Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[NOVA Green]

Had previously posted on this topic, but a new update:

Sanctions regime now looking at additional "Schmack Downs":

The Biden administration is preparing sanctions targeting Russian companies it says provides goods and services for the military and intelligence services, including dual-use components used in weapons proliferation, U.S. officials said.

The Treasury Department sanctions, which could be announced as early as next week, come as the U.S. and allies continue to target a range of economic sectors in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The sanctions are the latest action under an executive order signed by President Biden that aims at blocking or prohibiting transactions with entities or people linked to harmful foreign activities on behalf of Moscow.

According to U.S. officials and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the Russian government has relied heavily on key western and international technologies for its defense industry to function. The new sanctions are tailored to target companies that are part of Russia’s procurement networks that produce and buy goods that have both civil and military purposes.

Among those expected to be targeted: Serniya Engineering, which the U.S. thinks is at the center of a procurement network engaged in weapons proliferation for Russia’s intelligence services; and Moscow-based Sertal, which the administration says produces equipment and technology for Russia’s military. The U.S. also will impose sanctions on what it describes as four front companies used by Serniya and Sertal to facilitate their procurement for the military.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-to-sanction-companies-providing-technology-for-russian-military-intelligence-services-11648245575?st=p4qjmsxtsfbo1fl&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

[NOVA Green]

Based. The article says only the Colonel's legs were injured, unfortunately.

https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1507288589280894998?s=20&t=pLV5Ra3A...

Mysterious case of the Russian Commander either injured or KIA get's murkier... either way pretty clear that there was a bit of mutiny going on among the rank and file... per The Guardian

The original report of the mutiny was made on Wednesday on Facebook by a Ukrainian journalist, Roman Tsymbaliuk, who said that it occurred after the unit, which had been fighting in Makariv, west of Kyiv, had lost “about 50% of their personnel”.

“After choosing a convenient moment, during the fight, he ran over the commander standing next to him, injuring both his legs,” the journalist wrote. The colonel was then moved to a hospital in Belarus.

Corroborating evidence for the claim made by western officials that the colonel had died was limited to the headline of a report on the MailOnline website, which said: “Russian commander who was deliberately run over with a tank driven by his own disgruntled soldiers in protest at the huge death toll in his unit has DIED.”

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1507510823916384258?s=20&t=y8eDdI-f...

[Person Man]

https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1507510823916384258?s=20&t=y8eDdI-f...

This is more a war about extermination than conquest

[ugabug]

https://twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/1506988113939386372

[jaichind]

Average investment bank research 2022 real GDP growth estimates done in Feb and then March.

             Russia       Ukraine      Eurozone       USA           PRC           Japan
Feb         +2.6%       +3.7%       +4.0%       +3.7%       +5.1%        +2.8%
March      -9.6%      -22.5%        +3.3%       +3.6%       +5.1%        +2.4%

Russia to go into a deep recession which is at par with 2009.  Eurozone and Japan's growth to be hit by the war as well.  Ukraine's economy of course will be smashed.  USA and PRC growth impact none so far.

I suspect the April estimates will show some impact on USA and PRC economic growth.

[dead0man]

https://twitter.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1507442015323234305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%...Putin is calling in some more Nazis

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Dirty bomb ingredients go missing from Chornobyl monitoring lab

When the lights went out at Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant on 9 March, the Russian soldiers holding Ukrainian workers at gunpoint became the least of Anatolii Nosovskyi’s worries. More urgent was the possibility of a radiation accident at the decommissioned plant. If the plant’s emergency generators ran out of fuel, the ventilators that keep explosive hydrogen gas from building up inside a spent nuclear fuel repository would quit working, says Nosovskyi, director of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv. So would sensors and automated systems to suppress radioactive dust inside a concrete “sarcophagus” that holds the unsettled remains of Chornobyl’s Unit Four reactor, which melted down in the infamous 1986 accident.

Although power was restored to Chornobyl on 14 March, Nosovskyi’s worries have multiplied. In the chaos of the Russian advance, he told Science, looters raided a radiation monitoring lab in Chornobyl village—apparently making off with radioactive isotopes used to calibrate instruments and pieces of radioactive waste that could be mixed with conventional explosives to form a “dirty bomb” that would spread contamination over a wide area. ISPNPP has a separate lab in Chornobyl with even more dangerous materials: “powerful sources of gamma and neutron radiation” used to test devices, Nosovskyi says, as well as intensely radioactive samples of material leftover from the Unit Four meltdown. Nosovskyi has lost contact with the lab, he says, so “the fate of these sources is unknown to us.”

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://mobile.twitter.com/antiputler_news/status/1507168351696605187

[It’s so Joever]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/23/makariv-propaganda-ukraine/

It’s pay walled, but basically Makariv is still seeing plenty of fighting, reports on “liberation” were exaggerated. Atlas needs to chill with the propaganda. It’s meant to increase morale, not be a source of info for us.

[Cassius]

https://twitter.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1507442015323234305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%...Putin is calling in some more Nazis

At this rate Putin will be calling up Landsknechts and Wild Geese to swell the ranks.

[Logical]

Slavutych has also fallen today, which makes Chernihiv completely isolated. Ukrainian counterattacks east of Kyiv and Kherson have been more successful however. Trostyanets (near Sumy) was recaptured by Ukrainians.

[Mopsus]

https://twitter.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1507442015323234305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%...Putin is calling in some more Nazis

Whatever you do, don’t Google “Hezbollah Roman salute”!

[Sir Mohamed]

https://twitter.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1507442015323234305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%...Putin is calling in some more Nazis

Muh denazification.

Tbh, I'd support Biden sending in a bunch of CIA operatives to take care of them. Wagner Group is one of the worst kind, and they need to be taken care of properly.

[It’s so Joever]

Slavutych has also fallen today, which makes Chernihiv completely isolated. Ukrainian counterattacks east of Kyiv and Kherson have been more successful however. Trostyanets (near Sumy) was recaptured by Ukrainians.

Where are you getting the Trostyanets info from?

[Storr]

Worst crossover episode:

https://twitter.com/NotWoofers/status/1507724511155736586?s=20&t=otqKxN_M6Kq...

At least Russia knows exactly what their target western audience of disinformation is looking for.

[Storr]

Slavutych has also fallen today, which makes Chernihiv completely isolated. Ukrainian counterattacks east of Kyiv and Kherson have been more successful however. Trostyanets (near Sumy) was recaptured by Ukrainians.

Where are you getting the Trostyanets info from?

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1507740906333614085?s=20&t=ZdYLD2i...

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1507738221249241090?s=20&t=ZdYLD2i...

https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1507740061034504194?s=20&t=nvIwmB4SKlTNL...

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1507442015323234305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%...
Putin is calling in some more Nazis

If they couldn’t get the Syrians, they’ll have a hard time getting any significant number of Hezbollah troops. They took big hits in the Syrian civil war, are less indebted to Russia and are even more at risk than Syrian troops of becoming engulfed in one of several regional conflicts.

Additionally, bringing in Hezbollah would risk pushing Israel towards Ukraine’s camp.

[Sir Mohamed]

https://twitter.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1507442015323234305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%...
Putin is calling in some more Nazis

If they couldn’t get the Syrians, they’ll have a hard time getting any significant number of Hezbollah troops. They took big hits in the Syrian civil war, are less indebted to Russia and are even more at risk than Syrian troops of becoming engulfed in one of several regional conflicts.

Additionally, bringing in Hezbollah would risk pushing Israel towards Ukraine’s camp.

Sure, though you're implying Putin acts rational. His entire handling of the war and even the decision to get in in the first place clearly prove that he doesn't. There's just nobody in his orbit to tell him.

Even the little dicator in Belarus is more rational; there's a reason he hasn't joined the war, although he owes his "reelection" to Putin.

[Middle-aged Europe]

https://twitter.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1507442015323234305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%...Putin is calling in some more Nazis

Couldn't that turn Israel against Russia?

[Horus]

https://twitter.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1507442015323234305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%...Putin is calling in some more Nazis

Couldn't that turn Israel against Russia?

Israel knows their relationship with the West is on borrowed time. They, as a socially conservative pseudo democracy with religious characteristics, fit better in the Russian sphere anyways. Bye. Don't let the door hit ya. Etc.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/1507730627835183108

[GeorgiaModerate]

This is unbelievably brilliant.  (On the off chance that you don't recognize the reference, google for Gilbert & Sullivan's "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General".)

I am the very model of a Russian Major General
My standing in the battlefield is growing quite untenable
My forces, though equipped and given orders unequivocal
Did not expect the fight to be remotely this reciprocal

I used to have a tank brigade but now I have lost several
My fresh assaults are faltering with battleplans extemporal
I can't recover vehicles but farmers in a tractor can
It's all becoming rather reminiscent of Afghanistan

My ordnance is the best but only half my missiles make it there
I would have thought by now that we would be controllers of the air
But at the rate the snipers work my time here is ephemeral
I am the very model of a Russian Major General


https://twitter.com/AndrejNkv/status/1507365192405073920

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

https://twitter.com/IuliiaMendel/status/1507442015323234305?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%...Putin is calling in some more Nazis

Couldn't that turn Israel against Russia?

I would imagine a look at who Israel is quietly offering supplies and aid to currently would answer that question.

I doubt Russia using Israel's enemies in a foreign conflict would change that calculus much, given that Israel's head-down approach to the conflict is entirely based around not getting Putin angry.

[Storr]

The Nazi German and Stalinist Soviet Union parallels continue.

Note: I while back, I looked at the wikipedia list of Soviet Generals. Many of them were Ukrainian, I wonder what they'd think of the current conflict. Different times in history, I know. But, I can't help but think they'd be dismayed at the current war between "brother nations".

Shoutout to Major General Petro Grigorenko who became a dissident in the 1960s and (among other things) became an advocate of the Crimean Tatars, who unlike other WWII Soviet deportee ethnic groups, weren't allowed to return home under Khrushchev.

https://twitter.com/mikaheik/status/1507670824735674373?s=20&t=exCh0j_zERRA2...