Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion



I don't agree with this thread, Putin at this stage of his life can't be negotiated with, only deterred. There will always be some idiot in Washington to come in with a new naive viewpoint. Putin himself has to create an off-ramp that he can live with, he won't listen to anyone in the West.
 
I think it'll be much faster than that, the Ukrainian forces have done a great job but must be getting depleted now, it's unlikely they'll engage in prolonged urban warfare with massive damage to their own civilians. It's not going to be Stalingrad ver 2.0. Once the city is surrounded it'll fall quickly, maybe next weekend.

I don't know. The Ukrainian people have made it pretty clear they don't want to be conquered. They appear completely unified and their determination can only have grown as the atrocities of the Russian armed forces have gotten worse. You may be right, but I don't see it going down that easily for Putin.
 
If they strap a bomb to me and I explode I'll be totally fine, right?
You guys may all laugh but Kyiv has a long history of weaponising pigeons:

With the whole of the Drevian ruling class cruelly exterminated, Olga hatched a plan to do away with the rest of them all together and announcing that she would be soon arriving at the Drevian capital of Iskorosten and asked for them to arrange a funeral feast where they could mourn over her husband’s death in that the very city.

Despite the not having heard from either of the missions they’d dispatched to Olga’s court, the Drevians set about preparing the feast and after drinking themselves insensible on mead, Olga’s soldiers put 5,000 of them to the sword.

Even this orgy of bloodletting wasn’t enough to satiate her need for vengeance and Olga gathered an army to wipe out her foes for good. The surviving Drevians begged for mercy and offered to pay in honey and furs to escape her anger.

She seemed to soften, although at this point you’d think they’d know better…

“Give me three pigeons,” she said, according to the Primary Chronicle, “and three sparrows from each house. I do not desire to impose a heavy tribute, like my husband, but I require only this small gift from you, for you are impoverished by the siege.”

The Chronicle records in great detail the feat of precision-guided pyromania that followed:

“Now Olga gave to each soldier in her army a pigeon or a sparrow, and ordered them to attach by thread to each pigeon and sparrow a piece of sulfur bound with small pieces of cloth. When night fell, Olga bade her soldiers release the pigeons and the sparrows. So the birds flew to their nests, the pigeons to the cotes, and the sparrows under the eaves. The dove-cotes, the coops, the porches, and the haymows were set on fire.

“There was not a house that was not consumed, and it was impossible to extinguish the flames, because all the houses caught on fire at once. The people fled from the city, and Olga ordered her soldiers to catch them. Thus she took the city and burned it, and captured the elders of the city. Some of the other captives she killed, while some she gave to others as slaves to her followers. The remnant she left to pay tribute.”
 
You guys may all laugh but Kyiv has a long history of weaponising pigeons:
fecking hell, that's genius but also bloody horrific.
 
Mariupol is in a terrible, dire situation, according to various news sources. There is little food, virtually no drinking water, the shops and pharmacies are all empty, bodies are being thrown into mass graves and it's freezing cold.

There will be thousands of deaths due to starvation and disease if people aren't able to leave.
Yep, street scenes look like an apocalypse and corpses are everywhere. The Russians won’t open a corridor there.

I think it'll be much faster than that, the Ukrainian forces have done a great job but must be getting depleted now, it's unlikely they'll engage in prolonged urban warfare with massive damage to their own civilians. It's not going to be Stalingrad ver 2.0. Once the city is surrounded it'll fall quickly, maybe next weekend.
The intel suggests Russia is struggling to even hold their ground around Kharkiv and Kyiv. I don’t see that playing out.

Where are a few people getting the idea from that Ukraine has put up the resistance it has so far, and the West has implemented the sanctions it has, only for the Ukrainians to suddenly get cold feet and decide that a bit of Putin dictatorship would be the better part of valour? Maidan lasted longer than this, over three months, and that was entirely on the civilians. Russia will have to level major cities before people surrender.
 
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That's a battle that is likely to take months, if not years. ...

The Russians don't have months, let alone years. In 3 - 4 weeks from now their cumulative casualties - killed, wounded, desertions, surrendered, captured - will be reaching catastrophic levels.
 


So are we the Nazis now? I lose track.Denying people McDonalds and other consumerist tat is obviously more heinous than starving and freezing civilian populations to death.

We will look back and wonder how RT was allowed to be broadcast in the West until a week ago.
 
True, of course.

But also true is that, to generalise, Boomers are wrecking the planet and are a dangerous generation - Boomer leaders are utter maniacs.

Note - I’m talking generationally, I have friends and heroes who are Boomers (who agree with this point).
:D
You’ve heard, “I’ve got gay friends”
You’ve heard, “I’ve got black friends”
Now you’ve heard, “I’ve got boomer friends”
 
I wonder what can be interpreted from this. Mass desertions and resignations within the FSB?

I'm a bit hesitant to just accept that she really confirmed it to be mostly FSB people. But if that were true, then I don't think it's, because they get a great price in the middle of a war, so probably, because they see a real risk that Russia will have to let go of Crimea or that they need the liquidity because of the sanctions?!
 
They're nearing Kyiv?


Each day it seems they advance at least a little. What is more in doubt than their ability to achieve some advance is whether then can take Kyiv before the attrition to their numbers and equipment is too great.
 
BBC reports:

"The Russian economy will shrink by at least 15% this year, according to an assessment from the Institute of International Finance (IIF), a financial services trade group.

The IIF had previously predicted that Moscow's economy would grow by 3% in 2022, but now says that sanctions imposed following Russia's invasion of Ukraine "have led to a drastic and unprecedented tightening in financial conditions, which signals a deep recession".

Experts warned that the decline could be even sharper should there be additional Western boycotts of Russian energy supplies.

Such a move "would drastically impair Russia's ability to import goods and services, deepening the recession," the IIF said.
 
Can someone remind me which nation was allies with the Nazis at the start of WW2 because I keep forgetting.

You mean another “special military operation“ when they invaded Eastern Poland and massacred 22,000 Polish officers at Katyn? I forget who it was too….
 
All getting ready to move to Kiev?

They would keep their apartments in Yalta as vacation homes if that were the case. More likely, they are preparing to get reassigned domestically to quell a massive uprising once the economy fully tanks.
 
Thought this was an interesting read even if its fake (the fsb whistleblower bit at bottom).

 
Can someone remind me which nation was allies with the Nazis at the start of WW2 because I keep forgetting.


You mean another “special military operation“ when they invaded Eastern Poland and massacred 22,000 Polish officers at Katyn? I forget who it was too….

Retrospective nazi calling in response to a madman's propaganda machine meant for internal consumption in Russia? Really?

We know who it was and its irrelevant.

Also you're very selective in framing it. Stalin was the most and possibly only opponent of the Nazi's in the 30s on the international stage. Segregationist US didn't have an issue or the British elite who socialised with their German counterparts.

What happened in Poland was a last ditch attempt to keep the Germans at bay, not an alliance, a disgusting pact though.
 
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Makes sense but so would keeping property assets?

Realistically, I think the Russian government is about to tank, which means the party will be over for all, including corrupt FSB elites with Black Sea homes in Crimea. Owning property won't mean much when they would simply be lucky to be alive 12 months from now.
 
Retrospective nazi calling in response to a madman's propaganda machine meant internal consumption in Russia? Really?

We both know who it was and its irrelevant.

Also you're very selective in framing it. Stalin was the most and possibly only opponent of the Nazi's in the 30s on the international stage. Segregationist US didn't have an issue or the British elite who socialised with their German counterparts.

What happened in Poland was a last ditch attempt to keep the Germans at bay, not an alliance, a disgusting pact though.

Based on the evidence of the 30s, who would have seemed the biggest maniac? Hitler had camps open in Germany and was clearly a vile individual but had done nothing at that stage to compare to the holodomor or the Great Terror. Plus, killing 22,000 officers is not a defensive strategy - it is a decapitation strategy aimed against a country that had only regained its independence from Russia 20 years earlier.
 
Realistically, I think the Russian government is about to tank, which means the party will be over for all, including corrupt FSB elites with Black Sea homes in Crimea. Owning property won't mean much when they would simply be lucky to be alive 12 months from now.

I hope you're right.
 
Based on the evidence of the 30s, who would have seemed the biggest maniac? Hitler had camps open in Germany and was clearly a vile individual but had done nothing at that stage to compare to the holodomor or the Great Terror. Plus, killing 22,000 officers is not a defensive strategy - it is a decapitation strategy aimed against a country that had only regained its independence from Russia 20 years earlier.

Stalin obviously; he was a genocidal maniac, but that still doesn't validate the one eyed retrospective analysis which forgets his previous and subsequent ideological and military opposition to the Nazis. What he did in Poland was disgusting but it didnt make him a Nazi.
 
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They're nearing Kyiv?



They may have gained some inches but have lost some in other areas.

They have bypassed Cherihiv to approach Kyiv but were easily repelled it seems. This is where that video of that clumped up tank column taking artillary fire comes from. The re-supply road to Chernihiv is now blocked however.

Hearing mixed reports on Hosomel, but apparently Ukraine is making good progress further North-West:



We barely know anything about Ukraine troop movements but we do know there are thousands of well armed Ukrainian/foreign legion soldiers making their way over from the west. If these reports of a successful push NW of Kyiv are true, we may see the Russians becoming the ones being encircled in the coming days.
 
A few years ago I realized that I knew almost nothing beyond the very basics about the Eastern Front of WWII, so I decided to read a couple of books about it to know a little bit more. I also ended up getting a bit of the history of internal USSR politics around the time, and what shocked me about Stalin was the randomness of the violence. It went beyond what you might call just politically useful (persecution of opponents or even internal rivals), and got solidly into paranoia and maybe even bloodlust territory. I don't think its a great debate as to who was most violent, hard to lead to anything. But Stalin's brutality still stands out as you read about it, not just the numbers but the nature of it too.
 
What's the rough estimate of the Ukraine Army plus men who have stayed back to defend...it must be in the hundreds of thousands??