Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[pppolitics]

https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1508590366387228685

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

The half a trillion in losses is pretty brutal especially as Ukraine's last GDP was only just over $150 billion. That's more than three years it cost them. Of course they'll get immense foreign aid and investment following this. Ideally Russia should pay reparations...maybe that could be a condition for lifting sanctions.

There is probably going to be a US, UK and EU funded Ukrainian rebuilding plan. It would take massive humanitarian investment to rebuild the county. It could end being like the Marshall Plan after WW2.

[Frodo]

https://twitter.com/MaximColch/status/1508461578416496643
what

https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1508465158703796231

That should be the last time Ukrainians ever negotiate with the Russians, at least directly. 

[Storr]

The half a trillion in losses is pretty brutal especially as Ukraine's last GDP was only just over $150 billion. That's more than three years it cost them. Of course they'll get immense foreign aid and investment following this. Ideally Russia should pay reparations...maybe that could be a condition for lifting sanctions.

There is probably going to be a US, UK and EU funded Ukrainian rebuilding plan. It would take massive humanitarian investment to rebuild the county. It could end being like the Marshall Plan after WW2.

It can't really be compared to the reconstruction after the Yugoslav Wars because at its peak, Yugoslavia only had a population of 23 million. Ukraine has almost twice that population (including Crimea). Mariupol alone had a population nearly 50,000 people larger than Sarajevo. The Marshall plan really is the only modern European postwar reconstruction effort comparable in scale to what will be necessary in Ukraine. The Soviet model of reconstruction relying heavily on POWs is probably not politically viable these days.

[It’s so Joever]

When Mariupol falls it definitely could be a major turning point. Russians have taken the majority of the city, although fighting likely is still ongoing.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/28/europe/mariupol-mayor-ukraine-occupiers-intl/index.html

[NOVA Green]

Don't believe it has been mentioned yet, but looks like Russia might have destroyed yet another Holocaust Memorial as part of their "Denazification Campaign"

https://twitter.com/NikaMelkozerova/status/1507667886374014978?s=20&t=cmDjMq...

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/27/world/ukraine-russia-war/ukraine-says-russia-struck-a-holocaust-memorial

[It’s so Joever]

Don't believe it has been mentioned yet, but looks like Russia might have destroyed yet another Holocaust Memorial as part of their "Denazification Campaign"

https://twitter.com/NikaMelkozerova/status/1507667886374014978?s=20&t=cmDjMq...

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/27/world/ukraine-russia-war/ukraine-says-russia-struck-a-holocaust-memorial

No I think y’all misunderstood.

Putin never said denazification campaign, he said The nazification campaign.

[NOVA Green]

Looks like there might be some underground diplomacy going on in of all places Israel...

Diplomats from Israel, the U.S. and four Arab countries meet, in part, to hash out differences over the war in Ukraine.

For all its powerful geopolitical symbolism, the first-ever multilateral Arab-Israeli summit on Israeli soil was a largely transactional affair.

But the real business of the hastily arranged summit on Monday was urgent diplomacy, spurred by the war in Ukraine and the pending nuclear agreement with Iran: The United States wanted to press Israel and four Arab countries to take a harder line against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, while they in turn wanted American assurances that Iran would be constrained.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/28/world/ukraine-russia-war/diplomats-from-israel-the-us-and-four-arab-countries-meet-in-part-to-hash-out-differences-over-the-war-in-ukraine

[NOVA Green]

Not mentioned yet on this thread, but regardless of Finnish Company pulling out of Russia, still their technology which has been used to track and monitor Russian dissidents, including Navalny, still remains:

When Nokia pulled out of Russia, a vast surveillance system remained.


Nokia said this month that it would stop its sales in Russia and denounced the invasion of Ukraine. But the Finnish company didn’t mention what it was leaving behind: equipment and software connecting the government’s most powerful tool for digital surveillance to the nation’s largest telecommunications network.

The tool was used to track supporters of the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny. Investigators said it had intercepted the phone calls of a Kremlin foe who was later assassinated. Called the System for Operative Investigative Activities, or SORM, it is also most likely being employed at this moment as President Vladimir V. Putin culls and silences antiwar voices inside Russia.

For more than five years, Nokia provided equipment and services to link SORM to Russia’s largest telecom service provider, MTS, according to company documents obtained by The New York Times. While Nokia does not make the tech that intercepts communications, the documents lay out how it worked with state-linked Russian companies to plan, streamline and troubleshoot the SORM system’s connection to the MTS network. Russia’s main intelligence service, the F.S.B., uses SORM to listen in on phone conversations, intercept emails and text messages, and track other internet communications.

....

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/28/technology/nokia-russia-surveillance-system-sorm.html

[Hindsight was 2020]

When Mariupol falls it definitely could be a major turning point. Russians have taken the majority of the city, although fighting likely is still ongoing.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/28/europe/mariupol-mayor-ukraine-occupiers-intl/index.html

With all do respect forumlurker you have been predicting the war turning in Russia’s favor for weeks now and it never comes to pass. While you never count your chickens before they hatch it becomes harder and harder with all the stuff we have seen and read about the ground to actually see how Russia can change momentum in their favor

[NOVA Green]

Not mentioned yet on this thread, but regardless of Finnish Company pulling out of Russia, still their technology which has been used to track and monitor Russian dissidents, including Navalny, still remains:

When Nokia pulled out of Russia, a vast surveillance system remained.


Nokia said this month that it would stop its sales in Russia and denounced the invasion of Ukraine. But the Finnish company didn’t mention what it was leaving behind: equipment and software connecting the government’s most powerful tool for digital surveillance to the nation’s largest telecommunications network.

The tool was used to track supporters of the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny. Investigators said it had intercepted the phone calls of a Kremlin foe who was later assassinated. Called the System for Operative Investigative Activities, or SORM, it is also most likely being employed at this moment as President Vladimir V. Putin culls and silences antiwar voices inside Russia.

For more than five years, Nokia provided equipment and services to link SORM to Russia’s largest telecom service provider, MTS, according to company documents obtained by The New York Times. While Nokia does not make the tech that intercepts communications, the documents lay out how it worked with state-linked Russian companies to plan, streamline and troubleshoot the SORM system’s connection to the MTS network. Russia’s main intelligence service, the F.S.B., uses SORM to listen in on phone conversations, intercept emails and text messages, and track other internet communications.

....

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/28/technology/nokia-russia-surveillance-system-sorm.html

BUMP... This is a huge article and am naturally limited, but really anybody out there who is interested in how this technology has been used and is currently being used to target Russian dissidents, really needs to pay a few $$$ to read.

Global Capitalism has no borders, and in most cases very little ethics.

Putin's Russia did not independently produce all of the technologies, military hardware, financial support to be able to build up this massive war machine.

"War Pigs" have no distinction between the international border between nations, global financial investors no real interests between international borders, technology trade across borders no problem with no morality so long as the "Capitalist Class" with their venture capitalists and tech sector.

There is no morality when it comes to morally bankrupt global capitalist enterprises, while meanwhile workers pension funds are caught up into complex baskets, with the vast majority of us having absolutely no idea where our $$$ are being invested.

Sickened to sea Nokia from Finland effectively using similar types of tracking tech to target Russian dissidents, almost akin to some of the worst tracking tech that the US provided to 3rd World Fascist Dictatorships from 1960-1980, where many political dissidents were tortured and murdered.

[2952-0-0]

Sickened to sea Nokia from Finland effectively using similar types of tracking tech to target Russian dissidents, almost akin to some of the worst tracking tech that the US provided to 3rd World Fascist Dictatorships from 1960-1980, where many political dissidents were tortured and murdered.

It's not historical. The surveillance system in China that enabled the mass internment of Uyghurs would not have been possible without microchips produced with technology from western-aligned countries, and AI software provided by US companies. To his credit, Trump enacted restrictions on such transfers, but not before a lot of damage was done.

[NOVA Green]

Meanwhile looks like Russian cyber hacking warfare has been compromised.

Apologies can only quote a small % of the article, but still informative regardless, so please subscribe to an Independent Journalist outfit in order to read in full...

Secret World of Pro-Russia Hacking Group Exposed in Leak

A Ukrainian researcher revealed the operations of Trickbot, one of the most powerful cybercriminal enterprises with its Conti ransomware, after the group defended Russia; chats range from hospital attack plan to hackers grousing about vacation

In a secret chat room run by a group of Russian-affiliated cybercriminals, a hacker expressed excitement about a plan to attack and disable more than 400 U.S. hospitals. “There will be panic,” the hacker wrote, in Russian.

It was 2020, at a severe point in the pandemic, and the gang planned to hold hostage the computer systems of the hospitals, many of which were fighting to save Covid-19 patients.

U.S. authorities and cybersecurity researchers foiled large parts of the plan, warning hospitals before the hackers’ ransomware could be installed, but the hackers shrugged off the setback, according to a cache of data and documents leaked online in recent weeks.

The hacking enterprise, called the Trickbot Group by federal prosecutors, and its affiliates had already collected hundreds of millions of dollars by shutting down emergency rooms, city governments and public schools since 2018.

“I find it all funny,” wrote a Trickbot hacker who used the pseudonym “target,” in a message, after the plan was thwarted, to “stern,” the group’s leader and paymaster.

This wide-open view of the inner workings of what is perhaps the world’s biggest and most dangerous organized cybercrime group is a surprising consequence of the war in Ukraine. An anonymous researcher who had infiltrated the group’s servers, and who identified himself as Ukrainian, posted the data on Twitter on Feb. 27. “Ukraine will Rise!” he then wrote in a March 2 tweet.

Security researchers and U.S. officials say the internal conversations amount to the most complete and candid public look yet at the operations of a criminal ransomware enterprise. U.S. authorities have been tracking the Trickbot group, but little was known publicly about its operations and internal deliberations before the cache of documents surfaced.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trickbot-pro-russia-hacking-gang-documents-ukrainian-leaker-conti-11648480564

[Frodo]

The video of UA soldiers kneecapping Russian POWs is looking more genuine after some work done by the OSINT community.

If Ukraine does not crack down on this, good luck getting more soldiers to surrender after they have seen videos of torture/mistreatment.

Thread below:

https://twitter.com/zcjbrooker/status/1508114632673828867

Before we get too teary-eyed about abused Russian POWs:

A Ukrainian woman recounts being raped by the Russian soldiers who killed her husband: 'Shall we kill her or keep her alive?'

We from the comfort and safety of home have no idea what is going through the minds of their captors or what they witnessed and experienced, so let us not judge them too harshly.  

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

The video of UA soldiers kneecapping Russian POWs is looking more genuine after some work done by the OSINT community.

If Ukraine does not crack down on this, good luck getting more soldiers to surrender after they have seen videos of torture/mistreatment.

Thread below:

https://twitter.com/zcjbrooker/status/1508114632673828867

Before we get too teary-eyed about abused Russian POWs:

A Ukrainian woman recounts being raped by the Russian soldiers who killed her husband: 'Shall we kill her or keep her alive?'

We from the comfort and safety of home have no idea what is going through the minds of their captors or what they witnessed and experienced, so let us not judge them too harshly. 

Mm, no, brutalizing prisoners is brutalizing prisoners. Not that one or a few instances of it amount to so much as a drop in the bucket when it comes to which side in this war is right and which is wrong overall, but even one confirmed case of it is one too many for a minimally civilized military, and I hope these soldiers are punished to the fullest extent of Ukraine's military law.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The video of UA soldiers kneecapping Russian POWs is looking more genuine after some work done by the OSINT community.

If Ukraine does not crack down on this, good luck getting more soldiers to surrender after they have seen videos of torture/mistreatment.

Thread below:

https://twitter.com/zcjbrooker/status/1508114632673828867

Before we get too teary-eyed about abused Russian POWs:

A Ukrainian woman recounts being raped by the Russian soldiers who killed her husband: 'Shall we kill her or keep her alive?'

We from the comfort and safety of home have no idea what is going through the minds of their captors or what they witnessed and experienced, so let us not judge them too harshly. 

Mm, no, brutalizing prisoners is brutalizing prisoners. Not that one or a few instances of it amount to so much as a drop in the bucket when it comes to which side in this war is right and which is wrong overall, but even one confirmed case of it is one too many for a minimally civilized military, and I hope these soldiers are punished to the fullest extent of Ukraine's military law.

If Ukraine brutalizes Russian prisoners, then Putin has still more propaganda material to work with.

[NOVA Green]

The video of UA soldiers kneecapping Russian POWs is looking more genuine after some work done by the OSINT community.

If Ukraine does not crack down on this, good luck getting more soldiers to surrender after they have seen videos of torture/mistreatment.

Thread below:

https://twitter.com/zcjbrooker/status/1508114632673828867

Before we get too teary-eyed about abused Russian POWs:

A Ukrainian woman recounts being raped by the Russian soldiers who killed her husband: 'Shall we kill her or keep her alive?'

We from the comfort and safety of home have no idea what is going through the minds of their captors or what they witnessed and experienced, so let's pause before we judge them too harshly.  

Umm.. you are probably way way too young to remember the fake stories about Iraqi Soldiers throwing babies out of Incubators during Iraq War 1.0?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1994/02/26/the-kuwaiti-incubator-hoax/35b1e882-f796-4acb-a106-9280a7dda521/

https://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html

Although I am 100% in agreement that Putin has committed War Crimes in Ukraine, I tend to be very skeptical when it comes to unverified claims about atrocities designed to influence public opinion within Europe, the United States, as well as places such as Australia and Canada.

Not that isn't implausible, but still....

[Middle-aged Europe]

Russia continues to threaten an oil and gas embargo of the EU (if they don't start to pay in rubles):


https://twitter.com/RusEmbassyJ/status/1508692063101267970


Still an rather odd position to take considering that they would do those in the EU/Germany a favour who are arguing for an embargo themselves. It's not a threat, it's tipping the scales.

[Yoda]

The video of UA soldiers kneecapping Russian POWs is looking more genuine after some work done by the OSINT community.

If Ukraine does not crack down on this, good luck getting more soldiers to surrender after they have seen videos of torture/mistreatment.

Thread below:

https://twitter.com/zcjbrooker/status/1508114632673828867

I agree. This was going to happen sooner or later though. The Ukrainians can only watch civilians getting shot standing in breadlines, and babies and women get bombed to death for so long before they can't resist the urge to retaliate in kind. It's a shame that certain vile republican House members will use this as a reason to 'both sides' the war when the atrocities are almost entirely one-sided.

[Omega21]

I agree. This was going to happen sooner or later though. The Ukrainians can only watch civilians getting shot standing in breadlines, and babies and women get bombed to death for so long before they can't resist the urge to retaliate in kind. It's a shame that certain vile republican House members will use this as a reason to 'both sides' the war when the atrocities are almost entirely one-sided.

That's the whole point of being a professional soldier, not giving into animalistic instincts & emotions on the battlefield. War crime apologism is never really the morally right thing, no matter who's doing it and who it's being done to.

I don't care how many rockets Putin launches, it does not justify summary executions and barbaric torture of soldiers who laid down their weapons, especially when you consider the fact the ones who are giving up are more likely to give a rats ass about Putin's grandiose endeavor and just want the war to end for them.

[Meclazine for Israel]

This is what was/is being done with Starstreak MANPADS.

I am really scared about the proposition of typing "Starstreak Manpads" into Google.

[jaichind]

Ukraine says the conditions are there for a Putin-Zelensky meeting.  IFX reports that Russia will greatly reduce military activity around Kiev.

[jaichind]

Medinsky also comments that Putin-Zelensky meeting is now possible, echoing what the Ukrainians are saying.  Oil falls while equities rally.

[jaichind]

There were some recent comments from Zelensky about being flexible on the topics of the sovereignty of Crimea and Donetsk region.  Given Zelensky already agreed to neutrality and no NATO for Ukraine weeks I suspect Zelensky giving ground on these matters might be the breakthrough for Russia to grab onto this to get a deal and get itself out of this mess.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Oh god Zelensky please don’t. If he gives up 1 yard of Ukraine soil he’ll just be inviting Putin to try this again in the future and would effectively kill the UN charter which forbids the seizure of land via force