Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

Raoul said:
This should fuel the next round of whataboutism over the ensuing pages.
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It is not whataboutism to deplore how a tragedy like the one we are seeing in Ukraine instead of making us open our eyes to all the tragedies we've been ignoring (like the one in Yemen), is used to justify this bias and spread racist views like "other people are not civilized, they deserve what's happening to them".


matt10000 said:
Exactly, he is not the biggest in the class and it suits him to pretend he is the craziest in the class! Make people think he would go nuclear but he won’t. He won’t take on NATO either.

IMO he has calculated that NATO won’t fight directly in Ukraine and he is happy to swap sanctions for UKraine. He either ends up with Ukraine with Russian puppet government or if as I suspect, Ukraine offer too much resistance and he doesn’t fancy ten years of guerrilla war, he will gonto the negotiating table and get what he can, promises from NATO and Ukraine split into two opposing states.
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This is his only "good outcome". And it is one he can sell domestically as win. If he wins that war (for the 2 breakout republics) on the ground, I suspect NATO might pressure Ukraine to accept that defeat momentarily (over the medium term, to be reviseted when the regime in Russia starts changing...).

The first option makes no sense, the ukrainian people are not gonna accept a Russian puppet government. And the longer Putin exhausts his occupation army, the more he increases pressure from within while the sanctions keep bleeding Russia.
 
sun_tzu said:
It's currently difficult to see a path to sufficient de escalation that will allow him to maintain control of Russia... And certainly not one that protects what he sees as his legacy

In that context the anaology would be a corners animal ... Dangerously unpredictable

It may be he sees massive escalation is the only thing that might give him an off ramp and judgin his actions by conventional game theory / logic might not be the correct thing to do.

I think this is certainly the most geo politically dangerous situation for a long time 1960s or the fall of the wall I'd say?

I would be very surprised if putin stayed as leader in the medium term ... I would be even more surprised if he was alive after that
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I fear so. I fear that we are very close to the point of no return which then has only two possibilities: 1) Putin getting killed or 2) nuclear war.

While the first is the best-case scenario, the second is the worst-case scenario. The trouble is that all the other scenarios in the middle might be permanently lost within the next week.
 
sun_tzu said:
It's currently difficult to see a path to sufficient de escalation that will allow him to maintain control of Russia... And certainly not one that protects what he sees as his legacy

In that context the anaology would be a corners animal ... Dangerously unpredictable

It may be he sees massive escalation is the only thing that might give him an off ramp and judgin his actions by conventional game theory / logic might not be the correct thing to do.

I think this is certainly the most geo politically dangerous situation for a long time 1960s or the fall of the wall I'd say?

I would be very surprised if putin stayed as leader in the medium term ... I would be even more surprised if he was alive after that
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Agreed. The one thing that needs to be resolved at this point (which I think will play out of over the next few days) is what Putin's state of mind is after now having been humiliated in Ukraine and in the process having brought the full force sanctions from the US/EU/NATO/Japan/Australia and many other countries to bear on the Russian economy.

  • Is he aware that he has lost a lot of power and negotiating leverage ?
  • How will he process humiliation ?
  • Does he realize that he is perilously close to losing his grip on power in Russia ?
  • How will that affect his calculus on backing down or ramping up to actually considering nukes ?
It seems as though all roads ultimately lead to his removal, in one way or another, as he can never again go back to the world he lived in just 4 days ago.
 
If they retreat out of the battlefield, we should restore SWIFT connection. There's no need for innocents to have this sort of immediate economic devastation.

The rest of the sanctions can be negotiated but I would really like to see the whole Kremlin out permanently. I've had enough of this.

That said, it seems they are attacking Ukraine even while talks are happening, so feck them.
 
Revan said:
I fear so. I fear that we are very close to the point of no return which then has only two possibilities: 1) Putin getting killed or 2) nuclear war.

While the first is the best-case scenario, the second is the worst-case scenario. The trouble is that all the other scenarios in the middle might be permanently lost within the next week.
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Any chance we can get somebody to slip some polonium in his coffee
 
Revan said:
I fear so. I fear that we are very close to the point of no return which then has only two possibilities: 1) Putin getting killed or 2) nuclear war.

While the first is the best-case scenario, the second is the worst-case scenario. The trouble is that all the other scenarios in the middle might be permanently lost within the next week.
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I still don't see option 2 ever happening. All the top brass have families and assets all over Europe and the US. They're hardly going to authorise an attack on their own. All this talk is for me the ramblings of a desperate man who is backed into a corner. He has been forced to show his strongest hand just 4 days into a conflict with a third tier military.

I'd imagine China are mighty pissed off he's bringing nuclear weapons into it too.
 
spiriticon said:
If they retreat out of the battlefield, we should restore SWIFT connection. There's no need for innocents to have this sort of immediate economic devastation.

The rest of the sanctions can be negotiated but I would really like to see the whole Kremlin out permanently. I've had enough of this.

That said, it seems they are attacking Ukraine even while talks are happening, so feck them.
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You are joking right?

Putin went in full pelt and his agenda is probably to take as much land as he can before sitting on the negotiation table. That being said the damage is done. If even those sanctions don't hold up it means he completely gets away with it.
 
11101 said:
I still don't see option 2 ever happening. All the top brass have families and assets all over Europe and the US. They're hardly going to authorise an attack on their own. All this talk is for me the ramblings of a desperate man who is backed into a corner. He has been forced to show his strongest hand just 4 days into a conflict with a third tier military.

I'd imagine China are mighty pissed off he's bringing nuclear weapons into it too.
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I hope you are right. I just think that the percentage for it happening is now non-trivial, although still very low.

I don't think it needs to start with a full-scale attack. A tactical nuke in Ukrainian forces and then we are in uncharted territories.
 
Enigma_87 said:
You are joking right?

Putin went in full pelt and his agenda is probably to take as much land as he can before sitting on the negotiation table. That being said the damage is done. If even those sanctions don't hold up it means he completely gets away with it.
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Agreed, there's also an element of deterring him or his successor from similar actions down the line.
 
Enigma_87 said:
You are joking right?

Putin went in full pelt and his agenda is probably to take as much land as he can before sitting on the negotiation table. That being said the damage is done. If even those sanctions don't hold up it means he completely gets away with it.
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If they retreat fully out of Ukraine, the land can be retaken. IF. We should only restore it when we can see they are at least 50km from the border into their own lands
 
Can I just say that whoever made the alert on the main page that starts off with "Emergency!" is a massive wanker? Because they are a massive wanker.
 
Raoul said:
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Be interesting to see the trading floors opening moves in around 7 hours time

I'm expecting carnage and some very rich / powerful / pissed of oligarchs and potentially more problematic (for putin) than that is a bunch of the officials who facilitate things in Russia but not ones with access to bespoke Swiss banking arrangements being super pissed off
 
From the BBC:


Missiles launched into Ukraine from Belarus
Iskander missiles were launched from Belarus into Ukraine around 17:00 (15:00 GMT), an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister says.
It comes after President Zelensky's office announced today that Ukrainian and Russian officials are due to meet for talks on the Belarusian border with Ukraine - although they have not said when.
Anton Herashchenko posted the footage on Facebook.
"Iskanders launched against Ukraine from the vicinity of Mozyr," he wrote. "This means they've brought death somewhere... so this is the kind of ceasefire we have?"

A Ukrainian statement earlier said that Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko had "taken responsibility for ensuring that all planes, helicopters and missiles stationed on Belarusian territory remain on the ground during the Ukrainian delegation's travel, talks and return”.
 
spiriticon said:
If they retreat fully out of Ukraine, the land can retaken. IF. We should only restore it when we can see they are at least 50km from the border into their own lands
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I don't think simply giving up the land again would solve the issues we have with Putin. There's a general problem at hands and in my opinion, we need to make whole Russia feel it.
 
Abizzz said:
We had 19 years to talk about 2003. Many of us, myself included, have talked about it in many of those 19 years. Some of us lost friends and schoolmates in the aftermath.

Anyone bringing it up 19 years later in a specific thread can not expect others not to think he/she has a specific reason to do so.
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Well the main reason for me is to show how people can be hypocritical. As a war sufferer I understand more than anyone in this thread how cruel war can be and I know exactly how the Ukrainian people feel injustice now. They are left alone to fight against Imperialism and expansionism.
 
Rektsanwalt said:
I don't think simply giving up the land again would solve the issues we have with Putin. There's a general problem at hands and in my opinion, we need to make whole Russia feel it.
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Russia will feel devastation for years to come whether SWIFT is there or not. They must have about 100 sanctions now. SWIFT is just the shock and awe option.
 
spiriticon said:
If they retreat fully out of Ukraine, the land can be retaken. IF. We should only restore it when we can see they are at least 50km from the border into their own lands
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The land - yes. But the damage to the cities, lives taken, economical damage of the whole country, bridges, airports?

It's way more complicated to just retreat, say excuse me and all bans are lifted.

Also Putin already signed a treaty to recognize the separatists areas...
 
VorZakone said:
The Ukrainians have the world's utmost respect, support and sympathy at the moment. For them to start attacking a pro-Russian region would be extremely unwise IMO.
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If you are describing the Donbas especially as pro-Russian, then you may have been watching too much of Russia Today. It has a Russian-speaking majority for sure, but that doesn’t mean the people there prior to the occupation were a majority who identified as Russian and wanted either a separatist republic or to join the Russian Federation.

Russia has no bonafide claims on the territory.
 
sun_tzu said:
Be interesting to see the trading floors opening moves in around 7 hours time

I'm expecting carnage and some very rich / powerful / pissed of oligarchs and potentially more problematic (for putin) than that is a bunch of the officials who facilitate things in Russia but not ones with access to bespoke Swiss banking arrangements being super pissed off
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Rajma said:
Rub will hit 300 against EUR on Monday no doubt. I see default incoming.
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300 along with the compounding effect of all the sanctions would surely plunge the Russian economy into a deep depression. Putin, if he's still vaguely sane, will have to capitulate or else contend with a serious revolt at home.
 
Enigma_87 said:
The land - yes. But the damage to the cities, lives taken, economical damage of the whole country, bridges, airports?

It's way more complicated to just retreat, say excuse me and all bans are lifted.

Also Putin already signed a treaty to recognize the separatists areas...
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Not all bans. Just SWIFT.

And he can sign another treaty to unrecognize them I'm sure.
 
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