring the Shah back into power.

Although Khomeini was a scumbag and his ideology scummy. as most Iranian women will attest for a start. As with the pervy Castro brothers, anti USA arseholes are not any less nasty just because they are anti USA.

[CumbrianLefty]

Though many Iranians still preferred him to the Shah, which tells its own story.

Anyway, lets not get too far off topic eh

[(no subject)]

we need more people today to think like 10 year old female humans did 40 years ago: https://www.beta.facebook.com/SamanthaSmithINFO/

[sguberman]

https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1501191205727739917

[CumbrianLefty]

we need more people today to think like 10 year old female humans did 40 years ago: https://www.beta.facebook.com/SamanthaSmithINFO/

Surprised her death at 13 in a plane crash hasn't caused more conspiracy theories tbh.

[It’s so Joever]

More complex version of Russian-Ukrainian relations from Odessa, and perhaps indicative of what Russian troops might face as an occupying army in the future courtesy of The Economist:

Sorry don't want to overquote....

"Odessa finds its Ukrainian identity ahead of a Russian advance

But some continue to look both ways

NEON SIGNS advertising oysters and sparkling wine speak of an era that ended abruptly on the morning of February 24th, when Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. The Odessa Food Market on Richelievska Street was once a place of hipsters and flat whites. For 12 days now, it has served as a logistical hub for the war effort. It’s a hive of activity, with dozens of yellow-jacketed volunteers buzzing between the market’s two floors. They sort donations—from food rations and medicine to tampons and shampoo—onto shelves ready to be taken to the front lines. Time may be of the essence, they say. So far the city has been spared violence, though there have been some attacks in its surrounding region. But on March 6th President Volodymyr Zelensky warned of intelligence indicating an imminent rocket-led attack on Ukraine’s third city.

Odessa, a cosmopolitan port founded in 1794 by Catherine the Great on the coast of the Black Sea, would be a big prize for Mr Putin. The city is both a strategic military prize and an important commercial centre. It has huge symbolic value, too: it holds a treasured place in Russia’s history and culture. Odessa featured prominently in Mr Putin’s rambling speech of February 21st, which laid the ground for the invasion. He specifically mentioned the events of May 2nd 2014, when 48 mostly pro-Russian protesters died in the city after clashes with Ukrainian nationalists. It appears that Mr Putin believed that his invasion would find support among the local population. But if it was a debatable proposition then, it is much harder to believe today.

The city, like the food market, has been transformed by war. From an unsentimental place reluctant to take sides, it is now adorned in yellow and blue. Ukrainian flags fly from every street corner, from cars, from apartments. The city’s diverse populations—intellectuals, gangsters, artists, workers—are pulling together ahead of the expected attack. Young volunteers pack sandbags at the beach. Engineers at the tram depot make anti-tank “hedgehogs” from old bits of rail. Some of these barricades have been installed on Deribasovskaya Street, Odessa's central boulevard, and around the nearby opera house and municipal buildings. As bloggers have noted, the scene has more in common with black-and-white prints from the second world war than it does with the reality of just two weeks ago.

Odessa’s heroic struggle against Nazi barbarism—the city lived through a siege, occupation and the mass murder of its Jews—has become a galvanising memory. It is being invoked in the most unexpected of quarters. Gennadiy Trukhanov, the city’s bruiser of a mayor, a man long accused of rooting for Russia, tells The Economist that he believes Mr Putin’s men are “behaving like fascists”. The indiscriminate bombing of residential districts and churches in Kharkiv and Mariupol in the Russian-speaking east is unforgivable, he says. The ferocity of the attacks has shattered any previous illusions he might have had. Mr Putin has become drunk on power and fame. “He seems to think he has supernatural powers.”

The invasion has united most strands of Odessa’s usually fractious politics. Mr Trukhanov not only finds himself acting in unison with political opponents, but also with the city’s usually disapproving intellectuals. They express mild bewilderment at the alliance. Speaking at his bungalow on the outskirts of the city, Boris Khersonsky, a writer and poet, argues that the mayor’s patriotic realignment was partly situational—”Authenticity and Trukhanov do not always go together,” he says—and partly reflects a genuine shift in the Russian-speaking population. Even before February 24th, Odessans were turning their back on Russia, put off by its draconian laws, the banning of free speech, and by “a time machine that only goes backwards”. After 12 days of war, the poet predicts, they will not be waiting for Mr Putin's soldiers with flowers.

...."





https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/03/07/odessa-finds-its-ukrainian-identity-ahead-of-a-russian-advance

Anyway to get around the paywall?

Pay for it.

This isn’t very #populist of you, I’m disappointed.

[Storr]

Me and the boys on the way to Myrtle Beach:

https://twitter.com/NotWoofers/status/1501199000233467905?s=20&t=SRCGwXb5uOn...

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Because Iran took USians hostage once.. the USA never forgives you if you humiliate them.

I feel that the hostage crisis was justified given that the US and Israel were planning a counter coup at the time to bring the Shah back into power.

Although Khomeini was a scumbag and his ideology scummy. as most Iranian women will attest for a start. As with the pervy Castro brothers, anti USA arseholes are not any less nasty just because they are anti USA.

Too many people on the far left seem to forget this point.

[MATTROSE94]

Because Iran took USians hostage once.. the USA never forgives you if you humiliate them.

I feel that the hostage crisis was justified given that the US and Israel were planning a counter coup at the time to bring the Shah back into power.

Although Khomeini was a scumbag and his ideology scummy. as most Iranian women will attest for a start. As with the pervy Castro brothers, anti USA arseholes are not any less nasty just because they are anti USA.

Too many people on the far left seem to forget this point.

Ayatollah Khomeini was an improvement over the Shah, who killed 60,000-70,000 innocent Iranian people. Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei only killed around 8,000-9,500 Iranian civilians during their times in power.

[WMS]

This sounds like a false-flag set up for something horrible:
https://twitter.com/xsovietnews/status/1500856307171135501?s=21
I mean WMD-usage levels of horrible.

So yet another risibly transparent, utterly unbelievable Russian "false flag" which literally nobody out there save for the most brainwashed Putinists will even pretend to believe.

Seriously, what's the point?

And tbh I don't see it as genuine intent to unleash chemical warfare on resisting Ukrainians (which would surely not go unresponed to in some way) rather than more totally desperate flailing to shore up justification for a war which is going worse for them than most on both sides predicted.

I was thinking more along the lines of Russia staging a false flag WMD attack on some poor conscripts or even Russian civilians somewhere and using that as justification for even more atrocities. But given the chemical attacks that happened in Syria that were never sufficiently punished, the Russians might think they could get away with it.

Russia, for the third time in a row, shell the humanitarian corridor out of Mariupol:
https://twitter.com/olegnikolenko_/status/1501148170910322692?s=21
https://twitter.com/ksergatskova/status/1501156669354655744?s=21
That second tweet contains a few “both sides/what about” types that just remind me of why I despise that position so much.

The actual reason Putin didn’t invade Ukraine under Trump:
https://twitter.com/muellershewrote/status/1500921863483969540?s=21

A Finnish leftist who supports Finland entering NATO gives a good historical rundown on why:
https://twitter.com/jmkorhonen/status/1501189477259264013?s=21

On more promising news, looks like 40,000 military and ex-military foreign fighters have made it into Ukraine and maybe to Kyiv:
https://twitter.com/itsdeanblundell/status/1500970343204274182?s=21

[Silent Hunter]

What about Iraqi civilians?

[Storr]

Yep, it's time for Ukraine to surrender. There's no way they're defeating an army led by *checks notes* a guy that collects wood.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1501197684119642112?s=20&t=C2kIPBX...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ayatollah Khomeini was an improvement over the Shah, who killed 60,000-70,000 innocent Iranian people. Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei only killed around 8,000-9,500 Iranian civilians during their times in power.

This is all wildly off topic, but you are talking absolute shit here as usual. The most credible estimate for the number of political prisoners (largely left-wingers; in fact most of the active Iranian political Left) murdered in the massacres of 1988 is about 30,000.

[pppolitics]

https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1501170083976126464

Is that for real?

[WMS]

Because Iran took USians hostage once.. the USA never forgives you if you humiliate them.

I feel that the hostage crisis was justified given that the US and Israel were planning a counter coup at the time to bring the Shah back into power.

Although Khomeini was a scumbag and his ideology scummy. as most Iranian women will attest for a start. As with the pervy Castro brothers, anti USA arseholes are not any less nasty just because they are anti USA.

Too many people on the far left seem to forget this point.

Ayatollah Khomeini was an improvement over the Shah, who killed 60,000-70,000 innocent Iranian people. Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei only killed around 8,000-9,500 Iranian civilians during their times in power.

There were better options than those two. People keep forgetting that the Iranian Revolution overthrew the Shah, but that the Islamic Revolution overthrew the revolutionaries and put Khomeini in power, similar to how the February Revolution overthrew the Czar but the October Revolution overthrew the revolutionaries and put Lenin in power.

[pppolitics]

https://twitter.com/LostWeapons/status/1500417894491983876

[Sir Mohamed]

https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1501170083976126464

Is this for real?

I think it's more likely to be fake than not, tbh. At least needs further validation. That said, I wouldn't be that surprised to find out it's real. It's for sure obvious Russians and Mr. Putin in particular don't give a damn about their soldiers, who are sent to die for nothing. They're not even moving the dead bodies back to Russia. We're moving heaven and earth to return dead soldiers back home to America.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Yep, it's time for Ukraine to surrender. There's no way they're defeating an army led by *checks notes* a guy that collects wood.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1501197684119642112?s=20&t=C2kIPBX...

I’m glad a powerful man picked such an innocent/non-decadent hobby for once. It beats taxpayer-funded racing cars, castles and prostitution.

[Sir Mohamed]

https://twitter.com/LostWeapons/status/1500417894491983876

Is it even confirmed this is the Russian army moving stuff? Almost hard to believe they're that inept and pathetic.