Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

AFU victory over rasputiza:

https://twitter.com/PaulJawin/status/1569599513815404546?s=20&t=z6TN86oRYCdE...

That doesn't start in earnest until next month, at which point it may curtail any offensives for a bit.

[Frodo]

I am hearing rumors Melitopol has been evacuated by the Russians. 

[Cassius]

Are the moderators just going to leave up a post where a poster fantasises about choking and f****** a woman then?

It’s war. War means there is a period of time when two classes of people whose needs and survival have been determined to be exclusively relevant. During that time, one group lies outside the moral community of that  group inasmuch beyond whatever obligations outside classes universally impose upon them. In layman’s terms,     your feelings.

What does this (vaguely Schmittian) screed have to do with the lurid fantasies of an American keyboard warrior then? Is he risking life and limb on the frontline against the Ruskies? What do these contributions add to the thread?

I guess he isn’t allowed to be angry, then. There is a time and place for everything.

No he’s not. He’s a grown man (a fair bit above the average age on this forum as far as I can tell), who lives thousands of miles away from the conflict zone, a conflict zone that, I assume, he has never been to. If you want a thread of threnodies and torture porn then do it somewhere else.

Clutch them pearls harder! I'm so sorry that my outrage over the war crimes in genocide of Russians apparently offends you more then said war crimes themselves. I've contributed money to the Ukrainian cause which is, just like you, about as much support as I can do other than online gestures of support and utter wishing of ill will upon russians. I readily admit it's not much in a big scheme, but it's more than you're doing.

So yes, I hope the Russian collaborator dies of her assassination attempt wounds. I admit perhaps it was a bit sadistic to wish it'd be a painful death. I just want her dead like every other Russian and active collaborator. Let's get real, Ukrainian resistance sought her death for a reason.

Sounds a bit… genocidal?

Sorry, my voice to text app apparently skipped over the word "soldier" after the word Russian.

Of course it did. Just like it skipped over ‘f*** her [in a non-sexual way] eh]?

[sting in the rafters]

https://twitter.com/3yearletterman/status/1569503603773292545?s=21&t=jAtTDKB...

[NOVA Green]

Bit confused about what of the recent thread squabbling has to do with recent events regarding the Russian-Ukrainian War, but fine understand people need to sometimes let off at a bit of steam, especially considering more recent evidence starting to emerge of Russian War Crimes within Occupied Ukraine as investigators move into areas which have long been under Russian Military Control.

I will spare everyone some of the recent stories recounted by aging villagers, but here is a snippet from a longer article posted a few days back.

In Zaliznychne, a tiny agricultural village 37 miles east of Kharkiv, residents were feeling their way back to normality Sunday, sleeping in bedrooms rather than basements for the first time in months and trying to make contact with family on the outside.

Kozinska hasn’t seen her daughter since February — even though she lives 12 miles away — but had just received word that she will come to pick her up as soon as officials open access to the village, just as the weather turns cold.

The first Russian soldiers who set up in the village, turning the sawmill into their base and launching rocket attacks at Ukrainian troops in the next town, had at first not harassed the residents, she said. When they shot pigs on an abandoned farm, they sometimes let residents butcher some of the meat.

The Russians’ biggest rule for residents was to get inside by 6 p.m. and stay there, quiet and in the dark, several said. Violating that order could be fatal, as two men on the street learned early on. The friends were drinking and had a light on, said Maria Grygorova, who lives in the attached house next door. The next morning she found them on the floor.

“Konstiantyn had two bullet holes in his head,” she said.

She and two friends buried them in the side yard. The same two friends dug them up Sunday, with Ukrainian war crimes investigators looking on.

The team from Kharkiv collected two other bodies during their visit, including a security guard whose remains have been rotting on the floor of a gravel elevator at an asphalt plant for months, even as the Russians used it as a sniper tower. One investigator vomited over a guardrail repeatedly as officers collected the remains.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/11/kharkiv-liberated-retreat-izyum-russia/

[NOVA Green]

I am hearing rumors Melitopol has been evacuated by the Russians. 

Where from personal sources or.... ?

#1 rule of Atlas is to at least attempt to cite sources, so at least we can all have a good time "Unskewing" just like US-GE-PRES POLLS from '16 and '20.   

[AndyHogan14]

I am hearing rumors Melitopol has been evacuated by the Russians.  

Where from personal sources or.... ?

#1 rule of Atlas is to at least attempt to cite sources, so at least we can all have a good time "Unskewing" just like US-GE-PRES POLLS from '16 and '20.  

I saw that too, but it was just from random people on Twitter. As much as I would love it to be true, random accounts on Twitter aren't all too reliable—after all, I was fooled by the Donetsk Airport rumors on Saturday.

[NOVA Green]

Yet another story about what a "rout" looks like to follow-up from a story I had posted a couple dayz back.

Very long article so apologies in advance if I might have overquoted...

The signs of desperation were everywhere. Abandoned military vehicles. Cans of food and dishes left on tables. Mail scattered on office floors. Clothes left hanging on lines.

This is how the Russian army left the town of Balakliya in northeastern Ukraine, in a sign of a frantic, chaotic withdrawal as the Ukrainian Army closed in during a fast-moving counteroffensive over the last few days. The lightning assaults allowed Ukraine’s military to recapture hundreds of square miles of territory, strategic towns and abandoned weapons.

One resident, Oleksandr Kryvosheya, said that he had overheard Russian soldiers yelling at their commanders on a radio in an armored personnel carrier parked in the courtyard of his apartment block. “You left us behind, you got out,” the soldiers protested, Mr. Kryvosheya said.

As the Russian defenses around the town collapsed, residents said, soldiers ran for whatever transport they could, leaving behind ammunition and weapons along with personal items in apartments where they had quartered.

In the newly recaptured village of Verbivka, made up of a few isolated streets and brick homes surrounded by a sea of farm fields, a crowd of residents turned up to meet the police buses. Some cried, expressing both happiness and shock at the quick turn in fortunes.

A hundred or so soldiers had occupied the village from the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic, one of the two Russia-backed separatist groups that rebelled in 2014, residents said.

Put on occupation duty in what had been a rear area for the Russians, the troops were ill-equipped, lacking even their own vehicles. They had been dropped off by buses, residents said.

“At the checkpoints, they seemed stressed out,” said Maksym Bratienkov, a beekeeper who fled a southern city, Berdyansk, for the Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhzhia. “All night they were moving military equipment around, like they were in a hurry. They were looking for partisans and going to parts of town they had never been to.”

Mr. Bratienkov, the beekeeper, said not all the Russian soldiers in his town had behaved badly. Some were from the mostly Muslim republic of Dagestan, he said, while others came from a Ukrainian separatist group, and were to be feared. “These guys are fanatics,” he said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/world/europe/ukraine-russia-retreat-morale.html

[Virginiá]

Putin really does not want to knock the hornets' nest, does he? 

Putin just wants to "win," except he seems to still be unable to reconcile the idea of winning with the reality that he doesn't have nearly enough personnel to actually do so, let alone weapons, body armor and vehicles for them. Nor the competency and leadership from his military, but that's a whole other discussion. Maybe before he thought he could outlast Ukraine and let economic realities and waning military aid force Ukraine to sue for peace, but now it's clear the aid isn't going to stop and Ukraine actually is very capable of launching offensives of their own and quickly retaking land, and knows this, which means they won't give up.

[NOVA Green]

Meanwhile, now let's look at a bit of the current morale state among Russian soldiers stationed within Occupied Ukraine...

It appears from my uninformed perspective that this is likely much more significant than even the collapse of support for the Soviet Invasion and Occupation of Afghanistan, when it comes to a fundamental rejection of the military and political leadership behind this "Special Operation".


https://twitter.com/kromark/status/1569395756481806337?s=20&t=Cl3gvnJeCdMFrb...

[NOVA Green]

Meanwhile for some posters who tend to focus a bit more on the "Macro-Economics", no names be mentioned, but we have at least one poster who regularly provides informed updates regarding the economic scene within Russia... (You know who you are )

Long article hence selective quoting...

WSJ:

At Nova Poshta, Ukraine’s equivalent of FedEx, deliveries are back to 90% of their prewar level of a million parcels a day.

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, Nova Poshta’s revenues fell to 2% of the prewar level. “I thought our company could disappear,” said co-owner Vyacheslav Klimov. But as spring progressed, e-commerce and business activity resumed in areas away from the front lines, and many factories switched to supplying the military. “It means we’re profitable and even have some money for future investments,” he said.

Ukraine’s economy, while hurting, is stabilizing after the deep crash set off by the war, thanks to a combination of quick policy actions, military resilience and the flexible response of Ukrainian businesses to the damage and dislocation. The uptick is boosting morale in the country along with recent combat breakthroughs in the east after months on the defensive.

Ukraine’s central bank and Finance Ministry also took swift steps, using a playbook drawn from earlier crises, that economists say helped to prevent a bigger disaster.

The National Bank of Ukraine imposed capital controls and pegged Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, to the dollar at a level that didn’t allow import costs and inflation to skyrocket. The bank had to devalue the hryvnia in July when it came under too much pressure, but the new rate has held so far.

The central bank, despite misgivings, printed money to keep the government solvent at a time when international markets wouldn’t lend and tax revenues were evaporating. “At the beginning of the war we understood it is impossible to conduct our monetary policy as before,” said Sergiy Nikolaychuk, deputy governor of the National Bank of Ukraine.

The government temporarily slashed business taxes and suspended sales taxes and import duties, providing a fiscal stimulus and easing imports of consumer goods during the darkest hour. Kyiv has gradually restored taxes as economic activity has stabilized.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-economy-stabilizes-military-gains-11663078436?mod=hp_lead_pos6

[NOVA Green]

Slight follow-up on the whole "Political-Economy" scene...

https://twitter.com/IikkaKorhonen/status/1569536372012195841?s=20&t=Cl3gvnJe...

[NOVA Green]

Also while most of the thread involved certain personal arguments regarding collaborators and all that stuff...

Meanwhile potential chances of UKR breakthroughs in the immediate future on the Lyman front lines...


https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1569406124008300546?s=20&t=Cl3gvn...

[Frodo]

I felt it the appropriate time to bump the article ugabug originally posted six months ago, given that ultimate victory for Ukraine in this war is now in sight:

Here's a interesting article from a Chinese professor that's been translated about the possible impacts from the war from a Chinese perspective.

https://uscnpm.org/2022/03/12/hu-wei-russia-ukraine-war-china-choice/

[NOVA Green]

Again while Atlas is wrangling, looks like the French are willing to publicly step up with their military support to Ukraine (),

Military victories perhaps might provide more gifts to Ukraine from friendly countries well before Christmas and Hanukkah seasons?

https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1569386527989420032?s=20&t=Cl3gvn...

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

If this were a Paradox game, Ukraine would have a war score of around 70% in their favor now I think.

[Frodo]

Putin really does not want to knock the hornets' nest, does he? 

Putin just wants to "win," except he seems to still be unable to reconcile the idea of winning with the reality that he doesn't have nearly enough personnel to actually do so, let alone weapons, body armor and vehicles for them. Nor the competency and leadership from his military, but that's a whole other discussion. Maybe before he thought he could outlast Ukraine and let economic realities and waning military aid force Ukraine to sue for peace, but now it's clear the aid isn't going to stop and Ukraine actually is very capable of launching offensives of their own and quickly retaking land, and knows this, which means they won't give up.

Not to mention that even if he were to institute the draft, that it will take more than a year before those newly minted conscript soldiers can be ready to deploy in Ukraine, by which point the war will likely be over -in Ukraine's favor.  And most Russians (I hope) recognize this war doesn't pose an existential threat to the Russian state -Ukraine is not Nazi Germany in 1941 on the eve of Operation Barbarossa, further diminishing the necessity for this drastic measure.     

[NOVA Green]

Considering what appears to be a massive influx of Russian POWs recently into Ukrainian detention facilities now is def a good time to do a "prisoner swap.

International Committee of the Red Cross dinged Ukraine for Russian POWs mainly because the POWs were effectively living in small quarters in overcrowded cells.

International Committee of the Red Cross hit Russia hard for not allowing access to POW facilities, massive reports of brutality inflicted upon POWs including "Gauntlet" style ceremonies, which within older men in the US we associate more with East Coast Prep School, Military Initiation Rites, Frat Boy, scenes, but in this case very brutal and extremely violent well beyond the whole "boys be boys" BS from the '50s to the '90s.

Culture of Russian Military is based upon these very structures of dehumanization and hazing, which although unfortunately still exists today in so many countries in the world is increasingly becoming much more uncommon among most modern militaries.

Regardless, Ukraine should do everything possible to free the "men behind the wire", regardless of it is an unequal prisoner exchange, before the mass executions take place in Mariupol where cages are already being built to try members of the Azov Brigade who fought to defend the Steelworks.

This is after roughly (50) UK POWs were murdered under Russian custody with geolocation showing the graves being constructed a week before the mass murder of POWs....

Ukraine needs to free "The Men Behind the Wire"

Again apologies for my Commonwealth comrades and both me and my wife mourn the death of Queen Elizabeth, so please do not misinterpret this as my younger Sister has been living in the UK for well over (20) years, and my "mum" moved over there about (5) years back...

Just want to make sure that people understand that, since regardless of our feeling regarding should England be a Monarchy or a Republic, my post has nothing to do with any of that bullocks...

[Middle-aged Europe]

I am hearing rumors Melitopol has been evacuated by the Russians.  

Where from personal sources or.... ?

#1 rule of Atlas is to at least attempt to cite sources, so at least we can all have a good time "Unskewing" just like US-GE-PRES POLLS from '16 and '20.  

I saw that too, but it was just from random people on Twitter. As much as I would love it to be true, random accounts on Twitter aren't all too reliable—after all, I was fooled by the Donetsk Airport rumors on Saturday.

I read about the "Russian retreat fröm Melitopol" stuff too... in this case on the website of the Deutschlandfunk, the German version of the NPR (https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/russische-einheiten-ziehen-sich-offenbar-zurueck-100.html).

The source cited in the Deutschlanfunk article is the (deposed) mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Ukraine's next move to keep the momentum going should be to completely destroy the "government" of the Donetsk People's Republic. Swarm in past the Russians, while shooting artillery and missiles at "government" buildings (NOT civilians) and after the Russians and their joke of a military's inevitable routing swoop in and arrest all the leaders and members of their Parliament they can. Sure many if not most will flee but the optics of that are also horrible. The fall of the DPR will be truly unspinnable.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Putin really does not want to knock the hornets' nest, does he? 

Putin just wants to "win," except he seems to still be unable to reconcile the idea of winning with the reality that he doesn't have nearly enough personnel to actually do so, let alone weapons, body armor and vehicles for them. Nor the competency and leadership from his military, but that's a whole other discussion. Maybe before he thought he could outlast Ukraine and let economic realities and waning military aid force Ukraine to sue for peace, but now it's clear the aid isn't going to stop and Ukraine actually is very capable of launching offensives of their own and quickly retaking land, and knows this, which means they won't give up.

Not to mention that even if he were to institute the draft, that it will take more than a year before those newly minted conscript soldiers can be ready to deploy in Ukraine, by which point the war will likely be over -in Ukraine's favor.  And most Russians (I hope) recognize this war doesn't pose an existential threat to the Russian state -Ukraine is not Nazi Germany in 1941 on the eve of Operation Barbarossa, further diminishing the necessity for this drastic measure.     

What would the Russian argument?

"Guys we need more troops to fight the Nazis led by a Jewish President. Yes, we know Ukraine is a small country and we are a military 'superpower' but yeah. Anyway, can you send us more young people to kill for old times sake? Thanks"

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Two CSTO members. Let’s hope this deescalation - it has happened before, but Russia wasn’t militarily preoccupied then.
https://mobile.twitter.com/BBCSteveR/status/1569935743383920640

Incidentally, Ukrainian intelligence claimed yesterday that Russia was trying to buy military materiel and recruit retired servicemen from Tajikistan. The latter was already true to an extent - Wagner stepped up recruiting in former USSR countries a few months ago, IIRC.

[Torie]

I felt it the appropriate time to bump the article ugabug originally posted six months ago, given that ultimate victory for Ukraine in this war is now in sight:

Here's a interesting article from a Chinese professor that's been translated about the possible impacts from the war from a Chinese perspective.

https://uscnpm.org/2022/03/12/hu-wei-russia-ukraine-war-china-choice/

Quite perspicacious and even prescient article, but not utterly clairvoyant and omniscient. (Hey, four big words there in one short sentence, not bad there Torie .) The Russian economy has done better than he thought (if you don't believe me just ask jaichind   ), but the Ukrainian army has also done better, and so far the specter of nukes less of a factor. China has not spanked Russia, but other than secure its oil at a 30% discount, hasn't done much for Russia other than give Putin a couple of photo ops and some vague words of cooperation and solidarity. It has not supplied Russia with the critical IT chips (if it did, it would be cut off from them itself), so overall China has been considerably more of a disappointment for Russia than Germany has been for Ukraine, and that is saying something.

[Torie]

Two CSTO members. Let’s hope this deescalation - it has happened before, but Russia wasn’t militarily preoccupied then.
https://mobile.twitter.com/BBCSteveR/status/1569935743383920640
Incidentally, Ukrainian intelligence claimed yesterday that Russia was trying to buy military materiel and recruit retired servicemen from Tajikistan. The latter was already true to an extent - Wagner stepped up recruiting in former USSR countries a few months ago, IIRC.

Has some think tank guy elucidated how the dots connect or do not connect between the Ukraine war and the action between Armenia and Azerbaijan? How much of it is coincidence and how much of it is connected?

[Torie]

Meanwhile, now let's look at a bit of the current morale state among Russian soldiers stationed within Occupied Ukraine...

It appears from my uninformed perspective that this is likely much more significant than even the collapse of support for the Soviet Invasion and Occupation of Afghanistan, when it comes to a fundamental rejection of the military and political leadership behind this "Special Operation".


https://twitter.com/kromark/status/1569395756481806337?s=20&t=Cl3gvnJeCdMFrb...

That is but one day after the full scale counteroffensive began. That was quick. I guess they perhaps were aware of the hallowing out.