The Invasion of Ukraine

[lpm]

Someone on Twitter pointed out that Putin has, unnoticed, occupied Belarus. It's now not merely a puppet state but an invaded puppet state. The road to the Balts is wide open.

[EACLucifer]

Putin declares the two provinces independent.

Either the west buckles overnight or invasion tomorrow?

The Russian Black Sea fleet has sailed. The tanks in Belarus have left their positions and headed southwards.

- the correct military response would be for Ukraine to go for a surprise first strike now.

This is what Israel did in 67 after a similar buildup in the Sinai, but they were at the time more isolated, and though heavily outnumbered in terms of aircraft, the disparity was not as great as it is with Russia and Ukraine.

Ukraine are also equipped much more effectively for a defensive war than they are for offense.

the correct response from the west would be punitive sanctions now. Why bother waiting till tomorrow? Make Putin hesitate now.

The correct response would be sanctions that make those on Iran look extremely gentle.

For all the "if Russia attacks* we will clean out their dirty money" b.llsh.t we've had from politicians, why the f.ck haven't they cleaned the dirty money out already?



*They've already attacked, of course, they've been doing it for most of a decade

[sTeamTraen]

Do we have any indication of how keen the average Russian soldier is going to be to fight on away soil against a presumably highly-motivated opponent with whom he has no particular ethnic or racial beef?

When Hitler occupied the Sudetenland he had an entire nationalist movement behind him, complete with youth wing, official bad people (Jews, gypsies, etc), and generally a lot of fervour. I wonder how much the average Russian in the street, quite a few of whom will have family in Ukraine from the Soviet times, will feel about this.

You can go to McDonald's in Moscow or Kyiv. You can drink Heineken. The soldiers on both sides will have done that. They will all have Android phones. The officers on both sides will have (or know someone who has) bought a Toyota with ABS brakes from an authorised dealer, or bought clothes at a Gap store, again in both countries. They speak languages that are no further apart than Dutch and German (and half of the Ukrainians speak Russian anyway). I just don't get how you motivate people to fight people who are ostensibly so similar.

[EACLucifer]

- Russian civilians being herded onto buses to evacuate from the occupied eastern regions of Ukraine
- massive military exercise scheduled to end, will be converted into the attack
- Biden to make address

Occupied Ukrainian citizens, not Russians. They effectively abducted a bunch of orphans, many of whom were orphans because of Russian behaviour to begin with.

[EACLucifer]

For anyone wondering, I think lpm is referring to an explosion at a government building in Donestk - clicky. Not much detail on it so far.

Starting tonight I guess.

Maybe, but if they want to make it look slightly realistic they've got to arrest the "suspect" and get a "confession" out of them first, so maybe a bit longer. Mind you, after the "I went to Sailsbury to see the cathedral" bit, I'm not sure how much the Russians care about things looking realistic.

Their "we captured helmet camera footage from some dastardly Polish speaking saboteurs trying to blow up chlorine tanks" video was released on the 18th, I think. The video metadata shows it was put together on the 8th, with the audio for the videos of the explosions nicked from a youtube video of the Finnish army practising with some rockets.

Previously, they used computer game footage to make a false claim about the US.

Those idiots in the west who support Putin's fascist Russia, be they rightwingers, tankies or "anti-imperialists*", should be treated the same way one would treat neo-nazis.


*not referring to anti-imperialists with an understanding of what imperialism is and who are opposed to it, referring to those who have completely bought into the idea of spheres of influence and always side against the west.

[EACLucifer]

Do we have any indication of how keen the average Russian soldier is going to be to fight on away soil against a presumably highly-motivated opponent with whom he has no particular ethnic or racial beef?

When Hitler occupied the Sudetenland he had an entire nationalist movement behind him, complete with youth wing, official bad people (Jews, gypsies, etc), and generally a lot of fervour. I wonder how much the average Russian in the street, quite a few of whom will have family in Ukraine from the Soviet times, will feel about this.

You can go to McDonald's in Moscow or Kyiv. You can drink Heineken. The soldiers on both sides will have done that. They will all have Android phones. The officers on both sides will have (or know someone who has) bought a Toyota with ABS brakes from an authorised dealer, or bought clothes at a Gap store, again in both countries. They speak languages that are no further apart than Dutch and German (and half of the Ukrainians speak Russian anyway). I just don't get how you motivate people to fight people who are ostensibly so similar.

Reports from Belarus describe them as drunk and selling off their fuel. Reports from near the border describe them being dumped at a train station for many days without any rations and the officers just f.cking off and leaving them there, so they had to buy food from the local village until their money ran out, at which point I think they demanded it. As always, reports can't easily be verified, but if true, discipline is poor and morale presumably low.

The problem with this from a Ukrainian perspective is that soldiers in a military culture rife with brutal hazing and abuse and with very little discipline imposed are an absolute nightmare for an occupied civilian population. This isn't a hypothetical - consider the torture and murder of sixteen year old Stepan Chubenko - and he was far from the only victim.

[bob sterman]

Everything would seem to point to a full-scale invasion - with these breakaway republics simply providing the pretext.

To be precise, there are no breakaway republics. About a third of Donetsk and a third of Luhansk are controlled by "separatists", ie Russian backed forces with Russian "volunteers".

Putin is claiming the entire provinces, not just the parts already under control. The Ukrainian army is there in force along the "ceasefire" lines.

Yes - should have put "breakaway republics" in quotes or used a different term. But whatever we call them - they are the pretext - and he's going to be claiming not just the entire provinces but Ukraine in its entirety.

Consistent with this - US are apparently pulling embassy staff out of Western Ukraine at the moment.

[jimbob]

Do we have any indication of how keen the average Russian soldier is going to be to fight on away soil against a presumably highly-motivated opponent with whom he has no particular ethnic or racial beef?

When Hitler occupied the Sudetenland he had an entire nationalist movement behind him, complete with youth wing, official bad people (Jews, gypsies, etc), and generally a lot of fervour. I wonder how much the average Russian in the street, quite a few of whom will have family in Ukraine from the Soviet times, will feel about this.

You can go to McDonald's in Moscow or Kyiv. You can drink Heineken. The soldiers on both sides will have done that. They will all have Android phones. The officers on both sides will have (or know someone who has) bought a Toyota with ABS brakes from an authorised dealer, or bought clothes at a Gap store, again in both countries. They speak languages that are no further apart than Dutch and German (and half of the Ukrainians speak Russian anyway). I just don't get how you motivate people to fight people who are ostensibly so similar.

That's the optimistic view.

See countless civil wars not all which were fought on ethnic or religious lines

[El Pollo Diablo]

Still, the Stop The War coalition think this is all NATO's fault so at least we know where they stand

[jimbob]

*not referring to anti-imperialists with an understanding of what imperialism is and who are opposed to it, referring to those who have completely bought into the idea of spheres of influence and always side against the west.

Where the spheres of influence are basically whatever Putin says.

Mind you on the ISF, one apologist has decided that the best way to gmhead off criticism by comparison with the Sudaeten is to claim that Hitler was right

[IvanV]

I just don't get how you motivate people to fight people who are ostensibly so similar.

Often there is particular friction between people who are just a little bit different from each other. English and Scots. Serbs and Croats. Dutch and Germans. Spanish and Portuguese. Argentineans and Chileans. Russians and Poles. Ethiopians and Eritreans. Hutu and Tutsi. Protestants and Catholics. Sunnis and Shias. Athenians and Spartans. Judaeans and Samaritans.

I rather suspect the Ukrainians haven't forgotten the Holodomor, Stalin's administratively induced famine, which some consider a genocide. And the Russians haven't forgotten the extent of Ukrainian collaboration with Germans in WW2.

Or, at least, it is easy to wheel out issues like these by anyone trying to provoke animosity. Historical injustices tend to be remembered for a long time. Especially when people are kept reminded of them.

[Stranger Mouse]

Guy phoning into James O’Brien on LBC - he’s Latvian and he says there is a similar propaganda campaign going on in Latvia that has gone in Georgia and a Ukraine.

Still trying to figure out why we allow RT a broadcast licence. I’m expecting Putin to invade the UK to protect Lord Lebedev.

[lpm]

Still, the Stop The War coalition think this is all NATO's fault so at least we know where they stand

Amazing that Leave / Brexit Party have identical views and offer up the same Russian propaganda. Aaron Banks has made it clear who pulls his puppet strings.

[El Pollo Diablo]

I guess Russia has always been where far right and far left meet back on the other side

[lpm]

I know carrot and stick is a bit basic. But basic is good.

Surely we should increase sanction levels from 3 to 10 immediately, then tell the oligarchs we'll take it back down to 3 if they make Putin behave or go up to 20 if they let him be naughty.

[Stranger Mouse]

Farewell Nordstream 2 https://twitter.com/philipoltermann/sta ... 36064?s=21

[Woodchopper]

I know carrot and stick is a bit basic. But basic is good.

Surely we should increase sanction levels from 3 to 10 immediately, then tell the oligarchs we'll take it back down to 3 if they make Putin behave or go up to 20 if they let him be naughty.

As far as I know it’s a long time since the oligarchs wielded independent political power in Russia. If they tried to move against Putin they would likely be arrested or just killed. If there is to be a coup it would need to be by the army. Yesterday even the head of the foreign intelligence service looked terrified by Putin.

[lpm]

Putin himself is out of control but even he is subconsciously affected by the Overton window. There's influence to be had.

And at the other end of the spectrum, Putin doesn't personally store the Novichok supplies...

[EACLucifer]

I guess Russia has always been where far right and far left meet back on the other side

Kneejerk opposition to the west in general sees that - Russia of course is a particular focal point for that, but we've also seen it in support for Assad, and I've seen some MAGA types fawning over China's homophobic turn under Xi.

For the far left, a lot of it looks like nostalgia for the Soviet Union (or edgy little shits who've realised that dressing in black and getting piercings doesn't shock their parents these days and so have decided to be commies, often without the first understanding of what communism actually is. Trapped in an arms race to be the more shocking - just as death metal bands were in the eighties - many of them are now claiming to be maoists or praising North Korea). For others on the far left, it's an utterly stupid take on anti-imperialism, utterly divorced from any understanding of what imperialism actually is. Though such fools are generally uninterested in learning, they should be pointed in the direction of Ghana and Kenya's responses to this latest Russian imperialist attack.

For the far right, meanwhile, Russia is a lot like what they want to do in America and other parts of the west - rigged elections, homophobia, racism, use of christianity as a tool of social control, pathetic macho posturing by strongmen, etc.

Both fringes are utterly dominated by the idea that the highest possible good is attacking liberals, and so if massacring people in Syria and Ukraine upsets liberals, they conclude that it must be good.

[Stranger Mouse]

A Cold War Steve classic https://twitter.com/coldwar_steve/statu ... 15876?s=21

[EACLucifer]

Putin himself is out of control but even he is subconsciously affected by the Overton window. There's influence to be had.

And at the other end of the spectrum, Putin doesn't personally store the Novichok supplies...

And it's hard to operate an army of conquest when you are under embargo - just ask the racist, imperialist, revanchist dictator that tried to take over Europe using a false flag attack as a pretext.

One of the things that is making me so angry about all of this is that it did not have to be this way. Ukraine has forty million people. They can field a large army. What they needed all along was the weaponry to do so. It's too late to put it in place now. We shouldn't have waited to the last possible minute to ship Javelins and N-LAWs, the moment it became clear Putin was willing to invade Ukraine - which he did eight damn years ago - we should have been shipping everything we could to fortify the place, restarting the assembly lines to send them modern western tanks, sending them quantities of drones, and so on.

[jimbob]

Putin himself is out of control but even he is subconsciously affected by the Overton window. There's influence to be had.

And at the other end of the spectrum, Putin doesn't personally store the Novichok supplies...

And it's hard to operate an army of conquest when you are under embargo - just ask the racist, imperialist, revanchist dictator that tried to take over Europe using a false flag attack as a pretext.

One of the things that is making me so angry about all of this is that it did not have to be this way. Ukraine has forty million people. They can field a large army. What they needed all along was the weaponry to do so. It's too late to put it in place now. We shouldn't have waited to the last possible minute to ship Javelins and N-LAWs, the moment it became clear Putin was willing to invade Ukraine - which he did eight damn years ago - we should have been shipping everything we could to fortify the place, restarting the assembly lines to send them modern western tanks, sending them quantities of drones, and so on.

Agreed

[EACLucifer]

Just to make sure everyone is clear on the subject, Russia's annexation of eastern Ukraine includes areas that are on the Ukraine side of the current line of actual control, including places like Mariupol and Slovyansk, both sizeable cities.

[EACLucifer]

Sanctioning oligarchs is never going to cut it. They have ways round it, they have proxies to handle their money. For sanctions to work - and they must be made to work - they have to target Russia as a whole. It is necessary to make the Russians howl, until either depose Putin or are simply too bankrupt to inflict major harm. Anything less and Putin will regard it as permission to go even further.

It doesn't matter if we like the idea of a new cold war or not. We've got one, we've got one because Putin has decided to restore the Russian Empire to its nineteenth century status. The choices are to fight back now, or to surrender, only to be forced to make that choice again and again with fewer and fewer allies each time as Putin picks them off one by one. Appeasement simply does not work. Fighting back early with very tough sanctions won't be pleasant, but it won't be as unpleasant as leaving it until later and being forced to fight back with armies and navies and air forces.

As for the oligarchs, the way to hurt them is to drive them out, to stop them using the west as their playground. They steal their money in Russia, but they don't want to spend their time their, or among ordinary Russians. Until Putin's armies are out of Ukraine, the only visas we should offer Russians should be humanitarian ones. The kleptocrats should be expelled. The degree to which they and their stolen wealth has been welcomed in the west is inexcusable, and has to end.

[IvanV]

Just to make sure everyone is clear on the subject, Russia's annexation of eastern Ukraine includes areas that are on the Ukraine side of the current line of actual control, including places like Mariupol and Slovyansk, both sizeable cities.

The separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk have long claimed a larger region than they control. But the current news seems to be that Putin has not made clear what borders he recognises. If he was explicitly claiming a larger area, that would be news. I can't find any news that Russian troops have crossed the line of control, either. That would be massive news.