Ukraine

Rideback
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Re: Ukraine

Post by Rideback »

Tim Snyder does the translation of the Russian manifesto published last week. The manifesto lays out, in their own words, what this war is about, what they expect and how they don't care if the rest of the world calls them evil.

https://snyder.substack.com/p/russias-g ... Ui2ohPqneU
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Re: Ukraine

Post by Fun CH »

Rideback wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 3:53 pm It is interesting to see more context to the Russian invasion; the damn that Ukraine built to block access to the water by Crimea has a complex story behind it. Water wars are coming to every country it would seem.
https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium- ... ions-with/
there is a saying in the west. Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting. Water wars, nothing new. Most wars have been fought over the control of resources.
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Re: Ukraine

Post by Rideback »

It is interesting to see more context to the Russian invasion; the dam that Ukraine built to block access to the water by Crimea has a complex story behind it. Water wars are coming to every country it would seem.
https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium- ... ions-with/
Last edited by Rideback on Mon Apr 11, 2022 8:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ukraine

Post by Fun CH »

mister_coffee wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 11:05 am The real reasons for this war between Russia and Ukraine:

1. Shortly after Russia seized Crimea, Ukraine installed a dam that blocked 85 percent of Crimea's water supply.
2. Large natural gas fields were discovered in far eastern Ukraine in 2010. It isn't a coincidence that these are regions that Russia wants to turn into "People's Republics."
Expert opinion in link.

https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/pu ... ed-512642/

"Putin wants to reestablish a Russian empire and at the same time prevent a democratic encirclement around Russia."

"read his goals as twofold: he wants to reestablish directly or indirectly, by annexation or by puppet-regimes, a Russian empire—be it the former USSR or Tsarist Russia. A second possible answer has to do with the role of domestic Russian politics, which the standard literature on conflict takes very seriously: Putin has seen what happened in some former Soviet successor republics and the former Yugoslavia, several of which experienced “Color Revolutions” and democratized. Indeed, it was a Color Revolution in Ukraine in 2014, which Putin mischaracterizes as a military coup. He wants to prevent more of these revolutions and prevent a democratic encirclement of countries around him, which could provide a safe haven for Russian dissidents who’d be dangerous to Putin’s political survival. Both of these goals overlap in the sense that he is seeking regime change, which is a dangerous game. As my colleague Alexander Downes at George Washington University has recently shown, regime change can be a “catastrophic success.”
What's so funny 'bout peace love and understanding--Nick Lowe
Can't talk to a man who don't want to understand--Carol King
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Re: Ukraine

Post by mister_coffee »

The real reasons for this war between Russia and Ukraine:

1. Shortly after Russia seized Crimea, Ukraine installed a dam that blocked 85 percent of Crimea's water supply.
2. Large natural gas fields were discovered in far eastern Ukraine in 2010. It isn't a coincidence that these are regions that Russia wants to turn into "People's Republics."
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Re: Ukraine

Post by Rideback »

Did the west play a role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine?

https://ianbremmer.bulletin.com/did-the ... n-ukraine/
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Re: Ukraine

Post by Rideback »

lol at the you tube. they cut out before Selzer could answer the question. That's not journalism, that propaganda by censorship.

Ukraine is something everyone needs to focus on, not go down rabbit holes that waste everyone's time. Real war crimes are being committed, real dangers exist that are only moving into more dangerous zones, people around the globe are being impacted, countries around the world are seeing their economies drained and challenged. This isn't a time to do anything but focus on being well informed.
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Re: Ukraine

Post by mister_coffee »

Please! This thread is for discussing the noble business of organized murder and mayhem in the name of patriotism, and not anything so base as creepy perversions.
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Re: Ukraine

Post by dorankj »

You haven’t heard about all the scandal at cnn lately, specially the producers grooming very young girls? But the point was really about how wrong cnn gets the NEWS, not that you don’t like the owner.
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Re: Ukraine

Post by PAL »

On 8 June 1988, Rupert Murdoch announced in a speech to the British Academy of Film and Television Arts plans to start a new television news service. Sky News started broadcasting at 6 pm on 5 February 1989.[2]
Murdoch was born in Australia. And more on Murdoch:

Scandal and reorganization of Rupert Murdoch
By the early 21st century, Murdoch wielded considerable influence in both media and politics. However, in July 2011 he and the News Corporation came under intense scrutiny for wrongdoing at News of the World. Mounting evidence indicated that newspaper staffers had engaged in illegal and unethical behaviour, notably the hacking of mobile phone mailboxes belonging to celebrities, murder victims, and British soldiers killed in the Afghanistan War. Murdoch shuttered the newspaper later in July, but the scandal continued to grow. He subsequently testified on several occasions before British MPs, claiming that he had been unaware of the hacking. Murdoch’s son James, considered his heir apparent, was also embroiled in the controversy and later left several key posts. In May 2012 a parliamentary panel tasked with investigating the scandal released a highly critical report, which stated that Rupert “is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company” and that he showed “willful blindness” concerning misconduct within his corporation. In addition to the British inquiry, Murdoch and the News Corporation were also being investigated by FBI officials in the United States.

In June 2013 News Corporation split its print and television and media holdings. Its print division was reconstituted as News Corporation (usually referred to as News Corp). Its television and media holdings became the much-larger and more-profitable conglomerate 21st Century Fox. In 2015 Murdoch was succeeded as CEO at 21st Century Fox by James, but he continued to chair both corporations. In 2017 he agreed to sell most of the holdings of 21st Century Fox to the Disney Company. Two years later the deal closed and was valued at about $71 billion. The hugely profitable Fox News and various other TV channels were excluded from the sale, and they became part of the newly formed Fox Corporation. During this time Murdoch also led a bid to acquire full control of Sky but was outbid by Comcast in 2018; later that year Fox sold its shares in Sky.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.


The kids do ask good questions. But Sky News Australia is similar to Fox. Plus they're in Australia for cripes sake. They are not in this country.
Jouranlists on both sides are not infallible.
The video segment does not talk about dictatorships or authoritarianism.
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Re: Ukraine

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Re: Ukraine

Post by PAL »

What is it with people. It's like they are on some weird bent to come under an authoririan rule. What is the benefit other than they don't have to think for themselves. They are dictated to. If you think that is a benefit.
And... any mention of mandates is really not the same thing as authoritarian rule. Free speech is limited(see what is happening in Florida), public gatherings and demonstrations. No insurrections allowed. The insurrectionists have it easy here. Other countries they would have been shot dead.
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Re: Ukraine

Post by Rideback »

I'm getting nervous about Macron's race in France, Marie LePen is running stronger than ever before and without a doubt she is a wholly in Putin's camp.
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Re: Ukraine

Post by mister_coffee »

Another good video with excellent analysis from Perun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH0xWWSJL00

"Russia is not in a position to realistically achieve its stated objectives at a reasonable cost in a reasonable period of time."

Also a good discussion of why kill figures from both sides are likely exaggerated but Russia's are to an absurd degree.
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Re: Ukraine

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It was a good bit of research to find out what happened when viewers switched to CNN.
For Putin and those who came before him they recognized that in their kind of warfare facts were for suckers and disinformation meant you could literally create any history you wanted in order to gain power. Disinformation is a tool, it is a weapon and once people choose opinions over reasoned facts then they are malable, trainable...zombies.
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Re: Ukraine

Post by Rideback »

The translation of the article is chilling. Also telling. It seems to be a Palin-esque word salad where the Ukrainians deserve what they are getting...because they are doing it to themselves. The verb, the noun then repetition of 'nazi' 'denatzification' are such obvious levers being pulled to create emotions; fear, loathing, anxiety and a Putin logic of 'we are the victims' that the Russian people need in order to feel vindicted. Indeed, the believers have forgone any iota of reason/ing when they accept what the article tells them.
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Re: Ukraine

Post by mister_coffee »

Also, this article is an ominous example of the kinds of propaganda that are being spoon fed to the Rushka:

https://medium.com/@kravchenko_mm/what- ... 3e92e3cb64

Which is chilling and frightening stuff to hear from anyone in 2022, especially from a country with thousands of nuclear weapons that may or may not work.

Also, polls in Russia (which probably should be taken with a grain of salt, if not a truckload) indicate that around 80 percent of the population support Putin, support the "special military action", and support extending the war to Poland.
Last edited by mister_coffee on Thu Apr 07, 2022 8:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ukraine

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Re: Ukraine

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Point taken. What no one knows is Putin's breaking point. The DoJ has been on fire today releasing new arrests and warrants for Russian criminals and their troves. New sanctions will include stopping businesses from US entirely from opening up any new investments in Russia, the Kochs have backed out now, Dell backed out yesterday which brings to just over 600 the number of international companies that have exited. Also, yesterday the Treasury Dept put new sanctions in place that will likely push Russia into default, they're damn tough.

The questions are whether Putin will take aim at Odesa, will he further mine the Black Sea, will China step into the fray, will Putin use chemical weapons? All Putin's options now are complicated and require logistics that so far his military has not displayed enough expertise in accomplishing. Now that it's opening acknowledged that AI is being used by the allies I have to think Putin's forces are even worse off than he knows much less acknowledges. In that sense the Ukrainians are doing the heavy lifting for the NATO members in that they're depleting Russia's inventory of weapons as well as soldiers. Putin seems to think he can bring in more and more mercenaries to offset the losses, but keeping command of them seems on its face to be problematic.
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Re: Ukraine

Post by mister_coffee »

Rideback wrote: Wed Apr 06, 2022 8:23 am Gen Milley doesn't agree with you. He told Congress on Tues to expect a protracted war. Putin will not pull out, he will double down and the US and allied weaponry will allow the Ukrainians to hang on to their defensive positions and take back towns and cities that the Russians abandon as they continue to chew on the rest of Ukraine.
I know, perhaps he knows something I do not.

What I do know is that the losses the Russian army has taken in the last month are historically unprecedented for a major power and those losses are unsustainable.

Some math:

Best estimates were that the Russians had about 2000 tanks in active operation (when I say "tank" I am not including other armored fighting vehicles and tracked vehicles). They have something over 10_000 in storage in unknown operating condition.

Oryx's estimates of the lower bound of Russian tank losses (both destroyed and captured) since the start of the war are just under 500. Note these are emphatically lower bounds, and the actual numbers are likely substantially higher.

Under the most generous assumptions the Russian industrial base can manufacture roughly 100 new tanks per year. And with the sanctions that number is optimistic. As for the tanks in storage, an optimistic assessment might be that you can get 1000 of them operable and in action in a year.

Losses in other vehicles are comparable proportionally.

So it seems to me pretty clear that the Russians are going to run out of vehicles long before the Ukrainian army runs out of Javelins and NLAWs.
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Re: Ukraine

Post by mister_coffee »

realoldtimer wrote: Wed Apr 06, 2022 9:32 am More cannon fodder to bolster the frontlines -

"Putin orders 134,500 new conscripts into Russian army"
...
The Rushka army regularly inducts classes of conscripts twice a year on April 1st and October 1st.

It will take quite a while to train them to do anything useful. A lot of the Rushka losses are in combat specialties, which were mostly volunteers who had been with the service for years. Many VDV (Paratroopers and Air Assault) units took fearsome casualties of 30 percent or more. It will take many years to recruit the volunteers and train them to the level of proficiency that those forces had in February 2022.

Yes, you could probably train a draftee to do useful work like driving a truck in a few weeks. At this point their army probably has more truck drivers than working trucks anyway. It is going to take them much longer to train them to be in a tank or artillery crew, where they have to learn a specific and fairly complex job and how to work together with others in that crew and also how to work with other crews at the same time. And you'll want a pretty high level of training on anybody who is handling things that explodes, if only to make sure they don't blow up other, better trained people along with themselves.
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Re: Ukraine

Post by realoldtimer »

More cannon fodder to bolster the frontlines -

"Putin orders 134,500 new conscripts into Russian army"

https://www.axios.com/russia-new-conscr ... 0f1a9.html
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Re: Ukraine

Post by Rideback »

US Treasury and allies are going after the Russian cyber enablers and yesterday dealt a big blow to the Russian dark$

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0701
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Re: Ukraine

Post by Rideback »

Gen Milley doesn't agree with you. He told Congress on Tues to expect a protracted war. Putin will not pull out, he will double down and the US and allied weaponry will allow the Ukrainians to hang on to their defensive positions and take back towns and cities that the Russians abandon as they continue to chew on the rest of Ukraine.
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Re: Ukraine

Post by mister_coffee »

Rideback wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 3:44 pm I doubt anyone is positing that the war will continue at the rate and breadth that is happening now. Instead, there seems to be an exhaustion setting in; not just exhaustion of the fighters but of the equipment and weapons as well. Will there be a lowered level of action arrive and will that be sustained, with minimal fits, starts & stops for an extended period? That is what seems to be the incoming prediction...
My question is why would you assume that both sides would be exhausted at the same time? And why would you assume that they would have similar recovery times as well?

My point is that in the short term, the Russian army is stuck. It will take weeks (and more probably months) for them to repair and replace lost personnel and equipment. They probably will never be back to the same levels of readiness and proficiency that they were at the end of February.

In the meantime the Ukrainians have at least a few weeks where they have the initiative and the Russians can't do very much in response. April also typically has poor, rainy weather which will make off-road operations difficult to impossible for the Russians. But the Ukrainians seem to have figured out how to use ATVs. Since the Ukrainians have been receiving loitering munitions (like the switchblade drone) and decent night vision gear in some quantity, they seem to have the tools to rip the snot out of Russian forces who are blind at night and limited in mobility to main roads.

Given that there is apparently political time pressure on the Russians to announce some sort of victory before May 9th, there is a good chance the Russians will be forced to attack before they are ready. Which is even better for the Ukrainians.
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