Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[GoTfan]

It's a good thing compucomp is here because he can give us a look at what the latest CCP talking point is.

He can't. He wants the CCP to be more pro-Putin than it actually is to own the "Global North", because the Global South is supposed to be pleased about a country being violently colonised by a larger, richer powerhouse. There's definitely no parallels between Russia and other failing Western powers screwing up the invasion and occupation of various poorer and smaller countries.

I'm more than ready to criticise the West, everyone on here knows that, but I'd rather have the Americans and EU running things than the Russians or CCP.

[Splash]

https://twitter.com/BowenBBC/status/1510738861286113282

[NOVA Green]

Russian verifiable losses of tanks and AFVs continue to mount...

https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1510714601423446016?s=20&t=D2IXdK...

https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1510716209918001160?s=20&t=D2IXdK...

[NOVA Green]

Meanwhile from one of my Australian Twitter dudes, who appears to have a bit of a background and might know a thing or two....

https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1510736410868785154?s=20&t=D2IXdKA...

[NOVA Green]

Is this the state of the modern Russian Air Force???

https://twitter.com/COUPSURE/status/1510728612093304843?s=20&t=D2IXdKAUmC2hf...

[Omega21]

Is this the state of the modern Russian Air Force???

https://twitter.com/COUPSURE/status/1510728612093304843?s=20&t=D2IXdKAUmC2hf...

The An2 planes are often used as bait for AA.

An2 goes in (remote control or autopilot), AA battery locks on and shoots, and an ARM-equipped plane in the back goes in to take out the AA battery.

Azerbaijan also used them in a similar fashion I believe.

The latest situation report from Maxar, also shared by The Aviationist, posits that the An-2s “have likely been converted to drones and could be used as decoys to simulate helicopter or UAV formations to draw out Ukraine’s air defenses.” This could also be related to the reported appearance of undisclosed electronic warfare aircraft that arrived at Seshcha in the middle of last month. Those aircraft could potentially be used together with the An-2s as part of a wider assault on Ukraine’s ground-based air defense network which has remained relatively intact against great odds.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44532/russia-appears-to-be-preparing-its-ancient-an-2-biplanes-for-war-in-ukraine

[Storr]

As you'd guess by the name, the SVT-40 is a WWII weapon.

There were only 1.5 million made, which is pretty low for Soviet production rifles. The Soviets liked to produce millions and millions of their rifles.

https://twitter.com/NotWoofers/status/1510778974321922053?s=20&t=t9ZEq7Xb8XW...

[NOVA Green]

Yet more evidence of Russian War Crimes committed in Ukraine from The Economist.

Biden Administration pre-war warnings about "Russian hit lists" appears to have been taking place, and as more and more bodies are uncovered the extent of the atrocities will become more visible (Not just the "Dumb Bombs" and "Dumb Artillery" shells that reign havoc from the skies...

“YES, THAT is him,” says Zoya Merchynskaya, peering into the drain where her husband’s body had been dumped. “You can see his tattoo.” She steps away and covers her face. She returns and looks down again. Hennadiy Merchynskyi, aged 44, was slumped in a sitting position, immersed in dirty water up to his waist; murdered, it seems, by Russian soldiers. His torso was naked. A black strap was fastened around his neck. “They did not take his ring.” She sounds relieved.

Mr Merchynskyi was killed in the village of Motyzhyn, 50km to the west of Kyiv. He had been a member of the volunteer Territorial Defence Force. Mrs Merchynskaya said that he had been arrested by Russian troops along with an old man who was later released, and that she believed they had killed her husband after finding photographs of destroyed Russian tanks on his phone.

The Russians took control of Motyzhyn on February 26th and left on March 28th. Villagers there say that, during their month-long occupation, some soldiers had been sleeping in a big unfinished villa, in the garden of which Mr Merchynskyi’s remains were found. Two hundred metres away in a wood is a sandy pit where they buried Olha Sukhenko, the mayor of Motyzhyn, her husband, her son and one other man. Locals say the mayor had been arrested on March 23rd.

Their bodies were exhumed soon after Ukrainian control was restored. All appear to have been blindfolded. Ms Sukhenko’s earrings, a ring and her bloodied chest were visible. A local security official said he believed that Russian troops had tried to get the mayor to cooperate with them. When she refused, they murdered her and her family.

https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/04/03/retreating-russian-troops-leave-behind-harrowing-evidence-of-atrocities

[Logical]

Russia still does not understand that the Warsaw Pact is seen by Eastern Europeans not as a time of prosperity but a time of misery under the Russian boot.
https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/1510753447116623875

[NOVA Green]

Wagner Group mercs in Ukraine will likely have little impact in the war, per The Economist.

Very long article, but regardless of units active in the D&L Ukrainian provinces, doesn't really look like much meat on the bone, perhaps more akin to the handful of "foreign volunteers" who have headed to Ukraine to fight against the Russian Invasion and Occupation...

In Ukraine today, Mr Putin can no longer hope for deniability from Wagner, nor for much benefit from another service he prizes from mercenaries—lowered casualty counts among soldiers whose families might wonder why their loved ones were sacrificed. Since Russia already has some 190,000 troops in Ukraine, even a few thousand Wagner mercenaries have small chance of changing the outcome of the war. But they may make its conduct still more savage. For service in Ukraine, Russian recruiters have reached out to those who were turned down in the past for having too little experience or suspect backgrounds. “They’re taking anyone and everyone,” says Ilya Rozhdestvensky, a Russian journalist with long experience tracking mercenaries.

Reports of Wagner’s arrival in Ukraine appeared just days after the invasion. Ukraine’s security services announced that mercenaries had been dispatched to Kyiv to assassinate Volodymyr Zelensky, the president, and other senior officials. Yet there has been no independent confirmation of those claims, and analysts and journalists who track the group reckon that their use for such a sensitive mission is improbable. Mercenaries do not appear to be fighting alongside the regular Russian army units that invaded from Russia, Belarus and Crimea. Ukrainian security services have released information about only two fighters with Wagner connections among the scores of Russians taken prisoner; even those men said that though they fought with the group in the past, they came to Ukraine with the regular Russian army.

Instead, mercenaries are reportedly being channelled into the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk that were already occupied, to reinforce separatist units trying to break through established Ukrainian lines. The British Ministry of Defence said on March 28th that it expected Wagner to deploy more than 1,000 mercenaries in eastern Ukraine, including senior leaders.

[sting in the rafters]

Did most Hungarians forget whom their chopper club sponsor is? Guy needs to stop talking rah rah and stop being such a freeloader. Never thought I'd see the day where I'd want them outta NATO before Turkey, at least Erdogan's giving them drones!

[Karpatsky]

-

This is cute, but it assumes the operators of nuclear weapons are and will remain rational actors with perfect communication. States may be, but people - not constructs - cause nuclear holocausts. Look at the Cuban missile crisis - US ships tried to signal with fake depth charges that a Soviet submarine could surface, but the operators thought they were real depth charges. Days spent going mad underwater almost led to a nuclear launch, and once that had happened, hysteria - and with it, the risk of a world war - would have spiked. IMO it still wouldn't have happened, but the chance was too high to afford.

Nevertheless, your last line makes an unfortunate amount of sense. If the nuclear deterrent is repeatedly abused, there will be a renewed push to develop defences against nuclear weapons (which, in turn, encourages the early use of nuclear weapons).

All action is communication, and I of course agree with you that to avoid conflict, communication should be as clear as possible. That is exactly why - entirely besides the humanitarian consequences of failing to substantially escalate efforts to help Ukraine, whether or not that involves direct intervention - the west's current course of failing to communicate deterrence is so dangerous when taking the long view. At every step of the way since 2008, we have been teaching the Russians that we are not going to respond proportionally to their aggression.

And that encourages even more aggression, which greatly increases the chance - at some point in history, whether with the Russians, Chinese, or some other actor - that we will end up in a crisis with higher stakes, larger risks, and worse mutual understanding of each other's intentions and red lines. Don't forget that the Cuban Missile Crisis only happened in the first place because Khrushchev believed Kennedy was too weak to resist it based on his response to the Berlin Crisis.

We shouldn't be here in the first place, because we should have given Ukraine concrete security guarantees and placed tripwire forces in country in 2015. Or, really, in 2005. But the same people who are now telling us that the logic of deterrence - the only thing in human history which has reliably prevented war - is 'cute' said it would 'provoke' the Russians. And now here we are.

[NOVA Green]

Assuming this is recent looks like Ukrainian drones just took about a Russian armored convoy around Mykolaiv.

Now that the Russian Army is in full retreat on Northern Front, maybe some of the newer hardware is starting to show up on the Southern and Eastern Fronts?

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1510776248657760257?s=20&t=D2IXdKAUmC2h...

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1510776248657760257?s=20&t=D2IXdKAUmC2hfryfnkLmVA

Meanwhile humor me for a brief "Music Video" interlude from an American "Soft Rock" / "Country Singer" from the 1950's.

The Ballad of New Orleans reminds me a little bit about how 30-40 years after American Independence from the British Empire how their forces were defeated despite attacking and sacking the capitol of DC...

Similarities between Russia and Ukraine abound when looking at how the "Mother Country" has effectively been defeated in an attempt to completely subjugate a "Colonial Nation", which simply demanded their own independence and freedom.

The sheer fact that despite most military analysts and Western Governments expected Ukraine to fall within three weeks, and now effectively Russian Troops have been chased down across the border to Belarus, while meanwhile Ukrainian counterattacks continue within the NE and regions around Kherson is not a victory.

[Karpatsky]

The coward's way out?

How dare you.

I've had ancestors fought and killed at the hands of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. I had an uncle who narrowly avoided being sent to Vietnam. His friends? Not so lucky.

I get it, it's trendy to call cautious people cowards, but be careful about the words you use, because one day, you'll say them to the wrong person.

Good thing people like you didn't carry the policy wins when we were fighting Germany and Japan, or a lot more would have died.

A friend of my father's died on the front two weeks ago. Half a dozen of my classmates are on the front now, and I haven't heard from some of them in weeks. Don't come at me now with your false indignation over things which happened before you were born. 

Also, your threats come across really hollow when you've been doing nothing but hyperventilating about your own personal risk when you live literally across the world from the conflict zone. I'm actually in a former Soviet country right now and do face physical risk in the case of a NATO-Russian conflict or a Russian escalation after overrunning Ukraine. I'm not particularly worried that you're going to risk your skin to come give me your mind by means other than a keyboard.

[GoTfan]

The coward's way out?

How dare you.

I've had ancestors fought and killed at the hands of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. I had an uncle who narrowly avoided being sent to Vietnam. His friends? Not so lucky.

I get it, it's trendy to call cautious people cowards, but be careful about the words you use, because one day, you'll say them to the wrong person.

Good thing people like you didn't carry the policy wins when we were fighting Germany and Japan, or a lot more would have died.

A friend of my father's died on the front two weeks ago. Half a dozen of my classmates are on the front now, and I haven't heard from some of them in weeks. Don't come at me now with your false indignation over things which happened before you were born.  

Also, your threats come across really hollow when you've been doing nothing but hyperventilating about your own personal risk when you live literally across the world from the conflict zone. I'm actually in a former Soviet country right now and do face physical risk in the case of a NATO-Russian conflict or a Russian escalation after overrunning Ukraine. I'm not particularly worried that you're going to risk your skin to come give me your mind by means other than a keyboard.

I get it mate. It's trendy to dunk on cautious people, but wanting an NFZ set up will almost certainly lead to WW3, and no amount of wishful thinking will make that untrue.

Also, making a PM public? Wow.

[TheReckoning]

Does anyone here actually realize how uniquely evil Hitler/Nazis were? Not every bad person, or every person who starts a war, is the same level as Hitler. Not even close.

[nicholas.slaydon]

Does anyone here actually realize how uniquely evil Hitler/Nazis were? Not every bad person, or every person who starts a war, is the same level as Hitler. Not even close.

Putin may not be another Hitler (yet), but I think that the events in Bucha have shown that he certainly is another Milosevic, and his military commanders are cut from the same cloth as Mladic and Karadzic. Will we sit around and wait until another Srebrenica occurs right under our noses, or will take action to prevent another Srebrenica from ever occurring in the first place?

[It’s so Joever]

Does anyone here actually realize how uniquely evil Hitler/Nazis were? Not every bad person, or every person who starts a war, is the same level as Hitler. Not even close.

Oh don’t even get started Mr “Hitler wouldn’t have been so bad if he weren’t Hitler!”

[Blue3]

https://twitter.com/AnnaMyroniuk/status/1510524144349327360

These people are animals.

They're people. This is what humans have done in basically every war and violent conflict, for all human history and prehistory. It's immoral, but it's very human.All wars are like this. Think Iraq and Afghanistan were squeaky-clean?

[All Along The Watchtower]

https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1510344575591895046?s=21&t=4lVGxjtMuwV...

I’m sure the Czechs require no lectures in betrayal from the Russians; 1968 is well within living  memory.

[2952-0-0]

I’m sure the Czechs require no lectures in betrayal from the Russians; 1968 is well within living  memory.

I think the Russian diplomats are more concerned about pleasing their own big boss in order to not get poisoned or defenestrated, rather than convincing any foreign opinions. That's usually the best explanation for when diplomats representing dictatorships seemingly go berserk.

[NOVA Green]

Does anyone here actually realize how uniquely evil Hitler/Nazis were? Not every bad person, or every person who starts a war, is the same level as Hitler. Not even close.

Totally get it mate.

My Grandfather fought in WW II at the Battle of the Bulge and ended up in the American Occupied sectors of West Berlin.

He didn't finally come home for good after the War until 1949, despite "DeMob", which theoretically had hit sooner, especially following massive demonstrations in the US a couple years before.

He never really talked much about the War, despite having not been one of the GIs who liberated the Extermination Camps, pretty sure he heard the stories from other "GI Joes".

Not even going to get into my older sister, who as an Orthodox Jew, is even closer than myself to the unique history of the Holocaust, when it comes to both the legacy and the survivors.

Sure, I visited both Auschwitz and Birkenau back in 1994, and although I took some photos the memories still haunt me to the present day.

I can't describe the horrors existing even within the "historical museum", from removals of teeth fillings, hair, and every single human artifact prior to the Endlösung.

Trying to compare Holocaust to Ukraine is a totally bunk morally bankrupt argument from those who apparently have never really read nor experienced history.

This does not however mean that Russia has not committed massive demonstrated war crimes within their Invasion and Occupation of Ukraine on so many levels.

[GoTfan]

From what I can see on social media, Russia has apparently retreated from Chernihiv Oblast and Sumy.

The German defence minister is also urging discussions to begin on banning Russian gas.

[WMS]

The bitterest of confirmations. Is anyone surprised at how Russia has acted in Ukraine? This is how they’ve been acting for the past twenty to thirty fucking years!!! Syria, Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova, the CAR, South Sudan, and even more places. A thing I hadn’t gotten around to posting yet involves a question in Freedom House’s calculations: “Is the government or occupying power deliberately changing the ethnic composition of a country or territory so as to destroy a culture or tip the political balance in favor of another group?” It’s an additional question under Political Rights, Functioning of Government. It’s basically the Ethnic Cleansing and/or Genocide Question. Russia is guilty multiple times - South Ossetia, Crimea, the Eastern Donbas, and a bit further back in Abkhazia and Transnistria directly, and participated a little less directly in Syria, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and further back in Bosnia. Most of the other cases involve their buddies in China (both Tibet and in Xinjiang), Myanmar (the military government), Sri Lanka, the Sudan…all such sterling examples of human rights.

You know something else they have in common? They keep getting away with it, because it was deemed too costly to ever do anything about it. Some of us have been sounding the alarm since at least 2008*, only to be mocked and scorned by vile people from the left and right alike. But inaction is an action all its own. Many of you aren’t old enough to remember the Rwandan Genocide, where action could’ve saved some of the victims. Or Bosnia, where the killing only stopped when action was finally taken. Or ‘peace at any price’ applied to North Korea in 1994 - that sure worked out well**.

But it’s easy to turn your heads away when it doesn’t affect you personally, huh?

Well, wake up chucklefucks, because the people behind all of these atrocities are out to destroy democracy worldwide. Or have you not goddamned noticed the Russian and Chinese*** money and influence spread worldwide aimed at displacing both Western influence and Western values in order to replace them with something far grimmer****. That includes the support of anti-democratic forces in democratic countries, or have the examples of, say, Fidesz and the GOP not made that clear*****?

You think this world conflict can be avoided by appeasement? That’s what’s led to where we are now! The autocracies of the world will not stop until either democracy dies or autocracy is shattered. The options are surrendering or resisting. But holy shit do some people not get that. Or else they do get it, and welcome surrender, whether out of hate for the Western system that gives them the freedom to act like prats, or out of the belief that peace is worth any price, even global autocratic subjugation.

You can see what a world of autocracies would be like. Just start reading some human rights reports. Then apply that to everyone. Is this what you want? Because if not, then the democracies of the world are going to have to take a stand against their enemies both within and without.

I’m sure plenty of people are already dismissing me as an alarmist or a warmonger or a chickenhawk or whatever bullshit terms come to mind. But I’ve been right about this. Which is the bitterest confirmation of all, because cowardice and confusion and sociopathy and fear have led us all into an abyss that I worry will only be escaped from when it’s filled with the corpses of millions of innocents.

*I saw that thread on Russia invading Georgia from 2008 and yup, I was right. Unfortunately.
 **Yes, I would’ve supported intervention instead. How many millions of North Koreans have died of starvation and oppression since 1994? I bet it’s a LOT more than would have if the North Korean regime had been toppled at its weakest point. But blah blah money blah blah invincible North Korean military blah blah fuck the North Korean people amirite?
***And others. Usually under the rubric of opposing the West. This includes both the Saudis and Iranians. Plus their willing supporters.
****Unless you like the jackboots as long as you get to wear them? Looking at tankies and Trumpists alike, here.
*****Yes, the GOP is a clearly authoritarian party now, riddled with Russian influence. I guess after subverting the Greens the Russians decided to go big.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Keep in mind when ever people always make the point how a regime isnt the Nazis they fail to take into account that the Nazis wouldnt have become the Nazis if they were stopped in the in the late 1930s when the British/French had the ability to stop them.

If this was 1938-1939 I am sure there would be many posters who would say it would be crazy to compare the Nazis to Kaiser's Germany only to realize when it was too late(during the Fall of France) how big of a threat the Nazis really were and how evil they really were.

The lesson we learned from WW2 is that we should not wait for a regime to become the Nazis before taking action.

Most of the American intelligentsia (famously including the New York Times) and to a lesser extent the British and French throughout the 30s did in fact think that Nazis might be slightly unsavory characters but that they weren't as bad as their critics made them out to be and probably had some legitimate concerns, and that their critics were hand-wringing and being hyperbolic. Everything that's being said about Putin's Russia now.

I think a nice example of how mudance this phenomena was among the intelgientis even those who didn't consider themselves anti-semetic is this absolutely amazing Atlantic article from a collumist discussing their marriage interfaith marriage to a jew and the tension it has caused from 1939.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1939/01/i-married-a-jew/306262/

Of course we eventually come to Hitler, Ben and I. In the eyes of Ben, as in the eyes of all his people, Hitler stands for the Jewish equivalent of the Antichrist—a little, strutting monster whose sole purpose and pleasure in life is to flog, imprison, impoverish, humiliate, and plague Israel. Few history books trace the path of persecutions against the Jews as they have occurred throughout the ages. They have occurred in ancient Rome, Poland, Russia, Spain, England, and France, usually whenever Jewry becomes too numerous and too powerful, whenever it becomes, in the eyes of Gentiles, a threat, potential or actual, to Gentile supremacy. I try to tell Ben that Hitler is merely writing another page in a history that will continue so long as the status quo between Jews and Gentiles remains—a status that only the willing shoulders of both protagonists can remove.

But it is hard for Ben to take the long view. He looks upon Hitler as something malignantly unique, and it is no use trying to tell him that a hundred years hence the world will no more call Hitler a swine for expelling the Jews than it does Edward I of England, who did the same thing in the thirteenth century—an expulsion that remained in strict effect until the time of Cromwell, because a hundred years hence another country will be having its Jewish problem, unless…