Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Dereich]

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?

*heavy sarcasm* Didn’t you know Euromaidan was actually a NATO backed coup? The thousands of protesters in Kiev were all CIA operatives.

The fact that the Americans found local lackeys to do their bidding doesn't change the fact they orchestrated the regime change when Ukraine changed their policy to align with Russia. In particular, Victoria Nuland, who may still be at the State Department, was caught with her hand in the cookie jar and on tape talking about it. Biden talked today about the right of countries to determine their own futures. Well, what if Zelensky decides that the future of Ukraine is neutrality? Then it's time for a new Ukrainian president, huh?

One would think that after the Russians foisted Trump on the US and caused us all the mayhem and misery of the last 4 years, Americans would realize that what they did in Ukraine in 2014 was a big mistake. But hypocrisy looks like it is the true enduring hallmark of American foreign policy.

There's this absurd idea that EVERYTHING happening internationally happens only because of or in opposition to the United States. The United States, still pushing the "Russia Reset" idea at the time, had no reason to support protests to overthrow Yanukovych. If you really really want to point to some hidden hand behind the Maidan protests and regime change, the US is not the best culprit. The spark for those protests was the Yanukovych regime backing out of their association agreement with the EU; the EU would really be the ones with an immediate reason to back the protests and they did get their agreement. The US had nothing to gain and did in fact gain nothing from Yanukovych's overthrow. Of course, no one blames the EU for Maidan because its an absurd idea that they'd be able to secretly and successfully organize a revolution under Russia's nose if the EU could even get its members to agree to wanting to do so.

Meanwhile, regular Ukrainians had EVERY reason to want Yanukovych out. Ukraine has been a basketcase since the fall of the Soviet Union. They've been one of the 10 worst performing countries in the world in growth since 1990. And the EU has been a wildly successful project for everyone in Eastern Europe who got in. Ukraine was richer than Poland at the end of the Warsaw Pact and are now 30% poorer. Why WOULDN'T the people of Ukraine be outraged that their government was throwing away the chance to associate with the EU?

[Dereich]

So, ground troops didn't actually invade.
Very minor egg on face for the US intelligence apparatus?

What’s particularly weird about this buildup is how many messages we’re getting from different sources. I don’t think any official message from a named person has said “today is the day.” I’m not sure we have official statements beyond hearing that the Russians are prepared to invade at some point soon and things like the embassy evacuation. We probably shouldn’t be giving unnamed officials speaking to The Sun the same credence and legitimacy as a speech by President Biden but it’s hard to weigh when it’s coming in so quickly.

[Dereich]

Latest news:
https://twitter.com/27khv/status/1494665528799076352

I shouldn’t have to say this, but obviously Ukraine is not about to start an offensive against the breakaways with a massive Russian army on their border ready to invade. What would possibly be the point of this if Russia was bluffing? Mass evacuations are a hideously disruptive and expensive thing to do, especially if it goes on for any length of time.

[Dereich]

A surreal questioning with Putin’s press secretary. It’d be a good comedy routine if it wasn’t so serious.

[Dereich]

If I were Zelensky I'd be doing everything in my power to get my hands on nukes as quickly as possible.

As soon as he actively attempts this, Putin would possibly see this as invitation and invade Ukraine entirely. And without active military intervention from NATO forces (which wouldn't happen), Russia would have occupied the whole country in a matter of weeks and Zelensky would either be arrested or in exile.

More importantly, even if he had nukes, where exactly would he use them? In Donbass and occupied territory? He would conquer back territory that's no longer habitable from nuclear fallout. He would have to attack Russia directly, which would not only cause thousands of innocent deaths, it would be the starting point for WWIII.

Last but not least, arming Ukraine with nukes would embolden Russia, the PRC or other bad actors to arm other horrible regimes with nukes with whom they're allied because "the West has done the same."

The NATO bloc already tore down one precedent by separating Kosovo from Serbia, emboldening Russia and allowing it to support allied movements in Georgia and later Ukraine.
It'd be for the best if we didn't destroy another precedent for sake of short-term gain. No one should supply Ukraine any nukes. The knock-on effects would be disastrous.

Russia more or less helped Abkhaz separatists to expel and kill thousands of Georgians (47 % of the Abkhaz population in 1989, 21 % in 2003) for instance by refusing to step in when Abkhaz separatists violated a ceasefire agreement (Sokhumi massacre of 1993) in the early 1990s before the Kosovo War even started.

Thanks for the new information (and it shouldn't be surprising that Russia was doing divide-and-conquer games in the Caucusus of the 1990s), but it is still fact that Russia was allowed to militarily intervene and recognize Abkhazia in 2008 by using the Kosovo precedent, no?

Russia was “allowed” to do so because they had the military force and the political will to do so. The only thing the recognition of Kosovo changed was to give Russia a talking point against the West. There is no scenario where not recognizing Kosovo stops or changes the Russo-Georgian War.

[Dereich]

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1496681796137857029

I think US intelligence did a great job on this one. The leaks and putting everyone on alert put Putin in a tough position and made any kind of false flag impossible.

[Dereich]

The Ukrainians are going to bleed the Russians until they leave, and they are going to do so with (at least) the funding and diplomatic support of the Western World. The Russian army of 2021 isn’t the Red Army of 1941-45, bound together by ideology and fear of Nazi extermination, it’s cold and hungry and being sent to die in a foreign country for a madman’s vanity. The Russians may conquer Ukraine, but they will never hold it.

The the Russians have already sent in half of their forces at the border and they haven't even taken any major cities yet?
https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1496975432519983107?s=20&t=z4E1xL77...

I hope this is correct about the low morale.

 You and me both, but it frankly sounds like total propaganda.

"As of 2021, all male Russian citizens aged 18–27 are subject to conscription for 1 year of active duty military service in armed forces, but the precise number of conscripts for each of the recruitment campaigns, which are usually held twice annually, is prescribed by particular Presidential Decree." If these Russian soldiers are mostly 1 year conscripts I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't super happy to be in battle. 

[Dereich]

We ought to get BigSerg in here to see another perspective.

Your opinion is noted.

[Dereich]

Petition to unmute BigSerg on this thread to widen perspectives shared

X TheReckoning

You've tried this a few times. Its not happening.

[Dereich]

Russia is NOT the same threat as Nazi Germany or even the USSR, and people desperate for action need to stop pretending otherwise.

It's true that there is a certain type of bored, NEET westerner who is hoping for action for action's own sake simply in order to bring excitement to their otherwise dreary life.

However, it's unquestionable that Putin's playbook has shifted from his old approach of nibbling around the edges of his neighbors, to outright conquest. It's very likely that his 2 years of COVID isolation either made him insane, obsessed with his place in the history books, or both.

Conquest was status quo for millennia, so people need to stop acting like breaking a relatively recent norm is definitely the end of mankind, or even a major event in the grand scheme of things.

It was also the status quo that there would be a great power war every 50 years or so and the peace since WWII is also a unusual break from the norm. I can promise you that we'd be treating a war between two at very least as seriously as we're all treating this.

[Dereich]

American intel has been absolutely elite so far in this war, I trust them to know exactly what's going on in Russia and know which buttons we need to press to end the war and (hopefully) get Putin fragged.

Our foreign policy and intelligence apparatus has had its best year in decades.

It shouldn't be surprising that the US intelligence establishment is better on Russia than anywhere else. Finally we get a benefit from them not sufficiently moving on from the Cold War focus on the Soviets.

[Dereich]

Also, it's clear that China got it right when it decided to ring-fence its internet, bar Western internet and social media companies that wouldn't meet its requirements, which turned out to be all of them, and develop domestic alternatives. Facebook and Twitter are turning out to be huge national security nightmares for Russia as they are clearly intervening on behalf of the Ukrainians and banning them now could cause backlash as there may not be an alternative (maybe Telegram?) and Russians are used to using them. China would not face this issue at all. Yes it's annoying to use the internet in China particularly to browse foreign websites but national security is more important than my convenience.

COPE

Again, this makes no sense. I'm not Russian. I'm basically watching a football game here. I may have picked a side to support but I have no skin in the game. For some reason the vast majority of the forum, minus a few Ukrainians, thinks they do even though they are in the same situation as me.

There is an obvious difference between private censorship and state censorship. For instance, I might think that you should be permanently banned from this site because you are a fascist useful idiot, an authoritarian stooge, a Wumao 50 cent shill, a gutless bloodthirsty keyboard warrior, and worst of all a Jerseyite. Nevertheless, I would still think you should be free to say what you want in the public sphere though. Hypothetically.

These days Twitter, Facebook, and other social media/internet services function practically as extensions of the public sphere even if they are regulated as private companies and have wide powers to deny service. They have clearly picked a side in this conflict and the situation is clearly asymmetric; if Ukrainian troop movements were filmed and posted, they would likely be quickly deleted, and Russian "fake news" is banned while Ukrainian reports that are likely just as fake are promulgated as news. I mean who really believes the 20:1 casualty ratio reported? Imagine how you would feel if Weibo were the dominant service in the US, Twitter were a fringe service like Parler or whatever the hell Trump is launching, and after the war started all you saw were pro-Russian posts and the pro-Ukrainian ones were suppressed?

Most of this you’re making up or being disingenuous about. The reason that there are so many pro-Ukrainian posts and reports is not because of some Western pro-Ukrainian bias and shadow moderation but because the invasion is happening on Ukrainian soil and the common citizens there who are tweeting things on the ground have an obvious and reasonable pro-Ukrainian bias. The other big reason is that there is only one side interested in publishing news and reports about the war. The Russians have been pretending that this isn’t a big deal and have not taken the initiative on presenting their own side on international social media. And when they’re telling their citizens that nothing major is happening there’s no reason for Russian social media users to fight for the narrative.

The one piece of “Ukrainian propaganda” that you picked, the 20-1 casualty ratio, was a terrible one. Because in that one area we DID get a Russian response. Namely, that they had ZERO (0) casualties in the first three days and ONE (1) casualty the day after that. The Russian response was so obviously and objectively wrong it was easy to dismiss and ignore. No pro-Western social media censorship required!

[Dereich]

Does anyone have an informed opinion as to whether Putin has gone nutter in a way that he was not before, and yes, you guessed it, that covid isolation might have had something to do with it?

https://thehill.com/policy/international/596269-worries-grow-over-putins-stability-mindset

It’s been easy for everyone in the past to ignore some of Putin’s other crazy moves and treat them like he’s a mastermind playing 5D chess. But this is the only world leader outside Kim Jong Un who has openly had his political opposition assassinated in foreign countries. He’s also almost certainly the one who had his own capital bombed to pave the way for a war in Chechnya to boost his popularity. Nothing he’s doing now is THAT far from how he’s always been in my opinion.  

[Dereich]

Would the fall of Kiev be the end of the conventional war or do we anticipate continued conventional resistance in the west?

I think it was the Russian expectation right from the start that the Ukrainian military would collapse once Kyiv fell but with how things have developed that doesn't seem as likely as it did a week ago. I don't think anyone can say at this point.

[Dereich]

Russian Ministry of Defense claims 2,870 Ukrainian soldiers killed, 498 Russians.

https://twitter.com/DrAlakbarov/status/1499073100067000320

In the first 10 days of the invasion of Iraq the US had 65 deaths. Even if you were to believe the Russian numbers, which I don't, they've had a much worse time of it than the US did in 2003.

[Dereich]

https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1508904940181372936

This sounds like Russia is reverting back to some form of its original plan for the "special military operation" before it had been scaled up (by Putin?) at the last minute prior to the invasion... as far as we can tell.

I doubt this was ever the "original" plan. As early as the 3rd post in this thread, way back in November, the US was talking about concerning Russian troop buildups in the town of Yelnya near the Belorussian border. Yelnya would be much closer to Chernihiv and Kyiv than it would be to Donetsk.

[Dereich]

This is the "goal" map that pro-Russian Twitter users (or bots) have begun sharing

Not sure if even this is realistic though.

Good luck with that.

Even Russian speakers in Ukraine don't like Putin or Russia anymore.

Look at what the Russians did to Mariupol, a majority Russian-speaking city.

Did? More like "are still doing." It is worth remembering that Mariupol of all cities is somehow still holding out after more than a month. If the Russians can't quickly capture what should have been the easiest city in all of Ukraine, there's zero chance they'll have an easy time taking the other big eastern cities.

[Dereich]

These two stories does not jive

https://www.reuters.com/world/indian-troops-join-russian-military-exercise-despite-us-concerns-2022-09-01/

"Indian troops join Russian military exercise despite U.S. concerns"


https://www.businessinsider.com/vostok-22-will-be-fraction-of-the-size-uk-intelligence-2022-9

"Russia is using a fraction of soldiers it claimed for military exercises with China and India, UK intel says"

It seems weird for Russia to lie about the number of troops in Vostok 2022 when both PRC and India will be present at this exercise and be in a position to know that Russia lied.    It seems if Russia is going to lie about this they should not invite PRC and India and expose their weakness and if they are going to invite PRC and India then they will not lie about the number of Russian troops at  Vostok 2022

Why not? If India and China want to visibly show their support for Russia by attending these exercises it stands to reason that they wouldn't then immediately embarrass Russia by exposing their lies. Doing so would just make everyone angry.

[Dereich]

Goldman Sachs had a report out this week expecting European natural gas prices to plunge soon saying that Europe has solved its natural gas problem for this winter.

JP-Morgan analysts also think that European gas prices will be dropping soon and that a combination of changing gas usage and high reserves mean that if there are going to be any issues they won't be until next year. Specifically "Even with assuming zero supply from Russia going forward, storage likely won’t dip below 30% this winter, leaving Europe with a buffer for an extraordinary cold spell."

This is the kind of economics story you'd expect Jaichind to have posted but I guess he just missed all of this positive news for some reason.

[Dereich]

According to German newssources, Russian Duma considers "inviting" Defense Minister Shoigu for a hearing. This is quite unusual. Apparently there's increasing backlash even in Russia over recent military losses. Has first been reported by a Russian newspaper close to the Kremlin. Maybe he's on his way out?

That's worrying.

He might get replaced with someone competent.

I don't think that's fair! He's been a Russian cabinet minister for 31 years under Yeltsin and all the various Putin regimes without falling out of any windows or being arrested for making the wrong person angry. He's definitely competent at something...just maybe not running the Russian military efficiently.

[Dereich]

Meduza cites sources close to Putin’s administration: https://meduza.io/feature/2022/09/20/partiya-voyny-pobedila

They claim the plan is to use the referendums to deter Ukraine from advancing further. If they do, the fallback is to conduct a “partial mobilisation”. They don’t specify what that is, but based on previous reporting, this could mean some combination of compelling refuseniks (which the new Duma law seems to do), conscripting retired or reservist specialists/officers, using active-duty conscripts and fully mobilising certain border regions.

Welcome to Russia Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces! You are now drafted as part of full mobilization, go fight and die for your new country.

[Dereich]

The weird thing about the pro-Russian viewpoints I always see is this pervading, underlying belief that they're always on the cusp of victory if only they were to put in a little bit more effort. If only Russia had a few ten thousand more men, if only western support were to slow down, if only they could push through Ukrainian defensive positions in Donetsk then Ukrainian resistance would fall apart and Russia would get the quick easy victory that they were just unlucky not to get from the start. Its like Russia supporters cannot acknowledge both that Russia is no longer a military powerhouse capable of enforcing its will wherever it wants or that Ukrainians have their own strongly compelling reasons to fight and the ability to do so even if the West were to pull out its support.

This potential mobilization is the same thing; even if Russia were to fully mobilize is there any reason to think that it'd mean Ukrainian support for the war would collapse or that the Russian military would be better equipped or positioned to swiftly win the war? I doubt it.

[Dereich]

U.S. Believes Ukrainians Were Behind an Assassination in Russia

American officials said they were not aware of the plan ahead of time for the attack that killed Daria Dugina and that they had admonished Ukraine over it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/05/us/politics/ukraine-russia-dugina-assassination.html

Is that so? Oh no. Anyways, the mobilization doesn't seem to have changed Ukrainian decisionmaking so far.

[Dereich]

https://twitter.com/baronitaigas/status/1579407047430639617

That's the same Twitter account that gives "assessments" like these though:


https://twitter.com/baronitaigas/status/1579391284296699904

For the benefit of those of us blocked by this account, what do these tweets say?

[Dereich]

Pokrovske has fallen, there might be some defenders left in the outskirts. Either way, the road is now open towards Bakhmut. I take it the Russians will first try to secure Soledar (currently ongoing fighting) to the north before they make a move on Bakhmut itself.

The outskirts of Donetsk City is probably the most hellish place currently on the front. Taking Avdiivka might give the Russians and it's separatists some breathing room around the city, I suspect they'll advance north towards Kostiantynivka through the H20, but not before they try to secure Toretsk/New York, and it's surrounding settlements.

(Speculation)
Which the timing makes sense I guess? since the Wagnerovites are assaulting from Novoluhanske/Vuhlevirsk to the west side of the settlements, and the supply route to Bakhmut (Which is about to be assaulted soon) goes through Kostiantynivka.

Bakhmut:

https://twitter.com/marcushaukka/status/1580115223557439488

Surely Bakhmut is mere moments from falling and much progress has been made since July.