Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The nationalism of man wrapped in a patina of faux Christianity. Patriarch Kirill is a disgrace to his church.

He is, and frankly always has been, a pathetic and highly compromised figure.

[NOVA Green]

Zelensky just sacked two of his Senior national security officials...

Wonder what the backstory was here?

He announced he had sacked two senior members of the Ukrainian national security service on the grounds they were “traitors”.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60949706

[Storr]

What...

https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1509666850795360268?s=20&t=YUoteooT...

[NOVA Green]

The "Convoy to Nowhere"... Does it even still exist?

Still, I would imagine that the Pentagon probably *does* have some sort of idea since I believe that satellite imagery cloud cover has been much better in the past couple weeks, than the first two weeks of the war.

The Pentagon says it does not know if Russia's convoy of military vehicles, which once stretched some 40 miles outside Kyiv "still exists at this point".

"It's been now so long," said spokesman John Kirby. "They never really accomplished their mission."

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60949706

[DaleCooper]

Zelensky just sacked two of his Senior national security officials...

Wonder what the backstory was here?

He announced he had sacked two senior members of the Ukrainian national security service on the grounds they were “traitors”.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60949706

Purely speculation here, but I wonder if it has something to do with the lead-up to the invasion when there seemed to be a lot of confusion high up in Ukraine's leadership about whether or not there would even be an invasion.

[Storr]

Zelensky just sacked two of his Senior national security officials...

Wonder what the backstory was here?

He announced he had sacked two senior members of the Ukrainian national security service on the grounds they were “traitors”.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60949706

Purely speculation here, but I wonder if it has something to do with the lead-up to the invasion when there seemed to be a lot of confusion high up in Ukraine's leadership about whether or not there would even be an invasion.

One of the Generals fired is Serhiy Oleksandrovych Kryvoruchko, the former head of the SBU in Kherson Oblast. Maybe he was found to be somehow cooperating with the Russians, which occupy nearly all of Kherson Oblast?

My conspiratorial thought is that this could be an attempt to direct blame for the Kherson region being occupied as quickly as it was, away from Zelensky and the rest of the current government.

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3445232-zelensky-says-two-generals-who-turned-out-to-be-traitors-stripped-of-their-rank.html

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

We’ve heard a ton of contradictory claims about the airbase and towns in the area, but the US usually hasn’t been so clear on what they believe the situation is.

https://www.twitter.com/CarlaBabbVOA/status/1509553376417173508

The farther Kyiv and other cities get away from Russian artillery, the better.

[2952-0-0]

LOL Russia has gotten quite petty: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/03/31/russia-demands-wikipedia-take-down-information-about-ukraine-war/?sh=48a0567866f2

Translation: they're preparing to block it.

The nationalism of man wrapped in a patina of faux Christianity. Patriarch Kirill is a disgrace to his church.

A bill has been introduced in the Ukrainian parliament to ban religious groups headquartered in nations that are deemed aggressors. That refers to the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
https://risu.ua/en/a-bill-banning-the-moscow-patriarchate-in-ukraine-sent-to-the-parliamentary-committee-for-consideration_n127799

A Jesuit Catholic priest who worked in Ukraine says that, due to church attendance being far higher in Ukraine than in Russia, he believes that almost half (!!) of practicing members of the Russian Orthodox Church are in Ukraine, and hence the church schism between Moscow and Kyiv has been both symbolically and materially crippling.
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2022/03/30/ukraine-putin-kirill-242725

Father Nazar said he learned “from authoritative sources” that 46 percent of the Russian Orthodox Church is in Ukraine. Moreover, “whereas Ukrainians go to church in big numbers, in Moscow—among those who say they are Orthodox—only 2 percent go to church on Sunday, and this is partly due to a certain discrediting of the Russian Orthodox Church that goes back to [the time of] Dostoyevsky.”

He explained that “the Russian Orthodox Church has always been too aligned with the authorities in Russia, whether it was the czars or those in power during the Soviet Union period and now with Putin.” He said, “It’s a church that runs services, but has no prophetic power because it is under pressure to be absolutely aligned with the state.” Moreover, “the Russian Orthodox Church gets its money from the state, not from the people, and so it cannot take risks, nor can it be a prophetic church.”

[John Dule]

Has anyone else read these stories about Putin's reaction to the fall of the Soviet Union? Reading the story about him in Dresden, I was struck by the close parallel to Hitler's reaction to the end of WWI. Both men appeared to be caught completely off-guard by these moments of national humiliation; both describe feelings of betrayal at the hands of incompetent or traitorous leaders; and both seem to have been imbued with a desire to reclaim lost glory as a result of these experiences. It's deeply disturbing reading something like this after The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

[Virginiá]

I hadn't thought about that comparison although I have seen those stories about Putin.

Either way, I'm grateful Putin so badly planned his initial move to reclaim lost glory that any future attempts will likely fail as well given the immense damage to Russia's economy and international image - particularly any potential fear CIS countries may have had of Russia's military, which has surely been significantly eroded after the failure to conquer even half of Europe's poorest country despite massive losses in personnel and equipment.

[NOVA Green]

Zelensky just sacked two of his Senior national security officials...

Wonder what the backstory was here?

He announced he had sacked two senior members of the Ukrainian national security service on the grounds they were “traitors”.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60949706

Purely speculation here, but I wonder if it has something to do with the lead-up to the invasion when there seemed to be a lot of confusion high up in Ukraine's leadership about whether or not there would even be an invasion.

One of the Generals fired is Serhiy Oleksandrovych Kryvoruchko, the former head of the SBU in Kherson Oblast. Maybe he was found to be somehow cooperating with the Russians, which occupy nearly all of Kherson Oblast?

My conspiratorial thought is that this could be an attempt to direct blame for the Kherson region being occupied as quickly as it was, away from Zelensky and the rest of the current government.

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3445232-zelensky-says-two-generals-who-turned-out-to-be-traitors-stripped-of-their-rank.html

Perhaps the other might be associated with the death of the Ukrainian "Double Agent" who was involved in the 1st / 2nd round of negotiations with the Russians?

Purely speculation on my part, but dude's title suggests that maybe a mistake was made there?

[NYDem]

Zelensky just sacked two of his Senior national security officials...

Wonder what the backstory was here?

He announced he had sacked two senior members of the Ukrainian national security service on the grounds they were “traitors”.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60949706

Purely speculation here, but I wonder if it has something to do with the lead-up to the invasion when there seemed to be a lot of confusion high up in Ukraine's leadership about whether or not there would even be an invasion.

One of the Generals fired is Serhiy Oleksandrovych Kryvoruchko, the former head of the SBU in Kherson Oblast. Maybe he was found to be somehow cooperating with the Russians, which occupy nearly all of Kherson Oblast?

My conspiratorial thought is that this could be an attempt to direct blame for the Kherson region being occupied as quickly as it was, away from Zelensky and the rest of the current government.

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3445232-zelensky-says-two-generals-who-turned-out-to-be-traitors-stripped-of-their-rank.html

People forget about this given how well it performed after the war started, but the Ukrainian Government really dropped the ball in preparation, particularly in the south. I think if Ukraine loses this war it's going to be a direct result of the fact that their southern front collapsed so quickly. There was a good article about this that was posted earlier in this thread. The best the troops could do was avoid being totally encircled and regroup in Kherson city. IIRC they captured the bridge over the Dniepr on day 1.

[NOVA Green]

LOL Russia has gotten quite petty: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/03/31/russia-demands-wikipedia-take-down-information-about-ukraine-war/?sh=48a0567866f2

Translation: they're preparing to block it.

The nationalism of man wrapped in a patina of faux Christianity. Patriarch Kirill is a disgrace to his church.

A bill has been introduced in the Ukrainian parliament to ban religious groups headquartered in nations that are deemed aggressors. That refers to the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
https://risu.ua/en/a-bill-banning-the-moscow-patriarchate-in-ukraine-sent-to-the-parliamentary-committee-for-consideration_n127799

A Jesuit Catholic priest who worked in Ukraine says that, due to church attendance being far higher in Ukraine than in Russia, he believes that almost half (!!) of practicing members of the Russian Orthodox Church are in Ukraine, and hence the church schism between Moscow and Kyiv has been both symbolically and materially crippling.
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2022/03/30/ukraine-putin-kirill-242725

Father Nazar said he learned “from authoritative sources” that 46 percent of the Russian Orthodox Church is in Ukraine. Moreover, “whereas Ukrainians go to church in big numbers, in Moscow—among those who say they are Orthodox—only 2 percent go to church on Sunday, and this is partly due to a certain discrediting of the Russian Orthodox Church that goes back to [the time of] Dostoyevsky.”

He explained that “the Russian Orthodox Church has always been too aligned with the authorities in Russia, whether it was the czars or those in power during the Soviet Union period and now with Putin.” He said, “It’s a church that runs services, but has no prophetic power because it is under pressure to be absolutely aligned with the state.” Moreover, “the Russian Orthodox Church gets its money from the state, not from the people, and so it cannot take risks, nor can it be a prophetic church.”

As an Atheist American, I do not believe in the banning of freedom of religion in ANY country.

Still as an Atheist American, I do not understand the distinctions between the various strains of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Still one must certainly wonder to what extent this is a direct result of Glasnost era reforms, which effectively allowed a counter-weight to the "Atheist State".

Beginning in the late 1980s, under Mikhail Gorbachev, the new political and social freedoms resulted in the return of many church buildings to the church, so they could be restored by local parishioners. A pivotal point in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church came in 1988, the millennial anniversary of the Christianization of Kievan Rus'. Throughout the summer of that year, major government-supported celebrations took place in Moscow and other cities; many older churches and some monasteries were reopened. An implicit ban on religious propaganda on state TV was finally lifted. For the first time in the history of the Soviet Union, people could watch live transmissions of church services on television.

Gleb Yakunin, a critic of the Moscow Patriarchate who was one of those who briefly gained access to the KGB's archives in the early 1990s, argued that the Moscow Patriarchate was "practically a subsidiary, a sister company of the KGB".[45] Critics charge that the archives showed the extent of active participation of the top ROC hierarchs in the KGB efforts overseas.[46][47][48][49][50][51] George Trofimoff, the highest-ranking US military officer ever indicted for, and convicted of, espionage by the United States and sentenced to life imprisonment on 27 September 2001, had been "recruited into the service of the KGB"[52] by Igor Susemihl (a.k.a. Zuzemihl), a bishop in the Russian Orthodox Church (subsequently, a high-ranking hierarch—the ROC Metropolitan Iriney of Vienna, who died in July 1999[53]).

Konstanin Kharchev, former chairman of the Soviet Council on Religious Affairs, explained: "Not a single candidate for the office of bishop or any other high-ranking office, much less a member of the Holy Synod, went through without confirmation by the Central Committee of the CPSU and the KGB".[49] Professor Nathaniel Davis points out: "If the bishops wished to defend their people and survive in office, they had to collaborate to some degree with the KGB, with the commissioners of the Council for Religious Affairs, and with other party and governmental authorities".[54] Patriarch Alexy II, acknowledged that compromises were made with the Soviet government by bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate, himself included, and he publicly repented for these compromises.[55]

It is also clear that the ROC claims a distinct supremacist style position over other Eastern Orthodox Christians....

The ROC currently claims exclusive jurisdiction over the Eastern Orthodox Christians, irrespective of their ethnic background, who reside in the former member republics of the Soviet Union, excluding Georgia. The ROC also created the autonomous Church of Japan and Chinese Orthodox Church. The ROC eparchies in Belarus and Latvia, since the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, enjoy various degrees of self-government, albeit short of the status of formal ecclesiastical autonomy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Orthodox_Church

Personally more of a "ni dieux ni maitres" scene, but totally grok on what the Ukrainians are pissed off.

[Storr]

Bruh moment.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1509754010160574467?s=20&t=MXD7z1s...

https://twitter.com/ELINTNews/status/1509752229900828673?s=20&t=fpvlIPru1FXv...

[2952-0-0]

As an Atheist American, I do not believe in the banning of freedom of religion in ANY country.

There are shades of what happened to the Church of England during the Revolutionary War.

Still as an Atheist American, I do not understand the distinctions between the various strains of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Still one must certainly wonder to what extent this is a direct result of Glasnost era reforms, which effectively allowed a counter-weight to the "Atheist State".

It is also clear that the ROC claims a distinct supremacist style position over other Eastern Orthodox Christians....


Personally more of a "ni dieux ni maitres" scene, but totally grok on what the Ukrainians are pissed off.

In a very simplified nutshell, the Eastern Orthodox Church didn't evolve into a single, centralized hierarchy like the Catholic Church. It has an Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, who's morally seen as the leader of Eastern Orthodoxy, but who doesn't lead a central institution like the Pope in Rome. As more Eastern Orthodox nations emerged, the EP recognized the autocephaly of their national churches, which institutionalized a link between the Orthodox Church and the national identity. Also, because the official title of the Patriarch of the ROC is the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus', this implies that the ROC claims jurisdiction over all the Rus' lands, including Belarus and Ukraine. On a side note, that's also why the ROC especially despises the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church: because the circumstances in which it emerged were especially outrageous.

Hence, when Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople recognized the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, he effectively declared Ukraine to be entirely separate from Russia, as if it were Romania or Greece. The fact that the Patriarch of all Rus' no longer had jurisdiction over Kiev, the ancestral heartland of the Rus' civilization, was even more painful. That Eastern Orthodoxy was organized on explicitly national lines, unfortunately, makes it much easier to blur the line between religion and nationalism. Mind you, the churches of other denominations weren't entirely innocent: the Catholic hierarchy wedded itself to many right-wing dictatorships, but the fact that they answer to a corporate HQ in Rome prevented them from becoming entirely mouthpieces of el caudillo, especially after the Vatican itself liberalized its tone in the 1960s.

It's impossible to answer your comment about the Glasnost reforms, in this sense. The notion that some people are superior to others is heretical to the most elementary of Christian teachings, but that hasn't prevented Christians who sought to climb power structures from claiming otherwise. You don't need to be a believer in the Orthodox Church to be a Russian nationalist chauvinist. The Soviet Union itself imposed its culture throughout its empire. Putin himself didn't talk much about religion until he found it politically convenient. He justified the annexation of the Crimea by claiming that it's as sacred to the Russian people as Jerusalem is to the Jews - enough blasphemy to make Jesus on the cross smack his face with his bloodied palm, but convenient for Vladimirovich.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Crazy times that we're looking at some of the most significant attacks on a nuclear power.

There was 9/11, but that wasn't a government.
There was the Falkland islands, but that's some far flung territory.
There's that glacier that India and Pakistan fought over, but it's a disputed area with no residents.

[Storr]

Freaking legends

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1509765821454856237?s=20&t=6FD475G...

[2952-0-0]

Taiwan's foreign minister has personally become a Twitter troll against the Moscow-Beijing bromance.

https://twitter.com/MOFA_Taiwan/status/1508603212500127744

https://twitter.com/MOFA_Taiwan/status/1509169520644345857

My gut feeling from the start was that China will do everything to help Russia short of actually helping Russia, and so far that's holding. Lots of flowery language with this visit, but no concrete announcements were made.

[Logical]

Russian air defences have always been cooler in paper than in practice. Ask Mathias Rust.

[NOVA Green]

Australia sending "Bushmasters" to Ukraine.

Australia will provide Ukraine with the Australian-built armored troop carriers known as Bushmasters, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday. President Volodymyr Zelensky had asked for the vehicles in a video address to the Australian Parliament on Thursday. It was not immediately clear how many of the troop carriers Australia would send. Mr. Morrison pledged on Thursday to send $18 million in additional military aid to Ukraine.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/04/01/world/ukraine-russia-war

Meanwhile Japan rejects the notion of "paying for natural gas in rubles".

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan on Friday rejected Russian demands to pay for gas deliveries in rubles. He had said a day earlier that Japan would continue cooperating with Russia on natural gas projects deemed vital to the island nation’s energy security. President Vladimir V. Putin has warned that starting Friday, countries must pay in rubles for all natural gas imported from Russia, or risk having the supplies shut off.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/31/world/ukraine-russia-war-news

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

The "Convoy to Nowhere"... Does it even still exist?

Still, I would imagine that the Pentagon probably *does* have some sort of idea since I believe that satellite imagery cloud cover has been much better in the past couple weeks, than the first two weeks of the war.

The Pentagon says it does not know if Russia's convoy of military vehicles, which once stretched some 40 miles outside Kyiv "still exists at this point".

"It's been now so long," said spokesman John Kirby. "They never really accomplished their mission."

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60949706

The ISW said it dispersed a few weeks ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had no particular mission and was just a result of logistical blunders.

[Person Man]

LOL Russia has gotten quite petty: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/03/31/russia-demands-wikipedia-take-down-information-about-ukraine-war/?sh=48a0567866f2

Translation: they're preparing to block it.

The nationalism of man wrapped in a patina of faux Christianity. Patriarch Kirill is a disgrace to his church.

A bill has been introduced in the Ukrainian parliament to ban religious groups headquartered in nations that are deemed aggressors. That refers to the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
https://risu.ua/en/a-bill-banning-the-moscow-patriarchate-in-ukraine-sent-to-the-parliamentary-committee-for-consideration_n127799

A Jesuit Catholic priest who worked in Ukraine says that, due to church attendance being far higher in Ukraine than in Russia, he believes that almost half (!!) of practicing members of the Russian Orthodox Church are in Ukraine, and hence the church schism between Moscow and Kyiv has been both symbolically and materially crippling.
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2022/03/30/ukraine-putin-kirill-242725

Father Nazar said he learned “from authoritative sources” that 46 percent of the Russian Orthodox Church is in Ukraine. Moreover, “whereas Ukrainians go to church in big numbers, in Moscow—among those who say they are Orthodox—only 2 percent go to church on Sunday, and this is partly due to a certain discrediting of the Russian Orthodox Church that goes back to [the time of] Dostoyevsky.”

He explained that “the Russian Orthodox Church has always been too aligned with the authorities in Russia, whether it was the czars or those in power during the Soviet Union period and now with Putin.” He said, “It’s a church that runs services, but has no prophetic power because it is under pressure to be absolutely aligned with the state.” Moreover, “the Russian Orthodox Church gets its money from the state, not from the people, and so it cannot take risks, nor can it be a prophetic church.”

We could just start acting like the Patriarch of the “Russian” Orthodox Church is in Kyiv, not Moscow.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Crazy times that we're looking at some of the most significant attacks on a nuclear power.

There was 9/11, but that wasn't a government.
There was the Falkland islands, but that's some far flung territory.
There's that glacier that India and Pakistan fought over, but it's a disputed area with no residents.

India and Pakistan have had a lot of fights over Kashmir.

Edit: Israel counts as well, although state actors have only fought it over disputed territory in recent years.

[Yeahsayyeah]

We could just start acting like the Patriarch of the “Russian” Orthodox Church is in Kyiv, not Moscow.

This would clearly be more consistent with the "Patriarch of all the Rus" title. ;-)

[CumbrianLefty]

Zelensky just sacked two of his Senior national security officials...

Wonder what the backstory was here?

He announced he had sacked two senior members of the Ukrainian national security service on the grounds they were “traitors”.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60949706

Purely speculation here, but I wonder if it has something to do with the lead-up to the invasion when there seemed to be a lot of confusion high up in Ukraine's leadership about whether or not there would even be an invasion.

Zelensky himself was playing it down until a few days before it happened.