Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

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

Great Patriots think alike.

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1483612693827182596

I don't think anyone disputes that it's reasonable for Putin to see a NATO-aligned Ukraine as not in Russia's interests. The question is whether he has the right to tell Ukraine that it's not in Ukraine's interests.

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

Great Patriots think alike.

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1483612693827182596

Tucker Carlson in 1938: Imagine if Mexico fell under the direct military control of the Soviet Union. We would see that as a threat. There would be no reason for that. That’s how Germany views Western control of Czechoslovakia and why wouldn’t they?

1930s Mexico was Soviet-aligned, so I'm not sure that's the best comparison to what Carlson is saying.

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

Ukraine joining NATO at this point is about as likely as Turkey ever joining the EU.
 

So why not tell Putin that publically.  If Russia invades then Putin will have a hell of a job trying to explain to his people why Russian blood needs to be bleed on something the West and Ukraine is already making concessions on.

Because this is geopolitics and that's not how things work. For example, everyone knows Crimea now is Russian and it is never going back to Ukraine, but they're not going to say that publicly in order to not legitimize Russia's hostile annexation of it until the Ukrainians agree to cede it.

Look, Singapore to throw out a random place has a right to join NATO. That doesn't mean they will ever actually get approved to join. The EU are never going to allow Turkey in nowadays, they're still considered a candidate. The Russians seem to want a written-down treaty to be agreed to reorganizing Europe's security infrastructure, and that takes years, not a couple months with your forces around a border.

The Russians are apparently willing to settle for Ukraine guaranteeing it in their laws, probably as a part of their constitution. This would be the biggest L possible IMO for the US, their eastern expansion into Ukraine thwarted without being able to punish Russia for it.  This would probably tempt the US to launch another regime change in Ukraine, which would give Russia a much more solid casus belli.

What do you mean by "another" here?

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

🍿

This isn't some kind of game.

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

compucomp really is the worst poster on the site

Forever-COVID SALT Thatchercrat at home, tankie abroad? Yeah. Awful.

Anyway, looks like nothing tonight so far.

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

🍿

This isn't some kind of game.

Doesn’t mean we can’t find it entertaining/exciting. I know I will.

We could be on the brink of something that will change this world forever. Isn’t that something to get your adrenaline running?

Well, sure, but if I want my adrenaline running I can just do some exercise or watch an action movie. I don't particularly want the threat of mass death to enter into it.

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

🍿

This isn't some kind of game.

Doesn’t mean we can’t find it entertaining/exciting. I know I will.

We could be on the brink of something that will change this world forever. Isn’t that something to get your adrenaline running?

Well, sure, but if I want my adrenaline running I can just do some exercise or watch an action movie. I don't particularly want the threat of mass death to enter into it.

Full disclaimer: I’m not going to say I’m not being naive here- maybe I am, and maybe I’m letting my adventurous spirit getting in the way of my rational and ethical mind.

I typically view times of strife and challenge as times for opportunity and the furthering of myself and humanity.

But Of course, that’s ignoring just his severe that strife/challenge can be in terms of consequence, which often end up destroying opportunities and holding back myself and humanity.

You make your signature look unironic but yeah. There is a part of all of us that wants to see the problem consummated. Some folks really want to watch the world burn but others just don’t like to watch these things fester.

I have thought today and yesterday that if Putin is going to invade I'd rather he just get it over with because I prefer to accept bad news as a reality rather than dread it as a possibility, so on that level I guess TheReckoning has a point.

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

https://twitter.com/John_Hudson/status/1493964155547705351

Lot of Israelis with relatives in Russia they can currently visit without a visa.

I believe, it has more to do with ME/Hamas/Syria/Iran than visas.

Probably, but I'm sure there's not no consideration of the visa issue. Remember that a member of the current governing coalition in Israel started as a Russian-speakers' interests party.

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

https://twitter.com/mrsorokaa/status/1495057000262254595

Zelensky is obviously talking worst-case-scenario here, but this is a kind of big deal rhetorically. Zelensky seems to be implying that, unless the US and UK come to Ukraine's defense, Ukraine may pursue an independent nuclear weapons program. I kind of doubt Ukraine currently has the capacity to build such a program, and it would also be against the terms of Ukraine accession to the NPT. But since Ukraine joined the NPT as a result of the Budapest Memorandum, Zelensky might be able to pull some crazy legalese interpretation that, absent a Budapest Memorandum in force, Ukraine is grandfathered into the NPT as a nuclear weapons state as it legally had Soviet nuclear weapons at the time the NPT was created.

That wouldn't even be that crazy. It probably wouldn't hold up in serious international arbitration, but it's nowhere even close to the way the NPT has been stretched to accommodate, say, Israel's "nuclear ambiguity" or whatever apartheid South Africa was doing towards the end.

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

LETS KICK SOME **S AGAINST THESE SICKOS!!!

You're not helping.

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

Based on multiple reports, it appears that the areas surrounding the contact line in the Donbas are experiencing the heaviest artillery barrage since 2014/2015. Columns of Russian mechanized units have also been spotted tonight less than five kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

At this point, I am pretty sure some sort of operation is commencing and we'll soon see further Russian incursion into Ukraine. I think the only question at this point is whether it's the full-on assault that could see Kyiv encircled or some sort of limited invasion that seizes Kharkiv, Mariupol', and degrades Ukrainian infrastructure in the interior with air and missile strikes. I don't see what the 'limited' option really does for Putin in the strategic sense. If his goal is regime change, I don't know if that'll cut it.

What happens if Zelensky is sitting on unaccounted Nukes and there are reports of a nuclear explosion?

So, there definitely are unaccounted for Soviet nukes, and it's possible there's at least one in Ukraine. Although it's much more likely that any such "lost" bomb would be buried deep under some farm where a Soviet plane crashed decades ago in a totally unusable state and without anybody but some aging bureaucrat in Moscow knowing anything about it. But the chances that Ukraine has managed to keep even one nuke under wraps while also maintaining it (weapons-usable isotopes have half lifes ranging between 14 years and 700 million years, among other considerations) without any IAEA inspectors catching on, are slim to none.

There's also a thorough, reliable, global network of nuclear explosion detectors. So, if there were reports of a nuclear blast, we'd know whether those reports were true almost instantly, although there's no doubt you could convince people otherwise (I knew someone who was extremely knowledgeable about military/warfare stuff who was convinced Russia might have tested a nuke in Syria without anyone noticing - it's not true.)

So, the most likely answer to your question is that the attack would immediately be widely blamed on Russia, which I'm sure Russia would deny, but beyond that, we'd be in totally unprecedented territory, and it's impossible to say.

The ultimate question I was asking is that if it happened tonight/in the morning over there, would I be getting up to a mushroom cloud tomorrow?

It's extremely, extremely doubtful.

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

Russian landing ships in the Sea of Azov and notice given to civilian aircraft:

https://twitter.com/GrangerE04117/status/1495439464403185664?s=20&t=YEFqLh7S...

https://twitter.com/The_Lookout_N/status/1495436428456644614?s=20&t=YEFqLh7S...

So is Macron's allegedly successful diplomatic intervention BS or...?

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

https://twitter.com/JoshMandelOhio/status/1495155709100666888

It's amazing how this tweet manages to go from a good point (by Josh Mandel standards, anyway) to classic "ayy lmao" rightist red-meat nonsense in a single word, which is also the second-to-last word in the tweet.

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

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1495574210185515009?s=20&t=527YmdUSW...

"A verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on."--Sam Goldwyn

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

So what does this mean? No invasion or what?

It absolutely does not mean no invasion, but it does make a slow-rolling encroachment like with Crimea more likely relative to the apocalyptic blitzkrieg we were all fantasizing about a few days ago.

RUB actually strengthened to above 80 at the end of the speech.  I guess some investors expected Putin to also order a military offensive against Ukraine which did not take place.

did no take place yet

It's jaichind; he takes it as an article of faith that currency speculators aren't lemmings because if he admits that they are his whole worldview collapses. Best to ignore his posts about the ruble and just focus on his much more reality-based interpretations regarding what Putin and other leaders are actually saying and doing.

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

Also I like Putin's terminology

I'm sure you do.

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

https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fevanhill%2Fstatus%2F1495873540578594818&widget=Tweet

I've been sympathetic-ish to the "the US isn't necessarily that much better in the grand scheme of things" position in the past, NOVA Green, but now--as in both today and the current geopolitical lay of the land in general--is really not the time any more.

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

Equity markets and RUB surged after Biden's speech.  I guess the sanctions were less than what was feared by the markets.

I'm putting you on ignore until you shut up about currency speculators' hot takes and go back to posting about what's actually happening in the real world.

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

Are Iran and China sending troops into Ukraine to support Russia as well or not at this point?

Lmao

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

I find myself coming back to the same question: Why now?

Has public opinion in Ukraine shifted to be more pro western?

Has the situation in the east devolved enough that Russia needs to step in?

Are things at home that bad?

There's no evidence of A and C, and insufficient evidence of B. I think (this is slightly oversimplifying it but whatevs) the reason he's doing it is that he thinks this is the best opening he'll get and he wants to be remembered as the man who stopped NATO's eastward expansion right in its tracks. And he doesn't trust the West's word either. So he'll remake the situation here, right then and now. He can then negotiate from a position of strength.

He's also getting older and being in relative isolation for two years has given him a lot of time and space to reflect (brood) on capital-H History. One of Putin's few good points is that he genuinely cares about that sort of thing.

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

Abnormally heavy traffic for 3 AM on the obvious invasion route (main road from Belgorod to Kharkiv):

https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1496650993978724357

disposition.

This seems, uh, dispositive.

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

https://twitter.com/leonidragozin/status/1496669206955372546

Thank you for keeping us updated with real information despite your very different sympathies than most of this forum, RB.

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

https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/1496680759624708097

Well. Doesn't get much more MSM than AP.

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

https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1496683014604140548

Putin is basically accusing the Ukrainian government of being McBain-style "commienazis". It's not worthy of attempts at serious interpretation.

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

This is horrifying, I'm so scared. We must now all support the Ukrainian Army and people in their fight for freedom.

Spare us the pearl clutching. Why are you scared? You're not in Ukraine. This war will not touch the USA. Gas prices will go up a bit, that's all. You're really that upset that the grand American ploy to surround and contain Russia has failed?

Again, it's amazing that on a forum that is so politically aware, the vast majority drink the Kool-Aid and accept the Western "freedom and democracy" propaganda as the inalienable truth.

Go to hell, bootlicker.