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>> No. 36687 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 7:58 pm
36687 Ukraine Crisis
Let's take a break from Thatcherlad arguing with Marxlad and talk about geopolitics. So what do we reckon about this year's bi-annual lurching forward of the doomsday clock?

I think this is a pretty sensible breakdown.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/19/ukraine-russia-nato-crisis-liberal-illusions/

Standing back from the situation it seems obvious that US led brinkmanship and almost psychopathic foreign policy only makes a bad situation worse. The extent to which the media portrays Russia as the unambiguous bad guys while NATO continues to push them borders on completely delusional, like saying the sky is green or the sea is made of sand. Russia and Putin are no saints by any means, but what did we (the West) expect by constantly encroaching on their security interests?

The UK and EU badly need to distance themselves from America, I feel like they are going to become dangerous friends to have if moments like this and China's overtures on Taiwan play out as their own Suez crisis.
Expand all images.
>> No. 36688 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 8:12 pm
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It is none of Russia's business whether or not Ukraine wishes to join NATO. If Canada wanted to join the EU, America wouldn't have to like it but it would not be acceptable for them to try and stop it. And America hasn't committed any genocides against Canada in the past century that have left Canadians understandably touchy.
>> No. 36689 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 8:13 pm
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UVB-76 (The Buzzer) numbers station has been broadcasting Gangam Style and spectrograph trollfaces since the 15th.
>> No. 36690 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 8:15 pm
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Forgot the image. >>36689
>> No. 36691 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 8:25 pm
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>>36688

Imagine if there were a small island just of the coast of America, which allied with the Russians and the Russians proposed to put missiles on. How do you think the Americans would react to such a situation? It's not like they'd have a massive meltdown that almost caused nuclear war over the mere prospect, I'm sure.
>> No. 36692 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 8:58 pm
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>>36691
If such a thing happened, which obviously it never would, I would disapprove of that too. Because you're not meant to tell other countries how to run their business.
>> No. 36693 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 9:13 pm
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>>36692

Unfortunately, countries are a lot like neighbours. You might want them to mind their own business, and you might not give a fuck what they're doing in their own property. But sometimes, you have no choice but to confront them over how they keep leaving their bins at the end of your drive. Only the bins are nuclear missiles.
>> No. 36694 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 9:42 pm
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>>36688
>It is none of Russia's business whether or not Ukraine wishes to join NATO

This. Russia's recent ultimatum to NATO involves an effective sphere of influence in not only Ukraine but even Poland where the US is perceived as in need of grand bargain to counteract China and the European security alliance as faltering thanks to the vanity of France and Germany. But despite the limp-wristed attitude of Biden the West has already seen off one pressure tactic where Belarus attempted to force a refugee crisis.

Its threat that we know from the long-term predictions of the Russian economy will be used in future to bully economic concessions and as we see from the Caucasus and history of Ukraine itself will still seep in to sow internal conflict or even outright annexation. There's a reason even the Swedes are going mental at the moment and its not good at a time when Russia has spent year building up foreign currency reserves while the west is perilously sensitive to Russian gas diplomacy.

On the broader realist perspective; the problem the school has is it too often presumes a state (that you're in at time of writing) to have free-will. NATO expansion was an inevitability and the weight of Poland alone will pull the west deeper into conflict. EU expansion couldn't have been stopped by the US despite Moscow's view that it's a stalking horse and Ukraine fell into the western orbit because the people living in Ukraine (now run by a Jewish fascist president as Mendeleev recently went to point out) threw their puppet government out of power. What the West could've done to avoid all this was to integrate Russia into the west during the 90s and avoid the country becoming a basket case but we didn't so there we go.
>> No. 36695 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 9:49 pm
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>>36693
Or in the case of Eastern Europe, anti-ballistic missiles. Or in Ukraine, the red-line recently moved to having any sort of western military presence such as training a countries military to defend itself against a neighbour that illegally occupies 7% of the country. Whataboutism doesn't really work in this situation.
>> No. 36696 Anonymous
21st January 2022
Friday 10:13 pm
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>>36687

>Standing back from the situation it seems obvious that US led brinkmanship and almost psychopathic foreign policy only makes a bad situation worse.

The problem with almost all of U.S. foreign policy has always been that Americans have a hard time admitting when they are wrong. Their world view is that they are the beacon of freedom and democracy, that they are the most compassionate and generous nation on Earth, and that they must spread those values across the globe, much in the same way that evangelists think they have to proselytise their religious faith. It's also maybe no complete coincidence that much of the Ukraine kerfuffle that still persists today happened under Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who is a devout Methodist, a Christian fundamentalist denomination that is particularly known for its proselytism and the belief in its own moral superiority and the urge to spread its gospel.

Then again, when it gets down to down-and-dirty power politics, there are enough realists in the American government who know they are only doing it to further and cement the sheer power that the U.S. wields over the rest of the world. There is no room for idealism at that level, it's all about dominance, strategic influence, and access to critical resources and raw materials.

NATO's Eastern Expansion, then, wasn't as much an act of wide-eyed liberalism as the linked article suggests. I'm very sure there were at all times enough hawkish realists in the American government who simply spotted a chance to weaken their old adversary of Russia by diminishing and geographically reducing its sphere of influence. It was probably a welcome side effect that the former Communist satellite states transformed into Western-style capitalist parliamentary democracies that opened up to international trade, but the real Great Game the hawks in the American government and in NATO were playing was a different one.
>> No. 36701 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 10:33 am
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Funny actually isn't it, there wasn't really any bickering at all with Russia under evil orange anti-christ man, but now a Real Politician is back at the helm, we're back on the doorstep of nuclear annihilation almost immediately.

I feel quite bad for the people of Ukraine. The way they are being played as pawns here is really disgusting, Nobody ever thinks of the human cost of bullshit like this. What does the ordinary Ukrainian citizen gain from two crumbling superpowers having a slap fight over them?
>> No. 36702 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 11:50 am
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>>36701

I think your memory might be failing you, lad.
>> No. 36703 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 11:51 am
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>>36701
It's absolutely correct that the man who was actively supported by the Russians was much less confrontational with the Russians.

I still don't expect this to be a real Armageddon, though. The only reason everyone is so afraid is because Russia is lining up a 100,000-strong invasion force on the border of Ukraine, but countries often put soldiers in places without starting wars there. The Americans, and we, certainly do. But if there is a war, we're going to fight back primarily with pathetic wimpy sanctions, and Russia will retaliate by switching off all their natural gas pipelines, and then our heating bills will go up even more than they currently are doing. If it came down to it, the rest of the world could beat Russia quite effectively, but paying electricity bills won't be much fun for a while.
>> No. 36704 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 12:15 pm
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>>36703

>But if there is a war, we're going to fight back primarily with pathetic wimpy sanctions, and Russia will retaliate by switching off all their natural gas pipelines, and then our heating bills will go up even more than they currently are doing

This is the daft bit about it. We could have been mates with Russia years ago after the fall of the USSR and none of this would ever have happened, but America insists on penalising Russia for making them look bad 70 years ago and won't ever let it go.

What is the US offering us? We could do with Russian gas but what are the Yanks giving us in return for all this bollocks? The "global security" argument is totally invalid at this point because the whole thing is demonstrating they simply don't have the cajones for it any more. If Russia invaded us tomorrow, nevermind Ukraine, I seriously have my doubts if the Americans would come rushing to our aid.
>> No. 36705 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 1:28 pm
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>>36704

>We could have been mates with Russia years ago after the fall of the USSR

Russia doesn't really have "mates", only allies of convenience. A rekindling of the cold war was almost inevitable after the rise of Putin. A strong man without enemies isn't a strong man.

>>36701

>What does the ordinary Ukrainian citizen gain from two crumbling superpowers having a slap fight over them?

Nothing, but they have even less to gain from being invaded by Russia. Before giving Trump any credit, it is worth noting that the ceasefire in Donbas collapsed in the first months of his presidency. Ukraine are continuing to fight the war in Donbas, they will fight as hard as they can against any further Russian incursions, but they're massively outnumbered and outgunned. Ukraine want military support and they're asking for our help.
>> No. 36706 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 1:45 pm
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>>36705

>Russia doesn't really have "mates", only allies of convenience

Do you think that's somehow different to any other country? Do you think America really gives the slightest fuck about Britain?

There was always a way to prevent this. Russia should have been brought into NATO and possibly even the EU.
>> No. 36707 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 2:04 pm
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>>36706
>Do you think that's somehow different to any other country?

It's interesting how so many countries talk about having a "special relationship" with the US. All of them have a slightly different way of saying it but it's the same.
>> No. 36708 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 2:10 pm
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>>36706

>Do you think that's somehow different to any other country?

It's no different to the US, but plenty of other countries have deep and lasting alliances.

>There was always a way to prevent this. Russia should have been brought into NATO and possibly even the EU.

Do you think that Russia at any point wanted to be part of NATO or the EU? The Yanks believe that they have a god-given right to run the world, the Russians believe that they're a global superpower rather than a washed-up dictatorship with a smaller GDP than Italy. They both have a continual desire to expand their spheres of influence and those spheres will inevitably intersect somewhere in Europe. Wishful thinking or appeasement can't stop global conflict.
>> No. 36709 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 2:35 pm
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>>36708

>Do you think that Russia at any point wanted to be part of NATO or the EU?

Um, yes, actually, in the early 90s they very much did. After the fall of the USSR, Russian capital certainly wanted to be part of the global free trade and financial party. Our rejection and refusal to integrate Russia into the west is part of the reason Putin rose to power at all.
>> No. 36710 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 3:43 pm
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>>36696
>It's also maybe no complete coincidence that much of the Ukraine kerfuffle that still persists today happened under Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, who is a devout Methodist, a Christian fundamentalist denomination that is particularly known for its proselytism and the belief in its own moral superiority and the urge to spread its gospel.

What are you implying here?

>>36704
It's Yankee ignorance that if anything that caused this. Russia was ignored when the missile shield was first proposed and it was ignored when the West started to interfere in the Caucasus during the War on Terror. This is what absolutely infuriates Russia because its a dead empire that wants to restart the Concert of Europe.

The argument of a decepticon conspiracy to destroy Russia was nonsense in the 2000s because everything was focused on terrorism and Iran.

>The "global security" argument is totally invalid at this point because the whole thing is demonstrating they simply don't have the cajones for it any more. If Russia invaded us tomorrow, nevermind Ukraine, I seriously have my doubts if the Americans would come rushing to our aid.

They would, stop being a retard. It's in the West's interest to maintain the stable and rules based international order against the new revisionist powers, not least owing to our level of economic integration. We actually even know from the leaked diplomatic cables that the US is unusually fluffy with us beyond any material gain and from Syria (and Iraq) that the US looks to Britain for a thumb up owing to the scars from Vietnam.

That doesn't mean we should be naïve on US interests but the reason the West's security alliance remains so strong is because if how aligned our collective interests are and how useful the components are. Ukraine is outside this umbrella but the reason much hand-wringing is going on compared to Kazakhstan is the threat this poses to the Baltic states and the way that Russia has undermined the fundamentals of the Post-WWII international order by stealing territory.
>> No. 36711 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 4:45 pm
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>>36706
There is talk of suspending voting rights for Poland and Hungary because their democratically-elected (in Hungary's case, that's debatable) leaders are mad fucks who just want to ruin everything. I don't think the rest of the EU would be very happy to welcome Russia into the fold. And Russia knew this; the only really valid argument they have here is that they very clearly asked NATO not to approach their borders in 1990, and that promise has been broken repeatedly by ex-Soviet countries looking to get away from the bear outside the tent. If Russia hates NATO that much, inviting them to join is unlikely to have succeeded.
>> No. 36712 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 6:57 pm
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>>36709

>Um, yes, actually, in the early 90s they very much did.

Russia is a member of the EAPC and the PfP. It has the option of applying for NATO membership via the PfP, but it has never exercised that option. 14 members of the PfP have successfully joined NATO via the PfP; Russia actively opposed their membership, regarding it as a threat to their national security.

Russia was a member of the G8 until it decided to invade Crimea. There are a substantial number of EU-Russia cooperation agreements, but EU membership has never been a serious option given Russia's active opposition to many of the Copenhagen Criteria.

The door has always been open for Russia to join the club, but they are unwilling to play by the rules. A NATO that allows its members to go to war with each other is utterly pointless.
>> No. 36713 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 10:36 pm
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>>36711

>the only really valid argument they have here is that they very clearly asked NATO not to approach their borders in 1990, and that promise has been broken repeatedly by ex-Soviet countries looking to get away from the bear outside the tent

The fatal flaw of post-Soviet transformation in Eastern Europe was then that Gorbachev didn't ask to get that promise in writing. In the negotiations to redraw the European map in 1990, assurances were limited to verbally telling the Russians, oh yeah, don't worry, NATO will stay put where it is. Gorbachev in the end accepted what the Russians assumed was a gentlemen's agreement. But as with anything you don't have in writing, it's difficult to then hold somebody, in this case NATO and the Americans, to their promise. They are now saying, well no, that was never actually part of the deal. And it wasn't, because it wasn't codified in the treaties. The Americans knew what they were doing though, and that a verbal promise was never going to be binding, and you could even say it was a ruse to sucker Gorbachev into agreeing to relinquish power over those satellite states.

It's also imprecise to say that the former Soviet satellite states simply joined NATO of their own volition because they were somehow scared of the big bad wolf Russian bear. What is true is that during the Communist Bloc era, Soviet political and ideological dominance over those countries often left them severely short changed. But on the other hand, the U.S. in particular has by now a 30-year history of intense influencing and outright meddling with domestic politics and public opinion in those countries. It operates NGOs, think tanks and other organisations whose sole purpose at least tacitly it is to foster pro-American political elites in those countries who will be loyal to the U.S. and NATO. There has been a lot of talk about Russian government-sponsored NGOs in the West in recent years. And they exist, and they often do damage in undermining and destabilising the political system and public opinion in countries like Germany or indeed the UK. But pound-for-pound and in terms of the kind of budget the Russians set aside to finance those NGOs, it's simply dwarfed by what the Americans spend a year on supporting pro-U.S. NGOs worldwide. We're talking on the order of 20 times the kind of money the Russians dedicate to it.
>> No. 36714 Anonymous
22nd January 2022
Saturday 11:28 pm
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>>36713
Why do you seem to always show the Americans as being the only ones with any agency? For starters the Visagrad group emerged before any consensus was agreed by the US, who instead acted from fear of displacement by a new European security architecture, and Russia's actions in its near abroad during the 90s already fuelled the opinions a population who saw European integration as they key to future prosperity. Even today when Poland's Kaczyński talks about a Polish strategy autonomy to survive a Russian attack it cleaves from NATO doctrine.

The Americans bumble about on the world stage, they're not a smart people or hivemind.
>> No. 36715 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 1:52 am
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>>36710
"Rules based international order" is one of my least favourite phrases. The most charitable way I can interpret it is that Russia is objectionable because it's a destabilising force, which is a perfectly legitimate view. Yet tipping it over into "they break the rules" becomes a step too far. I immediately want to point to Iraq, or to the nicked Chagos Islands, or god knows what little example that invariably invites dismissal with "whataboutism" even though the specifics of any example aren't quite as important as a general idea that we'd never let the rules get in the way of our perceived interests (I might say: 'damn right too!') and that I can't stomach pretending otherwise. Making the cynics case for doing so seems easy: it's much easier to keep all the little countries on-side if they think they might be able to catch you out by appealing to the rules. But as individual human beings rather than institutions it seems unnecessary to play along with such a game. It's not likely any countries that lose out from it are going to find out via a post from an idiot like me.
>> No. 36716 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 2:46 am
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>>36714

>Even today when Poland's Kaczyński talks about a Polish strategy autonomy to survive a Russian attack

Why would Russia attack Poland then?

It's this kind of thinking that prevents any kind of levelheadedness.
>> No. 36717 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 3:04 am
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>>36716
>Why would Russia attack Poland then?
Why wouldn't Russia attack Poland?
>> No. 36718 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 3:12 am
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>>36717

You just proved my point. Well done, you.
>> No. 36719 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 3:44 am
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It's funny how so many of you are repeating things that the OP's article already clearly went over. It's as though none of you read it.

I mean you're not wrong, most of you, but it does go to show how on the internet, we just start talking directly out of our arse without even acknowledging the information presented.

Anyway carry on, this is one of the more interesting threads we've had in a while. I think you might all get a sticker on the fridge.
>> No. 36720 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 11:10 am
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>>36719
I did worry briefly, "What if the link I didn't read disproves everything I'm about to say?" But then I would dismiss it as fake news and consider my time wasted for reading it. I will read it now (unless it's boring).
>> No. 36721 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 11:33 am
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It's a much better article than I was expecting. It's not pro-Russian propaganda, I don't think. It still doesn't give any reasons why NATO could be framed as an evil force, aside from equating it with America and listing all the bad things America has done. But then maybe I'm just too passionate about liberalism.

Ukraine declaring itself to be neutral, and refusing to get too close to either Russia or NATO, would perhaps work for a bit, but I think they have too much history with Russia, of getting invaded and massacred over and over again, for the Ukrainians to do such a thing and just hope Russia chills out for the first time in history. All the arguments that Russia is just bracing itself against potential attacks, just in case, can also be made for Ukraine, which would get its shit pushed in by Russia without a larger alliance.
>> No. 36722 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 4:18 pm
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>>36715
Your argument is that the rule of law law isn't valid because of abuse by the powerful so we should throw out the concept of law altogether. International law is challenged by the lack of global policeman but even the US suffers a cost for breaking the rules through community feedback, hence why states avoid launching wars of aggressive conquest because it has become completely taboo post-Kellogg–Briand Pact.

>>36716
>Why would Russia attack Poland then?

Russia has attacked Poland multiple times through hybrid-warfare, recently demanded that NATO cease the deployment of weapons in Poland, simulated an nuclear attack on Warsaw during Zapad exercises in Belarus and in more broad terms the Poles have every right to be distrustful of the bear to their east which they're wholly unprepared to counter. It's not like the Poles have been busying themselves since the 90s or don't have better things to spend their money on, they have an aggressive power to their East whose regime carries a geopolitical ideology bent on dominating their state.

To top it off there is absolutely no reason for Putin to fear NATO expansion, other non-NATO neighbours are ambivalent because they have no interest in bullying other countries quite like Russia has when it whinges about the Baltic states.

>>36719
The problem with FP is they've started aggressively pay walling their articles so it can be a roll of the dice whether someone can read it. The problem with Stephen Walt is that he's a realist windbag whose only trick is to talk about the 90s and American decline.
>> No. 36723 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 6:17 pm
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>>36722

>To top it off there is absolutely no reason for Putin to fear NATO expansion

Because it never happened, right?

Just imagine if the Russians started a new international military alliance and incorporated one country after another into it, in the Western Hemisphere, no less. Wouldn't we here in the UK or the Americans get a smidgeon nervous? Wouldn't that be considered a blatant act of "Russian aggression"?

And don't give us the whole "But NATO and the Americans are the good guys". Well, not entirely so, if you look at history. And while the Warsaw Pact was completely dissolved and Russia never reversed its geographical retreat, NATO was assimilating former Soviet satellite states left, right and centre.

Just because somebody says they're the good guys, doesn't mean they're not going to pull the trigger of the gun they've got pointed at your head the whole time.
>> No. 36724 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 6:25 pm
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>>36723

>Just because somebody says they're the good guys, doesn't mean they're not going to pull the trigger of the gun they've got pointed at your head the whole time.

Pretty much.

What we're essentially asking Russia to do is get their bollocks out, and put their bollocks on the table, which we are stood on the opposite side of, holding a hammer.

Obviously we're not going to do anything with the hammer, we just so happen to be holding it, complete coincidence. Absolutely no reason to be concerned at all, you're just paranoid if you think so. But nevertheless, would put your bollocks on the table?

It really doesn't matter who's the good guys and who isn't, that's the thing. It's that we're expecting Russia to submit, and Russia is not, nor has it ever been, a sub.
>> No. 36725 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 6:50 pm
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>>36724

It's the old double standard of good versus evil and war propaganda. These days, it's pretty much Russian aggression when Putin lets off a fart during Easterly winds. While nobody among the Western political elite even permits the question, without branding you an enemy of the system anyway, if the country-by-country eastward advance of NATO in the last 30 years could be construed by Russia as a latently hostile act.

The old mantra always goes that the other side does everything they do because they're evil, and "our" side only does essentially the same things because we're good, and you've got to break some eggs to make omelette.

This tactic is probably as old as warfare and all geostrategic jostling itself. Except since the mid-20th century, it has essentially been a game of nuclear chicken that almost turned ugly a few times, with no side really having been able to claim moral high ground. And just because nobody got hurt the first time around during the 1946-1990 Cold War, doesn't mean it won't happen in Cold War II. Can we really take that chance?
>> No. 36726 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 7:04 pm
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>>36723

A number of Eastern European countries made the decision to join NATO, because they believe it to be in their own best interests. Russia has repeatedly aggressed against many of those countries and is currently illegally occupying large parts of Ukraine.

There is no moral equivalence here. Russia has absolutely no legitimate grounds to oppose NATO expansion. Eastern European countries have every right to join NATO if they so wish. There is zero evidence that the expansion of NATO poses a threat to Russian security or territorial integrity, but it does pose a clear threat to Russia's expansionist aims.

There was no provocation in 2014; Russia simply assessed that the West would not support Ukraine to defend against an invasion. We cannot de-escalate this situation by appeasement. The international community needs to stand firmly in support of Ukraine's right to territorial integrity and self-determination.
>> No. 36727 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 7:18 pm
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>>36726

>Russia has absolutely no legitimate grounds

This is the part you don't seem to understand. There's no such thing as "legitimate". It's in their interests not to have NATO on their doorstep, and that's all the legitimacy they need to act in their own self interest.

It's delusional not to expect a country to act in its own self interest just because you've convinced yourself of some artificial construct on what it is and isn't okay to do.
>> No. 36728 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 7:19 pm
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Jeremy Kyle was a cock, wasn't he?

He had his own TV series, where he would invite dysfunctional people on, many of whom needed help, and he would berate them. What a twat. He was the rich millionaire TV celebrity, getting rich off the back of Callum and Chantal from the local council estate, and then they barely saw a sniff of the profits. Prick. But at the same time, Callum was a prick too. He kept getting invited onto the show because he was an alcoholic who would get blackout drunk and beat the shit out of Chantal. And Chantal hated this, but she never left, not even when Jeremy Kyle told her to. And two months later, they'd both be back on the Jeremy Kyle, being chastised for being worthless basket cases.

We are Jeremy Kyle. We're rich and we hold all the cards, ultimately. Chantal is the abused, barely-literate Ukraine. That poor woman. And finally, she has taken a stand and said she is dumping Callum for good. She's moving in with Jeremy Kyle, because he has a big house, and she's taking the kids. No more violent beatings from Callum after a weekend vodka bender.

Now Callum is in the street, shirtless and yelling for Chantal to come out. He has been insulted by Jeremy Kyle so many times that he really can't accept that Chantal would rather live with him than with Callum. That's the only reason Callum is so angry. He hasn't changed, and he will definitely abuse Chantal again while drinking even more vodka, reading unendingly miserable 19th-century literature, and sleeping around with Belarus and Kazakhstan. Chantal's still a hopeless thicko, but she looks at you, and asks, "Should I get back with him?"

Obviously fucking not. Come on.
>> No. 36729 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 7:47 pm
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>>36728

(Let's assume you, the reader, are Jezza, that makes it more personally relatable.)

But also, in this analogy, Callum is actually part of a quite serious gang on the estate, and if you don't let him in to see Chantal, him and his 'ard mates are going to break in at night and beat the shit out of her and the kids. They'll look at you and go "Well, gonna stick up for 'er are you mate?" and you'll just shake your head.

You know she's not worth a black eye over, and you always did. Deep down inside yourself you know you never actually intended to look after her, stand up for her, protect her. You were just using her for the council slag blowies, and you had only temporarily convinced yourself otherwise, you think to yourself, as a single tear rolls down your cheek and into your glass of Famous Grouse.
>> No. 36730 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 8:10 pm
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>>36729
>Famouse Grouse

You mean High Commissioner, Lad. That's your brown equivalent of Glen's Vodka.
>> No. 36731 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 8:13 pm
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>>36730
>Famouse

FUCK. Proof that even something as "posh" as Glenfiddich Solera 15 doesn't stop yu making a clown of yerself on the interwebs.

But I never punched a Lass. I have that going for me.
>> No. 36732 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 9:04 pm
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I fear we've left analogy behind and are just writing out sublimated fantasies.
>> No. 36733 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 10:33 pm
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>>36723
No. It would be considered a strategic failure of the west but by definition a defensive alliance shouldn't be regarded as an offensive act, you certainly wouldn't have even the Yankees annexing 7% of said country for smiling in the wrong direction. Not that anyone would ever be keen to host Russian soldiers of course.

That's the thing, it is perfectly legitimate for Ukraine to enter into an economic agreement with Europe and it's perfectly legitimate for sovereign states to enter into a defensive alliance. It says so in the UN Charter and and national sovereignty has been THE fundamental precept of international law for at least 100 years. On the other hand invading a country because they've frankly had enough of you and stealing territory is absolutely outrageous and may have even raised heckles in the 19th century. You only have to look at the limited number of countries that have accepted Russia's annexation of Crimea and the actions of even non-NATO members to know which side of history Putin is operating on.

Now you have to ask yourself what 100,000 Russian soldiers are going to invade for, what pretext are they going to use here when the limited equipment Ukraine has had delivered from NATO consist of anti-tank rockets and Turkish drones. Are the "fascists" coming to kill all the Russians or is it the Jews this time?

>>36728
>Chantal's still a hopeless thicko, but she looks at you, and asks, "Should I get back with him?"

ARE Chantal would never say this. She's made repeatedly clear she's going to fight back and if she ends up too broken then she won't be able to tend her ganja farm which is going to send prices for green rocketing across the estate.

>>36729
You wouldn't go in swinging against a group of chavs who have broken into your home and are looking to beat a woman and her children?
>> No. 36734 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 10:35 pm
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>>36726

>The international community needs to stand firmly in support of Ukraine's right to territorial integrity and self-determination

Would've been nice if the West had applied that same high moral standard to countries like Syria, or indeed Afghanistan or Iraq.


>There was no provocation in 2014

Except there was. The 2013 revolution in Ukraine was bought and paid for by Western shell NGOs. Whose operatives were literally giving protesters in the streets cash money handouts, and the opposition movement as a whole also received generous funding from countries including, but not limited to the United States.

Crimea's problem admittedly was that it has been home to one of (Soviet) Russia's most strategically important military bases on the planet since before the Cold War. A new pro-Western Ukrainian government could have simply evicted the Russians at some point, which would have weakened Russia's military posture as a whole.

Ultimately, just declaring Crimea a part of Russia was without a doubt a rarely before seen violation of international law and multilateral treaties. But what are you going to do. There is no feasible way of returning Crimea to Ukraine, without very literally risking an all-out nuclear war. Eight years of intense political pressure and sanctions have yielded absolutely no results, and the West is still deluding itself that yet anoter round of new sanctions over and over again is somehow at some point going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
>> No. 36735 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 10:42 pm
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>>36733

>You wouldn't go in swinging against a group of chavs who have broken into your home and are looking to beat a woman and her children?

Well, no, because the point of this analogy is that we (The West and Are Jezza) are absolutely just going to sit on our hands and watch Chantal get beaten up.

We can yammer on at length about what Russia has done wrong and how NATO hasn't done anything to provoke them, but at the end of the day what are we going to do? We don't want a fight with Russia, certainly not over a shithole like Ukraine. We don't give a fuck.

We're just acting like bigmen, but if we get called on it, we'll have to back away, and then we're going to look like right dickheads, and the whole estate will know we're not hard like we used to be. Past it. Has been. Next thing you know all these other upstarts are selling baggies down the Lion, and when you confront them, they just laugh. Get out of here, old geezer, you're done with.

That's the greater issue with all this. We've painted ourselves into a corner and we've fucked up. This is a moment of reckoning for the future, and the US is looking absolutely impotent right now.
>> No. 36736 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 11:04 pm
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>>36735

>We're just acting like bigmen, but if we get called on it, we'll have to back away, and then we're going to look like right dickheads, and the whole estate will know we're not hard like we used to be

It's all about how far you want to take a bluff.

As you said, ultimately, despite all the huffing and puffing, the West isn't going to start a nuclear war over a shithole country like Ukraine, and all the territorial pissing that both sides are doing isn't going to change that. Putin knew that the West wasn't going to send troops to pry Russia's most important European naval base from him at gunpoint to return it to Crimea. So he got away with it by successfully gambling on Western governments not being bigger lunatics than him. As far as our governments were concerned, it was better to just accept that Putin had made the West look like complete fools, and not risk global nuclear stability over a speck of land in the Black Sea that ultimately wasn't worth it.
>> No. 36737 Anonymous
23rd January 2022
Sunday 11:12 pm
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>>36734
>Except there was. The 2013 revolution in Ukraine was bought and paid for by Western shell NGOs. Whose operatives were literally giving protesters in the streets cash money handouts, and the opposition movement as a whole also received generous funding from countries including, but not limited to the United States.

Goodness, it's amazing how much money we must have considering the past 8 years the Ukrainian people have rejected pro-Russian candidates.

>>36735
>but at the end of the day what are we going to do?

Supply weapons, training and the like to Ukraine, you may have seen it on the news. Maybe kick Russia out of Swift and whatever other sanctions are needed to cripple the Russian economy as it was in Russia's last financial crisis. Your entire argument hinges on the assumption that "just let Russia do whatever it wants" is some viable option like it's not equally Russia that is skating on thin ice and isn't likely scrambling to save face.
>> No. 36739 Anonymous
24th January 2022
Monday 12:43 am
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>>36737

We've been trying to cripple the Russian economy for the best part of the last decade, and by the looks of it, it hasn't done much.

Probably because most of the people who would feel the pinch of those sanctions don't actually have many financial interests in Russia itself, instead they own half the real estate market in London and fund the Tory party.
>> No. 36796 Anonymous
30th January 2022
Sunday 6:08 pm
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The Russian war plan for this is insane (from 6:10 on):


Cities with millions of people under siege and a pincer movement cutting along and probably through the Chernobyl exclusion zone, Transnistria pulling Moldova in and Russia facing an insurgency that puts Iraq to shame. I can't imagine there's much margin for error.

>>36739
>We've been trying to cripple the Russian economy for the best part of the last decade, and by the looks of it, it hasn't done much.

It has. So much so that Russia has now stockpiled foreign reserves to avoid a repeat of the 2014-16 financial crisis where the majority of the economy fell into state ownership and millionaires fled the country despite targeted sanctions. Most of Russia's exports flow to the EU and the alternative once that dries up is falling into China's orbit as a low-wage economy for primary goods.

The one's coming next are suggested to be brutal, cutting even Sberbank alone off would cripple the Russian economy:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/01/21/russia-sanctions-stop-putin-energy-markets-us-invasion-527524

>Probably because most of the people who would feel the pinch of those sanctions don't actually have many financial interests in Russia itself, instead they own half the real estate market in London and fund the Tory party.

I don't get why you would think that oligarchs holding assets outside of Russia, who made their fortune in the chaos of the 90s, would be pro-Putin. Nor why you assume the UK is in any way Russia's largest trading partner or the anchor that Germany is. Russian = Foe is a dumb way of looking at it even if a few MPs are pretty regular bought off by anyone who wants a slice.
>> No. 36935 Anonymous
11th February 2022
Friday 10:10 pm
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ITZ, or not?

Can only imagine the smug grin that Putin has right about now.

For some reason, I'm reminded of that passage from Illuminatus:

>He was, in fact, characteristic of the best type of dominant male in the world at this time. He was fifty-five years old, tough, shrewd, unburdened by the complicated ethical ambiguities which puzzle intellectuals, and had long ago decided that the world was a mean son-of-a-bitch in which only the most cunning and ruthless can survive. He was also as kind as was possible for one holding that ultra-Darwinian philosophy; and he genuinely loved children and dogs, unless they were on the site of something that had to be bombed in the National Interest. He still retained some sense of humor, despite the burdens of his almost godly office, and, although he had been impotent with his wife for nearly ten years now, he generally achieved orgasm in the mouth of a skilled prostitute within 1.5 minutes. He took amphetamine pep pills to keep going on his grueling twenty-hour day, with the result that his vision of the world was somewhat skewed in a paranoid direction, and he took tranquilizers to keep from worrying too much, with the result that his detachment sometimes bordered on the schizophrenic; but most of the time his innate shrewdness gave him a fingernail grip on reality. In short, he was much like the rulers of Russia and China.
>> No. 36954 Anonymous
12th February 2022
Saturday 4:57 pm
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Invasion on Wednesday, apparently.

https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/krise-in-osteuropa-cia-rechnet-mit-russischem-angriff-kommende-woche-a-2e10a45f-b6eb-4b1a-b692-2edc64c04adf
>> No. 36955 Anonymous
12th February 2022
Saturday 6:12 pm
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>>36954

Good to know Gerry is taking notice.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but so far, we've only got the West's thoughts on all that. While Russia still maintains that it's just a military exercise and that there are no plans to invade at all. It'd be a bit anticlimactic if the Russians actually don't invade and at some point just call off their "exercise". Like back in school when rumours went around that the school bully was going to kick the wimpy kid's arse behind the gym after school one day, but he never even showed up.

On the other hand, maybe the Russians just think that what goes around, comes around. They paid bitterly for believing Hitler's assurances as part of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. And then look what happened. Which also led to the Seven Days To The River Rhine strategic plan during the Cold War, whose aim it was that in the event WWIII broke out, the Warsaw Pact would push westward and overrun West Germany with all their available ground forces in seven days to make sure that NATO wouldn't do the same to Russia with their troops moving eastward.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_to_the_River_Rhine

So it could be part of their strategy to completely go pokerface with it until the first Russsian MiGs or tanks cross into Ukraine.

The problem that the West has is that Biden has said very firmly that the U.S. is not going to send its own troops into Ukraine in the event of a Russian invasion, because it would trigger WWIII. While that's a somewhat prudent decision on Biden's part, one we in the West should probably thank him for out of sheer self interest and the fact that it means we won't be waking up to mushroom clouds in the sky next week, it also means that Putin will get away with invading Ukraine. He knows the worst he is going to have to endure from the West is a lot of huffing and puffing in diplomatic and political circles and a few more toothless sanctions that Putin can't be arsed to care about, but ultimately, the West will settle into the reality again, like with Crimea, that what Russia is doing is a grossly illegal act under international laws and treaties, but that there isn't anything you can really do to kick the Russians back out. Again, short of kicking off WWIII.
>> No. 36958 Anonymous
12th February 2022
Saturday 6:45 pm
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>>36955
This is one of those situations where because I don't know what will happen, I try to take a smug intellectual approach and scrutinise everyone's real motivations to predict how it will go. But Putin wants to portray the outside world as evil to his people, to cement his position in the face of existing sanctions, so he could well go to war for that.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden has very low approval ratings, which would be hugely helped in the midterms by a war with Russia. Our own government is mired in scandal, and saying Keir Starmer loves pederasts and hates justice didn't work, so they too stand to gain from a war. All across Europe, other NATO governments are finding themselves unpopular in a way that a war with Russia would really help with.

The war itself, of course, if it happened, wouldn't really benefit anybody except the politicians. Nobody is defending freedom and justice; both sides are just telling themselves they'd be putting a bully in their place for illegitimately trying to claim Ukraine. Based on what I've seen, Russia is going to try and cheat and invade Ukraine while claiming they're not really invading Ukraine. Then we'd look like the bad guys for fighting them when they never really invaded anywhere. So fuck Russia. But I don't know if that's what Russia is really planning, because I read all those reports in the dreaded m-m-m-mainstream media, which cannot necessarily be trusted.

I guess the ideal outcome would be cyberwarfare, with everyone switching off each other's power stations and Sky Sports but nobody actually dying. If we could remove Putin simply through filling Russian infrastructure with Goatse and Billy Herrington, I'd sign up today. But all governments everywhere have spent far too much on real weapons not to use them, so even that would probably ultimately kill us all.
>> No. 36960 Anonymous
12th February 2022
Saturday 7:51 pm
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>>36958

>Meanwhile, Joe Biden has very low approval ratings, which would be hugely helped in the midterms by a war with Russia. Our own government is mired in scandal, and saying Keir Starmer loves pederasts and hates justice didn't work, so they too stand to gain from a war. All across Europe, other NATO governments are finding themselves unpopular in a way that a war with Russia would really help with.

Except this time it wouldn't be a proxy war over which Western governments could do the usual circle jerk in telling each other, and their people, how much they condemn the barbaric acts of the enemy. This time, they're really running around with matches inside a dynamite factory. And the approval of your voters doesn't mean much if they all get vaporised by a Russian ICBM as a result of your gung-ho decision making.


>Based on what I've seen, Russia is going to try and cheat and invade Ukraine while claiming they're not really invading Ukraine

You can do that with a handful of military trucks in the vast expanses of the rural Donbas. You can even show footage of some nondescript landscape with Russian tanks in it and with the possible exception of undeniable landmark features in shot, nobdy will be able to prove from those images that the Russians aren't on their own territory, But once you've got eyewitness mobile phone video popping up on social media of entire formations of Russian jets laying fire on Kyiv, you'll know the Russians are right in the middle of Ukraine, and Putin won't bother denying it.

My guess is that because Kyiv is only about 120 miles from the Russian border and also not far from where Russia and Belarus are currently holding a joint military "exercise", the first wave of attack is going to be by air right on Kyiv. They'll do a decapitation strike and then take it from there as strategic targets will continue to be bombed by air and ground troops begin their advance into Ukrainian territory. While the West and NATO in particular will shy away from direct counteraction in order not to invoke Article 5.
>> No. 36961 Anonymous
12th February 2022
Saturday 8:02 pm
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>>36935
It's too late now.

In practical terms, Russia has started up drills that will be a ball ache to now quickly untangle into fighting and in particular amphibious operations aren't known for a quick turnaround. It also has no element of surprise and what is more the full attention of Europe focused upon it which is normally the point in any conflict when it opts for a negotiated settlement.

In strategic terms even NATO members have expressed doubt, Russia has a limited cost tolerance where intervention in Syria was defined by mercenaries and air-strikes (and involved backdoor guarantees that the Coalition would not supply anti-aircraft weapons), Georgia wasn't destroyed because the diplomatic cost was viewed as too great and Azerbaijan was allowed to humiliate Armenia because there was no open route to send aid. A war now would cut Russia from it's largest export market, dooming it to China's orbit and be a ruinously expensive conflict that would certainly cost some advanced equipment Russia can't afford to lose.

The whole thing has been sabre-rattling to see how the West reacts and it's probably sussed us as a little wanting. Same thing will now become a regular occurrence to undermine western confidence following the formula that began to emerge from Zapad and simulated strikes on Warsaw. Soon we'll have a similar display in the Baltics to test American resolve where Russia knows the NATO can't prevent them being overrun and where they might come to seek some accommodation.
>> No. 36964 Anonymous
12th February 2022
Saturday 8:39 pm
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60361983

>More than a dozen countries have urged their citizens to leave Ukraine amid warnings from Western powers that an invasion by Russia could be imminent.


Nice knowing you, otherlads.

Time to pack your rice and wellies.
>> No. 36968 Anonymous
12th February 2022
Saturday 8:51 pm
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I watched that Lukashenko BBC interview the other day and what he said about NGOs was quite interesting, went something like that
>Yeah, all those NGOs you've set up? We've liquified them and they're all Western propaganda hubs
or something to that effect and it made me wonder if Lukashenko has tipped Russia off about similar things happening in Ukraine.
Not to sound like a Russian bot or anything but the way Ukraine was slowly being taken into the fold of the West and NATO made me wonder whether we have, oh let's be honest, we HAVE been nudging them closer and closer to NATO but perhaps Putin wasn't looking in the right places whilst it was happening. Now he's had a word with Lukashenko and Lukashenko has clued him in on it.
It does sort of feel like the West has been caught doing something it shouldn't have been doing and is now getting all defensive about it.
sage for absolute schizophrenic, rambling bollocks
>> No. 36984 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 11:42 am
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My white knuckle ride of investing in Ukraine is paying off. Feels weird to be making money on peace for a change when everyone else has been throwing money at defence companies.
>> No. 36985 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 2:01 pm
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>>36984

How did you do this? As in, who did you invest through?
>> No. 36986 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 2:14 pm
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>>36964

This really does seem like an absolute reversal of the truth. Isn't Russia seeking a legally binding agreement to stop NATO expansion to the east?

It really seems like we're being geared up for war, primed to see Russia as the enemy.
>> No. 36987 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 3:14 pm
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>>36985
HL, FXPO wasn't a bad punt either for a smoother ride. Third largest iron ore pellet exporter in the world and a lot less risk of Green men, Kiev setting a price ceiling or corruption.

>>36986
Russia has openly signalled it's ​deescalating and it was always just a military exercise despite the Americans and media screaming. The Russian demands were always a bullshit high-ball ask if the west wanted to strike a grand bargain.

Ukraine gave some mixed signals that it won't be joining NATO anytime soon but they'll probably just apply once they feel they can credibly deter a Russian attack. Nothing ever happens.

>It really seems like we're being geared up for war, primed to see Russia as the enemy.

Annexing a chunk of a country like it's 1938 and running a low-intensity conflict in another nation's borders that has created 1.5 million refugees will do that
>> No. 36988 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 3:42 pm
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>>36984
I admire your brass balls ladm9.
>> No. 36989 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 4:05 pm
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>>36986
How do you expect sovereign nations to stop being sovereign and applying to join NATO? Agreeing with Russia's demands essentially means eastern Europe is part of Russia.
>> No. 36990 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 4:55 pm
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>>36989

I think your question is very much based on a false premise. It makes about as much sense as saying those countries in NATO are part of the US.
>> No. 36991 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 5:24 pm
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>>36986

>It really seems like we're being geared up for war, primed to see Russia as the enemy.

Russia have already invaded Ukraine. They might strenuously deny it, but there is irrefutable evidence that Russian special forces and mercenaries have been acting in Crimea and Donbas since 2014.

NATO rules specifically disallow membership to countries with an active territorial dispute, making Ukraine ineligible to join. However you slice it, Russia are the aggressor in this situation and acting unlawfully.
>> No. 36992 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 6:19 pm
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>>36987

>Annexing a chunk of a country like it's 1938 and running a low-intensity conflict in another nation's borders that has created 1.5 million refugees will do that


Maybe, but in this case, so far at least it has all just been a big hyped up nothing. Putin does a little flex on Ukraine's doorstep, and the West's intelligence and media completely run with all kinds of horror scenarios which, in fairness, don't seem all that likely to materialise. It may be good for newspaper and TV readership and viewership numbers, and to reinforce the image of Russia as the evil empire, but it really borders on mass delusion by now.

And Putin isn't actually going to send his 100,000 men to invade Ukraine because he knows there is a high risk of it ending up like Afghanistan. The reason why the Soviet-Afghan War played an instrumental part in the Soviet Union's demise was that the Soviets spent themselves to death trying to gain the upper hand, while the U.S. was secretly supplying wholesale weaponry to the Mujahideen the whole time, thus dragging out a conflict that should have lasted no more than a year or two to last ten years.

The Ukrainians today also wouldn't go down without a fight, and they would likely receive oodles more weapons than they'd ever need from NATO and the U.S., without the two getting directly involved, resulting in the exact same kind of quagmire for the Russians as Afghanistan.

And not wanting to slip into too much Putinsplaining here, but NATO has quite openly a geographical containment strategy against Russia. Which isn't limited to NATO's eastern expansion in Europe, but also extends to increased military presence in recent years and decades in southern Eurasia and East Asia. Imagine if the Russians did that. They're already painted as the scourge of world peace by gathering 100,000 soldiers on their own soil near a neighbouring country's border, so far with no stated intent but to hold a large-scale military exercise. While the U.S. sent half its Navy down to the Caribbean and openly threatened nuclear war when the Soviets shipped missiles to Cuba. And it should not be forgotten that the Russian missiles in Cuba were a direct response to NATO having Jupiter ballistic missiles stationed in Turkey and Italy, each equipped with a 1.5 Mt warhead targeted at Moscow and many other cities in western Russia. These missiles were all very quietly taken down, as part of the agreement to remove the Russian missiles from Cuba. But you don't ever hear much about that in History Channel documentaries.
>> No. 36993 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 6:38 pm
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>>36992
I would argue that annexing thousands of square miles of a neighbouring country, in violation of international law, is actually quite a large flex. It's certainly a bigger flex than anything NATO has done to Russia lately.
>> No. 36994 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 6:55 pm
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>>36993

Nicking a small corner off someone else's country is still not a large flex. Not a small one either, but it's not a large flex.
>> No. 36995 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 7:00 pm
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>>36994
Has anyone done that since WW2 other than Russia (multiple times by the way)? Are you a RussianBot by any chance?
>> No. 36996 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 7:03 pm
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>>36994
I also find it funny that you call nicking an area larger than Wales, just a minor flex.
>> No. 36997 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 7:14 pm
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>>36996
Even England could nick an area the size of Wales. It needs to be at least several times that to be a proper flex.
>> No. 36998 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 7:23 pm
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>>36995
Israel.
>> No. 36999 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 7:47 pm
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>>36996

I called it "not a large flex. Not a small one either".

The Ukraine is also a lot bigger than the UK in relation to Wales.


Total land area of Ukraine: 233,062 sq mi

Land area of Crimea: 10,000 sq mi (~4.2%)


Total land area of the UK: 93,628 sq mi

Land area of Wales: 8,023 sq mi (~ 8.5%)
>> No. 37000 Anonymous
15th February 2022
Tuesday 9:03 pm
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>>36999
Is that how far you want to go to justify the annexation, RussianBotLad?
>> No. 37001 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 12:47 pm
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>>36954
Are they doing it yet? Or have we been betrayed by the duplicitous Western media? Or even, were the Russians really going to invade today, then called it off to make our media look stupid, so we no longer trust them when they [I]do[I] invade?
>> No. 37002 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 3:14 pm
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>>37001
I'll reply to myself again, since my post seems more sarcastic and aggressive than I meant it to. There are now videos of tanks leaving Crimea, and pulling away from Ukraine, but NATO and the Americans are saying that this is all fake, and that actually, if anything, Russian troop numbers are increasing on the border with Ukraine. I really am very confused right now.
>> No. 37003 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 3:14 pm
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I dunno, I kind of feel like there was never any real intention to invade, but simply an attempt to make the West look like charlatans.

I mean it doesn't really cost anything to have a bunch of tanks and soldiers sat there on the border looking like they could invade at any minute, and sit back to watch as America loses its shit for months on end while at the same time displaying complete impotence to do anything about it.

Both sides are playing a pretty cynical game here- The west wants Russia encircled, Russia wants a sphere of inbendsence to retain some global heft. But the West is definitely the one coming out of this looking like our towel fell down.
>> No. 37004 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 3:23 pm
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>>37002
There were reports about a week ago about Russia potentially deploying fake footage. Of course, we didn't get to see what that footage was or what it depicted, for good reason. For the same reason, NATO aren't going to confirm or deny whether what we're seeing is that fakery.
>> No. 37005 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 3:28 pm
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>>37003
>I dunno, I kind of feel like there was never any real intention to invade, but simply an attempt to make the West look like charlatans.
You should probably stop watching RT.
>> No. 37006 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 5:03 pm
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>>37005
I don't know; he could be right. Putin certainly has a track record of manipulating foreign media and.spreading the message that they can't be trusted. If he can make the West look like a bunch of mugs, that's great news for him. And remember that if he does want to invade, he's effectively inviting the entire world to treat his government like that of Afghanistan in terms of how unwelcome they would be, all in exchange for some space, which they have plenty of already, in one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in Europe. Eastern Ukraine is hardly prime real estate for any government other than the Ukrainian one.
>> No. 37007 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 5:09 pm
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>>37006
>If he can make the West look like a bunch of mugs
For what? Responding to a credible threat of invasion?
>> No. 37008 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 5:22 pm
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>>37007
A credible threat of invasion can easily look like incredible hysteria when the invasion doesn't materialise, especially when the government that found it credible has a record of getting it horribly wrong before (credible evidence of WMD in Iraq) to stain its own credibility.
>> No. 37009 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 5:28 pm
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>>37003

Putin is expanding his sphere of inbendsence, but not in the way the news would suggest.

It's all a charade and the audience are Orban, Duda and Erdoğan. Putin has no intention of a full invasion of Ukraine, because it'd be far too costly for far too little gain. The point of the exercise is to send a message to populist leaders (and their electorates) in Eastern Europe - that the major NATO powers consider them to be expendable and that their future security depends on closer ties with Russia, not the west.

If Putin can gradually turn Poland and Hungary into Belarus-esque puppet states, then dominating Ukraine is a fait accompli. Russia get to punch a massive hole in NATO's eastern frontier without a shot being fired.
>> No. 37010 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 5:50 pm
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>>37008
>(credible evidence of WMD in Iraq)
My calendar says it's 2022. What does yours say?
>> No. 37011 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 6:11 pm
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>>37010
I'm not sure, I can't read it because my bastard 6 year old has written "people can remember things and make inferences from them in the future" in black ink over the entire calendar part, leaving it as nothing but a collection of poorly framed shots of Australia's four landmarks.
>> No. 37012 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 7:28 pm
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>>37011
>"people can remember things and make inferences from them in the future"

Is this a wordfilter, or do you have a really precocious kid?
>> No. 37013 Anonymous
17th February 2022
Thursday 8:02 am
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>>37008
This situation is completely different. Russia doesn’t deny it has troops surrounding Ukraine and no country, anywhere, has said it will send forces to protect them if an invasion did take place. That second point is also why talk of WW3 is so silly too, you’re going to need more than two countries for a world war.
>> No. 37016 Anonymous
17th February 2022
Thursday 4:23 pm
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>>37007

Well yes, duncelad. It wouldn't be much of a gambit if the West just immediately sussed "nah, he's bullshitting" would it? Christ.
>> No. 37020 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 9:53 am
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>>37016
I don't get it. There's a credible threat of invasion, and every indication that Putin means it. Do the fire service look like mugs when they turn up to a hoax call?
>> No. 37021 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 11:27 am
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>>37020

This is a faulty analogy because the fire service would at least show up to a hoax call.

That's the point you're missing. The west (or at least the Americans) look like mugs over this because of how much noise they're making despite expressly ruling out even the possibility of showing up, because they know they can't.

The longer it goes on, the more of a floppy dick we look.
>> No. 37022 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 1:42 pm
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>>37013

> Russia doesn’t deny it has troops surrounding Ukraine

Yes, but that isn't the point, is it. The point is if Russia will attack Ukraine or not.

So far, all we have to go on is the West carrying itself like a bunch of headless chickens in reiterating over and over again the alleged imminent threat of a Russian invasion, while Russia denies such plans. We're not talking about Russian troops that are already in Crimea and with some degree of probability in the Donbas, but a full-scale hostile military invasion.

If the Russians actually end up not invading Ukraine and withdrawing their troops because it all really was just a large-scale exercise, then NATO and Western governments will all end up looking like right twats.

Let's just see how everything unfolds. Part of me believes that the West just wants to goad Putin into an invasion. They're essentially presenting the Ukraine to Putin on a silver platter by saying look, we've flown out all our diplomats and other local personnel, and we won't send in NATO troops if you attack.
>> No. 37024 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 2:26 pm
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Would Russia look like twats if NATO didn't attack them? Because NATO isn't going to. So perhaps looking like a twat isn't the end of the world in terms of international diplomacy.
>> No. 37025 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 2:40 pm
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>>37024

What I meant was, what's missing from the narrative of an unstable rogue leader threatening world peace is that Putin hasn't made any open threats to attack Ukraine. He has spoken out vociferously against NATO's eastern expansion and has said that Russia would be prepared to defend its interests both with diplomacy and its military might. But that isn't the same as a direct threat to attack and invade Ukraine. And in the absence of that, all we ever hear is warnings from Western governments and NATO that an attack is directly at hand in the next few days. So far, with no results. Which leads me to believe that the West is really overdramatising the situation because it hopes to achieve political gain from it.
>> No. 37026 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 2:44 pm
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>>37025
That's exactly what Putin wants you to think.

He hasn't made explicit threats against Ukraine, but he has, repeatedly, said the equivalent of "Nice country you have there, it would be a shame if anything happened to it."
>> No. 37027 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 2:56 pm
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>>37026

In the end, the proof of the Putin pudding is still in the eating. The West is placing its bets on a Ukraine invasion, but it will still make itself look stuipid if that invasion never happens. And to paint over the fact that NATO and Western governments incorrectly predicted an invasion, they'll probably reframe it as their diplomatic success that it didn't happen. Which would be more than a little bit dishonest.
>> No. 37029 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 3:03 pm
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>>37027
Mate, just take your 5 rubles and fuck off already.
>> No. 37032 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 5:16 pm
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>>37020
This hinges on the credbility of the threat, which can always be contested in hindsight. People aren't probability computers, there's a reason they're lazy with seatbelts.

>>37024
The domestic politics of looking like a twat differs from country to country. In NATO countries, by and large, if nothing happens things look like unwarranted panic. In Russia, it's much easier to steer it to look like unwarranted hostility from NATO, even if you started it.

>>37026
>>37029
If, no matter what happens, "that's what putin wants you to think", why is it so implausible that he could set up another win-win situation for himself? Set up a probable invasion, judge the reaction, then either back down (making the reaction look like an overreaction), or, if there's no reaction, invade and grab a nice chunk of land.

It's bizarre that we can imagine posters and politicians are in his pocket, uncritically repeating lines practically penned by himself, but the moment you suggest the man might actually have had a clever strategy going into this that's proof you're on his side.
>> No. 37033 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 5:44 pm
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>>37025

>Putin hasn't made any open threats to attack Ukraine

Putin has already attacked Ukraine. He has invaded and annexed Crimea. Donbas has been taken over by a Russian-backed separatist army that calls itself "New Russia". The leader of that separatist government is a card-carrying member of Putin's party. 13,000 people have died in the conflict. There's fighting happening right now.

The troops massing on the border aren't threatening to start a war, they're threatening to escalate a war that has been going on for nearly eight years.
>> No. 37034 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 5:49 pm
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Regardless of how the fervent Yank-wankers ITT want to feel about it, it already is a win win for Putin.

He doesn't have to do anything. He just puts his tanks and artillery and loads and loads of soldiers on the border, when goes "What? I can put my soldiers wherever I want, it's my own country isn't it?" and in technical terms, he's absolutely right.

Every minute he leaves them there without invading when the Yanks keep saying "Invasion TUESDAY!" is a propaganda victory for him, essentially. "Me? Invade? Oh, would you just look at how impolite these Americans are! My army is just minding it's own business, completely harmlessly, six inches from the Ukrainian border. It's like the US wants me to invade!"

Meanwhile day after day we do nothing, continue to do nothing, and explicitly broadcast to the world our intention to do nothing. But if he does! if he does! Why, we'll... We'll... We'll huff, and we'll puff, and we'll... Impose economic sanctions! Thus reassuring all the countries we want to remain friendly and allied to us in eastern Europe that we're definitely going to stick our necks out for them if it ever comes to it. Because they're in NATO, so that's totally different, isn't it. We'd definitely start WW3 over them, just not Ukraine.

Will some of you take off your red vs blue sports team glasses for a minute and stand back to look at the bigger picture?
>> No. 37035 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 6:00 pm
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>>37034
See, this is like the "casus belli" wankery you can find elsewhere. It's herd insanity at a grand scale, nothing more and nothing less. The dress up game people who cannot accept that humans are fucked play doesn't change that. Just like that prince's death didn't kick off a war, if bullets start flying it's psychos leading psychos inexplicably following orders given by psychos.
>> No. 37036 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 6:03 pm
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>>37032

> It's bizarre that we can imagine posters and politicians are in his pocket, uncritically repeating lines practically penned by himself, but the moment you suggest the man might actually have had a clever strategy going into this that's proof you're on his side.

This. In any game of strategy, the biggest way you can set yourself up to lose from the word go is a) by underestimating your opponent's capabilities and b) by believing too much in your own, and thinking you've got your opponent all figured out.

In other words, whatever else you think of Putin, you have to accept what allies and adversaries alike have always said about him, and that is that he is a brilliant strategist. And realistically, you don't get to the top of an ailing democracy-turned autocracy just by playing nice. Putin is President of Russia with an estimated personal wealth of more than $100 billion because he has spent a lifetime scheming, forging alliances and outsmarting rivals, to a point where his power is absolute. Even in a failed democracy like Russia, that is no mean feat. To then think that Putin somehow just doesn't have it in him to show up the West and to make it and NATO look bad as a result of this crisis is just negligent.


>then either back down (making the reaction look like an overreaction), or, if there's no reaction, invade and grab a nice chunk of land.

Exactly right. And the gamble that the West is taking right now is that it is pretty much handing the Ukraine to Putin's troops, because all foreign personnel has been flown out or told to leave the country, and Putin has been guaranteed that NATO forces will not intervene against Russia, for obvious reasons. The West naturally doesn't like the idea of Putin invading and taking over Ukraine, but they're also not really doing anything to stop him. And once the Russian army controls the territory in a meaningful way, there is also going to be no way for Ukraine to receive new weapon supplies to continue fighting off the Russians on their own.

In the end, the Ukraine is too unimportant for the U.S., which still calls the shots in NATO, to start WW3 over. NATO's containment strategy against Russia is already in place and will work with or without Ukraine being a part of NATO's eastern flank.

If Putin chooses to invade Ukraine, the most likely outcome is going to be crippling sanctions against Russia and a wave of bitter condemnation and disgust from Western politics, but Putin will get to keep Ukraine and possibly incorporate it into Russian territory like they have done with Crimea. The only way to stop it from happening, again, would be WW3.
>> No. 37037 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 6:22 pm
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>>37032
>It's bizarre that we can imagine posters and politicians are in his pocket, uncritically repeating lines practically penned by himself, but the moment you suggest the man might actually have had a clever strategy going into this that's proof you're on his side.
Nobody's suggesting he doesn't have a clever strategy. Some Russiabot keeps harping on about how the West are apparently mugs for rising to Putin's sabre-rattling when in fact he's making a credible threat that he's perfectly capable of following up on, given he's literally done it before.

The Russians aren't stupid. They already know that NATO isn't sitting idly by. They already know that supplies are incoming. They already know that Ukraine is preparing its troops and training civilians in guerilla warfare. Putin knows he has second move advantage. He knows he can basically swing his massive dick around as much as he likes.
>> No. 37038 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 6:37 pm
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>>37037

> when in fact he's making a credible threat that he's perfectly capable of following up on, given he's literally done it before.

So far, he isn't making a threat, at least with respect to actually invading Ukraine. And nobody said that he's not capable of following up on it. But that's exactly part of his strategy. Everybody knows that he's capable of just invading a neighbouring country and taking a chunk out of it, as he has shown with Crimea.


What worries me is that Western politicians are now saying Putin could be looking to stage a false-flag operation as a cause for war. Some sort of very minor incident or attack on Russian forces upon which Putin would then declare his right to start a war against Ukraine after all. The problem with that is that it goes both ways. If such a minor attack is a false-flag operation or is really carried out by the West and then blamed on Russia as a false-flag attack is something you will not be able to unpick once one thing leads to another and we've actually got a full-blown war on our hands.
>> No. 37039 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 6:38 pm
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>>37037

You can go "durr russiabot" all you want, but the point is the west DO look like mugs, because they're playing right into his hands. They're giving him exactly what he wants.

Yes, it's a credible threat. Of course it's a credible threat. That's the fucking point. Let's say you're robbing a bank- Do you use a realistic replica firearm, or a bright orange water pistol? You don't intend to kill anyone, but you won't get far if you don't at least look like you might.

You don't have to support Russia to say the West has cocked this right up. As someone who lives in the West, I'd very much like us to remain the dominant global force, maintain our relative prosperity, and live in security. The reason to be angry with our diplomats right now is because they're putting all that at risk by being such inept fucking twats.

How dense are you lad.
>> No. 37040 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 6:45 pm
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>>37039

>You can go "durr russiabot" all you want

What's that about anyway. I'm by all means not a Russian bot, nor some sort of Kremlin-paid social media comment poster. I'm just somebody who likes his own take on many things.

It bewilders me that .gs is normally a place that encourages people to feel at home with their off the wall and non-mainstream ideas, but that that somehow doesn't go for any discussion we have about politics. Are we really still nothing more than Airstrip One in this country?
>> No. 37041 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 6:53 pm
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>>37038
>So far, he isn't making a threat
I don't know, turning up at a meeting you weren't invited to and telling NATO and the EU to fuck off, and then massing substantial numbers of troops on the border sounds suspiciously like a threat to me.

>What worries me is that Western politicians are now saying Putin could be looking to stage a false-flag operation as a cause for war.
You say "looking to", it literally happened earlier today. Civilians were evacuated from the rebel provinces to Russia, then Russian state media all reported simultaneously that there had been an attack.
>> No. 37042 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 6:57 pm
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>>37039
>Yes, it's a credible threat. Of course it's a credible threat. That's the fucking point.
Right. And so the West has to respond to it.

>The reason to be angry with our diplomats right now is because they're putting all that at risk by being such inept fucking twats.
Do go on. Please, give us an abstract of your forthcoming paper in the Britfa.gs Journal of Foreign Policy and Diplomacy.
>> No. 37043 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 7:00 pm
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>>37040

Probably similar sorts of lads who were dead set on pretending the rednecks tazing themselves in the balls on January 6th last year were in fact daft militant wogs instigating a genuine and serious coup against the US government. Bonafide patriots.
>> No. 37044 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 7:16 pm
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Half of the Ukraine is basically Russia. The only real solution for this quagmire of a nation is neutrality and federalisation.

Regards,
Putinshill/Kremlinbot
>> No. 37045 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 7:34 pm
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>>37038
>The problem with [a false-flag attack] is that it goes both ways
I'm completely with you on this. So far, we're getting reports that some shells were fired at a Ukrainian kindergarten. That's unspeakably evil and I'm sure we're all aghast at the evil Russians firing their death bombs at all the cute widdle kiddies, but if you were Russia, why on Earth would you pick a kindergarten to shoot at? It's like the Gulf War thing where Iraqi soldiers supposedly went into that hospital and threw all the babies in incubators out of the windows, except if they then left and didn't do any more fighting. All it would achieve, from a military perspective, is to make absolutely everyone furious at you while gaining absolutely nothing. It's a terrible way to start a war. And, for anyone not aware, the incubators story was a lie too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony#Investigations

I don't think Putin could win a real war. He prefers to fight media wars, because he's very good at those, and he's winning this one. I second-guess everything our own media tells me now, even though I remain confident that Putin is the bad guy and we're the goodies. Justice is on our side, but our news is looking much more duplicitous and fake than it normally does, and that's a very weird coincidence when we're on the brink of war with the king of making people not trust the news.
>> No. 37046 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 7:37 pm
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>>37044

Even if you're not a kremlinbot, you have to recognise that Ukraine's strong Russian minority complicates things.
>> No. 37047 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 7:41 pm
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>>37040
I don't personally think you're being paid to hold these beliefs (and that's if it's just you defending Putin, which it might not be). But there are plenty of left-wing old-skool commies, like Jeremy Corbyn's own personal Dominic Cummings Seumas Milne, who are very suspiciously pro-Russia. Left-wing old-skool commies are the heart of this community, and I think you are Seumas Milne or at least very much aligned with him. Unfortunately, loving Mother Russia is not a very common left-wing ideal these days.
>> No. 37048 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 7:44 pm
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>>37042
>And so the West has to respond to it.
It doesn't have to, it could choose Charybdis over Scylla. That whichever choice it makes is a terrible one is why it's a clever trick.
>> No. 37049 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 7:59 pm
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>>37047

You are aware that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, right, Pentagonlad? This is not uncle Joe the red menace we are talking about, modern Russia doesn't even pretend to be sort-of-but-not-really communist like China does. It's extremely right wing and every bit as capitalist as the good ol' US of A.

That being the case, I'm not sure why you think those of the lefty persuasion might be pro-Russia, but on the other hand, I do think the inability to wake up to this reality does explain a lot about America's attitudes towards them. The old bear is a shadow of its former self, and America should really rather be keeping its eye on the sleeping dragon; but out of a perverse sense of pride and racial chauvinism, it doesn't want to let go of Ivan as the great enemy, and admit it should really be the slanty eyed insect people who make the iPhone.
>> No. 37050 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 8:35 pm
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>>37045

I refer you to >>38033. The big lie from our side is that this is a new situation rather than an escalation of an old one. Eastern Ukraine has been shelled to buggery for years. They're saying "shelling has started" rather than "the shelling is heavier than usual", because they don't want to admit that they were ignoring a war for years. By "they" I mean politicians, diplomats and the media - they're all complicit in turning a blind eye.
>> No. 37051 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 8:36 pm
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>>37050

*>>37033
>> No. 37052 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 8:54 pm
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>>37049

The world was a simpler place when Russia still fit the enemy stereotype of the evil commies who kept their people in slavery and without democratic rights - and the spoils of capitalism, because they were denied their four-bedroom home in the suburbs with a custom kitchen and a big Chrysler V8 in the driveway.

While consumerism and participation in capitalism have always at least tacitly been seen as the epitome of an individual exercising their democratic freedoms, Russia nowadays is by no stretch of the word an actual democracy, but it is ruthlessly capitalist nonetheless. It far outranks countries like the United States in socioeconomic inequality of its people, and of course virtually all Western European market economies.

It's interesting that nobody attacks Russia for its ruthless capitalism, but that the criticism of its system tends to center around it being a failed democracy. Which it is by all means, or has at least become in the last 20 years with Putin in power. And that's decidedly not a minor problem. But I guess you still need a good narrative of "us vs. them". So that next to all its neo-imperialistic aspirations (with which it is far from alone), there is a sense established that Russia isn't like us and that it's the enemy or at least an antagonist or adversary because it isn't. While a lack of democracy, on the other hand, is often openly tolerated by the West in other corners of the globe, e.g. in places of Saudi Arabia, because they are a friendly regime.

I guess what I am saying is, without a proper sense of relativism, you're just going to fall into that habit of "us vs. them". When in reality, the world is rarely that black and white.
>> No. 37053 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 9:07 pm
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>>37052

The term "democracy" itself is a funny one, when you think about what it means when used by different facets of the state/media/propaganda machine.

On the one hand it means the freedom of a people to choose their leaders, and therefore ultimately express their will, as is good and proper, according to the largely liberal values we have attempted to impress upon the globe. But on the other, it also tacitly stands for a certain kind of free market economy, a certain model of government, a certain style of doing things, wearing suits and being just generally quite decidedly Anglo. It implicitly means being aligned with the West, the "shared international order" and all that. In some ways, it's sort of a dogwhistle. A country being democratic means they are like us. If they're not democratic, they're one of the baddies (unless they're our pet baddies like Gadaffi).

In that way I have cynically pondered, at times, whether a country being democratic is important solely because it means they are within our sphere of inbendsence. Our media can saturate their news, our intelligence agencies can inbendsence their politics. We can pull the strings without really having to get our hands dirty at all. And that doesn't work if you're not democratic.

With countries like Russia, Iran, North Korea et al... Their real sin is that we don't have a hold on them.
>> No. 37054 Anonymous
18th February 2022
Friday 9:38 pm
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>>37053

I think you're spot on in that the "democratic" West somehow only accepts political systems as equal which follow and abide by a quite narrow set of political and socioeconomic tenets.

While one thing that falls flat on its face at the first hurdle is that a country is free to choose its leaders. It's the idea that a freely chosen leader must be democratic and in the end also pro-capitalist and pro-liberal. One instance where all that was led ad absurdum was the 1970 Chilean elections where the Chilean people freely elected a socialist head of state. The U.S. back then tolerated socialist governments in the Americas as little as they do today, and the coup that followed in 1973 where Pinochet was put in power by a CIA-backed military junta brought the Chilean people anything but freedom and democracy.

Other more recent examples are the U.S.'s involvement in Venezuela's domestic affairs to the point where without any legal basis, they suddenly declared the opposition leader the country's rightful president.

Or the Greek elections during Austerity where the Greeks elected a socialist president who showed the middle finger to Merkelian market radicalism and rolled back many of the austerity measures imposed by the EU. Or when Portugal elected a left-wing government in the 2010s which led the country back to a balanced budget despite rejecting austerity measures.

So the West is essentially saying you're free to elect your leaders, as long as you don't elect those kinds of leaders. And to be clear, we're not talking about the German people freely electing Hitler in 1933. It's about refusing to accept that a socialist government can be freely elected by the people, because socialism, for all its shortcomings and its general undesirability, somehow violates the principle that free elections and capitalism must go together.

But if you limit freedom of choice to a handful of options that suit the West's economic ideology, then you're really less free than you think.
>> No. 37055 Anonymous
19th February 2022
Saturday 4:43 am
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>>37054
I often think about a Peter Mandelson quote:
>No serious challenge on the Left exists to Third Way thinking anywhere in the world. This is hardly surprising as globalisation punishes hard any country that tries to run its economy by ignoring the realities of the market or prudent public finances. In this strictly narrow sense, and in the urgent need to remove rigidities and incorporate flexibility in capital, product and labour markets, we are all "Thatcherite" now.
Every time I read it, without fail, I mentally interject "then what is the point of Democracy?" after the italics. Is it for deciding social issues? Is it just for picking which face puts forward similar policies? Is it for fiddling at the edges? Is it just too hard to replace? Or is it just a fetish, a cargo-cult ritual with purely spiritual meaning?

And despite my left-wing instincts, those questions seem even stronger from the right - if you accept that the market holds the veto anyway, that it's urgent to do as the market wants or you'll be punished, why not simply leave everything to the market? Why waste all that money on a democracy without the ability to vote down market decisions when you could put that money in people's pockets and boost their ability to vote with their wallets? I can see a million objections to that idea, but none consistent with Mr. Mandelson's logic.
>> No. 37056 Anonymous
19th February 2022
Saturday 4:06 pm
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>>37055

While it's a good thing that the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Union as the motherland of socialism are no more, the problem is that it instilled a sense of hubris in the Western world that its system of a democratic capitalist market economy survived because of its superiority over communism. I would even argue that it's actually true that communism was the inferior system. But Soviet communism didn't fail because it was the inferior system, but because the Soviet Union was bankrupt (in no small part due to the enormous military budget as a result of the Soviet-Afghan War) and because communist governments in the Soviet Union's satellite states dug their heels in against much needed social and political reforms. It's worth noting that in history, revolutions didn't always only arise against socialist governments, but against capitalist/pro-market governments as well. And believe it or not, in some of the Soviet satellite states during the 1989 revolutions, there were actually still strong pro-socialist movements which wanted to keep socialism, but under different conditions. Their objectives were to oust their country's current leadership and political elite, but not universally to end socialism.

The reason why capitalism's hubris is a problem is that it likes to tout itself as the one and only true gospel. In my opinion, and having spent a good amount of time in Yankland, it's no coincidence that Americans are the main proponents of global market liberalism. American-style religious evangelism and market liberalism are really two sides of the same coin of a country which wants to spread its own ideals, both economic and religious, across the globe. It believes those to be the only God-given truth. What plays into it very substantially is Americans' ignorance towards other cultures and their inability to comprehend them. So what American-style market liberalism does is that it seeks to conquer by assimilation. It wants to establish similar conditions in countries across the globe so that economies function the same way as the American one, and so that there is less friction when doing business with those countries and exploiting their resources.

And much like religious evangelism which tolerates no other religions beside it, market liberalism isn't happy seeing countries and democracies function based on different principles than its own. It's one reason why the Americans were grappling so much with the reinsurgence of socialism in the Americas in the early 2000s, but by extension also why the European Commission struggled to accept the emergence of freely elected left-wing/socialist governments in Greece and Portugal during Austerity.


>if you accept that the market holds the veto anyway, that it's urgent to do as the market wants or you'll be punished, why not simply leave everything to the market?

There is a whole discipline in economics that concerns itself with reasons why that is a bad idea. Basically, if you completely give markets free rein, you will end up with extreme inequality and wealth distribution, which is then irreconcilable with democracy as we understand it, or at least pretend to understand it. It can then erode that democracy and cause political unrest, which, in turn, is bad for business.

Some theories even posit that markets could not function for long at all without (democratic) institutions in place to bridle capitalism's excesses that it is prone to.

What market-radical liberalism gets wrong in our time is that it doesn't just see a functioning democracy as the necessary underpinning of a stable capitalist economy, and maybe even as an intrinsic ideal for its own sake, but that that democracy's primary purpose altogether is to ensure the functioning of liberal markets. And because popular vote and what the people in a democracy want isn't necessarily always what the big economic actors want, there is bound to be friction.
>> No. 37057 Anonymous
19th February 2022
Saturday 4:19 pm
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>>37056

I once had a thought that what if we can take the principles of free market liberalism, and political democracy, and literally fuse them together via the mantra vote with your wallet.

Think about the way you choose which energy company you're with- Even though it's a totally absurd concept, because the same leccy comes down the same wires from the same station, somehow we've democratised the energy grid through the free market.

So why not do it for government? You could subscribe for citizenship of whichever one appeals to you the most. If your party starts throwing parties in lockdown or you suspect their front-benchers are all fiddling kids, you just switch to a different provider, and become a citizen of another government.

I think this is the future. There's something in it. When we all live hooked on the VR pipes delivering fully immersive 3D furry porn direct to our sponge, what use will physical borders be anyway?
>> No. 37058 Anonymous
19th February 2022
Saturday 4:39 pm
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>>37055
>then what is the point of Democracy?
I have been thinking while reading the past couple of posts, about what democracy really means, back to when I was at school, aged 16-17 like all edgy yutes, and I challenged my Philosophy teacher about this political consensus. This education happened outside the UK, so maybe yours was different.

My Philosophy teacher taught us the usual stuff in the book that I didn't really care about, at the time, and when it all got political, the message was, "This is theocracy, this is autocracy, this is oligarchy, but this, this right here, this is democracy, where everybody votes and that's how the government decides what to do. And that's the absolute best, and you always get your way every time, and in this classroom, where you are encouraged to debate the pros and cons of every ideology and political system, you must not question this. Democracy is the best, it gives you everything, and that is non-negotiable." Maybe that's not exactly what I was taught, but my description of it 18 years later is pretty close to how it felt at the time, and you better believe I kicked off. I wasn't standing for this shit. Everyone turned on me; they were all indoctrinated too. They had no arguments, just, "B-b-b-but MUH DEMOCRACY!" Such a lively debate must have been a dream for the teacher, except he joined in, chatting shit and calling me a fool for questioning the accepted wisdom.

Nowadays, I'm not like that. I know that democracy, really, just means voting, but I too use the word as a shorthand for "the right way" for anything political. When the Iranian people vote in a hardline extremist, that's no good; they need democracy. Not the voting system that they have, which is perfectly free within some very strict limitations, but real democracy, where they vote how I would vote. Google and Amazon are so powerful they can act unilaterally to inbendsence government policy without asking anyone else; that's the sign a good proper democracy. Brexit wasn't democracy; it was a bad idea and therefore all those votes weren't real democracy. Democracy, now, is just whatever the right answer is, and so the wrong answer by definition cannot be democracy. It's like science for all those people who Fucking Love Science.

And again, I mentioned Iran above. Which of the following was more democratic: Iran under the Shah, a pro-Western literal king who made Iran into a popular and welcome player on the international stage, or Iran under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an extremist who called America "The Great Satan" and made multiple speeches about nuking Israel, but who did in fact win elections?

I have never in my life missed an opportunity to vote, but I almost never pick a winner and I almost never get my way. But we're still better than Russia because I'm freer than I would be there. But isn't it weird how successfully society has convinced me, without actually giving me anything to persuade me?
>> No. 37059 Anonymous
19th February 2022
Saturday 5:27 pm
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>>37058
>inbendsence
Why do you keep doing this across the whole thread?
>> No. 37060 Anonymous
19th February 2022
Saturday 5:35 pm
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>>37059
That's the first time I, personally, have done that, I think. Sorry. I also forgot to sage even though a long essay all about myself is something I would encourage others to sage.
>> No. 37061 Anonymous
19th February 2022
Saturday 5:36 pm
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>>37059
Are you sure it's on purpose? Could be a conbendsence of bendskes.
>> No. 37062 Anonymous
19th February 2022
Saturday 7:08 pm
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>>37059

Our mods in their infinite wisdom sometimes like us to forsake certain combinations of letters, no matter what context they may appear in, for they are forbidden runes that shall bring out the devil.

Keep that in mind when you next go for your bends jab.
>> No. 37063 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 12:26 am
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>>37058
>Iran under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an extremist who called America "The Great Satan" and made multiple speeches about nuking Israel, but who did in fact win elections?
This is facile. Kim Jong-il won multiple elections, but nobody's about to paint DPRK as democratic other than themselves.
>> No. 37064 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 4:54 am
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>>37063
In fairness, it might be fun to think about the matter of degree - and to what degree it applies in the DPRK.
My recollection is that in the USSR, although you'd always have the one nominated CPSU candidate, it was a perfectly valid option to vote against him or to not vote for him, and if he didn't get half the vote he wouldn't get in and you'd get a new candidate, so they did have to make a bit of an effort. North Korea is probably much worse, but there could always be more to it than it seems, even if nobody's pretending Kim Jong Un is elected.
Maybe you could even be cheeky and pick out a few UK MPs who're so useless, but in seats so safe, that they're probably less "democratically elected" than the candidate from the most assertive Soviet constituency, since nobody here's going to be kicked out for uselessness if their rosette matches the right candidate for PM.
>> No. 37065 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 10:58 am
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>>37064

Elections in the DPRK have a single candidate for each seat. You can spoil your ballot, but there's no secrecy. The whole thing is of course a complete mockery of democracy, but it's quite a useful exercise for the party, as they get a neatly compiled list of traitors.

Officially, their elections have 99.99% turnout with 100% of votes being cast for the approved candidate.
>> No. 37066 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 12:50 pm
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>>37065

>Officially, their elections have 99.99% turnout with 100% of votes being cast for the approved candidate.

Similar to the German Democratic Republic in its final throes. It held its final general elections in spring of 1989 under the old regime, unbeknownst to everybody at the time, and had both a voter turnout and a ballot approval rate in the upper 90 percent. Except by that time, discontent among its people was already growing, and the opposition movement was able to prove that the government had commited voting fraud on an enormous scale by forging the numbers. Which only increased the people's wrath and was an important catalyst in the run-up to the peaceful revolution that autumn.

On the other hand, in faux-democracy communist countries, voter turnout is actually higher than in Britain where barely two-thirds of the electorate can be arsed to go. Because people fear the repercussions if they don't vote. There was a woman on a documentary about the German Democratic Republic, and she said that as a school teacher and thus somebody who was entrusted by the state with instilling socialist ideology into her pupils, she was simply expected to vote. And by the afternoon of that election day in 1989 when she still hadn't turned up to vote, the government sent secret police to her house to persuade her to go. She refused, and was laid off from her teaching position the next day.
>> No. 37074 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 2:37 pm
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>>36984
>Russian President Vladimir Putin and his ally Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko have extended military drills which were due to end on Sunday.
>At a sandbagged lookout position 24-year-old Taras told us there had been three days of heavy incoming fire. "I think Putin is doing it on purpose to provoke us," he said. "The situation has gotten worse, but we tolerate it, and we wait."
>Ukrainian forces say they have orders not to return fire - except in exceptional cases - as Russia is "looking for any excuse to invade".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60451955

Probably should've sold when I was on a high but I got smug. Now my investment will be tied up for weeks and is dependant on Taras not doing anything silly - I should send him a postcard.
>> No. 37084 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 6:08 pm
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>>37064
>nobody's pretending Kim Jong Un is elected.
He isn't. Kim Jong-un declined to stand in the 2019 election, preferring to focus on his various executive positions.

Iran's elections are not exactly free and fair, mostly the candidates get vetted beforehand. Radical reformers won't be attacked viciously in the press during their campaigns - they just won't be allowed to run.

Putin is in many ways trying to get the band back together. He's trying to go back to the glory days of the USSR, except that unlike those redfash types he's not bothering with the disguise of socialism.
>> No. 37085 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 6:18 pm
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>>37084

Even if he is trying to do that (which I don't think he is, because that would be patently daft when they're all already in NATO and the EU) why is that Britain's problem?

I can see it being the EU's problem and obviously the Americans have a problem with anything that wasn't their express wish. But I don't see why it should bother the world's biggest off-shore tax haven. We want to be mates with everyone we possibly can these days, not pretend we're still the great Empire of old.
>> No. 37087 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 6:26 pm
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>>37085
>Even if he is trying to do that (which I don't think he is, because that would be patently daft when they're all already in NATO and the EU)
Belarus has a "Union State" agreement with Russia, which is basically the beginnings of a return to the Union. He's made manoeuvres on Ukraine and Georgia. Things are looking a bit uneasy in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, which have moved away from Cyrillic, but they're both dictatorships so are pretty easy to bring to heel if necessary. The mere fact of the Baltic states having joined the EU and NATO hasn't stopped him constantly trying to put the willies up them, almost as if to teach them a lesson. He's used it to pressure at least one of them to end their system of not extending citizenship to ethnic Russians unless they learn the local language, which was arguably somewhat unfair, but then again see the Nazi bar analogy which seems to have played out quite nicely in the Donbas.
>> No. 37090 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 8:21 pm
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60451955

>Russian President Vladimir Putin and his ally Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko have extended military drills which were due to end on Sunday.

>A statement cited the "deterioration of the situation" in east Ukraine as one reason for keeping an estimated 30,000 Russian troops in Belarus.


Was this his strategy all along? Pretending to innocently move 100,000-plus troops into close proximity to Ukraine for an exercise, secretly counting on their presence to cause turmoil in the Donbas, and to then move in because he really "has no choice", given that Russian minorities in Ukraine are suddenly in danger?

Putin has always been known as a shrewd strategist. This would enable him to maintain that it really was just a military exercise, but that things suddenly got bad and something needed to be done, and it then fell on his troops, which out of sheer coincidence just happened to be in the region in the hundreds of thousands.
>> No. 37091 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 8:44 pm
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>>37090
I still think he's trying to do something that will look like a clever move that outsmarted everyone else. What you're suggesting, I think, is what the West is predicting, which is why I don't think he'll do it. It's a crafty plan, but it doesn't have the full 4D chess vibe that I'm expecting.

Maybe it's like those people who stormed the Capitol to make Donald Trump remain President, and Vladimir Putin is just innocently stomping around outside Ukraine to embolden the pro-Russia parts of Ukraine into rising up all on their own. But I can't tell if that's cleverer or much, much dumber.
>> No. 37092 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 8:54 pm
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>>37091
>Maybe it's like those people who stormed the Capitol to make Donald Trump remain President, and Vladimir Putin is just innocently stomping around outside Ukraine to embolden the pro-Russia parts of Ukraine into rising up all on their own.

Very much that. Friends of mine who visit Russia often describe Putin as most like the ex leader of the UK Independence Party - someone who appeals to baser nationalistic sentiment.
>> No. 37093 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 9:20 pm
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>>37091

It does have that whole "piss on my leg and tell me it's raining" vibe though that Putin is famous for. Like when they had that referendum in Crimea, to give it just a bit of veneer that a whole region with a substantial majority of the vote suddenly wanted to secede from Ukraine because they loved Russia so much.

Up to this point today, I thought maybe the West was just hyperventilating with its warnings of an imminent Russian invasion into Ukraine. But you can't deny that there are threads coming together now that really could end up spelling doom. And it could very realistically result in a new world war. If we just look at how quickly the entire European continent got drawn into WWI because of alliances and assurances that countries would come to each other's aid.

I've been thinking about just effing off to some remote island while there is still time. But realistically, what are you going to do when you're there and there's really a global nuclear war. With all supply routes severed and nuclear winter reaching even the most remote corners of the globe, places like St. Helena would quickly starve and would not be able to sustain a population of locals and other refugees for long. So it's best to just sit back on your sofa in Essex and wait to be vaporised.
>> No. 37094 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 9:30 pm
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>>37093
If I'm going to get nuked, I'm going to get nuked at the pre-nuke orgy in a major British city. The world still owes me the post-coronavirus pandemic orgies that I promised myself. I'm not going to look like the start of Terminator 2 on my bloody own like a mug.

Besides, there is, I assume, still time to learn how to hack into critical Russian infrastructure and make poo come out of all the shower heads. And I can picture no nobler death than dying while doing that.
>> No. 37095 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 9:48 pm
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>>37093
>If we just look at how quickly the entire European continent got drawn into WWI because of alliances and assurances that countries would come to each other's aid.

Everyone's ruled out properly helping Ukraine so it'll be fine. But onto your scenario it would be the northern hemisphere that gets shafted, South America will escape the worst of it although perhaps the living will envy the dead.


>> No. 37096 Anonymous
20th February 2022
Sunday 11:22 pm
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>>37095

>Everyone's ruled out properly helping Ukraine so it'll be fine.

I'm not sure though that the West is actually going to stand by and just watch Putin take Ukraine. Sanctions obviously haven't done anything to make him see the error of his ways, and are unlikely to do so in the future. So they'll probably be looking at more decisive ways of punishing Putin.

Even with no direct involvement of NATO troops in Ukraine, it could end up becoming another proxy war like the Soviet-Afghan War, which gets dragged out because of constant arms deliveries to the Ukrainian military, but with the Afghan quagmire of 1979-89 still in Russian living memory, for somebody like Putin anyway, he's probably not going to let that happen again. At some point, he could just threaten to invade Poland or the Baltic states or whatever NATO country lends active support to the Ukrainians. Of course that would trigger WW3 proper, but as wars can go, even if they are regionally limited at first, often one thing can lead to another.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHLU0Uej1WA
>> No. 37097 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 12:12 am
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>>37096
So you're saying that, in order to avoid another Afghanistan, Putin will trigger another Great Patriotic War that he is certain to lose and which he doesn't have the forces to even attempt to fight.

Nah, the Russian battleplan was already leaked and involved him taking Ukraine step-by-step with phases for new negotiations. The West knows that the combination of sanctions and military aid to Ukraine raises the cost of war and Russia has historically been cost-sensitive in how it conducts wars. Russia can't even afford to occupy Novorossiya much less with the West supporting the insurgency, it can't afford it in terms of the economic cost nor the soldiers (unless it tries a draft) nor the equipment. So Georgia II.
>> No. 37098 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 1:02 am
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>>37096
>Sanctions obviously haven't done anything to make him see the error of his ways, and are unlikely to do so in the future.
Well, there are sanctions and then there are sanctions. Sanctions are what we've done to Afghanistan, and everyone's starving to death there now. I know there's some international payment system that most people have never heard of (Swift?) which lets banks transfer money internationally or something like that. If we got angry enough with Russia, we could just switch that off and then Russia can't transfer money to other countries, nor receive money from foreign countries, at all. This all sounds incredibly dull, but it would be very harmful to the Russian economy. If it annoys the people enough, he'll have another Russian Revolution on his hands, although to be fair, I can't think of any revolutions off the top of my head that started due to the effects of economic sanctions.

Russia have also spent a lot of money to build Nord Stream 2, so if nobody buys the gas, they're lumbered with a gigantic money sink. Of course, this also means much higher gas prices for all of Europe, and this is why we haven't done it yet. You're absolutely right that sanctions haven't made Vladimir Putin see the error of his ways yet, but he doesn't have to see the error of his ways if all the other Russians can see that they're suddenly broke and can no longer afford their Adidas tracksuits, flat caps and swastika tattoos.
>> No. 37099 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 2:07 pm
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>>37098

>I can't think of any revolutions off the top of my head that started due to the effects of economic sanctions.

Revolutions start when a critical mass of average people are so disgusted with their country's leadership that they just don't want to put up with it anymore.

In every country, there's always a fringe minority of people dreaming of revolution, even if they live in a country which by reasonable standards has a government that by and large treats its people fairly. But as a leader, if you piss off too many people at once, then it can get the ball rolling and once it's beyond that critical mass, even all the fence sitters and those who were just mildly dissatisfied with their leaders will join in.

If Russia gets cut off from SWIFT, it could be that a lot of Russians are going to say "I'm probably more adept at climbing a tree than somebody like you, that's it!!". Then again, it's not certain. Especially with the sanctions of the last couple of years, Russia is not as dependent on international trade anymore as it once was. I'm not sure with what technology Russia handles domestic money transfers, but it will probably not bring their whole financial system to a halt, as SWIFT only processes international transactions.
>> No. 37100 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 2:13 pm
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>>37099

>it could be that a lot of Russians are going to say "I'm probably more adept at climbing a tree than somebody like you, that's it!!"

Mirth.
>> No. 37101 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 2:14 pm
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>>37099
> SWIFT only processes international transactions.

Not the case - banks routinely use SWIFT to send each other money and confirm transactions, it's a bit like a special internet for banks; that isn't to say that there aren't other methods that Russian banks could fall back on domestically, but it's a big deal to lose access to it. Still don't think it would make that much difference to Putins planning; they'll just do it the old way, using Telex or Fax.

The gas part is relevant - as we get further into the year and weather warms up, gas prices drop so Vlad loses some of that leverage. Again, not convinced it's going to make a huge difference to his thinking.
>> No. 37102 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 2:27 pm
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>>37101

Russians are used to making sacrifices. Not only did they put up with 70 years of communism, but if you look at things like Stalin's Scorched Earth strategy in WWII which ordered retreating Russian troops to destroy all useful supplies and food resources of villages along the way so they wouldn't fall into the hands of the Germans, they are not above cutting off a limb to save their lives.
>> No. 37103 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 2:39 pm
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>>37101

The Russians started their own interbank transfer system (SPFS) in 2014, in response to the threat of US sanctions. This system has connections to a number of international banks, so blocking Russian access to SWIFT would be an inconvenience rather than a crisis. They also have their own domestic card payment system due to sanctions restricting Russian access to Visa and Mastercard networks.

Banning Russia from SWIFT has already been ruled out. Ostensibly this is because of concerns over debt repayments to European lenders, but I think there's a fear that disconnecting Russia from SWIFT could be the first step in creating a new iron curtain. Russia built SPFS as a backup option, but forcing them to rely on it could increase the adoption of it in countries with significant economic ties to Russia. SWIFT is effectively controlled by the US and monitored by the NSA, so creating a viable alternative would be a massive own-goal.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/swift-off-russia-sanctions-list-state-banks-likely-target-us-eu-officials-2022-02-11/
>> No. 37104 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 3:36 pm
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Can we just send Andrew in to sort them out like he did with the Argies? Kill two birds with one stone by keeping him away from here in case Brenda dies.
>> No. 37105 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 3:37 pm
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The thing I think sanction fetishists are forgetting is that for much of the 20th century, Russia was pretty much cut off from the Western world entirely, and did reasonably alright for itself. It just seems a very odd line of logic, to me, if you think Putin wants to bring back the USSR, that imposing our own iron curtain on him will somehow do much to discourage it.

It always comes off as a naively Seppo, neoliberal way of viewing things. Those kind of sanctions might be terrible and topple governments if they were imposed on France, or the UK, or Australia, or wherever. But Russia isn't one of those places. It has more than enough of it's own natural resources to tick along, it's friendly with plenty of countries we're at best ambivalent with,but most importantly of all, it doesn't have much of a commitment to providing a high standard of living for it's people.

This is the bit that braindead Yank-worshiping NYT reading twats can't wrap their head around. Russia doesn't feel the effects of sanctions, because Russians are already eating rats and harvesting organs and turning themselves into zombies with krokodil and all kinds of shit. It's a different world. You're assuming that Russia would somehow fall apart like we nearly did when Waitrose didn't have our favourite brand of chips, but you're failing to understand Russia, on a fundamental civil level, is made out of nails and rusty razorblades.
>> No. 37106 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 3:46 pm
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>>37103

>Banning Russia from SWIFT has already been ruled out. Ostensibly this is because of concerns over debt repayments to European lenders

That consideration is much less tinfoilhattery than it seems.

Remember when Greece was allowed to join the Euro despite its sketchy public finances? Well, Greek companies but also government entities were deep in debt to banks in future Eurozone countries, most of all Deutsche Bank. Which feared that not including Greece in the Euro would run its Greek debtors bankrupt due to an imminent massive devaluation of the Drachma against the Euro. And so Deutsche Bank helped the Greek government manipulate its ledgers and present Greece's finances in far better health than they actually were.
>> No. 37109 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 6:48 pm
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>>37104
>Can we just send Andrew in to sort them out

I'm not sure how Christmas cheer could fix this situation.

>>37105
>The thing I think sanction fetishists are forgetting is that for much of the 20th century, Russia was pretty much cut off from the Western world entirely, and did reasonably alright for itself.

That's wrong though. Even without getting into the high-cost of doing business with the West throughout its existence, Soviet autarky is grossly overstated and the export of food is a big example of bad things happening.

>This is the bit that braindead Yank-worshiping NYT reading twats can't wrap their head around. Russia doesn't feel the effects of sanctions, because Russians are already eating rats and harvesting organs and turning themselves into zombies with krokodil and all kinds of shit.

That's just some racist chest-beating. I can certainly think of one case where economic hardship combined with an unpopular war led to revolution in Russia, technically two.
>> No. 37110 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 8:16 pm
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>>37109

>Soviet autarky is grossly overstated

Is it though? Whichever way you slice it, they were doing well enough behind the iron curtain that their existence was the only reason our leaders gave us concessions like the welfare state. Their decline is the reason our leaders got complacent enough to do away with those things.

>I can certainly think of one case where economic hardship combined with an unpopular war led to revolution in Russia, technically two.

While this is true, you've got to be daft to think Ukraine and Putin will be one of those times. Putin is still insanely popular, Ukraine has a sizeable ethnic Russian base. What we're looking at here could be much more akin to the Troubles (and the same way the Yanks always drastically oversimplify that in such a way as to piss off paddies and prods alike).
>> No. 37111 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 9:14 pm
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>>37110
>their existence was the only reason our leaders gave us concessions like the welfare state
I appreciate it's tangential but this strikes me as a very self-congratulatory view from those sympathetic to the USSR. Our welfare state in particular has its roots before the Russian revolution, and a lot of Labour's postwar extension of it is arguably an overhyped extension of that Liberalism rather than "really" being social democratic, let alone socialist. The NHS stands out as an exception in being universal, not really having a contributory element (except glasses/dentures, thanks Gaitskell.), but when looking at the USSR the incentives for starting a national health service are as much hard-headed as altruistic - "buying the workers off with human dignity so they don't revolt" can be counterbalanced with a bit of"making sure the workers aren't riddled with disease so they can take up a rifle or a post in a rifle-factory in the next war."
Then we've to ask why the groundwork was laid for the crushing of the unions in the 1970s, when the USSR was still with us. Stagnant, sure, but even the final collapse came as a bit of a shock. If the capitalists aren't outright seers, at the time where postwar worker-power peaked they certainly decided to risk a revolution the USSR might've supported over continuing along the compromise route of incomes policy balanced by social spending.

It's also worth adding some interesting trivia: I forget the precise decade, 70s, 80s, or 90s, but in the British case it was quite recently that we actually started to spend more on welfare than on warfare. (David Edgerton's got some good writing on this.) We're arguably more of a welfare state now than we were under Attlee in that respect, even if that money isn't always finding its way to the right people due to the desire of successive work and pensions ministers to design the most kafkaesque systems possible, and the last Labour government accidentally triangulating away all sympathy for the unemployed.
>> No. 37112 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 10:38 pm
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-60454795
>> No. 37113 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 11:07 pm
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There you have it lads. He has gone and done it. Similar to what he did in Georgia and Crimea. There will be sanctions and nothing else.
>> No. 37114 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 11:21 pm
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>>37113

I have to say I didn't think he'd go in for quite such a shameless smash and grab. Up until today, I still had a little bit of doubt and thought that just maybe, the West was being overdramatic. Especially when Biden predicted the invasion.

But it was planned all along. The point of having 100,000-plus troops in that region wasn't a military exercise, however much he tried to pull the wool over our eyes. Far from it.

So what comes now? Ukraine getting arse raped by Putin while the world is watching and doing little more than yet more sanctions? NATO increasing its troops in the bordering regions? World war 3?
>> No. 37115 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 11:28 pm
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>>37114
Nothing much will happen, until Putin does something similar again. And even then, nothing more than just "limited sanctions" will be tried.
>> No. 37116 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 11:36 pm
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>>37114
Finger wagging, dissatisfied sighing and not much else.
>> No. 37117 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 11:47 pm
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>>37114

>So what comes now?

Several more rounds of "Do anything like that again and there will be serious consequences!". There will not be consequences.
>> No. 37118 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 11:54 pm
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>>37116

He has ruined Palindrome Day for everybody though. A lot of people are going to get married on 22-2-22. What if one day, this date will be looked back on as the beginning of WW3?

Then again, a lot of marriages end up feeling like that anyway.
>> No. 37119 Anonymous
21st February 2022
Monday 11:57 pm
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>>37117
Can you envisage any "serious consequences" that wouldn't result in countless deaths?
>> No. 37120 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 12:39 am
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>>37114
>Up until today, I still had a little bit of doubt
That's a good point actually. I've been telling people it's just been posturing and Russia doing the aggressive shrug-and-lean-forward move for weeks now, and yet now that Russian soldiers are entering the areas that Russia has unilaterally decided aren't Ukraine anyway and so it's okay, my thoughts immediately changed to, "Exactly what I knew would happen!" and I never even noticed. I guess it's the magic of unreliable media.

Bladdermir Poopin is going to be utterly livid next week, though, when China annexes absolutely all of Eastern Siberia and there's nothing he can do about it. And using Yandex for your porno searches is now going to be an act of treason. Without wanking, I might as well sign up to be shot at.
>> No. 37121 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 12:43 am
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>>37114
NATO will want to send a strong message which probably means energy prices are going to spike (we'll be better on this - Germany is fucked), banks and large financial institutions are being shafted as we speak for continually investing in Russia. Grain production will be hit in Ukraine which is the breadbasket of the Middle East - expect to see the ordinarily peaceful Middle East get bumpy on the back of rising food prices. We'll have more hour-long rambles from Putin on the news about how Ukrainians don't exist and the problem of the USSR was decentralization. Oh, and the government has ruled out taking in Ukrainian refugees so don't expect any fanny out of this.

I might open the Covid thread again just to remember the halcyon days of 2020 when the only thing we needed to worry about was a deadly airborne plague and 'adjusting' to a life of working from home in our pyjamas. Maybe I'll say the same about this thread in 2024 when the next box of horrors lands.
>> No. 37122 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 12:59 am
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I have half been looking at rt.com and their coverage of the situation for a few days, with a mixture of amusement and disgust, but now they have decidedly gone from crude political cheerleading to dadaism.

https://www.rt.com/russia/550172-donetsk-lugansk-recognition-celebrations/

>Street celebrations broke out in breakaway republics, which Ukraine claims as its own territory, late on Monday after President Vladimir Putin said Moscow will “immediately recognize the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) People’s Republics.”

>Footage from the scene shows fireworks lighting up the skies above Donetsk, which has been the capital of the DPR for nearly eight years.
>> No. 37123 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 1:04 am
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>>37118
YouTube just recommended Bad Day by REM to me. Admittedly, I did listen to it a couple of months ago, but not since and it's not the music I normally listen to on YouTube.

Of course, the Americans have been arming the Ukrainians, and we how much they spend on their military. There's still a small chance that Ukraine will unleash a thousand laser-shooting Terminators to walk all the way to Moscow, wiping out absolutely everything in their path.
>> No. 37124 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 2:42 am
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Is this really much of a change in the status quo?
I'm not trying to engage in Putin apologia, I'm just finding it hard to tell if he's "really" invaded Ukraine, or if he's "just" sending more troops into the area he invaded ages ago (but pretended not to), thus dropping the pretending, which is bad but a little bit less bad than grabbing a "new" area of Ukraine.
>> No. 37125 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 4:26 am
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>>37124
"He" isn't doing shit. If this escalates it involves many more people.
>> No. 37126 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 6:49 am
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>>37124

Putin has denied all involvement with the coup in Donetsk and Lugansk. Russian engagement thus far had been mainly through mercenaries and non-uniformed Spetsnaz soldiers. This change will see a huge increase in the Russian military presence in eastern Ukraine, greatly increasing the likelihood of further invasions. It also greatly reduces the possibility of Ukraine regaining those territories.

IMO the evacuation of civilians from the disputed region is a particularly worrying sign, as it suggests that Putin is planning to fight.
>> No. 37127 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 8:18 am
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The OCSE looks like a good resource for reporting on violations of ceasefires and de-escalation agreements:

https://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/reports

The UK, US, and Canada have recently withdrawn their staff, and now briefing their media that the OCSE is biased. Make of that what you will.
>> No. 37128 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 11:09 am
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>>37123

Isn't it more like they just get a shitload of old M4s that their troops are unfamiliar and untrained with because they normally use AKs? They're not in NATO either so they probably won't even take STANAG mags and ammunition, so they'll be a liability more than anything else. If they're lucky there might be some fancy missiles and a couple of drones, but I don't think the US is giving much of the good stuff away.

Surely they've learned their lesson about that now after they spent months doing it with anti-Assad rebels and then suddenly out of nowhere in a completely unforeseeable turn of events, ISIS started existing.
>> No. 37129 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 4:43 pm
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Have we considered sending Gaza to the Kremlin with a KFC bucket and a fishing rod?
>> No. 37130 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 4:44 pm
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Whoops, *Gazza. First post wouldn't help much.
>> No. 37131 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 5:41 pm
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>>37128

Ukraine has a weird hodge-podge of small arms, so a big box of M4s wouldn't be the worst thing as long as they come with an equally big box of ammo.

What they really need is MANPADs, which they're being supplied in useful quantities by their near neighbours. Lithuania and Poland have agreed to supply a useful quantity of Stinger and Piorun systems respectively. The Yanks have chipped in some SMAW-D systems, but I'm honestly not sure what use they'd be.
>> No. 37132 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 5:53 pm
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>>37131
I don't think getting their nails did will help them, lad.
>> No. 37133 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 7:51 pm
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>>37128
>>37131
I've been trying to resist playing armchair general on this but:

Ukraine has been armed with squad-based anti-tank and anti-air weapons - for the past 8 years the Ukrainian army has been built up with support from the West to fight the kind of defensive war it will be fighting against Russia where small isolated pockets of mostly Ukrainian infantry will need to cause havoc against overwhelming Russian armoured and air superiority.

As we saw from the Nagorno-Karabakh War your superior air power is totally neutralised if you're afraid of losing it and just as then Turkish drones instead take the skies. Even in Syria this was made apparent by Russia ensuring both before and during its intervention that anti-aircraft weapons would never fall into rebel hands with diplomacy. This also applies to artillery where Ukraine has been supplied with tracking technology so that when Russian artillery opens fire it will be quickly found and destroyed. If that gets magically jammed then the US can just supply the Ukrainians with information by satellite.

In Syria the rebels were never armed with the kind of weapons Ukraine has. It's a different game much as you might want Ukrainian ISIS.
>> No. 37134 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 8:07 pm
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If Ukraine is part of Russia, doesn't that mean Russia will be invading Russia, in winter? We all know how that goes.
>> No. 37135 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 8:43 pm
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>>37134

> invading Russia, in winter? We all know how that goes

The Germans made the miscalculation that a victory against Russia in WWII would be a quick affair, much the same way that Hitler overran Western Europe within a few months. The German invasion into Russia started in late June and Hitler thought his troops would long be in Moscow by the first snow. Where things started going wrong was that the autumn of 1941 was an unusually wet and rainy period across much of western Russia, and the Germans got stuck in the mud in their thousands on countless unfortified roads. This slowed the advance considerably, and as winter drew closer, new problems arose in that they went to Russia with relatively light gear to begin with, which was adequate for a summer invasion, but was no match for the fierce Russian winter. Soldiers lacked such basic things as proper warm coats. And it all just derailed from there. But they also didn't take into account the tenacity of the Russian army and their determination to defend their country with all their might.
>> No. 37136 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 9:00 pm
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>>37135
>> No. 37137 Anonymous
22nd February 2022
Tuesday 9:14 pm
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>>37134
Spring thaw's the worst part, because the ground turns to soup. Also Napoleon nor Hitler didn't have modern fighter-bomber jets.
>> No. 37140 Anonymous
23rd February 2022
Wednesday 11:49 am
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I think I hate Ben Wallace.
>> No. 37141 Anonymous
23rd February 2022
Wednesday 1:08 pm
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>>37140
He's seemed all right to me in general so far. As a Conservative minister, I'm sure he can't be; what don't you like.about him?
>> No. 37142 Anonymous
23rd February 2022
Wednesday 1:49 pm
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>>37141
Today's the second time he's made some idiotic historical comparison in an attempt to sound intelligent, despite said hitorical event being at best meaningless and at worst actively unhelpful in the current situation. I highly doubt the Russian government are hanging on our defense secretary's every word, but beating your chest and hooting about the Crimean War at this time is just plain stupid. Not to mention there was another, much larger, war between then and now that might be worth bringing up as a more positive example of internation cooperation and how smaller conflicts can quickly spiral out of control. After all, Adolf Hitler's plan was to fight a few small wars, more like fait accomplis, for territory he wanted before starting The Big One in 1941. Not that I think Putin is Hitler or this will turn into a world war, but therein lie the limits of tracing historical events onto contemporary ones, you have to spend twice as much time explaining why it's unlike what's happening than you did saying why it is like it. However, it's still more relevant than talking about what a bunch of top lads the Scotch Guards are because 30 years ago you were in the regiment while it sat around in post-everything-Germany, and how they'll stick it to Ivan like it was 1855 and the Russians are still using smoothbore muskets wielded by a terrified serf.
>> No. 37145 Anonymous
23rd February 2022
Wednesday 8:49 pm
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>>37142
>Wallace, a former Scots Guards officer, argues his regiment "kicked the backside" of Tsar Nicholas I in the mid-19th century Crimean war, adding "we can always do it again".
For fuck's sake. What a tit. I would say that this is the sort of political insight an eight-year-old would offer, and it is, but the worst thing about it is that this country is full of people who really love to hear such puerile imbecility. He's saying it for them, not for us, I hope.

In other news, the big strong Western media is pointing out all the flaws in various false-flag attacks:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/60470089
For example, there's a video of a chlorine tank being attacked by Polish soldiers, except the metadata shows the video was made ten days before its release, and its sound was taken from 2010 footage of a Finnish shooting range:
https://twitter.com/eliothiggins/status/1495355366141534208?s=24
There's also a car that was blown up, except it has no numberplates and there is no blood, suggesting it was just some random abandoned car the Donetskians blew up for a photo, and the leader of the Donetsk region made a video saying, "Today, on the 18th of February..." and the metadata says it was recorded on the 16th.

I've been saying the Russians are good at media manipulation. Maybe they're not. I'm happy to not always trust Western media unquestioningly, but I'd like to think the BBC wouldn't make such rookie errors.
>> No. 37146 Anonymous
23rd February 2022
Wednesday 10:51 pm
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>>37145
I think the sort of people they're aiming the stuff at are those not likely to actually go poking into it.
>> No. 37147 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 2:54 am
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America really suckered Putin with this Ukraine plan, eh?
>> No. 37149 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 6:10 am
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/24/russia-has-invaded-ukraine-what-we-know-so-far
There we go then.
Do I get any points for being the first to jump on the "Well, I didn't expect that" bandwagon?
>> No. 37151 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 7:53 am
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>> No. 37153 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 8:33 am
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>>37152
Stupid quoatation marks AND it's from The Daily Express? Don't post this sort of shite on here again, please.
>> No. 37154 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 8:39 am
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Worth remembering that part of the reason Hitler invaded Poland, according to him, was that Poland was allegedly mistreating the German population of Gdánsk, and that the safety of Germany as a nation was at risk. Putin took a page out of none other than Hitler's playbook to justify this invasion?

Will it lead to WW3? Part of me thinks that question is pointless from today. But let's hope not.
>> No. 37156 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 9:39 am
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Is this the first war without an ideological struggle at its heart?
I'm listening to the radio and I really don't see the 'we need to stand up for Western Democracy' arguement that's being parroted.

I may be speaking from britprivilege, but is our brand of neoliberalism really that different from the Russian version? I'm far too much of a coward anyway, but at least I can imagine being motivated to go off and fight for the Kurds etc., but can't really see anyone laying down their life to defend First Past the Post.

I'd love to know if non-NATO Europeans still see the Western social democratic model as aspirational, or have they become more cynical over the last decade?
>> No. 37157 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 9:50 am
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>>37156
I should add I understand the issue of Ukrainian sovereignty, I'm just navel gazing to the wider international support and the possibility of the war spreading.
>> No. 37158 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 10:06 am
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>>37156

Say you have two countries that profit from exporting kicks in the bollocks but one of them also oppresses the gays and goes on little lebensraum wars occasionally and the other is ok to the gays and occasionally invades far off places to depose random dictators for no good reason.
It's all shit.
>> No. 37159 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 10:19 am
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I think we all owe 2020 an apology.

>>37156
Ukraine is a democracy. That's the issue driving this whole escapade.
>> No. 37160 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 10:32 am
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>>37158

I've never really liked the inbendsence that NATO has on the Western world, in that it is very realistically the military arm of American foreign policy. On the face of it, NATO may be organised democratically in that the decision making process is usually subject to member state votes. But that doesn't mean the Americans, and the Americans only aren't calling the shots behind closed doors.

That said, NATO is our only hope against the red Russian menace right now. Unless Putin truly has a death wish, he isn't going to invade the former Soviet satellite states that are now in NATO, and thus expand what is currently still a regional conflict.

Could all still go horribly wrong. Putin has already said that any meddling of the West in Ukraine will be met with never seen before consequences. My guess is that the likelihood of global nuclear war has risen by about 30 percent over night. Nice knowing you, lads.
>> No. 37161 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 11:38 am
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>>37160
>My guess is that the likelihood of global nuclear war has risen by about 30 percent over night. Nice knowing you, lads.

I had a horrifying moment last night when I realised the last post on .gs and my last thought would be shagging Ant & Dec in drag.
>> No. 37162 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 11:47 am
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>>37155
They've certainly seized a lot of Ukraine and all of Belarus in that picture, but also, where is the sovereign NATO state of Lithuania? Ukraine is apparently quite a rubbish place, but if they go after my national waifu Lithuania I am going to be very angry indeed.
>> No. 37163 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 12:11 pm
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>>37161

As a consolation, if WW3 really breaks out, there will be nobody left to point fingers at you.

Being in the Southeast here should make everything quick. London will probably be flattened by one or two thermonuclear devices, and their immediate kill radius should include much of Essex.

https://The Metro is owned by the Daily Mail./2022/02/22/nuke-map-reveals-deadly-impact-russias-bombs-could-cause-if-dropped-on-london-16147987/

Worryingly, the site nuclearsecrecy.com where you can create those maps is unreachable at the moment. I guess a lot of people right now are pondering their chances of survival in a nuclear attack on their local area.
>> No. 37164 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 12:23 pm
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So, are we likely to be directly affected by any of this?
Gas & Leccy rationing?
>> No. 37165 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 12:47 pm
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Buy the dip now that the panic has set into the market or wait and see if it goes lower tomorrow?

>>37164
I hope you're not running low on toilet paper.
>> No. 37166 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 1:07 pm
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>>37165

>Buy the dip now that the panic has set into the market or wait and see if it goes lower tomorrow?

With a view to owning your stocks for a longer period of time, and provided we don't all get nuked by Moscow, today could be a good day to start bargain hunting.

The start of a war has usually been a very good long-term opportunity. What keeps retail investors from profiting from it a lot of times is that they either speculate on stocks going even lower and then missing the rebound, or getting scared and selling at the lowest point.

Your money, your decisions. No investment advice.
>> No. 37167 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 1:15 pm
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If you're talking about investments I think you just hang yourself. Vile cunts.
>> No. 37168 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 1:22 pm
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>>37167

Now, now.

Hate the game, not the players.
>> No. 37169 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 1:28 pm
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>>37167
You've got to speculate to accumulate.
>> No. 37170 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 3:01 pm
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>>36687 But those nations joined NATO of their own decision. Why can't they do tht?
>> No. 37171 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 3:01 pm
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>>36687 But those nations joined NATO of their own decision. Why can't they do tht?
>> No. 37172 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 3:06 pm
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Let's be honest lads, how likely is this to move to WW3? Not very likely, really, is it?
>> No. 37174 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 3:17 pm
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>>37173
Fuck off. Fuck off, with your lower case idiocy and Twitter screen grabs from cunts talking about shite they don't understand and don't want to learn about. Xi Jinping's just going to teleport hundreds-of-thousands of soldiers on Taiwan is he? Or march them across the sea perhaps?
>> No. 37176 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 3:21 pm
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So it's on, Putin has made his play like it was absolutely obvious he would since we spent the last three months telling him "we're not going to stop you, whatever happens we definitely won't intervene, but we must reiterate that it's very naughty."

But is it the invasion the Americans were screeching about? Is it a full on blitzkrieg with Russian tanks roaring along to flatten Kiev and most tragically of all, fucking delay S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2? Or is it more like that thing like when we were just putting guys in Syria as "training operatives" and so on?

I've made a few posts in this thread that some of you have accused of being Putin sympathising and I assure you it's not, but the thing is I can't help the feeling our news is in complete propaganda mode over all this. Frankly I think you've got to be either naive or malicious to deny that, it's self evident. But what's really going on? Where can we establish the facts?
>> No. 37178 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 3:31 pm
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>>37172
Doubt it.
We will likely go on about how we strongly disapprove, but nobody dare fire a shot in anger because Vlad is probably as nuts as they make him out to be.
>> No. 37179 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 3:43 pm
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>>37175
Oh, so there's a big amphibious invasion force ready to go is there? Where's that mustering then? Can you even name more than three Chinese cities anyway, you illiterate knobhead?

Fucking use your shift key, you cunt.
>> No. 37182 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 3:55 pm
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I'm not replying to any more fucking gormless Twitter posts. There's no point trying to have a conversation about anything when the shit-for-brains gang rock up and start posting their favourite far-right freaks and speaking in monosyllabic sentences of no more than six words.
>> No. 37185 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 4:19 pm
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I'm worried that my brain has been poisoned by the social media age, because I know nothing about these sanctions we're imposing, but I have immediately decided that we need to do more. In politics, perception is reality, and my perception of the situation is that we undeniably look pathetically weak. Why would anyone ever listen to us on the world's stage? It's like if when Roy Keane shattered that guy's leg, if the guy took the football to hospital with him and made Roy Keane play with a plastic bag full of other shopping bags instead. It's hardly an eye for an eye. It's hardly justice.

People are starving and freezing to death in Afghanistan because they have been completely shut out of international society under the Taliban. Sanctions cannot possibly be more extreme than that. But the Taliban are still in power and I haven't heard any stories of them even being particularly worried. We look like bitches with our infantile threats to stop buying Russian gas. But the alternative, of course, will kill thousands of British soldiers. It's weird that I'm happy to overlook that in exchange for making the news look more cool.
>> No. 37187 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 4:58 pm
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>>37185
Oddly I'm the other way around, strangely apathetic. There's a bit of (imagine a less distasteful term for 'excitement') at 'history happening' or similar, but everything is disposable in the social media age. By 2023 I find it hard to think anyone will be paying that much attention to Ukraine (except perhaps in a Syria-watcher kind of way) because something else will come along and catch everyone's attention, and since perception is reality, the decision to appoint Trump to the supreme court or something will take precedence.

When there's something big like a war, I think we all jump to seeing history as a linear thing, the way we've all been taught the story of WW2. But with the internet, these things are nonlinear. You and I will have seen completely different posts, have a completely different conception of the war. Others will be deep down a Russian propaganda hole, or believe that Q predicted this. Rather than a neat history textbook, it's a wikipedia article full of hyperlinks that will take you to chemical elements and Japanese Kei cars before you know it. An appearance of a social consensus will appear out of the noise, but it's a step change from where we were in 1991 where everyone was watching the same 4 telly channels, and soon the noise will reconfigure to condemnation for something else. (It's almost always condemnation though.)
Which all seems very serious, even though it can be quite frivilous: the difficulty isn't people being too gung-ho, or people being pro-putin, it's more that a chunk of people will only follow along with Ukraine War memes, or what some streamer has to say before they get distracted by the next news event, or surreal topical onlyfans content. If you think of these things by analogy to Trump, that might make my point clearer - who re-watches 2017 episodes of some streamer whining that Trump's a bad president? Nobody. It's disposable, even though the presidency was important. The war is important, yet the same thing will probably happen. In the real world, the people of Afghanistan are cold, starving, and ruled by nutters - but on the internet I haven't seen more than passing references for weeks until your post, unless you include Soviet-Afghan war music.
And maybe it's just that Adam Curtis post about his media manipulation, but I suspect Russia understands something of this reality better than we do. Maybe because narratively satisfying history imploded in Russia slightly before it did here.
>> No. 37188 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 5:32 pm
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>>37187

>I think we all jump to seeing history as a linear thing, the way we've all been taught the story of WW2.

Studying history from primary sources is a really easy way to dispel that mindset.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1938-09-28/debates/127ff3ff-19b8-4190-a8bc-02bbb59f955e/EuropeanSituation

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1938-10-06/debates/41f5ec19-7164-4e9d-bab8-0c80fa541013/PolicyOfHisMajestySGovernment
>> No. 37189 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 6:16 pm
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All the Russian furry porn artists are absolutely shitting themselves right now, because the upcoming sanctions will almost certainly rule out being able to get money into Russia through paypal and the like.
>> No. 37190 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 6:24 pm
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Will Russians be protesting this like when we were on the streets against the invasion of Iraq or would that be completely clamped down on?
>> No. 37192 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 6:31 pm
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>>37190
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-698546
>Russian police detain thousands in anti-war, pro-Ukraine protests
>Anti-war protests have taken place in 40 different Russian cities on Thursday.
>> No. 37194 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 6:33 pm
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>>37191
The Foreign Secretary's job is to hate immigrants and foreigners. We can't go listening to what the Foreign Secretary says about refugees or we'd all be manning bunkers and machine gun nests along the south coast.
>> No. 37195 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 6:37 pm
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>>37193
>> No. 37196 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 6:38 pm
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>>37185

>People are starving and freezing to death in Afghanistan because they have been completely shut out of international society under the Taliban.

And as alluded to earlier, this is why sanctions don't work, and worse than that the only people they harm are the innocent civillian populace of a country, not the leadership and elites who are calling the shots. It's ineffective at the best of times, and it's next to completely useless against the kind of regimes we typically aim them at, who don't give two fucks about the conditions their people live in.

In fact scratch that, I don't even need to make that qualification do I. Imagine a parallel universe where Britain is getting embargo'd Cuba style by the international community for invading Las Malvinas and reclaiming rightful British clay. The Mail and the Graun are both full of pictures of empty shelves and forlorn, hungry children. Boris still won't resign.

>But the alternative, of course, will kill thousands of British soldiers

Well, at least getting shot is a soldier's job. The trouble is that again, it's the ordinary people who pay the price. The ordinary people of Ukraine never wanted any of this. They want to go to school and go to work without getting shelled. The Yanks have got this one nicely figured out anyway, they can massacre innocent civilians without even putting a single soldier in harm's way these days.

The one alternative between limp-dicked economic sanctions and full on war is the one thing seemingly nobody on either side was interested in bothering with- Actual fucking diplomacy. Like any relationship, international relations require compromise, and nobody in this situation, least of all us, the West, has been willing to. Putin maybe the big baddie in the current situation, but the fact is if we hadn't treated Russia like a leper after the fall of the Soviet Union we wouldn't have had him to worry about in the first place. Like the breakdown of any interpersonal relationship, there is blame on both sides, and the refusal to acknowledge it is why grudges persist.

History repeats itself. You all know how the overly punishing terms of surrender in WW1 laid the groundwork for the rise of Hitler, well it's not much different with Russia. We should have built relations with them, but instead geriatric Yank politicians insisted on carrying on acting like they were still the Great Enemy, and kept the cold war going.

It's all just so fucking stupid because we would live in a better world if people could just not be stubborn, power hungry, tribalistic bastards. We'd all be wealthier and happier if it didn't have to be us vs them.

As an aside: What happens on the space station if Russia and the US go to war? Will they have to scrap it out with the little plastic straws they use to eat space food?
>> No. 37197 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 6:40 pm
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>>37195

I believe that "meme" is pointing out the kind of hypocrisy you can see in mainstream "liberal" (the American Democrat voter kind) types. They like to take the moral high ground on issues about hurt feelings and social justice but they quite frequently turn full patriot when it comes to foreign policy.

Americans are weird.
>> No. 37198 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 6:49 pm
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If there's one good thing to come out of all this, its the amount of lovely Eastern European belles on the telly now. Best accent on a woman hands down.
>> No. 37199 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 6:58 pm
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>>37182

You'd give yourself less brain damage headbutting a wall than looking at Twitter. I'm afraid you have nobody to blame but yourself.
>> No. 37201 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 7:17 pm
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What's most disturbing is that Putin got away with what was probably the ultimate bluff. Think about it. For weeks, it was all, oh don't mind us 100,000 troops here dilly-dallying along the Ukrainian border. We're just exercising. We'll go home when we're done. Much of the Western world was alarmed, but still believed that Putin wouldn't be crazy enough to actually invade Ukraine. He then even ordered a handful of troops to go home. While at the same time secretly sending in many more new ones.

Still, even Biden made a fool of himself warning against an invasion, which then didn't come on February 16. NATO was accused of fearmongering and of having its own agenda and wanting to goad Putin into an attack. And then when the Americans released the Russian Army's invasion strategy, which has now happened almost exactly the way it was predicted, everybody was still like, Putin is crazy but not that crazy. When he then moved troops into the Donbas, everybody was like, whew, oh, ok, so he wants the Donbas. Incredibly rude of him, but see, he doesn't want to invade the entire country. Because he's not that crazy, is he.

The question now is, where do his Jedi mind tricks end. Is he actually going to use nukes, if pressed, or is he really not that crazy after all? And what can we base any kind of probable assessment on? Either it's just a bluff and he hopes that the West will not call it, or he's actually prepared to shoot nuclear missiles at NATO and western countries if they interfere in Ukraine.

In war and politics, your own success greatly hinges on correctly predicting your opponent's next move. But with Putin, all bets seem off. All we know is that anything can happen with him. He's not even behaving erratically like some other more lightweight rogue dictators. Everything he does is carefully planned. But he has a way of not letting you guess his moves correctly even when all the clues are completely out in the open.

The Americans came close, in that they actually kept saying all along that there would be a full-scale invasion. They got it right. And in a very unwelcome way, what happened today vindicates them. Part of me still believes it was just dumb luck. At other times, to quote Marge Simpson, they can't predict six o'clock at five-thirty. But a lot of the media and opinion leaders as well as many of you and me were probably completely stumped this morning.
>> No. 37202 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 7:20 pm
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>>37201

>Putin wouldn't be crazy enough to actually invade Ukraine

What's crazy about it? We spent three months explicitly telling him there would be no consequences.
>> No. 37203 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 7:26 pm
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>>37198

I've always had a right stonk on for Mila Kunis. Coincidentally, she's Ukrainian as well. But listening to her speaking completely bendsent Russian, although I can't understand a single word of it, almost makes me spontaneously blow a load.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXt2FEEYVEw
>> No. 37204 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 7:26 pm
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>>37203

>bendsent

That word filter has kind of worn out its welcome, don't you think, modlad?
>> No. 37205 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 7:29 pm
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>>37203

Yuck, Russian with a Yank accent? That's horrid. no thanks. I want a girl who sounds like the mission briefing bird from Red Alert 2.

The closest I've got is a Polish lass, but it's near enough.
>> No. 37206 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 7:32 pm
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>>37205

>Yuck, Russian with a Yank accent

You're looking at it the wrong way. It's Mila Kunis speaking Russian.

Also, how can you tell? You're not Kremlinlad, are you?
>> No. 37207 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 7:43 pm
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>>37201
I'm more amazed that Russia launched the invasion in the middle of a UN Security Council meeting to find a diplomatic resolution. I know Putin has threatened to wipe out Ukraine as a culture, violated a countries national sovereignty and demanded he dominate Eastern Europe as an emperor but it sound so much worse to attack during a diplomatic meeting.

Not cricket is what it is.
>> No. 37208 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 8:02 pm
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>>37199
I was shouting at people doing exactly what you've just done by posting a silly screencap, but the mods, rightfully, deleted the posts so I look even madder than usual.

>>37201
He got away with it because no one just invades a country because they flat out don't like who's running it anymore. Even the cavalcade of lies and self-deceit that was the Iraq War had those pretenses, it kind of'-sorta' fell under the umbrella of the "War on Terror" and at no point did the USA or anyone else in the Coalition say "Iraq isn't real, we are going to stop Iraq from existing" just because they didn't like Iraq, though that was clearly a motivating factor as well.

It is very, very alarming to see how unhinged Putin appears. I was reading that Biden had been presented with the option to unleash massive cyber attacks against Russia, which might not happen, but if it were to how would Putin react to that? I don't recall Ukraine sending tanks and air assault troops into Russia and yet look at where we are. As you say, all bets are off.

>>37207
I'm speculating too much here, but does that point to utter duplicity on Russia's part or confusion amongst their leadership?
>> No. 37209 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 8:09 pm
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>>37207

>I'm more amazed that Russia launched the invasion in the middle of a UN Security Council meeting to find a diplomatic resolution

When you just don't give a damn as a despot hell bent on war, then I am sure it seems to you like just the right kind of taunt towards institutions like the UN. You don't want to negotiate or be talked out of your war plans, you just want everybody to go and fuck off.

It's the same as all those meeting the last few days and weeks with Western leaders and heads of government. Putin knew for a far longer time what he wanted to do, his mind was set on it, and yet, he had all of them pleading with him to no avail. He must have taken a good amount of delight in seeing them essentially powerless against his cunning plan.

It's all a lot like Chamberlain's appeasement. Except Hitler made an even bigger fool of Chamberlain than Putin has done with leaders who just paid him a visit, who came home from those meetings more or less aware that they had achieved nothing.
>> No. 37210 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 8:12 pm
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>>37209
>It's all a lot like Chamberlain's appeasement. Except Hitler made an even bigger fool of Chamberlain than Putin has done with leaders who just paid him a visit, who came home from those meetings more or less aware that they had achieved nothing.

Wasn't the whole point of appeasement that we were in no way ready for a war with Germany and it gave us some time to massively ramp up production?
>> No. 37211 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 8:26 pm
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>>37210

>Wasn't the whole point of appeasement that we were in no way ready for a war with Germany and it gave us some time to massively ramp up production?

I think Chamberlain was genuinely naive about the whole thing and thought that he had done the impossible in reasoning with Hitler and achieving a binding agreement between honourable statesmen. Others in his cabinet were surely less wide eyed, and were acutely aware that Britain's ability to fight off a German invasion was still looking a bit sketchy at the time.
>> No. 37212 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 8:39 pm
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>>37208
>I was reading that Biden had been presented with the option to unleash massive cyber attacks against Russia, which might not happen, but if it were to how would Putin react to that?
Big moot point as we know that the Russian authorities already have the technical capability to essentially shut the whole of the Russian internet off from the rest of the world, and rumours are circulating that it's going to happen soon anyway to control what info Russian citizens are getting about the conflict
>> No. 37213 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 9:08 pm
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To me, the most worryingly insane thing about ol' Bladder-Poo was his warning to other countries during his invasion. He warned all the other countries in the world not to get involved, or he would smack our bottoms with his big choppers and other air force materiel.

Everyone had already said they wouldn't be sending soldiers to fight back the Russians. But now, we look weak and submissive for sticking to our plans. We said we weren't going to fight him, and he said, "You better not, you soft pussies!" and we just meekly said yes. It's like he wants to bait other countries into fighting back. He's going after Ukraine, and he sounds annoyed that we've just handed it over. He wanted a bigger war and he hasn't got it.

Sun Tzu said something in The Art of War which I can't find to quote directly, but if your enemy is standing and waiting for you to advance, do not advance. So we're probably doing the right thing by acting like weenies. Nevertheless, it's another media win for the king of media manipulation, and a media loss for Team America.
>> No. 37214 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 9:16 pm
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>>37213
> Nevertheless, it's another media win for the king of media manipulation, and a media loss for Team America.

The west kept saying an invasion was coming. Putin kept calling them agitators. Now Putin looks like a liar and the west looks prescient. I'd call that a win for Team America.
>> No. 37215 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 9:30 pm
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>>37214
This. And importantly Ukraine isn't NATO (yet?)
The west isn't obliged to defend Ukraine at this point, and that's the core reason for Putin to attack now rather than years in the future.
>> No. 37216 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 9:31 pm
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I talked to one of my mum's oldest friends today who is a retired RAF officer and served as crew on the Vulcan bomber in his younger days in the early 80s. He genuinely scared me. He said that one feared scenario for the start of WW3 back then was that the Warsaw Pact would suddenly attack and invade a neutral country between it and NATO territory, e.g. Austria or Sweden, which then would have served as a base to disperse more and more troops into neighbouring NATO territory. He thinks Putin may be looking at Ukraine as well as Belarus in a similar way.

ITZ, lads. ITZ.
>> No. 37217 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 9:43 pm
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>>37214
NATOmuglad seems awfully quiet right now.
>> No. 37218 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 9:49 pm
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>>37216

Putin would get an absolute shoeing if he took on NATO. The Russian military is large and capable, but it's totally outclassed and outgunned by the combined might of NATO. That's why he is so keen to disrupt and undermine the NATO alliance; he only stands a chance if he can move west piecemeal, without triggering a world war. laplanderstan and China might be sympathetic, but they won't go to bat for him in any meaningful way.

Finland and Moldova should be pretty fucking nervous, there might be some proxy war shenanigans in the Balkans, he might eventually take a nibble at the edges of Poland or Romania, but we aren't on the cusp of World War Three. Putin hasn't (yet) steered the Russian economy towards preparations for total war and he's too clever to start a fight he can't possibly win.
>> No. 37219 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 9:55 pm
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>>37214

>Now Putin looks like a liar and the west looks prescient

In all fairness, he is a liar. He cannot possibly expect anybody to believe that his troops just happened to be all around the Ukrainian borders in the hundreds of thousands when suddenly out of nowhere, things got bad enough in the Donbass that it became imperative for him to intervene. It's an absolute bullshit excuse, from somebody who has long stopped caring what the world thinks about his moral integrity as leader.
>> No. 37220 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 10:00 pm
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>>37215
>The west isn't obliged to defend Ukraine at this point, and that's the core reason for Putin to attack now rather than years in the future.

Well, sort of. It does feel like a proxy war again, except in Europe, with the admittedly puny amounts of military tools shipped into Ukraine from Nato allies.

And what's bothersome is that this is Level 2 of for Russia, with Crimea in 2016 being Level 1. Or rather, for the Putin regime. They "nibble" (at the cost of likely hundreds of lives) and wait for the die down. What happens next depends on Russian dementia, do they ask for a "corridor to Kaliningrad" much like Danzig served as an excuse to be a fucking arsehole?

I sincerly hope Putin doesn't follow that playbook in his waning years, but I have little faith that there will be a net-positive from decisions made from here. If this turns into war, it'll be financial, computer based, and sadly human based. It would be a whole new kind of warfare unleashed.
>> No. 37221 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 10:01 pm
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>>37219
I think it was obvious from the outset that anyone who believed that almost 200k troops around the Ukrainian border were there for an exercise was in the market for a bridge.
>> No. 37222 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 10:08 pm
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What are people's predictions for this war, by the way? I fear that Ukraine will not put up a very good fight. They announced earlier that they would give out guns to anyone who wants them and is willing to fight the Russian invaders.

https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-president-zelensky-will-provide-weapons-to-citizens-2022-2

That looks to me like a country that has immediately decided on guerrilla warfare, which in turn sounds like they don't trust their own army. Furthermore, five years from now, Ukraine will be a country with thousands of guns in sheds and bedrooms and almost no oversight of them. That is a country which will be ungovernable. If Ukraine chases out all the Russians, they're going to have a nightmare restoring law and order and regret this plan. If Ukraine is Russia five years from now, it will have been a great idea. So it looks like Ukraine's days might be numbered, and that's very sad.
>> No. 37223 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 10:22 pm
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>>37222
>That looks to me like a country that has immediately decided on guerrilla warfare, which in turn sounds like they don't trust their own army.
It's not that they don't trust their own army, it's that they know they're otherwise outnumbered and outgunned and will absolutely lose a conventional conflict against the Russians.
>> No. 37225 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 10:25 pm
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>>37221

I just think it's beyond cynical even as a failed-state despot that you care so little about giving something even the thinnest veneer of faked honesty that it basically comes down to saying, oh you know, of course I was lying, what did you think I was doing with 200,000 troops on the Ukrainian border.
>> No. 37226 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 10:29 pm
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>>37222
Some commentators have said a victory for Russia would have been their forces surrounding Kyiv in 12 hours, that hasn't happened. There have been many accounts of Russian forces having got bogged down in very wet ground. There a lot of information being spread online about Ukrainian forces having all fled and not fought, but there's plenty of footage and photos showing bombed out Russian tanks troop carriers jets and helicopters to disprove that. Ukrainian troops are definitely fighting an active war but I think their tactics are mostly that they're picking off individual units and then retreating to avoid getting tagged for airstrikes.
Russian forces have air superiority but in terms of wellies in the mud they're on a more even footing with Ukraine, and in that situation an attacker still generally needs to greatly outnumber defenders for a quick victory. Shelling and bombing of cities appears to have been very very limited so apparently Russians are at least trying to avoid civilian casualties.

All in all I don't really know, I might wake up tomorrow to find Kyiv is a smoking crater or there might have been no change since this morning. Most seems to hinge on whether Russia can hold onto the airport and land troops and supplies. Otherwise Ukraine will keep attacking their supply chains and perhaps shell the airport to deny its use.
>> No. 37227 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 10:30 pm
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>>37222
Not an expert by any means, but they're in somehwat of an unwinnable situation on the face of it. Russia has them surrounded on all sides, has the superior land forces, navy and air force and Ukraine is basically completely flat. I bemoaned pointless historical parallels earlier in the week, but it does remind me of Poland in WW2, which was in much the same position at the time of the German invasion. I would be suprised if the government didn't trust the armed forces, but only because I've not heard of any defections or mutinies in recent times, I'm just some pleb on the internet though, don't take my word for it.
>> No. 37228 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 10:54 pm
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>>37222

The Ukrainian army is fairly capable, but it's completely outnumbered and outgunned. They can't win, so the question is how many losses they're willing to suffer before they surrender. I'd expect a fairly rapid transition to asymmetric warfare, possibly within a matter of days.

>five years from now, Ukraine will be a country with thousands of guns in sheds and bedrooms and almost no oversight of them.

Ukraine is already that country. It doesn't technically have any laws governing civilian firearms ownership, just ministerial regulations. Those regulations were already fairly weakly enforced, but in the east of the country they have been ignored almost completely since 2014. The country is awash with guns and the authorities are happy to turn a blind eye if you aren't acting like a dickhead.

Officially there are just shy of a million registered gun owners, but the number of unregistered owners is believed to be several times greater. Ukraine still has vast quantities of ex-Soviet small arms that are cheaply and readily available to civilians. The legalisation of gun ownership is really just a recognition of the status quo.

If an abundance of unregistered guns would make Ukraine ungovernable, it would have already happened.

https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/cp/ukraine

https://www.smallarmssurvey.org/sites/default/files/resources/SAS-BP3-Ukraine.pdf
>> No. 37229 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 11:03 pm
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>>37225
> I just think it's beyond cynical even as a failed-state despot that you care so little about giving something even the thinnest veneer of faked honesty that it basically comes down to saying, oh you know, of course I was lying, what did you think I was doing with 200,000 troops on the Ukrainian border.

People (especially the ones who claim otherwise) do not care about facts, they care about stories and love story tellers. Tell that story properly, and suddenly it becomes truth.
>> No. 37230 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 11:14 pm
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>sancshuns
>> No. 37231 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 11:16 pm
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>>37225

Putin is claiming that he is liberating Ukraine from a neo-Nazi regime that are committing genocide against ethnic Russians.

Politics is much easier when you can just invent your own reality.
>> No. 37232 Anonymous
24th February 2022
Thursday 11:29 pm
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>All Ukrainian men aged between 18 to 60 are now banned from leaving the country, Ukraine's state border guard service (DPSA) says. It adds the measure is aimed at "guaranteeing Ukraine's defence and the organisation of timely mobilisation". The temporary ban will remain in force for the duration of martial law declared on Thursday morning.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-60454795

I'm going to look a right sex-pest if I say that we should take in some Ukrainian refugees now. It'll be interesting to see how the press react when it really is women and children coming over.
>> No. 37233 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 12:07 am
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>>37231

He's lying obviously, but it's only the same kind of lie we told when we invaded Iraq to find them WMDs, or when we were supporting the Syrian rebels for... Why were we doing that again?

Anyway the likely realistic translation from politics to reality is that they're looking to force a regime change and put someone pro-Russia in charge, it won't be a literal "this is Russia now" type of thing. They're just doing it with open military action instead of covertly supporting separatists and playing them off against each other like the CIA have been trying to do for the past... What is it, 8 years now?

Potato tomato.
>> No. 37234 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 12:20 am
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>>37217

In fairness whichever way you stood on the invasion/no invasion prediction, Putin has made everyone look like a mug. It basically went like this:

"I'm going to invade Ukraine"

"You better not you naughty Ruskie!"

"What are you going to do about it?"

"Well... We'll uh... Stop you being able to use Adobe Premier and stuff."

"Right, sounds okay to me."

"And we will strongly condemn it, in the strongest terms."

"Oh dear."

Being more cynical though I don't think anyone in the west really gave a fuck, we made loud noises about it purely to keep the kayfabe up. It's almost all those talks were just a theatrical gesture to make it look like we had any intention of stopping him, but when nobody was looking we gave him the wink and the nod.
>> No. 37235 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 12:20 am
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>>37231
Putin's claimed all sorts of shit and the more he plays by the Nazi playbook ("our people are being suppressed, they are crying out for liberation") the more it seems reasonable to exepect escalation.

But if this escalates too much I'm buying a [s]hovel[/h]house in County Durham and digging a bunker.
>> No. 37236 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 12:26 am
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>>37231

>Putin is claiming that he is liberating Ukraine from a neo-Nazi regime

He does know that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Selensky is Jewish?
>> No. 37237 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 12:39 am
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>>37233
In fairness, our lies were slightly more plausibly timed and made a better show of doing the bureaucratic parts correctly. The leap from Donetsk to a full invasion was much, much too fast. Iraq gave everyone a year or so of pretending that if Saddam just met our very reasonable demands, we could put all of this behind us, before finally telling him he had 24 hours to fuck off or he'd be fucking off from this mortal coil.
Though I suspect the rush was because of a similar problem that the Iraq war authors faced: the justification operation running up against practical military deadlines. If you've got to invade by next week, you don't really have the time to set up a sufficiently thick paper thin pretext. If I was Putin's editor, I'd have him move the Donetsk invasion back a month, let everyone relax a bit, then go in properly.
>> No. 37238 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 1:23 am
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>>37233
>but it's only the same kind of lie we told when we invaded Iraq to find them WMDs
It really, really isn't.

>or when we were supporting the Syrian rebels for... Why were we doing that again?
Because the dictator was brutalising his own people, up to and including the use of chemical weapons.
>> No. 37239 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 1:26 am
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>>37231
I do find it slightly hilarious that people go "but the Azov militias" while defending an actual fascist who's basically funding the entire European far-right contingent at this point.
>> No. 37240 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 2:39 am
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>>37238

>It really, really isn't.

Yes, it is.

>Because the dictator was brutalising his own people, up to and including the use of chemical weapons.

Oh yeah, that was it. Which is funnily enough a better excuse than we had for invading Iraq, but that time we decided it'd be better to create ISIS instead.
>> No. 37241 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 3:35 am
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>>37240

Iraq definitely had weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s, because he used them on the Iranians and the Kurds. Over the course of the 1990s, the United Nations Special Commission oversaw the process of finding and destroying those weapons. They found abundant and irrefutable evidence that Iraq had a large and successful chemical weapons programme, which the Iraqi government ultimately admitted to.

That process of disarmament was nearly complete in 1998, but weapons inspectors were either withdrawn or expelled from Iraq. Over the following five years, increasing belligerence on the part of both America and Iraq impeded UN efforts to ascertain the true status of Iraq's WMD capabilities.

The Iraq Dossier was undoubtedly of poor quality, the American government of the time undoubtedly distorted the intelligence to push for war, but it was never a fiction cut from whole cloth. By their own admission, Iraq had chemical and biological weapons in 1996. A significant number of old and degraded weapons were found subsequent to the 2003 invasion. The point of factual dispute is a fairly subtle one - whether, at the time of the invasion, any of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons were in a useable state.

If you can't see the difference between a complex dispute over uncertain information and a blatant lie, there's really nothing more I can say to you.
>> No. 37242 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 7:36 am
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>>37241
>If you can't see the difference between a complex dispute over uncertain information and a blatant lie, there's really nothing more I can say to you.

I think he just wants to keep saying 'West = bad' and 'Putin has made us look like mugs' over and over again.
>> No. 37243 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 7:50 am
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This thread is an absolute fucking mess of sophistry, ill-defined positions, ahistorical nonsense, namecalling, and strawmanning. I feel stupider for having read it.
>> No. 37244 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 8:22 am
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>>37241
I find it hard to accept that the government that had the gall to pretend increasing the employment rate (i.e. getting old people and single mothers into work, rather than reducing the involuntary unemployment rate) constituted "bringing back full employment" was somehow unable to spin "unusable rusty chemical bomb" into "chemical bomb", even with a relatively supportive press. It's not impossible by any means, but it suggests a failure to spin the story on a level with the intelligence failures leading up to the war itself.

In a more tedious French philosopher sort of way, I'm tempted to say that the dynamic of a blatant lie is preferable. It's unambiguous that Putin was bullshitting from before the war started, but the Americans had a role in making the necessary information on Iraq unavailable, then looked at random noise and interpreted it in a way that aligned with what they ultimately wanted to do. It feels much easier to tackle the former than the latter, and something of a miracle that in the case of Iraq public opinion has come down as harshly as it did. Unless he's actually gone insane Putin has gone to bed tonight knowing he's a liar, while Tony Blair still goes to bed telling himself he made the right call which (technical disputes aside) is essentially lying to himself.
(Though in defence of seeing what he wanted to see, my recollection is that we were selling dual-use chemicals to Iraq during the 1980s.)
>> No. 37245 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 8:46 am
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>>37243
Believe me this place is a lot more sensible than *other* places to discuss such matters.
>> No. 37246 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 5:40 pm
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>>37243
Welcome to britfa.gs
>> No. 37247 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 8:30 pm
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If Putin wants to go full pariah, where have the sneaky fucks been hiding their IC fabs? Three manky little plants isn;t going to keepthem in knockoff iphones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants
>> No. 37248 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 8:46 pm
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>>37247
China does not subscribe to the NA/EU sanction regime.
>> No. 37249 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 9:50 pm
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>>37247
Russia supplies the lions share of essential raw materials for semiconductors though so if they turn off the tap we're not much better off than them.
>> No. 37250 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 10:20 pm
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>>37247

Russia have been trying to work towards semiconductor self-sufficiency, but they just don't have access to the technology. The Dutch company ASML have a near-total monopoly on modern photolithography equipment; this bottleneck has proved very useful for the Yanks in restricting the IC fabrication capabilities of adversaries and potential adversaries. A combination of domestic production and sanctions avoidance will probably keep them well supplied with military chips, but the civilian market is likely to suffer.

>>37248

China proper are only just starting to get into IC manufacturing via SMIC. They're a couple of generations behind the cutting edge, which isn't being helped by US sanctions.

The vast majority of IC fabrication is done in Chinese Taipei, Japan, South Korea and the US. China might be the final point of manufacture for most consumer electronics, but there's a long chain of intellectual property that is very likely to make Chinese companies averse to doing business with Russia. Huawei have been badly affected by US sanctions and nobody else is keen on joining that list. With massive global shortages of chips likely to last for at least 18 months, manufacturers can afford to pick and choose who they sell to.

>>37249

Definitely not.

Russia export significant quantities of rare earth minerals, but they only hold a small proportion of global reserves and China is capable of full self sufficiency. Cutting off Russian exports might affect prices, but it won't have any significant impact on supply.

Ukraine is a major supplier of laser-grade noble gases, which does present some serious short-term concerns. They in turn rely on exports of commercial-grade noble gases from Russia. The US has abundant stockpiles of noble gases as part of their strategic helium reserve, but it's not entirely clear whether they have sufficient processing capacity.

Regardless, I would be fully confident that the major semiconductor manufacturers have more than adequate contingency plans. The cost of plant shutdowns is immense, so they invest heavily in continuity of supply and do whatever the opposite of JIT is.
>> No. 37251 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 10:29 pm
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>>37248
Funnily enough
>China State Banks Restrict Financing for Russian Commodities
>At least two of China’s largest state-owned banks are restricting financing for purchases of Russian commodities, underscoring the limits of Beijing’s pledge to maintain economic ties with one of its most important strategic partners in the face of sanctions by the U.S. and its allies.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-25/chinese-state-banks-restrict-financing-for-russian-commodities

China probably will be happy to export, somehow, but it's unlikely to go against self-interest in its access to the far-larger US and European markets. Russia was already dependant on China for semiconductors and it's going to be tough for Russia to pay for imports even in a Yuan/barter system.

>>37249
You're thinking of 35% of US palladium supplies with 90% of the neon instead coming from Ukraine but there are alternative sources. The world doesn't work like your 4X computer games.

This is even assuming that Russia can even afford to cut its exports.
>> No. 37252 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 11:11 pm
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A friend of mine from school who has a Ukrainian wife that he met at the Euromaidan protests has shared a link for anyone wishing to donate money to the Ukrainian cause:

https://uacrisis.org/en/help-ukraine

That page has links to several other charities which you can donate to; there are ones for treating wounded soldiers and there are ones for buying more ammunition and weapons to assist in the massacre of murderous invading scum. You can probably guess which charities I am more inclined to support. A lot of them will only accept bank transfers, and I don't do any sort of online banking, so I'm going to have to find a Western Union or MoneyGram outlet tomorrow. But I plan to, because I feel extremely strongly about this.
>> No. 37253 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 11:22 pm
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>>37252
Not to sound soft, but I don't like the characterisation of the Russian Army as scum. I'm well aware of the immorality on display, and the events on Snake Island in particular turn my stomach, but I'm sure plenty of Russia's soldiers are just young lads without a better option. If the British Army considers working the tills at Sainsbury's reason enough to sign up, the push factors for a Russian must be through the floor in comparison.
>> No. 37254 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 11:38 pm
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>>37253

Individual Russian soldiers may well be perfectly decent lads who just got conscripted or signed up to get out of a shit situation, but the Russian army is institutionally malicious. The lads on the ground are just following orders, but the people giving the orders are proper bastards.
>> No. 37255 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 11:50 pm
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>>37242

The only reason you don't like it because he's not incorrect. It's nice to have someone else being unambiguously bad for a change though I suppose, makes it easier to sleep at night knowing our own governments are marginally less corrupt and power hungry.

>>37254

Careful, muglad will be posting pictures of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo before you know it if you keep making it this easy.

I think it's fair to say that the same is true of most militaries, much like most businesses. You don't blame the bloke delivering your bluetooth headphones for the fact Bezos is an utter bastard.
>> No. 37256 Anonymous
25th February 2022
Friday 11:57 pm
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>>37254
I suppose that's fair, especially given how the ship captain behaved more like ED-209 towards the Snake Island garrison than a human being.
>> No. 37257 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 12:42 am
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>Cabinet ministers received what one source described as an "ominous assessment" from defence and intelligence chiefs on Thursday night about what may lie ahead for the people of Ukraine. And it has now become clearer what the fears of the Western allies are.

>Ukrainian resistance to Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces is - for the people of the country - something of a double-edged sword. Intelligence assessments suggest Russian forces are making slower progress than they had envisaged. A well-placed Western official suggested Ukrainian forces had traded control of "empty spaces" and "rural areas" to concentrate on defending the cities.

>There are now significant concerns Mr Putin will look to effect his aim of regime change in the capital Kyiv "by any means necessary", that source said. That could mean the indiscriminate use of violence and the indiscriminate use of artillery - with the civilian population very much in the firing line. This view is shared in Whitehall - that the more resistance the Russian forces face, the more relentless the retaliation they will carry out. What was a war of choice for Mr Putin could become a war of necessity, which he has to be seen to win.

>In conversation with politicians and other government sources with good links to the defence and intelligence services, it is anticipated that when Russian forces formally take control of Ukrainian cities an insurgency will be mounted against them. This, one source predicted, would be "bloody and brutal". Another went as far as to express fears the tactics adopted by Russian forces at the beginning of the century in Grozny could, if necessary, be adopted again. The Chechen city was subjected to heavy barrages of artillery, costing at least 5,000 lives.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60532586

Good Times Bad Times are now doing day by day coverage, it already looks like things are getting especially bloody.


>>37253
>I don't like the characterisation of the Russian Army as scum

I'm sure they'll be fine.
>> No. 37258 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 1:56 am
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>>37257
>I'm sure they'll be fine.
It wasn't them I was concerned for.
>> No. 37259 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 3:14 am
37259 spacer
>>37257

Supposedly they're already lining up peace talks.

I wouldn't be surprised if elements within the government throw the current president to the dogs in exchange for peace. And truth be told, it wouldn't be a great loss- From what I understand the current Ukrainian president is what would happen if you crossed Are Nige with Michael Macintyre, a contrarian anti-establishment character whose election points to the corruption in the government underneath.

But of course the likely result there would be Ukraine pivoting toward Russia, which is unacceptable and incompatible with Western aims, so that won't be the end of it if so.
>> No. 37260 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 4:06 am
37260 crimea river
Taking Crimea in 2014 was probably the right move for Russia. The lease on Crimean naval facilities was set to end in 2047, and it's unlikely that a westward facing Ukraine would extend it. Consider that the 2010 Kharkiv agreement to extend the lease barely passed in the Ukrainian government, and set off protests outside the Rada and fist fights within it. Russia would lose access to Sevastopol, its only military warm water port, with its second warm water port of Novorossiysk being primarily an economic port.

Crimea is still officially recognised as part of Ukraine by most governments, and Ukrainian politicians often spout rhetoric about bringing Crimea back into the fold. The real question is this: could a Ukraine that has joined NATO, and potentially the EU decades down the line, pose a threat to Russian control over Crimea or is the idea unjustified paranoia?
>> No. 37261 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 5:34 am
37261 spacer
An idle thought: A lot of newspaper articles seem to be playing with the WW2 angle, going on about how we never thought we'd see Europeans invading and murdering one another again, how all that horror belongs in black and white photographs, how, as a result, schoolchildren will be learning about the Russo-Ukranian war.
And it dawns on me, it's all very familiar: It's very similar to what people were saying about the Yugoslav wars too. But 30 years since Yugoslavia took a nosedive I'd be shocked if the majority of the public even still remembered those, let alone more than a handful of schoolchildren - and in their case, it's probably because those blokes with the accordion and Yamaha keyboard singing about how Karadžić will lead the Serbs became a meme, rather than because their school's covered the conflict. (Though with the way budgets are, the maps probably still have a Yugoslavia, so there's that.)

Obviously the two conflicts aren't that analogous - If you asked me in a glib sort of way, this is more of a "proper war" between two fully independent countries, while the Yugoslav conflicts were a bit more like a mixture of a civil war and a series of independence wars, plus genocides. But it's not really a point about the wars themselves - just the coverage. That echo is there again, that sense of a secret desire for history to return, to be able to tell your kids that as Kyiv was hit by cruise missiles and cluster bombs, you lay on the couch in an early morning haze and caught a bit of a BBC bulletin reporting that we don't really know anything at the moment before switching over to a re-run of Tipping Point.
>> No. 37262 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 5:53 am
37262 spacer
>>37261
The other thing to remember is that relatively speaking WW2 was simple: you had some trumped-up Kraut getting himself where he wasn't supposed to be. By contrast, the history and causes of the death of Yugoslavia are fiendishly complex. It's not the sort of thing you could teach to secondary kids in a few weeks. Think about how many times you went over some part of WW2 in school, and you probably spent about 20% or more of your entire 7-14 history time on it.

Then again, the sort of people who insist this is the first major conflict in Europe since WW2 probably also think that 1066 was the last time mainland Britain was invaded.
>> No. 37263 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 8:37 am
37263 spacer
Being smug contrary arseholes this morning, yeah? Felt like mixing things up a bit, did you?
>> No. 37264 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 8:53 am
37264 spacer
>>37263
No.
>> No. 37265 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 8:54 am
37265 spacer
>>37264
Well you seem to hold opinions different to the ones expressed by the BBC this morning, and therefore you must be a contrary arsehole!
>> No. 37266 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 8:56 am
37266 spacer
>>37262

>relatively speaking WW2 was simple

Well, it is looking back on it now, with the benefit of knowing that the Nazis were the most unquestionably evil villains history will ever offer us. But I'm pretty sure that back in late 1938, early 1939, the prospect of the looming war was much less clear cut.
>> No. 37267 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 9:01 am
37267 spacer
>>37265
Unless the BBC were talking about how simple WW2 and its causes were this morning I'm not sure why you're claiming that. Nor could I have been influenced by the BBC Breakfast team as the only news media I've consumed today so far is the latest Guardian Football Weekly, which, funnily enough, barely made reference to the war. There was that bit where Lars went on and on about the Hossbach Memorandum, but otherwise not a peep.
>> No. 37268 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 9:56 am
37268 spacer

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I keep seeing Ukrainians posting memes putting themselves in the position of the Imperial Guard, and it's... Well, I mean you can't really be that guy who criticises someone whose country is actively being invaded, but there's problems on a couple of levels with it.

One is that the Imperium are actually literally ultra-fascists, so this doesn't really do them any favours considering the Russian propaganda's slant on it all. And also the fact that the primary characteristic of the Imperial Guard is that they typically die in their tens of thousands every battle. It's kind of like that thing where Yanks of a certain generation compare everything in politics to Harry Potter, only a bit more tasteless.

I want to hope it's probably teenage lads who are a bit too young to really understand these implications, but I mean, if not...
>> No. 37269 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 10:05 am
37269 spacer
>>37268
Eh. People will be dumb on the Internet, teenagers especially so, and Warhammer neckbeards - well will they ever pick up a gun for real?
>> No. 37270 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 10:43 am
37270 spacer
>>37268
I really don't feel like discussing 40k lore right now, but "the Imperium are actually literally ultra-fascists" is meaningless fluff, grammatically iffy and they're still amongst the "good guys" in the silliness soup that is Warhammer in Space. Their true defining trait is one of everyday plebs trying to hold on against all odds, any fascist tendancies are probably only addressed in some terrible books no one in their right minds would read and certainly not invoked in the image used for basis of this edit you posted. Quite honestly you sound like more of a dafty for overanalysing memes someone knocked together in all of five minutes, possibly in a warzone at that. Given the very real events happening this very second I don't know why anyone would dedicate several sentences to having a minor moral panic over such imagery. Did you know the band Black Sabbath were actually invoking the imagery of witchcraft and devilry when they chose that name? I really hope Ozzy Osbourne understands these implications, but I mean, if not... I might start ending my posts with an ellipsis like a total pillock.

Alright, we're done with 40k now, moving on.
>> No. 37271 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 12:59 pm
37271 spacer
>>37270
We're never done with 40K lore. The Imperium of Man are not "the good guys" as you mention, they fall more into "necessary evil" territory. The Imperial Guard in particular is kind of based on WW1 in general and early WW2 Russian tactics: just throw bodies at it until they give up, or until technology catches up and the Big Guns come out to save you.

I'll take my shovel and go home. If home still exists.
>> No. 37272 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 1:13 pm
37272 spacer
Shut the fuck up about your toy soldiers.
>> No. 37273 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 1:51 pm
37273 spacer
Something interesting happened overnight that's not really being talked about because it's not strictly relevant to what's playing out in Ukraine now, but it's sticking in my mind regardless. Putin asked the Kazakhstan government to send troops, but the Kazakhs rejected this and have not acknowledged the existence of the Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics. I assume this is because The 'Stans realised that the emotinal-non-argument Putin made about Ukraine's lack of right to sovreignty could easily be made about them also. However, I wonder why Putin asked for additional troops in the first place. Was it to force the Khazakstan government to pick a side and now he knows precisely where they stand? Does he think troops that are more foreign to Ukraine might have an easier time rampaging about inside of it? Or does he really think his troops can't or won't get the job done? I'm really struggling to understand his late night call to arms.

Not sure why either of you two would know, but I've spoken to my dogs about it several times now and they've not been the least bit enlightening.
>> No. 37274 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 2:04 pm
37274 spacer
>>37273
I suspect it was a loyalty test. Kazakhstan recently dropped Cyrillic for Latin. Putin also sent in troops to Kazakhstan to quell the fuel protests last month, so I assume this was him figuring out whether they'd deliver that favour that he thinks they owe him. He scratched their back, but they're not scratching his. I guess that otherlad would say that this means the Kazakh government have been made to look like mugs or something.
>> No. 37275 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 3:03 pm
37275 spacer
>>37273
Coalition of the willing.
>> No. 37276 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 3:20 pm
37276 spacer
>>37270

Nah, I think you sound like someone who is very bumsore at being made to consider the fact that maybe memeing about "CADIA STANDS" during an actual war where people are actually being killed is kind of crass.

Normally I'm right there with you in the "it's just a bit of fun, don't take it too seriously" camp, but the thing is, that's because it's normally over-sensitive pricks making imaginary problems out of nothing. This is about very real events which are, like you say, happening this very second; I don't think it's in any way irrational to observe that this is, at best, an unfortunate kind of comparison to make for the defenders of Kyiv.

Anyway, the camp theatrics of heavy metal are one thing, but it's quite another when you get to chaps like Varg Vikernes, Bård Eithun, or Jon Nödtveidt. There's nothing wrong with enjoying their music, but I think most metal fans would still call it tasteless to make memes about murdering bumders and starting your own genuine satanic cult; or at least, posting them publicly and not just amongst your own group of similarly dark humoured friends.
>> No. 37277 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 3:29 pm
37277 spacer

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>> No. 37278 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 3:39 pm
37278 spacer
>>37277

Should we make a new thread for the coming invasion of Taiwan, or just make this the Invasions General thread?
>> No. 37279 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 4:18 pm
37279 spacer
>>37278
I would vote for a new thread. But this isn't the first time someone has posted a Twitter screenshot and nothing else, and ideally we just ignore such posts. We don't want Xi Jinping thinking he can bait us into replying to shitposts if he invades Taiwan.
>> No. 37280 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 4:21 pm
37280 spacer
>A Blackpool comedy club has said it 'won't back down' after a customer from Hull demanded refunds - citing the Ukraine and Russia conflict as their reason for not attending a gig.

>Last night (February 25), owner Ryan Gleeson shared a thread of emails from an unhappy customer who he said had been trying to claim a refund for over a week. In the emails shared, the customer cited the war in Ukraine as their reason for not making the trip from Hull to Blackpool to attend a show tomorrow night (February 26).

>The email read: "COMPLAINT FOR THE MANAGER. My husband and I had planned a trip to Blackpool this weekend and we have got tickets for your (Saturday Night Laughs) show at 7.00 on the date above. I spoke to someone called Rob (if that even is his real name) on Facebook texts asking for a refund for our two tickets which we paid for IN FULL! A few weeks ago. Due to events in Russia and Ukraine it is not safe for us to travel from Hull as we are both retired. Due to this it's safer that we stay nearer to home until it is sorted.

>I told Rob that I wanted a refund and he said he would move the tickets to another date but I DO NOT want that because I don't know how long this will go on for. NO ONE KNOWS!!!!!!!! He showed me so called terms and conditions - which I did not read when I booked the tickets a few weeks ago like nobody does and nowhere in them does it say anything about no refunds FOR A WAR. As it is not in your so called terms and conditions I am legally allowed a FULL refund and I will take this to trading standards if not refunded in 24 hours. I MEAN IT."

>The email continues to demand a 'FULL REFUND' and then added: "We have already lost money on train tickets and our bed and breakfast booking as they say we have just chose to not go but this is probably just every one in Blackpool sticking together to scam people during a war. DISGUSTING. You are suppose to be a comedy store but this is NOT funny at all have some respect. My solicitor WILL be informed and I WILL report you to trading standards if you don't pay me back in 24 hours."

https://www.lancs.live/news/lancashire-news/blackpool-comedy-club-says-wont-23215651
>> No. 37281 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 4:32 pm
37281 spacer
>>37280
>You are suppose to be a comedy store but this is NOT funny at all
I bet she's kicking herself for writing that after the reaction she's got.
>> No. 37282 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 4:33 pm
37282 spacer
>>37280

"Despite offering multiple resolutions to your problem, you persisted in calling [our staff member] a liar, swearing at him and asking if he 'masturbates to a poster of Putin', at which point he, quite rightly, advised you that he was not going to continue the conversation and gave you our email address. As Rob mentioned, you are not entitled to a refund simply because you live 'nearer to Russia than we do'."

If this is all just made up for publicity, then fair play to them, it's fucking hilarious.
>> No. 37284 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 6:51 pm
37284 spacer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEuLeLt6qsk
>> No. 37285 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 7:20 pm
37285 spacer

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372853728537285
That bellend who was in Afghanistan when the Taliban took over is currently in Kiev.
>> No. 37286 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 7:26 pm
37286 spacer
>>37285

>Kiev

Aha. Kremlinlad reveals himself at last! If you were a westener, you'd know everyone agreed to call it Kyiv, not Kiev, because the latter is the Russian origin of the word and the former is the true freedom Ukrainian version.

Like in Breakng Bad when his son decides he wants to be called Flynn.
>> No. 37287 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 7:42 pm
37287 spacer
>>37286
I bet I look like a real mug right now.
>> No. 37288 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 7:57 pm
37288 spacer
>>37286
I still say Kiev, and I spent half an hour in the post office trying to send money to the Ukrainian war effort this morning. All the protections for people to stop them getting scammed by crooked Ukrainians have really made it very hard to send money to Ukraine for legitimate reasons. That, or I have been scammed too. Anyway, at one point I did have to put in the charity's address, and then I did write "Kyiv" because I'm nice, but I still would have pronounced it "Kiev" out loud.
>> No. 37289 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 8:17 pm
37289 spacer
So I went on Nukemap to check out what would happen where I live, I'm about 5 miles away from where a 10 megaton bucket full of sunshine would drop, so I'm pretty much toast. Literally.
The site is under huge demand https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ so it's not just me thinking that Armageddon is round the corner. All it takes during the fog of war is for a trigger happy Ivan to do something like shoot at a Nato ally ship in theBlack Sea and for everything to go kinetic.
I've paid 3 grand for a new mountain bike which is due for delivery at the end of March, I'd be really pissed off if we all end up getting vapourised.
>> No. 37290 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 8:21 pm
37290 spacer
>>37289
I'm wondering if London might actually be less of a target due to the stunning amount of money that Putin's buddies have stashed away here.
>> No. 37291 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 8:32 pm
37291 spacer
I've just been talking to a high-level official in NATO who I went to school with and he said there's a 50% chance nukes will be used next week.
>> No. 37292 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 8:33 pm
37292 spacer
>>37290

To be fair it would probably be safer to live in a post apocalyptic Mad Max world rather than living in London.
>> No. 37293 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 8:39 pm
37293 spacer
>>37291


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cAZZR_Jki0
>> No. 37294 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 8:39 pm
37294 spacer
>>37291
Well my Dad's a Space Ranger and he says it'll be death rays.
>> No. 37295 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 8:44 pm
37295 spacer
>>37280

>Due to events in Russia and Ukraine it is not safe for us to travel from Hull as we are both retired.

This sounds like it could be directly lifted from When the Wind Blows. Fantastic.
>> No. 37296 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 8:58 pm
37296 spacer
>>37291
Hahaha, fuck off, you lying cunt.
>> No. 37297 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 9:01 pm
37297 spacer
>>37296

They already brought tactical nuke artillery.
>> No. 37298 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 9:07 pm
37298 spacer
>>37292
I look forward to seeing the property market only increase in value following a nuclear apocalypse. Paying 500k in bottlecaps for a 2 bed in the London commuter belt that you can't spend more than 5 hours a week in without getting radiation sickness.

The government will put a holiday on stamp duty you see.

>>37293
You've posted this before and it bugged me then as well. Russia starts randomly invading Finland and has magical soldiers appearing all over the place while the entire international situation breaks down in minutes - it tells you why we're really not in a Cold War anymore compared to what we had


>>37297
We'll just counter with rocket buggy spam.
>> No. 37299 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 9:07 pm
37299 spacer
>>37297
This could be a really useful and good thread, but you keep talking in single sentences and being generally useless and I think I really dislike you. Stop making me feel like this, I don't enjoy it.
>> No. 37300 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 9:07 pm
37300 spacer
>>37291
There's a 50% chance of anything. Either it happens or it doesn't. 50%.
>> No. 37301 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 9:09 pm
37301 spacer
Has anybody else's internet gone down? The Russians are supposedly cyberattacking UK ISPs.
>> No. 37302 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 9:15 pm
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>> No. 37303 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 9:25 pm
37303 spacer

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Here we go.
>> No. 37304 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 9:27 pm
37304 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2gC37ILQmk
>>37303
>> No. 37305 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 9:27 pm
37305 spacer

adventure_time_dog.png
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>>37301
Yes, I'm connected to the internet with my mind.
>> No. 37306 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 9:28 pm
37306 spacer
>>37303
If nothing happens, you're forbidden from ever posting a twitter screenshot again.
>> No. 37307 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 9:51 pm
37307 spacer
>>37306
I didn't think I could want world peace more than I did already.
>> No. 37308 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 10:01 pm
37308 spacer
That's it! That's an hour since the Tweet was made, he's done! "Forbidden", that was you said!
>> No. 37309 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 10:08 pm
37309 spacer
>>37308
Everything posted from that IP has been hysterical nonsense but that's not really grounds for banning him.
>> No. 37310 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 10:18 pm
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>>37308
I can't believe it's already been an hour. Dicking around with Inspect Element to prove a point is much harder than it sounds.
>> No. 37311 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 10:40 pm
37311 spacer
>The EU, US and their allies have agreed to cut off a number of Russian banks from the main international payment system, Swift. "This is intended to cut off these institutions from international financial flows, which will massively restrict their global operations," a German government spokesman said. Russia is reliant on the Swift system for its oil and gas exports.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-60542433

Is it self-defence to kill my housemate who likes to be able to wear a t-shirt inside?
>> No. 37312 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 10:45 pm
37312 spacer
President of Ukraine says they'll give arms to anyone who wants to go there and fight the Russians.

Genuine question, how would a perfectly normal UK citizen like myself go about doing that?
>> No. 37313 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 10:50 pm
37313 spacer
I know this sounds childish, but am I wrong in saying Russia's making a pig's ear out of this? I was expecting T-90 tanks and BMP-2s thundering across Ukrainian fields, overwhelming Ukrainian forces hour after hour, give the length of tim Russia was building up its forces. Instead it seems to be small units trying to barrel straight down roads to whatever city or airport they're supposed to be taking, and seemingly failing each time. Nor was there any kind of pre-invasion infiltration from what I've heard, and Russian paras are dying by the plane load because they're being flown in without air supremacy on the second day of an invasion. I'm not trying to backseat a military conquest I hope fails, but it all looks very slapdash at this stage.

>>37309
I want to say you've gone soft, but there would have been a solid four years in which every other post of mine would have been a ban by that measure so I accept your ruling. Anyway, I never said I wanted him banned, just no more daft screencaps with no accompanying text.

>>37310
Never thought I'd be in alignment with Prince Bill; war produces strange bedfellows.
>> No. 37314 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 10:50 pm
37314 spacer
>>37312
You'd have to fly to Poland; I don't think you can fly into Ukraine any more. There might also come a point where you need to be able to speak Ukrainian. I would also expect the British government to disapprove enormously; they're trying to avoid a war so doing what you suggest would make you the new Shamima Begum. And they wouldn't even let you bring the gun back here afterwards.
>> No. 37315 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 10:57 pm
37315 spacer
>>37313
I think this is one reason we're not going fully apocalyptic with the sanctions. There's a lot more evil stuff that Russia can do that they currently aren't doing. You can't go from house to house in the Ukrainian capital of Keith, killing everyone who shoots back, without huge casualties, so they're not doing and this is reported as a great triumph for Ukraine in our pro-Ukraine media. But there's no denying you could just surround the city and drop a load of poison gas or something on it if you were really willing to do absolutely anything. The fact that they're not doing that shows that either we're not seeing the whole story from our media, or Russia hasn't gone absolutely maximum evil just yet.
>> No. 37316 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 11:10 pm
37316 spacer
Didn't Russia say they'd see it as a declaration of War™ if they got removed from Swift?
>> No. 37317 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 11:11 pm
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>> No. 37318 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 11:12 pm
37318 spacer

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(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 37319 Anonymous
26th February 2022
Saturday 11:32 pm
37319 spacer
>>37312

Unless you've got relevant experience (military, medical, logistics, engineering) you'd be more of a liability than an asset.

If you want to support the Ukrainian struggle, there are many things you can do from home.

Write to your MP. A lot of people are cynical about it, but it really does matter. Just tell them what you think about the situation and what you'd like to be done, whether that's military aid, humanitarian aid for civilians, support for refugees or whatever.

Just enter your postcode here and you can send a message straight to your MP: https://www.theyworkforyou.com/

The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain are fundraising on behalf of a range of Ukrainian charities and will try to use your donation where it is most needed.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/helpukraine

If you want to support the fight directly, Return Alive and Army SOS are raising funds to buy equipment and supplies for soldiers and volunteers.

https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/

https://armysos.com.ua/en/help-the-army
>> No. 37320 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 12:28 am
37320 spacer
>>37319

What if I just want to go out there and shoot Russians and don't really give a shit about my own personal wellbeing?
>> No. 37321 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 12:58 am
37321 spacer
>>37320

Take a flight to Lublin and a train to Kyiv. Shouldn't cost you more than a hundred quid. Don't expect the Foreign Office to help.
>> No. 37322 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 12:59 am
37322 spacer
чифи́рь, chifir. Make strong tea.It's not going to lead to peace, but if everyone could come together to make tea, it would be a nice world.

Make tea, not war.
>> No. 37323 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 1:00 am
37323 spacer
>>37313

>I know this sounds childish, but am I wrong in saying Russia's making a pig's ear out of this?

I don't think we can really make any judgement at this point considering right now, propaganda machines on both sides are going full churn and it's pretty much impossible to discern what's actually going on through the noise.

But it's not exactly surprising if you're right and they're cocking it all right up. Because when you think about it, when was the last major Russian military operation before this? Afghanistan? They've only had tiny piddling little missions since then. The Russian army in the broadest sense, is green. It has no experience behind it, and in military terms experience matters a fuck of a lot. It arguably matters more than anything else- Soldiers and generals who have only ever done play fights will invariably bungle at least some of it, and the troops won't know what to do when the plans go awry.

One of the reasons Britain still wields considerable military influence, despite all our self defeating pessimism, is that our armed forces have had consistent real world experience pretty much every decade since The War. Even if occasionally those ventures were morally dubious, it does mean that our men are experienced in real world fighting. Not on an individual soldier level, I mean, but the command structure and the people in charge of the logistics.

Logistics are incredibly important. It's probably not an exaggeration to say logistics is more than half the battle, in the most literal sense. This is why you should actually worry about Bezos- If Amazon decided to go into military contracting, I bet they'd be able to field a frighteningly effective force on the strength of the logistics organisation alone.

But yeah we'll see I suppose. The troubling thought is that Putin can't afford to lose face, so it could either turn into a real meat grinder or escalate dramatically.
>> No. 37324 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 1:03 am
37324 spacer
>>37320

You'll certainly end up looking like a mug. Your funeral though lad.
>> No. 37325 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 1:55 am
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>>37323

Elements of the Russian military have had significant involvement in Georgia and Syria, with alleged definite Spetsnaz activity in Ukraine since 2004. They have decent institutional knowledge of counter-insurgency from the Chechen and North Caucasus conflicts.

The broader issues IMO are corruption, poor leadership and weak morale. The Russian military is still geared around quantity over quality, which is fine if you're defending the motherland but much less useful if you're engaging in expeditionary wars.

They have a core of very capable volunteers, but nowhere near enough of them for a conflict of this scale. That presents a lot of difficult and risky strategic calculations. Do you spread out your volunteers amongst the conscripts and risk losing their effectiveness? Do you use volunteers as the tip of the spear and risk losing your supply lines to enfilade? Do you throw all of your best men at Kyiv and deal with the rest of the country later?

The Russian advantage in materiel and trained manpower looks completely overwhelming, but I wouldn't underestimate the Ukrainian advantage in morale. If the Russian advance bogs down and discipline starts to falter, things could get very unpleasant for them. Increasing levels of brutality might only serve to harden the resolve of the Ukrainian resistance.
>> No. 37326 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 3:29 am
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>>37311

For fuck's sake. Inflation isn't going anywhere then. Gas prices are going to skyrocket. We're definitely going to look like mugs if the sanctions we impose to punish Russia end up hurting us more than they do them. I'm sure big Vlad is terrified by us threatening to kick ourselves in the face in retribution.

Less facetiously though this is what I hate about wars and shit. We're going to be paying for this when we, the average plebs, have fuck all to do with it and most of us couldn't care less. I've never even met a Ukrainian, and I think I've only ever met one Russian. I would very much like it if world leaders could settle their disputes via one on one fist fights, and leave the rest of us the fuck out of it.
>> No. 37327 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 5:06 am
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>>37326
If you're sure of how the price of a major commodity is going to change, you should be printing money, not paying the consequences.
>> No. 37328 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 9:57 am
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Anyone from the Ukraine who wants to seek refuge here better be prepared to pick veggies.
>> No. 37329 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 10:05 am
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>>37315
>The fact that they're not doing that shows that either we're not seeing the whole story from our media, or Russia hasn't gone absolutely maximum evil just yet.

It seems that a lot of higher-ups in the Russian military are against the war themselves, and motivation and morale amongst the Russian ranks is rock-bottom. There's bound to be commanders giving orders to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible regardless of whether the Kremlin wants that, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the rank and file Russian soldiers are intentionally holding back or draining their own fuel reserves to get out of fighting.
Many Russians have their own friends and family in Ukraine and have access to enough information to know that Putins claims are bullshit.
>> No. 37330 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 10:30 am
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>>37328
I believe this scheme is known in Whitehall as "Generalplan Ost".
>> No. 37331 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 1:37 pm
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It's happening lads, Putin has just ordered his nuclear arsenal to prepare for action.
>> No. 37332 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 2:02 pm
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>>37331
I'm not too fussed until he readies the Kirov airships.
>> No. 37333 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 2:44 pm
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>>37321

>>Don't expect the Foreign Office to help

Liz Truss has said she fully supports Brits who want to go and fight.
>> No. 37334 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 2:47 pm
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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is doing a live press conference and answering questions from a few journalists. One of them asked how foreigners can sign up to go and fight if they want to. He's also been talking about what would happen if Ukraine got nuked. Ukrainians really do come across as a badass people.

I couldn't find a link to the press conference to post here, but he has already tweeted some answers to the questions. If you're serious about going to fight Russians, you can get in touch with the Ukrainian embassy and they can give you more information.
https://twitter.com/DmytroKuleba/status/1497840669066502145
I also tried to get you a link to the Ukrainian embassy in London, but the website is overloaded right now.

And THAT is how you post a Twitter screenshot.
>> No. 37335 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 2:48 pm
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>>37321
>Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said she supports individuals from the UK who might want to go to Ukraine to join an international force to fight. She told the BBC it was up to people to make their own decisions, but argued it was a battle "for democracy". She said Ukrainians were fighting for freedom, "not just for Ukraine but for the whole of Europe".

>Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged foreign nationals "to join the defence of security in Europe". Earlier on Sunday, he said Ukraine was setting up an "international" legion of volunteers for foreigners wishing to join the Ukrainian army in its fight against Russian forces. "This is not just Russia's invasion of Ukraine, this is the beginning of a war against Europe. Against European unity," Mr Zelensky was quoted as saying on his official website. Everyone who wants to join the defence of security in Europe and the world may come and stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukrainians against the invaders of the 21st Century."

>Ukraine's ambassador to the UK Vadym Prystaiko said an "overwhelming" number of foreign nationals were "demanding to be allowed to fight" for Ukraine - as the Russian invasion reaches its fourth day. Ukraine has said it will arm all volunteers. Asked on BBC One's Sunday Morning programme if she would support individuals from Britain going over to Ukraine to help in the fight, Ms Truss said: "I do support that, and of course that is something that people can make their own decisions about.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60544838

Come on you two, after we get into our third pedantic argument over what we call ourselves Putin will be begging for mercy.

>>37331
I'm glad we're doing this on a Sunday afternoon rather than a Friday night.
>> No. 37336 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 3:27 pm
37336 spacer
I'll join the .gs platoon, but I've gained about a stone-and-a-half during the pandemic and the one time I went paintballing I was shot in the head six times. Didn't count as a fair hit though so technically I didn't take a shot all day. Do real guns follow this rule? Who can say.
>> No. 37337 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 3:34 pm
37337 spacer
I was thinking.

Why have people gone so properly bonkers over this? I wasn't aware that most Westerners were so closely fond of Ukraine until last Thursday, but this whole time they've been avid Ukrainophiles it would seem. It's weird considering the mild disdain with which Poles and Czechs and other such slav types are usually regarded.

Is it just because it's Russia? The baddies in all the Bond films and Call of Duty? Are people just tired after years of misery and need an outlet? Is it just that when an unambiguous bad guy does something unambiguously bad, everyone is secretly overjoyed because finally, after the grinding and relentless murkiness of the news and politics over the last ten to fifteen years, there's something everyone can agree on?

All this talk of going over there to join in the fight, it's almost like people are enjoying this. It makes me sick. I feel like everyone's lost their bloody mind.

Why don't you all go watch Threads and then subsequently calm the fuck down.
>> No. 37338 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 3:41 pm
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>>37337
I think it's because a country was attacked for no reason whatsoever and hundrds of people are dying as a result, you great wally. Almost all antagonism I'm seeing and hearing is directed at Putin himself, not Russia. I think your absurd notion that everyone's happy that terrible things are taking place is stupid in the extreme, it just is something most people agree on; unprovoked wars of conquest are bad. You've also managed to forget the past two years in which a similar level of agreement was reached that COVID-19 is bad, everyone, more or less, did their level best to prevent its spread.

Try typing with your fingers instead of talking out of your arse in the future.
>> No. 37339 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 3:43 pm
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>>37337
> It's weird considering the mild disdain with which Poles and Czechs and other such slav types are usually regarded.

You need to think harder lad. None of those countries are getting invaded, right now, but when they did we came to their help too.

I'm with you on the lust for war, and I'm reminded of the Chris Morris/Brasseye special on it.
>> No. 37340 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 4:12 pm
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>>37337
>All this talk of going over there to join in the fight
What occurred to me after seeing all the people in blue and yellow in central London today, and that is bleedingly obvious in hindsight, is that there are a shitload of expatriate Ukrainians here and around Europe; I imagine they make up the majority of those seriously wanting to go there to fight.
>> No. 37341 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 4:19 pm
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>>37338

>Try typing with your fingers instead of talking out of your arse

>>everyone, more or less, did their level best to prevent [Covid-19's] spread

I think you need to come back to reality lad, because either you're severely out of touch with it, or you live in a totally different one to me.

The dimension I live in, there were in fact widespread protests against lockdown measures, masks, and vaccines, and indeed our very own government totally disregarded it's own rules. Now, I wouldn't suggest Putin invaded Ukraine as a personal favour to pull Are Boris' arse out of the plug over his lockdown parties, but it has certainly been a boon for him in that regard, hasn't it?

Either way, to say everyone did their level best is fantasy bordering on delusion, lad.
>> No. 37342 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 4:23 pm
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>>37331


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaP_qTppD_c
>> No. 37343 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 4:24 pm
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>>37337

Most wars involve brown people in places we can't find on a map, either getting bombed by our allies or butchering each other for reasons that are inscrutable to us. This war involves white people who live lives like ours, many of whom speak very good English, being attacked by someone who controls our central heating and has had people killed on British soil.

It has been decades since a conflict threatened the established order. This war might be an isolated incident, or it might be the start of something far bigger. That possibility deserves attention, if only for self-interested reasons.
>> No. 37344 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 4:25 pm
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I always thought they'd put the doomsday clock too far forward and it meant that further issues would need to be given a smaller forward setting than less serious issues they'd bumped it forward loads for.

Now, I'm not so sure.
>> No. 37345 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 4:26 pm
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>>37342


>> No. 37346 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 4:33 pm
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>>37341
You know full well what "more or less" means, you disingenous berk. Obviously I wasn't claim 100% of people agreed with COVID-19 restrictions, but your assertion that I was suggests you believe in a time when 100% of the population did agree on specific policy points, which would seem to me to be a complete fantasy. However, overall the UK was in the same boat in combating COVID-19 and your idiotic attempt to suggest otherwise because I highlighted how full of crap you are doesn't stand up. I can't help but notice how you haven't even tried to reiterate your stupid points about the UK being chuffed to bits that hundreds of people are dying because it gives us something "everyone cab agree on". It's a ridiculous claim and I would like to see you admit as much or shut up entirely.
>> No. 37347 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 4:43 pm
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>>37346

God you're thick, fuck me.

>I can't help but notice how you haven't even tried to reiterate your stupid points about the UK being chuffed to bits that hundreds of people are dying

I can't help but notice how you're too much of a drivelling moron to understand the concept of rhetorical propositions, you fucking inbred. There was a question mark at the end of every sentence in that paragraph for a reason, you febrile ill-educated cretin.

Now you fuck off and shut the fuck up, because I don't want to spend all afternoon coming up with new ways to call you a retard.
>> No. 37348 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 4:52 pm
37348 spacer
>>37345


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxrWz9XVvls
>> No. 37349 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 4:56 pm
37349 spacer
Think there's a cunt off happening lads. I wouldn't get too excited, the EMP from the nukes arriving soon will put an end to it.
>> No. 37350 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 5:13 pm
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>> No. 37351 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 5:20 pm
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>Ukrainian and Russian delegations will meet on the border between Ukraine and Belarus for peace talks, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday, four days after Russian troops invaded his country.

>Zelenskiy said he had talked with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, a close Russian ally, who assured him that “all planes, helicopters and missiles stationed on Belarusian territory remain on the ground during the Ukrainian delegation’s travel, talks and return.” The meeting will take place near the Prypyat River, which flows from Belarus to Ukraine north of Kyiv. Earlier on Sunday, Zelenskiy said he was open to peace talks but rejected Moscow’s suggestion to hold them in Belarus, which has been used as a staging ground for the invasion.
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-and-russia-to-hold-peace-talks/

Looks like it is all wrapping up and China has been well and truly deterred from trying similar. Now we can go back to the rampant inflation, debt and the risk we might go into another great recession once interest rates start climbing again.

IT WUZ THE THREAT OF THE MOATY BATTALLION WOT DONE IT
>> No. 37352 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 5:22 pm
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>>37337
I personally do feel a moderate affinity for Ukraine. They've always been the underdog, and they've been harmed by Russia before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
On top of this, my personal passion is pop music from former communist countries, and the first song I ever enjoyed like that was Ukrainian. I have tracked the pop star down and I'm her fan on Facebook and I subscribe to her on YouTube, and I'm a huge fan and she replies to my YouTube comments regularly. Her sister, meanwhile, went to Russia to pursue the larger target audience there, and became hugely famous in the 1990s, and now this family is in trouble because she can never return from Russia to Ukraine now, probably. (The Ukrainian one won't die; she now works as a music teacher in Florida).

On top of this, I am slightly racist against Russia. They're so serious and humourless. Frankie Boyle went there for a documentary about Russia before the 2018 World Cup, and he asked people how they felt about the recent laws banning discussion of homosexuality in schools, and the Russians he spoke to were all convinced that evil homosexuals had to be stamped out. Similarly, I looked at the website of Soviet pop group Komissar - here's a video -

- and they seem oddly obsessed with stressing how definitely not gay they are. Even if they have to be like that because Russia is like that, it's a level of reactionary fear and stupidity that makes me root against the Russians a lot of the time, however groovy their '80s music might have been.

That's just my own personal position, of course. But the way the war has built up, it has been framed as Russia against NATO. Russia talks about NATO as the enemy. Vladimir Putin goes on TV to talk about "them vs us", and that might work for uniting the Russian people, but we've been seeing it too and we all feel very united now. Even though Ukraine is not in NATO, it feels like they are. This wild motherfucker is bullying our new best friend. It seems like he won't come for us, but it also seemed like he wouldn't come for Ukraine either, and then he did. So now we need to ask ourselves how ready we want to be if he comes for us too.

I'm sure your question is worth asking, because I don't think a lot of people being supportive knew where Ukraine was on a map any more than they did Syria or Lebanon or Yemen, and it really is the only story on the news right now, 24/7. But I don't think there's anything wrong with cheering really, really hard for Ukraine right now.
>> No. 37353 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 5:36 pm
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>>37352
>russian music video

basically a shit rip off of blue monday and no limit

why are some countries so crap at making music? is it genetic or cultural?
>> No. 37354 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 5:43 pm
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>>37352

Russians are just super, super gay. The more macho they try to be, the gayer they get. They have to be homophobic and repressed, otherwise they'd spend all their time bumming and never get anything done.


>> No. 37355 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 5:46 pm
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I think as far as evil states go, I much prefer China over Russia. Nicer buildings, better mythology, tastier food. Sexier women too. Qi lai, qi lai!
>> No. 37356 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 5:49 pm
37356 spacer
>>37334
>I also tried to get you a link to the Ukrainian embassy in London, but the website is overloaded right now.

Ukrainian Embassy website is still down, so I can't find out if they'd accept an obese, weak, autisic retard like myself with a 12 year out of date passport into their International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine unit.
It's a shame because it might be the kind of thing I'd be interested in doing on a whim.
>> No. 37357 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 6:02 pm
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>> No. 37358 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 6:21 pm
37358 spacer
>>37357

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPeXwZqYm8I
>> No. 37359 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 6:30 pm
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The worst part of all this is that Natalia Poklonskaya has a new job now, and is no longer involved with Russian-Ukrainian military conflict, so she's never on the news for this war. That's the real crime against humanity. Phwoar.
>> No. 37360 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 6:39 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY6lHjZjYXE
>> No. 37361 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 6:42 pm
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>>37360
>> No. 37362 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 6:49 pm
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>>37359

Zelenskyy's wife is quite fit.
>> No. 37363 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 6:59 pm
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>>37360
>>37361
These, espeicially the second, bring to mind those weird Russian fetish club cliques you see in The Matrix and various werewolf/vampire films.
>> No. 37364 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 7:52 pm
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>> No. 37365 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 7:54 pm
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>>37364

Good job posting these, I'm sure Putin will see them here and be really upset.
>> No. 37366 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 7:57 pm
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>>37365
I wouldn't be surprised if some Ruskielad is set on watching us.
>> No. 37367 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 8:18 pm
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>>37366

Da, but then we ended up in a cunt off with each other and didn't realise ...
>> No. 37368 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 8:57 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nifxKIhFSuw

Russian POWs, all have pretty much the same story to tell, none of them had any idea they were going to Ukraine until they were crossing the border, and have basically just been pointed in a straight line without a plan.
Heard stories from some of the Russian furries that have similar stories, before the invasion their boyfriends were "tricked" into enlisting and took off to the border.
The whole thing seems a complete shitshow.
>> No. 37369 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 9:07 pm
37369 spacer
>>37368
The whole escapade seems to repeat the exact story I've read from the first Chechen War, especially from what I hear of the Spetsnaz units who were wasted by their commanders simply pointing them in a direction and giving no supplies or further orders so they eventually just wandered up to Chechens to surrender for want of food. I wouldn't be surprised if there's similar some catastrophic friendly fire going on or Russian and Ukrainian units just walking right past each other.

Let's hope Russia hasn't taken the lesson of levelling Grozny.
>> No. 37370 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 9:13 pm
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At this rate the Ukrainians wont need all the weapons being sent from other countries, they'll have half the Russian armoury in their own hands.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1497931925046059010

https://twitter.com/i/status/1498021600288907267
>> No. 37371 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 9:35 pm
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>>37368
> all have pretty much the same story to tell
I'm no war expert, but is it possible that they have been told, "If you get captured, tell them this exact story"?
>> No. 37372 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 9:44 pm
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>>37368
A pal of mine said to me last night, and I'm not sure where he got this so it could just be his opinion so pinches of salt all round, but he said that Russian officers had been claiming wages for soldiers that weren't there and by the time they realised the invasion was on they just signed up whoever they could at short notice. Whether or not officers were stealing wages they definitely look to have scrounged up whoever they could and given them little in the way of training.

Even so I though the Russians had naval infantry, airborne troops, those lads they sent to Syria? Maybe 90% of the officer corps are completely useless.

>>37370
Christ almighty. Anyone still concerned about WW3? Farmer Dave and his big eared boy certainly won't be.
>> No. 37373 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 9:50 pm
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>Fifa has decided that Russia can continue their bid to qualify for this winter’s World Cup
Oh, FIFA, what are you like? I honestly don't think there has been a more debased and narcissistic organisation since the SS.

>>37371
That is not a far-fetched concept in theory, but why would you have everyone tell a story that makes the Russian military look incompotent and dishonourable? Especially when your haphazard invasion is already suggesting the former is true already.
>> No. 37374 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 10:02 pm
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>>37369
I think Vlad might be losing; four, almost five days in and no real progress to show of.
>> No. 37375 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 10:06 pm
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>>37371

The Geneva Conventions only require a POW to give their name, rank and number. It'd be a bit weird for Russian officers to give their men a cover story that makes Russia look really bad. These lads could have made up a story in the hope that their captors will take pity on them, but they seem demoralised rather than scared.

It's possible that this is a rehearsed cover story, but most of the evidence we have supports the notion that the invasion was poorly planned at the last minute by a mostly incompetent officer corps and is being carried out by mostly inexperienced and unmotivated men.
>> No. 37376 Anonymous
27th February 2022
Sunday 11:35 pm
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>>37374
There's a lot of heavy artillery and stuff that Russia can use, which they haven't used yet. In theory, they can escalate the conflict massively at any point and have a decent chance. However, the fact that Ukraine's tactics, as I understand them, were to abandon the countryside and focus on defending the cities, makes it look fairly unimpressive that most of the countryside is not controlled by the Russians yet.

If NATO bring in a no-fly zone, the war will either end or become global. Russian air superiority would pretty much wipe out Ukraine's chances. If Russia control the air, they can keep an eye on all the Ukrainians and prevent them from resupplying and then their days are numbered. This is why people want NATO to say nobody can fly over Ukraine and anyone who does will be shot down. But then NATO will be shooting down Russians, and I still maintain that Bad Vlad the Cad has completely lost his mind and could cause some serious global damage once his pilots start being killed by NATO forces.
>> No. 37377 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 12:08 am
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Vladimir Putin puts mayonnaise on chippy chips.
Vladimir Putin's ringtone is The Crazy Frog.
Vladimir Putin has only ever bought one round; he ordered the pint of Guinness last.
Vladimir Putin's soap is absolutely covered in pubes.
Vladimir Putin once paid for a packet of Chewits with a cheque.
Vladimir Putin has never thanked a bus driver.
Vladimir Putin flicks his bogeys behind the sofa, even when he's at someone else's house.
Vladimir Putin owns a complete set of Compare the Meerkat dolls.
Vladimir Putin farts in lifts.
Vladimir Putin's favourite burger is a Filet-O-Fish.
>> No. 37378 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 12:14 am
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>>37376

Air superiority is much less valuable in urban environments, especially if your intelligence and fire control isn't up to scratch. The Ukrainians might not need NATO air support if they're supplied with enough modern SAM systems.
>> No. 37379 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 12:19 am
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>>37375

>the invasion was poorly planned at the last minute

You mean like they... Weren't actually planning on invading? Muglad was right all along?

I mean think about it, perhaps Putin was just hoping a realistic enough looking threat would get him his own way, and when nobody budged, he had no choice but to either shit, or get off the pot. So to speak.
>> No. 37380 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 12:27 am
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>>37379

No that actually does make sense. That's what has been off from the start, if the plan was always to invade, surely they would have just up and done it with no warning. Instead they gave everyone at least a couple of months warning to prepare the defense.

Maybe it really wasn't the intention and they've just had to do it to save face. Maybe it was us that successfully called the bluff. Well, successfully enough that the casualties are within what somebody somewhere calculated as "acceptable", anyway.
>> No. 37381 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 12:41 am
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This video is permanently in my Recommended Videos on YouTube and I don't know why. Are any of you getting it too? It feels very suspicious that it should be there when it isn't foreign pop music, as though an actual human wants me to see it. But, much like the 108-year-old man remembering World War 1, and the great storyteller who wanted to tell me about the Vietnam War, I will never watch this clickbait shit no matter how many times it is inappropriately recommended to me.
>> No. 37382 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 12:50 am
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>>37381
I'm confused as to why it would take him am hour and 14 minutes to say the two words "it isn't" when it takes me less than a second.
>> No. 37383 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 1:04 am
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>>37378
Exactly right. Also, if you study the publicly available ADS-B data, it's obvious the UK/US are flying continuous air support over neighbouring friendly countries; there are lots of AWACS, radar, electronic warfare and in-flight refuelling assets in the air right now - that is a huge multiplier, even if they're not directly over Ukrainian airspace.
>> No. 37384 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 4:32 am
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>> No. 37385 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 6:01 am
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It seems the rumours of the AN-225 Mirya being destroyed have been confirmed. Hardly the most tragic thing happening over there right now, but for me it certainly demonstrates the pointless destruction that war brings.
>> No. 37386 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 7:36 am
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>>37384
That sounds like some full on angsty emo whining.
>> No. 37387 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 8:52 am
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Cugn8JZfk

Have I drank too much Kremlin kool-aid or was Putin being mostly pretty reasonable here?
>> No. 37388 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 9:13 am
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>>37387

In theory yes, the trouble is he's a bent bastard using the cover of some pretty reasonable and quite valid arguments regarding NATO encroachment to pursue entirely cynical realpolitik goals.

I wonder how things would have gone for Russia if he never came to power. I will be the first to say that the way the West has treated Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union has very rarely been fair or reasonable, the Clintons essentially declared open season and strip mined the place, whereas they could have built a firm ally instead, were they not such short sighted neolib ghouls.

But you have to wonder how things might have turned out if they had a leader who took the higher road and continued trying to engage with the west, instead of going stubbornly tit-for-tat like Putin has done all these years.
>> No. 37389 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 9:21 am
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>>37381

John Mearsheimer is actually a very clever bloke who knows what he's on about. There's also:

>6 years ago

So it's not about the current situation is it, you wee daftie.

You might also be interested in this article from 1993, where the very same man argues Ukraine should keep it's nukes, in case of exactly this past week's turn of events.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/1993-06-01/case-ukrainian-nuclear-deterrent

You're not the only person being recommended that video though. It's just the algorithm getting confused because of the recent interest in Ukraine. But rest assured it's not clickbait, it's a very rational and well argued lecture.
>> No. 37390 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 10:06 am
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>>37388

Few countries even reach the level of using valid arguments to pursue their entirely cynical realpolitik goals. This should go without saying, but that's not a defence of Russia. The invasion of Ukraine is a terrible move, strategically and morally.

That said, I stand by my general principle that if we have a list of political issues to care about in our lives, their order should be determined by the degree of our ability to actually affect them.

I am feeling overwhelmed by the bombardment of pro-war propaganda, and very simplistic good versus evil takes on this. Media coverage is blatantly inciting further conflict. While it is really heart-warming to see an outpouring of support for the people of Ukraine, it's less heart-warming to wonder where all of the support and media coverage goes when it's a matter of our direct involvement, and not that of an official enemy.

In short, if we care about stopping conflict, we should have spent the last several decades pressuring our own governments to deescalate and stop breaking agreements with Russia, because that's what the public here has the most power to affect. The Russian public should have done the same to the Russian government (as they are now, but preferably sooner). At this stage, with the invasion already happening, I really don't think our condemnation of Russia from the opposing side will do anything other than fan the flames and increase the likelihood of military conflict.

It would be nice if the entire thing just petered out due to lack of Russian military willpower, or better yet, if we could reach a diplomatic agreement that involved concessions on both sides, including NATO.

There. It's not much of a hot take, but it's what I have to say about this.
>> No. 37391 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 10:32 am
37391 spacer
With ITZ around the corner, how much rice do I need to pack? And how do I stop it spoiling from the effects of radiation and a temperature of 10 000 degrees centigrade?
>> No. 37392 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 10:39 am
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>>37391
Maybe for the apocalypse our advice should change, and we should pack corn; maybe some salt and sugar too.
>> No. 37393 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 10:45 am
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>>3739
Make sure you have a Shed Bunker.
>> No. 37394 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 11:36 am
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>>37385
Fuck. That's really sad. I loved that plane. Poor Antonov An-225 Mriya. It wasn't even a warplane.
>> No. 37395 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 11:45 am
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>>37392
Spam is probably the best thing for an apocalypse. It's extremely dense and it'll never go off.
>> No. 37396 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 2:15 pm
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>>37394

We can rebuild it. We have the technology.
>> No. 37397 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 3:09 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QlpTlz073k
>> No. 37398 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 3:31 pm
37398 spacer
Why does every YouTube thumbnail have to have some idiot's awful face gawping at me? At the current rate of infection, in tens years time you won't be able to buy a copy of Brave New World without Aldous Huxley's mug splashed on the front, crudely doctored to emulate Twich's infamous "poggers" emote.

This is a rhetorical question do not answer it or I'll burn down your shed.
>> No. 37399 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 3:52 pm
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>>37398
The algorithm© likes faces, or at least that is what Youtubers have come to think as they beseech their AI god for his blessing. Fear the AI for he can unperson you at any moment.


>This is a rhetorical question do not answer it or I'll burn down your shed.

Jokes on you, I can't afford a shed.
>> No. 37400 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 5:06 pm
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>>37399
Maybe you'd be able to afford a shed if you included a photo of yourself (looking off to the side as well, they're always looking off to one side) in the thumbnails of your YouTube videos. You only have yourself to blame.
>> No. 37401 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 5:13 pm
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I don't know nowt so indulge me here.

What if Russia just adopted the US dollar? Would it be the uno reverse card of economic sanctions?
>> No. 37402 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 5:19 pm
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>>37401

They'd have to buy the dollars using their own roubles, they can't just print USD.
>> No. 37403 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 6:00 pm
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>>37402
>they can't just print USD
They kind of can, but they'd need to find someone willing to take billions in notes to make it work.
>> No. 37404 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 6:25 pm
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>> No. 37405 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 6:46 pm
37405 spacer
>>37404
Incoherent rambling I'm afraid - many of his assertions about SWIFT are just wrong.
>> No. 37406 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 7:41 pm
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Seems like very odd tactics to have lines of vehicles like this.

Oh for an A10.
>> No. 37407 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 7:43 pm
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>>37406
Looks more like the M4 to me.
>> No. 37408 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 7:45 pm
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>>37405

Iran have been selling oil in EUR for nearly 20 years. China buy large proportions of their oil in RMB. If Russia wanted to sell oil in RUB or create a new reserve currency they could, but they prefer to receive USD.
>> No. 37409 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 7:59 pm
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>>37406
The only rational explaination for Russia's performance so far is that they were trying a soft touch approach and thought the Ukrainians really would be throwing flowers in front of their convoys. That doesn't entirely make sense mind you, because why not send in a proper force just in case that wasn't the reception? Or at least have it following up the rear? I don't want to get ahead of myself mind you, it's still only been five days, and it's not like I've ever invaded a country.

I was thinking about was the way Ukraine still has an air force. I looked something up to find out why and the RUSI, at least, don't quite know either: https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/mysterious-case-missing-russian-air-force
>> No. 37410 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 8:29 pm
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>>37409
Perhaps - I wonder whether the Russian commanders are throwing the game on purpose - in the hope that it leads to Vlad going down; 8d chess I know, but it's the only other explanation I can come up with for the very poor military performance.
>> No. 37411 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 8:47 pm
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>>37410
I actually heard that exact suggestion in this podcast I listened to earlier today: https://soundcloud.com/war_college/russias-war-in-ukraine-isnt

I'm afraid I've no idea when it was brought up because I was doing other things at the time as well and it was recorded Sunday morning so it's not the most up-to-date, but the chap who mentioned it was skeptical though not totally dismissive of the idea. If I had to make a call I would say genuine ineptitude is more likely than sabotage, but honestly it's anyone's guess.
>> No. 37412 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 9:02 pm
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>>37411
> If I had to make a call I would say genuine ineptitude is more likely than sabotage, but honestly it's anyone's guess.

I always agree with this theme too though - it's nearly always a cockup and not a conspiracy. I like some military observers views that part of the conspiracy is the inept/corrupt Russian military, who for a long time have been lying to the boss and have now been found out, with staggering ineptitude. It might all be as simple as diesel/fuel and people cocking up.
>> No. 37413 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 9:06 pm
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>>37412
>diesel/fuel

I meant diesel/food obviously. Add ammunition to that I guess. And there are stories of how poor the equipment is - I kept this picture of some stuff supposedly captured off a Russian supposed paratrooper. The radios look shocking, and I know of many people listening in on the Russian military channels, frequencies are all over the place; there is also much amusing jamming going on, particularly of the famous UVB-76 Buzzer.
>> No. 37414 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 9:11 pm
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Anecdotal stories coming out of Belarus that a lot of the Russian stationed there were pawning off cans of diesel in exchange for cigarettes and vodka.
>> No. 37415 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 9:14 pm
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It seems Putin and his friends are going for the Bond Villain gig, but the rest of the Russian Army is trying to live up to it's stereotyping of being useless inept pissheads.
>> No. 37416 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 9:15 pm
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>>37413
>there is also much amusing jamming going on
I must confess I am perplexed by the lack of cyberwarfare so far. This is Russia's whole thing, I thought. Perhaps the US government aren't sending Palo Alto's top researchers to make Yandex Image Search replace all pictures of Putin with willies, but I can't understand how not a single script kiddie in an Anonymous mask has so far redirected the Kremlin's website to Meatspin.
>> No. 37417 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 9:15 pm
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>>37409

>The only rational explaination for Russia's performance so far is that they were trying a soft touch approach and thought the Ukrainians really would be throwing flowers in front of their convoys.

Putin wouldn't be the first deluded autocrat. It doesn't really fit though because otherwise, he is known as a quite rational and capable strategist. Misjudging the reaction of the Ukrainian people so drastically doesn't really seem like him. So it's more likely that he just has a shit military.
>> No. 37418 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 9:20 pm
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>>37416

Many of the criminal hacking groups have been declaring themselves neutral, not Conti of course. There has been a fair bit going on, it's just not as viral or newsworthy as videos of exploding tanks.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/anonymous-russia-hackers-ukraine-message-b2024989.html
https://twitter.com/BadboyBettereal/status/1498286773096656900
>> No. 37419 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 9:52 pm
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>>37413

I think the kit problems speak to wider issues in the Russian military.

There's a really bizarre mish-mash of stuff in the field. I've seen countless photos of Russian troops with uniforms that don't match or odd bits of civvy gear. Monitoring stations have found Russian radio activity right across the HF and VHF bands with a mix of encodings, we've seen at least three different generations of kit and I've seen some unverified images of Russian infantry with el cheapo Baofeng handheld transceivers.

I was wondering why this struck me as oddly familiar, but then I remembered - our lads in 2001. Bowman, Snatch Land Rovers, faded green S95, cardboard boots, the lack of helicopters, the L85A1. Our procurement system was hopelessly corrupt, our brass were out of touch, our politicians were complacent and the army were thrown into a conflict at short notice. When the war started we "discovered" problems that the P.B.I. had been complaining about for years, but it took us the best part of a decade to actually sort it out.

I suspect that Russia's military failings are basically the same, only worse. Our lads cracked on in spite of everything and did a surprisingly good job considering, because they were professionals and they were well trained to improvise. Russian conscripts don't have that in their favour.
>> No. 37420 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 10:20 pm
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https://nitter.net/clashreport/status/1498371888304766984

This is great - video footage of the TB2 drones.
>> No. 37421 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 10:26 pm
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>>37419
>I've seen some unverified images of Russian infantry with el cheapo Baofeng handheld transceivers.

It would not surprise me at all - someone has helpfully done this to show how it should be done:
https://k0lwc.com/what-radios-are-ukrainian-military-using/
>> No. 37422 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 10:44 pm
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>>37421

Buying modern, off-the-shelf kit based on well-proven technology from a reputable commercial manufacturer? Nah, that'll never work. What they should do is enter an opaque and lengthy procurement process with unrealistic and excessively complex requirements and accept a lowball bid based on an incomprehensible Powerpoint presentation and some nice golf trips.

Ten years later when the project has gone massively over-budget and still hasn't delivered anything useful, there should be several rounds of inquiries that produce thousands of pages of commentary and a vague aspiration to do things differently next time. Things will not be different next time. Ajax.
>> No. 37423 Anonymous
28th February 2022
Monday 11:56 pm
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>>37419

I think you are spot on here, and comparing it to the state of our troops in 2001 is pretty apt.

But I think another thing to keep in mind about it, is that we kind of all knew this already. It really shouldn't come as a surprise, we knew Russia had big numbers on paper but that they were largely conscripts of limited experience, and poorly equipped. I can remember us discussing it on this site before, in threads much older than this one.

We all just got caught up in the propaganda machine, thinking Russia is the angry bear on steroids that could crush a little bunny of a country like Ukraine under its paw. What we're seeing is that evidently, that isn't the case at all. And when you think about it it makes sense, Russia has a huge landmass, but most of its population centres are towards the border with Europe; a bit like how when you look at it on a map, most of the important bits of Canada really might as well just be part of the US. We should really think of Russia much more like Germany or France, because by any measure you use, it's no stronger than either of them. Still formidable, sure, but nowhere near superpower status.

It's also funny that in a way, all of this does go to show that maybe Russian security concerns over Ukraine were actually quite well founded- They needed a buffer zone and they were legitimately scared of NATO, because they knew their own territorial defence capabilities would be extremely shaky.

Of course the elephant in the room is nukes. If conventional military were the only factor, I'm pretty sure most European countries can hold their own against Russia, and the bigger ones like us, France and Germany can probably quite confidently kick their arse. But there's always the nukes. Are the nukes in the same state as the rest of their army, where if the worst came to worst, half of them would just harmlessly make a hole in the ground on impact? Or is a nuke just a nuke? I don't fancy finding out.
>> No. 37424 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 12:14 am
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>Ukraine is planning to issue a “war bond” to fund its armed forces in their battle against Russian invasion as the country sought to reassure international investors that it will not default on its debt.

>The Ukraine finance ministry unveiled its plans to raise money to fund its war effort, in the announcement of a new bond auction scheduled for Tuesday. “In the time of military aggression of the Russian Federation, the ministry of finance offers citizens, businesses and foreign investors [the chance] to support the budget of Ukraine by investing in military government bonds.” On an investor call with bond fund managers on Monday, Ukraine’s government commissioner for public debt management Yuriy Butsa described the fundraising exercise as a “military bond” aimed at “everyone who wants to support the budget in these troubling times”.

>The Ukrainian finance ministry said that the new bonds would have a one-year maturity with the interest rate offered to investors “to be determined in the auction. The proceeds from the bonds will be used to meet the needs of the armed forces of Ukraine and to ensure the uninterrupted provision of the state’s financial needs under the war,” the finance ministry said.
https://www.ft.com/content/faf894e7-f7a8-4a48-a7ce-2738441ac079

And to think, otherlad called us monsters for war profiteering. What do you think the price will be?
>> No. 37425 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 12:28 am
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>>37424

Perhaps the better question is will you ever see them back?

Russia looks like it's struggling, sure, but I think it's only a matter of how long and how messy it gets before they eventually come out on top.
>> No. 37426 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 12:49 am
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>>37423

>But I think another thing to keep in mind about it, is that we kind of all knew this already. It really shouldn't come as a surprise, we knew Russia had big numbers on paper but that they were largely conscripts of limited experience, and poorly equipped.

We did, but I think a few things did surprise us.

Firstly, the lack of serious strategic preparation and the weaknesses in the chain of command. The inadequacies of the Russian army in terms of training and equipment were clear, but we didn't expect so many units to end up following vague orders, wandering aimlessly or just getting lost. I strongly suspect that this confusion goes right to the top; the sheer senselessness of the invasion makes it very difficult for military leadership to develop an effective strategy, because they don't know what (if anything) they're supposed to achieve.

Secondly, the failure to make effective use of professional units. Russia does have a very capable core of professionals, but they don't seem to have made much of an impact in the conflict. The Ukrainians are concerned that they're being saved for an assault on Kyiv, which remains a possibility.

Thirdly, atrociously poor morale. We have clearly over-estimated the effectiveness of Putin's domestic propaganda, but there were also a number of unforced errors in how Russian troops were prepared and deployed. The already shaky morale of a conscript army has been further undermined by them apparently being kept in the dark - we have consistent reports that Russian soldiers have simply been sent out with no idea of what they're supposed to be achieving.

Fourthly, the spirit of the Ukrainian people. The Ukrainians have thus far demonstrated an incredible willingness to fight and seem to be prepared to take very heavy losses. Zelenskyy deserves a great deal of credit for his truly outstanding leadership during this crisis, but the Ukrainian people ultimately deserve the credit for summoning a level of patriotic unity that defies understanding.

>It's also funny that in a way, all of this does go to show that maybe Russian security concerns over Ukraine were actually quite well founded

I'm not sure that we can extrapolate so much from a botched invasion. Personally, I think what we're seeing is better explained by deep cracks within the Russian regime. The Russians have a very long history of fighting very effectively despite their only advantage being numbers. I'm almost certain that the Russians could fight vastly more effectively if they wanted to; the problem is that Putin seems to be the only person who actually wants this war.

The idea has been floated that the invasion is being deliberately sabotaged by generals with the aim of dethroning Putin, but I don't think such a conspiracy is at all necessary to explain the facts. Russian troop movements in Ukraine are wholly consistent with the actions of an army that simply doesn't care. The men don't know why they're in Ukraine and just want to go home; at best they're indifferent and at worst they're sympathetic to the Ukrainians. Everyone above them from sergeants to generals want to do just enough to avoid a charge of insubordination, without risking pushing their men into desertion or mutiny. The old Soviet joke "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us" springs to mind.

If I were Putin, I wouldn't be afraid of NATO - I'd be worrying about what this fiasco says about my grip on power.
>> No. 37427 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 12:51 am
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>>37424
It had better be more than £200 because that's how much I've already sent the Ukraine war effort for free.

But talk of economics has made me worry: we're doing everything we can to completely bankrupt Russia as punishment. Great; slava Ukraini and all that. But if we wind up with a massive humanitarian crisis, then we have a Russia-sized humanitarian crisis and that's going to be truly awful news on a global scale. And not only that, but there are countries like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan who base a large amount of their economies on selling things to Russia, and even on sending their people into Russia to work as cleaners and delivery drivers. Those countries have done nothing wrong, and they're going to be completely fucked if Baddymir Dustbin doesn't cave completely very soon.
>> No. 37428 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 1:31 am
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>>37426
>If I were Putin, I wouldn't be afraid of NATO - I'd be worrying about what this fiasco says about my grip on power.

Not Otherlad but I think there might be a point in that Russia was on borrowed time, we can be certain that Putin would view it from a long-term civilization context because he has that variant of autism. For the long-term the prospects of Russia are absolutely grim if it can't build a sphere of influence around it to exploit, meanwhile Ukraine has clearly spent 8 years becoming a harder and harder target creating a new sense of urgency. Russia, at the same time, can't afford to maintain its security against NATO with Ukraine in the fold so it's quite do-or-die as far as its independent foreign policy goes (and for Lukashenko die in a more real sense) without even getting into the domestic challenges a prosperous and democratic Ukraine could bring.

I guess the upswing we might see from this is for Russia to either accept a renewed 2000s-era vaguely pro-western stance from simple geopolitical reality or alternatively for it to forgo its own 'great power' status to try to play a middle-man in the US-China Cold War. Either choice may ironically get post-Putin what they want in terms of the US leaving the continent but economically Russia has maybe 10 years to create an industry that isn't the world's petrol station and it looks like the ship has sailed along with the goodwill of its largest trading partners.
>> No. 37430 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 9:07 am
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: B3TA DECLARES SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA
This will surely bring the Kremlin to its knees

We've banned traffic from Russia on b3ta.com - if Putin wants back his ability to post bad photoshops of cats he has to withdraw from Ukraine NOW. And that's him told.


Nice one lads. Has purps followed suit yet? If not why does he hate Ukraine?
>> No. 37431 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 9:14 am
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>>37430
Why do you think /zoo/ died about eight years ago? Purps had enough of Russians spamming fighter jets whilst apologising for their bad English so decided to ban foreigners from just about everywhere, I think everyone but Seppos, from posting here.
>> No. 37432 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 9:16 am
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>>37430

Interesting to see that we have a not dissimilar amount of traffic to them now, which says more about their decline than our popularity.
>> No. 37433 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 9:16 am
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>>37431
Fair enough. I keep hearing about the Great Wall but I didn't know precisely how far it extended.
>> No. 37434 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 9:44 am
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>>37433
I've been able to view but not post when I've crossed The Channel.
>> No. 37437 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 1:03 pm
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>>37433
In Belgium, you get an Apache error screen and can't view the site at all. I assume you can visit /shed/ if you manually type the URL, but otherwise this site is cut off over there.
>> No. 37438 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 1:21 pm
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https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2022/02/ukraine-offers-pay-russians-who-surrender-while-pentagon-assesses-moscows-nuke-posture/362538/

>Ukraine Offers to Pay Russians Who Surrender, While Pentagon Assesses Moscow’s Nuke Posture

>“We offer Russian soldiers a choice: to die in an unjust war, or full amnesty and 5 million rubles of compensation if they put down their guns and voluntarily surrender to prison,”

Even after the current devaluation of the Ruble, that amounts to exactly £38,829.56 according to Google.

Not bad. You can probably buy a small house in the Ukrainian countryside for that kind of money once you get released. Unless Putin actually gets kicked out of office, you'll never be able to set foot on Russian soil again, mind.
>> No. 37439 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 2:02 pm
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>>37438

How do I join the Russian army? Will the Foreign Secretary support me?
>> No. 37441 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 3:15 pm
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>>37438

Clever. Even if no-one takes up the offer, it'll have an insidious effect on morale.
>> No. 37442 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 3:35 pm
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>>37438
How full is the amnesty if you're volunteering yourself straight into a Ukrainian prison?
>> No. 37443 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 3:37 pm
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>>37427
They went for £24.80 and it looks like they're giving all your free money to the Russians now. That'll teach you for helping people.

>>37438
Doesn't really seem like there's any guarantee on the offer. At best you're liable to have most of it nicked for 'expenses' attached to your captivity when you could instead be out robbing Ukrainian banks with the chance of finding some real money.

It's not like an offer from the UK where we probably would deliver on a 2-4-1 Nando's voucher.
>> No. 37444 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 4:59 pm
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Maybe I'm just a Putin shill, but does anyone else get the sense that this guy's going to goad war-horny Western politicians into nuclear war to prove that "hell yeah we're tough enough"?
>> No. 37445 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 5:02 pm
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>>37444
He's gonna make us look like right mugs.
>> No. 37446 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 5:06 pm
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>>37444

I think he's looking at a 40 mile convoy of Russian forces approaching Kyiv and begging for help.
>> No. 37447 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 5:18 pm
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>>37446

I presumed the West was already falling over ourselves in sending military and financial aid? What exactly else is he asking us to do, declare war on Russia?

Fair play to him either way.
>> No. 37448 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 5:31 pm
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>>37444

He's doing his job. Since the other guy was deposed in 2014, this is exactly what he was installed for.
>> No. 37449 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 5:32 pm
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>>37444

He's a TV actor doing a very good job of looking more sincere than your average politico. But of course he is, he's an actor.

Literally, it's like if James Cordon was our prime minister. Keep that in mind.
>> No. 37450 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 5:43 pm
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>>37449
He is much, much better than James Corden. He was also the voice of Paddington in the Ukrainian dubs of the Paddington films.
>> No. 37451 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 5:46 pm
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>>37449

I reckon Jimmy Carr is probably a better analogy. Both comedians, both tax dodgers, probably both hate gypsies.
>> No. 37452 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 5:48 pm
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>>37449
I think being in the middle of a massive war discounts this idea of his behavior being "acting". If you punched Patrick Stewart on the nose he would actually be very up with you, he wouldn't be putting on just because he pretended to be Sejanus back in the 70s.
>> No. 37453 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 5:49 pm
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>>37447

The military aid is still a bit half-arsed. Some western countries still haven't agreed to supply anything. Most have at least agreed to provide small arms and man-portable missile systems, but there's a distinct lack of urgency from many of them and time really is of the essence.

There are some fairly complicated issues that could make a really big difference. The most obvious one that comes to mind is the Bayraktar TB2 drone system. The Ukrainian armed forces have used them to tremendous effect, but they can't get more because they're built in Turkey which is subject to sanctions. Strings could and should be pulled to work around this.

Even if we absolutely don't want to go to war, there's a lot we could do with plausible deniability. Turkey have closed the Bosphorus Strait, but a couple of SBS squadrons deployed to the Sea of Azov could do massive damage to Russian logistics. Obviously we wouldn't know if that was happening, but Russia aren't complaining about daft militant woggery. Russian communication and navigation systems still appear to be working, but we have the capacity to jam them without setting foot on Ukrainian soil.
>> No. 37454 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 6:00 pm
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>>37452

Maybe so, but that's no reason to take everything at face value, people still have motives even in times of war. In this case it's getting as much support for his country as possible, which is reasonably justified, but that doesn't mean he won't be hamming it up. His propaganda ministry clearly is anyway.

I take your point, but it's also extremely naive. Just because Russia are the baddies and Ukraine are the goodies doesn't mean we should take everything from the Ukrainian side at 100% face value.
>> No. 37455 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 6:04 pm
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>>37453

>Some western countries still haven't agreed to supply anything.

I think what we're seeing there is that, when push comes to shove, many of them don't actually care that much. Big players like ourselves, the US, France and Germany have plenty at stake with Ukraine, despite how we might claim it's all about doing the right thing defending a nation under attack. For a lot of smaller countries things are a lot more pragmatic than that, and Ukraine just isn't the sort of place that's worth the hassle for them, as sad as that is.

Let's be fucking real though, it's absolutely the right thing to do to defend Ukraine, but that's not why we're doing it, is it.
>> No. 37456 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 6:05 pm
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>>37454
Right, that's not what I said and your use of "baddies" and "goodies", even in a wry manner, is making me want to spit in your face.
>> No. 37457 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 6:10 pm
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I can't help but feel that some part of Zelensky must be loving this. Before all of this it looked like he was set to lose the next election and fade into obscurity. Now he's captured the attention and admiration of the entire world (bar Russia of course) and will likely go down as a hero in Ukrainian history. This is his big moment, whether he's acting or not.
>> No. 37458 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 6:31 pm
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>>37457

Given the choice between a comfortable pension as a former President and enjoying early retirement peacefully, and having to defend your country against a Russian invasion with a decidedly more than scant likelihood that you and everybody else will be obliterated in a third world war, I don't think many people would pick the latter.
>> No. 37459 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 6:32 pm
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>>37457
Ben Whishaw voiced Paddington in the English-language Paddington films. He's playing a junior doctor in a rip-off of Scrubs while his Ukrainian counterpart is the greatest statesman on earth right now. But Ben Whishaw is probably still happy his country isn't being invaded.
>> No. 37460 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 6:40 pm
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>>37458
>>37459

See, this is what I mean. Mind bendingly naive takes.

Now, I'm not saying it's a barrel of laughs having "your" country invaded, but do you really think he's going down with the ship? That's such an outstandingly rare thing to actually happen, and it's only ever dictators who refuse to surrender who actually do.

He'll be off living safely in the Netherlands or somewhere like that as soon as it looks like the fighting is no longer sustainable. It's the ordinary people who will suffer, stop simping for the political elites. Christ.
>> No. 37461 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 6:42 pm
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>>37458

I think a lot of people would jump at the opportunity. It's basically the same reason people volunteer for war, except even more glory.
>> No. 37462 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 6:44 pm
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>>37460

I'm not sure I entirely disagree that he might try to fuck off at the last minute but also it wouldn't be un-Putin-like to then have him killed horribly in another country.
>> No. 37464 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 6:56 pm
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>>37462

>but also it wouldn't be un-Putin-like to then have him killed horribly in another country.

That's actually a possibility IMO. There are several precedents for this, as we all know. They won't just let somebody like Selensky get away.

I'm not sure if it's just an act he is puttin on, or if he is really prepared to go down with his country. It's a nice touch though that he's now appearing in interviews without suit and tie and instead in what seems to be an army issue combat T shirt.
>> No. 37465 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 7:00 pm
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>>37460

Zelenskyy's leadership during this conflict has vastly exceeded expectations. Ukrainians couldn't ask for more from a leader.

If narcissism causes someone to act for the greater good, is it really narcissism?
>> No. 37467 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 7:02 pm
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>>37464

The point I forgot to add on to my post is that he's going to know it's a strong possibility. It has to change the risk-of-staying/reward-of-running factor quite a lot.
I don't know the man though, other than the above I don't have any sensible basis to speculate.
>> No. 37468 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 7:03 pm
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>>37462

>I'm not sure I entirely disagree that he might try to fuck off at the last minute

There's really not much doubt about it, you have to be quite unfamiliar with the history of warfare to think otherwise.

From the late medieval period right the way through to the first world war, the upper class and rulers of a country had little to fear in wartime, they could expect to be treated very well if captured, regardless how bitter the fighting got. Knights and other nobles could expect to essentially be hosted as guests until they were ransomed back after the fighting stopped, and anyway, most of the leaders were related to each other somehow. War was more of a family feud in those days.

That all changed during the early 20th century when we first started to see a new kind of warfare nobody was safe from, and doubly so when socialist revolutions started kicking off all over the shop. Suddenly the elites were no longer a protected class- So ever since then it has been pretty much standard procedure to have a contingency plan of getting them the fuck out of there if it all goes to shit. During WW2 we had half of Europe's deposed leaders living here. Nobody is saying Charles de Gaulle was a fanny for running away from the Germans are they? Well. Bad example maybe but you get my point.

You are probably right that he will probably have a very suspicious accident involving defenestration the next decade or so though.
>> No. 37470 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 7:43 pm
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>>37469

No, but I wonder if the West has really thought everything through. While it was probably just saber rattling and posturing that he threatened the nuclear option against the West, you have to ask what happens if Putin is actually facing defeat in Ukraine. Without aid and weapons from the West, Ukraine would really have a hard time withstanding the Russian invasion permanently. So in a way, Putin's defeat would in no small part be at the hands of the West. But he could then still switch it up to nuclear, if it was his only chance to either defeat Ukraine or not only lose the war but probably also be ousted by a turning tide of protest back home in Russia. It wouldn't have to be world-ending global thermonuclear war, and I don't think he's really in that frame of mind, yet, like Hitler who in the end had no qualms to take everybody down with him. But what if Putin uses low-yield nuclear bombs to disable enemy installations. Because those nuclear strikes would be confined to Ukraine, where NATO forces decidedly won't be in active combat, he could get away with it and not trigger Article 5 and thus set off armageddon.
>> No. 37471 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 8:01 pm
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>>37470
Russia sure has a lot of nukes, but America has put a lot of work into anti-missile systems, our airforces can probably knock out most of their bombers and NATO probably know where all Russias subs are at any one time.
The big question is over Russias capability with hypersonic missiles, we know they've been trying to develop them, but are they an ace up Putins sleeve or just a bluff. My thoughts are that if their hypersonic missiles really were a gamechanger, then NATO being on Russias borders would no longer be a threat.
>> No. 37473 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 8:16 pm
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>>37471

The US military was able to detect the ones China launched successfully, I'm inferring from this that if the Russians have also developed and tested them then those would also have been detected.
>> No. 37474 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 8:38 pm
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>>37471

>but are they an ace up Putins sleeve or just a bluff

The Kremlin has been pretty boastful about those, but even with hypersonic missiles, he probably doesn't have enough of them to prevent a NATO counterattack outright. A substantial number of American ICBMs would still get through and cause enough damage on Russian soil to make losses unacceptable, both politically and in terms of civilian deaths and damage to infrastructure and vital industries.

What worries me on a subconscious personal level is that whenever I am outside in nature somewhere the last couple of days or even weeks, I now catch myself looking at and beholding everything around me much more intensely than usual, with an eerie feeling in the back of my head that it might be one of the last times I get to do that.

I guess for me it's a throwback to the film The Day After, where one of the protagonists does something similar just minutes before the bombs fall.

Curiously, although that movie gives little political context on a broader scale as to what leads to WW3 in it and instead focuses on how the nuclear war affects regular people, it all seems to start with the Warsaw Pact for whatever reason suddenly invading the eastern parts of West Germany by land, amid heightened overall tensions between the Soviets and NATO. Small and locally confined nuclear explosions along the Warsaw Pact's advance into Germany then suddenly trigger a global thermonuclear war.

I would otherwise recommend that movie for its historical significance, as even Ronald Reagan purportedly watched it with his staff at the White House and it influenced his decision making towards bringing the Cold War to an end. But I guess it's all just getting a bit too real at the moment.
>> No. 37475 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 9:03 pm
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>>37474
>The Kremlin has been pretty boastful about those, but even with hypersonic missiles, he probably doesn't have enough of them to prevent a NATO counterattack outright. A substantial number of American ICBMs would still get through and cause enough damage on Russian soil to make losses unacceptable, both politically and in terms of civilian deaths and damage to infrastructure and vital industries.

No the hypersonics are the offensive weapon systems, and the point of them is that they evade NATOs defences, not the other way round.
>> No. 37476 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 9:23 pm
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>>37473

>The US military was able to detect the ones China launched successfully

Detect, but not necessarily intercept. Hypersonic glide vehicles aren't all that much faster than ballistic missiles, but they have a shallower trajectory and they're far more manoeuvrable. Their flight path is less predictable than that of a ballistic missile, so they're far harder to shoot down. Without deep insights into the flight characteristics and guidance package, the Yanks can't be at all confident that their missile defence systems would work.

They aren't a revolutionary type of weapon, but they do change the calculus of any potential nuclear conflict by increasing the potential risks to American soil.

We're fucked either way.
>> No. 37477 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 9:26 pm
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>>37475
I think the point is that the first lot to launch are intended to take out your enemy's retaliatory capabilities.

>>37476
Bit of a moot point if nobody's detected Russia having any, China's not the issue.
>> No. 37479 Anonymous ## Mod ##
1st March 2022
Tuesday 9:33 pm
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There's someone ban evading who keeps trying to push some sort of nuclear agenda. Please don't engage with him.
>> No. 37480 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 9:43 pm
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>>37477

>Bit of a moot point if nobody's detected Russia having any

The open source information is patchy, but Russia claim to have test-fired two different systems, Zircon and Avangard. The Yanks might be confident that they don't work, they might not be, but they're putting quite a lot of money into upgrading their missile defence systems.
>> No. 37481 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 10:14 pm
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I'd like to hold faith in the people who's job it is to actually push the big red button (the real one at the actual launch sites, not the metaphorical one the president of either respective states has) knowing that if they were ever given the order to actually do so, they would refuse.

I mean, if I were the sort of person who had that job, I know full well I'd play along, but know that if the time came, my answer would simply be no. I don't have much faith in humanity but with all the psychological evaluation you must have to go through to even hold that role, they must at least have a rational instinct for self preservation, and know that actually following that order is suicide.

I hope that's the case, anyway. That nukes are like a bloke with a ten inch cock the width of a can of Stella, but severe erectile dysfunction.
>> No. 37482 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 10:18 pm
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>>37481
>> No. 37483 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 10:19 pm
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>>37481
>> No. 37484 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 10:50 pm
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>>37482
>>37483

What exactly is this supposed to prove? As a metalhead I've got loads of t-shirts with skulls and pentagrams and what have you on them, it doesn't mean I'm a murderous satan worshipper in reality.

Likewise, unless the military is actively selecting for the kind of psychopath who wouldn't hesitate to end all life on planet Earth (which seems unlikely, or else we would have all died by now thanks to one of them going postal after their girlfriend left them or something), I'd imagine these things are just the very floor of fatalistic dark humour.

I'd also like to imagine that over the years, the people responsible for maintaining the infrastructure have built up such a labyrinthine bureaucracy over actually authorising a launch that in the actual event, the process of sitting on the phone and talking to someone who has to talk to someone else to get the codes to give the person who gives you the codes etc etc would give them enough pause to think twice.
>> No. 37485 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 11:18 pm
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>>37481
On a similar track, I've always wondered what each prime minister (and perhaps LOTO) would've put in their letters to the Trident and Polaris submarines. Who'd have retaliated, who'd have handed them over to Australia or the Yanks, and who'd have gone "If you're reading this, you're aboard a colossal waste of money, so just give up. Don't bother retaliating."
In some ways it seems much more interesting than what they might do in an actual war-gone-hot situation, demanding a last minute decision. In those cases it's too easy to imagine someone losing their temper or just giving in to despair. What they wrote in the calm of having just become PM, half-thinking and entirely hoping it might never be read, that's much more interesting. Far greater potential for dove types to quietly reveal they'd incinerate millions, and for war-hawks to reveal that despite all the talk if the deterrent didn't work they'd give up and hope at least a few commies make it out alive.

My recollection is that after retiring Denis Healey said that had he become PM, his letter would've been of that last sort, while Callaghan said he'd have ordered retaliation were he still such alive in those circumstances but kept quiet about what his letter said. Everyone else is third party speculation. (Which is itself interesting, though only in what it tells you about how people think about the various leaders.)
>> No. 37486 Anonymous
1st March 2022
Tuesday 11:50 pm
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>Nike restricts purchases of its sportswear in Russia, Reuters reports
It's a start, but it won't be until Adidas make a stand that the people will really turn on Putin.
>> No. 37487 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 12:10 am
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>>37484
>Likewise, unless the military is actively selecting for the kind of psychopath who wouldn't hesitate to end all life on planet Earth

Missile crews are specifically selected to obey the order without question. The Americans literally pull anyone during training who asks hypotheticals because of the actions they need to take and Stanislav Petrov saved the world because, in his own view, he had civilian training and that had anyone else been on the shift thing would've gone differently.

Goddamn it, Modlad says we can't play nuclear war but people are posting wrongthings.
>> No. 37488 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 12:35 am
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>>37484

They aren't psychopaths, they're just daft kids, which is very much the problem.

For all their importance, US nuclear weapons systems have been largely forgotten about - by the public, by politicians and by military leadership. The result is ageing technology, crumbling infrastructure and mediocre staff.

The literal keys to America's land-based nuclear weapons are held by bored 20-somethings in remote parts of the midwest who spend most of their time on duty watching TV and eating junk food. The silos aren't sophisticated facilities with careful oversight, they're concrete bunkers filled with 1970s technology and a handful of staff. It's a branch of the Air Force staffed mainly by dossers and incompetents, because it's crushingly boring and offers no real chance of advancement.

There are frequent and serious errors of security and safety, most of which go unreported due to military secrecy and a lack of interest. Silo doors being left open to let the pizza delivery man in, guards falling asleep or taking drugs on duty, officers failing basic proficiency tests, nuclear weapons being loaded onto the wrong aircraft.

If it comes to it, the people down in those silos will likely press the red button with little thought, because they were recruited with little thought, trained with little thought and supervised with little thought. An equally serious risk is that they press the button erroneously because of a drill gone wrong or an elaborate hoax, or that some part of their ageing computer system triggers a false alarm.

I can highly recommend Eric Schlosser's book Command and Control, which covers in detail the deficiencies in safety management in the US nuclear deterrent system.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Command-Control-Eric-Schlosser/dp/0141037911

https://www.c-span.org/video/?314853-1/after-words-eric-schlosser
>> No. 37489 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 1:54 am
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>Ukraine Pushes to Unplug Russia From the Internet
>Ukrainian officials are asking a key organization responsible for the operation of the internet to disconnect all Russian sites from the global computer network of networks, Rolling Stone has learned. It’s the latest attempt to turn Russia into a pariah state in retaliation for the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. Experts call it a massive — and ill-advised — step.

>According to an email reviewed by Rolling Stone, Ukraine’s request to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) seeks to revoke domains issued in Russia and shut down primary Domain Name System (DNS) servers in the country — a move that would effectively bar access to Russian internet sites, with the potential of knocking the entire country offline. “No one anywhere in the world would be able to reach any Russian website,” explains Bill Woodcock, executive director of Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit that provides support and security to a collection of software and hardware systems known as critical internet infrastructure. “People inside Russia, unless they had good connectivity to the rest of the world, would be unable to reach any other part of the internet — just Russian parts.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/ukraine-icann-russia-internet-runet-disconnection-1314278/

I'm not so sure about this lads.
>> No. 37490 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 1:55 am
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>>37484

>What exactly is this supposed to prove? As a metalhead I've got loads of t-shirts with skulls and pentagrams and what have you on them, it doesn't mean I'm a murderous satan worshipper in reality.

Perhaps, but if you got on a bus and the driver had a company issued (or company approved, or tolerated) jacket on that said "When the going gets tough, swerve into a ravine" Would you stay on that bus?
>> No. 37491 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 6:10 am
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>>37489
I don't know if the whole boycott thing is going too far. At the very least it's double standards. If everyone is happy to boycott Russia why shouldn't they be doing the same to the Saudis due to what they're doing in Yemen? Do we only care when it happens to white western nations?
>> No. 37492 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 7:55 am
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>>37491

>Do we only care when it happens to white western nations?

Yes, I think that's basically the gist of it.
>> No. 37493 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 7:55 am
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>>37491

Aside from this being a brutal unprovoked attack on a sovereign neighbouring country, I think the west sees this as a golden opportunity to bring about the downfall of Putin's regime. So we're throwing everything we've got at it, in an attempt to turn his invasion into a complete fuck up.

Which is fine, Putin does need to go, but you can't help seeing a bit of hypocrisy on our side at play.
>> No. 37494 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 9:46 am
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>>37490
I'd chuckle and think nothing more of it.
>> No. 37495 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 10:11 am
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>>37490

Do you take it literally when somebody has one of those "don't talk to me until I've had my coffee" mugs/t-shirts too?
>> No. 37496 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 10:21 am
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>>37495
Yes, by reading it you've entered into a legally-binding contract.
>> No. 37498 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 11:10 am
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I've read that the invasion is likely to see car prices going up because both Russia and Ukraine are key to the supply of materials used in semiconductors.
>> No. 37499 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 11:51 am
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>>37494

I mean, me too, but what if you saw it in America? They don't do sarcasm.
>> No. 37500 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 11:59 am
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>>37498

Yes, along with any other sort of electrics, really. Apparently Ukraine supplies around 60% of the world's neon (including a staggering 90% of US neon), which is a key commodity needed to run the lasers that etch chips, and Russia similarly supplies almost half of all the palladium in the world too, and we need that for semiconductors too.

I really would like to upgrade my GTX 1060 sometime before I retire.
>> No. 37502 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 12:29 pm
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>>37501
Google it you carpet-bagger.
>> No. 37503 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 12:32 pm
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>>37501
Ukraine translates as "borderland", so it was literally known as "the borderland" when it was part of the Soviet Union. Since they gained independence they've dropped the "the".

Apparently the only two countries in the world you should properly use it for are The Gambia and The Bahamas.
>> No. 37505 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 12:52 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFkSJDAazAw

I think people like Zelensky because he's young enough to be relatable to the needs of his country, rather than someone senile and doddery that should have been put out to pasture long ago.
>> No. 37506 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 1:01 pm
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>>37491
I think it's a telling problem following the whole ‘blue eyes and blonde hair' comment and failure to treat black people as human beings. There's no doubt a European exceptionalism at work here just as we saw with Greece during the financial crisis and we'd sooner sweep the hypocrisy under the carpet.

>I don't know if the whole boycott thing is going too far.

I think the problem is more that Ukraine is asking that the west disconnect educated Russians from interacting with the wider world. It's not conductive to solving the crisis, either by toppling the Putin regime or more likely providing an out. We're fostering a siege mentality and overestimating what the west can achieve when we're also dealing with Iran, North Korea and China with many states telling us to piss off with our sanctions.

>>37500
We've been over this, Ukraine and Russia don't hold a monopoly and in the case of neon it's a by-product of industrial processes. The real problem is more immediate for grain and energy we're the major impact is more the speed at which supply lines need to change.

Albania is about to run out bread, imagine that the next time you have soup.

>>37505
Obama didn't exactly solve the Ukrainian crisis the first time around despite the BBC telling me that women were wanking to him all the time.
>> No. 37507 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 1:22 pm
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>>37506
> imagine that the next time you have soup.
Did you just assume that I have with my soup?
>> No. 37509 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 1:31 pm
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>>37491
I've been wondering why this war is so much more serious than others, and I don't think it's because it's white people. I think it's because Ukraine is being attacked precisely because they are like us. If Yemen gets bombed, we ask why, and I think the answer is to do with being Shiite eskimos. We're not Shiite eskimos. If Israelis and Palestinians kill each other for being the opposite one, well, I am neither so I am safe. But the entire motivation for Russia invading Ukraine, the whole reason Putin did it, is because Ukraine is becoming more Western (like us) and embracing Western values (like I do) and not speaking Russian (like I don't) and wanting to join NATO and the EU, like I do. If Putin does this to Ukraine, imagine what he'd do to me. That's why the attack on Ukraine feels like an attack on me, even though it's thousands of miles away.
>> No. 37510 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 1:43 pm
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Wow, Westerners care more about a war that is pushing Russia westward, than one between minor powers in the middle east. Thats... uh, racist!
>> No. 37511 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 2:08 pm
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>>37509

>If Putin does this to Ukraine, imagine what he'd do to me. That's why the attack on Ukraine feels like an attack on me

Pull the other one you fucking ponce.

>>37510

Can you please just stop making such droll posts, we don't need them. It's not even that you're wrong, it's just so fucking boring. I come to Britfa hoping to see perspectives other than the ones plastered over every single newspaper and website already, thanks.
>> No. 37512 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 2:09 pm
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>>37491
>why shouldn't they be doing the same to the Saudis due to what they're doing in Yemen
Because Saudi oil money is a hell of a drug.
>> No. 37514 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 2:27 pm
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>>37513
Why are you reposting a very old Tweet with no further comment? Is it because you want me to commit bodily harm against your person?
>> No. 37515 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 2:29 pm
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>>37513
Going off on a tangent, but I like the idea of depicting countries as animals. If there was a British equivalent of Leo Belgicus I'd most likely have a map of it on my wall.
>> No. 37516 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 3:20 pm
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>>37511
>Can you please just stop making such droll posts, we don't need them. It's not even that you're wrong, it's just so fucking boring. I come to Britfa hoping to see perspectives other than the ones plastered over every single newspaper and website already, thanks.

Maybe you should ironically go check out the comment section of the Daily Mail which may be more your pace? Not him, I just think you're a dickhead.
>> No. 37518 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 3:52 pm
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>>37490
There aren't many Ravines in Ossett, so I don't see anything to worry about.
>> No. 37520 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 4:36 pm
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>>37516

I'm quite sure the Mail will be even more full of war-hark chest beating than MSM-lad over there (who I'm sure isn't you) is, so no thanks.
>> No. 37521 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 5:04 pm
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Who will jump the gun first and decide enough is enough?
>> No. 37522 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 5:45 pm
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>>37511
>I come to Britfa hoping to see perspectives other than the ones plastered over every single newspaper and website already, thanks.
Not even him, but fun fact: there aren't two sides to everything.
>> No. 37523 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 5:50 pm
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>>37490

I've been chuckling to myself about that ravine thing for a while and think it would make a good patch.
>> No. 37525 Anonymous
2nd March 2022
Wednesday 6:31 pm
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>>37503

Perhaps they should change their name if they don't want people like Putin questioning their status as an independent nation.
>> No. 37532 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 8:17 am
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>>37487

I'm not stopping anyone talking about nuclear war, it's just that low effort shitposter.
>> No. 37533 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 9:22 am
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>>37532

One more thing about Stanislav Petrov - somebody was saying that he decided against ordering a missile launch when the moment had objectively come as far as the information available to him was suggesting at that time, and as would have been his duty. He didn't make that decision because he didn't want to send untold American civilian casualties to their certain death, but because it didn't make sense to him that NATO would attack the Warsaw Pact with just five ICBMs that Russian spy satellites were detecting. Given that the obvious response by the Warsaw Pact would have been a full retaliatory strike that would have borne the risk of destroying most of NATO's nuclear arsenal on the ground and would have left the Soviets with minimal damage to their infrastructure while much of NATO's own territory would have been wiped out.

The culprit that evening in Moscow were Russian spy satellites whose software mistook sunrise glare over Alaska for a series of ICBM launches. Stanislav Petrov's service to mankind at that moment was that without knowing this, he reasoned that it just didn't make sense. But if for whatever reason the computers at his command post had shown an - equally non-existing - full-scale missile attack by all of NATO, then history could have taken an entirely different course. Because that was the kind of thing that Petrov was trained for, and probably would have been capable of carrying out.


In other news:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60597751

>An investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine has been launched, after Russia was accused of bombing civilians.

>The International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor said evidence was being collected on alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

>It came after 39 nations called for an inquiry to be opened.
>> No. 37534 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 9:36 am
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>>37533
Didn't they find that war crimes were committed in Syria? I can't remember it amounting to anything, certainly Assad didn't go "oh, shit, I didn't realise we're committing war crimes, we'd better pack it in."
>> No. 37535 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 9:47 am
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>>37534

I guess you could be flippant about it and say that in every war, all sides commit war crimes and don't seem to think much of it.

But it looks like it's now going to be an integral part of the West's response to the Russian invasion to point out the war crimes committed by Russian troops. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with it, but it's worth remembering that it's not always just the enemy who commits them.
>> No. 37536 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 10:15 am
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>>37535
>it's worth remembering that it's not always just the enemy who commits them.
It is though, by retroactive consensus. The winners don't generally punish themselves for what they did to win.
>> No. 37537 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 10:26 am
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>>37536

True enough; when the Soviet troops moved into Germany in 1945, there were countless reports of Russian soldiers raping civilian German women. In some respect, I guess they were taking personal revenge for the war crimes the Nazis had committed when they invaded Russia, but they were war crimes nonetheless. The UN nowadays officially recognises rape as a war crime.
>> No. 37538 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 10:37 am
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I hope I'm not derailing anything here, but are there any good reasons to be wholly and steadfastly anti-NATO? I try to be as pacifistic as I can feasibly be, so I don't love the organisation for a couple of reasons, but as far as I can tell it hasn't actually caused a single war by way of simply existing. All the conflicts it has been involved in likely would have involved an alliance of western nations regardless, just assembled in an ad-hoc fashion. I take some issue with the minimum 2% funding for militaries it demands, it's perhaps too American-centric, but despite spending the morning trying to become anti-NATO in an attempt to stress test my apathy towards it, nothing else is sticking.
>> No. 37539 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 10:47 am
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>>37537

I think the SS Cap Arcona is a better example as it was "us" who did the crime in that instance, not still banging the anti-Russian drum. Nearly 7,000 casualties because British Intelligence knew but didn't notify the RAF that the ships were carrying about 5,000 prisoners from concentration camps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Cap_Arcona
>RAF Pilot Allan Wyse of No. 193 Squadron recalled, "We used our cannon fire at the chaps in the water... we shot them up with 20 mm cannons in the water. Horrible thing, but we were told to do it and we did it. That's war."

>From the Till report of June 1945: "The Intelligence Officer with 83 Group RAF has admitted on two occasions; first to Lt H. F. Ansell of this Team (when it was confirmed by a Wing Commander present), and on a second occasion to the Investigating Officer when he was accompanied by Lt. H. F. Ansell, that a message was received on 2 May 1945 that these ships were loaded with KZ prisoners but that, although there was ample time to warn the pilots of the planes who attacked these ships on the following day, by some oversight the message was never passed on... From the facts and from the statement volunteered by the RAF Intelligence Officer, it appears that the primary responsibility for this great loss of life must fall on the British RAF personnel who failed to pass to the pilots the message they received concerning the presence of KZ prisoners on board these ships." See: Jacobs and Pool, 2004 and Till, 1945.

As the system stands, there are no war crimes - only losing-the-war crimes.
>> No. 37540 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 11:35 am
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It reminds me of the whole thing about invading Iraq being an "illegal war". I never took that seriously; I just had this vision of hundreds of tanks speeding across the desert while Dixon of Dock Green jogs behind them with a truncheon and a whistle shouting, "Come back! You're not allowed to do that!" I know most countries have signed up to promise to be a bit nicer during their wars, and I guess that's a good thing, but what can anyone do if they then break those promises?
>> No. 37541 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 11:39 am
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>>37540
>I just had this vision of hundreds of tanks speeding across the desert while Dixon of Dock Green jogs behind them with a truncheon and a whistle shouting, "Come back! You're not allowed to do that!"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJzM1kaTcsY
>> No. 37542 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 12:05 pm
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>>37540
>I know most countries have signed up to promise to be a bit nicer during their wars, and I guess that's a good thing, but what can anyone do if they then break those promises?

In principle, by handing over the individuals responsible, to be tried. In practise, the people responsible are those in control of the country at the time and that complicates things.
>> No. 37543 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 12:13 pm
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https://twitter.com/defensesentinel/status/1499161463352881153

At what point did any part of this this seem like a good idea to anybody.
>> No. 37544 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 1:32 pm
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>>37540

This is why having a unipolar world wherein there is only one serious power (ie the US and by extension, NATO) is at the root of the problem.

You can't help but notice that up until last week, there was one and only one country to break those rules with complete impunity. The world as envisioned post-WW2 relied on the idea of great powers balancing one another out- And for a long time, it worked. Nobody really had this kind of war until the end of the cold war, it was always limited to intervening with ongoing civil conflicts, most notably America in Vietnam and Russia in Afghanistan.

I make a lot of posts with a vague anti-American sentiment around here, but of course it's not America specifically I have a problem with. It's just that ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, they have become the most dangerous country in the world by all objective measures, because who's going to stop them?
>> No. 37545 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 4:28 pm
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In Soviet Russia, war fights you.


https://globalhappenings.com/top-global-news/115335.html

>A bill was submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation on conscription for military service in the “LDNR” of those who were held accountable for participating in protests against the war with Ukraine.

>The corresponding bill No. 81184-8 is published on the website of the State Duma. The authors of the document are LDPR deputies Andrei Lugovoy and Yaroslav Nilov. The Russian law on military duty and military service is proposed to be supplemented with the paragraph:

>“Citizens held accountable for participating in an unauthorized public event directed against the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation outside the territory of the Russian Federation are subject to conscription. Such citizens are sent for military service in the territories of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic.”
>> No. 37546 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 5:23 pm
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>>37538
Arguably it has discredited the role of UN and OSCE during the 90s when a genuine peace could've been built. Whether NATO-with-Russia would've worked is anyone's guess but it certainly features into the propaganda.

>>37544
>The world as envisioned post-WW2 relied on the idea of great powers balancing one another out- And for a long time, it worked.

It did? Russia is still in part arguing that it is itself intervening in a civil conflict and that's been the frustrating thing for the west for a number of years as they've just thrown R2P back in our faces.

I think there's an argument for a bipolar order as it gives real incentive for each side to behave in a way they want the opponent to but multipolar orders seem at best to merely emulate this owing to human nature or at worst turns every small-medium power into a victim of a new scramble for Africa.

>>37545
What could possibly go wrong with arming and training dissidents before sending them off to meet your enemies?
>> No. 37547 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 6:42 pm
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>>37546
It sounds like you're saying it's better to have multiple political systems that people can align themselves with, because then they can choose their favourite one and the most popular ones will win out while the ones that fail will ultimately be ignored and go extinct. That's a great idea, but it already has a name: capitalism. And just like capitalism, once one side has won, it can crush all newcomers and generally do what it wants, no longer obliged to appeal to anyone. So that's not so great. But I must say I think NATO is a whole lot better than Google or Amazon. I wonder how Russians feel?
>> No. 37548 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 6:55 pm
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>>37547
I'd say a bigger problem with capitalism than monopolies is the specific version of "what people want" that it gives them. Imagine a gambling addict, internally conflicted: he wants to stop gambling, but he also wants to gamble. Capitalism's incentive structure means that I stand to benefit the most by having him gamble in my casino, by "giving him what he wants." But at the same time I'm giving him exactly what he doesn't want, I'm pulling on the side of a vice he's trying to overcome to line my own pockets.
More ambiguously you can get something like Twitter. Nobody "wants" to be angry and frightened all the time, but angry and frightened people engage with a website more - and you can read that off as them "wanting" it, even when a good chunk of the posts on the website are people decrying that they can't stop "doomscrolling". So you've often got an incentive structure to create a website that will frighten and annoy people so that they'll use it more, even though if you were to design society in a god-like fashion, you'd never create something like that because it just makes lots of people unhappy and angry to make a small number of people rich.

I'm not saying another system would work better, I don't particularly care about that anymore, but I think we've a very myopic view of what people want. It's very easy to cast aside expressed preferences (what people say they want) and just say that their revealed preferences (what they actually do) must always be right, and then to use that to say that there's no moral dilemma in exploiting people's weaknesses, even when it's very hard to hide from yourself that that's what you're doing. (i.e. hiring psychologists to tell you the best ways to keep people "engaged" with your website.)
>> No. 37550 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 8:17 pm
37550 mass nationalisation of Russian companies
https://rusonline.org/russia/proshchayte-putin-nachinaet-massovuyu-nacionalizaciyu

>Yesterday Mishustin instructed the Ministry of Finance to carry out a massive purchase of shares of Russian companies at the expense of the National Welfare Fund. The total amount is up to 1 trillion rubles.

>the Central Bank banned the withdrawal of dividends abroad, as well as the payment of interest on securities in foreign jurisdictions. Also, the Central Bank froze non-resident deposits in our stock market, and Putin banned the withdrawal of profits for offshore parent companies.

>What happened in the end. It was mainly on this news (and not so much on geopolitics) that our companies' shares collapsed in London. For example, Sber has fallen 16.5 times since the beginning of the year. On February 28, one American depositary receipt (4 shares) was down to $0.9. That's 22-23 rubles per share.

>This happened because it makes no sense for foreigners to own shares in our companies. They cannot receive dividends, and they will face huge problems when selling their shares. And it was the high dividend yield that attracted non-residents to the Russian stock market. They were so attracted that by the end of the first half of 2021 about 81% of free-floating shares on our market were controlled by non-residents.

>And now, when stocks have collapsed manifold, the government prints out $1 trillion from the National Welfare Fund to buy them up on the cheap. Not even on the cheap, but for nothing. For a formal penny value.

>Let us look at the example of Sber. So, at the expense of the National Welfare Fund shares will be bought, let's assume, for 20-30 rubles per unit. But Sber has to pay about 27.5 rubles in dividends. That is, the money will return within a year and, most importantly, will remain in Russia. Of course, given the current situation, companies may temporarily refuse to pay dividends. But even if they are paid next year, it's still a great investment. And from here on it's profit.

>In fact, this means mass nationalization. Any large business would be put under direct state control. Of course, it makes no sense to take control of a notional Severstal or Novatek. Profits will no longer be taken offshore (it's forbidden by law) and prices on the domestic market will be monitored without any interruption. Taxes will be paid here. What else is needed? Why is it necessary to impose administrative functions on the state, bloating the bureaucratic apparatus? Of course there is no point in it.

What does this mean for Russia? State capitalism seems to have worked out pretty well for China and in hindsight Russia would've been better off with the Chinese model over America's "shock therapy" capitalism. Was this part of Putin's 5D chess plan all along?

t. clueless about finance and economics
>> No. 37551 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 8:42 pm
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>>37550
It's 50% a desperate move to keep the economy from tanking. It's 50% a school playground response to Western Companies selling out "You can give up your shares if we take them from you"
>> No. 37552 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 8:46 pm
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>>37550

So the 42% of Americans who earnestly believe Russia is a communist country will soon be correct, entirely by accident.

https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/aa58ig9d3b/econTabReport.pdf
>> No. 37553 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 8:50 pm
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>>37552
Please, this is a very tense time, I don't need to be reminded that Americans exist.
>> No. 37554 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 8:57 pm
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>>37550
Honestly I'll be interested in how this plays out. Will the government start to interfere in how these companies operate, or will it leave them as independent entities that just happen to have their shares held by the state rather than an investment fund? When people hear "nationalisation" they always seem to think of the former, even though the latter is also an option, and some countries like NZ have made a good show of running a chunk of industry that way.
Though it might not be a very good test - I suspect even before this, Russian private companies were probably subject to more state interference (or more interference from a crook who also happened to be in the state apparatus) than average.
>> No. 37555 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 9:08 pm
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So what are we going to do with all the real estate the government is liberating from the hands of Russian oligarchs?

London is about to get a lot more affordable I would imagine. Probably two thirds of the whole city will be getting seized. Looks like council housing's back on the menu, boys!
>> No. 37556 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 10:26 pm
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>>37555
Chinese oligarchs own more than the Russians do anyway, they'll probably get most of it. Don't forget Gulf Arabs and all the home grown rich scum either! Now, go back to sleep in your refurbished tumble dryer and stop making a fuss. Save that for when your landlord wants his £7,500 at the end of the month, but don't actually save it for then, because it's the dryer or nothing.
>> No. 37557 Anonymous
3rd March 2022
Thursday 10:47 pm
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>>37550

Putin is stealing everything (that he hasn't already stolen). Seriously, he's a kleptomaniac, he can't help himself.

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/heres-how-vladimir-putin-stole-a-super-bowl-ring-from-the-patriots-robert-kraft/
>> No. 37558 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 12:33 am
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I look forward to the coming health fad of sawdust enriched bread.

>>37547
As much as I'd love to discuss the anarcho-capitalist theories of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, I'm not sure how you read that as what I was getting at.

>But I must say I think NATO is a whole lot better than Google or Amazon. I wonder how Russians feel?

I'm almost tempted to ask about the difference. I suppose NATO is less interventionist when it comes to being a behemoth pumped up on government steroids that ruthlessly destroys any competition in foreign markets.

>>37550
I'm starting to grow very cynical about how this has all turned out for the West. So far we've sanctioned and stolen property from people who stole money from Russia and stored it outside of Russia (i.e. Putin's political rivals and the security they had against his regime) and Russia just bought its national champions for a rock-bottom price and whose ownership was a serious problem for offshoring high-dividends.

Do you know who is profiting from this? The Saudis Crown Prince who have been exercising their enormous leverage to blow up Yemenis and push the US to recognise him as the countries ruler:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/saudi-crown-prince-plays-oil-card-quest-us-recognition-2022-03-03/

Meanwhile China profits from the US being distracted again in Europe, having Russia become totally dependant upon it and the world now looking to move away from a declining US dollar in global trade volume because the US has fallen into a 'with us or against us' mentality with India and South America.

>>37554
You'd be correct, Russian companies have been under the thumb of Moscow since the financial crisis. Putin will now use his leverage to reward his friends and bind them further to him.

>> No. 37559 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 12:54 am
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>Europe's Largest Nuclear Power Plant on Fire After Shelling
>A spokesman for Europe’s largest nuclear plant says the facility is on fire after Russia attacked the power station in the southern Ukrainian city of Enerhodar. A government official tells The Associated Press elevated levels of radiation are being detected near the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which provides about 25% of the country’s power generation.

>The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information has not yet been publicly released. Plant spokesman Andriy Tuz told Ukrainian television that it is urgent to stop the fighting to put out the flames. Enerhodar is a city on the Dnieper River that accounts for one-quarter of the country’s power generation.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-03/refugee-count-tops-1-million-russians-besiege-ukraine-ports

What teacon are we on now?
>> No. 37560 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 1:34 am
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>>37559
Not sure. Might have to check with your parents what the procedures are for a nuclear power station on fire in Ukraine.
>> No. 37561 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 1:46 pm
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>>37553

Apparently an American senator publicly called on Russians to assassinate Putin.

Can you imagine if people said the same about an American president? Even if it was the evil orange one who shall not be named.
>> No. 37562 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 1:48 pm
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>>37561
I don't know, seems like that's the only way Putin's getting removed from power right now.
>> No. 37563 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 2:35 pm
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>>37561>>37562
It really doesn't help to have senior Am*rican politicians wanking themselves into a frenzy about sanction induced regime change, confirming Putin's worst paranoia, when the odds would still favour a diplomatic solution over a second Russian revolution. Not that I'm saying diplomacy has particularly good odds, far from it, but an ingrate like Lindsay Graham doesn't care either way. The mass sanctioning of Russia is all well and good, although it is turning into a bizarre game of one-upmanship in some respects, but if you make Putin think the only way out of this is his becoming a corpse it's only going to make the situation worse, both within and without Russia.

As for death threats towards US presidents I can quite easily imagine them, maybe not from senior politicians, but certainly from a solid third of Graham's party membership.
>> No. 37564 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 2:58 pm
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>>37563
I see a lot of people talking about wanting to further diplomatic routes, but I'm not really sure what's to be gained there. Peace talks are a nice idea, but there isn't anything to be negotiated here. The only peaceful solution on the table is Russia getting the fuck out of Ukraine and letting them join whatever organisations they want to.
>> No. 37566 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 5:19 pm
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>>37564
What on earth makes you think an unconditional withdrawal from Ukraine by Russia is "on the table"? It's completely politically unviable for Putin.
>> No. 37567 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 5:26 pm
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>>37566
The fact that anything less than unconditional withdrawal is surrender.
>> No. 37568 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 6:00 pm
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>>37564
>>37567
Nah fuck that, I think enough kids have died already. What's the grand plan for how Ukraine is going to eject Russia from Crimea? What is your position going to be when Russia simply crushes Ukraine under its sheer weight like a gay seal with a penguin fetish and leaves ruins behind?
>> No. 37569 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 6:05 pm
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>>37568
With all due respect and sympathy towards your opinion, what's your idea? No fly zone? Push the Russians out of Ukraine? Does that include Crimea and the breakaway republics? What if they don't stop attack Ukraine even then? Push them all the way back to Moscow? I'd like to believe any one of these options would solve things and end the war sooner and with fewer casualities, but that would be entirely wishful thinking as far as I can tell.
>> No. 37570 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 6:55 pm
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>>37568
>Nah fuck that, I think enough kids have died already.
Ah, you're one of those fake lefty anti-war types.
>> No. 37571 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 8:39 pm
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>>37568

>What is your position going to be when Russia simply crushes Ukraine under its sheer weight

That's far from a given. Russia currently have the initiative, but they seem to have taken fairly equal losses of men and materiel. If and when Russia start trying to actually take control of the country, there's a real risk that they'll be dragged into a meat grinder of asymmetrical warfare.

Russia has more men and guns, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can afford to take disproportionate losses. Morale is clearly very poor from the outset and could collapse completely if the advance grinds to a halt and the Ukrainians effectively exploit their home turf advantage. Guerilla tactics can suppress entire battalions, shatter supply lines and force invaders to defend territory that they don't truly control.

Putin could quite quickly find himself trying to lead an army that has broken down - hungry men, guns with no shells, tanks with no fuel. When the advantage of surprise and mobility has faded, things could become unimaginably grim for the Russian forces.

Ukraine will undoubtedly suffer, but they have made it absolutely clear that they are prepared to suffer for their freedom. Russian conscripts will also suffer, but what for? How much will they be willing to endure?
>> No. 37572 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 9:13 pm
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>>37571

There's a tendency to sort of fetishise guerilla warfare that, I think, sort of ignores the fact that that country IS still occupied, and effectively controlled, for however long it takes the invaders to get bored and piss off, and that can be a very long time indeed.

It works, but it's a very long term prospect. Look at how long Vietnam dragged on for the Americans. Look at how long they were in Afghanistan, nearly 20 years. People have been born and reached adulthood in the timespan it took for that outcome to materialise.

Really there's an argument to be made that guerilla warfare has less to do with demoralising and slowly bleeding the enemy, as it does just stubbornly clinging onto the idea that "this is OUR country". As long as the citizens of a nation hold on to that collective belief, you will never truly conquer them.

Anyway it's going to be awkward for Russia because if they don't occupy outright and simply wish to force a regime change, you just know the CIA are going to be in there like a dog with it's nose up another dog's arsehole to force one back again. You know, like how the war that was already going on in Ukraine got started.
>> No. 37573 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 9:48 pm
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>>37571
>but they seem to have taken fairly equal losses of men and materiel.
Depends who you trust but realistic figures seem to be putting Ukrainian losses an order of magnitude less than Russias. Also remember Russia hasn't just committed all its forces that happened to be in the area at the time, they've already got a large proportion of all the available professional soldiers in their entire country committed in this war. They're sending in the Praetorian guard (which is led by a former bodyguard who had no prior military experience), They've sent in regiments of Kadyrovites (war hardened veterans from Chechnya, and they're apparently lost their general and taken heavy losses already).
The Russians have gone in with trucks that keep breaking down or getting flat tyres. They're being sent in with ration packs that are 7 years past their use by date. They're using military ambulances to carry shells and ammunition instead of medical supplies. They're losing scores upon scores of tanks helicopters and armoured infantry vehicles

Even seen some reports on Twitter today of a firefight between two different groups of Russians that ended up in them losing a few tanks and vehicles. Which is entirely believable given the state of the communications and coordination.

Even if they win in Ukraine, although they might cope with the sanctions alone, they'll have lost a huge portion of their military hardware and they're not going to be able to rebuild quickly or cheaply.
They've leveraged oil and gas and dirty money to get an advantage over the west for so long, yes they can switch to selling to the Chinese instead but then the shoe will be on the other foot, with China being able to set whatever buying price they want.
>> No. 37574 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 9:57 pm
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You know what, all the leftist anti war groups over the years were right but they missed the most important reason.
Every time we and the Americans have invaded anywhere, even with the best of intentions it sets a precedent. All those pointless wars have done little but to undermine the UN and undermine our moral position. The torture in Gitmo, brutality in Bagdad, murdering innocent civilians by drone in the middle east. All with no meaningful consequence or punishment. It all means Putin and other dictators can commit atrocities and then call us hypocrites with utter sincerity.
>> No. 37575 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 10:03 pm
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>>37574

No I'm pretty sure I have been saying that's a big reason we shouldn't be doing it for years.

The problem is when non-lefty types hear us saying that, they reflexively pivot to WHY DO YOU HATE YOUR OWN COUNTRY SO MUCH EH, WHY DON'T YOU MOVE TO CHINA IF WE'RE SUCH MONSTERS instead of actually hearing the point being made, which is precisely the penny that has finally dropped for you.
>> No. 37576 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 10:13 pm
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>>37572

>that can be a very long time indeed

Certainly, but Russia clearly wasn't planning for a long fight. Putin has been building up cash reserves in anticipation of sanctions, but he didn't prepare the military for a drawn-out conflict. On top of what >>37573 says, Russian air assets have been massively depleted by the Syria conflict. They have few meaningful allies left and they're going to find it incredibly difficult to sustain the war effort without completely obliterating the civilian economy.

Ukraine have been preparing for this on a massive scale. On top of 400,000 men with recent combat experience from the Donbas conflict, they have a huge pool of willing reservists and volunteers. They've got more small arms and ammunition than they know what to do with; as long as they can maintain a supply corridor to Poland or Slovakia, they'll have a growing material advantage over Russia.

Vietnam exhausted the American people despite strong morale at the start of the conflict, an utterly dominant economy and significant international support. Ukraine might have been invaded, but Russia are looking far more isolated right now.

There's no certainty either way, but Russia are in a far more tenuous position than their history would suggest. They're skint, they're demoralised, they're disorganised and every day that the conflict continues is a small defeat.
>> No. 37577 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 10:16 pm
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>>37574
>>37575

In a similar vein, when are we going to start sanctioning Israel?

I didn't think very hard about this, I just thought it's a good spicy take. Should I put it on Twatter?
>> No. 37578 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 10:23 pm
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I'm quite irritated by the sensationalism and hyperbole in todays media coverage of the attack on the nuclear power plant.
Despite the other atrocities being committed, calling it a crime to take control of a facility like that is dumb, no army in the world would or could simply ignore it in a war, fortunately there's been no attack on the plant itself only a building outside which was probably because the Russians were getting shot at from there.
>> No. 37579 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 10:24 pm
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>>37573
Russia to collapse and become a sort of wild west mish mash of different areas with 5 years?
>> No. 37580 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 10:36 pm
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>>37579
It probably couldn't get much more splintered. Perhaps some border cities might voluntarily join their neighbours for economic stability and free movement. The rest of the East wouldn't really gain anything by separating from Moscow, the only result of that would be that China would turn them into a client state running their belt and road and siphoning off all the natural resources.
Chechnya would declare independence and make a big land grab probably. But most of the main population centres of western Russia would otherwise stay united.
>> No. 37581 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 10:42 pm
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>>37577

Do it. I think it's a legitimate if deliberately provocative thing to say. In fact I might start tossing that argument about for the fuck of it.
>> No. 37582 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 11:16 pm
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>>37578
In fairness the news media didn't call it a "war crime" out of nowhere. The US embassy in Keeve called it that on Twitter, something the State Department later quashed by telling every other US embassy to not retweet or otherwise endorse the statement. The accusation did sound a bit odd to me at the time, but then the whole war is technically a war crime so it's not the biggest faux pas ever. I do reckon firing cluster munitions from an MRLS into a town centre on a whim is worse though.
>> No. 37583 Anonymous
4th March 2022
Friday 11:25 pm
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>>37570
No I'm just old enough now that it genuinely shocks me how young the people dying are. I can't imagine how it must feel right now to be a mother on either side and not hearing from your son for a week only to then get flooded with abuse and pictures of his dead body on VK.

>>37571
>Russia currently have the initiative

And they won't lose it. Ukraine has an army in danger of encirclement in the South, no real means of fighting a pitch-battle to evict the Russians from it's critical infrastructure and its cities are coming under siege. So what'll happen is Kiev can fall in another Grozny situation, a puppet leader will be installed and Russia will engage in gangsterism to suppress dissent which it has become adept at as a means to decrease the costs of controlling territory.

I'm not saying it will play out like that blow for blow but there is a real reason to negotiate given the risk and loss of life involved against the fact that Ukraine won't retake Crimea. I'm sure we in the West would love for it to be an endless quagmire and will supply Ukraine to ensure that happens but you must be pretty comfortable to not even consider negotiation.
>> No. 37584 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 12:28 am
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>>37578
There has definitely been some deliberate editorialising in the supposedly impartial news. Russia is absolutely in the wrong here and I don't especially care if our own news reminds us of that regularly, but 90% of news stories about the war seem to consist of, "Awww, wook at the widdle babies being slaughtered by evil Putin the monster, behold these sobbing women, aww, and now the filthy Russian demons have just bombed the puppy hospital, what bastards, have you ever seen such cruelty?" and other human-interest bollocks like that. They don't need to spin the news that hard, so why are they?
>> No. 37585 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 3:49 am
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>>37584
When everyone agrees about something, nobody's going to call you out on it technically not matching procedure. It's much easier to just swim with the flow. This goes double in the social media age, where you've got to be aware of the fact that @Steve185891891 #JohnsonOut #FPBE 🇺🇦🇺🇦 is going to call you out on not being anti-Russia enough while only Anonymous 5th March 2022 is going to complain about you being too anti-Russia. And where the economics favour human interest stories and lots of photos of things burning over long boring explainers about military doctrine made up of more than 50% "of course, we're not sure that's what's really going on because this is a developing situation and information is scarce".

In short, as a rule of thumb, the press are prone to groupthink and only marginally competent. A war's just a good way to throw these pre-existing tendencies into overdrive. (And yet in this instance, I can't say I'm upset with them. I regard myself as "anti-Russia", a stance I surely arrived at without press influence, before having that stance affirmed and redoubled by the big plane getting destroyed. So it's nice to see unfairness in a direction I agree with for once.)
>> No. 37586 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 4:06 am
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>>37584

>They don't need to spin the news that hard, so why are they?

They don't know what's going on, but they need to cover the story. They don't know the difference between a tank and an AFV, they don't know how to interpret OSINT, they don't have useful contacts in Ukraine or Russia and they have a strange cultural aversion to letting experts speak for themselves. Given those parameters, your options are a) put on a ballistic vest, stand on a rooftop and speak in vague platitudes or b) wander the streets and interview random punters.

They do the same thing with most news stories that involve any degree of complexity - the reflex is to turn it into a human interest story.

>>37583

The Chechen separatists inflicted heavy casualties on the Russians in Grozny despite being outnumbered somewhere between 7:1 and 20:1. They didn't have half the western world supplying them with planeloads of materiel. Grozny is less than a tenth the size of Kyiv and it was still a gruelling conflict for the Russians.

Russia lost the first Chechen war, under circumstances far more favourable than the current war in Ukraine. Again, I'm not saying that the Ukrainians will win, but a Russian victory may well prove Pyrrhic. Russia have struggled with the easy part of the invasion and things are going to get much, much tougher for them.
>> No. 37587 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 10:23 am
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>>37584

> and other human-interest bollocks like that.

This is really beginning to annoy me as well. I can understand that they're trying to make the events relatable even to the thickest segment of their viewership, but if it's happening on such a scale as we're seeing right now where everybody from ITV to Channel 4 and to some extent also the BBC is reaching for those low-hanging fruit, you can't help feeling a little bit intellectually insulted. And I just don't like human misery porn being thrown at me like that. At least not when it becomes 70 percent of their entire coverage of the war.


>>37586

>or b) wander the streets and interview random punters.

As long as they're not interviewing random punters at Birmingham city centre, who clearly know even less about the situation in Ukraine than the local news reporters who are gathering their generic five-second vox pop soundbites. How is it going to help me get a picture of what's going on by listening to Rachel from Smethwick saying that she's scared of WW3.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI
>> No. 37590 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 11:51 am
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Ruskies appear to be ignoring their agreed ceasefire. How unexpected.
>> No. 37591 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 11:54 am
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>>37590

You're saying Russians are gonna russ?
>> No. 37592 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 11:55 am
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>>37587
I absolutely love that Charlie Brooker bit on the news - one of my favourite "bits" of his; as ever, extremely well observed.
>> No. 37593 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 12:10 pm
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https://edition.cnn.com/videos/entertainment/2022/03/04/mila-kunis-ashton-kutcher-ukraine-donation-pledge-melas-mxp-vpx.hln

>Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher pledge $3M to help her native country of Ukraine

>Ukraine-born Mila Kunis and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, have pledged to match up to $3 million in donations to help refugees fleeing her native country amid the conflict with Russia.
>> No. 37594 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 12:16 pm
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>>37590
Ignoring or not been told about it?
That's the million rouble question.
>> No. 37595 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 12:27 pm
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>>37594
Speaking of million ruble questions, Ukraine is apparently offering rewards of 5 million rubles for Russian soldiers who surrender. They know that a lot of them are conscripts who really don't want to be there, and that it also plays into the narrative of Ukrainians as brothers that is fueling protests in Russia.

For reference, 5m rubles was worth £30k last week, and about 75p and a packet of Rolos this week.
>> No. 37596 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 12:50 pm
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>>37595
I’d take a packet of Rolos and change over urban warfare and forced conscription any day of the week.
>> No. 37597 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 1:14 pm
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>>37595

>For reference, 5m rubles was worth £30k last week, and about 75p and a packet of Rolos this week.

What's really going to be interesting is what five million rubles buys you in Ukraine, because realistically, if you surrender, you will not be able to return to Russia without being sent to a gulag, or much worse, for the foreseeable future. The Ruble has lost about 35 percent against the Ukrainian Hrywnya just in the past month. Before long, the five million rubles will be little more than a handout in Ukrainian or even Western currency. Which both means that the Ukrainian government will increasingly get off cheap paying out all those Russian soldiers, and the Russians themselves might reconsider as well.

Best solution is to offer them a fixed amount in hard currency. Make it something like $50K American. With all the subsidies the Ukrainians are probably getting from the U.S. government both officially and unofficially, they should have no problem shelling out that kind of money. And the more the Ruble becomes devalued, the more attractive the $50K are going to look.

Also, even if they go back to Russia, they'll probably suffer monster inflation, because as Russia's economy is now almost entirely sealed off from the rest of the world, there will be a shortage of pretty much everything, and foreign goods and commodities are almost impossible to import now. With Russian Central Bank interest rates now at 20 percent, you could invest that money in Russian term deposits or government bonds, the latter of which have seen a massive yield spike in recent days, but Russia has just been downgraded to junk status by Moody's and others, so there is a big risk you'll never see that money again.
>> No. 37598 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 1:30 pm
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Slava Ukraini!
>> No. 37599 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 1:44 pm
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>>37597
I'm not sure whether it was being offered in actual rubles or whether that was just being used as an indicative number. I'm assuming it was probably going to be issued in hryven (around 1.5m thereof) since it's a package deal that included amnesty and asylum, but I'm assuming your average Russian doesn't know the relative value of the hryvnia against the ruble. It would be like Poland offering you a sum stated in pounds rather than in złotych because you probably don't know what a złoty is worth. It's about 18p.
>> No. 37600 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 2:10 pm
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>>37543
Apparently the Russians found out because his friend reshared his post on rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk for internet karma. I've certainly seen footage of dead Ukrainian soldiers in other schools after this happened.
>> No. 37601 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 2:16 pm
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>>37600

I think what Google did was very sensible when they disabled all traffic data for Ukraine in Google Maps.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/28/22954426/google-disables-maps-traffic-data-in-ukraine-to-protect-citizens

I've also read somewhere that Ukrainian forces are asking Western journalists not to film their military in action at the moment, for fear that the Russians might draw conclusions from it that could help them in their attacks.
>> No. 37602 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 2:38 pm
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>>37601
I don't think the Russians are fans of western journalists either.

https://news.sky.com/story/sky-news-teams-harrowing-account-of-their-violent-ambush-in-ukraine-this-week-12557585
>> No. 37603 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 2:48 pm
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>>37601
The notion that OSINT can be a bitch is not new. Loose lips sink ships, and all that. With digital technology, a skilled analyst can pinpoint the location of some random photograph in very short order.
>> No. 37604 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 3:25 pm
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>>37599
This reminds me of that time the Americans offered $100k or so to any North Korean who'd defect with a MiG-15, only for the first guy to do so to say he'd never heard of the offer and that he didn't think anyone would be taken in by it since nobody knew how much a dollar was worth - he thought offering them a good job would've been much more tempting.
>> No. 37605 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 4:36 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxdSNGtjGGg
>> No. 37606 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 8:02 pm
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If that's Fox News, it seems to have got worse in recent years.

(To save anyone else from watching a video that was posted entirely without comment, it's a man on Fox Business interviewing an American who is extremely pro-Russia and who makes various claims, such as the invasion not going as well as expected because "the Russians have so far been too gentle", and the whole video feels more like something you'd see on Sputnik in terms of its pro-Russia slant).
>> No. 37607 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 9:12 pm
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Alright, who had Right Said Fred and Dr. Hilary Jones having a cunt-off over the invasion of Ukraine on their 2022 bingo card?
>> No. 37608 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 9:22 pm
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>>37607
Bingo card? No. Cursed tarot card? That's a different story.
>> No. 37609 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 9:59 pm
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Some real 5D chess going on with the Iran sanctions.
US and Europe wants nuclear deal with Iran to be finalised to get hold of their oil. Iran has abstained on the UN votes against Russia. Israel wants the Iran deal stopped. The Israeli PM flies to talk to Putin to discuss mediating a ceasefire in Ukraine. Russia blocks the Iran deal on the condition of the US agreeing that no sanctions will interfere with business between Iran and Russia. Iran says they're not happy about Russia interfering.
>> No. 37610 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 11:17 pm
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>>37587
>you can't help feeling a little bit intellectually insulted

I think I've complained about this before. There's something almost reflective at work in how consumers are treated like fucking idiots that is justified by giving them 'what they can understand' or 'what they want' like the cattle must never be intellectually challenged, as a result they become what the assumptions say they are.

Today's television news is a lot like shopping at discount supermarket, what you get is tripe aimed at the lowest-common denominator that is completely unhealthy - you find yourself wanting more of the detail and not to the intellectual equivalent of an Iceland ready-meal pushed into your brain but you can't get it. You leave with a microwave hotdog and a pizza because the store decided you must be a low-income layabout unable to cook and that's what you become because your choices and what you're shown are narrowed.

Obviously those of us with an education read newspapers and magazines, the Waitrose of the mind - full of a soft-ideology for the status quo and an empty sense of powerlessness. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a human soul being forced through holes of various shapes – for ever.

>>37593
>Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher pledge $3M to help her native country of Ukraine

And there's me questioning why I just paid for dinner and a trip to a museum.
>> No. 37611 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 11:53 pm
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>>37610

>If you want a picture of the future, imagine a human soul being forced through holes of various shapes – for ever.


>> No. 37612 Anonymous
5th March 2022
Saturday 11:56 pm
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>>37611
I miss the Great Recession.
>> No. 37613 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 12:29 am
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>>37610

What has been an absolute disappointment is watching CNN reporting the Ukraine war. There was a time when CNN had a quasi-monopoly as a trusted, impartial global news source, but those days are long gone, and today they're nothing more than a ham-handed cheerleading squad for the liberal agenda, and in terms of peddling human misery porn, they're not a smidgeon better than ITV and Channel 4. More than that, everything is soaked in the usual overly self-indulged pathos of Murrica being the global beacon of freedom and democracy and the rest of the world just being shiteholes of varying degrees that need to be shown the way. I'm old enough to remember when the channel was cutting its teeth on the 1991 Iraq War, which established CNN's deserved good reputation. But over the years, they've become nothing more than an echo chamber for America's liberal elite and its expansionist global agenda. I thought the biggest ignominy was how they portrayed Trump as the eternal bogeyman (don't get me wrong, Trump was atrocious as President) and roundly brown nosed Biden. But their angle on the Ukraine War, especially in its subtext, feels altogether like a hot steaming turd in your mouth.
>> No. 37614 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 12:54 am
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Something that is starting to worry me is that we're seeing identifiable images of POWs appearing in the papers - it means the British press has become complicit in a war crime. Not the most severe or consequential of the war crimes being committed admittedly but both sides crossed some lines that aren't meant to be crossed almost immediately.
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-russian-pow-issue-war-crime-concerns/27025069.html

What we really need to see more of though, is monkey business.
>The Russians entered the elevator to cover the area from the roof of the office building, and the Ukrainians turned off their power
https://twitter.com/CarloPaski/status/1500039135431737344?t=ySFjF-0Qn9_Ec2Ka_M_NQQ&s=19
>> No. 37616 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 1:26 am
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>>37614

>What we really need to see more of though, is monkey business.







https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/03/ukraine-authorities-say-seized-russian-tanks-dont-need-to-be-declared-on-tax-form
>> No. 37617 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 1:39 am
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>>37615
I knew it! I've been saying this from the start! I bloody hope I said it here at some point so I can gloat. Look at how the shape of his face has changed over the past couple of years. His face is much fatter while his body is not. My own suspicion was a brain tumour, although my other piece of evidence was that it was making him go crazy and invade Ukraine, and perhaps the two points are mutually exclusive: either his face looks different because they're treating the secret brain tumour, or he's gone mad because they're not treating it.
>> No. 37618 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 3:12 am
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>>37617

Or maybe he just knows he's dying and thinks "fuck it, may as well go down in history one way or the other."

One one hand this makes him more dangerous; on the other hand, perhaps it means we can rest more easily regarding the nuclear question considering that would mean there will be no history for him to go down in.
>> No. 37619 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 9:31 am
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>>37617
>>37618

Yeah, I'm sure the Daily Star wouldn't publish any sort of propaganda or anything.
>> No. 37620 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 9:58 am
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>>37619
What difference does it make whether he is dying of cancer or not? If anything wouldn't having cancer make him more sympathetic?
>> No. 37621 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 10:32 am
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>>37620
>wouldn't having cancer make him more sympathetic?
Errr Why?

>>37614
When I saw that story first it was claiming that other Russians had turned off the power supply, perhaps something lost in translation though.
>> No. 37622 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 10:53 am
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ITZ!!

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1575245/nuclear-war-russia-putin-doomsday-plane-russian-air-force-moscow

>Nuclear war fears as Putin's 'doomsday plane' scrambled above Moscow

>A NEWLY built "doomsday plane" operated by the Russian Air Force, has been reportedly out circulating Moscow.


https://inews.co.uk/news/us-doomsday-plane-boeing-flight-putin-nuclear-weapons-threat-russia-ukraine-1491543

> US ‘doomsday plane’ made four-hour flight following Putin’s nuclear weapons threat

>The Boeing 747 modified to provide a flying command centre in the event of a nuclear conflict conducted a mission with other early warning jets but Washington has underlined it sees ‘no reason’ to change its nuclear posture


Even if it was probably just a cautious exercise in both cases in light of the current situation, I seem to remember that it's exceedingly rare for these planes to be off the ground at all.
>> No. 37623 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 11:26 am
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Even in a time of war and devastation, CNN are not above clickbait.

At least they didn't put "Governments angry: Despot encircles city in two days with this simple trick".
>> No. 37624 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 12:05 pm
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>>37622
>According to Russian state media, work began on the military aircraft last year. The new plane model...
So in other words a new plane took off on a short test flight. It wasn't "scrambled", fucking Express.
>> No. 37625 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 1:15 pm
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>>37623
>You will die if you live in this city! Which city? Find out after these messages!
I've actually been following the news less closely over the past couple of days. It seems like we've reached the point where I already know what they're going to say. Any more severe developments will be discussed 24/7 if they happen, so I only need to check the news for a couple of minutes to make sure they haven't happened, and then I'm up to date.
>> No. 37626 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 1:33 pm
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How much longer do you think we're going to have to deal with this? I'm bored now and it's obvious that Russia will soon see a collapse in supply chains and thousands unemployed while the Southern front for Ukraine is in a much worse state than what we see in the North.

All this news is also costing me thousands of pounds in stocks at a time when I've already blown my load buying the dip. I'm not even particularly exposed to European stocks so I can't imagine how the Eurocentrics are doing right now.

>>37615
>Sweary Spook's loose

If the 2020s weren't bad enough we now have to deal with the wind calling us a bellend! There really is no rest.

>>37624
These jets are the equivalent of Airforce One and they work in tandem with numbers stations to let you know ITZ has started, I remember during the invasion of Crimea Putin's jet took off and started circling the sky while Russia numbers stations started changing the script.

It's probably part of the pattern of escalation between the US and Russia like two drunk lads squaring up in the pub and pushing each other but you know that neither one wants to throw the first punch. You heard me, I'm calling Biden and Putin chicken - if they were 'ard they'd nuke the locations of Britain's greatest minds like Bradford, Wirral and Westminster.
>> No. 37627 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 1:48 pm
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>>37622
>I seem to remember that it's exceedingly rare for these planes to be off the ground at all.

No - there is always at least one E4-B active and usually in the air at all times - they're always up there, it's just that usually people pay no attention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-4
>> No. 37628 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 2:23 pm
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https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1500301348780199937.html

A very interesting read here, allegedly leaks from an analyst at the FSB.

Some key points:
The "planning" for this conflict, together with the possibility of these sorts of sanctions was put forward as a purely hypothetical situation, so of course most of the government thought no war would happen so there was no planning or contingency put into place. Not only that but there was a great deal of pressure on the FSB to put through reports stating that everything would be fine and the country could handle it with no issues.

Before the invasion all the KSBs plans were to incite anti-government riots in Ukraine and topple Zelensky that way and everything was put into place to arrange that.

They have no functional plan of what to do if they actually take the country by force, as all the candidates they had lined up to form a puppet government have turned against Putin. And they don't have resources to maintain an occupation.

Their forces currently stationed in Syria are running dangerously low on supplies.

Apparently they've lost contact with most of the commanders in Ukraine

The Chechens think someone in the FSB leaked the position of the Kadyrovites to the Ukraine army and got them wiped out.

And *speculation* that Russias Nuclear arsenal is woefully maintained and might not be functional.
>> No. 37629 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 2:44 pm
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>>37628

>The "planning" for this conflict, together with the possibility of these sorts of sanctions was put forward as a purely hypothetical situation, so of course most of the government thought no war would happen so there was no planning or contingency put into place.

Fucking told you didn't I. Who looks like mugs now, eh?

Well, the Russians, but I was still right. The intention wasn't to invade. The invasion has only gone ahead to save face. It's all geopolitical farce.
>> No. 37630 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 2:52 pm
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>>37629
Which arguably makes Vlad even more a paranoid nutter.
>> No. 37631 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 3:05 pm
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>>37629
>You all laughed when I said England would win the World Cup. Granted, it was France, but still.
>> No. 37632 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 3:28 pm
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>>37630

I read it more as desperation at this point.

The West has never taken Russia seriously, and despite all the US propagandising about Russia being the Big Bad of the world and acting like it's still the great power it was in the communist days, they know it's a shadow of it's former self. That's why they know they can afford not to take it seriously, and played hard-ball in these negotiations. I would argue that's still pretty callous given the lives this war will end up costing, but I'm pretty confident it was a calculated gamble.

Russia (ie Vlad) knows that if he doesn't do something to secure Russia's interests and give them a bit more heft to throw around, they're going to be totally beholden to China for the better part of the next century.

I still subscribe to the theory it would have been better to bring Russia into the fold in the 90s, but that ship had already sailed by the early 2000s, and by now it's in two bits at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
>> No. 37633 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 4:03 pm
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>>37628
Making a big assumption that this is true I can speak from my own experience as a bureaucrat that an analyst wouldn't have this kind of information, he'd have hearsay at best. It was the same with whomever was leaking to the press during Brexit and I imagine it's the same for most of you here about the organisation you work for. Same with the rumours that the FSB is foiling assassination attempts.

>The Pandora’s Box is open – a real global horror will begin by the summer – global famine is inevitable as Russia and Ukraine are main producers of wheat.

This is probably true though. We're fine here because of the money, trade networks and fields of wheat to caper in but the price of food is about to shit the bed and it's already building on a fertiliser crisis that began at the end of the summer. A big sack of rice and another of fanny custard is probably a good investment at the moment.
>> No. 37634 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 4:05 pm
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>>37632
>Russia (ie Vlad) knows that if he doesn't do something to secure Russia's interests and give them a bit more heft to throw around
He could have done that with constitutional form to reduce corruption and protect domestic markets, leading to nice things like a functional military and better standards of living for their citizens. Instead he let a bunch of kleptomaniacs squeeze the country dry of every last dollar and rouble.
>> No. 37635 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 4:13 pm
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>>37634

That's a circular argument that goes back to the bit about bringing Russia closer to the West when there was still a possibility of doing that, though. It's not that Putin "let a bunch of kleptomaniacs squeeze the country dry", it's that he's one of them. Once he got in the game was up.

Under Yeltsin there was still a possibility of reform and modernisation, but instead of embracing it and reaching out, the Clintons declared an open season. Post-USSR Russia was very much treated as a defeated opponent, when that's not how they saw themselves, nor really what they were. Same exact mistake as Weimar Germany, same exact outcome.
>> No. 37636 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 4:20 pm
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>>37632
>I still subscribe to the theory it would have been better to bring Russia into the fold in the 90s, but that ship had already sailed by the early 2000s, and by now it's in two bits at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

Such a pessimist. There's a chance that after all of this the west might've learnt its lesson and Russia might have a new leader - the liberal international order back on the upswing and this time without quite the same zealotry for neoliberalism.

Admittedly the heir apparent is a taxman but a new world is still possible even if you still won't be able to afford a house there (and everyone will be a darkie).
>> No. 37637 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 4:34 pm
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>>37628
>By and large, Russia does not have an out. There are no options for a possible victory, only of losses – this is it.
This is what makes the whole thing so fragile. Russia has already failed, but if there's no backing down then Putin is only going to get more desperate. The thought of a small nuclear strike on Ukraine is ... scary, to say the least.
>> No. 37638 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 6:02 pm
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It's a slow road to the Great Collapse, But you can see it coming.
>> No. 37641 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 8:57 pm
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>>37637

>Russia has already failed, but if there's no backing down then Putin is only going to get more desperate. The thought of a small nuclear strike on Ukraine is ... scary, to say the least.

We're talking about a whole country of 40 million putting up fierce resistance. Even if the Russians nuke Kiev, which would no doubt have a very demoralising and intimidating effect, then that is still no guarantee that the war will be won. Putin would probably have to bomb several cities all at once, in which case surely much of the 71 percent of Russians who still support him according to the latest opinion polls would turn against him.

Is he really ruthless enough to resort to nukes if he can't win otherwise? It's not entirely unlikely, but even for Putin, that's still a level of violence he hasn't shown before.
>> No. 37642 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 9:15 pm
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>>37641

There's really no point controlling a country that you've turned into a radioactive wasteland. Chernobyl was bad enough, and some have speculated that it's the very event that started the dominos falling on the Soviet Union itself.

You lads need to get a grip for fuck's sake. It's one thing to be an armchair general but you all need to brush up on your armchair history and start thinking with some perspective.

>>37638

The great collapse was 30 years ago. If you think Russia has been some sort of powerhouse since then, you haven't looked at the evidence, and you don't know what you're talking about. It's been punching well below its weight for a long time, because it has been hollowed out and very little of the strength remains.

I think sometimes we need to settle down and admit it, we've got James Bond and Call of Duty mixed up with objective reality. We base our estimations of Russia on the fiction we've been writing with them as the baddies for the last half a century, not on what they actually are.
>> No. 37643 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 9:26 pm
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>>37638
You and every other berk since time immemorial have thought that. Your self-indulgent doomsaying doesn't contribute a thing. Roman writers couldn't stop talking about how brilliant great-granddad must have had it, even the first century ones.
>> No. 37644 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 9:53 pm
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>> No. 37645 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 9:56 pm
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>>37642

>There's really no point controlling a country that you've turned into a radioactive wasteland. Chernobyl was bad enough

You can't really compare Chernobyl to a (Hiroshima-magnitude) atomic bomb though. According to Wikipedia, Chernobyl released 400 times more radioactive material into the environment than the Hiroshima bomb. You could theoretically flatten a city with something like a 15 to 20 kt device, and as long as you're only doing it to two or three cities, the radioactive fallout will be relatively limited.

It'd be pretty disadvantageous though to bomb Kiev that way, because whatever Putin has planned for Ukraine after the war, i.e. either a puppet state or a new Russian province, it'll need an administrative centre. And by nuking Kiev, Putin would have to put a lot of effort and resources into erecting a new administrative centre elsewhere.
>> No. 37646 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 10:20 pm
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>>37645

>And by nuking Kiev, Putin would have to put a lot of effort and resources into erecting a new administrative centre elsewhere.

Hence the "wasteland" part of "radioactive wasteland."

Generally if you want useful control of an area, you do as little damage as possible to it. That's why the bombers haven't been in to flatten everything, that's why the reports of shelling that power station smelled like bullshit from the word go. That's the reason the entire invasion is "going badly".

Russia's objective is regime change, not flattening the fucking place. People are just being plain and simply hysterical about it all. Think about it. This kind of operation is a delicate job, and Russia's armed forces are more of a sledgehammer than a scalpel.
>> No. 37647 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 10:33 pm
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Putin's justification is that NATO has been expanding eastward and threatening Russia's borders, and that this expansion is an existential threat to the nation. He puts forth the case that America would never allow a Russian or Chinese military base in Mexico or Canada, so why should Russia tolerate the same sort of thing?

Is this actually a legit argument? Would a NATO base in Ukraine really be a threat to Russia? Would a Russian base in Mexico really threaten America? How much does geography really matter in an age of sophisticated nuclear weaponry?
>> No. 37648 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 10:48 pm
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>>37647 Would a NATO base in Ukraine really be a threat to Russia?

If Ukraine joined NATO, with Crimea's status still being disputed, what would happen? _Can_ you join NATO with unresolved disputes?
>> No. 37649 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 11:04 pm
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>>37648
> _Can_ you join NATO with unresolved disputes?
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_24733.htm
>States which have ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes, including irredentist claims, or internal jurisdictional disputes must settle those disputes by peaceful means in accordance with OSCE principles. Resolution of such disputes would be a factor in determining whether to invite a state to join the Alliance.

Hmm. So if keeping Ukraine neutral was really Putin's main goal, then it seems like he could have accomplished it by maintaining control over Crimea and continuing to provide support for the separatists in the civil war in the east.
>> No. 37650 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 11:16 pm
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I don't understand why you're talking about nuking Kiev two weeks into a old fashioned ground war. Putin's been in a terrible mood lately, but until he starts showing up at the ends of those massive tables with Mr Flibble on one hand while wearing a red and white gingham dress he won't go that far. Probably.

>>37648>>37649
My understanding was that this very thing was preventing Ukraine from having any chance of joining NATO, because they're not completely mad.
>> No. 37651 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 11:40 pm
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>>37647
It wouldn't really be a threat, because NATO is a purely defensive alliance that doesn't go invading places and exists purely to protect its member states. However, Russia doesn't see it that way, and Vladimir Putin very much sees it as a branch of American imperialism. He also thinks the Cold War is still going on, so as far as he's concerned, Ukraine joining NATO would be the same as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

As far as I'm concerned, his claims are all total bollocks. NATO isn't invading Eastern Europe; the countries are asking to join precisely to escape from Russia's sphere of influence. But then, I am so utterly convinced Vladimir Putin is a lying scumbag that I sound exactly like someone who has been indoctrinated, so perhaps there are points I am overlooking.

>How much does geography really matter in an age of sophisticated nuclear weaponry?
It certainly matters to the Ukrainians and the Latvians and the Lithuanians and the Estonians.
>> No. 37652 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 11:42 pm
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>>37647

>He puts forth the case that America would never allow a Russian or Chinese military base in Mexico or Canada

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis

>Would a NATO base in Ukraine really be a threat to Russia?

The dastardly Ukrainians are threatening Russia by trying to avoid being invaded by Russia. How can Russia possibly ensure their security if they can't invade their neighbours with impunity?
>> No. 37653 Anonymous
6th March 2022
Sunday 11:44 pm
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>>37647
>Would a NATO base in Ukraine really be a threat to Russia?

The Russian south is extremely vulnerable to being cut off and it's not far or a bad drive to Moscow from the Ukrainian border. Even ignoring an offensive, Russia would be hard pressed to defend the length of its border from the machinations of Poland or survive within its own conception of geopolitics or historical identity. There's a long historical basis for this fear that isn't exactly allayed by Russo-American friendship.

Plus obviously having a prosperous and democratic Slavic brother on the border would be a problem for the Putin regime.

>Would a Russian base in Mexico really threaten America?

No but the Americans like to dominate their hemisphere and if the shoe (a superpower at the border with alliances everywhere) were truly on the other foot you can bet that the US would absolutely not be okay with it and be CIA-ing all over the place.
>> No. 37654 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 12:05 am
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Channel 4 is currently showing Volodomyr Zelenskiy's sitcom, Servant of the People, which ultimately led to his presidency. I applaud this hugely because I have wanted to see it since before the war started. However, I missed the start and All4 is a pain, so I'm still not watching it now.

It's also free on YouTube, although I don't know if it has subtitles on there. The title is "Слуга народу" if you feel like copying and pasting that into the search bar.
>> No. 37655 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 1:35 am
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>>37651
>NATO is a purely defensive alliance that doesn't go invading places and exists purely to protect its member states
That's hard to square with NATO's intervention in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Libya. Sure, bombing people to stop genocide or war-crimes might be a nice thing to do, but it takes an unreasonable amount of spinning to make it defensive or a matter of protecting your member states. It's all the more inconvenient that the Serbs, who got to be on the receiving end of 2/3s of those interventions, have typically held close ties to Russia.
>> No. 37656 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 1:54 am
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>>37647

It's a reasonably valid argument, but on a purely humanitarian level, that doesn't justify an invasion. That's about the long and short of it.

On the political level- Speculating about if NATO are a "threat" to Russia is just sheer whataboutism though, the fact is it's an alliance formed with the explicit goal of combating and containing Russia and limiting their ability to influence and expand over Europe. Russia sees it as opposed to their interests, because it is.

Whether that's right or wrong is irrelevant- If we were in Russia's position we'd do the same. That's the game that's going on here.

>Would a Russian base in Mexico really threaten America?

You really don't need to ask this question. You just have to look at Cuba, and the way the Yanks have had sand in their fanny over it for the last sixty years.

The point is, you've got to look at this from a top down perspective. There's only one thing it all comes down to, and that's self interest. Any moralising here is just set dressing.
>> No. 37657 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 3:15 am
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>>37641
They wouldn't nuke Kyiv, they'd nuke a provincial city. Much as it might put the shits up Ukrainians, the nuke isn't for them. It would be for us.
>> No. 37658 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 3:28 am
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>>37654
It has subtitles, but they're not great. Hopefully, the subs on C4 are better. Also, navigating it is awkward now because his old company has replaced most of the thumbnails with a slide calling for an end to the war.
>> No. 37659 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 3:37 am
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>>37647
It's BS and the comparison to bases on the US border people keep making is just whataboutery.

>>37655
>That's hard to square with NATO's intervention in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Libya.
You're aware that it didn't start any of those conflicts, right? It intervened to put down aggressors. The operation in Bosnia was UN-sanctioned. If you want to shit on NATO, Afghanistan is the way to go.
>> No. 37660 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 4:04 am
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>>37659
It didn't start those conflicts, but it was perfectly within their remit to ignore them and NATO countries chose not to. The point is not to attack NATO, or even to attack those specific interventions (I'd say 2/3 of them went very well in isolation), it's purely to make this point: Getting involved in the wars of non-NATO countries may be perfectly laudable, becoming the armed wing of the UN equally so, but doing either entails surrendering a credible claim that you're content to sit and not do very much until your member states are attacked.
>> No. 37661 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 11:06 am
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>>37656

>You really don't need to ask this question. You just have to look at Cuba, and the way the Yanks have had sand in their fanny over it for the last sixty years.

You're still neglecting the fact that it wasn't just some insignificant backwater Russian base, but a prospective launch site for Russian intermediate-range nuclear missiles against the U.S. in the event of a nuclear war.

That said, no, the U.S. probably wouldn't accept any foreign military installation in North, or even Central or South America even today. Whereas the question is reasonable why we have to put up with the Americans having about 600 different military bases across the globe outside its own borders.
>> No. 37662 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 5:40 pm
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https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-rejects-calls-for-banning-russian-oil-and-gas/

>BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz today pushed back against calls from the U.S. and Ukraine for a ban on imports of Russian gas and oil as part of international sanctions on Moscow.


Mr. Scholz raises a fair point though that they can't just switch from Russian energy to other sources from one moment to the next. And early springtime can still be quite frosty in Germany.
>> No. 37663 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 5:51 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW0Wq-t4kSQ


You can't help lauding the sentiment, but I liked Sting's voice better when it still had that youthful piercing quality to it. Especially in a song with many high notes like "Roxanne" or indeed the original "Russians".
>> No. 37664 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 6:31 pm
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I really wish the nukes would start falling. I feel much better about the thought of dying with everyone else for some reason. Maybe 50 years after the nukes, whomever is left will build some kind of memorial statue/slate thing with the names of people who perished, and I can have my name somewhere in the middle too (fucking alphabetical order). It frightens me a bit, that I would find such a thought peaceful.
>> No. 37665 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 7:11 pm
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Not a good day to be long on RUB/GBP.
>> No. 37666 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 9:10 pm
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The news has started reporting what this thread has been saying for a while now, that Russia is doing a terrible job of this invasion and they're hopeless and they're all going to die. Meanwhile, these reports are interspersed with interviews with Ukrainians, saying that it's all getting worse and they keep being bombed and blown up and they need help right now or they will all be overrun by big strong Russians. The Ukrainians are more trustworthy than the news, in my opinion, so that makes me think we're being shown morale-boosting propaganda to keep our spirits up.

Combine that with the human-interest stories of adorable toddlers and beautiful women becoming refugees like common dirty Africans, and I do feel extremely manipulated. But more than that, it feels like they're preparing us to join the war. They knew that Russia was going to invade weeks in advance, and they told us. If they know that it really is going to be World War 3 and many us will be incinerated within the next couple of months, I can see why they wouldn't want to share that information, but would do everything they could to get us ready to support the war that we're going to be involved in.

I'm not saying that's what's going to happen; it's just that if it was, this is what it would probably look like.
>> No. 37667 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 9:44 pm
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>>37666

I also wasn't sold on the idea that Putin or the Russian Army or whoever you want to blame for the invasion miscalculated so badly in their preparations for the war that it somehow completely eluded them that they wouldn't be welcomed with open arms as noble liberators from the evil genocidal Jewish Nazis in Kiev.

The whole Crimea and Donbass what-have-you has been nothing but eight years of acrimony between Russia and the entire (residual) Ukrainian people, plain to see for everybody. And we're being told that a government with a foreign intelligence service capable of poisoning dissidents in broad daylight on a park bench in the middle of Salisbury somehow slipped up on basic intel as to how the Ukrainians might take a Russian invasion.

That isn't to say that a superpower or a regional hegemon can't cock up an invasion. Look at our Afghanistan adventure which at the end of it achieved nothing, after 20 years of keeping the country an almost constant war zone.

I also think that we're being fed the usual tearjerking human interest rubbish to boost our morale against those daft Russians who have supposedly fallen at the first hurdle and can't even move a 40-mile military convoy 120 miles along a road to Kiev, a journey that should take any single vehicle in that convoy no more than four hours even if you're hauling heavy military gear. If the Russians really get out the big guns, we're all very much fucked like a turtle on its back.

Expect the Russian invasion to get pretty bloody from here on out. We should almost hope that the stories of the Russians buggering it up so far aren't true, because the only thing worse than a volatile autocrat is a volatile autocrat who finds himself cornered with nowhere to go.
>> No. 37668 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 10:10 pm
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>>37666

Both are basically true. The Russians are taking heavy losses, they're bogged down and failing to gain ground, but they're shelling civilian areas with increasing ferocity. The strategic analysis is that Russian generals are increasingly desperate and hoping to bomb the populace into submission, but that's not much comfort to people on the ground.

The Ukrainian armed forces are fighting very effectively, they're dishing out far more damage than they're taking, but there's not a great deal they can do to stop the Russian artillery. Imagine that the Russians were attacking Ossett with Grad rockets. Those rockets could be fired from Skipton, Rochdale, Sheffield, Doncaster or the outskirts of York. By the time you've figured out where the rockets came from, the launcher crews have already packed up and left. Unless you have the manpower to take and hold vast areas of land, you're chasing shadows.

The fate of Ukraine still very much hangs in the balance, which the news struggles to convey. They're in the business of simplistic moral narratives and emotional voyeurism, not clarifying complexity and uncertainty. The Russians are performing far worse than anyone expected, the Ukrainians are performing far better, civilian casualties are still remarkably low, but it's still a war and wars are always a nasty business. Things are horrible, people are dying everywhere, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Ukrainians are losing. Killing women and children is an outrage, but women and children don't win wars.

We aren't going to join the war any time soon, because we just aren't ready for it. Our armed forces are badly depleted from two decades of war and a decade of defence spending cuts. We don't have any recent experience of near-peer conflicts and most of our investment and training has been oriented towards counter-insurgency. Frankly, the Ukrainians have made us look like amateurs. We don't have the manpower or resources to engage in a third world war. If things do escalate to that point, we're looking at a timescale of years rather than weeks or months.
>> No. 37669 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 10:20 pm
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>>37667
>And we're being told that a government with a foreign intelligence service capable of poisoning dissidents in broad daylight on a park bench in the middle of Salisbury somehow slipped up on basic intel as to how the Ukrainians might take a Russian invasion.

They're very different things. One you're relying on a very small number of people, the best of the best in the country to do one very specific job really well.
The other is that when you choose to build your political system based on corruption and kleptocracy at the top levels, the whole thing rots from the head down until even the lowly ranking officers are stealing from the army and failing to carry out basic maintenance of things like tyres.
>> No. 37670 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 10:36 pm
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>>37667

>I also wasn't sold on the idea that Putin or the Russian Army or whoever you want to blame for the invasion miscalculated so badly in their preparations for the war that it somehow completely eluded them that they wouldn't be welcomed with open arms as noble liberators from the evil genocidal Jewish Nazis in Kiev.

I don't think that any knowledgeable person actually believes that. The far simpler explanation is that Putin doesn't care, or has surrounded himself with yes-men who know better than to tell him something he doesn't want to hear. There's a big difference between having the intelligence and acting upon the intelligence, as we all learned in 2003.
>> No. 37671 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 10:59 pm
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What oil and gas derived products are you most going to miss now that we won't be able to afford them?

>>37666
>The Ukrainians are more trustworthy than the news, in my opinion

The Ukrainians have an agenda and the news (and what we see on social media) is marching lockstep with the Ukrainian information war. They just have marginally different targets in mind but the government and military officials are if anything trying to temper down any demands for Barbarossa II.

>We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.
-Holly Willoughby
>> No. 37672 Anonymous
7th March 2022
Monday 11:06 pm
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>>37659
>You're aware that it didn't start any of those conflicts, right? It intervened to put down aggressors

The inquiry following the Libyan Intervention found it was absolute bollocks to assume Ghaddafi was about to commit mass murder. Even if he did it was completely illegal for NATO to intervene outside of the poorly defined R2P duty which Putin has taken great joy in playing back to us in Syria and Ukraine.

It's ultimately pretty fucking dubious to ignore national sovereignty because some boys you like are kicking off. Doubly so when Russia fears a colour revolution.
>> No. 37673 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 12:44 am
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>>37672
To be honest, NATO shenanigans in Afghanistan and Libya is what gave Russia the balls to do what it is doing in Ukraine. It even had some practice in Georgia before hand.
>> No. 37674 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 2:01 am
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>>37673
I don't know about Afghanistan, almost everyone was happy for the US to stomp all over the Taliban and such was the consensus that the talk of the time was for the UNSC to be evolving through wide-reaching new powers toward executive functions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1373

Obviously targeted assassinations in third-countries with the President becoming judge, jury and executioner is a bad look but that's never stopped anyone before.
>> No. 37675 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 4:26 am
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>>37671

>What oil and gas derived products are you most going to miss now that we won't be able to afford them?

Russian hydrocarbons represent 12% of the global market, but 68% of Russian export revenues. The market is currently volatile and unbalanced in the aftermath of COVID, but we could cope with sanctions on Russian exports. Higher prices improve the viability of tight reserves, so oil prices are unlikely to exceed $130 per barrel for any length of time.

The question is how much impact those sanctions would have on Russia. Nearly all of the growth in demand for hydrocarbons is in China and India, so Russia is likely to continue to find a market for their oil. Gas is more tricky on both ends - Russia can't find alternative buyers for their gas due to a lack of liquefaction capacity, but buyers can't find alternative suppliers either.
>> No. 37676 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 9:35 am
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In 2019, Russia banned their military from using foreign smartphones for security reasons. They use their own encrypted "Era" system instead, which relies on 3g/4g, and that's great, except they ruined the *g phone tower system in some parts of Ukraine so have to use totally unsecured phones there, picked up locally.
>> No. 37677 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 9:54 am
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>>37676
I can't, in fact, read Russian, so your image is irrelevant.
>> No. 37678 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 1:39 pm
37678 spacer
>>37676

Google Maps picked up traffic jams in Ukraine which was caused by poorly maintained Russian armoured vehicles breaking down / running out of fuel. So much for opsec when all it takes is for a few A10's to check out Google Maps to know where to go and make their cannons go BRRRRRRRRRRppppp p p p
>> No. 37679 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 2:09 pm
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Which country is next lads?
>> No. 37680 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 2:26 pm
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>>37679

My money is on the blue one just south of Ukraine.
>> No. 37681 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 2:37 pm
37681 spacer
>>37679

Moldova for the Lebensraum.
>> No. 37682 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 2:41 pm
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>>37679
The battle plan shared by Lukashenko shows Russian forces entering Moldova. I also read that Russia are planning on giving Abkhazia in Georgia similar treatment to Donbas by recognising it as a breakaway state and freeing the fuck out of it.
>> No. 37683 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 2:53 pm
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I looked on DuckDuckGo for "watch rt online", and I was provided with a link to a YouTube live stream. But when I searched on YouTube for "watch rt online", it's not there. At all. I find this exceptionally sinister.
>> No. 37684 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 3:18 pm
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>>37683
But have you ever actually watched RT? All they do is talk complete shit. It's not like they've quashed access to the Russian BBC.
>> No. 37685 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 3:30 pm
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>>37684
RT, Al Jazeera, and The Guardian were my main news sources. RT was obviously shit, but gave an outsiders view compared to many western news sites.
>> No. 37686 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 5:35 pm
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>>37685
It gave one particular outsider's view, anyway.
>> No. 37687 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 6:03 pm
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>>37686
Is he still going on the air?
>> No. 37688 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 6:21 pm
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>>37687
I think Starmer came down quite hard on Corbyn and his allies to stop pissing about.
>> No. 37689 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 6:25 pm
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>>37679
Terracotta pie.
>> No. 37690 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 6:48 pm
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>>37684
I have watched it for a couple of minutes at a time many times. Traditionally, it has always been, "You can't trust the mainstream media and we can prove it. Also, here are some wild hot takes from us, who are not mainstream. PS check out these cryptocurrency investments". A day or two before they got shut off, they had some Daily Show-style comedy programme that didn't mention the war at all, and I really enjoyed that. But it was certainly the worst of the Freeview news channels.

Anyway, my point was more that online search results are being actively manipulated to make sure we don't see anything that They™ don't want us to see. Obviously there are always ways around these things, but I would have thought searching on YouTube was one of those ways and it clearly is not.
>> No. 37691 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 6:53 pm
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>>37682
Remember that Transnistria, where the troops are shown entering, is even less controlled by Moldova than Donbas is by Ukraine, and they have their own government and would love to join Russia. I can't be absolutely certain of this, but Moldova might even hand it over for free if Russia asked.
>> No. 37692 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 7:23 pm
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https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1576793/Ukraine-war-Russia-Vladimir-Putin-road-signs-defaced

>'F*** off to Russia!' Furious Ukrainians deface key road signs to confuse Putin's troops

>Pictures of a road sign in Odessa show a road sign with one arrow pointing ahead reading 'F*** off", another arrow to the left states, "F*** off again" and a third arrow pointing to the right reads, "F*** off back to Russia".


When did Ukraine turn into Croydon?
>> No. 37693 Anonymous
8th March 2022
Tuesday 10:47 pm
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>>37692
It's always the postmen who are the real victims in war.
>> No. 37694 Anonymous
9th March 2022
Wednesday 12:02 am
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>>37693

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vp9dKNoq6I
>> No. 37695 Anonymous
9th March 2022
Wednesday 7:35 am
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>>37690
As mentioned, you can watch Al Jazeera if you want an anti-West perspective and not just propaganda forced in your face. Despite being another heavily biased state-owned operation, they actually do journalism instead of wholesale manufacture disinformation.
>> No. 37698 Anonymous
9th March 2022
Wednesday 1:21 pm
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So what's the latest, is it all over and the Russian state has collapsed yet? Has Vladimir Putin been ousted in a KGB coup yet?

I think everyone got far too excited over this when it first kicked off. Has it been long enough that we start seeing sober discussion yet?
>> No. 37699 Anonymous
9th March 2022
Wednesday 1:58 pm
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>>37698
Would you like to state a single worthwhile opinion or thought of your own before trying to claim everyone else is wrong, or otherwise lacking "sober" thoughts? This itself is a stupid statement seeing as there has been plenty of sensible discussion itt. You complain like the war is simultaneously taking too long whilst chastising others for paying too much attention to it all, conveniently revealing nothing of your own views all the time.
>> No. 37700 Anonymous
9th March 2022
Wednesday 2:06 pm
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>>37698

https://ilyalozovsky.substack.com/p/what-russian-officials-think-of-the
>> No. 37701 Anonymous
9th March 2022
Wednesday 2:49 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4wRdoWpw0w

Pretty convincing analysis of what went wrong for the Russians in planning and carrying out the invasion so far.

tl;dr: the Russian Army was technologically and strategically unequipped for an endevaour of this magnitude.
>> No. 37702 Anonymous
9th March 2022
Wednesday 3:22 pm
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>>37698
No, no, we didn't, and all my posts here before 4pm are sober. I'll tell you what we are seeing: history's first ever case of political cancel culture. McDonald's has now closed all its restaurants in Russia, just for the good PR. Again, I'm all for stopping Vladimir Putin however we can (the only reason we're not in World War 3 right now is because Western governments declined the invitation to start it), but some of these corporations are clearly just trying to get a righteous tweet out of things. Also, there's the famous Golden Arches Theory of Peace, where no two countries that both have McDonald's had ever gone to war with each other for a long time. So if McDonald's is closing down its Russian branches, that means the rule will no longer apply and the nukes can fly with impunity. Armageddon will be instigated by Ronald McDonald. Is that sober enough for you?
>> No. 37703 Anonymous
9th March 2022
Wednesday 3:27 pm
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>>37702
>history's first ever case of political cancel culture
Just fuck off somewhere else with this bollocks. Then fuck off from there too.
>> No. 37704 Anonymous
9th March 2022
Wednesday 3:41 pm
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>>37702

It's not a political decision for these companies to withdraw from Russia, just one of self-interest. The financial sanctions regime makes it practically difficult and legally risky to transact with any Russian entities. Russia isn't a particularly large consumer market, the collapse of the rouble means it's even less profitable and so it's just not worth risking a prosecution for money laundering. The regulators have given a clear signal that they will be scrutinising any trade with Russia very carefully and the legal departments of major corporations have responded accordingly.

Here's an explainer on the implications of the SWIFT ban from someone who works in that specific part of the finance industry:

https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/moving-money-internationally/
>> No. 37705 Anonymous
9th March 2022
Wednesday 3:48 pm
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>>37702
Didn't a lot of businesses avoid operating in South Africa due to apartheid? And we've also got the BDS movement to counter Zionism. Maccy D's pulling out of Russia is hardly the first case of "political cancel culture".
>> No. 37706 Anonymous
9th March 2022
Wednesday 5:01 pm
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>>37701

This channel does post some decent stuff but the fact they always pronounce decimals as something like "twelve point three-hundred-ninety-four" instead of... You know. Properly... Makes me think they're actually a bit thick, whoever they are.

It also sometimes makes little comments that reveal a distinct "I am an American that went to an American college and I view the world through the lens of an American college graduate" sort of bias on their analyses.

Sage for nothing of value other than whinging about a Youtube channel.
>> No. 37707 Anonymous
9th March 2022
Wednesday 5:14 pm
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>>37702
>>37705
Yeah, "political cancel culture" sounds like something one of those appalling opinion writers who fart out a trite fifteen-hundred-ish words once a week and still have the gall to call themselves a "journalist" would say.

>>37701
I don't want to sound like some kind of technobot psycho, but it's annoying that the television news coverage of the conflict is "blimey, isn't this horrible? Look how sad these people are" and not something more akin to that video. The BBC and ITV will cover this stuff, but only five years from now in a 11pm documentary no one will watch.
>> No. 37708 Anonymous
9th March 2022
Wednesday 7:35 pm
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>>37707

>I don't want to sound like some kind of technobot psycho, but it's annoying that the television news coverage of the conflict is "blimey, isn't this horrible? Look how sad these people are" and not something more akin to that video.

I had to defend pretty much that exact point of view to a coworker today, who said I was being cold hearted and cynical because apparently all the horrendous human suffering meant nothing to me.

Well, luv, it touches me and it's an incredible tragedy, but after two weeks of being inundated by nothing but images of sobbing women and children with cuts and blood spatter on their faces, I don't think I have to take that kind of lecture from somebody whose TV viewing habits, by her own admission, rarely go beyond Strictly, I'm a Celeb and Ibiza Weekender. There are more complex layers to this conflict that those of us who aren't shallow ditzes would like to read and watch more about than the mainstream media see fit for us at the moment.
>> No. 37710 Anonymous
9th March 2022
Wednesday 9:32 pm
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>>37702
Surely this war puts the "golden arches theory of peace" to bed anyway: Russia (847 McDonalds Restaurants) invaded Ukraine (108 McDonalds Restaurants).

>>37704
I would add to this a thought that I've been having repeatedly: If these companies were really trying to hurt Russia, which I think a lot of them are trying to spin it as, they'd be more aggressive. As it is they're all "pausing" operations, or splitting their Russian operations from their international operations, both of which are relatively neutral actions compared to what you'd do if you wanted to harm Russia: give everyone the sack and shut down operations. Boom, a spike in unemployment and certain important services disappear overnight.
(Slightly more insanely, I'd wonder if technology companies have the capability to push an automatic update that breaks things for Russian users. Obviously that'd have long term trust implications that nobody would want to risk kicking up, but surely if Apple and Microsoft wanted they could go one better than not selling their products and actively start breaking everyone's laptop and iPhone.)
>> No. 37711 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 12:02 am
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>>37710

>I'd wonder if technology companies have the capability to push an automatic update that breaks things for Russian users. Obviously that'd have long term trust implications that nobody would want to risk kicking up

Of course they can, without a doubt. But like you say, they've a lot to lose by proving it. It's the kind of action that serves little real benefit to them beyond optics, meanwhile even the technologically illiterate geriatrics in charge of the US government would suddenly clock what they are capable of, and come down like a ton of bricks.
>> No. 37712 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 1:01 am
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>>37711
For phones they could (if HTC, Apple, Samsung and Huawei decided to excluded Russian users) but who does that hurt?
>> No. 37713 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 1:30 am
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>>37710
One interesting thing that I read about but now can't find (I know it was on theregister.com if you want to look yourself) is the fact that many of these companies do have offices there, and are now pretty much telling their Russian branches they're not allowed to use anything from the other branches. So you get companies like Oracle and VMware who have hundreds of employees based in Russia, currently reduced to just twiddling their thumbs because they need their American office to send them stuff to do, and that is no longer possible.
>> No. 37714 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 8:26 am
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHrGd0BcLmA
>> No. 37715 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 12:27 pm
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Do you think NATO would intervene if Russia used a nuke or chemical weapons?
>> No. 37716 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 12:36 pm
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>>37715
NATO is a fan of not getting nuked itself, so no.
>> No. 37717 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 1:09 pm
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So, is it pretty much inevitable that Vlad the lad is going to take things a bit too far and somebody else having to get involved?
>> No. 37718 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 2:20 pm
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>>37717
Not really. Russia is struggling with Ukraine alone, why would they immediately start a second front with a country who in all likelihood are either in NATO or just very much ready for this happening to them as well? In fact, the "why" is the least of it, the how is more important. If it's true Russia has committed 75% of its ground combat troops to this then they don't really have anything left to get anyone else involved. If, and it's a big if, Ukraine is wrapped up by the Summer or thereabouts Georgia might be at risk. However, they're going to need to occupy Ukraine at that point and who knows how much men and materials will have been lost by then. There have been a lot of comparisons to Hitler over the past few weeks, but I think Mussolini is the more apt historical equal for Putin now; big but ineffectual army, showy but mostly crap airforce and a big bloated head. Though I think Putin's head is due to the botox, whereas Mussolini's was too much zeppole. I suppose this comparison does undermine my early points about why and how Russia could fight more conflicts, as Mussolini kept starting fights Italy wasn't prepared for, but 75% is much a huge committment of troops it seems impossible to me. It probably isn't that different to what the UK and US sent into Iraq in terms of a proportion of their armed forces, but the Coalition weren't taking casualities at least into the high thousands, if not low tens-of-thousands, like the Russians are.

You see, this isn't only a big, conventional, ground war betweem two European nations for the first time since 1945, it's one that's so badly run western military analysts are shocked at how crap Russia is doing. Take the Russian generals that were killed, they didn't die because some Ukrainian Super Army Soldiers tracked down their HQ and took them out all sneaky like. It's thought they were shot while at the frontlines trying to find out what all the chaos and confusion was about, which why generals in 1812 would die, in 2022 that's incredible. I don't know if many WW2 divisional or above commanders died like that. The ones I can think of all got hit by air attacks, artillery or died in a plane crash.
>> No. 37719 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 2:33 pm
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>> No. 37720 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 2:51 pm
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>>37719

Bit disturbing that a Russian Government entity would actually stoop so low.
>> No. 37721 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 3:35 pm
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>>37720

Do you think they would go so low as to drop a nuke or two?
>> No. 37722 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 3:38 pm
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>>37721
Why do you keep talking about nukes? Russia is trying to conquer Ukraine and never thought about nuking Grozny or Aleppo, you sound like a child.
>> No. 37723 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 3:40 pm
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>>37722

I just want WW3 to happen. Is it too much to ask?

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 37724 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 3:58 pm
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>>37723

It's already beginned.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exvecFZq9wQ
>> No. 37725 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 5:26 pm
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>>37724
Bit disturbing that a Ukrainian government entity would actually stoop so low.
>> No. 37726 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 6:27 pm
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>>37718
I think one other thing is that we're at the dawn of a new type of warfare entirely.

WWI saw the end of cavalry following the invention of machine guns and artillery.
WWII saw the advent of tanks and fast moving vehicles ruling the battlefield.

But what we're seeing in Ukraine is that modern hand-held anti-air and anti-armour weapons, together with drones have made Russias tanks obsolete. Perhaps I'm wrong though, and just having an attacking force with good coordination and intelligence would be able to counter that.
>> No. 37727 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 7:01 pm
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>>37726
I'm unsure how modern armoured tactics have changed so I can't speak to that, and as you say the inadequacy of Russian forces means you can't gleam too much from any of this. However, the drone attacks Ukraine was utilising early on in the invasion were only possible due to Russian incompetence. The ground forces outran their AAA, or simply didn't deploy it, and as such the Ukrainians, for a time, had a free hand to strike the Russian columns again and again. There isn't anything special about the TB2 drone, there just wasn't anything to stop them flying in, firing and leaving.
>> No. 37728 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 7:35 pm
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>>37724

Well fuck. For a country that can count itself lucky that the West isn't just sitting back and letting Putin arse rape it as he pleases, they're really fanning the flames and jeopardising strategic security for all of Europe.

Just like when Zelensky asked NATO to put a no-fly zone into effect. I know your back is against the wall right now, but just because you're going down the drain, doesn't mean you can expect the world to start WWIII over what is essentially still a former Communist shitehole country. A large and increasingly modern one, with growing ties to the West and Western Europe, but there comes a point when you just need to stop demanding a mile everytime you're given an inch. When push comes to shove and if the only other alternative is global nuclear armageddon, the West and NATO will drop your country like a hot potato. And rightly so.

I'm firmly in the Western and anti-Russian camp in all this, but Ukraine is starting to behave like a mental slag who gets off on her boyfriend beating the shit out of other blokes everytime somebody else flirts with her.
>> No. 37729 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 7:35 pm
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>>37726

I feel pretty confident that if it was us or the Yanks invading, it would be the Ukranians who look like a bunch of useless peasant pissheads who have no idea what they're doing. It's only because we all expected so much more of Russia that they look this inept.

I don't say that to try brag about Are Boys being superior or out of any sense of nationalism or whatever, but that it's all about comparative experience and organisation. On top of a badly organised plan that looks like it was never meant to actually go ahead at all, and giving pretty much every possible strategic advantage in the world to the Ukranians, the Russian armed forces simply haven't done something on this scale in years. The various interventions in the Baltics don't compare, their last proper invasion was Rambo 3.
>> No. 37730 Anonymous
10th March 2022
Thursday 10:35 pm
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>>37729

> the Russian armed forces simply haven't done something on this scale in years

It's a bit cynical saying that the Americans got loads more practice invading larger sovereign countries in the last 25 years, but it's kind of the truth. Places like Georgia where the Russians invaded are barely the size of Ireland and were easy to hold despite being largely mountainous inaccessible terrain. And whatever the Russians did in Syria was no invasion but the killing off of pockets of insurgents against the Assad regime. But a vast country the size of Ukraine, which is three times the size of Great Britain and still almost 50 percent bigger than Iraq, with a population of 40 million, is something that you need experienced personnel for, both on the ground and in the higher-up ranks of military strategy.
>> No. 37731 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 8:22 am
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The British ex-army guy who went to fight got captured by the Ukrainians (yes) thinking he was a Russian spy then immediately came home after they released him. Turns out it's not as fun when your side isn't the overwhelmingly well-equipped and supported side.
>> No. 37732 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 10:16 am
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If Russia's big error was a lack of experience in invading countries, they're going to have a lot more experience next time and they will positively bum Kazakhstan.
>> No. 37733 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 10:46 am
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>>37732

>and they will positively bum Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan has a Moscow-leaning puppet government in place that suppresses its people in a similar way as now Belarus. The Russians won't have to do a full-on regime change invasion, they'll just have to send in some troops to support the Tokayev regime and quell public protests.
>> No. 37734 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 1:17 pm
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Russia and Ukraine together produce about 30% of the world's wheat exports and 80% of sunflower oil.
Investor lads, if this information makes you rich, you owe me a percentage.
>> No. 37735 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 1:23 pm
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>>37734
Sod crops. With the amount of armour and aircraft Russia's throwing away scrap metal's where the money's at.
>> No. 37736 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 1:26 pm
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>>37734
>> No. 37737 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 1:48 pm
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>>37713
>One interesting thing that I read about but now can't find (I know it was on theregister.com if you want to look yourself) is the fact that many of these companies do have offices there, and are now pretty much telling their Russian branches they're not allowed to use anything from the other branches. So you get companies like Oracle and VMware who have hundreds of employees based in Russia, currently reduced to just twiddling their thumbs because they need their American office to send them stuff to do, and that is no longer possible.

I'm almost disappointed we're not going to get a Fanta-style operation where Russian franchises operate individually. Maybe I'm turning into a dad but just imagine a drive for peace motivated by the desire to try the neighbours burgers - grill for peace.

Oh well, at least Russia has embarked on a true utopian experiment of what happens when you pay non-bennie-chasing people without giving them anything specific to do. Imagine all the little projects that would never otherwise see the light of day even if they still have to sit around. And the bonking.

>>37726
>>37727
The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War and Tigray War were the foreboding for this and in Nagorno-Karabakh it's telling that the superior (expensive) equipment of the Armenian air-force were neutralised by risk in the same way battleships rarely fought. The point of drones is they're useful because there is a much higher risk-tolerance involved, you'd think Russia would be all over a winning tactic like that only they lack the technical sophistication.

Keep in mind that in Syria Russia was specifically able to ensure that AA weaponry stayed out of rebel hands which is something nations have a historical interest in due to the risk to aviation.
>> No. 37738 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 3:51 pm
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>Putin seeks foreign volunteers to fight in Ukraine

>Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for foreign volunteers to be able to fight against Ukrainian forces. Speaking at a Russian security council meeting, he said those who wanted to volunteer to fight with Russia-backed forces should be allowed to.

>Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said there were 16,000 volunteers in the Middle East ready to fight alongside Russia-backed forces. US officials said these could include Syrians skilled in urban combat. Mr Shoigu also proposed handing over captured Western anti-tank missile systems to Russian-backed rebel fighters in the breakaway Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donbas region.

>Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, responding in a video message, said "thugs from Syria" would be coming to kill people "in a foreign land". Foreign fighters, including former and current British army personnel, have also been arriving in Ukraine to fight for the government in Kyiv. Mr Zelensky said recently that 16,000 foreigners had volunteered for the cause, part of what he called an "international legion".

>According to the Wall Street Journal, US officials have told the paper that Russia has recently been recruiting fighters from Syria, hoping their expertise in urban warfare can help take Kyiv and deal a devastating blow to the Ukraine government. At the same time, US private security firms have been seeking to recruit former soldiers to help evacuate people from Ukraine.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60705486

Any of you lot going to Condor Legion?

But to continue my point on the Nagorno-Karabakh's lessons, Syrians (and Libyans) were recruited by Azerbaijan during this war to be used as cannon fodder. These weren't necessarily experts but people desperate for money with a family to support and a belief they would be handling rear-end stuff for $2000.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-55238803
>> No. 37739 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 4:09 pm
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>>37738
Are they actually going to be "handling rear-end stuff" quiet at the back, Kenneth Williams or is that just what the recruiters are telling them? Because I don't see why Russia couldn't get its own soldiers to do logistical work if it wanted. Regardless I don't know how much help they'll be. If they're such "experts in urban warfare" why did Russia need to bomb Aleppo, and elsewhere, to pieces in the first place? The truth is I don't think you can have much expertise in urban combat, it's just very, very hard and very, very dangerous.
>> No. 37740 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 4:30 pm
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>>37738

It's an admission that things aren't going to plan and that they need much more personnel than originally planned. Why would you start your invasion if you don't believe that your own troops are going to get the job done without backup from relatively unskilled additional, and foreign foreign volunteers.

As invasions go, this one looks more and more like a complete clusterfuck.
>> No. 37741 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 4:54 pm
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>>37739
This is obviously what they were told and sentry-duty isn't an uncommon bit of mercenary work.

>If they're such "experts in urban warfare" why did Russia need to bomb Aleppo, and elsewhere, to pieces in the first place?

That's generally how you assault a city. Surround it, bomb it, work your way to meet in the middle is the only way you can do it despite all the thinking that has been going into it. Urban Warfare skills is about the actual fighting part which not many armies can do and actually requires a whole new model of thinking - you don't use the front door, you go through walls with sledgehammers.

I remember reading an interesting article about Die-hard being an architects movie in this sense, in fact it exactly mirroring the kinds of thinking that go on in the IDF:
https://bldgblog.com/2010/01/nakatomi-space/
>> No. 37742 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 5:08 pm
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>>37740
>It's an admission that things aren't going to plan and that they need much more personnel than originally planned. Why would you start your invasion if you don't believe that your own troops are going to get the job done without backup from relatively unskilled additional, and foreign foreign volunteers.

Again, Nagorno-Karabakh showed the use of them. The poor and desperate of the world are becoming an increasing factor of war that hasn't entered the western mindset, cheap drones made of flesh that work like supervillain mooks that ARE (blonde-haired, blue-eyed) UKRANIAN BOYS will soon be mowing down. The public don't care about them, the law doesn't really apply and you can work them harder than a Polish day-labourer who has lost his passport.

Fucking hell the world's a grim place.
>> No. 37743 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 8:28 pm
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https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1577236/Ukraine-Russia-World-War-3-fears-WW3-US-bombers-RAF-Fairford

>Four gigantic US bombers arrive at UK airbase amid World War 3 fears

Of course, going with a headline like that in no way stokes those fears.
>> No. 37744 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 8:37 pm
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>>37743

It's The Express, they've been worrying about World War Three since 1946.
>> No. 37745 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 9:38 pm
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>>37744
They're usually more worried about making sure they get out their weekly snow forecast.
>> No. 37746 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 9:39 pm
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>>37739
>Because I don't see why Russia couldn't get its own soldiers to do logistical work if it wanted.

To me it seems that this is mostly just a tit-for-tat response to Ukraine recruiting their own foreign legion.
>> No. 37747 Anonymous
11th March 2022
Friday 9:39 pm
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/03/10/russia-belarus-mightily-close-default-world-bank-warns/

>Russia is facing effective bankruptcy as soon as Wednesday after the World Bank warned that crippling sanctions have left the Kremlin “mighty close” to a default on its foreign debts.

>Analysts fear the country will fail to make a $117m (£89m) coupon payment on a sovereign eurobond next week. It will have a 30-day grace period to pay up, but may be deemed to have defaulted if it attempts to pay in roubles.


That's probably the even bigger problem than the sanctions themselves. That payment is due in USD, at a time when the Ruble has seen record devaluation against all the world's hard currencies.
>> No. 37748 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 12:16 am
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>>37747
If all these endless sanctions don't work, we've basically just created a colder Greece. It's going to be awful if they don't work. Although I am now imagining all the Syrians refusing to join the Russian Foreign Legion because they don't want to leave behind the relative prosperity and economic stability of Syria.
>> No. 37749 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 1:47 am
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>>37743
I just love the B-52 and Tu-95. I sometimes daydream about working from home in the summer with my window open, and hearing death and destruction approaching. I use them as white noise sometimes.
>> No. 37750 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 1:49 am
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>>37747
Won't this push Putin to just be more ruthless? Grozny ruthless.
>> No. 37751 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 2:11 am
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>>37747
>>37750
I don't know how this is supposed to impact Russia.
>Blyat! We won't repay dollars to countries actively engaged in economic warfare against us and that we can no longer borrow from anyway!
>Their leaders might send a letter of deep concern

Idiots will still invest in Russia once this all calms down whether it's Putin in charge or not and it's not like the West can do anything about it. Not when most of the third world is about to default with rising food and fuel prices and while the West has really already used all its escalation levers.
>> No. 37752 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 2:36 am
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>>37747

I've never understood the whole thing with national debt and bonds and all that. I mean what exactly is going to happen if an entire country defaults? Who exactly is the world bank? It all just sounds utterly absurd when you read about it in situations like this. There's no such thing as roubles or dollars in this context anyway, it's just fucking 1s and 0s on a computer.

I mean, I can't imagine it's just like HSBC sending bailiffs over threatening to take your big telly away for your overdue credit card bills. Like, what exactly is supposed to happen, are we meant to see Putin down at World Cash Converters trying to get dollars for a load of old laptops?
>> No. 37753 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 3:19 am
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>>37752
When it's a country like Russia there's a risk that it damages banks around the world, for the country in question it ruins its reputation which means loss of access to finance amongst other things which is a bigger problem than you might think (and other states might be angry enough to just seize the money).

The World Bank hasn't done anything in Russia since Crimea.

>I've never understood the whole thing with national debt and bonds and all that.

And how is the Labour party these days?
>> No. 37755 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 4:22 am
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I am slightly curious how a state winds up with foreign denominated debts.
Is it a matter of selling rouble debts/bonds, but denominating them in dollars so that foreign investors will buy them? Or do they actually borrow US dollars? (perhaps to fund government imports of dollar-denominated goods? Or maybe the IMF will only give you dollars?)

My understanding of Britain at present is that, essentially, all of our debts are issued in pounds and if (say) god showed up tomorrow and demanded that we "pay everyone back" (yes, i know, "that's not how it works") or be smited and sink into the sea we could just run the printing presses at the Bank of England, and while there'd be economic consequences to that, we'd have met god's will and everything would tick over as a "mere" massive economic shock. Meanwhile if you asked Russia or Argentina or Greece, they'd be in trouble because their debts are either in someone else's money, or in their money, which they don't actually control because the Germans have the key to the printer room, so they'd either have to have a big personal bankruptcy inducing national whip-round (which still might not even work, since GDP is a yearly figure, not a current account balance) or accept they're stuffed and take the smiting. Attempts to print enough money would cause the money they can print to lose value relative to the currency they can't print which is the one they've got to pay it back in. Or in the Greek case, being arrested by the Bundesnachrichtendienst for breaking into the ECB.
>> No. 37756 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 5:22 am
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>>37752

>I mean what exactly is going to happen if an entire country defaults?

Most governments and foreign banks will refuse to lend them money, which is an extremely serious problem.

The vast majority of international trade is facilitated by debt. If I buy something from Japan, my bank doesn't buy any yen. They have a partner bank in Japan who will complete the transaction and essentially issue an IOU. Most of those IOUs will just be written off against each other, so money very rarely actually changes hands. This system of trust massively improves transaction speed and reduces transaction costs.

Not being able to participate in that system is crippling for any economy, but it's particularly problematic for Russia due to their dependence on imports. Russia has an incredibly weak industrial base and can't really manufacture much of anything, because their economy is so dependent on hydrocarbons and metals. Without the ability to easily borrow, they become far more dependent on the short-term flow of foreign currency and lose a great deal of their bargaining power when selling their resources.

A sovereign default pretty much always leads to an awful crisis and a long recession, but it's particularly unpleasant if you've pissed everyone off and none of your creditors are inclined to meet you half way.

>>37755

>I am slightly curious how a state winds up with foreign denominated debts.

All governments end up with some amount of foreign-denominated debt for the reason just given - it's the easiest and cheapest way of completing transactions with a foreign entity. Weak economies with volatile or weakening currencies do tend to end up issuing foreign-denominated debt instruments to reduce their cost of borrowing. If everyone expects you to just print money to pay off your debts, they'll price that expected devaluation into their offer of credit.

Russia has exceptionally low levels of external debt thanks to Putin's big oily warchest, but that doesn't help very much in preventing a debt crisis if all of your foreign assets have been frozen and nobody is willing to do business with you. This is a highly abnormal debt crisis, because it's being engineered with the specific purpose of breaking the Russian economy.
>> No. 37757 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 5:43 am
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>>37750

Ukraine have been preparing for that specific scenario, hence the mass evacuation of civilians and the preparation for guerilla warfare. Russia was in a far better strategic position in Grozny, but their victory was distinctly pyrrhic. If this turns into a war of attrition, it will not end well for the Russians.


>> No. 37758 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 8:45 am
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"Worrabout Corbyn?"
>> No. 37759 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 10:51 am
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>>37758

Corbyn was opposed to the increasing privatisation of the NHS, and the 2019 manifesto proposed a greater increase in public healthcare funding than any other. He was also the only genuinely anti-war party leader that I have ever known to have had a chance at power.

I imagine in some alternative future we would all be enjoying headlines like, "1,000 TOTAL EXCESS COVID-19 DEATHS ON NEW SOCIALIST NHS: 'INEXCUSABLE AMOUNT' SAYS ANALYST" and "COMRADE CORBYN GIVES AWAY UKRAINE IN NEW MINSK AGREEMENT".
>> No. 37760 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 11:04 am
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>>37759
He was also a massive apologist for Russia. I know a lot of people try and pin his downfall solely on Labour's extremely muddled Brexit position for the 2019 GE, but his shameful response to the Salisbury poisoning turned many people off him after gradually winning them over. He certainly said that Russia weren't unprovoked when they annexed Crimea as it was justified by the expansion of NATO/Western imperialism.

Anyway, let's not do this. The man is an irrelevance these days.
>> No. 37761 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 11:36 am
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>>37760
>I know a lot of people try and pin his downfall solely on Labour's extremely muddled Brexit position for the 2019 GE

That's the current party line, but it's the well-researched and quantifiable media bias, as well as the smear campaign accusing the party of antisemitism, that had far more to do with their loss at the election time. I strongly suspect that your idea that Corbyn was a "massive apologist for Russia" comes from that same strain of media that reported George Oborne's and RIchard Dearlove's remarks that Corbyn was a "security threat", and gleefully questioned him on live television whether he would be willing to launch nuclear weapons.

>He certainly said that Russia weren't unprovoked when they annexed Crimea as it was justified by the expansion of NATO/Western imperialism.

It's a common tactic to call someone an "apologist" when they point to the history of our own decisions, i.e. things we had control over, and then claim it's somehow a justification for the horrid action of others. Russia's actions in Crimea and now Ukraine were and are inexcusable, and Corbyn has said as much. Take a look at his article on Stop the War, which says this explicitly, and argues for proper historical and political context in the interest of preventing further conflict: https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/the-history-lurking-behind-the-crisis-in-ukraine-by-jeremy-corbyn-mp/

>Russia has gone way beyond its legal powers to use bases in the Crimea. Sending unidentified forces into another country is clearly a violation of that country’s sovereignty.

>Anyway, let's not do this. The man is an irrelevance these days.

As I say, Corbyn was the only genuinely anti-war party leader that has even come close to power. I truly doubt we will ever see an anti-war activist in that position again in our lifetimes. His version of Labour shaped the politics of an entire generation of voters. More than that, Corbyn is still an MP. He's only an irrelevance in the circles that were desperate to misrepresent and divert attention from him in the first place.
>> No. 37762 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 12:03 pm
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https://www.ft.com/content/28a13d3d-bfc1-4bc0-8fd6-360c9c797ae6

>Ukraine war could cause a ‘renewed downturn’ in UK, warn economists

>Living standards and growth are expected to be hit, with inflation now predicted to peak above 9%


Anybody else feel like the 2020s so far have been a massive disappointment?
>> No. 37763 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 12:09 pm
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>>37762
If your happiness is tied to single digit changes in macroeconomic outlook, maybe you're doing it wrong.
>> No. 37764 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 12:14 pm
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>>37763

It's just the tip of the iceberg though. The whole big picture of the early 20s is starting to become quite anticlimactic.

First the pandemic, now Putin going all Dr. Evil, with far-reaching consequences both for the global economy and the British one.

Only upside will be fewer Russian oligarchs driving up property prices in Londongrad.
>> No. 37765 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 12:14 pm
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>>37762
Between Johnson's thousand year World Kingdom, the pandemic and now the perpetually fucked economy because of a horrendously pointless war it is certainly making my complaints that "blimey, this Brexit business is really crowding out the rest of the news" ring so hollow you could fit an entire subterranean Reptilian base in it.
>> No. 37766 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 12:21 pm
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>>37765

Right, forgot Brexit.
>> No. 37767 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 12:30 pm
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Can airportlad tell us how the surge in crude oil is going to affect airfares? I just looked at Jet2 fares for popular holiday destinations, and they still seem to have the same special offers as ever. You can still go to Fuerteventura and back in late March for around £350 per person. Which is right around the price band of pre-pandemic special offers. Shouldn't ticket prices also skyrocket right now?
>> No. 37768 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 12:37 pm
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>>37767

EDIT: Just found a flight April 20-27, including baggage, that's only 182 quid.

https://www.jet2.com/en/cheap-flights/london-stansted/fuerteventura?from=2022-04-20&to=2022-04-27&adults=2&children&infants=0&preselect=true

How are they still turning a profit?
>> No. 37769 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 1:03 pm
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>>37767
A lot of airlines probably don't buy fuel at today's prices. But increases are coming.
>> No. 37770 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 1:15 pm
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>>37769

So is it better then to move your summer holiday up to mid-spring?

Majorca is still a bit nippy at that time, but there are places in Greece or Turkey where you'll have solid summer weather as early as late April.
>> No. 37771 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 1:25 pm
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>>37768

Not every seat on the flight will cost that. They will have charged 4x that to other people and are now dropping prices to cover.

Though even at that cost, they'd still break even on a 737-800 at around 140 tickets. And then they make 5 grand profit in the air on drinks.
>> No. 37772 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 1:52 pm
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>>37771

>And then they make 5 grand profit in the air on drinks.

I've noticed that no-frills airlines these days increasingly charge for drinks. I know that you used to get free coffee (within reason) on any flight and pretty much any airline on your package holiday flights, but then at some point they all started charging two quid (?) for every cup.

Unless it's a longer flight like Turkey or Sharm El Sheikh, I generally avoid food and drink during a flight. No point spending 20 quid on food and drink on a two-hour flight to Majorca. Maybe I'll have one coffee.
>> No. 37773 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 3:20 pm
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>>37762
Not especially. I've been crying out for Armageddon for years. But I'll admit it hasn't been as great as I hoped. None of my gripes are related to the war in Ukraine at all, but it is in my interest for everyone around me to have less money and to die off in record numbers, so I'll admit to being upset that I have yet to see a single benefit from this.
>> No. 37774 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 6:33 pm
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>>37762
They've been boring, but I'm still stuck to enjoying it a bit like Pavlov's dog. The economic status quo came about after the oil crisis, and while each subsequent crisis has failed to bring about something new that doesn't seem like reason to give up hope.
Just because neither Brexit nor Covid brought back my social democratic full employment utopia that will pay me to be a quality control inspector at the box factory doesn't mean that the mutual fallout of sanctioning Russia won't underscore that having a national economy is actually a good thing.
It won't do that, of course, but until the crisis is over I can hope. Then the next thing will come along and I'll do it again. My fantasies as static as Britain's real-terms wage growth.
>> No. 37775 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 7:09 pm
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>>37774
>a national economy is actually a good thing

Is it though? I see you don't expect anything to change but I think it's worth emphasising that we've been decoupling from China for years but I feel sod-all richer or social democratic for it and the same will be true of cutting off Russia only more so. At this point I'd quite like to at least remain static on the treadmill of life.

I ended up reading Morning Star the other night and they had a good editorial on the problem of a 'paradigm shift' similar to 9/11, the risk of the left forgetting just how much worse things could get in a new world of high-military budgets and low international cooperation that make it impossible to address global challenges like climate change, Covid-19 and economic hardship. Obviously they're anti-American tankies who might at best weep some crocodile tears over Russian tanks flattening 'fascist' Ukrainians but when even Communists are talking about the risk to free trade you have to listen.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/e/if-war-paradigm-shift-left-needs-view-what-comes-next
>> No. 37776 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 7:14 pm
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>>37775
In and of itself not really, but the advantage it has is that you can actually control it rather than throwing your hands up and going "can't do anything about it mate, that's just globalisation for you, learn to program and pray for the best."
I'm not so much worried about free trade (mostly good) as about free movement of capital. If you could get a similar level of control over capital at the international level, that might be a better way of dealing with climate change, but failing that a series of national economies could co-operate better than an international economy where each state compares for a share of free-moving capital.

But my contrived economic views aren't as fun as the cargo-cult psychology of "surely this major crisis will ultimately improve my lot in life and make the country better fit my political and aesthetic sensibilities"
>> No. 37777 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 8:06 pm
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>>37776
I think the problem is there are more people who don't want what we want than do want it. So when I (>>37773) say that crisis brings opportunity because it will kil de boomers and bankrupt families who live in the houses I want to buy, the government spots this too and rapidly intervenes to protect their voters and fuck me over in the process.
>> No. 37778 Anonymous
12th March 2022
Saturday 9:55 pm
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>>37776

Globalisation itself was put in place to suit the interests of Big Capital, who wanted to cut costs by sourcing their raw materials and preproducts in Far Eastern countries that could afford to pay their workers 20p an hour, and to invest profits at the touch of a button wherever on the planet they pleased. It wasn't so that Greg from Manchester could buy stuff on eBay directly from China or so that Klaus from Cologne could pay for his cup of coffee in Majorca in Euros just like back home. Whatever benefits we as consumers got from it were either accidental or they create business opportunities in and of themselves for Big Capital.

If you're a business person somewhere in some third-world shitehole country in sub-Saharan Africa who has money to invest, you can buy British stocks over the Internet at the touch of a button. But look what happens to you if you're one of those poor sods from there who try to enter Britain illegally just because they want to earn a living with their own hands. Capital enjoys a freedom of movement unprecedented in history, while work migration to the Global North has probably never been as restricted as it is today. In other words, in the sense of economic production factors, the rich can do with the production factors that they own, in this case capital, whatever the fuck they want, while the poor, whose only production factor is their labour, are told to stay the fuck out. They're needed to bosh together preproducts for 20p an hour in their home countries, we can't have them working in the Global North for our kinds of wages.

I'm not sure market economies would become more manageable and controllable if you reverted to pre-globalisation and national economies. Economic systems are inherently unstable, and even the smallest countries today whose economies border on isolationism tend to not be managed well. You would probably have to exercise a level of government control that would be irreconcilable with any ideas about free enterprise. And government intervention often creates its own share of inefficiency and of doing more harm than good.
>> No. 37780 Anonymous
13th March 2022
Sunday 2:12 am
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>UK households offered £350 a month for hosting refugees
>Meanwhile, the first ministers of Scotland and Wales have proposed that both countries become "super sponsors" to refugees fleeing the Russian invasion.
>In a joint letter, Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford said becoming "super sponsor" would allow the two nations to take refugees more quickly and give them access to safeguarding and services, while a longer-term sponsor is found.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60724111

Apparently Gove is even talking about seizing mansions to house refugees. Imagine if 6 months ago I'd told you this, you'd probably call me a gaylord.

>>37776
>but failing that a series of national economies could co-operate better than an international economy where each state compares for a share of free-moving capital.

I don't know about that - Comecon was a shitshow and even today the efficiency of international trading arrangements is plagued by nationalism. The current fiasco with Russia should really be a symbol of how the free movement of capital is dependant on you keeping Uncle Sam happy and we've discussed before the risk of someone getting unpersoned if banks find you too much hassle to deal with.

>>37778
I'm pretty fucking sure Big Capital would love to import people who undercut local wages. It's just that after doing it, social democracy has collapsed instead of neoliberalism because the Left thinks calling voters racist wins an argument.
>> No. 37783 Anonymous
13th March 2022
Sunday 8:36 am
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>>37780

Quite, although:

>It's just that after doing it, social democracy has collapsed instead of neoliberalism because the neoliberals disguised themselves as the left and started calling voters racist

would be a more accurate way to put it, I reckon.
>> No. 37784 Anonymous
13th March 2022
Sunday 11:58 am
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>>37780
>>UK households offered £350 a month for hosting refugees

Yes I bet all the HMO landlords are rubbing their hands with glee.
>> No. 37786 Anonymous
13th March 2022
Sunday 3:45 pm
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>>37780

>I'm pretty fucking sure Big Capital would love to import people who undercut local wages

Except they can't realistically because many countries in the Global North have minimum wages.

The only way to circumvent minimum wages on a larger scale is prison labour, which has become a thriving industry especially in the U.S., where prisoners are paid infinitesimally low wages typically for manual manufacturing work because they don't fall under minimum wage restrictions. It enables companies to farm out certain parts of their production process while still keeping them in the country, at labour costs they normally only get in third world countries. It's one reason why prison itself is such a big business in the U.S. in particular.
>> No. 37787 Anonymous
13th March 2022
Sunday 4:16 pm
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>>37780
>Apparently Gove is even talking about seizing mansions to house refugees. Imagine if 6 months ago I'd told you this, you'd probably call me a gaylord.
Bloody hell. I assume he means the empty houses owned by Russian oligarchs. Because you're absolutely right; this is mental. You are effectively reporting that Michael Gove has come out and said we need an uprising against all those twats like Michael Gove because of all the atrocities perpetrated by twats like Michael Gove. The only way to stop Michael Gove is to vote for Michael Gove. I know he's a man who believes in nothing beyond his own career aspirations, but what on Earth is happening?

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 37788 Anonymous
13th March 2022
Sunday 7:57 pm
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>>37787
>Major UK businesses are lining up to offer jobs to Ukrainian refugees when they start to arrive in the UK.

>A group of more than 45 large businesses is pressing the government to make it easier for those driven out by Russia's invasion to come to the UK. Marks & Spencer, Asos, Lush and recruitment giant Robert Walters are some of the firms involved.

>The initiative is being led by British entrepreneur Emma Sinclair, the chief executive of Enterprise Alumni. She said it had quickly gained ground in a short space of time. The project is in its early stages, and many of the details about how it will work in practice are unclear. Ms Sinclair, who is co-ordinating the initiative at the moment despite a recent head injury, told the BBC that many of her ancestors were from Eastern Europe, including Ukraine.

>The aim of the project is to help "tens of thousands" of refugees not only get jobs in the UK, but to help them find accommodation, and gain language skills.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60728298

They're coming over 'er taking our jobs, our homes and, for some, our hearts. What on Earth is going on.
>> No. 37789 Anonymous
13th March 2022
Sunday 8:33 pm
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>https://The Metro is owned by the Daily Mail./2022/02/28/compare-the-meerkat-adverts-dropped-from-tv-news-over-ukraine-conflict-16190688/

>Compare the Meerkat adverts dropped from TV news over Ukraine conflict

I was wondering the other day what happened to them.

I understand the sentiment, I do, but are we all so soft and irritable these days that we can't even tolerate a faux Russian advertising mascot, who has arguably had a good run, bringing a little bit of levity?

If we're serious that Putin is the enemy and not the Russian people, which I happen to agree with, then surely one way of showing it would be to hold on to a popular advert character and understand that that doesn't mean you're endorsing Putin's war in Ukraine.
>> No. 37790 Anonymous
13th March 2022
Sunday 11:37 pm
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>>37760

Hmm I don't think so.

https://twitter.com/OborneTweets/status/1502201248690454529
>> No. 37791 Anonymous
14th March 2022
Monday 12:36 am
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>>37790

Makes you wonder what ever happened to that report about the Conservative party's Russian donors.
>> No. 37792 Anonymous
14th March 2022
Monday 2:31 pm
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>>37789
Next you'll be telling me I can't even oisky poisky these days, captainsky.
>> No. 37793 Anonymous
14th March 2022
Monday 3:03 pm
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>>37791
It is my understanding Dominic Raab ate the entire thing.
>> No. 37794 Anonymous
14th March 2022
Monday 3:08 pm
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This tweet was spot on.

Notice the time and date.
>> No. 37795 Anonymous
14th March 2022
Monday 3:54 pm
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>>37793
We were expecting a triple-A blockbuster, but instead he ate it so the As ended up in his name instead.
>> No. 37796 Anonymous
14th March 2022
Monday 4:04 pm
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>>37789

WWWIII confirmed.

I hear we're going to start getting posters of the Go Compare singer done up all like Lord Kitchener.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6hRDS3LvQQ
>> No. 37797 Anonymous
14th March 2022
Monday 4:24 pm
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>>37795

I still struggle to tell the difference between Dominic Raab and Matt Hancock. They're so completely unremarkable, they can both only be described as a "slightly clammy white bloke, mid-to-late 40s, thinning brown hair, average build, average height". I can't even tell what colour their eyes are.

I imagine they were both courted by MI5 when they were at Oxford before being rejected for lacking initiative. They're so perfectly dull that they would never attract attention.
>> No. 37798 Anonymous
14th March 2022
Monday 4:33 pm
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>>37796


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM8bTdBs-cw


"Johnny Got His Gun" is one of the most distubing anti-war films you'll ever see. Definitely recommended. I also tried reading the book, but besides being incredibly quotable on almost every page, its style of writing is a bit difficult to follow and digest.
>> No. 37799 Anonymous
14th March 2022
Monday 4:47 pm
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>>37797
Raab has a quiet rage within him. Like a school shooter.
>> No. 37800 Anonymous
14th March 2022
Monday 4:55 pm
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>>37797
>I can't even tell what colour their eyes are.

>> No. 37801 Anonymous
14th March 2022
Monday 5:25 pm
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>>37797
Dominic Raab is ripped. He was in his university rowing team and is also a former boxer or something like that. He is that most upsetting thing: an insufferable MP that you couldn't beat up.

Beating up Matt Hancock would probably be much easier.
>> No. 37802 Anonymous
14th March 2022
Monday 5:59 pm
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>>37798

I'd suggest Die Brücke or Lebanon, the latter of which is almost more claustrophobic than Johnny Got His Gun, if you can imagine such a thing.
>> No. 37803 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 1:23 am
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https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html

For those of you who like to be a little more tinfoil about everything, this is pretty good.

If this is to be believed then all of this was understood as a consequence of NATO expansion years and years ago, the civil war, separatism, all of it.
>> No. 37804 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 2:08 am
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>>37803
Bernie Sanders explains some of the political history involved;
09:00 onward


There was also a video link floating about which detailed the strategic military significance of neighbouring regions in the defense of Russia, which I can unfortunately not find right now.

Who would have thought it's not as simple as 'Russia bad', regardless of your opionion of Putin.
>> No. 37805 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 2:48 am
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>>37803
>>37804
Let's be honest, everyone has lost their bloody minds lately and this stuff is being swept under the carpet that we all knew a month ago. There's a mate I feel sorry for in all this because his girlfriend is pregnant and has become adamant they should adopt a Ukrainian - he's fighting a losing battle because he knows there's a good chance that they won't ever leave no matter what happens in Ukraine.

Mearsheimer in the Great Delusion has been proven absolutely right that we continue to live under the spell of a liberal hegemony and he even warned Ukraine that the path they were being led on by the west was one that would only lead to destruction.
>> No. 37806 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 8:34 am
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>>37804
> There was also a video link floating about which detailed the strategic military significance of neighbouring regions in the defense of Russia, which I can unfortunately not find right now.

One of this chap's vids perhaps. From 3:30 onwards.



The map he presents is pretty terrible a) for being on its side, and b) from the colours (Water is white, blue is not water but cold bits etc)
>> No. 37807 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 9:30 am
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>>37803

In the end, after loads more fighting, the likely outcome is going to be that everybody gets something. Russia will stop its botched invasion, which it has no way of successfully completing if it doesn't want to risk another Afghanistan and doesn't want to go nuclear, even locally in Ukraine. NATO will not incorporate Ukraine into its territory, and it will remain a neutral state. There will be mutual assurances that neither Russia nor NATO will see Ukraine as part of their sphere of influence.

Not much else you can do really. Besides an endless war of attrition.
>> No. 37808 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 9:37 am
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>>37807

If it comes out with a peace agreement that assures Ukraine won't join NATO, they still got what they wanted, really. It cost them greatly, but they got it.
>> No. 37809 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 10:00 am
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>>37808

Anything is better than us here in Britain suddenly waking up to mushroom clouds in the sky one morning. At some point, the West needs to ask itself just how much it is willing to sacrifice just to defend one single country with questionable importance against a new old enemy.

Zelensky, on the other hand, is still dead set on demanding a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine. Which may stop Russian air raids in the short run, but is surely going to end in a direct military confrontation between NATO and Russia, which will either end in global nuclear war, or if it doesn't, it would still set a dangerous precedent for the idea that NATO and Russia can fight directly with each other without going nuclear. Which they never can, in the long run.

In that respect, the mind boggles that Zelensky can't see the consequences. What good is a bit of temporary relief from Russian air raids when you'll end up getting nuked just like the rest of the world. He reminds me of Che Guevara a bit at the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis who, when the Russians packed up their nuclear missiles and left, was reportedly furious that the Russians didn't actually launch them at the U.S..
>> No. 37810 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 10:32 am
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>>37809

To be clear I don't think that would even necessarily be a bad outcome. Not because Russia gets what it wants (although in the long term I do think that is important for real, genuine stability; and if it cost them this dearly they will think twice about doing this kind of thing again in the near future), but mainly because I've felt like the interventionalist, neo-con World Police tendencies of the US/West/NATO need giving a bit of a wake-up call.

We live in what feels like a very dangerous period of world history. We all have nukes pointed at each other, but we're far enough from the memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and starting to get far enough from the ever looming dread of the Cold War, that we're starting to get complacent about it.
>> No. 37811 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 11:17 am
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>>37809

>the West needs to ask itself just how much it is willing to sacrifice just to defend one single country

How confident are you that Putin would stop at Ukraine?
>> No. 37812 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 11:23 am
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>>37811

About 95% confident given he could barely even manage Ukraine.

Give the doomsaying a rest now, the exciting bit is over and it's time to be sensible. Even if Putin wants to be 21st century Hitler, he's shit at it.
>> No. 37813 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 11:27 am
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>>37810

>but we're far enough from the memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and starting to get far enough from the ever looming dread of the Cold War, that we're starting to get complacent about it.

That's a very important point. I became a teenlad at the tail end of the 1980s and the Cold War, and I remember very vividly talking in year six at school about what we'd do if the bombs fell, and how pointles it seemed to do anything at all. I went home that day and told my parents that it really upset me. This was also the era of films like Threads or The Day After or When The Wind Blows, which cemented the idea of total annihilation and its inescapability in 80s popular culture. It was omnipresent, although the early 80s were probably a much more politically volatile time than 1987 or 1988. Also, my uncle was in the BAOR in West Germany, just 50 miles from the Iron Curtain, and when he came back to visit, he often told us that if the Russians ever came, he'd be one of the first to know, as Russian short-range missiles fired from East Germany had a warning time of less than two minutes, and their town of Celle was a primary target because they had loads of military personnel there. It would all have been over quickly for him and he wouldn't have had to suffer. But it still blew your mind hearing that at age nine or ten.

You kind of absorb all that as a weelad, and it stays with you. The problem nowadays is that you increasingly have people in positions of political power who are in their mid-30s to early 40s who just missed the Cold War by a few years and have no first-hand emotional frame of reference what that experience was like. One of my best friends nowadays was born in 1981, and I've kept telling him the last few weeks what dangerous times we live in and that we've all been here before, but it just doesn't resonate with him the same way because when the Communist Bloc fell he was just about eight years old. It seems a few years really matter in your perception of what is going on at the moment.
>> No. 37814 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 12:35 pm
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>>37809
Zelensky is asking for a NFZ, but that’s not to say he expects to get one. I think he’s demanding the maximum possible to up his chances of getting the next best thing, whatever that might be. I know he wants those Polish MiG 29s, although I’m not sure how help they’d really be at this stage.
>> No. 37815 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 12:57 pm
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>>37814

He should have thought about buying his own MiG-29s before he got invaded then, shouldn't he. Some people, just go around expecting a hand out all the time, I swear.

That's all this is shaping up to be. Typical scroungers expecting someone else to foot the bill because they spent all their money on fags, cheap voddy and big tellies.
>> No. 37816 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 1:09 pm
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>>37815
The Ukrainian adaption of Shameless is a bit more action packed than the original.
>> No. 37817 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 3:00 pm
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>>37811

>How confident are you that Putin would stop at Ukraine?

Biden and NATO just said a few days ago that if Putin invades Poland or the Baltic countries, then it's on. Armageddon.

Part of the success of Mutually Assured Destruction in the Cold War was that both sides left no doubt that it was to be taken literally. You weren't just going to get away with attacking any country, region or part of NATO or Warsaw Pact territory without crippling losses. It would decidedly not have been swings and roundabouts, and would have resulted in your own complete annihilation.

Putin may be one of the biggest hasardeurs since WWII , but he's not a fool. He is a strategist whose skillset was honed during many years as a Colonel in the KGB. He'll know that the former Warsaw Pact states that are now in NATO are lost for good. Which is kind of the whole point of why he now attacked Ukraine.
>> No. 37818 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 3:07 pm
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>>37815
And now it's going to cost the hardworking British flat-renter £350 a month for each one of them that comes over here. That's £350 of my taxes, going to homeowners who would probably have done this for free in a lot of cases while the rest of us can eat shit. Sorry; I'm going off-topic.
>> No. 37819 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 3:31 pm
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>>37818
Nowt stopping you from taking in a refugee.
>> No. 37820 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 3:32 pm
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>>37818

At least they offer you money, and don't just tell you to take somebody in. My mum lives in our old four-bedroom house by herself these days, and her neighbours have asked her why she doesn't take in a Ukrainian family or two. My mum can barely look after herself and has a carer popping in once a day, I don't think you can realistically expect her to welcome half a dozen strangers into her house. But some bigoted cunts in her neighbourhood are now making her feel guilty because she has all that unused space in her house.

Is it just my perception, or is hosting a Ukrainian refugee family suddenly becoming the new the shipping forecast for white middle class people? It seems that you are starting to see that kind of thing pop up on your twitter feed more and more with each day. I don't mean the fact that many people are kind enough to provide shelter for others who are in dire need of a safe roof over their heads right now, which is an incredibly admirable and unselfish thing to do with or without 350 quid from the government, but that some people somehow feel the need to flaunt that fact on social media.

In that sense, let's hope Ukrainian refugees won't become a lifestyle accessory. Or if they do, let's hope there'll be a South Park episode about it.
>> No. 37821 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 3:33 pm
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>>37820

>shipping forecast

You win, .gs. Once again, you win.
>> No. 37822 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 3:47 pm
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>>37820
Sounds like your mum doesn't need a four-bedroom house.
>> No. 37823 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 3:49 pm
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>>37822

But if she sells it to someone who does need four bedrooms, there still won't be room for any ukranians.
>> No. 37824 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 4:18 pm
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>>37822

Right, middle class people shouldn't have nice things, because they'll just spend it all on four-bedroom houses, ETFs and holiday homes.
>> No. 37825 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 4:39 pm
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Four bedrooms I can tolerate if there are heads for the beds, but what's up with everyone having a separate kitchen and living-room? Come my benevolent rule you'll be knocking that wall through and then working off your bourgeois tastes in the Siberian Mars rocket factory, Comrade.
(Until such time as the establishment of the Sozialistische Weltrepublik is completed, please temporarily direct yourself to Drumnadrochit light aircraft factory No. 7)
>> No. 37826 Anonymous
15th March 2022
Tuesday 6:01 pm
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>>37825

> but what's up with everyone having a separate kitchen and living-room?

It's a signifier that you're true middle class, and not just some pauper in a starter home pretending he's middle class.

No dwelling larger than a bedsit should ever have a combined kitchen and livingroom. I don't care what yanklads do in their own country where you see that arrangement even in some McMansions, but here at home we should keep that shit to a minimum.
>> No. 37827 Anonymous
16th March 2022
Wednesday 6:48 am
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>>37825

Even the council flat I used to live in had a separate living room.

This is what happens when you come on the internet pretending to be a class warrior when really you grew up on a street that looks exactly like Privet Drive in the Harry Potter movies, and have a first in economics from Commuterbury Poly, Milton Keynes. You just make yourself look like a muppet.

Let that be a lesson to you Tarquin.
>> No. 37828 Anonymous
16th March 2022
Wednesday 10:14 am
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>>37827
I live on a council-built estate and can confirm every single home has identical tiny kitchens too small to have a table in.
>> No. 37829 Anonymous
16th March 2022
Wednesday 11:14 am
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>>37828

My first flat was a bedsit with a separate kitchen, which was almost as big as my combined livingroom/bedroom.

Unless you live in a 2,000-sq ft industrial loft, having a combined livingroom and bedroom is absolute shit. It felt like glorified student housing, and it's always awkward when you invite people over.
>> No. 37830 Anonymous
16th March 2022
Wednesday 11:31 am
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I never had a table in my kitchen until I was an adult. When I grew up we had the dining table, but we only really used that when we had a Sunday roast; the rest of the time we put a cushion on our laps and ate whilst watching telly.
>> No. 37831 Anonymous
16th March 2022
Wednesday 2:00 pm
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All this talk of Aleksandr the meerkat being taken out of the adverts is bollocks. He was just in an advert on ITV. Switch on ITV1+1 in approximately 57 minutes and you'll see him.
>> No. 37832 Anonymous
16th March 2022
Wednesday 2:35 pm
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>>37830
> and ate whilst watching telly.
I bet it was a big one.
>> No. 37833 Anonymous
16th March 2022
Wednesday 2:41 pm
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.>>37831
Saw that, heard him on the radio too.
>> No. 37834 Anonymous
16th March 2022
Wednesday 2:46 pm
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>>37832
My parents have never been ones for big tellies, but I do remember when we used to have it in its own special cabinet where we'd shut the doors on a night.
>> No. 37835 Anonymous
16th March 2022
Wednesday 10:07 pm
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Belarus is exploding, apprently. I'm afraid I don't have more for you than that.
>> No. 37836 Anonymous
16th March 2022
Wednesday 11:52 pm
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>>37835
Sonic booms.
>> No. 37837 Anonymous
17th March 2022
Thursday 2:09 pm
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>Ukraine and Russia have made significant progress on a tentative peace plan including a ceasefire and Russian withdrawal if Kyiv declares neutrality and accepts limits on its armed forces, according to five people briefed on the talks.

>Ukrainian and Russian negotiators discussed the proposed deal in full for the first time on Monday, said two of the people. The 15-point draft considered that day would involve Kyiv renouncing its ambitions to join Nato and promising not to host foreign military bases or weaponry in exchange for protection from allies such as the US, UK and Turkey, the people said. However, the nature of western guarantees for Ukrainian security — and their acceptability to Moscow — could prove to be a big obstacle to any deal, as could the status of the country’s territories seized by Russia and its proxies in 2014. A 1994 agreement underpinning Ukrainian security failed to prevent the Kremlin’s aggression against its neighbour.

>Putin showed no sign of compromise on Wednesday, vowing Moscow would achieve all of its war aims in Ukraine. “We will never allow Ukraine to become a stronghold of aggressive actions against our country,” he said. But a Russian source briefed on the talks said the proposed settlement, if agreed, could give both sides a credible way to declare victory in the war. “Every side needs a win,” the person said. “He needs to be able to sell it to the people. Putin can say that we wanted to stop Ukraine joining Nato and putting foreign bases and missiles in its territory. If they do that, he can say, ‘I got it.’”

>Ukraine would maintain its armed forces but would be obliged to stay outside military alliances such as Nato and refrain from hosting foreign military bases on its territory. Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that neutrality for Ukraine based on the status of Austria or Sweden was a possibility. “This option is really being discussed now, and is one that can be considered neutral,” said Peskov. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said that “absolutely specific wordings” were “close to being agreed” in the negotiations.

>Though Ukraine’s constitution commits it to seek membership of Nato, Zelensky and his aides have increasingly played down the country’s chances of joining the transatlantic military alliance, a prospect that Russia sees as a provocation. Two of the people said the putative deal also included provisions on enshrining rights for the Russian language in Ukraine, where it is widely spoken though Ukrainian is the only official language. Russia has framed its invasion as an attempt to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine from what it claims is “genocide” by “neo-Nazis”.

>The biggest sticking point remains Russia’s demand that Ukraine recognise its 2014 annexation of Crimea and the independence of two separatist statelets in the eastern Donbas border region. Ukraine has refused but was willing to compartmentalise the issue, Podolyak said.

https://www.ft.com/content/7b341e46-d375-4817-be67-802b7fa77ef1

How long do you reckon it will be from the peace deal to a pro-Russian coup?
>> No. 37838 Anonymous
17th March 2022
Thursday 3:23 pm
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>>37837
The problem with any peace deal will surely be: do you trust people to stick to it? Vladimir Putin has clearly gone visibly mental; if you knew someone who was talking how he talks, that person probably wouldn't be allowed to sign their own paperwork. Russia, meanwhile, says that NATO promised it wouldn't expand into former Soviet countries, and while they never got this in writing and it's an insane promise anyway, there's no denying that when former Soviet countries ask to join, NATO tends not to refuse. So a hypothetical Russian who still supports Putin and believes everything he says is unlikely to put much faith in a treaty like this.

The pro-Russian coup would need to happen pretty quickly, because I don't know if a deal like this would get the sanctions lifted, so a couple of years from now I don't think there will be anyone left who thinks the Russian way of life would be better than their own.
>> No. 37839 Anonymous
17th March 2022
Thursday 6:39 pm
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>>37837
>Though Ukraine’s constitution commits it to seek membership of Nato
What?

Recognising Russian Crimea and Donbas is too much to swallow but if Ukraine can stop the invasion by agreeing no NATO and no foreign military bases then that's golden.

As for pro-Russian coups or not trusting Putin, well, cross that bridge when you come to it. For now it's enough that civilians stop dying.
>> No. 37840 Anonymous
17th March 2022
Thursday 6:42 pm
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>>37837

>How long do you reckon it will be from the peace deal to a pro-Russian coup?

Eh? For what purpose? A deal like this secures in writing everything that a Russian backed coup or regime change would have done anyway, so there's no point.

It also means the CIA can't pull any funny business after the fact either, because everything they'd want to do with the place after encouraging democracy to happen in the right direction would violate those terms somehow. You can't really be a secret NATO member.

(Also it's funny how western liberals can see through a disingenuous use of the terms fascist and Nazi when it's someone other than them doing it, to their favourite Eastern European country that they couldn't place on a map until last month lololol.)

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 37841 Anonymous
17th March 2022
Thursday 7:06 pm
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>A mum claims she ordered a £4,500 taxi to war-torn Ukraine to 'help' after 'one too many drinks'. Leoni Fildes was only saved by having 'insufficient funds' in her account.

>Leoni had been out to celebrate her friend's birthday on Saturday when the pair turned to talk of the war in Ukraine. The 34-year-old claims she had already downed a 'few double pink gins and 'shots of Sambuca' when she drunkenly decided to go there in a taxi to 'help' the Ukrainian cause.

>The dog grooming business owner claims she then attempted to order the cab, which was estimated to cost as much as £4,578, but was told she had 'insufficient funds' on the app. Leoni claims she only had 'flashbacks' of her risky mistake when her bank called her to following morning thinking her card had been fraudulently used - letting her know Uber had reportedly tried to take the money nine times.

https://www.hullPlease don't ban me.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/mum-ordered-4500-uber-ukraine-6819550
>> No. 37842 Anonymous
17th March 2022
Thursday 7:20 pm
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>>37839
>if Ukraine can stop the invasion by agreeing no NATO and no foreign military bases then that's golden
Yes, I'm sure Ukraine can stop the invasion by just giving Russia whatever it's asking for.
>> No. 37843 Anonymous
17th March 2022
Thursday 7:41 pm
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>>37842

I mean it's probably a better bet than trying to stop it militarily and getting Grozny'd.
>> No. 37844 Anonymous
17th March 2022
Thursday 7:54 pm
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>>37842

Yes, that would appear to be the case. They should have done that in the first place and then we wouldn't have been on the brink of world war 3 to begin with. I know we're all supposed to be wrapped up in the propaganda, painting the front of our houses blue and yellow and letting forty Ukranians live in our spare room to alleviate the desperate cheap eastern Eurpoean slave labour shortage we've had since Brexit, but at some stage you're going to have to get to grip with reality.

There will be no end to friction until Russia can be assured they have defacto control over what they consider vital buffers between themselves and NATO. There's no getting around that. For the better part of the last decade the we've been trying to have our cake and east it in Ukraine, by now we have to accept that it's not happening. You can carry on screaming about how Putin is literally Hitler in 1935 and if he gets Ukraine then it'll be Poland, Slovakia and Hungary next, but I think it's pretty clear which side of that argument is being irrational, Russia wouldn't be coming to talks with neutrality on the table were that an option.

I know Russia is the bad guys in James Bond and Call of Duty so they're obviously The Enemy, and people are really enjoying easily understood moral simplicity about world affairs for a change; but the fact is everything we've seen so far demonstrates that we actually could have talked it over and prevented a war to begin with if we had played ball. The article in the OP's link remains every bit as relevant- If we hadn't insisted on treating a Russia as crooks, many thousands, if not tens of thousands by this stage, of lives would have been saved.

This is the thing you cunts don't seem to get. The outcome is going to be the same, because if you look at a map, it should be obvious why Ukraine's fate can never be and will never be truly independent. For the last decade we've been pushing our luck trying to get it into our pocket, and the Russians will never have that in a million years. It doesn't matter if Putin is in charge or not. Doesn't matter if Russia is democratic, communist, or bloody anarchist- Ukraine will always be a vital strategic area for them.

Tell you what, if ten years from now we're having the same conversation about Moldova, then you can have your war. Would that appease you, Tone?

Yes I'm drunk, fuck yuou
>> No. 37845 Anonymous
17th March 2022
Thursday 8:20 pm
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>>37843

Russia lost the first battle of Grozny. Ukraine is 200 times more populous and 1860 times larger than Grozny. Russia cannot "Grozny" Ukraine, because they don't have enough ammunition.

Russia cannot win this war. Ukraine can, but at a very high price. There are a range of plausible lose-lose outcomes.
>> No. 37846 Anonymous
17th March 2022
Thursday 9:35 pm
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>>37844
>I know Russia is the bad guys in James Bond
It's tangential, but I've always found it interesting that this is the image the Bond franchise developed. If you're really pedantic about it you could make the case that Russia is never the villain in any Bond film. Even less pedantically, only 4 really stick out as candidates: From Russia with Love, for obvious reasons, Octopussy, The Living Daylights, and Goldeneye, where the villain is actually an Englishman, but I'll count it because he murders a bunch of Russian soldiers. In every other film it's some madman who loves only gold, wants everyone to live under the sea, or to sell a sun-laser to China, or whatever the hell Die Another Day was about. For most of the cold war movies, the Soviets are portrayed surprisingly positively - they're not the bad guys, just the other team. Even in the two 80s ones nobody really remembers, where the portrayal of Russia is at it's worst, Octopussy has the main Russian state apparatus trying to stop the actual villain, and The Living Daylights doesn't dwell too much on Russia's invasion of Afghanistan before underscoring that the real villain is a guy embezzling from the Soviet state.

I'm not trying to "gotcha" here with some off-topic pedantry about films. You've picked the right reference for the point you're making, it's just fascinating to me that it's the right reference point. Maybe because everything else was so paranoid about the commies that Bond just seems like a natural fit. Maybe because Octopussy is more influential than I thought. Maybe because it's odd that the most iconic British spy spent more time foiling a crazy Greek-Pole's get rich quick schemes than on spying on our cold-war enemies.
>> No. 37847 Anonymous
17th March 2022
Thursday 9:55 pm
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>>37845

It seems to be the case that if Ukraine doesn't surrender they're going to 'Grozny' a city at a time until they do.

As I think has been discussed earlier ITT, Ukraine can only 'win' by fighting a long and brutal guerrilla war that will see an ever larger number of cities and lives lost.
>> No. 37848 Anonymous
17th March 2022
Thursday 11:34 pm
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>>37844

>There will be no end to friction until Russia can be assured they have defacto control over what they consider vital buffers between themselves and NATO

If they're buffers or buffer states, then having Russia assume control over them is the opposite of a buffer state. Buffer states need to be completely neutral towards both sides, or you're just going to ask for trouble again in the long run.


>For the last decade we've been pushing our luck trying to get it into our pocket, and the Russians will never have that in a million years.

Why not let the Ukrainians decide that, and their overwhelming majority will now probably want to join the EU and NATO. Their country belongs to no one besides the Ukrainians. The Soviet empire ended in 1991, and the only one who hasn't come to grips with that is Comrade Putin. And one man's mad desire to roll back history and have a neo-Soviet Union cannot be an excuse to jeopardise decades of geostrategic stability.
>> No. 37849 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 12:21 am
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>>37848

>Why not let the Ukrainians decide that, and their overwhelming majority will now probably want to join the EU and NATO.

The majority of Brits wanted to leave the EU, that doesn't mean it was a good idea.

The only way that's viable is if Russia itself collapses into being a third rate ex-power, which it arguably almost is already, and it's clearly what we're trying to make it into. But if you can realpolitik well enough to understand that, you can certainly give it a rest with the "eerrhhh neo-soviet commie putin" nonsense.
>> No. 37850 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 1:07 am
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>>37847

>It seems to be the case that if Ukraine doesn't surrender they're going to 'Grozny' a city at a time until they do.

Seriously, Russia are running out of ammunition. On paper they have huge stockpiles, but most of it is Soviet-era junk that's literally just left in big piles. It's more of a liability than an asset, with Russia regularly suffering from massive explosions due to the poor storage of old ammunition.

Russia spends about as much on defence as the UK, while trying to maintain a force many times larger. Consequently, the jam is spread very thinly. We've seen that having thousands of tanks isn't very useful if they're obsolete T-72s with self-ejecting turrets and no sat nav. We've seen that having hundreds of thousands of troops isn't very useful if most of them are poorly trained, malnourished and unmotivated conscripts.

The shift towards indiscriminate bombardment of civilians isn't a tactical decision, they've just exhausted their very small pool of modern resources and are resorting to older, less precise weapons systems. Between the sanctions and Russia's incredibly weak domestic industrial capacity, those resources aren't going to be replenished.

It turns out that the Russian military-industrial complex hasn't been meaningfully reformed since 1991. They're still using the old Soviet-era tricks to inflate their quotas, they've still got a culture of not letting bad news pass up the chain of command. Putin hadn't realised that his own generals had pulled an Operation Fortitude on him.

https://www.rt.com/news/ammunition-depot-blasts-russia-888/
https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-military-rough-few-weeks-with-fires-explosions-2019-8
>> No. 37851 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 2:01 am
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>>37848
>Buffer states need to be completely neutral towards both sides

There's nothing that says that and most of the examples I can think of don't have it as the case. It's a fait accompli at any rate as we now have multiple sources sounding that Zelensky has agreed to an un-NATO-fied Ukraine.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60785754

>And one man's mad desire to roll back history and have a neo-Soviet Union cannot be an excuse to jeopardise decades of geostrategic stability.

Yes, yes fuck Putin and fuck anyone that tries what he tries etc. However liberal internationalism is utterly irrelevant against the forces of nationalism and national security, it consistently blows up in the wests face when we forget this and it partly puts the west at fault for leading Ukraine down the garden path.

>>37850
Ukraine can't retake and hold territory, it doesn't even have the right equipment to and it can't even lift sieges on its own cities. Considering this is no longer an existential conflict but one over how much territory Ukraine will lose it's ruinous to hold out in a war that can't be won.
>> No. 37852 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 10:53 am
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>>37851

From the article:

>Ukraine would have to undergo a disarmament process to ensure it wasn't a threat to Russia.

This is the part I just don't get. NATO is a defence alliance, and not in the business of territorial conquest. Even if Ukraine was armed to the teeth with NATO soldiers, how would that be a threat to Russia. It's only a threat if you have your own imperialist aspirations.
>> No. 37853 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 12:09 pm
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>>37852

>This is the part I just don't get. NATO is a defence alliance, and not in the business of territorial conquest.

I bet you believe it when Shell says it's committed to fighting climate change too don't you. In any case, the Russians aren't willing to be so charitably naive.
>> No. 37854 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 12:34 pm
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>>37853

>I bet you believe it when Shell says it's committed to fighting climate change too don't you


Oh, but they are.

https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-future/our-climate-target.html


Don't you feel silly now.
>> No. 37855 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 12:45 pm
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>>37854
No, but you should. I think it can be said established that he doesn't believe it when Shell says it's committed to fighting climate change, so linking to Shell's own website say it's committed to fighting climate change won't convince him otherwise.
>> No. 37856 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 1:18 pm
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>>37855

I have a feeling that lad may have been being facetious, to be honest.

(It never feels right to say "been being", there's a better way to phrase that surely.)
>> No. 37857 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 1:23 pm
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>>37852
I know Vladimir is posting sarcastically with his reply, and I meanwhile 100% agree with you, but there's no getting around the fact that being right won't work if Mr Putin doesn't believe that NATO is a purely defensive alliance. It seems obvious to us that we're not going to suddenly invade Russia, but it doesn't feel that way to the man we need to sign the treaty. If NATO suddenly decided to obliterate Moscow, I would have to deal with the awkwardness of having been wrong about them all this time, and thr discomfort of being one of the bad guys. But the Russian government would have to deal with their country not existing any more and all of them being dead. So asking them not to be so paranoid is a much bigger part of any deal than it looks on our end.
>> No. 37858 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 5:08 pm
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>>37852
>NATO is a defence alliance, and not in the business of territorial conquest
It was, however, in the business of preventing genocide in the former Yugoslavia twice, and in going for a Libyan adventure once.
I raised this before and it never went anywhere, but it's hard to square the idea that NATO'll just sit there and wait to be attacked with the fact that NATO's heart occasionally goes out to some unfortunate people and they'll go off for a bit of aerial bombing on someone they don't like.

And I'll reiterate: I support those first two interventions. But if you're Vladimir Putin, it's not entirely unreasonable to go "What if I want to genocide some annoying little ethnicity and NATO tries to stop me? Why does Xi get to have all the fun? Or what if there are big protests and NATO decides actually, repressing them isn't allowed this time?", because there's now a precedent for such interventions. (Well, you can say NATO's never messed with a nuclear power, but that makes Putin's job to be feared, not to sit and ignore them because they're a quiet little ANZUS treaty.)
>> No. 37859 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 5:23 pm
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>>37858

>But if you're Vladimir Putin, it's not entirely unreasonable to go "What if I want to genocide some annoying little ethnicity and NATO tries to stop me?

Yes, but that isn't the same as an unprovoked attack on your country by NATO. Bit like being mad at the police because they won't just let you be a carpet-bagger.
>> No. 37860 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 6:05 pm
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>>37859
It's a pretty unprovoked move from an alliance with the nominal purpose of stopping other people invading their member states to invade you because of something you did entirely within your own borders conflicting with their preferences. It's not hard to imagine the latter quickly becoming an existential threat to the Russian federation itself - if there's another Chechnya type secession attempt, is NATO going to let you Grozny-fy them to keep the federation together? If not, and if others learn from that example, Russia could hypothetically be torn apart without any NATO invasion whatsoever, since it's not exactly rich enough to throw Barnett consequentials at all 85 federal subjects instead of holding them together by force.

The police analogy might be too apt: Humanitarian interventions turn NATO from a "purely defensive alliance" into the world (well, European-North-African) police force, and which literal-mobster wants the cops living next door?
Not that any of this justifies Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which seems more and more distant the further down this line of thought I go.
>> No. 37861 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 6:30 pm
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>>37848

>Why not let the Ukrainians decide that, and their overwhelming majority will now probably want to join the EU and NATO.

I don't think them wanting to join is enough for that to happen. Countries like Albania have been wanting to join the EU for years, and doesn't NATO have a policy against letting countries with ongoing territorial disputes join (for good reason)?
>> No. 37862 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 7:01 pm
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Is anyone else getting ads on facey for the Ukrainian Foreign Legion? It seems like they've even tried to lightly hide it as a game advert.
>> No. 37863 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 7:25 pm
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>>37862
not me, for obvious IDEOAFBA reasons.
Surely this is just a sucker / account harvesting scheme, rather than thinking that randoms on FB are what you need?

Also, and more importantly, is the game actually out yet? Surely someone's skinned either a sim or a FPS? Who's updating the tactical sims with how badly Russia seems to be doing at this sort of thing?
>> No. 37864 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 7:39 pm
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>>37863
>Surely this is just a sucker / account harvesting scheme, rather than thinking that randoms on FB are what you need?

I'm asking because I'm an ex-serviceman so I'm slightly paranoid that I'm being targeted by an algorithm and that they might also be targeting active duty which would be quite serious. Although it seems they've already been caught targeting ordinary Irishmen so who knows what is going on:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/irish-men-being-targeted-by-ads-to-join-ukrainian-army-1.4826714

Needless to say I'll give dying for Slavs a miss. I'd probably get off the train and immediately be tasked with rounding up all the gypsies, blacks and Jews.
>> No. 37865 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 8:01 pm
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>>37862
I suspect this has nothing to do with fighting in the Ukraine and is just a company using whatever's big in the news to get people to click their link.

>>37864
>Needless to say I'll give dying for Slavs a miss. I'd probably get off the train and immediately be tasked with rounding up all the gypsies, blacks and Jews.
You're the third squaddie I've known who has gone some way to making me think we really shouldn't help ex-servicemen and women.
>> No. 37866 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 8:16 pm
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>>37865
The link is to the Ukraine Foreign Legion website.

>You're the third squaddie I've known who has gone some way to making me think we really shouldn't help ex-servicemen and women.

Don't you people usually wait until the squaddies go home broken before you start with the poppy fascism spiel?
>> No. 37867 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 8:28 pm
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>>37866
I don't really follow.

Our squaddie seems like a dick, the one I met in hospital was a bullshit merchant the only other one I've known took his fiance hostage with a shotgun and poured petrol all over his house during a five hour stand-off with the police. I know a lad who was in the RAF Regiment who's fine, but as it's the RAF I believe he was technically a land pilot, not a soldier.
>> No. 37868 Anonymous
18th March 2022
Friday 8:52 pm
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>>37867

It's almost like coercing a person from a likely disadvantaged background into undergoing training to turn them into the human instrument of state brutality, and pressing them into action in a series of morally dubious and strategically inconclusive expeditionary conflicts will tend to psychologically damage them.

Who would have thought.
>> No. 37874 Anonymous
19th March 2022
Saturday 6:35 pm
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>>37865
If you react like that to an irreverent sentiment on .gs, you are a terrible judge of intent with weak knees.
>> No. 37875 Anonymous
19th March 2022
Saturday 6:54 pm
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>>37874
Oh, so he can invoke the Holocaust and we all understand he's joking, I say we should make veterans live in tent cities and I'm being dead serious. Good spot, Professor Comedy-Brain.
>> No. 37876 Anonymous
19th March 2022
Saturday 7:46 pm
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>>37875
I was actually referring to the backwardness of Eastern Europe today. There were no black people in Ukraine during the 1940s as far as I'm aware.
>> No. 37877 Anonymous
19th March 2022
Saturday 8:30 pm
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>>37876
It was a better time.
>> No. 37886 Anonymous
20th March 2022
Sunday 3:15 pm
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>>37868
Your ignoring the percentage of squaddies (ie those joining as private soldiers not the military as a whole) who are borderline psychopathic and are joining to play out the fantasies they have.

Perhaps screening needs to be implemented as giving weapons to psycho's really isn't a good idea
>> No. 37887 Anonymous
20th March 2022
Sunday 3:27 pm
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reports of fires and large explosions at the Chernobyl site

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 37888 Anonymous
20th March 2022
Sunday 4:45 pm
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>>37887
It's nothing that hasn't happened there before.
>> No. 37889 Anonymous
20th March 2022
Sunday 6:17 pm
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>>37887
Why shouldn't you wear Ukrainian underpants? Because Chernobyl fall out.
>> No. 37890 Anonymous
20th March 2022
Sunday 11:13 pm
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60809454

>Boris Johnson has been criticised for comparing the struggle of Ukrainians fighting Russia's invasion to people in Britain voting for Brexit.

>In a speech he said Britons, like Ukrainians, had the instinct "to choose freedom" and cited the 2016 vote to leave the EU as a "recent example".

It's like he's thrown a tantrum over not being in the news any more. What an absolute troll.
>> No. 37891 Anonymous
20th March 2022
Sunday 11:18 pm
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>>37890
He really is thick as pig shit.

>Boris Demands: Get Ukraine done!
>> No. 37892 Anonymous
21st March 2022
Monday 12:32 am
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>>37890
I look forward to reading about the Crimea Protocol and a Ukraine free from the diktats of Brussels to trade with dynamic economies such as Russia, Russia and Russia. Let's hear it for the Red, White and Blue!
>> No. 37895 Anonymous
21st March 2022
Monday 3:02 am
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>>37890
I'm going to go for the contrarian case that this is a smart move. It keeps his image out there as Brexiteer-mong-in-chief which will play well to the mongs-in-fealty that make up the backbenches, it'll get people going "oh did you see his stupid comment about the war" rather than "remember when he had a new flat party to celebrate every 10,000th covid death?", and Labour will dutifully condemn his statement as being not very eye-on-the-object of him, not very eye-on-the-object at all, which will read to the half-paying-attention as Labour still being a bunch of bitter FBPE remoaners in a vague, vibes-based kind of way that won't really land until Johnson alludes to Starmer being a carpet-bagger-defending Corbynite FBPE remoaner during the 2023-4 election campaign.
(It'll help that Labour will keep repeating the claim - to condemn it of course - as everyone in the PLP waits their turn to say "Oh my god, a dead cat!" to whoever replaced Adam Boulton, even if it means they forget to remind the public of their election centrepiece: the ol' windfall tax on privatised utilities to fund a means-tested new deal fresh start education education education one-off rebate for single mothers utility bills.)
>> No. 37908 Anonymous
21st March 2022
Monday 4:08 pm
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Spent a year and a half learning Russian, most of that time in Russia itself. Thinking I should drop it for French or something now. Ukraine will likely get annexed and Russian visas are an absolute nightmare ,and it's only getting to get harder.
>> No. 37909 Anonymous
21st March 2022
Monday 5:44 pm
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>>37908
Well there's plenty of openings in the security and diplomatic services. I remember even back in 2018 there was a major shortage because everyone had stopped learning Russian in the 90s.
>> No. 37911 Anonymous
21st March 2022
Monday 8:48 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZKrT4k7MMk
>> No. 37912 Anonymous
21st March 2022
Monday 10:53 pm
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>>37911
Pretty weak stuff, I have to say. Ben Wallace has made more ill-judged statements to the media than he does here, a heavily clipped video in which he appears to be be in a rush and trying to be polite. If they'd got him to splay his arsehole for a "biosecurity check" I could see how this might be embarassing, instead Wallace more or less says nuclear proliferation is a bad idea and seems confused by the suggestion. The awkward part is learning all you need is a couple of mates in Russian intelligence and you can get on the blower with any cabinet minister you want.
>> No. 37913 Anonymous
21st March 2022
Monday 11:17 pm
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These headlines about Johnson trying to visit Kyiv after the Romanian and Polish PMs did so are so pathetic. Maybe it's only being reported domestically, but I don't hear of the likes of Olaf Scholz trying to use the war as a photo op. Barely anyone even knew the two PMs were going either, whereas Johnson appears to want to roll in at the head of a carnival parade, givent he fuss he's making.
>> No. 37915 Anonymous
21st March 2022
Monday 11:43 pm
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>>37913
I haven't seen those headlines anywhere. Admittedly, I am watching less news now that I know in advance exactly what it's going to be every day (and why isn't anyone pointing out that the government said it was illegal to pay Iran to release Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe when that's exactly what they did in the end and it wasn't illegal at all? That should be a bigger scandal than it is; even she has come out and said she could have been released years ago), but I haven't seen much talk about Boris Johnson going to Ukraine. I know he was talking about it a week or two ago, but I don't know if he even went.
>> No. 37916 Anonymous
22nd March 2022
Tuesday 12:03 am
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>>37915
I suppose we have different news sources. The Johnson wants a holiday one is all over the papers, I barely watch TV news unless I can't sleep.

Not to derail, but the Zaghari-Ratcliffe release wasn't technically secured with that payment. Technically. The money was a debt owed to Iran for non-delivery of Chieftain tanks ordered and payed for by the Shah, but canceled by Britain post-revolution. The Iranians were simply saying, without actually saying, that if the £400 million debt was payed then maybe certain people could potentially bag themselves an early release. I have no idea as to the legality of witholding the tanks or refunding them in regards to a government changing hands via a revolution. Clearly Iran's actions are completely immoral, but again, no idea if they technically broke any laws.

On an ironic note, the only country the Iranian's seemed to have used the Chieftains they had already received against was Sadam Hussein's Iraq.
>> No. 37917 Anonymous
22nd March 2022
Tuesday 6:42 am
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I don't understand why Zaghari-Ratcliffe has received so much attention. The bloke released at the same time who was in an almost identical position, Anoosheh Ashoori, has received only a fraction of the media coverage, both now and whilst in captivity. I'm assuming it's a class thing, like the McCanns being able to generate so much publicity, overshadowing the families of other missing children.
>> No. 37919 Anonymous
22nd March 2022
Tuesday 9:20 am
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Ruskies aparantly running out of Ammo in 3 days.
>> No. 37920 Anonymous
22nd March 2022
Tuesday 9:33 am
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>>37913
Imagine he goes for a visit and gets blown to bits.
>> No. 37921 Anonymous
22nd March 2022
Tuesday 10:52 am
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>>37920
Be careful what you wish for. Look at the state of them crowns.
>> No. 37923 Anonymous
22nd March 2022
Tuesday 12:13 pm
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>>37917
It's not a bloody class thing. She is a supreme fitty and would get it from anyone here. Also, her husband has been tirelessly campaigning for her release, with hunger strikes and things, but sadly he survived so she isn't currently single.
>> No. 37924 Anonymous
22nd March 2022
Tuesday 12:25 pm
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>>37923
I dunno, lad. They're clearly monied. I've looked it up and he's got a plum job at the National Audit Office and she's working for Reuters. Obviously her media connections will have helped, but poshos always get far more coverage.

I guarantee that their daughter has never eaten a jam sandwich or had egg and chips for a meal.
>> No. 37925 Anonymous
22nd March 2022
Tuesday 1:36 pm
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Anoosheh Ashoori seems fairly well-to-do in his own right, so I'm not sure this Marxist reading of Iranian hostage taking really tracks.
>> No. 37927 Anonymous
22nd March 2022
Tuesday 7:22 pm
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>>37915
>the government said it was illegal to pay Iran to release Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe when that's exactly what they did in the end and it wasn't illegal at all?

Not illegal in that sense, what the government was saying they couldn't pay the debt because of the sanctions in place against Iran in recent years, and that is something that I understand will be imminently changing.
>> No. 37928 Anonymous
22nd March 2022
Tuesday 9:20 pm
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>>37923 >>37925

Richard Ratcliffe is a friend and neighbour of David Mitchell and Victoria Coren-Mitchell. Nazanin was very well connected in the media, having worked for the BBC World Service Trust and the Thompson Reuters Foundation.

If you're going to get kidnapped, knowing loads of journalists is probably quite handy.
>> No. 37988 Anonymous
25th March 2022
Friday 10:04 pm
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I get why Nato aren't getting involved, but is there any particular reason the UN haven't sent peacekeepers to Ukraine?
>> No. 37989 Anonymous
25th March 2022
Friday 10:16 pm
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>>37988

UN peacekeepers only keep the peace, they don't get involved in wars. The UN can actively involve themselves in an active conflict, but this has only happened once in DR Congo. This involvement was with the full agreement of the Congolese government in dealing with rebel groups, a special battalion was created using troops from South Africa and Tanzania, but it was still highly controversial.

Any UN-led military deployment would require authorisation from the Security Council. Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council, which gives them veto rights.
>> No. 37995 Anonymous
26th March 2022
Saturday 1:59 pm
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60878513
>One month after Russia's invasion began, its military is declaring the war's first phase over.
>Moscow said its initial aim was to destroy most of Ukraine's air force and navy, but its invasion has stalled and Kyiv is still in Ukrainian hands.
>Its efforts are now turning to the eastern Donbas region, a senior military official said on Friday.

>Russian officials are claiming its army has accomplished its initial goals, and will now focus on the "complete liberation" of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine.

This seems like a pretty massive piece of good news, unless you currently live in one of the more pro-Russian regions of Ukraine and like being part of a country that hasn't got North Korea-level international sanctions on it.

And unrelated but comical, further down that page:
>In a wide-ranging speech on Friday, the Russian president criticised "cancel culture" in the West and said Russian writers and composers were being unfairly discriminated against because of the war.
>At one point, Mr Putin even likened Russia's isolation on the world stage to the recent criticism of JK Rowling for her views on evangelist christian korean youtuber issues.
>The Harry Potter author was quick to reject the comparison. This point is "not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance," Ms Rowling tweeted.
>> No. 37996 Anonymous
26th March 2022
Saturday 2:30 pm
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>>37995

>This point is "not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance," Ms Rowling tweeted.

She's so close to getting it.
>> No. 37997 Anonymous
26th March 2022
Saturday 2:49 pm
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>>37995
>one of the more pro-Russian regions of Ukraine

This has become a fantasy pushed by Russian nationalists seeking to reclaim Novorossiya. In reality the language/political divides of the past are now long-gone and it's Russia's own fault for it in provoking a united sense of Ukrainian nationalism.

I'd say it's more symbolic of how negotiations have failed as recognition of Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea seemed to be the sticking point of Russian demands last weeks.
>> No. 37998 Anonymous
26th March 2022
Saturday 3:29 pm
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>> No. 37999 Anonymous
26th March 2022
Saturday 3:31 pm
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>>37997
>I'd say it's more symbolic of how negotiations have failed as recognition of Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea seemed to be the sticking point of Russian demands last weeks.

My own gut feeling of the way things will go, even if Russia was prepared to hand back Luhansk and Donetsk as they're mostly just symbolic with no real strategic importance, Crimea would be a red line as the dock at Sevastopol is such an important asset to Russia, to the extent that even if there was a coup and Putin was overthrown whoever took control would still need to negotiate a treaty that ensured indefinite control of Sevastopol.
>> No. 38000 Anonymous
26th March 2022
Saturday 3:41 pm
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>>37998
In fairness much of the top brass didn't seem to know it was almost match day. No reason to think the social media bods at their embassy in Greece would have had a clue.
>> No. 38028 Anonymous
27th March 2022
Sunday 2:46 am
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>> No. 38029 Anonymous
27th March 2022
Sunday 3:15 am
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>>37999
Technically, Sevastopol is separate from the rest of Crimea, so the Kremlin could hand back the Republic of Crimea but retain Sevastopol.

In any case, the original terms on which Russia offered peace were a bit like a rapey executive offering to settle a sexual harassment dispute by offering the victim severance and an NDA.
>> No. 38030 Anonymous
27th March 2022
Sunday 10:14 am
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>>38029
>so the Kremlin could hand back the Republic of Crimea but retain Sevastopol.
It also requires unfettered road and rail access to Sevastopol too though.
>> No. 38032 Anonymous
27th March 2022
Sunday 12:20 pm
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-60891803
>US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has denied that the United States has any plans to bring about regime change in Russia or anywhere else.
>Mr Blinken's comments come a day after President Joe Biden said his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, should not be allowed to remain in power.
>Mr Biden made the unscripted remark at the end of a speech in Poland.

>"For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," US President Joe Biden said about his Russian counterpart President Vladimir Putin during a speech in Poland's capital, Warsaw, on Saturday.
>This was quickly followed by the White House saying Mr Biden wasn't calling for regime change, but was instead making a point about Mr Putin not being allowed to exercise power over his neighbours.

World War 3 will not be fought with tanks and guns against planes and missiles, but with senility and dementia against paranoid schizophrenia. Great.
>> No. 38036 Anonymous
27th March 2022
Sunday 4:37 pm
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I have an old friend and work colleague who is second-generation Ukrainian and appears to have completely lost her mind since the war started. She was always a bit unhinged so we have that in common but we went for a drink yesterday, she didn't speak any Ukrainian over a month ago but now deliberately emphasises the pronunciation of place names, talks about punching Russians and all the horrible things she's read has been happening in Ukraine. Understandable of course but it's like dealing with ecomodlad after he's spent a week reading about environmental disasters or an antivaxxer.

My policy was just to let her vent for an hour as we did shots of vodka, she's ordinarily some soft-green sort so we talked about how it's all so stupid and she ranted for an hour or so about how all countries should be done away with yet still fuck Russia. Fortunately she's keeping busy helping Ukrainians with visas and accommodation but I do wonder if there's something else I should be doing to stop her falling off the deep-end with all this. Not because I want to piss up her arse but because it's not doing her any good and I don't really know how to deal with people when they're like this, if it were a bloke I'd take the piss but you' know how it is.
>> No. 38061 Anonymous
29th March 2022
Tuesday 11:06 am
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I think we can afford to lose Sheffield, and Blackpool could be Russia's warm water port. What bits of the UK would you be willing to foist on surrender to Putin?
>> No. 38062 Anonymous
29th March 2022
Tuesday 12:50 pm
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>>38061

He already owns half of London.
>> No. 38063 Anonymous
29th March 2022
Tuesday 1:02 pm
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>>38032

Except the U.S. does want regime change, or at least that suspicion would be well founded.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/russia-after-putin-report/#h-regime-change
>> No. 38064 Anonymous
29th March 2022
Tuesday 1:27 pm
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>>38061
East Yorkshire
Wales
Devon and Cornwall
They can have Brighton too
>> No. 38065 Anonymous
29th March 2022
Tuesday 1:31 pm
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>>38064

>They can have Brighton too

Putin would surely sort out all the poofs there.
>> No. 38066 Anonymous
29th March 2022
Tuesday 1:31 pm
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>>38061

Easy. Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is nothing but a pain in our arse.

Bit of an unfair analogy though, we don't have any regions with large ethnic Russian populations which are trying to secede in the first place. Maybe at a stretch it'd be like giving the North back to Denmark.
>> No. 38069 Anonymous
29th March 2022
Tuesday 1:48 pm
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>>38066
I might have already posted earlier in the thread that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a bit like if after Brexit, the EU invaded Scotland to bring them back in. They want it, and it would only be accepted if the British government was changed, but it still isn't the right way to go about these things.
>> No. 38070 Anonymous
29th March 2022
Tuesday 1:51 pm
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>>38066
Surely giving Northern Ireland to Russia would be completely disproportionate retaliation when they're only tidying up our cities?
>> No. 38090 Anonymous
30th March 2022
Wednesday 10:23 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekeq4szDmJo

looks like a nice chap
>> No. 38092 Anonymous
31st March 2022
Thursday 12:18 am
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>>38090
Indeed. If there's one thing I don't think he'd ever do it's authorise the use of KMGU cluster munitions on civilian population centres, not with that voice.
>> No. 38117 Anonymous
31st March 2022
Thursday 10:31 pm
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60945248
>Russia has told "unfriendly" foreign countries they must start paying for gas in roubles or it will cut supplies.
>Vladimir Putin has signed a decree stating buyers "must open rouble accounts in Russian banks" from Friday.
>"Nobody sells us anything for free, and we are not going to do charity either - that is, existing contracts will be stopped," the Russian president said.
So Germany in particular is going to have to support the Russian economy a whole lot more, or have their gas cut off in a couple of hours, or maybe already if it was midnight Russian time. I think we should all take a moment to kneel down and thank capitalism for allowing World War 3 to largely be fought using boring legal bureaucracy instead of our lives. Thank you, capitalism!
>> No. 38120 Anonymous
31st March 2022
Thursday 11:06 pm
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>>38117
They're basically saying "please put your money in Russian banks in Russian currency where we can nick it all off you as needed".
>> No. 38123 Anonymous
1st April 2022
Friday 10:09 am
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>>38090

Looks like a fucking bellend.
>> No. 38126 Anonymous
1st April 2022
Friday 10:40 am
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>>38120
No, they're saying "Make deposits into our economy, hopefully with something valuable like gold".
>> No. 38127 Anonymous
1st April 2022
Friday 11:00 am
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>>38123
What are you on about? This video makes him look like good craic.
>> No. 38131 Anonymous
1st April 2022
Friday 4:36 pm
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>>38126
"... which we can then nick off you as needed."
>> No. 38135 Anonymous
1st April 2022
Friday 9:19 pm
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has the ukraine been de-nazified yet?

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 38136 Anonymous
1st April 2022
Friday 10:28 pm
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I had donated to a Ukrainian relief charity but having seen the video of them shooting prisoners of war, the attack on a Russian oil depot, not to mention how they've behaved on /r/place I'm starting to think I've been taken for a fool.
>> No. 38137 Anonymous
2nd April 2022
Saturday 12:21 am
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>>38136
I was expecting stories like this, really. One of the reasons Russia was supposedly committing so many war crimes was because their soldiers were very green and lacked most of the training, and this extended to nobody really bothering to tell them all the details of the Geneva Convention or other international laws before sending them off to fight. So they showed up, and probably weren't sure about how to handle certain situations.

For example, did you know it's a war crime to shoot soldiers who are parachuting down to the ground? If you shoot at them while they're coming down, it is legally pretty much the same as bombing orphanages and so on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_parachutists
However, the Wikipedia page says that this only applies to if they're bailing out of aircraft, so actual paratroopers might be fair game. I don't know. Similarly, are you allowed to shoot your enemies in the back when they run away? I have no idea but I assume that's frowned on too. But then, what if they are running towards cover? Does it matter if they're armed or not? These are all things that I would need to ask about if I was recruited into the Russian army, before I drove into Ukraine for a surprise invasion. And if the Russian army is mostly local jobless scrotes and drug addicts who only joined up two weeks earlier, I am happy to accept that as an explanation for at least some of Russia's war crimes.

And remember that the Ukrainians are often just bartenders and office workers who have been handed AK-47s and told to do their best. They're not going to have a bloody clue whether or not it's acceptable to shoot an enemy whose gun has jammed, or to shoot at a whole regiment when half of it has surrendered but the other half hasn't, because who would have told them? No amount of MUH PASSION would give someone the appropriate legal grounding to guess correctly every time in these situations. Both sides are shambolically trained; it's impossible to expect absolutely no war crimes to be committed in a situation like this.
>> No. 38138 Anonymous
2nd April 2022
Saturday 1:23 am
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>>38137
Use yer noggin and it's easy. Someone bailing out of a plane is the same situation as a life raft which is why it's bad.

>Similarly, are you allowed to shoot your enemies in the back when they run away? I have no idea but I assume that's frowned on too. But then, what if they are running towards cover? Does it matter if they're armed or not?

No, it works exactly like proportionate force under UK law.
Grey area, if you're confident and it makes reasonable sense then fire away and in 10 years you go to court.
No, but good luck getting anyone done for that - it's a common trick among villains to leave a firearm out and shoot anyone that picks it up.

It's something like tying a prisoners shoelaces together so they can't run away and putting them in public eye that trips people up, the rest is just observing cricket and not being a complete psychopath. Not that anyone will go on trial for tying gypsies to lamposts or whatever else is going on or being fabricated by Russia.
>> No. 38139 Anonymous
2nd April 2022
Saturday 5:04 am
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>>38136
>the attack on a Russian oil depot

Has this been ruled out as a false flag attack? I'm not sure how easily Ukrainian helicopters could get into Russia undetected, but it would be awfully convenient for the Russkies to be able to say to the West "if you keep supplying Ukraine with arms they're going to attack Russia rather than just defending their own country; you're going to start World War Three."
>> No. 38140 Anonymous
2nd April 2022
Saturday 9:16 am
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>>38137>>38136
There's been a lot of speculation that the video of prisoners getting shot in the legs was faked but it's hard to tell either way. In that sort of situation it's grim as hell but for a defending force who is low on supplies they really can't afford to have to house and feed a load of prisoners, so what's better, execute them on the spot or you release them but make sure they wont return to the fight anytime soon.

>Not that anyone will go on trial for tying gypsies to lamposts or whatever else is going on or being fabricated by Russia.
The public is tying suspected looters and saboteurs to lamposts, pulling their trousers down and laughing at them while they wait for police or army to turn up to arrest them. It's probably a fair guess that some of them are gypsies being lynched during the chaos.
>> No. 38150 Anonymous
2nd April 2022
Saturday 1:32 pm
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>>38136
>Oil attack
I've seen some extremely dark stuff (stabbing rather than shooting, hammers used on one of lamppost lads) coming out of Ukraine, but the fuel depot strike looks like a brave raid on a legitimate military target to me and I have no idea why they're denying it.
>> No. 38151 Anonymous
2nd April 2022
Saturday 1:37 pm
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>>38140
>what's better, execute them on the spot or you release them but make sure they wont return to the fight anytime soon.
Fucking hell lad, think for a second. Is it kinder to kill someone or to shoot through their femur then abandon them so they die slowly and painfully? If the situation is so dire you can't keep captives you're definitely not getting them to hospital, are you?
>> No. 38152 Anonymous
2nd April 2022
Saturday 4:19 pm
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It's almost like war is a very nasty business in which no side can truly claim to be innocent or virtuous.

Is it just me or does it feel like a lot of people were cheerleading for this war early on, because they more or less expected Ukraine to fold immediately? It was okay to make a show of supporting Ukraine's brave and valiant defense effort because you thought it'd be over quickly anyway, and they'd at least give the Russians a bit of a bloody nose before they went down. But now it turns out it's a grinding, brutal conflict with decidedly much more even odds than we thought, and the suffering is only going to continue, it feels a lot harder to be so casually jingoistic.

Weird one really.
>> No. 38154 Anonymous
2nd April 2022
Saturday 4:45 pm
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>>38152
I'm still cheerleading for Ukraine; it's just that I'm running out of things to say. It would be nice if the North Korean regime was toppled too, and if that looks like happening then I'll be right in that thread with horror stories I've heard from there, but it's not going to happen right now so there's no reason to bring it up. Similarly, now that we can't view this as a film like Terminator 2, and instead it's like Dances With Wolves and will soon tip even further into being like Das Boot, they're all good films but sometimes you just wish it would hurry up and end already.
>> No. 38155 Anonymous
2nd April 2022
Saturday 5:16 pm
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>>38152
I'm still cheerleading Ukraine I guess, It's a situation where they are unquestionably in the right from an ethical and legal sense which is what has given it such an outpouring. Yes, Yes, bad things happen and the Russians don't have much choice in the affair, but if you're going to cry about everything bad that has ever happened or that people die in war then you might want to live under a rock.
>> No. 38160 Anonymous
2nd April 2022
Saturday 7:36 pm
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RIP Anotonov.
>> No. 38162 Anonymous
3rd April 2022
Sunday 8:11 am
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>The biggest cooking oil bottler for UK shops has said it only has a few weeks' supply of sunflower oil left. Ukraine and Russia produce most of the world's sunflower oil and the war is disrupting exports, said Edible Oils.

>The company, which packages oil for 75% of the UK retail market, is ramping up supplies of other oils for shoppers. Meanwhile, manufacturers of foods that contain sunflower oil, like crisps, oven chips and cereal bars, are reworking their recipes.

>Kim Matthews, commercial director at Edible Oils said 80% of the global supply of sunflower oil comes out of Russia and Ukraine.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60941091

RIP, chips and crisps. Another sacrifice in the war.
>> No. 38163 Anonymous
3rd April 2022
Sunday 8:23 am
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>>38162
Also expect a shortage of olive oil because its so widely doctored with sunflower oil.
>> No. 38164 Anonymous
3rd April 2022
Sunday 11:35 am
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>>38162
They're using rapeseed oil instead now, so rapeseed oil prices are skyrocketing. Investors, take note.
>> No. 38165 Anonymous
3rd April 2022
Sunday 12:43 pm
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>>38164
Give it a few months and we'll be seeing restaurants / chippies using fryer oil until it's properly rank. And then we'll have the delights of gutter oil, China-style.
Farmer next door has rolled the dice and mostly chosen beans, for fields that don't already have winter wheat & barley on. It's a tricky call, based on fertiliser price, diesel price, and guesses as to what other people will be guessing at. Who the fuck knows what the next couple of years will look like as this all oscillates wildly into a new normal.
>> No. 38166 Anonymous
3rd April 2022
Sunday 3:42 pm
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>Ukraine’s top negotiator in peace talks with Russia said Saturday that Moscow had “verbally” agreed to key Ukrainian proposals, raising hopes that talks to end fighting are moving forward.

>Negotiator David Arakhamia told Ukrainian television channels that any meeting between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin would “with a high probability” take place in Turkey. “The Russian Federation has given an official answer to all positions, which is that they accept the (Ukrainian) position, except for the issue of Crimea (annexed by Russia in 2014),” Arakhamia said.

>He said that while there was “no official confirmation in writing,” the Russian side said so “verbally.” The comments came as Ukraine said it had retaken control of the whole Kyiv region. Arakhamia said Moscow had agreed in talks that a referendum on the neutral status of Ukraine “will be the only way out of this situation.” Asked what would happen if Ukrainians voted against a neutral status for the country, Arakhamia said “we will either return to a state of war, perhaps, or return to new negotiations.”

>The Kremlin has insisted that Ukraine adopt a neutral status. Arakhamia said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “called both us and Vladimir Putin” Friday, saying he would host the meeting. “Neither the date nor the place is known, but we believe that the place will most likely be Ankara or Istanbul,” he said.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukraine-says-russia-verbally-agreed-to-its-proposals-except-on-crimea/

Finally, if there's one thing referendums are known for it's conclusively resolving knotty issues once and for all.
>> No. 38194 Anonymous
9th April 2022
Saturday 10:39 pm
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So Bozzer's been in Keev all day, and the Russians couldn't have picked this moment to chuck a bloody great bomb over?

Can't have nowt can we.
>> No. 38195 Anonymous
10th April 2022
Sunday 12:14 am
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>>38194
I know, we were THIS close to having Priti Patel as our new PM ;_;
>> No. 38200 Anonymous
10th April 2022
Sunday 1:48 am
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>>38195
She can't be PM now because as Home Secretary she stopped immigrants coming over.
>> No. 38201 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 9:12 am
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https://news.sky.com/story/artem-severiukhin-russian-karting-driver-15-sacked-and-under-fia-investigation-after-appearing-to-make-nazi-salute-on-podium-12588208

>Artem Severiukhin: Russian karting driver, 15, sacked and under FIA investigation after appearing to make Nazi salute on podium

>Artem Severiukhin pounded his chest and raised his right arm in the gesture before laughing as he celebrated his victory in round one of the FIA Karting European Championship at Portimao, Portugal.
>> No. 38202 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 9:27 am
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>>38201
If he had any sense he'd have tried claiming it was a Roman salute because he was racing under the Italian flag.
>> No. 38203 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 12:05 pm
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>>38202

The lad evidently barely knows about Nazism so far, I'm not sure you can expect him to know the intricacies of a Roman salute.
>> No. 38204 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 2:44 pm
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>>38202
I’m sure he’ll learn to lie like a Nazi soon enough.
>> No. 38205 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 2:58 pm
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>>38204

He was just following orders.
>> No. 38206 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 3:40 pm
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>The UN refugee agency has called on the UK government to intervene to stop single British men from being matched up with lone Ukrainian women seeking refuge from war because of fears of sexual exploitation.

>Following claims that predatory men are using the Homes for Ukraine scheme to target the vulnerable, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) told the Guardian “a more appropriate matching process” could be put in place to ensure women and women with children are matched with families or couples. The suggestion from the global refugee agency follows reports that Ukrainian refugees, predominantly women and sometimes accompanied by children, are at risk in the UK of sexual exploitation.

>Under the government’s Homes for Ukraine scheme, British hosts must link up with Ukrainian refugees themselves, leaving tens of thousands of people to resort to unregulated social media groups to connect.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/13/stop-matching-lone-female-ukraine-refugees-with-single-men-uk-told
>> No. 38207 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 4:08 pm
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>>38206
And the World Cup is coming up as well. They clearly don't need our help.
>> No. 38208 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 4:43 pm
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>>38206

It's amazing to me that nobody even considered this possibility, but it I also find it very asinine that people only wake up when the alarm is raised about women. Pretty sure Ukranian lads are having a far worse time of it right now, and would gladly swap places to have the worst of their problems be a bloke making uncomfortable comments over dinner.
>> No. 38209 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 4:51 pm
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>>38208
Most male Ukrainians have stayed to defend their country. They're not brown refugees.
>> No. 38210 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 4:54 pm
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>>38208
Why do you people always bring out the suffering top trumps card? Is it really necessary to acknowledge a worse problem when dealing with a problem? Can no problems be dealt with without resorting to the acknowledgement that it may not be the very worst problem on earth?
>> No. 38211 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 4:59 pm
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>>38210

Of course, but you can't act like there isn't a pattern of this kind of thing. The point isn't to lament that people care about the women, but to lament that people don't wake up and start caring until it's the women.

This Adopt a Ukranian scheme has been rife with potential for abuse and scamming from the start, and only an idiot wouldn't be able to see that; but everyone's been totally uncritical of it until this totally unsurprising and predictable story has come up.

It's the "I sleep/REAL SHIT" meme but in real life.
>> No. 38212 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 5:04 pm
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>>38210
Longstanding issues.
>> No. 38213 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 6:05 pm
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>>38211
If Ihor or Volodymyr showed up in my spare bedroom one day, with his paramilitary training and assault rifle, I don't think I would really class him as at risk of sexual exploitation from me even if I was into that sort of thing. And in another way, I would argue that if the women aren't in Ukraine any more, every expression of dismay at the horrors of war so far has been focused on the problems of male Ukrainians.
>> No. 38214 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 6:16 pm
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>>38213

For a start I don't think they're letting them bring assault rifles with them. And secondly it's not just sexual exploitation, but I can imagine there were a lot of unscrupulous types out there rubbing their hands together when they heard about this scheme, thinking of ways to fiddle it so they can put 20 Ukranians in each of their buy-to-let houses, get them making knock of Nikes, and pocket that £350 a month (times however many) for themselves.

I won't be surprised to hear in a couple of years that this scheme was taken advantage of in such a way. Remember the furlough scheme? It's estimated up to a third of that money was claimed fraudulently. The taxpayer should be very annoyed indeed about this, but nobody so much as noticed.
>> No. 38215 Anonymous
13th April 2022
Wednesday 11:29 pm
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>>38213
Not him but I would class male refugees, refugees in general, as at risk of slavery. We had enough stories of Eastern Europeans being exploited long before all of this, some being no less than innocent washing machine repair men.

Of course the blood truth of it is sleazy facebook messages are such an issue precisely because people are desperate and I wouldn't say even with vetting that there won't be abuses of power. It's like that film Dogville because the west in general doesn't have the slack to accommodate this many people with all the goodwill in the world.
>> No. 38216 Anonymous
14th April 2022
Thursday 6:00 am
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>Stop matching lone female Ukraine refugees with single men, UK told

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/13/stop-matching-lone-female-ukraine-refugees-with-single-men-uk-told

Can't have owt
>> No. 38217 Anonymous
15th April 2022
Friday 8:24 pm
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The Moskva, one of the largest and most impenetrable ships in the Russian navy and the only one being used for the invasion of Ukraine, has sunk.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61103927

Ukraine claims they did it, using Neptune missiles. Russia claims it just caught fire when some ammunition exploded, and sank in a storm while it was being towed back to port. That Russian explanation sounds like they're pretty hopeless, but the ship should have had multiple layers of defences that would easily intercept Neptune missiles, which are apparently a bit shit, and none of those defences worked. So both sides are offering explanations which massively embarrass Russia.

This would surely be a massive morale boost to the Ukrainians still defending Mariupol. They're meant to be on the verge of surrendering, but they've been like that for a few days now and I think they're still fighting. Honestly, I would be expecting the Ukrainians to be trying to break through to them from the other side, since they need food and ammunition and the only thing preventing these supplies from being delivered are sounding more and more like the Slavic equivalent of the Three Stooges every day.
>> No. 38218 Anonymous
15th April 2022
Friday 8:32 pm
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>>38217

I love how the Russians are deadass like "Yeah nah it just caught fire and sank by total coincidence. Nothing to do with the war." On the one hand it's totally unbelievable and makes them look like idiots, but at the same time I bet the Ukranians are seething that there's even any doubt.

I would have expected a war between two factions of comparably drunk slavs to result in a few more slapstick moments like this to be fair.
>> No. 38219 Anonymous
15th April 2022
Friday 8:49 pm
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>>38218
Russia also just bombed the factory which produced these missiles, using their limited stock of Kalibr cruise missiles to hit a target far inland. They also relocated their remaining surface ships away from the Ukrainian coast. I'd take that as an admission that it was in fact hit by one or more Neptunes, which is excellent work from the Ukrainians. I hope they had the sense to relocate some of their machinery and weapon stocks from the factory before it was hit - they had to assume it would be a prime target.
>> No. 38220 Anonymous
15th April 2022
Friday 9:10 pm
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>Moscow will start legal proceedings if it is declared in default by the West, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Monday, after Russia was declared in "selective" default over the weekend. Russia last week paid its foreign dollar debt in rubles after it was unable to process the payment in foreign currency due to sanctions over Ukraine.

>"We will go to court because we have taken all the necessary measures to ensure that investors receive their payments," Siluanov said in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper. We will present to the court our invoices confirming our efforts to pay both in foreign currency and in rubles," he said, without specifying which legal body Moscow would turn to.

>Credit ratings agency S&P on Saturday said Russia had gone into "selective default" after it repaid dollar-denominated bonds that matured last week in rubles.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/04/11/russia-says-will-go-to-court-if-declared-in-default-a77310

It has begun.

>>38217
>but the ship should have had multiple layers of defences that would easily intercept Neptune missiles, which are apparently a bit shit, and none of those defences worked

The Neptune missiles are brand new while the Moskva is a 1970s ship that has never had adequate air defence. To top it off it looks like drones were again used to great effect in both distracting defences and providing targeting to defeat any electronic warfare.
>> No. 38221 Anonymous
15th April 2022
Friday 10:51 pm
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>>38220
I imagine if the Ukranians had had been a bit better equipped and ready in the first place they would have slapped the Ruskies all the way back to Moscow by now.
>> No. 38222 Anonymous
15th April 2022
Friday 11:00 pm
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>>38221
And if France and Germany weren't complete non-countries the idea of a common European security architecture wouldn't be dead and there might not have even been a war.
>> No. 38223 Anonymous
16th April 2022
Saturday 12:37 am
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>>38220
>It has begun.
I should bloody well hope so. It's been two months. It's only the incredible dedication of the Ukrainians that has kept the war going this long. They talked about inflation on the news at some point in the past 36 hours, and gave some numbers. We've got inflation of 7%, I think France had 8%, America has 8.5%, and Russia has 12.5%. It's not exactly Zimbabwe, is it? These sanctions were meant to cripple the Russian economy, and they evidently have not, at least not yet. So it had better hurry and >begin soon.
>> No. 38224 Anonymous
16th April 2022
Saturday 2:04 am
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>>38221

Russia has more than three times the population of Ukraine. They were expecting to steamroller their way into Kyiv in four days. Ukraine's performance in this conflict has been nothing short of exceptional.

>>38223

Russia is simultaneously experiencing high inflation and a severe recession, with GDP down at least 10%. That inflation figure is being suppressed by the sanctions - imported goods would have massively increased in price if they were still available to buy.

The Kremlin have spent the last few years building huge reserves and massively cutting back on public spending to stabilise the economy in anticipation of sanctions, but there's only so much they can do to protect the living standards of ordinary citizens.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-revises-forecasts-gdp-fall-more-than-10-2022-ria-cites-official-2022-04-12/
>> No. 38225 Anonymous
16th April 2022
Saturday 3:38 am
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>>38224
I wonder if this will trigger the broadly cyclical nature of Russian revolutions. We have defeat in war and economic collapse at home, what I suppose is missing is a genuine opposition to Putin either from the communists or the oligarchs in United Russia.

And then in 30 years we're back where we are now because we don't know how to integrate a Eurasian land power into the west and if not Russia then Poland will probably be up to no good.
>> No. 38226 Anonymous
16th April 2022
Saturday 3:41 pm
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>>38225

Well, in theory that's why the sanctions are supposed to "work". The intent is, supposedly, to pressure ordinary people into ousting their government. The fact we all know that's about as likely to happen in a major power in the 21st century as my foreskin growing back is but a minor fly in the ointment of liberal hypocrisy.

We illegally invaded Iraq, should the rest of the world have sanctioned us? Maybe, but if they did, would you say it was fair to expect we, the people, to have risen up to overthrow Tony Blair? We showed up enough masses to protest the invasion, we did everything acceptable in civil society to stop, but our government went and did it anyway; should we, the ordinary citizens, have suffered for that?

The sanctions are doing fuck all. And even in the hypothetical fantasy world that they did, imagine if after the last 20 years of toppling dictators only to have somebody or something worse in every imaginable way pop in their place, we somehow imagine it turning out any better in fucking Russia, of all fucking places.
>> No. 38227 Anonymous
16th April 2022
Saturday 3:44 pm
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>>38226
They are, arguably, very effective at depriving Russia of the ability to build and maintain their vehicles and weapons.
>> No. 38228 Anonymous
16th April 2022
Saturday 6:25 pm
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>>38226
>We illegally invaded Iraq, should the rest of the world have sanctioned us? Maybe, but if they did, would you say it was fair to expect we, the people, to have risen up to overthrow Tony Blair? We showed up enough masses to protest the invasion, we did everything acceptable in civil society to stop, but our government went and did it anyway; should we, the ordinary citizens, have suffered for that?
There is a part of me that says we did indeed deserve to suffer for re-electing him after the war. A thought process I can only terminate with quips about his third term being punishment enough, or something like "those responsible should be punished but since he came second in England it's really Scotland and Wales that let the side down, and I couldn't bare to see my favourite regional accents hurt."
>> No. 38229 Anonymous
16th April 2022
Saturday 7:49 pm
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>>38226
I have probably already said in this thread, perhaps repeatedly, that the sanctions need to work extremely quickly if they're going to work at all, because then we can stop them. If they're effective over the long term, then we've just created a new Weimar Germany that stretches from Poland to Japan and which already has a lot of neo-Nazi football fans. Nazi Russia would fuck us all up. We basically need to make them have food riots, and we currently are not doing that.
>> No. 38230 Anonymous
16th April 2022
Saturday 8:02 pm
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>>38229
The main problem is that Russia and Ukraine are kind of Europe's bread basket, and we've already seen Russia basically resort to theft, so there's no realistic way Russia will see food riots without having caused shortages elsewhere in the world first.
>> No. 38231 Anonymous
16th April 2022
Saturday 8:20 pm
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>>38226
Having a cunt-off about sanctions aside, what sticks for me is that there doesn't seem to be any thought going on for what winning looks like or even what happens once Russia leaves Ukraine. Fair enough if there isn't a proper answer but presumably we want to stop being enemies at some point and even create conditions for that to happen, the sum total of western thinking shouldn't be a meme video.


We don't have a strategy for actually winning this new confrontation with China either but presumably we'd want Russia on side.

>>38229
I don't see how 'Weimar Russia' is necessarily a problem, it's what we had in the 90s and 30 years later Russia's future is utterly fucked no matter what happens from its backwardness and dependence on petroleum exports.
>> No. 38232 Anonymous
16th April 2022
Saturday 10:36 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl959QnD3lM
>> No. 38233 Anonymous
17th April 2022
Sunday 9:27 am
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By my reckoning, the sanctions against Russia and the war in Ukraine have together reduced the amount of furry art being produced globally by at least 25%
>> No. 38234 Anonymous
17th April 2022
Sunday 10:11 am
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>>38233
Sounds like there's a gap in the market for you to exploit.
>> No. 38235 Anonymous
17th April 2022
Sunday 11:21 am
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>>38233

The furry society exists with only two polar groups- The artists and the tech nerds. The tech nerds finance the artists and the artists supply the tech nerds with their material. There is no class system in furry society, only the supplier and consumer dynamic. I have heard the furry community called a "petit-bourgeois hobby with no revolutionary impetus" before, but that's poppycock, the furries have already transcended capitalism as the old guard understand it.

As such I find it hard to believe that a mere trifling war is going to stand in the way of a furry and his LostDragon01 commission.

I am relatively convinced that while Bezos, Musk et al are still pissing about trying to drill space rocks, the furry community will have long since figured out how to upload their collective consciousness into VRChat, living in a post-scarcity utopia of 24/7 fetish orgies that manifests as a gestalt entity and claims the internet itself as sovereign territory.
>> No. 38236 Anonymous
17th April 2022
Sunday 8:10 pm
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>>38235
You've reminded me that long ago I read some rambling posts about the nature of the furry economy in response to a "furry communist manifesto." Which was taken as being more nationalist than communist, treating a 'closed' furry economy as socialist because it was an autarky, more anti-corporate than anti-capitalist. The analysis was along the lines of: Furry is built around an artisan class engaged in almost pre-capitalist production. Fursuits were more of an example than art, since you could theoretically mass produce cheap fursuits in China and sell them at a price much more accessible to the average person, who could then customise the generic base with their own sewing ability without worrying about wrecking it since it was cheap anyway. But that's an idea that tends to get a negative reaction, often cloaked in anti-corporate rhetoric. I thought there was something to the argument that the negative reaction is really a case of the interests of artisan producers who can't do it as cheaply as China aligning with their buyers who can afford to pay higher prices and who don't want the unwashed masses devaluing their ~£1000+ status-goods, even if it'd be preferable in a utilitarian sense.

I've no investment either way in how people get their fursuits, but it got me thinking about how underrated mass production is. How for all the evils of capitalism, bringing that about was good. Everyone likes the idea of twee bespoke production, but it's a nice to be able to pop to Tescos and get a pen for £1 rather than having to pay some pensmith £50.
>> No. 38237 Anonymous
17th April 2022
Sunday 9:49 pm
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>>38235
Furry artists aren't necessarily furries themselves, they just know that conspicuously wealthy furries are a thing and follow the money.

If you're vaguely good at art and can stand to create furry porn, you're set for life.
>> No. 38238 Anonymous
17th April 2022
Sunday 10:20 pm
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>>38237

That type is most certainly a minority. A great deal of an artist's success relies on how well they integrate, with the really good artists essentially being the celebrities of the furry world.

It's a different world to hentai, where the style is uniform and as a result the artists are essentially cheap expendable art-whores; a furry artist with a recognisable style and devotion to a specific kink market will invariably develop cult status.

In general porn artists are only ever any good at it when they're into it themselves. Especially when it comes to commissions, you can tell when they just followed the instructions, without understanding the real meat and gravy of what makes it hot.

>>38236

The trouble with fursuits is they essentially need to be 100% customised, the nature of the "fursona" concept makes it impossible to mass produce. Nobody wants to be a generic white rabbit or brown dog, that's just a sports mascot. It has to be "them". There's an element of status commodification there, but for the most part it's just the nature of the product.

What you'd want to do instead would be something like a large scale partly automated made-to-order factory, where the price is kept down by the volume afforded by a quick turnaround time. If you had a big team working on different parts in parallel you could knock out a customised suit every few days, instead of the weeks and months they take from a single maker.

Then I'd just run that as some sort of worker's co-op and boom, furry communism.
>> No. 38239 Anonymous
17th April 2022
Sunday 11:28 pm
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>>38238
What you'd be looking at would be something akin to a tailoring operation. Lots of parts could be mass-produced in different sizes and finishes, which could be adjusted for fit and stitched together easily before being handed off to someone for fine detailing.
>> No. 38240 Anonymous
18th April 2022
Monday 1:15 am
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>>38239

Personally I think that in the past 10 years there has been a 4D chess game going on. Showing Putin that we are a soft touch with gender toilet freakery but meanwhile the Blades have moved on from the Det plus with help from Para Reg and Marines have been training units in mobile guerilla style warfare. Using assets to target the logistics rather than the force.
>> No. 38241 Anonymous
18th April 2022
Monday 4:45 am
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>>38240
Putin never learned not to fuck with furries.


>> No. 38242 Anonymous
18th April 2022
Monday 10:57 am
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>>38241
The driver in the first tank actually owns both of those himself.
>> No. 38257 Anonymous
20th April 2022
Wednesday 9:22 pm
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>Ex-Crimea Prosecutor Poklonskaya Slams Russia's Pro-War 'Z' Symbol

>Natalia Poklonskaya has issued a harsh criticism of the pro-war Z symbol that has spread across Russia, the latest anti-war comments from the former Crimean prosecutor and onetime Russian lawmaker. The Latin letter — first seen displayed on Russian military vehicles entering Poklonskaya’s country of birth — has come to symbolize the public’s support for Russian troops. The Z has been prominently displayed on buildings, flash mobs organized at schools and universities, merchandise sold online and even on the Russian Easter cake known as kulich.

>“This letter Z symbolizes tragedy and grief for both Russia and Ukraine,” Poklonskaya, who had staunchly supported Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, said in an interview with a popular YouTube channel Tuesday. The comments sparked widespread criticism, including from Poklonskaya’s immediate boss at Russia’s state agency for international outreach, Rossotrudnichestvo, where she is deputy director after serving a tumultuous term in Russia’s lower house of parliament. Rossotrudnichestvo head Yevgeny Primakov on Wednesday said the letters Z and V are “symbols of the very liberation of Ukraine from the obvious evil of daft militant wogs and bandits.”

>“What I am saying is that it is dangerous to blindly worship any symbols — history does not like that,” Poklonskaya wrote in response to the criticism. Poklonskaya’s break with Russia’s official line that it is carrying out a “special military operation” to “de-Nazify and demilitarize” Ukraine is practically unheard of for a sitting official. Last week, she referred to Russia’s invasion of her native Ukraine as a “catastrophe.”

>“People are dying, houses and entire cities are destroyed [leaving] millions of refugees. Bodies and souls are mutilated. My heart is bursting with pain. My two native countries are killing each other, that’s not what I wanted and it’s not what I want,” she said in a video address to an international forum. Earlier in April, Poklonskaya said Ukrainian society has “changed” in the eight years since the war with pro-Russian separatists broke out in the east and that Ukrainians “would not greet Russia with flowers. Ukraine is not Russia,” she told a popular YouTube blogger.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/04/20/ex-crimea-prosecutor-poklonskaya-slams-russias-pro-war-z-symbol-a77418

Do you ever think she regrets joining Russia?
>> No. 38258 Anonymous
20th April 2022
Wednesday 10:50 pm
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>>38257

She'll definitely regret it when the FSB have finished with her.
>> No. 38268 Anonymous
22nd April 2022
Friday 9:14 am
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I really need to stop seeking out pro-Putin/Kremlin shit online because it's poisoning my brain and I'm going to grind my teeth to dust if I'm not careful. By their reckoning the Azov Battalion is more like an entire army group, it's only bad when American bombs blow up your flat and I've yet to see one mention of the 5,000,000 refugees the conflict has created from any of these pricks.
>> No. 38269 Anonymous
22nd April 2022
Friday 12:37 pm
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>>38268

Why on earth are you even doing that in the first place you div? I get riled up about fisherpersons but I don't go seeking their shite out do I.

Anyway it's not like the propaganda from the West is any lass blatant. My favourite is have totally innocuous sub-rudgwicks like r/interestingasfuck keep getting daily posts about the heroic Ukraine boys even when there's hardly anything interesting about it, let alone "as fuck". Just glaringly obvious.

Anyway from what I heard the Azov lot were almost entirely wiped out, and you know, that's very handy for Mr Zelensky considering their leader is the one who made death threats toward him. Make no mistake Zelensky isn't an idiot, this war makes for a very good opportunity to get rid of those far right thorns in his side. You don't have to pretend they weren't real to simp for poor innocent Ukraine, they won't be for much longer.

The play going on here would make a Skaven warlord wince.
>> No. 38270 Anonymous
22nd April 2022
Friday 1:22 pm
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>>38257
She needs to leave pretty much ASAP.
>> No. 38271 Anonymous
22nd April 2022
Friday 2:03 pm
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>>38270

If everyone like her leaves then there will only be evil nutjobs and morons left, and they will have ICBMs.
>> No. 38272 Anonymous
22nd April 2022
Friday 6:49 pm
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>Some supermarkets are limiting how much cooking oil customers are able to buy as supplies are hit by war in Ukraine.

>Tesco is allowing three items per customer. Waitrose and Morrisons have limited shoppers to two items each. The majority of the UK's sunflower oil comes from Ukraine and disruption to exports has led to some shortages and an increased demand for alternatives.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61193141

Limiting it to two/three per customer means people will buy two/three instead of their usual one and we'll run out.
>> No. 38273 Anonymous
22nd April 2022
Friday 6:55 pm
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>>38272
Does this have anything to do with all the flavoured oils they've been bringing out and putting everywhere? I can confirm eggs cooked with chilli oil is lovely.
>> No. 38274 Anonymous
22nd April 2022
Friday 7:03 pm
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>>38272
I recently bought a bottle of sunflour oil for the first time in years.
>> No. 38275 Anonymous
22nd April 2022
Friday 7:08 pm
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>>38274
A bottle of what?
>> No. 38276 Anonymous
22nd April 2022
Friday 7:16 pm
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>>38275
How else is he going to make malt loaf without sun flour?
>> No. 38277 Anonymous
22nd April 2022
Friday 9:21 pm
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>>38273
have you tried prickly oil? Endless fun.
>> No. 38278 Anonymous
22nd April 2022
Friday 10:57 pm
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>>38277
No and now I'm curious. It looks like there's at least 3 oils called prickly with the Chinese seeming to be a bit shit.
>> No. 38280 Anonymous
23rd April 2022
Saturday 10:47 am
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No cooking oil in Lidl this morning, unless you want the expensive poncey stuff.
>> No. 38281 Anonymous
23rd April 2022
Saturday 11:01 am
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>>38280
What about lard?
>> No. 38282 Anonymous
23rd April 2022
Saturday 11:32 am
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>>38281

Just get some of that Vegan Dripping once someone in a Lab has eventually sussed out how to make it from vacuoles, Lad.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/19/sea-farmed-supercrop-how-seaweed-could-transform-the-way-we-live
>> No. 38283 Anonymous
23rd April 2022
Saturday 11:57 am
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>>38280
If you ask me skimping on oil is like skimping on the burger bread. Often the cheap meats are outright better but oil is a base that'll change the whole meal, it's not even like there's a huge price attached to this.
>> No. 38284 Anonymous
23rd April 2022
Saturday 12:30 pm
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>>38283
I don't see the point in paying over the odds for triple pressed extra virgin olive oil to use it for cooking when cheaper alternatives would suffice. I can understand buying the expensive stuff if you're using it for dressing or as a dip, but not to fry with.
>> No. 38293 Anonymous
25th April 2022
Monday 12:39 am
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There's now a mysterious suicide epidemic among Russian oligarchs:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1517167013663289345.html
>> No. 38297 Anonymous
26th April 2022
Tuesday 1:30 am
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0016txs/navalny

This is an absolutely excellent film about Navalny. First thing that has given me hope in this crisis.
>> No. 38298 Anonymous
26th April 2022
Tuesday 3:08 am
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>>38297
I know it was reported, but even watching it happen I still can't believe he got that guy to basically confess to the whole murder plot over the phone like that.
>> No. 38300 Anonymous
27th April 2022
Wednesday 2:30 am
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If it comes to it I want to be the first one into Putin's lair so I can play Warhammers on his massive table.
>> No. 38301 Anonymous
27th April 2022
Wednesday 2:53 am
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>>38300
I wonder if he can still flip that thing if he gets angry.
>> No. 38302 Anonymous
27th April 2022
Wednesday 2:57 am
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>>38300

I've already dibsed it for a Subbuteo game of Shrovetide football.
>> No. 38366 Anonymous
2nd May 2022
Monday 9:10 pm
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-61296682

>Israel has reacted with fury after Russia's foreign minister claimed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler "had Jewish blood".

>Sergei Lavrov made the comments to try to justify Russia's portrayal of Ukraine as "Nazi" despite the fact that its president is Jewish.

>Israel's foreign ministry summoned Russia's ambassador for "clarification" and demanded an apology


Real piss take by now. Jews, shmews, eh?

All that said, Hitler put great effort into obfuscating and destryoing a lot of evidence about his ancestry, to the point of sanitising church registers and public records around his hometown after he came to power. It stands to argue that no purebred Aryan would have had to go to such lengths. There have even been studies by historians pointing towards Hitler at least at some point a few generations prior having had Jewish ancestry, but they were then ruled inconclusive again.

To use that in the current situation with Ukraine is incredibly outrageous though.
>> No. 38367 Anonymous
2nd May 2022
Monday 9:11 pm
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>>38366
Yeah. The Russians have gone too far now.
>> No. 38368 Anonymous
2nd May 2022
Monday 9:30 pm
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>>38367

And to think what nice chaps they were up to this point.
>> No. 38383 Anonymous
9th May 2022
Monday 8:40 am
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>Bono, the frontman of the Irish rock group U2 and his bandmate the Edge have performed a 40-minute concert in a subway station in Kyiv and praised Ukrainians fighting for their freedom from Russia.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/may/08/u2-bono-and-the-edge-perform-in-ukraine-subway-station

Haven't the Ukrainian people suffered enough?
>> No. 38392 Anonymous
11th May 2022
Wednesday 3:50 pm
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>The UK and Sweden have agreed a new deal to come to one another's aid should either nation be attacked.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61408700

I think this means we're officially on the side of putting ketchup on pasta.
>> No. 38396 Anonymous
12th May 2022
Thursday 11:46 pm
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>>38392
This is all getting a bit Anglo-Poland pact. Am I the only fucker who's studied contemporary European history? We're well renowned for making pacts with countries our foreign intelligence agencies tell us are about to be attacked by a country we want to go to war with, something we picked up from the Scots.

The military industrial complex might be about to spool up, lads. If you have any engineering, electrical or mechanical expertise you're going to get seconded to manufacture tanks soon, payment in chocolate and nylon tight rations. Keep calm and carry on.
>> No. 38397 Anonymous
13th May 2022
Friday 12:30 am
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>>38396
I think I’ve said this earlier in the thread, but Russia will be completely unable to lay a glove on Finland or Sweden for a very long time. Putin has committed about 75% of his armed forces to the invasion of Ukraine and it’s been a mess, there simply aren’t the resources to attack any one else.
>> No. 38398 Anonymous
13th May 2022
Friday 12:34 am
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>>38396
I'm surprised we didn't have deals like that already. I guess Finland might be neutral, but Sweden feels very much like it would be on our side in any war. On some level, I think most people do think of Russia and Ukraine as being quite similar, but if Russia attacks Sweden, that's World War III whether we sign a deal or not.

In other news, I am losing faith in the whole sanctions tactic. The BBC website wrote about the sanctions recently:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61381241
>At a glance, Russia has so far been able to fend off an economic collapse following its invasion of Ukraine.
>It has been hammered by sanctions introduced by Western countries since February.
>The initial shock forced the stock market in Russia to close temporarily and saw people queuing up at cash machines, worried about their savings.
>The rouble has, however, returned to pre-war levels, due to careful management by Russia's central bank.
>The country has also managed to avoid defaulting on its foreign debts.
>President Putin has insisted that the West's "economic blitzkrieg" has failed.

Meanwhile, the economy is going tits-up everywhere else. I guess it can be heartening to think that the credit crunch in 2008 harmed the economy by a few percent and it still fucked us pretty much permanently, so even a 10-15% economic shitstorm could kill Russia, but nobody is willing to provide any sort of timescale for when this might happen. Fighting back against the invasion of Ukraine with a load of political policies that will really sting in autumn 2023 isn't really the killer blow these sanctions have been touted as.
>> No. 38399 Anonymous
13th May 2022
Friday 1:01 am
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>>38398

Sanctions are extremely useful in preventing Russia from replenishing their lost military assets. We can't reliably stop them from importing essential dual-use goods that they need to fix tanks and build jet engines, but we can cut off the foreign currency they need to pay for it. Russia has very limited domestic manufacturing capacity and is dependent on imported goods for the most basic of products, because their economy is heavily centred around energy and mining. They might mine vast amounts of steel, but they don't have the machinery to make nuts and bolts.

The Kremlin has carefully prepared for sanctions by cutting public spending, hoarding foreign currency and imposing market controls, but they don't have much runway and there's really nothing they can do to work around trade restrictions. Putin doesn't care if the average Russian gets poorer, but he very much does care that he's running out of bullets.

The impact of the war in Ukraine on energy prices has been somewhat overstated. Brent crude hit a peak of $85/bbl in October last year, mostly due to a post-COVID surge in demand. Eastern Europe will be severely affected by restrictions on the availability of Russian gas, the timing isn't brilliant, but most of the increase in energy prices would have happened anyway.

Sanctions won't necessarily cripple the Russian economy, they certainly won't get rid of Putin, but they are rapidly crippling his military capabilities.
>> No. 38400 Anonymous
13th May 2022
Friday 8:52 pm
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>>38392
>President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday it was not possible for NATO-member Turkey to support plans by Sweden and Finland to join the pact given that the Nordic countries were "home to many daft militant wog organisations".
>Though Turkey has officially supported NATO enlargement since it joined the U.S.-led alliance 70 years ago, its opposition could pose a problem for Sweden and Finland given new members need unanimous agreement.

Oh well.
https://www.reuters.com/world/erdogan-says-turkey-not-positive-finland-sweden-joining-nato-2022-05-13/
>> No. 38401 Anonymous
13th May 2022
Friday 10:49 pm
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>>38399

>they are rapidly crippling his military capabilities.

They've been rapidly crippling Russian military capabilities for close to three months now, you berk. Positively light speed.

Meanwhile, the Russians continue to gain ground in absolute terms. The Ukranians have made some very impressive counterattacks, but they are, still nevertheless making a net loss of territory. Or in other words... Losing.

The news is calling this a "dynamic stalemate".

Propaganda and lies mate. Still, we've got to keep the prole's eyes on something while the economy crumbles at home, I suppose.
>> No. 38402 Anonymous
13th May 2022
Friday 11:43 pm
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>>38401

>They've been rapidly crippling Russian military capabilities for close to three months now, you berk. Positively light speed.

How long do you imagine that wars take?

>Meanwhile, the Russians continue to gain ground in absolute terms.

The Russians currently control more Ukrainian territory than they did on the 23rd of February, but they control a lot less than they did on the 23rd of March or the 23rd of April. Your mum has more teeth than when she was born, but much fewer than she did before she started smoking crack. That's a net gain of teeth, but your mum cannot be said to be gaining teeth.

Russia is running out of men, vehicles, ammunition and morale faster than Ukraine. It does not take a military genius to understand the inevitable conclusion of such an imbalance. Ukraine have retaken almost all territory within Kharkiv city limits and are in places reaching within six miles of the Russian border. They are rapidly advancing the Lysychansk salient which threatens to disconnect the Izium axis from Luhansk and have almost fully encircled Popasna. That is not a stalemate, no matter what some gonk on the telly might say.
>> No. 38404 Anonymous
14th May 2022
Saturday 10:46 am
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>>38401
If Russia retreat due to lack of resources, Ukraine earns a Pyrrhic victory by attrition. As the Finns know well, a win is a win even if it's not technically a win. It'll make them think twice in future.

Making things hard for Russia to hold territory is the best way to force a retreat as Russia doesn't have the resources to sustain that, tit for tat, long term. Ukraine does, because it has the backing of NATO.

How much of Ukraine Russia currently occupies is shrinking as they consolidate their efforts in places they think they can hold.
>> No. 38405 Anonymous
14th May 2022
Saturday 10:56 am
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>>38401
>"We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."
Russia lost this war when their fantasy of a two day sprint into Kiev failed absolutely. Everything since then has been a face saving exercise, the grim cost of which is tens of thousands dead on both sides and 5-6 million Ukrainian refugees.
>> No. 38406 Anonymous
14th May 2022
Saturday 11:40 am
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>>38401
Well, sort of.
It seems more like they're not wasting any manpower trying to push the Russians back out of empty farmland and rural villages, instead preferring to let Russia take massive losses in failed offensives.
>> No. 38407 Anonymous
14th May 2022
Saturday 12:44 pm
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>>38406

From the start, Ukraine have allowed Russia to advance, then used a choke point to break the supply line and create an isolated pocket. It isn't a new strategy - the Finns used it to great success during the continuation war - but the Russians seem to be extremely slow to figure it out. There's a big difference between taking territory and walking into a trap.
>> No. 38412 Anonymous
17th May 2022
Tuesday 4:44 pm
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>Georgia's separatist South Ossetia region to hold referendum on joining Russia
>"Anatoly Bibilov signed a decree on holding a referendum in the Republic of South Ossetia," his office said in a statement, citing his people's "historic aspiration" to join Russia. South Ossetia was at the centre of the Russian-Georgian war in 2008 after which the Kremlin recognised the territory – along with another separatist region, Abkhazia – as an independent state and stationed military bases there. "We are coming home," Bibilov said on messaging app Telegram. "The time has come to unite once and for all. "South Ossetia and Russia will be together. This is the start of a big new story," the outgoing leader added.
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220513-georgia-s-separatist-south-ossetia-region-to-hold-referendum-on-joining-russia

If Putin keep this up then pretty soon NATO will just run out of countries to expand into. It's genius.
>> No. 38466 Anonymous
21st May 2022
Saturday 11:08 pm
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>A man has left the mum of his two children for a young Ukrainian refugee who lived in the family home for just 10 days before tensions boiled over.

>Tony Ganett, 29, left Lorona, 28, after falling for Sofiia Karkadym who had escaped the horrors of her besieged hometown of Lviv. Tony, a security guard, initially signed up for the government's rehoming scheme but found the progress was too slow and reached out to refugees on social media instead.

https://www.hullPlease don't ban me.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/yorkshire-family-take-ukrainian-refugee-7112153

It's nice to trade up, but I don't know why you'd go to the papers with this.
>> No. 38467 Anonymous
21st May 2022
Saturday 11:46 pm
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Lads you've all been played. Azov Nazis have been fighting the Russian ' separatists' for years. Norn Irn troubles with communism. Clinton and Biden have been using 'business interests' within Ukraine, as much as they used within the so called Arab Spring. Putin saw this as a threat, with an excuse of eradicating Azov Nazis but also to push military might against an economic threat. This has now been passed on to us as oligarchs shift their funds and the real war isn't counted in deaths from bombs and bullets but food shortages and desire for truth.
>> No. 38468 Anonymous
22nd May 2022
Sunday 12:09 am
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>>38467

Go away mate. You haven't uncovered The Truth, you've just concocted your own reality to make yourself feel clever. I assume that the mods are all out on the lash, because you've been getting away with murder over the last couple of hours.
>> No. 38469 Anonymous
22nd May 2022
Sunday 12:17 am
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>>38467
>> No. 38470 Anonymous
22nd May 2022
Sunday 12:24 am
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>>38468

I'm not surprised that being a fingerman you deserve being pointed at, scorned, and deservedly a comeuppance with clenched fingers.
>> No. 38471 Anonymous
22nd May 2022
Sunday 12:57 am
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>>38466
Does he have incredibly pointy fingernails, or is that her hand? It looks horrifying either way. If I was the original wife, I would leave just to avoid getting my eyes sliced open like Un Chien Andalou.
>> No. 38472 Anonymous
22nd May 2022
Sunday 1:53 am
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>>38467>>38470
I'm not sure what relevance the ugly Hitchens brother has to do with this. Given his opinions on the western interventions that took place before his death, I doubt he'd oppose the current stance NATO and pals have taken.
>> No. 38475 Anonymous
23rd May 2022
Monday 2:25 pm
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>>38472
>the ugly Hitchens brother

Hahahahahahaaaaa.
>> No. 38521 Anonymous
28th May 2022
Saturday 9:23 pm
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Isn't it a bit regressive for the Ukrainian government to imprison the male population in a warzone while the women are allowed to flee? I get that Ukrainians and eastern euros are a bit backwards and don't want full western feminism and females on the frontlines, but they could at least keep them in the country as nurses and support staff.
>> No. 38522 Anonymous
28th May 2022
Saturday 9:36 pm
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>>38521

Nah, it just goes to show how things like feminism are luxury beliefs. They're the first things to go out of the window in times of genuine hardship, where you can't afford to indulge the fantasies of middle class liberals and have to do as needs must.

I'm sure there are female volunteers helping out in that capacity anyway, and the refugees being given priority will be mums with kids to evacuate and so on.
>> No. 38525 Anonymous
28th May 2022
Saturday 10:15 pm
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>>38522

In the same sense that literally all of civilisation is a luxury belief that goes out the window with hardship, sure.
>> No. 38526 Anonymous
28th May 2022
Saturday 10:21 pm
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>>38522

Or, perhaps they weren't that fisherperson to begin with, somehow. I can't imagine an eastern europe, former soviet bloc country having more traditional views on gender roles than us, though, so I must be talking out of my arse.
>> No. 38527 Anonymous
28th May 2022
Saturday 10:24 pm
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>>38525

No, not really. In the sense that without the infrastructure and labour saving conveniences of modern society, those old fashioned "socially constructed" gender roles suddenly become facts of life again.

Civilisation itself is a concept we could play endless semantics over the meaning of, but it hasn't gone out of the window in Ukraine yet by any means.
>> No. 38528 Anonymous
28th May 2022
Saturday 10:27 pm
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>>38527

Yes, really.
>> No. 38529 Anonymous
28th May 2022
Saturday 10:28 pm
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>>38521

Aside from all the waiting around, soldiering is mostly heavy manual labour. Digging trenches, filling sandbags, carrying big fuck-off bits of metal around. For unavoidable biological reasons, most women are poorly suited to this kind of work and would be a liability in the field.

The other stuff generally requires some level of specialist training that can't be delivered effectively in a crisis situation. fisherpersons might demand equality, but very few of them have an HGV license or know how to repair a diesel generator. Medical professionals are always valuable, but you can't train an OR nurse or a field medic in a fortnight when everyone who could train them is busy saving lives.

In a long war you can work around that skills gap, but Ukraine didn't have that luxury. Some Ukrainian women did prepare themselves in peacetime and are now making a valuable military contribution; for the rest, the best thing they can do for their country is to go somewhere safe.

There's a gap between what women want to see other women doing and what they actually want for themselves and their daughters. I occasionally get into arguments with people who think that my field of mechanical engineering is "male dominated" (rather than predominantly male). I always make the offer of paid work experience or an apprenticeship to any woman who doesn't mind carting around big lumps of metal, doing lots of sums, getting covered in machine oil and the slight risk of losing a limb. Nobody ever takes me up on that offer, or knows anyone who might be interested. That's not the point, apparently.
>> No. 38530 Anonymous
28th May 2022
Saturday 10:34 pm
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You're all arguing a point as if Ukraine was until recently somehow as progressive as we are. They were not.
>> No. 38531 Anonymous
28th May 2022
Saturday 11:07 pm
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>>38530

There is no single axis between "progressive" and "regressive". The Red Army had massive numbers of female tank crew and snipers. Iran has a greater proportion of female scientists than Sweden. Angela Merkel grew up behind the iron curtain.

Gender politics is a hostage of reductive narratives, false dichotomies, inconvenient truths and convenient falsehoods.
>> No. 38532 Anonymous
28th May 2022
Saturday 11:28 pm
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>>38526
>>38527
So why did all those Afghan men run?

>>38529
>soldiering is mostly heavy manual labour

I assure you that the vast majority of time spent soldiering is doing autistic bollocks and Ukraine has had women operating on the frontline for years. The problem with women is strictly in infantry combat roles and the risk of injury - the vast VAST majority of military roles do not involve combat and there's plenty of work to go around.

But I suspect the whole bar on men leaving is more a political and strategic decision. Men are given no means of escape and the international community would be up in arms if women and children were held up at the border. That's life for you, it doesn't really invalidate that you can't slap a woman arse at work.
>> No. 38533 Anonymous
29th May 2022
Sunday 12:25 am
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>>38532

>So why did all those Afghan men run?

Because they had no interest in fighting the Taliban, put simply. They had absolutely no stake in defending the cardboard cut-out of a state the Yanks put up.

Ukraine couldn't be more different because it has spent the better part of the last decade or two as the focus of Western intelligence ops and agitprop to cultivate nationalist sentiment, in order to use them as a puppet in a proxy war with Russia.

(Not that that'll ever happen, of course, don't talk daft with all that conspiracy nonsense, they said.)
>> No. 38534 Anonymous
29th May 2022
Sunday 1:19 am
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I wonder what happened to all the (male) Africans who lived in Ukraine and were very angry when they weren't allowed to go back to Africa. I remember seeing an article on the BBC website where they said, "This isn't our war." Yes it bloody is. You moved there. I understand they probably had a pretty shit time even during peacetime in Ukraine, what with all the racists who very much do exist, but I remember being very angry when I saw the reports of them trying to leave because they didn't want to fight. Most Ukrainians don't want to fight. Right now, there are definitely going to be huge numbers of Ukrainians just like me, utterly shit at fighting, but doing it anyway because it needs to be done for Ukraine. They are by definition similar to me, which means they are cannon fodder and they know it. And people who have immigrated to Ukraine, and embraced Ukraine, were trying to go back and say the conscription didn't apply to them. I hope they're fighting now, but I haven't seen any follow-up stories on them.
>> No. 38536 Anonymous
29th May 2022
Sunday 2:37 am
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>>38533
>Ukraine couldn't be more different because it has spent the better part of the last decade or two as the focus of Western intelligence ops and agitprop to cultivate nationalist sentiment, in order to use them as a puppet in a proxy war with Russia.

Seems more like by 2014 the Ukrainian people had found their identity when at last firmly making the choice of utter poverty with security under Russia or risking it with western integration. A mood that was only then pushed further by Putin uniting everyone in Ukraine against him. It's not like this process was some quickly emerging incident or that today it's a hard choice in a war that Russia periodically shows as one of annihilation.

>>38534
Are you stupid or just deliberately ignorant? There were Africans in Ukraine for the same reason you had Indians and laplanderstanis, it was dirt cheap to study yet comes with a second-world education. They were foreign nationals who were held back at the border because of the colour of their skin. It's not a question of a citizen's duty.
>> No. 38537 Anonymous
29th May 2022
Sunday 7:44 am
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>>38532

>the vast VAST majority of military roles do not involve combat and there's plenty of work to go around

In an expeditionary force, yes. In a borderline guerilla defensive army, not so much. The Ukrainians have short supply lines and a very deep front.

>>38533

>Ukraine couldn't be more different because it has spent the better part of the last decade or two as the focus of Western intelligence ops and agitprop to cultivate nationalist sentiment, in order to use them as a puppet in a proxy war with Russia.

The Ukrainians are defending their homes. Sentiment in traditionally pro-Russian areas has massively turned due to the outright barbarism of Russian forces. Not everything is a conspiracy and sometimes there are definite baddies. It's extraordinarily arrogant to imagine that the Ukrainians would just let Putin take over if it wasn't for us mongling their brains.
>> No. 38540 Anonymous
29th May 2022
Sunday 9:15 am
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Soldiers don't use money when they're fighting, the military feeds them rations. It just goes to show how things like capitalism are luxury beliefs. They're the first things to go out of the window in times of genuine hardship, where you can't afford to indulge the fantasies of billionaires and have to do as needs must.

You have to get by using expressions and gestures when you're in a country where you don't speak the language. It just goes to show how things like words are luxury beliefs. They're the first things to go out of the window in times of genuine hardship, where you can't afford to indulge the fantasies of talky-talky folk and have to do as needs must.
>> No. 38544 Anonymous
29th May 2022
Sunday 12:18 pm
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>>38537
>In an expeditionary force, yes. In a borderline guerilla defensive army, not so much. The Ukrainians have short supply lines and a very deep front.

Don't be daft. A Ukrainian combat soldier still needs cooks, ambulance and logistics drivers, mechanics, armourers etc. Again, there's plenty of work to go around and I'm sure some samaritan can find something for you to do if you're bored.

>>38540
Soldiers spend a considerable amount of money on personal kit, especially boots, along with Haribo and cheeky vimto. You cannot escape capitalism.
>> No. 38546 Anonymous
29th May 2022
Sunday 12:42 pm
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>>38544
The overwhelming majority of soldiers throughout time have never even heard of such things. Their food comes from rations supplied by the military and looting. This is proof that authoritarian military klepto-communism is the natural state of humanity. If I can't use a niche example of a situation to make sweeping generalisations about all other situations then how else am I supposed to reinforce my preconceptions?
>> No. 38547 Anonymous
29th May 2022
Sunday 12:55 pm
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>>38546
The overwhelming majority of soldiers throughout time have been responsible for their own equipment. Don't distort history as it triggers my autism.
>> No. 38548 Anonymous
29th May 2022
Sunday 12:58 pm
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>>38537

>The Ukrainians are defending their homes.

Yes, they are, but that doesn't change the fact they've been very thoroughly groomed for it over the last decade or so. Remember that this war wouldn't be happenning if it wasn't for the previous civil conflict between pro-Russian and pro-Western factions. Ultimately, in the long view, this nation's brutal fight for its own independence is still a part of a larger and very cynical geopolitical game. Those are not mutually exclusive truths.
>> No. 38566 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 6:00 am
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>>38548
Redundant post.

Everything's part of a bigger thing ooooooooo.
>> No. 38567 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 7:43 am
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>>38548
"Groomed" and "civil conflict", just shut up already.
>> No. 38568 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 8:40 am
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>>38567
I've learnt by now that any posts where Russia's concerned are to be taken with a massive pinch of salt.
>> No. 38569 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 9:58 am
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>>38566

This is quite possibly the thickest post in the history of .gs, and possibly the only time I've seen someone try to be dismissive of using context to understand a set of events.
>> No. 38570 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 12:11 pm
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>>38569
> possibly the only time I've seen someone try to be dismissive of using context to understand a set of events.
Maybe on this board, but if you look at .gs as a part of a larger and very cynical global shitposting game, you'll realize there are many such examples.
>> No. 38571 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 1:19 pm
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>>38566
>>38567

Oh, right sorry.

WOOOO UKRAINE GO ON LADS DID YOU SEE THAT EPIC VIDEO OF THE DRONE STRIKE HAHAHA GET FUCKED IVAN

That better?
>> No. 38572 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 3:25 pm
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>>38571
You are satirising a mindset that has not once been expressed in this thread. I was merely highlighting your clumsy attempts to reframe Ukrainian statehood as a kind of chaotic aberation, implicitly under the direction of the meddling West. Russia has treated Ukraine as a colony gone rogue, and every criticism that has been leveled at the US-UK invasion of Iraq can be leveled at the "special operation" being waged in Eastern Europe, with Nazis taking the place of WMDs and a heaped spoonful of reckless talk about possible nuclear strikes added for good measure.
>> No. 38573 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 6:22 pm
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>>38572
>with Nazis taking the place of WMDs
Does anyone know how the "with us or against us" crowd are dealing with the Azov battalion existing and helping Ukraine avoid foreign occupation?
>> No. 38574 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 6:42 pm
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>>38573

>the "with us or against us" crowd

I don't know what that means.
>> No. 38575 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 7:25 pm
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>>38574
>If 10 people are sitting at a table with a Nazi then there are 11 Nazis at that table.
Those lot. If only anecdotally I've seen these opinions about and I'm sure others have. Can we all agree that they're wrong then, or at least agents of Putin?
>> No. 38577 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 9:18 pm
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>>38573
I don't trust anybody who just wants to ask innocent questions about whether the dictator with a history of evil behaviour, who is currently invading a sovereign nation on spurious reasoning and massacring its people, is really the bad guy here. Perhaps that qualifies me as one of your "with us or against us" crowd. Personally, I am delighted that the Azov battalion are helping to defend Ukraine. If they do bad things, we can worry about those when they do them. Right now, they're doing good-guy stuff.
>> No. 38579 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 9:25 pm
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>>38575

>Can we all agree that they're wrong then, or at least agents of Putin?

Yes. Some members of the Azov Battalion hold views that range from "a bit iffy" to "literal Nazism", but they have the right to defend their homes against unprovoked aggression and they're bloody good soldiers. It is possible to admire someone's bravery while disapproving of their beliefs; it is possible for a bad guy to be fighting on the side of good and vice-versa.

The far right alliance won less than 2.2% of the popular vote in the 2019 parliamentary election and since the Russian invasion the far right have become a minority even within the Azov Battalion. Anyone who believes that a liberal democracy should have a total absence of "unacceptable" views has fundamentally misunderstood the concept of liberal democracy.
>> No. 38580 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 9:38 pm
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>>38577

The part that makes me roll my eyes here is that you look at this in terms of "good guy" and "bad guy" at all. History has no such thing.

No, not even Hitler, before you ask. When we went to war with him we had no idea he was a mentalist eugenic racial supremacist, and even if we did know, that wasn't actually an altogether controversial opinion back then. Especially not over the pond.

It just comes off as a bit childish and naive. Our media is bombarding us with just as much propaganda as Russia Today is blasting their people with. Yes, an invasion is morally wrong, but to ignore the long and complex series of events that led to it is simply clamping your hands over your ears and going LALALALA like a seven year old.
>> No. 38581 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 10:40 pm
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>>38580

The postmodern abandonment of concrete morality and concrete truth is half the reason we're in this mess. Hitler, Stalin and Churchill were all wrong'uns, but they weren't equally bad. "Good guy" and "bad guy" are contextual and relative, but "good" and "bad" are absolute and if we believe otherwise we're buggered. If you can't draw the line somewhere, you inevitably descent into a recursive loop of whataboutery. Having rules of war might seem absurd, but that absurdity is the only thing separating us from barbarism.

>to ignore the long and complex series of events that led to it

Unless you're engaged in a conspiracist mindset that blames everything in the world on The West, it isn't all that complex. Some things really are just inexcusable and nonsensical. Nobody but Putin wanted this war to happen. The effect of this war is to strengthen and expand NATO, but nobody expected that to happen - Putin thought that he could roll into Kyiv in a matter of days and so did we.

There was no plot to goad Putin into it, there was no propaganda effort to militate Ukrainians against him, it was just a tinpot dictator who believed his own lies and bit off more than he could chew. The Orange Revolution and Euromaidan were Ukrainian movements led by the Ukrainian people and arguments to the contrary are Kremlin lies, plain and simple. There is no Great Game afoot here, no sneaky geopolitical machinations by the CIA, just a futile effort by a dying man to revive a dead empire.

Some moral problems are difficult and nuanced, but sometimes inarguably bad people do inarguably bad things for inarguably bad reasons.
>> No. 38582 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 10:42 pm
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>>38580
It's pretty simple really, sovereignty is viewed as the highest good* in our modern international system by design. Even on an objective level we know what happens when it is infringed and we've known for a long time to the degree I don't think I need to go into Putin's view of Ukraine as a non-country and the actions of his army. It's why everyone has taken to Ukraine so strongly because for the first time since maybe ISIS we have a fight where the sides are so clearly black and white.

If Russia doesn't like it they can fuck off. Special operation my arse.

>When we went to war with him we had no idea he was a mentalist eugenic racial supremacist

We knew he was violating Poland's sovereignty after we'd made it explicit that Poland was a "fuck around and find out" line.
>> No. 38585 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 10:53 pm
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>>38582

>We knew he was violating Poland's sovereignty after we'd made it explicit that Poland was a "fuck around and find out" line.

Very good. Now, why was Poland our "fuck around and find out" line, again? Much like Belgium was in the prequel, you might recall.
>> No. 38586 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 11:05 pm
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>>38581

>The Orange Revolution and Euromaidan were Ukrainian movements led by the Ukrainian people and arguments to the contrary are Kremlin lies, plain and simple. There is no Great Game afoot here, no sneaky geopolitical machinations by the CIA

There literally, factually, demonstrably, actually were though, mate. If this is what you earnestly believe and you're not consciously practising doublethink here, then you might be a bit of a lost cause.

It's fine if you want to say Putin is the bad-er guy, say the western liberal order is the lesser evil, whatever. That much is pretty much true. But I don't understand what you are gaining by denying reality and pledging such fierce allegiance to a side here. Are you somehow determined to help the cause through your keyboard? The civil war was more or less openly the result of a botched western-backed regime change, and the news back then didn't even really attempt to hide it. The narrative only changed when it started to look ugly. That's not KGB propaganda, it was on the fucking BBC evening news.

Similar deal to how everything about sending weapons to those anti-Assad rebels got memory holed when ISIS mysteriously appeared out of nowhere. Honestly it's fucking weird how it keeps happening and everyone just goes along with it.
>> No. 38587 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 11:28 pm
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>>38585
>Now, why was Poland our "fuck around and find out" line, again?

Because neither Britain nor France could afford a war with Germany all the other times despite it being morally and legally outrageous. Poland even had a defensive alliance on the matter which is still valid and the only commonly accepted way a nation may intervene in a conflict without referring the matter to the UNSC.

>>38586
>The civil war was more or less openly the result of a botched western-backed regime change

Utter bollocks. You're living in a fantasyland of NotRussian tanks rolling over the border and Ukrainians donning green to hold totally legitimate referendums to prevent Nazis on trains.
>> No. 38589 Anonymous
30th May 2022
Monday 11:41 pm
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>>38587

Very good. Now, why did we have that alliance with Poland?
>> No. 38590 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 12:10 am
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>>38589
Get to the point, lad. I don't have all night for you to tell me how NATO is obviously going to attack Russia any day now.
>> No. 38591 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 12:49 am
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>>38590

The point is, ultimately, because we didn't want Germany to be 'arder than us. That's all it comes down to. The punitive measures we imposed on Germany after the first world war, were designed to prevent that, but ultimately backfired. People can easily see the Great War as a morally grey on grey conflict born out of boring geopolitical tensions and tangled alliances, but rarely do we acknowledge that the second one started in much the same way.

Much like today we don't want Russia to be 'arder than us, what with the legacy of that little thing called the cold war and all that, and all of our geopolitical efforts have been directed at containing/weakening Russia, it's a similar situation. We're not standing beside Ukraine out of the goodness of our hearts. It's very convenient that Putin is a bad guy, much like it's very convenient that Hitler was a bad guy. But ultimately that's still not why we're doing it. We're doing it because it is in our interests (by which I obviously mean our ruling classes interests, but you're not daft so I know I needn't really have clarified that) to do so.

The thing I fear out of all this is that even when the good guys win, and it seems they're in with a decent shot if we send them enough missiles, it won't resolve anything. The same old tensions will remain, only deeper and more explicitly hostile than they have been for the last thirty years. If anything it'll just make matters worse, with a Weimar-ised Russia that will only seek to reclaim its lost pride in another ten or twenty years, Europe as a whole weakened by the energy crisis and economic impact, the already quite apparent rise of right wing populism on the continent being further emboldened... That's not something that bodes well with nearly all of Europe unilaterally increasing its military spending... Do you see what kind of picture I'm seeing?

You can say this is a just war if you want but I don't see any outcome of the present situation being good for any of us, and that's why I really can't get on board with this kind of moralism. Peace was the way forward but everyone has been swallowed up by this backdoor nationalism, tricked into it because it's virtuous. Whoever wins, we all lose.
>> No. 38592 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 1:14 am
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>>38591
>Much like today we don't want Russia to be 'arder than us
When will we manufacture a war against China? You'd think if we were going to go after a foreign country that poses a threat to our national interests, we'd be going after China rather than Russia.
>> No. 38593 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 7:39 am
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>>38592
I'm sure geopolitics lad will be along in a minute with his 500 word insight into why that is.

But how does China present a threat to our interests at this precise moment? We trade with them pretty freely, and they haven't invaded anywhere yet. Hong Kong we gave back ourselves; they've probably looked at Ukraine and thought they don't want any of that shit to happen in Taiwan; and the international community couldn't care less about the Uyghurs or Tibetans.
>> No. 38597 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 8:01 am
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>>38586

>There literally, factually, demonstrably, actually were though, mate. If this is what you earnestly believe and you're not consciously practising doublethink here, then you might be a bit of a lost cause.

Did we rig the 2004 election? Did we poison Yushchenko? Did we imprison Tymoshenko and Lutsenko? Did we somehow trick Russia into banning trade with Ukraine?

You're asserting that your claims are literally, factually, demonstrably true without actually providing any evidence.
>> No. 38598 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 11:08 am
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>>38593

You said it yourself. China isn't a threat at the moment, not to Europe at least. There's really no reason for China and Europe to clash. America and China is a different matter, mind you, and we're all going to be dragged along for the ride if it happens.

>>38597

>Did we rig the 2004 election?

I don't know, but considering the Anglo-American history of electoral interference throughout Europe, the middle east, and Latin America it's really not too farfetched of a suggestion.
>> No. 38599 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 11:10 am
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>>38598
>I don't know, but
Stop talking.
>> No. 38600 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 11:26 am
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>>38599

Why? Ignorance never stopped you.
>> No. 38601 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 11:35 am
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>>38598
Oh god you're one of those people who thinks the Venezuelan uprising was a US-staged coup, aren't you?
>> No. 38602 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 11:58 am
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>>38601

Give it a rest lad, this isn't flat earth conspiracy talk. Interfering in foreign affairs is practically what the CIA was created to do, and they set to it immediately after their foundation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Italian_general_election

Denying US interference in world affairs is on par with denying climate change. They fail as often as they succeed, they're not magically pulling all the strings from a position of omnipotence, but nevertheless, they're always trying to get their way.
>> No. 38603 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 12:49 pm
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>>38602
I refer you to the answer given by >>38599 some moments ago.
>> No. 38604 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 1:52 pm
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>>38602

It is a colossal leap from "the US routinely interferes in world affairs" to "the US routinely interferes in world affairs, therefore we should assume that any geopolitical event is just a US plot". It is possible to be so open-minded that your brains fall out; it is possible to be so cynical that you fall for any old nonsense that contradicts "the mainstream media narrative".
>> No. 38605 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 1:56 pm
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>>38604

Sure, but this is not one of those cases. There are clear and obvious motives for the US (and ourselves) to stick our oars in.
>> No. 38606 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 2:22 pm
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>>38600
That was my first post itt all day, you gormless oaf.
>> No. 38607 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 2:38 pm
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>>38605

>>38581

>The effect of this war is to strengthen and expand NATO, but nobody expected that to happen - Putin thought that he could roll into Kyiv in a matter of days and so did we.
>> No. 38608 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 3:08 pm
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>>38607 (and the previous posters I can't be arsed clicking expand to include)

>Putin thought that he could roll into Kyiv in a matter of days and so did we.

You know I'm not so sure, we might have put more effort in at the diplomatic stage if we really thought it was going to be a slaughter. I remember saying at the time, it seems almost like the Western diplomats are angling for a war.

Ultimately my slightly fence-sitting stance is that while the whole show hasn't be orchestrated from day one, it does suit the West's overall agenda of trying to bring down Putin, who has been a thorn in our side for a while, and install someone more pro-Western. Draw him into a nasty conflict like Afghanistan before it that toppled the Soviets.

Besides that it's worked out quite nicely for western oil and gas companies (the EU has just agreed to a 90% embargo on Russian oil), and our governments were desperate for a bit of inflation after the pandemic, so there's certainly been opportunism there. Again I'm not saying this is all happening at the jewish CIA illuminati NWO's say so, but it is all very convenient.
>> No. 38609 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 4:25 pm
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>>38608
I notice you still haven't stopped talking yet.
>> No. 38610 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 4:57 pm
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>>38608

>You know I'm not so sure, we might have put more effort in at the diplomatic stage if we really thought it was going to be a slaughter.

We didn't think it was going to be a slaughter, we thought it was going to be a fait accompli. The Ukraine conflict has turned out far bloodier than anyone expected, because nobody thought that the Ukrainians would resist so effectively. There was no diplomatic stage, because the Russians denied that they were planning an invasion and still deny that it's a war.

I fail to understand how we could possibly have "drawn" Putin into a senseless and unprovoked invasion with no obvious benefit. Did the CIA use a mind control ray to make him deny the existence of Ukrainian national identity? Did MI5 hypnotise him into wanting to rebuild the Soviet Union? Did the Foreign Office secretly leak a pirate treasure map with an X in the middle of Kyiv?

There's no plausible mechanism by which we could have influenced Russian decision-making and no indication whatsoever that anyone had anticipated the current state of affairs. America certainly wasn't behaving like a country that had baited their opponent into a long and bloody conflict, they were behaving like a country that was blindsided by an invasion that they didn't expect, hadn't prepared for and couldn't understand.
>> No. 38611 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 4:58 pm
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>>38609

That was my first post itt all day, you gormless oaf.
>> No. 38612 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 5:09 pm
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>>38610

Hang on a minute.

>There was no diplomatic stage, because the Russians denied that they were planning an invasion and still deny that it's a war.

So what, I imagined the entire month of January February when there were negotiations and talks and everything? We sent Liz Truss over to fucking embarrass herself and everything, remember?

>I fail to understand how we could possibly have "drawn" Putin into a senseless and unprovoked invasion with no obvious benefit

Erm, no, we drew Ukraine into our sphere of influence, which we knew the Russians wouldn't like, and then acted surprise when the Russians reacted. This has nothing to do with whether it was justified or who is in the right or in the wrong, it's just the factual reality of what happened.

>America certainly wasn't behaving like a country that had baited their opponent into a long and bloody conflict, they were behaving like a country that was blindsided by an invasion that they didn't expect, hadn't prepared for and couldn't understand.

Eh? The Americans were the ones screaming about the fact he was going to invade from the start, you can't call that blindsided.

It was gunpoint diplomacy where everyone involved understood that the threat of an invasion was the bargaining chip Russia was hoping would get them what they wanted. It's perfectly valid to say "well in that case not giving an inch was the right thing to do, don't negotiate with threats" but what you're trying to say here is that everyone was taken by surprise and had no idea what was going on, which is flat out untrue.

The only logical deduction here is that we knew there was going to be a war, but that that was a risk we were willing to take. I don't know why you insist on it being so mutually exclusive to say that the Russians are baddies for doing an invasion, but also that our motives aren't entirely pure. We're obviously going to take advantage of the situation.
>> No. 38613 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 5:42 pm
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>>38612

"Give us Ukraine or we'll take Ukraine" is not a negotiable position, it's just a pretext for war. We were fooled into thinking that Putin was engaged in gunboat diplomacy, we thought that he had some ulterior motive, because we couldn't believe that his actual motives were as stupid as they turned out to be.

We didn't draw Ukraine into our sphere of influence and it wouldn't matter if we did or didn't, because that's not how Putin sees the world. Either Ukraine is a vassal state of Russia with a Kremlin-appointed government, or it's a lapdog of the United States whose mere existence is an attack on the heart of Russian sovereignty. Ukrainians were deeply ambivalent about their place in the world and deeply divided on whether to move towards Europe or Russia until the 24th of February, when Putin conclusively disproved the propaganda message he had been peddling to the Ukrainians.

>our motives aren't entirely pure. We're obviously going to take advantage of the situation.

If our motives were entirely pure, how would we be acting differently?
>> No. 38614 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 6:42 pm
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>>38613

The thing is we can't do "the right thing" because the reality of nuclear armageddon and Putin not being a rational actor prohibit it; but that's not stopping us make the best of a bad hand.

The "right" thing would have been 30 years ago to actual honour the NATO non-expansion verbal agreement with Gorbachev or whoever it was back then. Obviously that ship sailed, but it would still have been more "right" to make some sort of treaty binding both sides to guarantee and honour Ukraine's (and Belarus, and Latvia, Lithuania, and whoever else) neutrality, and actually let them be independent. Failing all that, it would be more "right" to militarily confront Russia ourselves, instead of letting Ukraine shoulder the burden alone- Nukes aside, from what we can see, they wouldn't be much of a match for the combined powers of Europe, let alone if the Yanks got involved.

But as it is, we're looking at a position where it will ultimately work out quite well from our perspective. Ukraine stands a good chance of fending Russia off, and a defeated Russia will have little choice but to accept them joining NATO in the end, now that they have concrete reason to want to. Western businesses going in and "rescuing" Gazprom from the oligarchs when they're on the verge of collapse from the sanctions. It could all work out pretty peachy from our perspective, and all it cost is a few thousand dead Slavs.

The best outcome we can hope for is Putin being ousted, stepping down, or getting tried for warcrimes or something, and a new Russian leader can take place to build better relations with the West, even perhaps become friendly. Trade, resources, and prosperity. But it's probably far more likely we'll force them to retreat from the world for a few years and turn into the next Iran, or North Korea, only with fuckloads of actually viable nukes to worry about.

The trouble is the Yanks don't want the former option, and wouldn't let it happen. They've ensured that doesn't happen at every chance for the last fifty odd years. You might mistake me for someone who simps for Russia but that's not the case, it's more sheer distrust of the Yanks. Every foreign policy move the Yanks have made over the last several decades has ended up fucking us over, and I don't see that changing here.
>> No. 38615 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 6:54 pm
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>>38614
>But it's probably far more likely we'll force them to retreat from the world for a few years and turn into the next Iran, or North Korea, only with fuckloads of actually viable nukes to worry about.
"Turn into the old Russia" possibly.
>> No. 38616 Anonymous
31st May 2022
Tuesday 8:44 pm
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>>38614
>and actually let them be independent
Again, have you found any indication that joining NATO was not a free and independent decision? Some places just don't like the country that oppressed them for decades. I don't think the Americans secretly conspired to make them join NATO, because if that was happening, why hasn't Ireland joined?
>> No. 38618 Anonymous
1st June 2022
Wednesday 9:01 am
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>>38580
>No, not even Hitler, before you ask. When we went to war with him we had no idea he was a mentalist eugenic racial supremacist

I've just clocked this comment and consider it revisionist. Yes we did, we absolutely did, we knew about the Nazi ideology of racial purity and the state's persecution of Jews. The only thing we didn't know about until the war was over was the death camps.
>> No. 38619 Anonymous
1st June 2022
Wednesday 11:34 am
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>>38618

>The only thing we didn't know about until the war was over was the death camps.

Bit of a tough one, that. There were rumours about them that were told both by people who had escaped them and by air reconnaissance units who had seen them from above. What wasn't known was the extent of the horror that was taking place inside them.

If all those history documentaries are right, then the average German population only had sketchy knowledge of them as well. They were known to exist, not least because they were often only a stone's throw from villages. And as the war went on, it wasn't just Jews and other ethnic minorities anymore who got sent there, but it was also a place to get rid of political dissidents and other undesirables, which eventually even included homosexuals and "antisocial elements".

Sachsenhausen concentration camp was one of the more prominent of those sites just outside Berlin, and pretty much everybody knew that that's where you got sent if the regime just wanted you gone.

But especially in the latter days of the Reich, it was something you didn't talk about with anybody, because you could be arrested on the spot if police or the Gestapo were within earshot. There was no public discourse, as we would call it today.
>> No. 38620 Anonymous
1st June 2022
Wednesday 11:41 am
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>>38618

You can't ignore the second half of that sentence. Racism was pretty popular here too back then.

The point is correct- Nazi Germany's racial ideology barely factored into why we went to war with them, it just made it a lot easier to see ourselves as the good guys and whitewash our own atrocities after the fact.
>> No. 38621 Anonymous
1st June 2022
Wednesday 3:07 pm
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>>38619

They started building concentration camps in 1939, but they were genuinely detention camps rather than extermination camps until the end of 1941. The gas chambers were built in the first half of 1942 following the Wannsee conference and they were all in occupied Poland. The extent to which the Allies knew about them is debatable, but the highest levels of government certainly knew that a lot of Jewish people were disappearing on a scale that led to an obvious conclusion.

The mass murder of Jews really started in Nazi-occupied parts of the Soviet Union, largely without the explicit authorisation of Hitler. The Babi Yar massacre in September 1941 was arguably the pilot scheme for the Holocaust, with over 30,000 Jews murdered at gunpoint in just two days. In a slightly unsettling echo from history, Babi Yar is in the middle of Kyiv.
>> No. 38627 Anonymous
2nd June 2022
Thursday 10:54 pm
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I don't know why it's taken me two months to think of this, but it occurs to me that if Putin wanted to twist our arm, he would have been better off just threatening to turn off the gas and oil in the first place than bothering with a war.

Is he just thick or what? Why wasn't he making ultimatums with the threat of cutting off our heating? How would the west have responded to that?

I suppose they need to sell it more than we need to buy it, but then again, I don't give it long before we're rattling for a bit of Ruskie oil. There's talk of leccy rationing and all sorts come the winter, if all this is still going on. I don't imagine that will go down well, although it'll be the final nail in the Tory coffin, so cheers Putin, keep it up a bit longer lad.
>> No. 38629 Anonymous
2nd June 2022
Thursday 11:31 pm
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>>38620
I ignored the second half of the sentence because it isn't relevant to the issue I have with the first half.
>> No. 38630 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 1:44 am
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>>38627

>Is he just thick or what? Why wasn't he making ultimatums with the threat of cutting off our heating?

Because he didn't want to twist our arm, he wanted to invade Ukraine. There is no subtext here, no secret goal that's going to emerge during negotiations. Before the invasion his demands were "unless Ukraine is rendered unable to defend against an invasion, I'll invade"; after the invasion, his demands are "we'll stop the war if we get to keep all of the bits of Ukraine we've invaded (and a bit extra)".

Our mistake was in assuming that nobody would be this stupid or crazy, in assuming that Putin was engaged in some kind of clever brinkmanship, when he'd been saying all along that he didn't believe that Ukraine existed as a legitimate entity and that it should be "reunited" with Russia. People who should know better gave him the benefit of the doubt when he said that NATO expansion was a threat to Russia, when he'd already made it clear that he thinks Russia's true borders are much further west than they are on any map. In his mind and in his words, the mere existence of the Ukrainian state is an "anti-Russian project".

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-world-cannot-ignore-putins-ukraine-obsession/
>> No. 38631 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 1:09 pm
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>>38630

Will you cut this shit out and at least play along, you div. Yes, yes, we get it, he's a frothing at the mouth mentalist who wants the hammer and sickle spread across eastern Europe, fine.

But what does he actually want to do that for? Just venture he was bored? Just because he wanted to play general? No, there's always a reason. The Nazis wanted to invade Europe to create "lebensraum", not just to colour in the map. Not just because they were playing IRL Paradox strategy games.

What does he actually want with Ukraine? Why is claiming Ukraine important? Try having a think m8.
>> No. 38632 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 1:31 pm
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>>38631

>What does he actually want with Ukraine? Why is claiming Ukraine important? Try having a think m8.

Not him, but Ukraine is of geostrategic importance because without it, Russia essentially has no Black Sea navy fleet. Crimea is still that fleet's most important hub, and while Russia has its own Black Sea coastline even without Crimea, there are only minor and insignificant cities along it, none of which could presently accomodate the entire Black Sea fleet.

If Ukraine as a whole including Crimea joined the EU and NATO, then naturally a Russian military presence in Crimea would no longer be tolerated by the West, which would for want of a better word cause the Russian military to become evicted from Crimea as well.

Well and also, you still can't deny that Putin has aspirations of getting the band back together and reuniting former Communist Bloc countries under his rule. Not to reinstate a new Soviet Union, but to increase his own power and influence in a very capitalist, oligarchic way.

It was probably his life trauma that he saw the Soviet Union collapse while serving as Lieutenant Colonel for the KGB. Interestingly, his role in East Germany in the late 1980s was as a KGB liaison and contact person for the East German Stasi. What that meant was that he oversaw Soviet doctrine being implemented by East German authorities. It also means he was at the direct receiving end of the East German peaceful revolution in 1989, to the point that he himself one night actually had to prevent an angry mob of East German citizens from storming a KGB installation. Which might explain his disdain for democratic movements to this day.
>> No. 38633 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 2:14 pm
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The take of Putin being Russian Hitler who wants to reestablish the Soviet Union just makes me roll my eyes honestly. It's the same energy as calling that time all those redneck Burgers stormed the Whitehouse a "coup", or blue hair twitter women who think it's literally life threatening violence when people say something un-PC.

You can recognise bad people doing undesirable things without descending immediately to shrieking unhinged hysteria about it.

>>38632

He had Germany in his pocket for a long time, even today they're the country most reliant on Russian gas. I can't remember the bloke's name but they had that one leader, before Merkel I think, who took money from Russia, and looking back on it basically sold his country out. Of course there's also the fact Germany took a full retard stance on nuclear energy.

In general though I think they need the money from selling it too much to use it as a weapon. They were hoping the west needed to buy it too much to use an embargo as a weapon too. The biggest motivation they have, as far as I can see, is that if they control Ukraine they won't have to pay transit fees on their pipelines. What they didn't account for is Europe being willing to tolerate immense self harm by going cold turkey on it.

(Except not really- They're just selling it to India and then we're buying it off India instead. Whoever loses, the energy companies win.)
>> No. 38634 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 2:35 pm
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>>38633

>they had that one leader, before Merkel I think, who took money from Russia, and looking back on it basically sold his country out.

His name was Gerhard Schroder, and the Guardian says he was Chancellor between 1998 and 2005.

He became best buddies with Putin and was instrumental in building close trade and political relations between the two countries. After Schroder's tenure in government, he actually became a board member at Gazprom.

It looks like he has really fallen out of favour with Germans now -

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/19/gerhard-schroder-to-be-stripped-of-office-for-not-cutting-ties-with-russia

>The former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder will lose some of his post-office privileges after failing to cut his links with Russian energy companies over the Ukraine war, the Bundestag’s budgetary committee has decided.

>Schröder, who was German head of government from 1998 until 2005, will be stripped of his office and staff, which cost about 419,000 euros (£354,500) in taxpayers’ money in 2021.


Blimey. Do our former PMs get those kinds of amenities too?
>> No. 38635 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 5:18 pm
38635 spacer
>>38633
>It's the same energy as calling that time all those redneck Burgers stormed the Whitehouse a "coup"
It was entirely literally an attempted coup, you'd have to be uninformed or lying to say otherwise. A bunch of gormless loons dominate the photos but there was no lack of armed and funded paramilitary groups there too. Not that one has to be part of an established militia to attempt a coup, you just turn up to the seat of power with the intention of killing and taking hostage the people there in order to install your own. Which is precisely what happened.
>> No. 38636 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 5:41 pm
38636 spacer
>>38633

>The take of Putin being Russian Hitler who wants to reestablish the Soviet Union just makes me roll my eyes honestly.

Putin says that he wants to re-unite the former Soviet states. He believes that the fall of the Soviet Union was a western plot to divide the Slavic people, that the post-Soviet states are fundamentally illegitimate and they should be reunited as part of a Greater Russia. That's not some weird Kremlinological mind-reading exercise, he has said it often and explicitly.

Is he just pulling our pisser, or are his actions in Ukraine and Belarus entirely consistent with his words? Does any aspect of the Ukraine invasion suggest that he is a strategic genius? Has Putin ever done anything that suggests he should be given the benefit of the doubt?
>> No. 38637 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 7:39 pm
38637 spacer
>>38636

>Putin says that he wants to re-unite the former Soviet states. He believes that the fall of the Soviet Union was a western plot to divide the Slavic people, that the post-Soviet states are fundamentally illegitimate and they should be reunited as part of a Greater Russia. That's not some weird Kremlinological mind-reading exercise, he has said it often and explicitly.


This. Except he's about 20 years too late with that sentiment. Many Slavic countries are now in NATO, some of them for almost two decades now, so there is no chance on Earth he'll get them back. I guess what gave him all the wrong ideas was the way he was able to quell westernisation movements in other wayward former Soviet republics like Georgia or Kazakhstan. Belarus's Lukashenko is doing the bidding of Putin, but that, too, only after Lukashenko desperately needed Russian troops to strike down street protests.

It's probably not nice when you believe in the greatness of your country, to the point that you become one of its higher-level government spies, and then you have to watch that country's empire implode under its own weight. That's too bad really, but you can't start WWIII over some pseudoromantic memories of Mother Russia's glory days.

That isn't to say certain higher echelons of power in the West didn't know what they were doing. In all likelihood, they were banking on weakening any future aspirations that some Russian leaders would have after the Soviet Union fell. Incorporating former Soviet satellite states like Poland or Romania into NATO as well as some actual former Soviet republics in the form of the Baltic states would have been clear for them to see as a way of limiting Russia's influence over the whole region in the future. And that was then the plan. Having won the Cold War was one thing, but maintaining a new status quo as the undisputed and only globally dominant power was something that the U.S. in particular was very invested in.
>> No. 38638 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 7:55 pm
38638 spacer
>>38635
This. There's a whole body of study on coups, and the academics would definitely call it (part of) an "autogolpe" or "self-coup" - an attempt by those in power to stop or prevent their lawful removal from it. Just like Maduro did with his "Constituent Assembly".
>> No. 38639 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 8:31 pm
38639 spacer
>>38637

>And that was then the plan. Having won the Cold War was one thing, but maintaining a new status quo as the undisputed and only globally dominant power was something that the U.S. in particular was very invested in.

And this is exactly why the former sentiment makes me roll my eyes. It's not because it isn't true- Putin does want to take back influence over eastern Europe. Of course he does. The sky is blue and water is wet. Every powerful nation wants to exert influence over its region, that's how the world works.

What makes me roll my eyes is people shitting their nappies over it like it's the worst thing since 9/11, as though it's of any benefit to ordinary folk like us to pick our side between team United Freedom Red White And Democracy and team Axis of Evil Commie Dictator Fascist Scumbags, when neither of them are on our side. It's all so droll. Everything just keeps getting worse for all of us, every single thing that happens.
>> No. 38641 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 9:03 pm
38641 spacer
>>38639

I don't want to say "edgelord", but it's just a phenomenally millennial take to say "no need to have a teary about it, it's only a war".

I'm not on team Red White and Democracy, I'm on team Blue and Yellow. I don't care what America thinks, but I do care that they provide Ukraine with the weapons that they want and need. This is objectively worse than 9/11, both for the Ukrainian people and the poor bloody Ivans.

It doesn't matter whether it's a massive change in the global geopolitical order, but for the record I think it is, vis-a-vis both the solidification of NATO and the increasing desperation of a faltering Russia. What matters is that it's a profound human tragedy that we can do something to alleviate.
>> No. 38642 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 9:56 pm
38642 spacer
>>38641

He doesn't really sound like he was even around when 9/11 happened.

>This is objectively worse than 9/11, both for the Ukrainian people and the poor bloody Ivans.

Just look at the body count. 9/11 claimed just under 3,000 confirmed deaths. Estimates for the Ukraine War vary wildly depending on sources, but military and civilian deaths combined on both sides, we're probably already looking at 20,000 dead, with a war that has only lasted three months so far and shows no hope of ending abruptly anytime soon.
>> No. 38643 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 10:07 pm
38643 spacer
>>38642
If the subject wasn't so grim it would be pretty funny, the irony of someone criticising people for hyperbole and jingoism using 9/11 as the most catastrophic world event he can come up with.
>> No. 38644 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 10:30 pm
38644 spacer
>>38635
I guess the reason people might be reluctant to label it a coup is precisely because of how amateur and unsustainable it was.

I mean by your logic if I go to the gates of Downing Street on my own and rattle the bars until they take me away, that's an attempted coup. But no newspaper would call it one.
>> No. 38645 Anonymous
3rd June 2022
Friday 10:34 pm
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>>38641
>>38642

Are you both forgetting about the two decades of warfare that happened as a consequence of 9/11, or just intentionally ignoring it? Or does that just not count because it only affected brown people?

9/11 was probably the most formative and important historical event since the fall of the Berlin wall, it's really not childish or hyperbolic whatsoever to use it as a reference for catastrophic events; but it does somewhat vindicate the point that you're willing to view that with such a detached and level headed rationality compared to this.
>> No. 38646 Anonymous
4th June 2022
Saturday 1:06 am
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>>38644
That assumes the coup started and ended on that day in January.
>> No. 38648 Anonymous
4th June 2022
Saturday 2:05 am
38648 spacer
>>38645

That presupposes that the Ukraine war is an isolated incident that will be resolved quickly, rather than a turning point in Russian foreign policy. The death toll in the first 100 days of the Ukraine war is comparable to the first year of the Iraq war.

Extremely serious-minded military analysts are currently weighing up the probability of a tactical nuclear strike in Ukraine. The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists believe that we are at greater risk of global nuclear war than at any point in history. Our entire response to the Ukraine war is shaped by the very real fear of triggering a nuclear conflict.

This is not just another war that happens to involve white people, it's a rekindling of one of the most existentially dangerous geopolitical disputes in our history. Russia is not just a tinpot dictatorship, it's a tinpot dictatorship with enough nukes to kill all of us several times over.

Back in February, a lot of very educated people were arguing that Putin isn't really going to invade Ukraine, he isn't stupid or crazy enough to do it, Russia couldn't possibly benefit from it and it might trigger World War 3, he's just waving his dick about to try and get something from us. Since then, dozens of towns have been completely obliterated, millions of people have been rendered homeless, tens of thousands have died and the war shows no signs of abating. We should be extremely careful about what we consider to be unimaginable.

Even if you decide that nuclear war is totally impossible, consider the bloodshed that occurred as a direct result of the cold war in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan. Korea is still living under constant threat of war after more than 70 years of détente. 9/11 was pretty much a direct result of the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the subsequent Western support for the mujahideen. A surge in interest in NATO membership is not a good omen for the next two decades.
>> No. 38649 Anonymous
4th June 2022
Saturday 2:31 am
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>>38648

Attacking a country with conventional weapons, even if you're a mentally unstable leader, is still below the nuclear threshold though, and gives no case to move up to nuclear weapons outright. At least as long as you're not attacking a full NATO member country. Putin knew this, and being the n-dimensional chess player that he is, he knew that there was no real risk for him to trigger WWIII that way.

The reason why he hasn't used nukes and in all likelihood won't, is that he knows that dipping his toes into that kind of water would lead to an uncalculable risk of escalating into a global nuclear conflict, which would leave Russia obliterated. Putin may be a corrupt and slightly insane leader, but he isn't Hitler, who said early on during WWII that if he was to fail in conquering the world, he would expect his whole country to go down with him.

The invasion has been a clusterfuck for Putin for weeks, and tactically speaking, he would have had ample reason to employ nukes to subdue the Ukrainian troops, where conventional weapons have obviously failed so far. He didn't use nukes, and that's because he knows he can't. n-dimensional chess player or not.
>> No. 38650 Anonymous
4th June 2022
Saturday 8:04 am
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>>38648

All of which is why it's even more important than ever not to treat the matter with hyperbole and jinogistic sentiment. It's a very serious business indeed, and one that only becomes much more dangerous if we get caught up in the emotional sentiment and inherently reductive analysis of a good vs evil narrative.

I wouldn't say this is even really a "turning point" in Russian foreign policy, it's been clear enough since they claimed Crimea that they're willing to break all the rules, but our position toward them never changed. We were too complacent, I would suggest slightly arrogant, in thinking that they wouldn't dare violate the Western hegemony on invading places with impunity, but we were clearly wrong. Nobody wants to suggest that appeasing a dictator is a good thing to do, but when there are enough nukes in the equation to wipe out humanity several times over, that changes the calculation. Russia clearly has concrete objectives which are, from their perspective, worth fighting for here, and even if their motivation is rendered less rational by a leader who shows every sign of losing his marbles, we have to take the realpolitik of the situation into account and look for a resolution that involves ending the war as soon as possible before the nukes start flying. It comes to something when you have people as far apart politically as Chomsky and Kissinger (and old enough to remember the realities of the cold war) more or less agreeing on this.

Once the immediate danger has cooled, then we can start asking the questions about what is to be done to contain Russian hostility, what can be done to rehabilitate the nation without provoking further conflict, what can be done to facilitate more peaceful relations. The thing is that will require some introspection on our part, and that's the frustrating bit. If we go about it under the assumption everything we've done over the years is just fine because it was us doing it, we'll never accomplish that. Much like with climate change, there need to be big changes to the way we've been doing things the past seventy-odd years.

We live in a dangerous time because our leaders are getting complacent about the possibility of nuclear war- As the lad below you statesm Putin calculated that he could get away with pulling a stunt like this because we wouldn't escalate. But the same calculation is going on in the minds of our own leaders, asking what they can get away with without provoking retaliation. The calculation appears to be coming dangerously close to concluding the nukes are irrelevant because nobody would be mad enough to use them, which is flawed for obvious reasons, much like the idea that Putin wasn't mad enough to invade in the first place. It's worth considering that while we talk about Putin's instability, the president of the United States is also a literal geriatric who shows plenty of signs of senility.

I don't know, it's just bloody scary, frankly, and I'm not ashamed to admit that. I don't want to wake up dead tomorrow, and I don't feel comfortable seeing people cheerleading the war as though we're not staring apocalypse in the face.
>> No. 38651 Anonymous
4th June 2022
Saturday 8:15 am
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>>38644
Pretending it was equivalent to one person rattling the bars of downing Street is exactly the sort of narrative the main perpetrators have been pushing as as defence, post-failure. Less coordinated peasant uprisings have toppled nations in the past.
>> No. 38652 Anonymous
4th June 2022
Saturday 11:45 am
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>>38650

The danger with nuclear war and nuclear weapons is thinking that cooler heads will always prevail before one side actually starts using them. And in the past, there were many instances where political leaders or military personnel in charge stopped just short of using them. From the Korean War to the Cuban Missile Crisis to the Stanislav Petrov incident.

The irony is that nuclear weapons themselves cannot just go off by accident. They have a multitude of safeguards built in which pretty much mean that even if you broke into a weaponry and nicked one, it would be useless to you because it would be impossible for you to set it off. Likewise, chains of command and computer systems are designed in such a way that it's nigh on impossible that somebody who has lost their mind in an underground missile silo or aboard a nuclear submarine would be able to launch them.

What all that built-in safety cannot prevent is human error. Most strategic projections estimate that any conventional run-in between Russia and NATO would turn nuclear after no more than three days. This doesn't have to be a planned tactical attack, it could arise from as little as a NATO vessel in the Black Sea being hit by a stray Russian conventional missile. Which is the real reason why NATO is taking a backseat in this war and is making sure that no NATO troops are directly involved in fighting with Russia. Because they know that in that event, all bets would be off.
>> No. 38653 Anonymous
4th June 2022
Saturday 1:07 pm
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>>38652

>The irony is that nuclear weapons themselves cannot just go off by accident. They have a multitude of safeguards built in which pretty much mean that even if you broke into a weaponry and nicked one, it would be useless to you because it would be impossible for you to set it off. Likewise, chains of command and computer systems are designed in such a way that it's nigh on impossible that somebody who has lost their mind in an underground missile silo or aboard a nuclear submarine would be able to launch them.

The safeguards are much less safe than you might hope for. Russia's Perimeter system remains fully operational; if enabled, it makes their nuclear launch capability fully automatic based on sensor inputs indicating that Russia has been attacked. Given the dilapidated state of the Russian military, it's entirely plausible that merely activating the system could lead to an unintentional strike due to a failed sensor or a computer error.

On the American side, their land-based deterrent is blighted by negligence and complacency. There are reports going back at least a decade of blast doors being left open, failed security audits, officers cheating on proficiency exams, guards falling asleep on duty, launch codes being set to "00000000" and takeaway delivery drivers being given access to highly sensitive areas. The physical infrastructure is crumbling, in large part because of the priority shift towards counterinsurgency in the post-9/11 landscape.
>> No. 38654 Anonymous
4th June 2022
Saturday 1:40 pm
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>>38649

>Putin may be a corrupt and slightly insane leader, but he isn't Hitler, who said early on during WWII that if he was to fail in conquering the world, he would expect his whole country to go down with him.

The rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin is perilously close to that already. There's a straightforward logical chain that starts with "we are not interested in a world without Russia" and ends with "there is no Russia without Putin".

https://en.desk-russie.eu/2021/12/30/what-does-the-russian-ultimatum.html
>> No. 38655 Anonymous
4th June 2022
Saturday 3:37 pm
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>>38654

I think what the West is tacitly attempting is to set the conditions for a revolution similar to that at the end of WWI, where the absolute monarch Nicholas I was ousted. That revolution was largely brought about by the fact that Nicholas concentrated all his country's resources on the war to the point that his people at home were literally starving to death by the millions.

Just look at how the West has isolated Russia from the rest of the world. The goal is somewhat obviously to cause Russia's entire economy to collapse to a point where people will have to stand in line for a loaf of bread all day.

The problem with that approach, on the other hand, is that Russians more or less lived like that for 70 years under socialism, and although it would be a major inconvenience, there could just be a way of thinking like, we survived that the last time, so we'll be alright this time as well.
>> No. 38656 Anonymous
4th June 2022
Saturday 4:03 pm
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>>38655

The reason that feels dangerous is because there's absolutely no reason to think someone better than Putin would take his place. It was mentioned earlier on in the thread, but look what's happened to every other country we... Encouraged revolutions in.

It's really a no-win situation with Russia. It's not like we'd tolerate a left wing leader/government getting power in a former communist superpower, and the right wing alternatives are all basically nazis (which I mean in the least hyperbolic possible way, but it's Russia we're talking about) too.
>> No. 38657 Anonymous
4th June 2022
Saturday 6:35 pm
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>>38656

Short of an actual revolution, whoever will succeed Putin at some point will likely come from his current circle of power. This will evidently not bring about a policy change, and we shouldn't get our hopes up that that successor will allow Putin to be brought to justice before the International Criminal Court, because faced with a long prison sentence, he'd probably have loads to talk about. Just look at people like Osama bin Laden. The U.S. in particular could not have afforded having him come clean about his ties to the CIA in a lengthy court trial.

Instigating a revolution in Russia is the West's best hope, but it's tickling the dragon's tail, because Putin did make it clear that he would use nukes to counter existential threats to Russia and its government.
>> No. 38658 Anonymous
4th June 2022
Saturday 9:35 pm
38658 spacer
>>38657

>Instigating a revolution in Russia is the West's best hope

Ladm7 u 12? See Russian history and revolutions.

Wars aren't tanks and guns, they're data and logistics. Guerrilla tactics which the UK SF and Para forces excel in - move fast, kill and hide. work in sections. Drones, booby traps, slowing down the assault.
>> No. 38659 Anonymous
5th June 2022
Sunday 9:42 pm
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Loved this story in the Torygraph today about Russian success crowdfunding better equipment, featuring this prominent shot.

These radios are made by Baofeng, they are the cheapest Chinese amateur radios you can buy - approximately £25 on Amazon. They are unencrypted and extremely easy for the rest of us to listen in to.

Also, emphatically, they are not made by Kenwood.

https://www.baofengradio.co.uk/baofeng-uv-5r-iii-tri-band-vhf-uhf-136-174-220-260-400-520mhz-walkie-talkie-two-way-radio/
>> No. 38660 Anonymous
5th June 2022
Sunday 10:55 pm
38660 spacer
>>38659

Yes.
>>37419
>>37421
>> No. 38661 Anonymous
5th June 2022
Sunday 11:54 pm
38661 spacer
>>38659

Oh, it's even better than that. Those are fake Baofengs.

They look like UV-5Rs, but if you look closely just to the right of the fake Kenwood logo you'll see that the band button is missing. The tuning knob is the wrong shape - it's supposed to have a little faceted geometric detail on top, but it just has straight knurling lines. Baofeng used that design of knob on a couple of other radios, but not the UV-5R. Baofeng do not and have never made a radio with the model number "TK-UVF3", nor has any other manufacturer; TYT used to make a "TH-UVF3", but that has a completely different shape and they discontinued it about ten years ago.

Christ knows what they've bought, but it isn't even the cheapo Chinese radio that grumpy people on amateur radio forums say should be banned for causing too much interference.
>> No. 38746 Anonymous
17th June 2022
Friday 4:10 pm
38746 spacer
Seem's The Freak Johnson is exporting his delusional and duplicitous claims to Ukraine now, having promised Zelenskiy the UK "could train up to 120,000 troops every 120 days". That's roughly two-thirds of the entire British Armed Forces.
>> No. 38747 Anonymous
17th June 2022
Friday 4:19 pm
38747 spacer
Sorry about the apostrophy, wont happen again.
>> No. 38748 Anonymous
17th June 2022
Friday 4:45 pm
38748 spacer
>>38661
Wait, so they've bought counterfeit counterfeit Kenwoods?

Knock-offception?
>> No. 38752 Anonymous
17th June 2022
Friday 8:21 pm
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Remember when camgirls would write things on signs/themselves on request?
>> No. 38780 Anonymous
21st June 2022
Tuesday 11:33 am
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>Moscow fumes over EU blockade of Baltic outpost

>Russia summoned the European Union's ambassador in Moscow on Tuesday, fuming over a rail blockade that has halted shipments of many basic goods to a Russian outpost on the Baltic Sea, the latest stand-off over sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine. The latest diplomatic crisis is over the Kaliningrad enclave, a port and surrounding countryside on the Baltic Sea that is home to nearly a million Russians, connected to the rest of Russia by a rail link through EU- and NATO-member Lithuania.

>In recent days, Lithuania has shut the route for basic goods including construction materials, metals and coal. Vilnius and Brussels say Lithuania is implementing new EU sanctions that came into force on Saturday. Moscow calls the move an illegal blockade and has threatened unspecified retaliation.

>The EU ambassador in Moscow appeared at the Russian foreign ministry headquarters on Tuesday, Russia's RIA state news agency reported. Overnight, the Kaliningrad governor told Russian television EU ambassador Marcus Ederer was to be summoned and "told of the appropriate conditions involved here". Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia's powerful Security Council, arrived in Kaliningrad to hold a council meeting, RIA reported.

>Moscow had summoned a Lithuanian diplomat on Monday, but the EU has deflected responsibility from the Lithuanians. Vilnius was "doing nothing else than implementing the guidelines provided by the (European) Commission", said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/ukraine-president-expects-russia-attacks-intensify-with-eu-summit-this-week-2022-06-20/

Well, I suppose the good thing is that Russia has spare shipping capacity at the moment.
>> No. 38783 Anonymous
21st June 2022
Tuesday 3:11 pm
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>>38780

They could just repeal the acts that gave the Baltic states independence after the Soviet Union collapsed.

https://www.baltictimes.com/state_duma_may_weigh_repealing_russia_s_recognition_of_estonia_s__latvia_s_independence/

Not sure how Putin would go about reclaiming them without starting WWIII outright, but oh well.
>> No. 38784 Anonymous
21st June 2022
Tuesday 3:27 pm
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>>38783
I know you don't mean very much by it, and I've gone off about it three or four times now, but WWIII is a pipedream. Russia is already committing everything it's got to Ukraine, it's just not capable of starting another war. It's struggling immensely to take one region of Ukraine that it already partially occupied and has been forced to resort to plain, old fashioned, Second World War style warfighting after all it's more ambitious ideas ended in total disaster. Amphibious landings in the south, whatever that was with the airbourne forces around Kiev, they've all been spectacular failures. I wholly understand the nervousness of the countries Russia has threatened, but unless Putin starts some kind of mass mobilisation and decides to go utterly coco-bananas, Russia physically can't threaten another war, even if they really, really wanted to, which I'm not sure the elites do, given how seemingly none of the senior military bods thought Ukraine was a realistic prospect until they finally got orders to attack.

Hope this doesn't sound like I'm having a dig, I'm really only posting this for anyone paranoid about having to be called up for the big push circa 2025.
>> No. 38785 Anonymous
21st June 2022
Tuesday 4:11 pm
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>>38784

Kaliningrad is still of military importance. After WWII, Stalin insisted on what was then Konigsberg becoming part of the Soviet Union, and in claiming the entire northern half of East Prussia, he obtained a Baltic seaport that didn't freeze in winter. When the Baltic states gained independence, it meant that the Oblast Kaliningrad had no more land connection to Russia, which was inconvenient but tolerable in those days because there was no more threat of a war with the West. But the area is now once again an important part of Russia's defence strategy against the West, so much so that nuclear missiles have been stationed there again with the capability of reaching Germany or Britain within minutes. So it's understandable that Putin has his wellies in a twist over Lithuania cutting off a connecting section of railway. Won't help him much though.
>> No. 38786 Anonymous
21st June 2022
Tuesday 4:14 pm
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>>38784

>unless Putin starts some kind of mass mobilisation and decides to go utterly coco-bananas

I don't think that can be fully ruled out. The invasion of Ukraine has been a total clusterfuck, but the Russian people still seem to be backing Putin. There's also the key issue of nuclear brinksmanship - a lot of the people arguing that Putin wouldn't actually use nuclear weapons were previously arguing that Putin wouldn't actually invade Ukraine.

We've long since left the realms of rational geopolitics and are clearly dealing with the whims of a megalomaniac. Putin has spent two decades dismantling the institutions that might keep him in check and eliminating anyone who might oppose him. I think that further escalation is far more likely than the removal of Putin from office.
>> No. 38796 Anonymous
21st June 2022
Tuesday 11:47 pm
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>>38786

>a lot of the people arguing that Putin wouldn't actually use nuclear weapons were previously arguing that Putin wouldn't actually invade Ukraine

Eh, I get the feeling those are the other way around. The people who were most adamant he was going to invade at first are the ones insistent there's no realistic threat of nuclear escalation. The people who thought he was bluffing at first see the fact he gone and done it as a signal that all bets are off and anything can happen. If Putin is backed into a corner, I feel like it's foolish not to consider him pushing the button at this stage.

There's also the outside chance that the US actually strikes first. If the war drags on long enough, and we have to keep the sanctions up in the face of the clear and obvious havoc it's causing our economies, I wouldn't rule out some Yank warhawk pushing a first strike as a swift way to end it and get the oil and gas flowing again. If Orange Hitler gets back in, which isn't looking unlikely, it goes from being outside chance to terrifying possibility.

That's my sensible "person who actually believes what the news says" take anyway. If you want my real opinion, the whole war is a pantomime orchestrated by both sides to keep us all distracted while the definitely-not-of-any-particular-race-or-religion Illuminati NWO puts that Great Reset into action, and force us all back into feudal serfdom.
>> No. 38798 Anonymous
21st June 2022
Tuesday 11:54 pm
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>Lina Laurinaityte Grigiene, a customs spokeswoman, said affected items include Russian steel ‘that cannot be transported over the territory of European countries. The land transit between Kaliningrad and other parts of Russia is not stopped or blocked. All goods that are not under sanctions travel freely,’ she said.

>She added that starting on July 10, similar sanctions will be implemented on concrete and alcohol goods, from August 10 on coal and from December no Russian oil will be allowed into EU territory.

What do you reckon they will make vodka out of this time?
>> No. 38799 Anonymous
22nd June 2022
Wednesday 1:06 am
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>>38798
Grain! Wait, no. Fuck. FUCK.
>> No. 38803 Anonymous
22nd June 2022
Wednesday 9:40 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFw1a3P9qE

Why do military drones sound like model airplanes? I was expecting a bit more oomph from something that can blow up a refinery.
>> No. 38804 Anonymous
22nd June 2022
Wednesday 9:57 pm
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>>38803

It is a model airplane.
>> No. 38805 Anonymous
22nd June 2022
Wednesday 9:58 pm
38805 spacer
>>38803

I assume the answer is that they're so lightweight they simply don't need anything more than nearly literally model airplane motors.
>> No. 38806 Anonymous
22nd June 2022
Wednesday 10:44 pm
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>>38803
Has anyone heard from dronelad lately?
>> No. 38813 Anonymous
23rd June 2022
Thursday 2:51 am
38813 spacer
>>38804

Yep. There's no point in reinventing the wheel. Mass-produced model aircraft bits are cheap, reliable and readily available thanks to their existing economies of scale. If your goal is to blow stuff up rather than sustain the military-industrial complex, it's the obvious choice. You don't need clever stealth or ECM technology to hide a plastic aircraft that naturally has a similar radar profile to a large bird.

The same applies to bigger drones too. The Bayraktar TB2 uses a Rotax 912 engine, as found in hundreds of models of light aircraft. It uses completely standard communications and navigation modules from Garmin. A drone with purpose-built everything might be a bit better, but it'll cost 10x more and take 10x longer to develop. A fleet of cheap drones are a hell of a lot more effective than a hugely expensive drone that you're promised will be great when it finally gets delivered in 2028 OK, 2029. Maybe 2030 at the latest. Oh, you wanted it to actually fly? We'll get back to you on that one..

British military procurement is pretty much the exact opposite of that approach, much to the detriment of the Poor Bloody Infantry. We could have bought off-the-shelf rifles from FN or H&K, but we wanted something purpose built for us. It took 15 years and hundreds of millions of pounds to get the SA80 working. Nimrod MRA4, Ajax, Bowman - they're all massively expensive projects that never delivered what they promised and became obsolete before they were ready for service.
>> No. 38814 Anonymous
23rd June 2022
Thursday 12:36 pm
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>>38813

>The same applies to bigger drones too. The Bayraktar TB2 uses a Rotax 912 engine, as found in hundreds of models of light aircraft.

Seems like that design has some drawbacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotax_912

>The manual states that Rotax gives no assurances that the engine is suitable for use in any aircraft, and that the engine may seize or stall at any time, which could lead to a crash landing. The manual adds that non-compliance with such warnings could lead to serious injury or death.

Right. Buy our product, but just so you know, you might die using it.

Not even cigarette companies are that honest. To this day.
>> No. 38815 Anonymous
23rd June 2022
Thursday 12:41 pm
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>>38814
Unless you plan on standing directly underneath it the entire time it's in operation it should be fine for a drone. Also this seems rather like the health warnings you get with prescription medication.
>> No. 38816 Anonymous
23rd June 2022
Thursday 6:16 pm
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>>38814

>Right. Buy our product, but just so you know, you might die using it.

It's basically a ruse to keep the price down. The 912 has been around for 30 years, it's one of the most popular engines on the market and has proved to be fantastically reliable. The cost of product liability insurance is a huge part of the cost of aircraft parts and substantially reduced the ability of Rotax to develop and improve the engine. Rotax know that anyone buying a 912 is going to put it in a plane, but pretending otherwise allows them to sell it much more cheaply and provide modern conveniences like electronic fuel injection. Rotax customers don't want Rotax to say it's an aircraft engine.
>> No. 38817 Anonymous
23rd June 2022
Thursday 7:37 pm
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https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notice-to-exporters-202218-introduction-of-additional-sanctions-against-russia/nte-202218-introduction-of-additional-sanctions-against-russia

>Prohibitions on the export to, or for use in Russia of jet fuel and fuel additives, as well as prohibitions on the making available, export, and supply, directly or indirectly, of such products to Russia or for use in Russia (as well as related technical assistance, financial services, funds, and brokering services).

Isn't that pointless when a country like Russia is very capable of making its own jet fuel from domestically produced oil?
>> No. 38818 Anonymous
23rd June 2022
Thursday 7:57 pm
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>>38817
They can do anything if they put their mind to it except conquer Ukraine. The point is to make it more inconvenient for them. Every country in the world can grow food there, but when they suddenly all have to because Russia is blocking all the Ukrainian exports, it's still massively frustrating.
>> No. 38819 Anonymous
23rd June 2022
Thursday 8:14 pm
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>>38818

Maybe they can make their jets run on vodka, like their old Ladas.
>> No. 38820 Anonymous
23rd June 2022
Thursday 8:46 pm
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>>38819

The Tupolev Tu-22 was the Soviet equivalent of the Vulcan - a high-speed, high-altitude bomber designed as part of their nuclear deterrent. The cooling system on the Tu-22 used hundreds of litres of ethanol per flight, but it could use much less if the flight crew didn't mind being in a supersonic sauna and turned the system down. This turned out exactly as you might expect.
>> No. 38822 Anonymous
24th June 2022
Friday 7:55 pm
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>Russian missile launch fails and boomerangs back 'blowing up Putin's troops'


Begun, the Looney Tunes Wars have.
>> No. 38823 Anonymous
24th June 2022
Friday 10:13 pm
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>>38822
It doesn't look like it hit where it came from.
>> No. 38824 Anonymous
25th June 2022
Saturday 11:50 am
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>>38823

Still close enough to be within the blast radius.
>> No. 38828 Anonymous
27th June 2022
Monday 10:40 pm
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61929926

>Russia is believed to have defaulted on its debt for the first time since 1998 after missing a key deadline.
Aha! This is the moment I have been waiting for! The sanctions are working!

>Russia has the money to make a $100m payment, which was due on Sunday, but sanctions made it impossible to get the sum to international creditors.
>The country had been determined to avoid the default, which is a major blow to the nation's prestige.
>Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, said "statements of a default were absolutely unjustified".
>He added that an intermediary bank had withheld the money and that the reserves were blocked "unlawfully".

>Russia's finance minister called the situation "a farce" and said the situation is not expected to have short-term impact.
>This is because Russia does not need to raise money internationally as it is reaping revenue from high-priced commodities such as oil, according to Chris Weafer, chief executive at Moscow-based consultancy Macro Advisory.
Perhaps the sanctions are not working as well as I thought...

>The $100m interest payment was due on 27 May. Russia says the money was sent to Euroclear, a bank which would then distribute the payment to investors.
>But that payment has been stuck there, according to Bloomberg News, and creditors have not received it.

>Euroclear would not say if the payment had been blocked, but said it adhered to all sanctions, introduced following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
>Russia disputed that it had defaulted on the debt. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it had made the payments due in May, and the fact that it was blocked by Euroclear because of sanctions was "not our problem."

The article keeps going, and I recommend you read it, because the Russians are right; this looks bloody farcical. The sanctions seemingly have not worked at all, except that they mean we refuse to accept Russian money and so they default on their debts on a ludicrous technicality. It almost feels like this news story was planted to make anyone reading it feel more supportive of proper World War 3, but I just had the Ten O'Clock News on as I was typing this and they didn't mention it at all, so it's not being fully pushed as propaganda. It's just an awkward failure by the good guys to stop the baddies.
>> No. 38851 Anonymous
3rd July 2022
Sunday 3:31 pm
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Must be quiet around Ukraine without all the air traffic noise.

source: https://www.flightradar24.com
>> No. 38852 Anonymous
3rd July 2022
Sunday 5:01 pm
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>>38851
Looks lovely. We should go.
>> No. 38853 Anonymous
3rd July 2022
Sunday 6:32 pm
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>>38851

It's awfully *boom* quiet around here, don't you *crack* think?
>> No. 38854 Anonymous
3rd July 2022
Sunday 7:04 pm
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>>38853

For sure.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFbKnjEBFDU
>> No. 38855 Anonymous
3rd July 2022
Sunday 7:49 pm
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>>38854


>> No. 38856 Anonymous
3rd July 2022
Sunday 8:55 pm
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>>38855
>> No. 38869 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 11:08 am
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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/communist-party-of-ukraine-banned-and-all-its-assets-seized-by-the-state

>The KPU is the latest opposition party to be banned by the Ukrainian authorities.

>A list of others including the Opposition Platform – For Life party, Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, Socialist Party of Ukraine and other left-wing organisations have also been prohibited.

>This followed a decree signed by Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky outlawing all political parties deemed to be “pro-Russian” on May 14.

>No far-right or neonazi organisations have been placed under similar restrictions despite responsibility for a string of atrocities and alleged war crimes in eastern Ukraine.

Nothing to see here, just casually banning any form of left wing party from existing in Ukraine. Totally normal freedom loving Western democratic state behaviour.

Of course, they had no choice, because all those treasonous lefties were in league with Putin's famously far left Russian regime.
>> No. 38870 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 1:27 pm
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>>38869
The Morning Star is a fairly pro-Russian outlet. If it's true, of course, then it's true whoever reports it, but I would advise caution against ignoring the obvious spin they have put on that story.
>> No. 38871 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 1:57 pm
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>>38869

>all those treasonous lefties were in league with Putin's famously far left Russian regime

Yes they were, and explicitly so. Viktor Medvedchuk was the chairman of both Opposition Platform - For Life and Ukrainian Choice; he describes himself as a personal friend of Vladimir Putin. Like all good socialists, he has a personal fortune of $460m and a 300ft superyacht.
>> No. 38872 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 2:44 pm
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>>38869
As far as I can tell these parties are openly collaborationist. Mightn't be that weird if the state they were collaborating with wasn't Russia, a nation filled to the rafters with wealth inequality, religious fervor and, since late February, militaristic imperialism. These things don't strike me as core tennents of communist philosphy. Even the wars of aggression the USSR fought were about more than "bossman says we need another warm water port".

I will admit Ukrainian politics are quite odd to me. As far as I can tell every party with any kind of legislative foothold is centrist and anti-corruption, with only very minor differences between them. But, I do not think one can have too many complaints when, during a time of war, you find yourself facing legal troubles after advocating for the invaders to win.
>> No. 38873 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 3:33 pm
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>>38871
>>38872

The important point more westernised sources wouldn't like you to notice is the demographic backgrounds for each of these parties. Look at a language map of Ukraine, and compare it to local support for the "collaborator" parties- They represent the ethnically Russian subset of the Ukraine population. That goes along way to explaining why they are, in turn, pro Russian.

So while this kind of move might make sense in terms of controlling wartime dissent, what's actually going on is that they're taking advantage of the demographic make-up of those parties, under the context of the current situation, to effectively outlaw leftist politics now and in future.
>> No. 38874 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 3:44 pm
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>>38873
This is wrong. Ukrainian political society fundamentally shifted after 2014 and that has obviously not changed over the past few month - using electoral maps against demography is something even Russia has abandoned.
>> No. 38875 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 3:53 pm
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>>38874

I fail to see how that map you posted has anything to do with what was said.
>> No. 38877 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 4:14 pm
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>>38875
It says that you're wrong. The traditional heartlands of pro-Russian influence no longer exists, to imply that a Russian speaker or, as you type with ape-like-fists, ethnic Russians are collaborators is bollocks.
https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/06/in-ukraine-russian-is-now-the-language-of-the-enemy

>to effectively outlaw leftist politics now and in future

It's not though. I know there's a lot of bollocks posted on this website but to suggest banning collaborationist parties is some fascist
stitch-up is something else. Ukrainian nationalist parties don't get the banhammer because they're not collaborating with a regime out to exterminate the Ukrainian nation which should be self-evident.
>> No. 38879 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 4:19 pm
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>>38877

So what if we banned the SNP, would that be alright?
>> No. 38881 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 4:23 pm
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>>38879
If Arthur Donaldson was still at the helm then yes the SNP =/= the Scottish people. Have a word with yourself.
>> No. 38883 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 4:25 pm
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>>38881

What if we banned the Arthur Donaldson SNP but the BNP and UKIP were still alright?
>> No. 38886 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 5:33 pm
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>>38883
We tried banning parties but the government kept on having them.
>> No. 38887 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 6:17 pm
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>>38879

If the Scots had unilaterally declared independence after a violent coup backed by Denmark and most of the SNP leadership were on Denmark's payroll, then yes, I think it would be OK to ban the SNP.

Side note: Until a few months ago, the paper was printing articles in support of the self-declared states in Donetsk and Luhansk. It has repeatedly referred to Ukrainian forces as "fascists", referred to Putin-backed forces as "anti-fascists" and presented Kremlin propaganda as fact. The Morning Star was largely funded by the Soviet Union prior to 1991. The Morning Star has been running at a considerable loss for many years and is almost wholly reliant on donations; I would be very curious to see where those donations come from.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/nato%E2%80%99s-fascist-wedge-ukraine

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-f1e2-what-the-donbass-rebels-are-really-fighting-for-1

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-3c94-the-past-informs-the-present-in-rebel-held-eastern-ukraine-1

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-48c5-anti-fascists-honour-ceasefire-deal-1
>> No. 38889 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 7:47 pm
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>>38879
If the SNP were openly encouraging an ongoing Norwegian invasion of Yorkshire then yes, we ought to ban them. Well, in a normal times anyway, personally I'd have crossed the lines weeks ago.
>> No. 38890 Anonymous
6th July 2022
Wednesday 7:53 pm
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This is why you need read all the replies to a post, or you end up making the same Scandi invasion gag as the previous lad, only worse.

Good to know we're all clued in to their icy machinations though.
>> No. 38891 Anonymous
7th July 2022
Thursday 7:37 am
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*Irishly* My name's Fergal Keane, here's a crying woman.
>> No. 38943 Anonymous
14th July 2022
Thursday 4:58 pm
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>>38466
>A man who left his family to start a relationship with a Ukrainian refugee that they took in has released a defiant rap song in which he boasts he stands "by what I've done".

>The former security guard released a rap song via YouTube last night to "reveal the real truth" about what happened, and said it was written in "less than an hour". The two-minute and 53-second song starts out with him describing himself as a "wolf in sheep's clothing" and that he has been made "famous by the media".

>The song, which has just over 500 views at the time of writing, also explains he stands "by what I've done" in an apparent reference to leaving Lorna for Sofiia. In the song, titled 'Ukraine to UK rain', he goes on to claim he "tried" for the relationship but he needed to "leave regardless", adding that he isn't "heartless". Tony goes on to rap about he says he was doing the right thing by saving "someone from Ukraine".

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/dad-who-ran-ukrainian-refugee-27480990
>> No. 38956 Anonymous
20th July 2022
Wednesday 1:19 pm
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https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/medvedev-wests-refusal-recognise-crimea-russian-is-threat-2022-07-17/

>Russia's Medvedev: Attack on Crimea will ignite 'Judgement Day' response

Just what we need. Another Terminator sequel.
>> No. 38957 Anonymous
20th July 2022
Wednesday 3:08 pm
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>>38956

Hasta La Vista
>> No. 38958 Anonymous
20th July 2022
Wednesday 3:20 pm
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>>38956
What is it with Russian invasions and telling us exactly what day they're going to do it?
>> No. 38959 Anonymous
20th July 2022
Wednesday 4:02 pm
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>>38958
That's not true. I don't remember them telling the world "this is going to be a massive cock-up and we're going to have to rethink the whole endevour come Spring" back in February.
>> No. 38960 Anonymous
20th July 2022
Wednesday 6:39 pm
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>>38959

To be exact, Putin denied any plans at all to attack Ukraine, even when Biden was flailing his arms like a headless chicken trying to convince the world otherwise.

Personally, I had one shred of doubt until a few days prior. There were those lingering five percent of my thought process where I was wondering if maybe we really were paranoid in the West. But then Putin announced that even though the joint military exercise with Belarus was officially over, his troops would spend some extra time in the region bordering the north of Ukraine. That's when even the biggest Kremlin apologists in the West had to concede that something was up, and even an n-dimensional chess player like Putin couldn't hide his true intentions forever. Although keeping his troops in the north and then later beginning the attacks from the east was another one of his mind tricks.
>> No. 38961 Anonymous
20th July 2022
Wednesday 8:05 pm
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>>38960

Really though, I'm pretty sure it's more that everyone was in denial rather than not thinking it was going to happen. I think everyone would really have rather turned a blind eye if it wasn't for US pressure, it's a no win situation for us.

That's how I feel at least, it's very tragic about the Ukrainians but I'd very much like it if petrol didn't cost a tenner a millilitre by the end of this year and if millions of people weren't about to starve in one of the biggest famines in recent history. In general I feel like Europe and its economy is suffering for the goals of American power, and it doesn't benefit us at all, so why bother.

We don't need America's help if it came to a Russian invasion of the rest of the continent, we'd comfortably kick the fuck out of them judging by what we've seen here. It wouldn't even be a fair fight, they can't invade their own back garden. If Ukraine can go this far (with assistance, granted) I feel like it's pretty probable the UK could beat them alone, nevermind with France and Germany's help. Not that it matters, because that would result in nuclear annihilation of life on Earth anyway. But still. That's why it begs the question for me- Why are we bending over for the Yanks when we gain nothing?

The outcome of letting Vlad play with his toys for a bit would not have been appreciably worse than what's happening now. Worst case scenario is it would have solidified European alliance and military co-operation, and then what? Where would Putin go next? He's invaded Ukraine because it's the only place he could, and he can barely even manage that.
>> No. 38962 Anonymous
20th July 2022
Wednesday 8:48 pm
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>>38961

>Not that it matters, because that would result in nuclear annihilation of life on Earth anyway

That's why the West is walking on eggshells right now as we all know, in a nutshell.

Back in pre-nuclear times, on the other hand, we would long have had a proper new world war on our hands. What has stopped this from becoming another conventional global war between multiple nations is precisely that even with Putin's Great Dictator antics, both sides still know and are acutely aware that an open confrontation of the two blocs would be survivable by nobody.

The only wildcard is the Ukrainians themselves. There are reports that the Ukrainians want to attack Crimea once they've taken full delivery of the latest shipment of U.S. missiles. Putin has now openly warned that this would set off armageddon. It's one thing to be shocked at comments by Putin that the world would be no good without Russia in it, but Ukraine kind of seems to have a death wish all of its own if they still end up attacking Crimea. They would then willingly draw the West into World War III. It's as if they're thinking, fuck it, if we die, everybody dies.
>> No. 38963 Anonymous
20th July 2022
Wednesday 9:15 pm
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>>38962
>They would then willingly draw the West into World War III.
When the war started, Western politicians would say they didn't want to start World War 3, and several Ukrainian politicians happily went on record that it had already started, and we just weren't involved yet. As far as Ukrainians are concerned, they're the Sudetenland. Putin won't stop there, so we might as well pile in now to save time.

Of course, I've heard it said that Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policies in the late 1930s gave us enough time to build up a proper military force to actually tackle the Nazis, who would otherwise have crushed us. Admittedly, we're not doing that now, but hopefully we are weakening Russia instead and the effects will be the same. Let America build a couple more Star Wars satellites, then we can head in as the only countries that have any bullets left and the war will be over nice and quickly, and we'll all be sunning ourselves on the brand-new beaches of eastern Poland before we know it.
>> No. 38964 Anonymous
20th July 2022
Wednesday 9:37 pm
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>>38962

Semi-baseless speculation:

Russia's nuclear threat is as hollow as its conventional threat. They have a big stockpile of rusty old missiles from the 60s that probably don't work, their targeting tech is totally obsolete and the 19-year-old conscripts responsible for manning it all don't know how any of it works. They might be able to fire off a couple of missiles, they might even be able to take out a couple of European cities, but they'd never get a missile through American defences and they'd all be dead within eighteen minutes when the retaliatory strikes reach them. Russia are intimating that nuclear war might be on the cards, but they're gambling that we'll be too risk-averse to call their bluff.
>> No. 38965 Anonymous
20th July 2022
Wednesday 10:41 pm
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>>38963

>As far as Ukrainians are concerned, they're the Sudetenland. Putin won't stop there, so we might as well pile in now to save time.

The big difference is Germany had an army capable of actually invading us back then, it was a real and plausible threat to be worried about. Right now Russia has a military that can barely make it a few miles outside their own border without supply lines falling apart. Putin might not want to stop with Ukraine, but he's about as likely to get any further as Nigeria launching a space program.

Ukraine might enjoy the self-aggrandising comparisons, but they're not accurate. If WW3 started over all of this, it'd be far more akin the foolish series of contrivances that started WW1 than the response to existential threat of WW2.

If we're going to fight Russia, the only way I can see it working out at all favourably is if it's a purely defensive war where we simply hold them off at the borders of NATO with our massive air, drone, and artillery superiority. Eventually they'd be forced to give up and tell themselves they at least gave us a bloody nose, with neither side daring to escalate it beyond that because nuclear armageddon is not a bluff anyone wants to call. They simply don't have the gear or manpower to start a continent wide invasion.

Russia has a million unreliable conscripts, Europe has a million and a half trained, professional soldiers. Russia has thousands of rusty old tanks, Europe has cutting edge technology. Each of the biggest countries in Europe comfortably dwarf Russia's economy on their own. This is simply not the kind of battle it would have been 50 years ago, the only reason we instinctively think otherwise is plain old fashioned propaganda. The only equalising factor here, and thus the only serious consideration to be made, is the nukes.
>> No. 38966 Anonymous
20th July 2022
Wednesday 10:48 pm
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>>38964

That bluff could go wrong both ways.

Another question is always, what do you do when the nuclear threshold has been crossed. So far, there aren't enough precedents, which is both an incredibly good thing and a problem. The one time nukes were used in a war theatre, Japan surrendered a few days later, rightly believing that otherwise, the Americans would have just kept throwing low-yield nuclear bombs at their cities till the cows would have come home. But what is going to happen if the Russians launch one, two, maybe three Hiroshima-sized nuclear devices at Ukrainian cities. Where do you go from there. Are you going to concede and let Putin get what he wants, so that he'll walk home with the whole of Ukraine incorporated into Russian territory? Or will you continue to defend Ukraine, telling Putin that if he doesn't stop with that sort of thing, he risks his own entire country getting nuked? And then what do you do?

It's a pity nobody ever actually wrote a paper with the title "Poker and Armageddon: The Role of Bluffing in a Nuclear Standoff", like in the movie Wargames. There was of course plenty of research out there in one way or another touching on that idea in the Cold War days, but it would have been good if somebody had actually and literally examined that angle in some kind of succinct research paper or an entire book.
>> No. 38967 Anonymous
20th July 2022
Wednesday 11:18 pm
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>>38966

I always wonder what things would have turned out like had Japan still refused to surrender, and the Americans kept on dropping bombs until the country was effectively wiped out.

With a genocide that makes the holocaust seem trivial on their hands, could they keep on calling it a necessary evil? Would they still have emerged with the reputation as having been "the good guys"? What effect would it have had on the American national consciousness, and what would the cold war have come out like?

Weirdly I feel like the world would be a better place today if we'd all seen proper nuclear horror the first time around.
>> No. 38968 Anonymous
20th July 2022
Wednesday 11:49 pm
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>>38967

Well you can't say that the two bombings in Japan didn't have an effect. In its own way, it's amazing that no nuclear power to this day has actually used nuclear weapons in a conflict, although there have probably been hundreds of armed conflicts since 1945 with direct involvement of a country with a nuclear arsenal. Let's forget for a moment that we've had many close calls between the USSR and NATO. No country has used the nuclear option in a similar way against a non-nuclear nation like the U.S. did against Japan. Even in the Korean War just a few years later, the Americans themselves decided at the last minute not to use them.

Plenty of conflicts probably could have been cut short just by intelligently placing one or two tactical nuclear strikes. We probably even could have dropped a nuke or two on Argentina and saved us the trouble of sending scores of personnel and gear down there in 1982.

Most leaders with nuclear weapons at their disposal have had the insight not to use them, knowing and respecting that that would have made them the world's number one baddie for generations. What's different with Putin is that he simply doesn't seem to care, and his strategic goals are paramount, which are basically a hopelessly misguided attempt at Soviet restoration. And if there's no other way to win the Ukraine war and to draw Ukraine back into the Motherland, then I'm pretty sure it's a safe bet that he's the kind of guy who will use them.
>> No. 38969 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 12:14 am
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>>38965
>Nigeria launching a space program
Racist

>The National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) is the national space agency of Nigeria.
>It has had cooperation in space technology with the United Kingdom, China, Ukraine and Russia.
>the space agency is one of the most advanced space agencies in Africa, boasting of four satellites and very grand ambitions. Nigeria's satellites have been praised for their high-resolution images.
>> No. 38970 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 2:08 am
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>>38966
Wargames was on TV again recently. It's still absolutely sick. They should show it every Christmas Day after Wallace & Gromit.
>> No. 38972 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 11:04 am
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>>38970

I'm surprised they got away with it. Normally, television networks have guidelines as to what movies and other content to avoid if the issue they deal with is deemed sensitive at the time.
>> No. 38973 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 1:21 pm
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>>38972

I think in this kind of situation it's really the opposite, we should be showing Threads every Thursday tea time.
>> No. 38974 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 1:44 pm
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>>38973

Followed by frequent repeats of Protect and Survive.

I was actually a weelad in primary school in the 80s, and we talked about these sorts of things in class. I remember our science teacher telling us that unfortunately, our odds were "very far from good" of surviving any kind of Soviet nuclear attack on the Greater London area, with or without government PSAs and pamphlets. Which actually upset some parents, who didn't want their 11 year olds to know. Yes, even in the 80s, there were overzealous parents at school.
>> No. 38975 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 4:11 pm
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>>38974

Go on Nukemap and put even a modestly sized bomb over any UK city. In the event of even a small scale nuclear exchange, we're just plain fucked, there's no point dancing around it.

I wouldn't count on the Yanks using their gear to save us either. Best I'd personally hope for is that living in one of the hillier regions of the country would sort of shield a lot of the surrounding regions from a blast over the centre of the city, and that there's not much around here to be heavily targeted. But it's not exactly optimistic.
>> No. 38976 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 6:09 pm
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>>38975

>In the event of even a small scale nuclear exchange, we're just plain fucked, there's no point dancing around it.

Yes, but in the 80s, quite a few people still believed government advice on how to make it through the apocalypse. After all, there was no Internet and no rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk or wikipedia, or indeed Nukemap. And somebody like a primary school science teacher in Ilford sticking his neck out and telling schoolchildren otherwise, with a slight bit of authority on the subject because he was a science teacher, caused a bit of a ruffle at the next parent teacher conference.

But yeah, we'd be fucked. Maybe you'd be safe in the Scilly Isles. Always wanted to go there, a friend keeps telling me they're gorgeous.
>> No. 38977 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 8:02 pm
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>>38975

>Go on Nukemap and put even a modestly sized bomb over any UK city. In the event of even a small scale nuclear exchange, we're just plain fucked, there's no point dancing around it.

I did (a current-stock Russian warhead dropped on Manchester) and the results completely vindicate government advice given in Protect and Survive.

In the tiny yellow circle in the middle, everyone and everything is burned to a crisp. No arguments there, those folks are just fucked. If we were Switzerland we'd have enough nuclear blast shelters to save most of these people, but we aren't.

In the smaller blue circle reaching out to Eccles and Droylsden, most buildings are going to be badly damaged. Anyone in an exposed area is fucked, but your chances of survival increase substantially if you're in the middle of your house away from exterior walls. As we saw in the Blitz, something as simple as hiding under a kitchen table or an improvised shelter would substantially reduce your risk of being killed or seriously injured by falling debris. Firestorms are a real risk in this area, so it's crucial that people clear out flammable materials, damp down flammable surfaces and fill buckets and baths to have water available for local firefighting.

In the larger yellow area, anyone directly exposed to the flash will suffer severe burns. It doesn't take much to protect yourself from this flash, because it's effectively instant and severe sunburn - in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we saw people with the patterns of their clothing burned into their skin. Simply lying down in a ditch or covering yourself with a coat would spare you from serious injury. Whitewashing your windows would be enough to stop your curtains from catching fire.

In the larger blue area, the only major risk comes from flying glass. The problem is that (as with lightning), the visible flash precedes the acoustic pressure wave by several seconds. People tend to go to the window to see what happened, at which point they get a face full of glass. We see this pattern repeated in large conventional explosions like we saw in Xiangshui and Lebanon. For people in this area, the simple "duck and cover" advice is the difference between severe lacerations and surviving completely unscathed.

Fallout is a very manageable risk, because of the simple physics that highly radioactive isotopes have a very short half-life. The advice given in Protect and Survive would be sufficient to protect you from any effects worse than a slightly increased long-term risk of cancer.

The detonation in the example above wouldn't produce significant amounts of fallout, because it's an air blast detonation - the radioactive energy in fallout is energy that doesn't give explosive effect, so modern nuclear weapon systems are designed to minimise fallout. A surface blast detonation of the same warhead in the same location would drop life-threatening levels of fallout radiation on parts of Halifax and Bradford in normal prevailing winds, but it would have far less destructive power.

I'm not saying that a nuclear attack would be anything less than horrific, but our civil defence strategy was based on sound science and the advice prepared for the public would have been extremely effective in saving lives. Nuclear bombs aren't doomsday devices. We need to take the risk of nuclear war very seriously and I think that politicians have systematically underestimated the risk of it since the end of the cold war, but that has to start with a calm factual understanding of the risks and how they can be mitigated. We need to maintain an early detection and warning system, because it's a very cheap investment that would save a lot of lives. We need to train fire and rescue services to deal with nuclear threats, we need local authorities to have effective and tested plans in place. None of that will happen if we maintain the false dichotomy that either a nuclear war will never happen or there's no point worrying about it because it'd just kill everyone.
>> No. 38978 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 8:57 pm
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>>38977

>Simply lying down in a ditch or covering yourself with a coat would spare you from serious injury.

I would guess that the problem with that is that the flash is instant, and that a great deal of the bomb's thermal radiation is released in the moment that that flash occurs. Also, the short-wave visible and ultraviolet wavelengths that the flash emits are converted into thermal energy on your skin and increase the burn many times because they are so intense. So it'll be no good saying, oh no, I just saw a flash, better roll into a ditch. It'll only save you if you take cover immediately once you become aware of other nuclear explosions in a safe distance from you before a bomb hits near where you are.

In theory, hydrogen bombs allow you at least some sort of reaction time, because unlike regular atomic bombs, they take two to three seconds to reach their thermal and visible light radiation maximum. But because they are set off by an atomic bomb as the primary stage and cause far greater destruction, you really have to be some distance away for it to matter.
>> No. 38979 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 9:07 pm
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>>38978

That's what an early warning system is for. Over-the-horizon radar can detect ICBMs from several thousand miles away, giving people time to find shelter.

We still have the radar system at RAF Fylingdales, but we decommissioned the national network of sirens that would actually provide a warning. I dunno, maybe they'll send you a text.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-minute_warning
>> No. 38980 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 9:15 pm
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>>38977

I don't know what kind of reality you live in mate but the one the rest of us inhabit, that map shows us most of Manchester, the third largest city in the country, is fucked. Proper fucked. The larger blue area that you're optimistically assuming will be more or less safe as long as you're not stood next to the window is the very closest you can be and have much hope at all of surviving. People in Bolton will still feel it.

The thing you're not taking into account is that the sheer scale of the destruction demonstrated there will completely and utterly overwhelm the emergency services, and on top of that, infrastructure like roads, water pipes, gas and electricity are going to be fucked too. The problems just spiral from there. It's not the blast you've to be worried about. It's the fact that basically every major city in the country will be hit with an overwhelming disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina or the Haiti earthquake at the same time. The sorts of events where relief efforts take months, and thousands of people still die, except there will be no relief effort, because everyone capable of organising it has also been bombed to smithereens.

Disease will be rife because of the lack of sanitation, the fires started by the blast will spread completely out of control because it'll just be too much for the remnants of the fire service to handle. Exposed gas pipes will start blowing up soon after that. People won't have the food and water to last, so whatever survivors are still strong enough will quickly turn violent.

There's no false dichotomy here, it's just being honest with ourselves that the survival of a nuclear attack is barely even worth calling survival. Your last paragraph sounds utterly mental.
>> No. 38981 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 9:39 pm
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>>38980

This.

We'd basically return from our civilisation to the Stone Age within the space of a few hours.

And even if you live in a rural remote area or even in a country far away that won't get hit at all by nuclear bombs, you'll feel it too, because global thermonuclear winter is projected to let average summer temperatures both in the northern and southern hemispheres drop to fifteen degrees below freezing. There will be no possibility for agriculture in a meaningful way for up to a few decades, and what livestock isn't killed by the bombs or radiation or cold temperatures will perish from starvation.

Maybe for some time, people could get by with deep sea fishing, because the effects of an atmospheric nuclear winter would take a while to reach the depths of several hundred or thousand metres. After many naturally occuring extinction event in the Earth's history, deep sea marine life fared much better than life on land. But ultimately, those food webs will collapse as well, as they depend on constant precipitation of nutrient particles from higher up in the water column, also known as marine snow.

We also know from simulations of a nuclear war between India and laplanderstan, which would likely only be fought with a few dozen nuclear bombs, that that would already have a very noticeable impact on global temperatures, and could diminish and threaten the Earth's food supply for several years. So there are no two ways about trying to estimate what a full-scale exchange between NATO and Russia would do to the global climate.
>> No. 38982 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 9:55 pm
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>>38981
I just had a thought. Can we use nukes to counter climate change?
>> No. 38983 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 10:05 pm
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>>38980

What you're describing is war. Your attitude isn't realism, it's nihilism. The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just as grateful to survive as the survivors of Aleppo, Mariupol, Stalingrad or Dresden. They all saw the same horrific sights - bodies rotting in the streets, the wounded dying alone, desperate people drinking from puddles.

When you think about the possibility of surviving a nuclear attack, you are forced to think about the reality of it. People don't like thinking about that, because they don't like thinking about war. Some people would rather imagine the end of humanity than confront the fact that in a nuclear conflict, there will be survivors and someone will have to deal with the aftermath.
>> No. 38984 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 10:17 pm
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>>38981

Nuclear winter is a myth based on obsolete data. It's only a realistic possibility if you assume that we'll be dropping 1950s-era bombs on 1950s-era cities. Hiroshima suffered a firestorm because it was mostly made of wood, but Nagasaki didn't. There's simply no scenario in which modern air-fuzed bombs dropped on modern concrete cities could produce anywhere near the level of soot required to cause significant levels of atmospheric cooling.

The asteroid that caused the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event had at least a million times more destructive power than all the nuclear weapons ever built combined.
>> No. 38985 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 10:57 pm
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>>38983

Yes, and it's the kind of war that the rest of us are capable of recognising must be avoided at all costs. Your assessment is the kind of psychotically naive kind of rationalisation that will eventually see us go through with it. You don't appear to have the faintest grasp how the knock on effects of a disaster on that scale would stack up, or how the failure of multiple links in the infrastructure chain makes everything else exponentially worse.

It's pretty simple, nuclear war is a line that can not be crossed. No objective is worth that cost. If we're in a war where the only option is using nukes, it is flat out better to just surrender. Simple as that. If we get nuked, then we're taking whoever did it with us, but there's no realistic prospect of Britain as we know it coming through on the other side.

You can say "people don't like thinking about it", but quite to the contrary, I've spent plenty of time thinking about it, as have a great deal of people much more educated than either of us. And the only rational conclusion is that we can't afford for it to happen. We have to have plans in place certainly, but be under no illusion, in reality, those plans will amount to nothing more than picking up the pieces. "No plan survives contact with the enemy" as the saying goes, except in this case the enemy has vaporised 200,000 people in an instant from several time zones away.

Anyway, let's all lift our spirits with a song shall we.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCwIhumzAMM
>> No. 38986 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 11:13 pm
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>>38984

>bombs dropped on modern concrete cities

Mate you're aware half this country's housing goes back to the fucking 1800s right? And Americans are still mad about building houses out of wood, as are many places around the globe.

You are making a lot of very optimistic stretches. If it helps you sleep better fair enough but don't pretend you're the one being rational here.
>> No. 38987 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 11:29 pm
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>>38985

It's weird that you've made the leap from me saying "nuclear war isn't actually armageddon and most people's perceptions aren't based on fact" to inferring that I think nuclear war is a good laugh.

It's all well and good to say that "nuclear war is a line that cannot be crossed", but it doesn't matter what you or I think because we don't have control of launch codes. Vladimir Putin does. If we're to accurately appraise the likelihood of him actually using those weapons, we need to think factually about what nuclear weapons actually do, what countermeasures to them exist and how a rational or irrational leader might evaluate the possible outcomes. We don't get a vote on whether Putin presses the metaphorical red button, but we do get a vote on a government that could build defences and negotiate treaties.

We had twenty-odd years of nuclear brinksmanship, followed by twenty-odd years of not really discussing nuclear weapons. The political discourse on nuclear weapons was always fairly shoddy, but it's now based on decades-old assumptions. The development of Aegis and Aster have radically changed the nuclear battlefield, to the extent that old assumptions about mutually assured destruction aren't necessarily true; the Russians recognise this, which is why they're desperate to develop effective hypersonic glider systems. The likelihood of nuclear war is higher than it has been for decades, partly because Russia is being run by a madman but also greatly because the West have greatly reduced the effectiveness of Russian nuclear deterrence. You might not think that the existence of a missile defence system offers much comfort against the threat of nuclear war, but our Prime Minister or the US President may not agree with you.

Given the situation in Ukraine, it is highly likely that Britain will have to make some very serious decisions in the next few years of great significance to our strategic defence. I only hope that we can make those decisions based on hard evidence and rational calculation.
>> No. 38988 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 11:49 pm
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>>38982
There's a joke in an episode of Futurama that suggests this is exactly what will happen.
>> No. 38989 Anonymous
21st July 2022
Thursday 11:51 pm
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>>38986

>Mate you're aware half this country's housing goes back to the fucking 1800s right?

Yes, but it's mostly made out of brick and large parts of the space in between is filled with tarmac and concrete.

There is a very big difference between "lots of things being on fire" and a firestorm. The nuclear winter scenario requires very hot, very intense fires capable of generating their own wind systems, which can propel very large quantities of soot into the upper atmosphere. Creating those firestorm conditions requires a very high density of fuel, which modern building and planning systems are specifically designed to prevent.

Yanks like building suburban houses out of wood, but most of those houses are built on large plots that adjoin wide roads. The big swathes of empty space that make it impossible to walk anywhere also greatly impedes the spread of fire. Despite the use of timber framing, their housing stock is relatively modern and far more fire resistant than you might expect.
>> No. 38990 Anonymous
22nd July 2022
Friday 12:42 am
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>>38987

It's not weird at all. You sound like the lad from the eco thread who's convinced Elon Musk will solve climate change by sending all the CO2 to space or whatever it was, and your rhetoric is dangerous for the same reasons. You are trying to paint it as rational level headedness but you're actually just enthralled by faintly psychopathic delusions that downplay the dangers and fetishise unproven technologies.
>> No. 38991 Anonymous
22nd July 2022
Friday 1:06 am
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>>38977
>>38987
Although I'd regard it as pretentious to think of Britain as important enough for it to matter, surely one of the big-brain nuclear strategist problems with stuff like
>We need to maintain an early detection and warning system, because it's a very cheap investment that would save a lot of lives. We need to train fire and rescue services to deal with nuclear threats, we need local authorities to have effective and tested plans in place.
Is that with conventional nuclear strategy it's an escalation since it shows that you intend to go beyond deterring an attack and actually survive a nuclear war, which makes the other side more nervous that you intend to start one. The same problem, in miniature, as an anti-ballistic missile system.

>>38983
The difficulty is (and this is a slightly different but parallel point to the above) that if you're thinking about surviving a nuclear attack, you're already accepting on some level that a nuclear attack is going to happen. You can do a coin flip on whether awareness of how to act in that event will make people more cautious due to wider awareness of potential horrors, or more fatalistic since they now view such events as inevitable, but it's at least possible that you actually make things worse.
(Though given we're functionally an American vassal maybe it's more of an academic question in our case, barring some fantastical scenario like CND having us pull out of NATO on the brink of WW3.)
>> No. 38992 Anonymous
22nd July 2022
Friday 9:32 am
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This is a really interesting, if horrible conversation. It's got me thinking - whats the next stage beyond nukes, in terms of practical weapons? I understand nukes have a shelf life - what will replace them?

Would the threat that anyone on the planet could be laser beamed from kill satellites instantly be as good a deterant as a submarine based nuke?
Like if we started massacring civilian targets in France, they could just laser beam all our politicians & generals, rather than turn Leeds to a sheet of glass.
If I understand game theory, it would need to be something that causes high value destruction (to either materiél or infrastructure), and would withstand any first strike. Does being able to reliably assassinate high value targets surely fulfills this?
>> No. 38993 Anonymous
22nd July 2022
Friday 9:36 am
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>>38977
I can see my house from here!
Does anyone else in the large blue area fancy meeting up to make a raider gang?
>> No. 38994 Anonymous
22nd July 2022
Friday 10:10 am
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>>38993
I'm in it too, but I live in the small blue circle, where all the cool dudes live. I have no desire to venture out into the ghastly wastelands of the big blue circle. From what I've heard, it's horrible.
>> No. 38995 Anonymous
22nd July 2022
Friday 11:34 am
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>>38992

> I understand nukes have a shelf life - what will replace them?

The most commonly used isotopes in atomic bombs are uranium-235 and plutonium-239. They have half lives of 700 million years and 24,100 years respectively. This means that the fission fuel itself has not deteriorated in a significant way even in decades-old bombs. Mechanical failures of an atom bomb's other components over time are therefore much more likely.

Tritium, on the other hand, which is necessary for hydrogen bombs, has a half life of just twelve years. I'm not sure how hydrogen bombs are serviced, but they will probably have their tritium content replenished in regular intervals.

And then there are technological advances that necessitate the swapping out of weapons systems. For example, Cold War-era Russian nuclear missiles were known for having inferior guidance systems to NATO missiles. Target accuracy was lacking. In a very typically Russian way, the answer was to simply increase yield, i.e. if your missile failed to hit the intended target dead-on, a bigger explosion meant that it would still be destroyed. This is probably no longer the case.
>> No. 38996 Anonymous
22nd July 2022
Friday 11:49 am
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>>38995
Interesting, thanks.
I was assuming that the shelf life would be on the missile itself, as you say - I have no clue on the engineering involved, but imagined you can't just swap out an old but functional warhead and put it on a new missile chassis like an electric toothbrush.

In true .GS fashion, I'm suddenly fascinated by the boring day to day reality of maintaining a nuclear arsenal. Like the idea that someone is repainting the casing every 12 months when it starts to peel around the rivets.
>> No. 38997 Anonymous
22nd July 2022
Friday 11:58 am
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>>38992

The things that are currently worrying defence analysts are low-cost autonomous drones and engineered bioweapons.

Ukraine has really shown the military potential of consumer-grade drones. A bunch of amateurs (no offence intended, but they're literally amateurs) figured out how to attach cheap mortar rounds and grenades to cheap off-the-shelf hobbyist drones to create a remarkably effective alternative to a conventional air force. A small drone flying at about 200m is basically silent and invisible to anyone on the ground. With a tall hill and a booster antenna, the operator of that drone could be anywhere up to 40km away. A small number of operators with a shoestring budget can create the constant threat of instant death across an entire city.

A serious state-level actor can use jamming technology to break the link between operator and drone, but the technology already exists to remove the need for that link. It isn't quite within the reach of most hobbyists yet, but for a few hundred pounds you could build a drone capable of launching, flying to a target, conducting a mission and returning to base without anyone controlling it. With the right sensors, that drone could use IMSI sniffing to target a specific mobile phone, automatic number plate recognition to target a specific car or even facial recognition. That drone wouldn't have a control channel that could be jammed, the inertial measurement unit would make it resistant to GPS spoofing and it would have about the same radar profile as a well-fed seagull. By the time anyone realises that it even exists, it's too late. Once it has finished a mission, it could ditch itself in the sea or self-destruct to reduce the risk of forensics. If daft militant wogs start figuring this stuff out, potential assassination targets will need to seriously rethink their security.

A slightly further-off but much graver threat is that of an engineered bioweapon. Yesterday's news reported on a new treatment for haemophilia. This treatment uses a modified virus to replace the defective gene that causes inadequate blood clotting; exactly the same approach is being used to treat cystic fibrosis, spinal muscular atrophy and a host of other genetic disorders.

The modified viruses used in these treatments are specifically chosen to have very low infectivity, but a malicious actor could do the opposite and choose a virus that spreads very rapidly. They could choose to target a genetic sequence that only occurs in people from a specific ethnic background. The payload of this weapon could be rapidly lethal, or it could have subtler effects that weaken, sterilise or kill the target after a time lag of months or years. Lessons haven't really been learned from COVID and we still don't have a coordinated international biosurveillance system, so a virus of this type probably wouldn't be detected until a significant number of people had been hospitalised. Imagine a version of COVID that doesn't make you particularly ill but does sterilise everyone with blue eyes and you've got an idea of the gravity of such a threat.
>> No. 38998 Anonymous
22nd July 2022
Friday 12:24 pm
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>>38996

I forgot to say that most atom bombs, and that includes primary stages of hydrogen fission-fusion bombs, are nowadays based on the implosion design, which means that you have an outer sphere of chemical explosives compressing a uranium or plutonium core to achieve critical mass and set off the nuclear chain reaction. It's difficult to find reliable sources on the deterioration of that chemical explosive, but as most chemical explosives experience some degree of breakdown over time, they could limit an individual bomb's shelf life as well.
>> No. 39034 Anonymous
2nd August 2022
Tuesday 7:29 pm
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>Jeremy Corbyn has urged western countries to stop arming Ukraine, and claimed he was criticised over antisemitism because of his stance on Palestine, in a TV interview likely to underscore Keir Starmer’s determination not to readmit him to the Labour party.

>“Pouring arms in isn’t going to bring about a solution, it’s only going to prolong and exaggerate this war,” Corbyn said. “We might be in for years and years of a war in Ukraine.” Corbyn gave the interview on Al Mayadeen, a Beirut-based TV channel that has carried pro-Russia reporting since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

>“What I find disappointing is that hardly any of the world’s leaders use the word peace; they always use the language of more war, and more bellicose war.” He added: “This war is disastrous for the people of Ukraine, for the people of Russia, and for the safety and security of the whole world, and therefore there has to be much more effort put into peace.”

>He called for the UN to be “much more centre stage”, and suggested involving other international bodies such as the African Union or the League of Arab States if the UN were unable to help negotiate a ceasefire.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/02/jeremy-corbyn-urges-west-to-stop-arming-ukraine

Flaccid cock Corbyn strikes again!
>> No. 39035 Anonymous
2nd August 2022
Tuesday 10:34 pm
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>>39034
I'd pay good money to watch Putin's response to the African Union asking him if he wouldn't mind not invading Ukraine.
>> No. 39036 Anonymous
2nd August 2022
Tuesday 11:13 pm
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>>39035

Part of the problem there is that the global south generally isn't taking sides here, and they're not toeing the line on the narrative either. Bit of a coin toss whether they'd ask Putin to stop committing an illegal invasion, or just ask us to stop interfering.
>> No. 39037 Anonymous
3rd August 2022
Wednesday 1:29 am
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>>39036

They care about Ukraine as much as we care about DR Congo, i.e. not at all.
>> No. 39038 Anonymous
3rd August 2022
Wednesday 7:16 am
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>>39037
The Um Bongo must flow.
>> No. 39069 Anonymous
7th August 2022
Sunday 12:30 pm
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Is anyone else rethinking their opinion that this isn't going to turn into World War 3? I'm getting worried as shit, because when a country's economy crashes, it's part of the political playbook to try and blame someone else, and occasionally start a war over it. Every country's economy is fucked right now, and everyone everywhere is angry. There's no way not a single government anywhere in the world will decide to pile in and start some badness. There are going to be a lot of wars in the next couple of years, I suspect.

Of course, if the whole world dogpiles Russia, and successfully avoids nuclear annihilation, then we could probably take them out pretty quickly and then food and petrol prices would go back to normal and things would be fixed. China might be happy too, and then not have to attack Taiwan and end the world that way. If a lot of people start feeling how I feel, we're all going to die, and I've never had a threesome. Fuck. Would a war massively increase inflation because of higher government borrowing? Maybe that will keep us safe if so.
>> No. 39070 Anonymous
7th August 2022
Sunday 1:19 pm
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>>39069
I haven't followed what's going on closely for a while, but I've noticed there's been an uptick in Russian shill activity online recently so I imagine it's not going too well for them at the minute.
>> No. 39071 Anonymous
7th August 2022
Sunday 2:05 pm
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>>39069

Russia are pretty much at a stalemate in Ukraine, because they've run out of military resources. They just don't have any more men or materiel left. There's a vague possibility that they could use their nuclear arsenal, but there's no obvious route to that - Russia aren't really capable of escalating the conflict in Ukraine, the rest of the world seems fairly keen on not getting directly involved and while Putin is mental you would assume that his generals aren't suicidal.

China really isn't trying to escalate things in Taiwan, they're just pushing back against American provocation. The yanks keep sending aircraft carriers into waters around the Paracel and Spratly islands that China claims as part of their territorial waters. Given that there are more than 75,000 American military personnel in Japan and South Korea operating out of dozens of permanent bases, China obviously regards American attempts to fully encircle them as extremely provocative. China has a clear track record of avoiding overt military conflict, but there's a risk that the Americans might (yet again) believe their own bullshit and blunder into yet another futile and unwinnable conflict. That conflict probably wouldn't become global, simply because no-one else on earth can see any reason why they'd want to restrict China's access to the seas. The Philippines aren't happy about China's territorial claims in the South China Sea, but they're even less happy about being strong-armed by their American "allies". They're perfectly aware that American "support" will be paid for in Filipino lives; Bongbong Marcos is a crook, but he's a crook who wants to keep his grip on power and is acutely aware of how fickle American friendship can be.

The geopolitical situation is a bit spicy at the moment, but the total lack of trust in international relations points away from the risk of a third world war. We might see more individual conflicts between nations, but those conflicts can only merge into a world war if countries trust each other enough to form major alliances. China simply doesn't care about anything beyond their immediate sphere of influence, Russia is too poor to project power globally and everyone knows that the Americans are backstabbing bastards. NATO might be resurgent, but that resurgence is a European-led defensive posture based on a recognition of the risks of being overly dependent on American military might.
>> No. 39072 Anonymous
7th August 2022
Sunday 2:58 pm
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>>39071

There's also the perspective often being neglected that Ukraine were never really the underdog we've been told they were in this conflict. They have a standing army of something like 700,000 men, plus however many have been conscripted since the start. They were arguably underequipped, at least to begin with before we started sending them gear, but so are the Russians.

This was never poor little Ukraine against the behemoth, it was always a much closer contest than the David and Goliath story the media has been happily selling. The Russians vastly overestimated their own capabilities- Ironically for pretty much the same reason the West has always overestimated their capabilities. Propaganda.

I mean just go look at a map. Ukraine is fucking massive. Easily comparable to the populated area of Russia, most of which is simply empty. Putin has just been getting high off his own supply and thought he could pull off a blitzkrieg. He was wrong.

There needs to be a peace deal negotiated somehow, some way, by almost any means; because if not this will be a stalemate that drags on for years, and the consequences are only going to be more dire the longer it keeps going. Doesn't matter which "side" you're on, if you're a Putinbot or a fully committed NATO illuminati reptile. This war needs to end and you're a fucking idiot if you don't realise it.
>> No. 39073 Anonymous
7th August 2022
Sunday 4:12 pm
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>>39071
>China really isn't trying to escalate things in Taiwan, they're just pushing back against American provocation.
Chinas internal politics has more to do with it than the Americans.
In a couple of months Xi will face the communist party national congress and have to convince the party to grant him another term in power. This is to a background of a zero-covid policy that is unworkable, a year of natural disasters, corruption in the construction industry leading to an untold number of building and bridge collapses, an emerging financial crisis where local banks are running out of money and people are cancelling mortgage payments for flats that were never built, and the prospect of mass unemployment as various industries are crashing.
Xi is just acting this way over taiwan because he's posturing for his own country.

>The Russians vastly overestimated their own capabilities- Ironically for pretty much the same reason the West has always overestimated their capabilities. Propaganda.
Nah propaganda isn't Russias problem here for once, its just the systemic corruption in their military and government that starts at the top and trickles down to the lowest rank and file.
The top levels of their government host rigged bidding programs for work like refitting cruisers that funnels money into their own pockets. Lower levels fix contracts for things like body armour so they're buying less products for the same price and getting a backhander in return, or they place an order for million dollar drones, the manufacturers then switch the design to use cheap off-the-shelf electronics so it costs a fraction of what they're paid, and again pay a backhander to the officials to keep quiet. Commanders alter the payroll so they're taking pay for more soldiers than they actually have and pocketing the difference. Privates siphon diesel and flog it in exchange the alcohol and cigarettes.

Putin genuinely believes his army is fantastic because all his yes men show him the receipts for all the money that got spent, but little of that money actually ends up knows its a crock of shit but no one will say it because they cant without implicating themselves.
>> No. 39076 Anonymous
7th August 2022
Sunday 5:08 pm
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>>39073
>Putin genuinely believes his army is fantastic because all his yes men show him the receipts for all the money that got spent

I thought he was deliberately hobbling the army to reduce the chances of a coup?
>> No. 39078 Anonymous
7th August 2022
Sunday 11:00 pm
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>>39071

>Russia are pretty much at a stalemate in Ukraine, because they've run out of military resources. They just don't have any more men or materiel left.

That's not what results in a stalemate, if that were true they'd be losing.

It's more like they're at a stalemate because they only allocated something like 100,000 men and the proportionate levels of supporting gear, because they are still committed to the line that it's not a war, but a "special military operation". Evidently that 100,000 men wasn't quite up to the task of taking on Ukraine's entire army and reserve on their home turf, plus western aid and equipment, and frankly it's pretty bonkers anyone thought it would.

They would probably be able to make much more progress if they were to put their back into it, if only through sheer brute force and weight of numbers; but they can't afford to do that without having to admit it really is a war, and taking the risk that if throwing a million conscripts into the grinder and bombing eastern Ukraine into the dust still doesn't get the results, it would put the stability of Russia itself in serious peril.
>> No. 39079 Anonymous
7th August 2022
Sunday 11:37 pm
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>>39078

>That's not what results in a stalemate, if that were true they'd be losing.

Russia have fairly similar levels of materiel to Ukraine. Russia have a lot more low-tech gear in various states of disrepair, Ukraine has a slight advantage in terms of modern equipment (NVGs, guided munitions, MANPADs and top-attack AT systems).

The flood of arms into Ukraine has turned into a trickle, because donor countries have given them all of their surplus and now people are starting to worry about their own capabilities. Procurement in NATO forces is notoriously slow and cumbersome, so even if they're ramping up production it'll take at least two years before any of that actually reaches the front.

Russia have burned through most of their cold war era stockpiles. Their extremely weak industrial base means that they can't easily make more and sanctions mean that they can't easily buy more. Russia has been a petrostate for decades and they really don't know how to make much of anything - most "Russian made" products are really just knock-down-kits imported from abroad and assembled in Russia for tax purposes.

Both sides have advantages and disadvantages on the battlefield, but none of them are decisive. Crucially, neither side has any levers they can pull to swing the balance. Russia could bus in a load of untrained conscripts, but they won't be able to do anything useful. Russia is already struggling to supply their troops in Ukraine with the most basic essentials.
>> No. 39080 Anonymous
8th August 2022
Monday 1:16 am
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What I don't understand is - why didn't Russia just surround Ukraine (like they have already), and with air superiority, just bomb every major city into the stone age? Am I smarter than Putin? I am not sure, but I would be much more ruthless, and threaten every NATO incursion with nuclear annihilation. All the while just destroying everything in sight. There. Job done in two weeks.
>> No. 39083 Anonymous
8th August 2022
Monday 7:59 pm
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>>39080
>and with air superiority, just bomb every major city into the stone age?

They did do that to Mariupol. They dont want to send their bombers too far into Ukraine though because of a combination of a shortage of well-trained pilots, and Ukraine being full of anti-air materiel that has already decimated Russias air force and they can't afford to lose any more.
>> No. 39084 Anonymous
8th August 2022
Monday 8:24 pm
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>>39080

Sane reason you dont raze every settlement you come upon in Total War. There's no point invading if there's nothing of worth left to capture. Plus, they did originally hope to be seen as liberators, not mass murderers, at least in the places with significant Russian ethnic populations.

Air superiority is useful if you can make accurate, surgical strikes, but Russia has neither the correct munitions nor the intel to acheive such precision. So it really would be WW2 level carpet bombing, and that doesn't really help acheive their goals in the long run, it would just put a lot more blood on their hands.

Anyway I wonder what you lads will make of this Al Jazeera article. Is Pentagonlad still here to get irate at the suggestion Western media might not be telling the entirely unbiased truth about this conflict? Have we calmed down enough to discuss the geopolitical realities of what's happening here without hysterics?

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/8/4/western-media-and-the-war-on-truth-in
>> No. 39085 Anonymous
8th August 2022
Monday 9:31 pm
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>>39080
I concur with what the other two have said. I'd add that just because you level a city with high explosives doesn't mean you can stroll in and take over what's left, the westernmost members of the former USSR surely know this better than anyone, given that's what the Germans tried in the Second World War. It worked some of the time, but when it didn't it became a gory nightmare on a level unimaginable to most.

There's also Russia's own and much more recent experience in Grozny. This is probably much more important to Russian military planners than WW2, now that I stop pontificating on my personal interests. They blew that Grozny to pieces and it still took months of fighting against a much smaller and less well armed force for Russia to take the city, and by the time they'd won Russia had become the devil to an overwhelming majority of Chechens. It's worth noting also that Grozny's not a very large city and they'd have to do this dozens of times, sometimes in cities four or five times as big. It's basically untenable unless the Ukrainian Armed Forces throw down their arms and pack it in en masse, which looks vanishingly unlikely. It's probably why Putin seems to be settling for eastern Ukraine, even though that obviously wasn't the idea back the February.
>> No. 39086 Anonymous
8th August 2022
Monday 9:41 pm
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>>39085

Lavrov just recently confirmed Russia's desire to cause regime change and drive the current Ukrainian government out. Which is a step down from what were quite likely Putin's true aspirations, i.e. conquering Ukraine outright, and incorporating the whole of it into Russian territory.

The problem still is that the West has no high horse to ride on when it comes to regime change, and Putin can rightly point to conflicts including but not limited to the 2003 Iraq War or even Afghanistan. Where the West essentially invaded sovereign countries just because the political elite in Washington didn't like their leadership, at times based on quite dodgy claims.
>> No. 39087 Anonymous
8th August 2022
Monday 10:44 pm
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>>39084
I haven't read all 1222 posts on this thread, but I'm assuming most people here don't presume the Western media's coverage to be entirely reliable. Gleaning all the articles on 'respectable' mainstream outlets makes it clear they put a spin on every single facet of Ukraine's effort. Like this article https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-unicorn-lgbtq-soldiers-head-war-2022-05-31/, some personnel put their own patches on their uniforms to express something, which many soldiers world over do, and Western media makes a news story of it because it appeals to current western narratives, as though Ukraine's war can be conveniently fitted into the causes that preoccupy the western mainstream. Are they worried that if they can't dress up Ukraine as being "wholesome™", it would start losing support among the western public?

Obviously you are probably more interesting in discussing if actual lies are being pedalled by the West about the war and I don't have a very clear picture on that. None of this makes me any less sympathetic to Ukraine. Sage for rambling.
>> No. 39088 Anonymous
9th August 2022
Tuesday 12:32 am
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>>39087

>Are they worried that if they can't dress up Ukraine as being "wholesome™", it would start losing support among the western public?

Nah, they just feel like they're supposed to report on the war because it's an Important Story but don't actually know anything. Digging up some identity politics bollocks on Twitter is a lot easier than actually going out to the front and finding things out.

>>39084

Russia doesn't really have air superiority. Ukraine doesn't have the anti aircraft capabilities to provide total airspace denial, but it has enough to make any air operations seriously risky. Russia have to be very careful about how they use air assets because of the constant risk of surface-to-air missiles; this is compounded by their severe shortages of precision guided munitions, spare parts, skilled engineers and properly trained pilots. From the Russian perspective, air assets are a non-renewable resource.

Regarding the Al Jazeera article, it's all innuendo. The crux of his argument seems to be "Westerners have lied about things before. I'm not saying that they're lying about Ukraine, but I'm not not saying that". It doesn't really add anything to the discussion other than a vaguely conspiratorial undertone of "you can't believe anything". There's always doubt in war, but the Ukraine conflict is the best-documented war in history. War-watchers have got a constant stream of live satellite imagery courtesy of Maxar and we're perfectly capable of deciding for ourselves how the war is going based on the facts. Ukraine isn't winning, but they're doing a hell of a lot better than anyone expected and Russia are quite clearly in far worse shape than anyone predicted. It's easy to forget that before the invasion, both sides sincerely believed that Kyiv would fall in a matter of days; at this point in the war there is no apparent route to victory for the Russians.
>> No. 39089 Anonymous
9th August 2022
Tuesday 12:20 pm
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>>39088

>From the Russian perspective, air assets are a non-renewable resource.

This point is not insignificant. Ukraine for all intents and purposes has unlimited access to heavy weaponry from NATO countries even if their own supplies run out. Russia could probably order backup from China, but the Chinese have enough conflicts of their own, so that they can't just freely give their gear to Russia in larger numbers.
>> No. 39090 Anonymous
9th August 2022
Tuesday 1:08 pm
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>>39089

China aren't even that keen to sell to Russia, because the rouble is worth fuck-all and they don't want to jeopardise deals with other countries. The Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 was a massive opportunity for China to grow their arms sales - Russia mostly stopped selling off their old kit and sanctions made it harder for them to import components and materials for more advanced weapons systems. The more recent escalation of the Ukraine conflict has only compounded the situation.

It's possible that Russia could do some under-the-table arms deals with China in exchange for oil, but China would rather pay cash and Russia really can't afford to refuse that much hard currency.

It's a remarkable fall from grace for Russia - China used to be heavily reliant on imports of Russian weapons systems, but now the shoe is on the other foot.
>> No. 39091 Anonymous
9th August 2022
Tuesday 3:43 pm
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>>39090
I find it funny when Russian officials talk of a "multipolar world" as if they'll be one of the poles.
>> No. 39102 Anonymous
16th August 2022
Tuesday 4:57 pm
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Are we bombing someone? There were loads of fast jets transiting last night, and loads again this afternoon. They're not dicking about doing dogfight practice like normal, they're hustling in a straight line, in singles and small groups. North Norfolk, so I'm used to biggles twatting about, but this isn't normal.
>> No. 39146 Anonymous
22nd August 2022
Monday 9:10 pm
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>>39102

I tracked some planes on flightradar24 last week because it seemed there were a lot of non-civilian aircraft in the air over Greater London.

It turned out that at least a few of them were on their way from Brize Norton to southeastern Poland. No fighter planes, mainly what appeared to be military cargo aircraft, but still. They didn't go there for a weekend retreat or to sample the local slivovitz.

ITZ, and that.
>> No. 39160 Anonymous
27th August 2022
Saturday 8:10 pm
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>On 17 August, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyi ratified Law 5371, which removes rights for workers at small and medium-sized companies. It will be effective for as long as the country is under martial law – a qualification added at the last minute, under pressure from trade unions.

>Under the new law, people who work for firms with up to 250 employees will now be covered by contracts they negotiate as individuals with their bosses, rather than the national labour code.

>In practice, this means that around 70% of workers in Ukraine have been stripped of many labour protections. Collective agreements negotiated by unions – over salary or holidays, for instance – no longer apply. The law also removes the legal authority of trade unions to veto workplace dismissals.

>The Ukrainian government has claimed it is trying to alleviate the difficulties faced by companies in wartime. However, it first tried to introduce the new law in 2021.

>The policy is opposed by Ukraine’s Federation of Trade Unions and has been criticised by a joint European Union-International Labour Organisation project. Some of its critics argue that the government is using Russia’s invasion as an excuse to push for deregulation and the stripping back of social support.

>In July, Nataliia Lomonosova of Ukrainian think tank Cedos told openDemocracy that these were long-term policy goals of Zelenskyi’s government, likely aimed at attracting foreign investment.

>Law 5371 is not an isolated measure. In July, two other laws were passed: one allows employers to stop paying workers who have been called up to fight, while the other legalises zero-hours contracts. The latter will remain in place even when martial law is lifted.

>Another draft bill proposes a drastic overhaul of Ukraine’s labour code itself. This would introduce a maximum 12-hour work day and allow employers to dismiss workers without justification.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-labour-law-wrecks-workers-rights/
>> No. 39161 Anonymous
27th August 2022
Saturday 10:25 pm
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>>39160

All is fair in love and war, eh.


A lot of it reads similar to all the labour market "reforms" that many of the former Soviet satellite states underwent in the early to late 90s. All for the sake of "modernisation" and "westernisation", y'know. Worth remembering that this wasn't just something that happened under New Labour in Britain. Also worth noting that in terms of worker's rights, they lost far more than we did, because much of their employment and job market laws were still holdovers from socialist times at least in principle, which were originally reincorporated into their newly democratic legal frameworks after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Both Western private companies and illustrious government institutions like USAID then lobbied for job market reforms, ostensibly to bring more prosperity through the implementation of a Western-style market economy, but also much more importantly to facilitate business for Western capital in those countries.

The more things change.

https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1863/EE_20_Year__Review.pdf
>> No. 39162 Anonymous
27th August 2022
Saturday 11:51 pm
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>>39161

I mean, that's all everything in Ukraine has been about since the start. We (as in, our governments and their lobbyists) has been about since the start. The last ten-fifteen years of covert fucking about and supporting various different political groups etc. Making it more hospitable to western capital.

We don't give a fuck about the lives of Ukranians and never have, we just want them to be in our economic sphere and not Russia's. It's that simple.

And no, that doesn't condone what Putin is doing, it doesn't make me a Russian troll, but it is the truth, and it's the reason all these cunts with their Ukraine flags up on Twitter and all that bollocks are basically little more than useful idiots. Consent has been well and truly manufactured here.
>> No. 39163 Anonymous
28th August 2022
Sunday 12:51 am
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>>39162

>We don't give a fuck about the lives of Ukranians and never have

Speak for yourself mate, I've taken a keen interest in Ukraine for many years. Some of my favourite prostitutes are Ukrainian.
>> No. 39164 Anonymous
28th August 2022
Sunday 2:07 am
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>>39163

You're certainly not alone in fucking Ukrainians then.
>> No. 39165 Anonymous
28th August 2022
Sunday 11:32 am
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>>39162

What's highly disingenuous, although it's really no big surprise as you said, is that you simply don't read anything at all about that in Western media. The narrative is all like, the Ukrainians want freedom and prosperity, and evil Putin wants to drag them back into his evil empire of doom.

Nobody is considering that the real reason the West wants Ukraine has to do not only with strategically weakening Russia in Eastern Europe, although that's a big part of it, but also with reaping the spoils that Ukraine offers. It's one of the world's key crop chambers as we know, but it is also very rich in natural resources like gas, oil and metal ores. Whoever has dominion over Ukraine gains access to all of it.

This is not just hypothetical; Ukraine liberalised land ownership rules last year to allow for more land possession by its citizens, but it decided against opening up agricultural land to be bought up by foreign citizens and entities. Public opinion polls even showed that a vast majority of Ukrainians would be against it.

Not happy with letting the people decide their own fate democratically, the Atlantic Council has considered launching a PR campaign in Ukraine to both convince the local public of the advantages of foreign land ownership and to prevent a possible referendum on the issue, which they fear would slam the door shut for generations.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ban-on-farmland-sales-to-foreigners-risks-starving-ukraine-of-investment/
>> No. 39215 Anonymous
6th September 2022
Tuesday 12:23 pm
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https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-hackers-create-fake-profiles-russia-troops-share-location-ft-2022-9?r=US&IR=T

>Ukrainian hackers created fake profiles of attractive women to trick Russian soldiers into sharing their location, report says. Days later, the base was blown up.
>> No. 39216 Anonymous
6th September 2022
Tuesday 3:26 pm
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According to most media outlets, Russia is a powerful enemy that poses a serious existential threat to the west, while simultaneously it has an inept military that has defied all expectations in how hilariously bad it is at waging war. Which of these opinions should I believe?
>> No. 39217 Anonymous
6th September 2022
Tuesday 3:29 pm
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>>39215
That's not fair. A man with an erection is barely sentient, you shouldn't trick them like this.
>> No. 39218 Anonymous
6th September 2022
Tuesday 3:34 pm
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>>39216

Well they're an inept military that could still at least potentially nuke Ukraine or the whole of the West.

Also, Russia still invests millions in its troll factories and other campaigns to influence the media and public opinion in the West.
>> No. 39219 Anonymous
6th September 2022
Tuesday 4:28 pm
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>>39216
The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.
>> No. 39220 Anonymous
6th September 2022
Tuesday 5:13 pm
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>>39216
They do have, as someone else already pointed out, nuclear capabilities, which is and should always be a concern. The damage they can do to the energy markets is obvious for all to see, and the stuff about imperious Russians marching on Warsaw or Stockholm is just bollocks from shite-rags trying to hawk more papers/garner more clicks with spurious, but eye-catching, claims. No one with any actual insight to the Russian military, or military matters in general, thinks that's a possibility at this time.

If you think this is a problem with "the media", I would add it's at least as much a problem with a lack of media literacy on your part. You should be wise enough to know not to take seriously the claims of columnists who only got a job because their dad used to be editor, and who's first pieces on defense were written in late February. I don't see the BBC or Guardian telling us Russia's on it's way to invade us, so perhaps you need to stop reading the views of braindead wastrels and choose a better option?
>> No. 39221 Anonymous
6th September 2022
Tuesday 5:24 pm
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>>39216

>Which of these opinions should I believe?

Neither. The media isn't conspiring to deceive you, it's just run by thick poshos. What might look like a concerted effort to push one particular message is just lazy groupthink by people who can't be arsed doing their own research and don't have the skills to interrogate useful primary sources. They're just regurgitating stuff they've seen on Twitter, re-writing AP wires and doing their best impression of Serious Journalists. They all seem to be saying the same thing because they're just copying each other's homework. Their writing is given an undeserved sense of importance because of the brand attached to it, but (with a few honourable exceptions) they're just people in offices trying to fill column inches at minimum effort.

Fortunately, the non-thick don't have to rely on the media any more. We have unparalleled access to live data and reports written by people with skin in the game. You can read the reports from the Institute for the Study of War, you can follow troop movements and losses on UAWarData and Militaryland, you can look at their footnotes and check their sources.

Broadly, the truth about Russia is that they have a corrupt, outmoded and ineffective military, but they still pose a serious threat because of their nuclear arsenal. We didn't know how crap the Russians were until they invaded Ukraine - they probably didn't even know - because they hadn't been involved in a significant near-peer conflict in decades. A lot of the whizz-bang technology that they had been parading didn't actually work and a lot of the basics (logistics, training, morale) had been badly neglected. You can't actually assess that unless you've got a lot of real combat data, which is why we've also got a much clearer sense of the capabilities of Western powers who have been tooling about in the Middle East for most of the last 20 years. We don't know how effective the Russian nuclear deterrent really is, but that's not something you want to gamble on.
>> No. 39222 Anonymous
6th September 2022
Tuesday 5:52 pm
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>>39220

> and the stuff about imperious Russians marching on Warsaw or Stockholm is just bollocks from shite-rags trying to hawk more papers/garner more clicks with spurious, but eye-catching, claims. No one with any actual insight to the Russian military, or military matters in general, thinks that's a possibility at this time.


The Soviets had secret plans during the height of the Cold War to attempt to overrun NATO forces in West Germany and be on the River Rhine in seven days. Not as a first strike, but as part of a counterstrike strategy, assuming that NATO would attack Poland first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_to_the_River_Rhine

It's thought that part of the reasoning was that the Russians had learned their lesson from Hitler's surprise attack on Russia in 1941, and wanted to make sure that in the event of a war with the West, they were not going to be invaded first by NATO.

Anyway, it's highly disputed today among historians that the Russians could have pulled it off. And this was at a time when literal millions of Warsaw Pact troops could have been deployed along the Iron Curtain on short notice. In East Germany alone, there were over half a million Soviet soldiers on active duty at any one time, more than five times the number which Putin has now sent to fight against Ukraine.

The main problem with the Seven Days to the River Rhine plan was that Warsaw Pact troops in West Germany probably would have been under such heavy nuclear bombardment that it would have stopped their advance few dozens of miles west of the Fulda Gap.

Putin has about 900,000 remaining active military personnel, so it's not that he wouldn't have the resources to invade a NATO country parallel to his adventures in Ukraine. But even attempting to reclaim the Baltic states would probably trigger a major regional nuclear exchange at least, which would again make a successful invasion highly doubtful. Let alone where things would escalate from there.

Putin may be slightly mentally unhinged, but he knows that he can't invade a NATO country, and live to talk about it.
>> No. 39223 Anonymous
6th September 2022
Tuesday 7:32 pm
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>>39221

>The media isn't conspiring to deceive you, it's just run by thick poshos.

Sure, but they do get the words put in their mouth for them, if you go far enough down the line. Propaganda is very real.
>> No. 39224 Anonymous
6th September 2022
Tuesday 7:32 pm
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>> No. 39225 Anonymous
6th September 2022
Tuesday 10:02 pm
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>>39223

>Sure, but they do get the words put in their mouth for them, if you go far enough down the line.

They really don't. Conspiracy theories are a comfort blanket, they're a secular invocation of God. People want to believe that there's a shadowy cabal in charge of everything, because it's less scary than the truth - that nobody is in charge.

Murdoch is a rainmaker, an immensely powerful weathervane. He uses his global media empire to force the world in the direction that he reckons it's headed in anyway, then takes credit for it afterwards. He might move the polls by a percentage point in either direction, but he's not actually that influential; campaigners pander to the Murdoch press because his organisation has a chameleon-like ability to reflect the mores and prejudices of any imaginable demographic. He owns Fox News, and The Sun, but he also owns The Times and The Wall Street Journal.

That's all it is - people pretending to be in control so they can take credit. Superstitious gamblers blowing on dice, pool players insisting that they meant to cannon off two balls, Pacific islanders making bamboo air traffic control towers with bamboo radios and bamboo antennas in a vain effort to bring back the cargo planes. Leaders and media are just a product of the zeitgeist, a symptom claiming to be a cause.
>> No. 39226 Anonymous
6th September 2022
Tuesday 10:35 pm
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>>39225

Fuck off, this is a tedious cop out and contrarian bollocks.

The press routinely have reports fed to them by government offices, by the PR agencies for the various companies, by the insiders of political pressure groups or thinktanks, bla bla bla, whoever it is for a particular interest. They're more often than not happy enough to reprint it more or less entirely uncritically.

It's not a conspiracy theory, it's not pretending there's a shadowy sinister cabal of a particular etho-religious origin. It's just the reality of the world that people with power and a particular interest have the ability to whipser in a journalist's ears and before you know it that's The Line.
>> No. 39227 Anonymous
6th September 2022
Tuesday 10:50 pm
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>>39222
I'm not entirely sure what relevance that has to modern Russian military capabilities. 75% of Russia's ground forces were committed to invading Ukraine back in February and the situation hasn't let up since then, so it could well be more now. The invasion has revealed how deep the rot goes as far as corruption is concerned in the Russian armed forces and it's very, very far indeed. I don't know where you've gotten the "900,000 remaining active military personnel" number from, but a significant portion of the troops set to invade Ukraine were actually just ghost soldiers, with the officers creaming off their salaries, until the days before the war. At the final hour units went around begging and press-ganging lads into joining up, which is one of the many reasons those initial days and weeks went so badly for Russia against most people's assumptions. All this is to say I'm doubtful of that 900,000 figure, it all sounds very "eight-million bayonets" to me, a boast Mussolini liked to make about the Italian Army. It's also one thing to have almost a million soldiers and another thing to equip them. I can't really be arsed getting into military logistics, but it's not exactly been Russia's strong suit during the invasion of Ukraine.

Basically the forty year old, hypothetical, invasion of West Germany by the Soviet military and it's Warsaw Pact allies has no bearing on Russia in 2022.
>> No. 39228 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 1:30 am
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Russia has been forced to buy military hardware from North Korea as sanctions squeeze Moscow's ability to supply its military, the US says.

A US official revealed Moscow is the process of purchasing millions of rockets and artillery shells from Pyongyang for use in Ukraine.

And they said that Russia could be forced to buy additional North Korean weaponry as the war dragged on.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62804825
>> No. 39229 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 9:37 am
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>>39228

The list of countries that are involved in this war keeps growing.

Although for now Ukraine is the only physical battleground, there could come a point where it'll be difficult to argue that this isn't a world war. Even without everybody nuking each other.
>> No. 39230 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 9:56 am
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>>39228
Could be interesting to find out what condition NK munitions are in when mass produced.
>> No. 39231 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 10:38 am
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>>39227

My point was that the Russians cannot possibly succeed in a land war against a NATO country. They couldn't 40 years ago, and they won't be able to nowadays.

Wikipedia says that the Russian Army currently has one million active armed personnel. Putin deployed roughly 100,000 against Ukraine, which would leave about 900,000 not currently involved in a military conflict.
>> No. 39232 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 12:08 pm
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>>39229
That's very true (if you're going to completely redefine the meaning of a "world war" to one that would encompass almost every regional conflict of the twentieth century and probably many from earlier centuries, you utter boob).

>>39231
That's more like half of what Russia has committed so far. I'd also feel confident that much of that on paper strength is either poorly equiped to the point of combat ineffectiveness or outright not real, similar, but probably not as severe, to how a third of pre-Taliban Afghanistan's army were ghosts.
>> No. 39233 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 1:35 pm
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>>39230

>Could be interesting to find out what condition NK munitions are in when mass produced.

Undoubtedly terrible. They're subject to such incredibly severe sanctions that they have extremely limited access to a lot of basic materials.

The classic example is textiles. Nearly all fabric in North Korea is made from Vinylon, a synthetic material completely unique to North Korea. They can't grow useful quantities of cotton or wool, they can't or won't import useful quantities of oil or petrochemicals, so they figured out how to make synthetic thread from coal and limestone. Vinylon is very stiff and difficult to dye, but it's just about the only option available to them. On one level it's incredibly ingenious, but it's also totally desperate.

Obviously we have very little concrete data on the current state of their manufacturing, but western experts have handled a limited number of export small arms that appear to be of mediocre quality even by the standards of the 1950s.

We do have good access to North Korean internal propaganda because it's broadcast unencrypted. The picture given by this propaganda is dire. Even when they're trying to show off, they can't seem to rustle up half a dozen machine guns that actually work or more than one box of ammunition.



It also tells us something quite interesting about North Korea - China relations. China has been undergoing a massive (and very well-implemented) military modernisation programme, but none of their surplus gear seems to be turning up in North Korea.
>> No. 39234 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 1:42 pm
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>>39233
I saw a fairly recent video that China put out of their new assault rifles where all the responses were pissing themselves laughing because the bullets cartwheeled as they came out the barrel and apparently that's not a good thing. So China's weapons presumably aren't that great either.
>> No. 39235 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 2:30 pm
39235 spacer
>>39234

There's an old joke that old Soviet-era AK-47s were most accurate when thrown at somebody.

More modern reproductions have largely fixed that problem. Then again, assault rifles don't need pinpoint accuracy for most applications. If you want to take out a single smallish target at long range, even the most underequipped military will have dedicated sniper rifles for that kind of job.
>> No. 39236 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 3:18 pm
39236 spacer
>>39234

That video was misrepresented by people who think they know more than they do. The comments section were saying "haha, their rounds are keyholing at five yards, their rifles are terrible" and "haha, they're shooting at concrete walls at five yards, they're going to blow their dicks off with ricochets", but both of those facts explain each other. The troops in the video were using DBF07 rubber training ammunition to reduce the risk posed by ricochets in a shoothouse training environment. That ammunition isn't particularly stable because it deforms, but it's only intended for use in close-quarters training. NATO equivalents do exactly the same thing.

The consensus is that the QBZ 191/192 is an excellent bit of kit. They've nicked the best bits of the AK and AR systems, added a load of genuinely new and patentable innovations and developed a new cartridge variant with decent armour penetration capabilities.

China are seriously committed to developing a modern small-arms capability as part of a modern combat doctrine. The old QBZ 95 was fine for the intended purpose, which was as a very cheap way of arming a massive army. It wasn't very modular, it wasn't very accurate, but it was cheap and idiot-proof. The 191/192 is a completely different kettle of fish. It's a much more expensive base rifle and it's being issued as standard with much more expensive accessories - a red dot sight on the 192 carbine, a variable optic on the 191 rifle and with the option for night vision, thermal optics and laser designators. They've also got a big contract to issue modern ballistic protection.

The upgrade in equipment is being matched with changes in training and doctrine. We're seeing the standard videos of raw recruits struggling to put rounds down range, but we're also seeing videos of very slick operators using modern weapon handling and movement drills. It could be seen as typical Chinese copycat behaviour, but they aren't just blindly imitating appearances - at least a part of the PLA is very serious about learning from international best practice.

I'm generally sceptical of claims that China is becoming a military threat, but their infantry modernisation programme would at least give them that capability. They're completely transforming their doctrine from having a massive standing army of mediocre grunts to a western-style approach of using a much smaller number of highly trained and well equipped front-line soldiers with very good logistics and combined arms support. That might just be a response to demographic pressures reducing their pool of available cannon fodder, but it does give the PLA the capability to reach beyond their borders effectively.
>> No. 39237 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 5:16 pm
39237 spacer
>>39236
Informative post, thanks.

>That video ... same thing.

Isn't that dangerous? They're training to use their weapons in a way that will put them at risk of danger they haven't trained to mitigate.
>> No. 39238 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 8:14 pm
39238 spacer
How do you even "buy" things off a country like North Korea anyway? Surely when they are such an insulated country with, as I understand it, more or less a full command economy anyway, money must be worthless to them.

Or is it just in exchange for oil and gas and such?
>> No. 39239 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 8:50 pm
39239 spacer
>>39237

>Or is it just in exchange for oil and gas and such?

This, probably.
>> No. 39240 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 9:03 pm
39240 spacer
>>39233
I had a thought unrelated to the war while gazing upon the beautiful woman in this video. Why do North Koreans always talk in that stressed yell? The newsreaders do it too. They always sound like they're about to burst into tears.

There's some Frankie Boyle comedy show where he mentions in passing that apparently the high-pitched scrotey squawk that scummy people in this country have, came about because many of them grew up without fathers and so grew up only hearing the voice of a put-upon woman, and this is why chavs and scallies and neds and so on all sound like stressed women when they speak. I thought that was fascinating. Anyway, maybe North Koreans all talk like they're sobbing because their country is so miserable that they cry all the time in private, until it developed into a national accent for later generations. I don't think South Koreans talk like that. How incredibly sad.

Sage, obviously.
>> No. 39243 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 9:31 pm
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>>39240

I think it's just for news, all the South Koreans I've asked say there isn't any difference in speech between the two, not even accents.
>> No. 39245 Anonymous
7th September 2022
Wednesday 9:57 pm
39245 spacer
>>39240

>There's some Frankie Boyle comedy show where he mentions in passing that apparently the high-pitched scrotey squawk that scummy people in this country have, came about because many of them grew up without fathers and so grew up only hearing the voice of a put-upon woman, and this is why chavs and scallies and neds and so on all sound like stressed women when they speak.


That sounds like a massive load of bollocks tbh.
>> No. 39247 Anonymous
8th September 2022
Thursday 12:37 am
39247 spacer
>>39237

If you're in a gunfight in a built-up area, ricochets are something to worry about after you've shot the guy who's shooting at you. A bullet usually breaks up when it ricochets, so if you do get hit it's usually with fragments that have lost a lot of their energy. That can still cause serious injuries, but it's rarely fatal, especially if you're wearing body armour.

In some niche counter-terrorism applications, you might use frangible ammunition that still has a lethal effect but breaks up on impact into a fine powder. The problem with using this in a military application is that it's completely ineffective against body armour. Even a standard lead bullet has limited effectiveness against modern armour plate systems, which has led most countries to move to a steel-cored bullet.

>>39238

North Korea is desperate for foreign currency. They are subject to sanctions, but the main factor limiting their ability to engage in international trade is their inability to produce anything that export customers would want to buy. They will very happily accept cash payments in just about any foreign currency, because it allows them to import stuff like petrochemicals and electronic components that they otherwise would just have to live without.

That desperation for foreign currency has historically been a major factor for command economies. Lada and Skoda cars were shit, but they did have some popularity here because they were incredibly cheap. Soviet and Eastern Bloc countries were willing to sell products for export very cheaply, because foreign currency was disproportionately valuable to them.

>>39240

Their propaganda pushes the message that North Korean citizens are engaged in a constant life-or-death struggle to defend their beloved nation against the evil USA. That tone of voice is just a reflection of that message. Ordinary people don't sound like that, but they put the voice on if someone points a camera at them because that's just what people sound like on telly. I think it's a bit like people on football phone-ins using pundit catchphrases that nobody actually uses in real life.

>>39243

They speak the same language, but North Korean speech is noticeably old-fashioned to South Korean ears. They were the same country, but the North was frozen in time in 1948 and hasn't really moved on.
>> No. 39248 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 11:05 am
39248 spacer
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/09/11/putin-finished-ukrainians-have-ropes-stunning-victory-sights/
Ukraine's cheerleaders are pre-emptively declaring victory.
>> No. 39249 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 11:43 am
39249 spacer
>>39248

If you actually look on the map, you'll see that the area the Ukrainian forces have reclaimed isn't all that big.

It's good that they're making progress, don't get me wrong. But as wars can go, you often have one side reclaiming territory from the other side, and vice versa.

Unless and until the Russians leave Ukraine entirely, with the exception of Crimea, there's no real point and no reason to declare victory just yet.
>> No. 39250 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 11:51 am
39250 spacer
>>39249

Having read the article it seems they're more excited about what's on the land they've taken and its strategic value than they are about simply taking ground.
>> No. 39251 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 12:14 pm
39251 spacer
>>39249
The area isn't large but they've retook a load of tactically important towns and cities in the Kharkiv region, what's more notable was there was very little fighting actually involved, Russian forces simply dropped their weapons and fled en masse, leaving behind pretty much the entire inventory of tanks artillery and shells that Russia has been stockpiling behind the front lines to fight this battle. And Ukraine has retook important towns that Russia was using as a hub for commander and for moving in supplies by rail.
The Ukrainian attack in the South was talked up for months but was a feint to distract from the Kharkiv region, but the Russian forces in Kherson are now effectively under siege as the bridges across the river back towards the South have been destroyed leaving their troops cut off from new supplies.
Also remember that a lot of the ground not yet reclaimed is simply empty fields and wilderness.
>> No. 39252 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 1:16 pm
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>>39248
This is what I meant by poor media literacy. You read a newspaper not fit to hold chips, act like it's scandalous it's full of hyperbole and start talking about "Ukraine's cheerleaders". You're the idiot, get a clue!
>> No. 39253 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 1:19 pm
39253 spacer
>>39252
Okay thanks for that Donald.
>> No. 39254 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 1:26 pm
39254 spacer
>>39253
What?
>> No. 39255 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 1:40 pm
39255 spacer
>>39252
Surely a cheerleader is a perfectly apt description of someone engaged in hyperbolic reporting in one side's favour? Isn't that the whole point of a cheerleader?
(Except so far as it's unfair to compare the talentless hacks of the British press to the far more difficult work of actual cheerleaders.)
>> No. 39256 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 2:29 pm
39256 spacer
>>39255
My guess is someone called him an idiot earlier in the thread and he hasn't gotten over it, so lashed out at the first thing he could read too much into.
>> No. 39257 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 2:38 pm
39257 spacer
Your guess is wrong, shit-for-brains.

>>39255
It's the broad strokes statement of "Ukraine's cheerleaders" that's jarring. Who's that? The Telegraph? The British print media? "The media"?
>> No. 39258 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 2:53 pm
39258 spacer
>>39257
No, I stand by it.
>> No. 39259 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 3:37 pm
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I saw on BBC News (which is on TV rather than printed, and therefore inherently more trustworthy) last night that the Ukrainians are feeling hugely encouraged by this, and that a lot of the success is believed to be down to the arrival of some sort of multiple missile-launcher vehicle that the Ukrainians have been asking for for months. The BBC correspondent also said they can't verify the images they were showing, because journalists have been banned from the frontlines now. They even also said that Ukraine is "very eager to win the media war", which sounds like bitterness to me from a TV journalist who wants to brag about how brave they are and isn't being allowed to.
>> No. 39260 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 6:56 pm
39260 spacer
>>39251

The little sketch maps in the papers are just wrong, because they don't mark the two crucial strategic factors in the current Ukrainian counteroffensive - the E40 highway and the Oskol river.

Izium was the centre of operations for Russian forces in the northeast. Taking it (and the Oskol crossings in Kupiansk and Dvoritchna) completely blocks the Russian forces in Luhansk and makes Kharkiv almost impossible to re-take. Trying to re-cross the Oskol might not even be possible for the Russians at this stage and any attempt would be incredibly costly for them.

The manner of the Russian defeat was striking, but this would have been a hugely significant advance even if the Russian forces had put up strong resistance. If Russia are now contemplating a counteroffensive in the north-east, their only options to advance are through a handful of very difficult bottlenecks that are completely dominated by Ukrainian artillery. Russia haven't lost this war, but they have definitively lost the ability to "win" in any meaningful sense.

The Ukrainians will have a much more difficult job if they intent to retake Donetsk and Luhansk, but the momentum has decisively changed.
>> No. 39261 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 8:13 pm
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62867560
>Ukraine's military says its forces have retaken over 3,000 sq km (1,158 sq miles) during a rapid counter-offensive in eastern Ukraine.
>The remarkable advance, if confirmed, means Kyiv's forces have tripled their stated gains in little over 48 hours.

>The BBC cannot verify the Ukrainian figures, and journalists have been denied access to the frontlines.
There's that caveat again. So there might be more that we're not hearing, most likely that Ukrainians are really massacring the fuckers who took their country from them.

>On Saturday, the eastern counter-attack saw Ukrainian troops enter the vital Russian-held supply towns of Izyum and Kupiansk.
>But UK defence officials have warned that fighting has continued outside those towns. And officials in Kyiv said Ukrainian forces were still fighting to gain control of a number of settlements around Izyum.
So it's not the free march to take everything back that Ukraine is claiming, at least not yet. Maybe that's why journalists aren't allowed in.

I was going to post a map from the article too, which shows Izyum not fully controlled, but I get an error when I try to post it.
>> No. 39263 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 8:30 pm
39263 spacer
>>39261
>Ukrainians are really massacring the fuckers who took their country from them
On the one hand, war crime. On the other, understandable.
>> No. 39264 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 8:36 pm
39264 spacer
>>39263
A war misdemeanour.
>> No. 39265 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 8:40 pm
39265 spacer
>>39263

Where do you read massacres or even war crimes into it?
>> No. 39266 Anonymous
11th September 2022
Sunday 10:36 pm
39266 spacer
>>39261

>There's that caveat again. So there might be more that we're not hearing, most likely that Ukrainians are really massacring the fuckers who took their country from them.

The current offensive was a surprise attack. Ukraine started with a push in the south, creating the appearance of a massive effort to take Kherson. They waited just long enough for the Russians to start redeploying their artillery, then started the actual attack in the north east. The piss-poor state of Russian command and logistics means that there's a lot of essential hardware that's just milling about uselessly, waiting to be sent somewhere by someone who isn't sure where to send it. The Russians don't have good access to satellite reconnaissance, so they've got a much less clear picture of the strength and location of Ukrainian forces.

In light of that, it seems fairly reasonable for the Ukrainians to keep the media in the dark. It's entirely possible that they're covering up for some shady shit, but there's also a perfectly reasonable explanation of military subterfuge. It's possible that the Ukrainian counterattack is currently much more thinly reinforced than they'd like, which would obviously undermine the psychological impact of their shock assault and potentially invite a quick counter-attack.
>> No. 39324 Anonymous
20th September 2022
Tuesday 10:00 pm
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Good news and bad news in recent Ukraine developments.

Firstly, Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Putin has had enough and wants to abandon this war: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62965993
>Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he believes Russia's leader is seeking an end to the war he began in Ukraine, and that a "significant step" will be made.
>He said his impression from recent talks with Vladimir Putin was that he wanted to "end this as soon as possible".
>In an interview with US broadcaster PBS, the Turkish leader said he gained the impression that the Russian president wanted a speedy end to the war.
>"He is actually showing me that he's willing to end this as soon as possible," Mr Erdogan said. "That was my impression, because the way things are going right now are quite problematic."

So that's nice. Except...
>Ukraine war: Occupied areas call urgent vote to join Russia
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62965998
>Four areas of Ukraine under Moscow's control have announced plans for urgent so-called referendums on joining Russia, which would pave the way for Russian annexation.
>Russian-backed officials in the east and south say they want votes on joining Russia starting this week.
>The international community has never recognised the Crimea annexation, but it has long been clear that Russia intends to rubber-stamp its takeover of other occupied regions in the same way.
>Annexing more Ukrainian territory would enable the Kremlin to claim Russia itself was coming under attack from Nato weapons.

So maybe we're all going to die.
>> No. 39325 Anonymous
20th September 2022
Tuesday 11:52 pm
39325 spacer
>>39324

>Annexing more Ukrainian territory would enable the Kremlin to claim Russia itself was coming under attack from Nato weapons.

>So maybe we're all going to die.

This has already happened, as Ukrainian forces have attacked Russian supplies on Russian soil with missiles. And it had few consequences.

It is going to kick things up a notch though if Putin declares the regions new Russian territory.
>> No. 39326 Anonymous
21st September 2022
Wednesday 7:57 am
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/sep/21/russia-ukraine-war-live-updates-blinken-calls-moscows-referendum-attempts-a-sham-zelenskiy-to-speak-at-un

>Russian president Vladimir Putin announces 'partial mobilisation' of Russia

>Putin said he would use “all means available to us” and that those who are trying to use nuclear blackmail against Russia will find the tables can be turned against them. He explicitly said “I’m not bluffing.”

ITZ. Nice knowing you lads.
>> No. 39327 Anonymous
21st September 2022
Wednesday 11:40 am
39327 spacer
>>39326
But nobody is using "nuclear blackmail" against Russia. Is he completely mental, or is this just one of those performative speeches that doesn't mean anything?

I will also really lose respect for the residents of the Donbass regions if after all this, they still support Russia. The votes will probably be rigged, of course, but it's mad to think that anyone would support them now.
>> No. 39328 Anonymous
21st September 2022
Wednesday 11:43 am
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https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/flights-out-russia-sell-out-after-putin-orders-partial-call-up-2022-09-21/

>Flights out of Russia sell out after Putin orders partial call-up
>> No. 39329 Anonymous
21st September 2022
Wednesday 11:45 am
39329 spacer
>>39327

>I will also really lose respect for the residents of the Donbass regions if after all this, they still support Russia. The votes will probably be rigged, of course, but it's mad to think that anyone would support them now.

The votes will be rigged either way, whether they support Russia or not. So it won't matter.
>> No. 39330 Anonymous
21st September 2022
Wednesday 12:30 pm
39330 spacer
>>39329
This. Putin is well aware of the classic legal maxim "Don't ask a question unless you already know the answer" and applies it thoroughly to politics at large.
>> No. 39331 Anonymous
21st September 2022
Wednesday 2:25 pm
39331 spacer
>>39327

>Is he completely mental, or is this just one of those performative speeches that doesn't mean anything?

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Putin understands the value of deterrence, he understands the value of being unpredictable and dangerous, but he's also isolated, paranoid and surrounded by yes-men. I don't think he wants to start a nuclear war, but I can see a lot of scenarios in which he feels that he doesn't have a choice.
>> No. 39332 Anonymous
21st September 2022
Wednesday 2:41 pm
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>>39331

The problem is that at some point, even if both blocs naturally don't want to see themselves annihilated by the enemy, it can spiral out of control. As wars do. At the beginning of WWI, I'm sure nobody in Germany or Austria-Hungaria envisioned a world war lasting four years that would cause never seen before bloodshed of industrial proportions. Germany's initial objective was to help the Austrians strike down Serbian separatists. And before long, everybody was at war with everybody.

Bluffing and nuclear deterrence may have worked for the most part during the Cold War to prevent an actual hot war, but it's still a dangerous proposition, because as we now know, there were a good dozen close calls during the Cold War that could have resulted in WWIII at a moment's notice.

So what will happen if Putin actually uses tactical nuclear weapons. Maybe a few low-yield devices in rural areas to disrupt the enemy's supply routes, with few civilian casualties. With Putin's goal being the conquest of Ukraine, I doubt he'll lay entire major cities to waste. What is going to be the West's response? To counter a nuclear strike with a nuclear strike would be an acknowledgement by the West that the nuclear threshold has been crossed. And then what. What's going to stop Putin from thinking, fuck it, we'll just go in all the way now.
>> No. 39333 Anonymous
21st September 2022
Wednesday 4:49 pm
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>>39332

The logic of Mutually Assured Destruction is fundamentally sound, but it breaks down totally if one side doesn't actually fear being obliterated. There is a non-zero possibility that Putin is in fact a suicidal lunatic who would choose nuclear armageddon over humiliation.


>> No. 39334 Anonymous
21st September 2022
Wednesday 5:17 pm
39334 spacer
>>39333

I think with Putin it's more like with Hitler. Putin has already said, what good would the world be without Russia. That's not that far removed from Hitler saying that if the German people couldn't fight off the allied troops, then they deserved to perish as a nation.

When push comes to shove, it's not entirely unlikely that Putin would rather die Hitler-style with a self-inflicted bullet in his head in an underground nuclear bunker outside Moscow than to retreat and admit defeat.
>> No. 39335 Anonymous
24th September 2022
Saturday 2:28 pm
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As we've already discussed in this thread, you have to understand Putin's mindset. Simply calling him things like "suicidal lunatic" doesn't grasp the gravity of the situation, it trivialises his motives, when in reality there's a terribly cold, rational logic behind it. It's just a mater of perspective.

What you have to understand is that in Putin's eyes, Russia has already been brought low by the west. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent balkanisation of the satellite states has been nothing less that Western humiliation that Russia has just had to sit there and take in front of the world, like a gimp having his bollocks trampled on a BDSM porn stream.

From where he's sitting, defeat just isn't something he's going to tolerate this time. He's completely willing to start a nuclear war; it's a last resort, but he's willing to do it if all the other options are exhausted. In his mind, it would be better to take the rest of the world with him than endure another humiliation. He's not mad, he just sees things as though he has nothing to lose- A world where Russia is reduced to just another submissive second-world bit part player is a world he simply has no concern for preserving. He's willing to burn it all down, because that vision of the world is the one thing which he holds the deepest, utmost contempt for.

I'm not so sure if mobilisation will exactly help Russia, their problems aren't problems that can be solved by simply throwing more meat into the grinder. But it's very concerning in terms of the overall trajectory of the war. We have to be very wary of the Ukranian effort to liberate their territory turning into a war of vengeance; because if it does, that's it. We are all fucked, and it doesn't matter what you think about the ethics of the situation. That will be it.

If I were to try be optimistic, if that word can be used in these circumstances, I would imagine the move to mobilisation is more likely an attempt to force Ukraine to the negotiating table on more favourable terms, and conclude the war before they lose any more of the territory gained early on (and before the conflict becomes such an obvious unmitigated disaster that it threatens to drag Putin's regime down with it). While it wouldn't be ideal for Ukraine to cede control of those territories, I think at this point, any opportunity to end the war before it spirals out of control should be seized with both hands.
>> No. 39336 Anonymous
24th September 2022
Saturday 3:18 pm
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>>39335

In that respect, Putin really isn't all that much unlike Hitler. Whose main grudge was that Germany had been humiliated by the Versailles Treaty after WWI and stripped of a good chunk of its domestic territory, as well as its colonies, few as they were, and its standing among the other European powers. He was evidently a bit more on the mental side still than Putin, but you see the similarities.

Ultimately, there isn't much wiggle room for Putin. Either he accepts defeat, which will mean Russia will for generations be declassed as a weak regional power, or he puts his foot down and at least goes home with the Donbass regions as his war trophy. With that now looking iffy as well, he's really an unstable autocrat with his back against the wall. Which isn't great when somebody has the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons at his fingertips.

The clincher is going to be whether the West decides to keep trying to reclaim the Donbas and the rest of eastern Ukraine even after Putin predictably declares it new Russian territory. Technically, it'll of course be illegal under international law and an annexation will be widely regarded as invalid. But that doesn't mean Putin won't call it an attack on Russia's sovereignty.

Probably the only way to prevent this would be to launch massive offensives against Russian troops in those regions before Russia formally manages to declare them as Russian. Then again, the way autocratic regimes work, all it takes is Putin's signature on a piece of paper, which he could do as early as next week.
>> No. 39337 Anonymous
24th September 2022
Saturday 8:55 pm
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>>39335

>In his mind, it would be better to take the rest of the world with him than endure another humiliation.

I'm pretty sure that qualifies you as a suicidal lunatic, on the same level as one of those blokes who takes their divorce really badly and drives off a cliff with their kids in the back seat. He's willing to risk global thermonuclear annihilation to preserve a Russia that only exists in his imagination, in a way that is hugely damaging to the actual Russia that exists in the world.

>I think at this point, any opportunity to end the war before it spirals out of control should be seized with both hands.

I think you're being naive to imagine that this war can be ended by diplomatic means; the Ukrainians certainly think so. Zelenskiy's address to the UN put forward the case that the only route out is tantamount to a total Russian surrender - treaty terms that permanently prevent Russia from pursuing military aggression.

From their perspective, anything less would simply be a postponement of the war, a pause for Russia to regroup and rearm. Letting Russia have Crimea didn't stop them from taking Donbas; letting them have Donbas won't stop them from trying to take Kyiv.

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polytics/3576941-zelenskys-address-at-un-general-assembly.html

Even now, when Russia talks about negotiations, it only wants to slow down its retreat. Russia wants to spend the winter on the occupied territory of Ukraine and prepare forces to attempt a new offensive. New Buchas, new Izyums... Or at least it wants to prepare fortifications on occupied land and carry out military mobilization at home.

We cannot agree to a delayed war. Because it will be even hotter than the war now.

>> No. 39338 Anonymous
24th September 2022
Saturday 9:37 pm
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>>39337

>I'm pretty sure that qualifies you as a suicidal lunatic

It doesn't though. It qualifies you as extremely unusual, but there's nothing unhinged or delusional about it. He just has priorities, desires and goals that are extremely different to you or I.

>I think you're being naive to imagine that this war can be ended by diplomatic means; the Ukrainians certainly think so. Zelenskiy's address to the UN put forward the case that the only route out is tantamount to a total Russian surrender - treaty terms that permanently prevent Russia from pursuing military aggression.

Which is why we shouldn't be listening to their side of it either, because that's never going to happen no matter which way you slice it. They can hope to end the invasion, and they can even hope to get the Russians off their territory, but if they want to hope for total unilateral disarmament of the country with the world's biggest nuclear arsenal, they may as well be asking for the moon on a stick.

They're willing to drive us all off the cliff for the same reason, to them it's an existential conflict. If they don't win outright, it will be a loss; but at some point we'll have to tell them to sit down and shut up and deal with it, because otherwise it's going to end up with the rest of the world being vaporised.

No matter how sympathetic you are to Ukraine, at some stage you have to draw the line and say look, it's very sad the Russians now have a few of your towns and villages, but you're just going to have to deal with it, because we're not ending the world as we fucking well know it over which corrupt government rules over a few eastern European peasants.

Harsh as it sounds, that's the reality of it here.
>> No. 39339 Anonymous
25th September 2022
Sunday 12:05 am
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>>39338

>Harsh as it sounds, that's the reality of it here.

I think you're fundamentally wrong, because I think there is no reason to believe that Putin will stop at Ukraine or stop at anything. I think there are two options here - the collapse of the Russian state or World War Three. Putin knows that he doesn't have the military capacity for a direct confrontation with NATO, hence the parallel strategy of nuclear blackmail and bite-and-hold. He is operating on the expectation that he can slowly nibble away at Eastern Europe until his troops are within artillery range of Berlin, always taking not quite enough in any one bite for NATO to believe that the risk of nuclear escalation is worth it. If you credit him with rationality, then you have to recognise that this strategy is the only logical course of action for Putin to take.
>> No. 39340 Anonymous
25th September 2022
Sunday 12:26 am
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>>39339

>I think there is no reason to believe that Putin will stop at Ukraine

I think you are fundamentally wrong, because he can't even manage to get through Ukraine's doorstep, let alone anywhere past it.

But he can definitely manage launching a fuck ton of nukes. This isn't 1939 and thinking about it in those terms is fundamentally unhelpful.
>> No. 39341 Anonymous
25th September 2022
Sunday 12:31 am
39341 spacer
>>39340

>But he can definitely manage launching a fuck ton of nukes


He still has a smaller but equally devastating fuck ton of NATO nukes pointed at him at the same time.

Even somebody with more than questionable sanity like him must know that.
>> No. 39342 Anonymous
25th September 2022
Sunday 12:33 am
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>>39340

I would also like to add, as I forgot to mention it in either of my previous posts, that the direct and overt threat of Russian aggression, which has been demonstrated to be real and valid, means that any conceivable peace treaty will almost certainly see Ukraine given a free pass to join NATO- Rendering them effectively immune to any future bullying.

It's not a bad trade off. Russia gets Donbass and that other place, allowing them to back down and pretend like it wasn't a humiliating defeat and complete waste of time that ended up handing the long-term strategic objective to their enemy, Ukraine gets the guarantee of protection it has wanted for so long, and we get to avoid nuclear annihilation of the planet Earth.

This is in every respect a proxy war, and the Russians have fucked it, but it's by far the most dangerous proxy war we've ever had, and we really ought to give them an out that doesn't involve nuking everything.
>> No. 39343 Anonymous
25th September 2022
Sunday 1:57 am
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>>39342

The people arguing that Putin wouldn't attack a NATO member are the same people who were arguing that the mass mobilisation on the border in 2021 was just a provocation. The people who were saying "duh, they're preparing an invasion" then are the people who are saying "duh, he's trying to start a world war" now.

How many more mass graves full of torture victims will we have to unearth before people realise that this is exactly what it looks like? Putin doesn't want Ukraine, he wants war. The goal is war and everything else is just a pretext.


>> No. 39344 Anonymous
25th September 2022
Sunday 12:34 pm
39344 spacer
>>39343

So... Shouldn't we all lie down with a paper bag on our heads, or something?
>> No. 39345 Anonymous
25th September 2022
Sunday 6:02 pm
39345 spacer
>>39344

Get some tickets to fly to the most remote island possible. Before everybody else does.

Nuclear winter will still probably kill you slowly wherever you are. Then again, some argue that it will actually make arid parts of Australia away from the scorched major cities more liveable.
>> No. 39346 Anonymous
25th September 2022
Sunday 6:06 pm
39346 spacer
>>39344


>> No. 39347 Anonymous
25th September 2022
Sunday 11:14 pm
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https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/polish-venue-cancels-roger-waters-gigs-after-ukraine-comments-2022-09-25/

>WARSAW, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Concerts by Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters were cancelled by a venue in the Polish city of Krakow, organisers said on Sunday, after the artist's comments on the war in Ukraine caused a storm of criticism.

>Waters had been due to appear in Krakow next April, but Polish media reports about an open letter he wrote to Ukraine's first lady Olena Zelenska urging her to ask her husband to choose "a different route" and criticising the West for supplying Ukraine with arms provoked a fierce backlash.

>Local councillors in Krakow had been due to vote on a resolution declaring Waters 'Persona non grata' on Wednesday.

>In a social media post, Waters said that it was not true that he or his management had cancelled the concerts and criticised local councillor Lukasz Wantuch over the vote to declare him unwelcome in the city.

>"Lukasz Wantuch has threatened to hold a meeting asking the council to declare me 'Persona non grata' because of my public efforts to encourage all involved in the disastrous war in Ukraine, especially the governments of the USA and Russia, to work towards a negotiated peace," Waters wrote in a post on Facebook.
>> No. 39348 Anonymous
25th September 2022
Sunday 11:43 pm
39348 spacer
>>39347

Bloody pacifists, trying to tell people war is bad, can you imagine such a thing. Bet he's an anti-Semite too.
>> No. 39349 Anonymous
25th September 2022
Sunday 11:48 pm
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>>39348
Wouldn't put it past him. He supported the notorious neo-nazi stalinist Jeremy Corbyn, after all.
>> No. 39350 Anonymous
25th September 2022
Sunday 11:55 pm
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>>39347

Why do musicians always have to take a political stance. Can't they just shut up off the stage and outside the recording studio.
>> No. 39351 Anonymous
26th September 2022
Monday 12:01 am
39351 spacer
>>39348

>Bet he's an anti-Semite too.

Probably, yes. Most contemporary pacifists are. "War is bad" is a perfectly reasonable perspective, but when you try to naively apply it as a blanket political stance, you must at some point reconcile the question of whether war is worse than the extermination of the Jewish people.

Some pacifists maintain the delusional belief that Hitler could have somehow been persuaded not to carry out the holocaust, but most end up allowing subconscious biases against Jewish people to resolve that cognitive dissonance. The same principle is applied to Israel - a very difficult set of moral and geopolitical questions is made very simple if you just deny that the Israeli people have the right to defend their territorial integrity or that the Jewish people have a right to a homeland. That train of thought is precisely what draws people like Ken Livingstone, Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway into anti-Semitic beliefs.

I assume that Roger Waters is probably a perfectly kind and generous person, but he is dangerously naive. He uses reasonable-sounding language about wanting to "work towards a negotiated peace", but his position isn't at all consistent with that. Without the Western arms that he think we shouldn't have supplied, there wouldn't be a Ukraine to negotiate that peace.

Pacifists are, ultimately, apologists for tyrants. The obvious contemporary example of that would be Aung San Suu Kyi. When faced with hard decisions, they choose the option that allows them to sleep at night over the option that is best for humanity. At best they are hopelessly naive about the realities of violence and at worst they have turned being an idle bystander into a moral virtue.
>> No. 39352 Anonymous
26th September 2022
Monday 12:40 am
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>>39351

Well, I mean, how many Jewish people are there? If the war to save the Jewish people from extermination would cost even a single extra life than simply allowing them to be exterminated, there's a rational case that allowing them to be exterminated is the lesser evil. To be absolutely clear I wouldn't make that case, but it is nevertheless rational.

The question you have to ask is what the objective of pacifism is. Is it the preservation of life? Or is it just the preservation of specific kinds of life, for specific reasons? At what cost? What cost is too high for the preservation of a life?

To be totally honest though I think stretching the definition of anti-semitism to encompass basically anything that doesn't agree with that specific kind of interventionist neo-con geopolitical worldview is both disingenuous and disrespectful in the extreme; especially hypocritically invoking the actual real life holocaust in defence of the actions of the Israeli state.
>> No. 39353 Anonymous
26th September 2022
Monday 12:41 am
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>>39351
> is made very simple if you just deny that the Israeli people have the right to defend their territorial integrity or that the Jewish people have a right to a homeland
Is that what they're calling occupying and annexing territories these days? Ironically Putin is using similar sort of arguments to justify invading Ukraine.

And didn't the Forde report exonerate Corby and his m8s from all the purported anti-semitism? Or do they still hate jews because they take issue with zionism?
>> No. 39354 Anonymous
26th September 2022
Monday 3:49 am
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>>39353

>Is that what they're calling occupying and annexing territories these days?

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are almost certainly illegal under international law, but the occupation of that land is wholly legal and recognised as such by the ICJ. If that sounds contradictory, it's because you haven't fully understood the history. Nearly all criticism of Israel from outside Israel is historically illiterate. Nearly everyone who calls themselves "pro-Palestinian" does not know what "Palestine" is. They don't know about the British mandate, they don't know about the Jordanian annexation, they don't know about the Oslo Accords.

Whose land did Israel occupy in 1967? Are you sure about your answer?
>> No. 39356 Anonymous
26th September 2022
Monday 9:33 am
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>>39354

So do you recognise the right of Putin to protect ethnic Russians from Ukranian fascists or not?
>> No. 39357 Anonymous
26th September 2022
Monday 9:52 am
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>>39354
It's amazing how people on the internet will claim to know exactly what other's don't know.
>> No. 39358 Anonymous
26th September 2022
Monday 11:03 am
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>>39354
>If that sounds contradictory, it's because you haven't fully understood the history.

Yeah I'm sure that's it m8.
>> No. 39361 Anonymous
26th September 2022
Monday 5:23 pm
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>>39356

Ethnic Russians in Ukraine neither needed nor wanted "protection from Ukrainian fascists" and that still wouldn't be lawful without a UN declaration. Apart from that, it's exactly like Israel's wholly legal engagement in the Six Day War.

>>39358

You can disagree, but you'd be factually wrong. The ICJ has recognised the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as lawful because it is lawful. The occupation is legal, the settlements are not; the settlements are an impediment to the ending of the occupation, but the problem of how the occupation can be ended still exists without the settlements.

Jordan relinquished their territorial claim to the West Bank in 1988, so are no longer a party to negotiations over the territorial status of it. The Oslo Accords were agreed by the PLO and set out a clear path to full Palestinian statehood with complete control over the West Bank, but the Palestinian National Authority are unwilling to abide by the terms of the Oslo Accords and are unwilling to renegotiate them. The option remains on the table, but they are unable to engage in that process because they have been unable to fully resolve the Fatah-Hamas dispute; the path to peace is blocked unless Hamas are prepared to invalidate the Khartoum resolution or unless Fatah are prepared to fully denounce Hamas. The Arab Peace Initiative is promising, but Israel cannot be expected to accept an agreement that grants Palestinian statehood but also invalidates Israel's right to control their own borders.
>> No. 39362 Anonymous
26th September 2022
Monday 7:24 pm
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>>39361
The complex and convoluted mental gymnastics that have to be performed to justify brutal oppression is quite something to behold.
>> No. 39363 Anonymous
26th September 2022
Monday 9:05 pm
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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-catastrophic-consequences-nuclear-weapons-ukraine-us-warns-rcna49365

>U.S. warns Russia of 'catastrophic' consequences if it uses nuclear weapons
>> No. 39364 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 9:47 am
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>>39363
Do we reckon it's actually going to happen before long lads?
Everything feels like it's collapsing tbh.
>> No. 39365 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 11:13 am
39365 spacer
>>39364
I hope not, I've got shit to do.
>> No. 39366 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 11:31 am
39366 spacer
>>39364
No. I think everyone is just joking around. So many people are doing so, though, that I do feel the need to point this out.
>> No. 39367 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 11:58 am
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>>39364

I read some kind of survival guide online a few years ago, when nuclear war seemed far less likely in the greater scheme of things, and it gave pointers on what to look out for to prepare for a nuclear war.

One of the things they said to keep an eye on was a worsening of relations between nuclear powers, and an aggressive shift of tone, accompanied by substantial troop movements to a geographical area where two or more nuclear powers would be staring each other down.

Granted, so far it's just a proxy war where the Ukrainians are fighting the Russians with NATO weaponry and equipment. But Putin has already said that he sees himself at war not just with Ukraine but with the whole West. That does not bode wel for what's to come.

And let's face it, the rhethoric on the news and in political debates at the moment is such that you'd actually be forgiven for thinking we're at war proper with Russia already.

So far in close to 80 years since the invention of nuclear weapons, we've had an almost entirely improbable concatenation of close calls and near misses that saved us from global annihilation even at the darkest times of the Cold War. It might serve as proof that when push came to shove, cooler heads always prevailed and will continue to do so. But it may just be a very dangerous assumption that all the threats and posturing will never have horrible consequences.

If you look at the Cuban Missile Crisis, in the end it was down to one Russian submarine commander's judgement whether they were already at war and had authority to shoot a tactical nuclear torpedo at the Americans. Which undoubtedly would have triggered a whole chain of events. It was only thanks to a two to one vote with his highest ranking officers on board that he decided not to fire. It's not entirely unthinkable that something similar could happen in Ukraine. That submarine incident may have been at a time when there was no satellite communication and they had no radio contact with Moscow. But it shows that a nuclear war might not start and be set off at the strategic level.
>> No. 39368 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 12:33 pm
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>>39367
Throw in the cloud flare incident of 1983 where ICBM launches turned on one guy needing to figure out that what the launch detection systems were showing was a false alarm.
>> No. 39369 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 1:27 pm
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>>39367


>> No. 39370 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 1:41 pm
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>>39364

There's a distinct and serious threat of it, yes.

Obviously I hope not, but this really is textbook exactly how it goes down in every piece of speculative fiction etc about the subject. It's exactly how most strategists and analysts have always warned, and the world's leaders are acting in a chillingly predictable and utterly psychopathic manner over it. Like they are reading from a script.

>>39366

I don't think Putin is joking around.
>> No. 39371 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 1:49 pm
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>>39368


That was Stanislav Petrov, on September 26, 1983, so just about 39 years ago.

Petrov himself had no power to authorise a nuclear strike, he was simply in charge of the nuclear early warning centre just outside Moscow that night, but whatever information he would have relayed up to the Soviet missile command probably could have caused them to launch what they would have thought was a retaliatory strike against NATO.

Enemy launch detection technology has probably improved massively in 40 years, but that doesn't mean there aren't flaws elsewhere in the system that were just never uncovered and which could be a ticking time bomb as tensions between Russia and NATO continue.

At the most basic level, any nuclear or conventional attack on NATO forces or member states, whether it's with a 5-megaton civilisation-ending hydrogen bomb or conventional weapons, automatically triggers Article 5. That still doesn't mean that NATO will retaliate in kind, but it gives NATO and its armed forces authority and discretion to launch armed counterattacks. And things could get nuclear from there very quickly. Most battlefield simulations of conventional armed skirmishes between Russia and NATO, in Ukraine or elsewhere, tend to come to the conclusion that those run-ins would inevitably lead to a nuclear exchange on the third day at the latest.

One of the reasons why NATO so far hasn't assumed an active combat role in Ukraine is that they're trying to tip toe around triggering Article 5 just by being there and taking a hit from Russian forces. The other is of course to not give Putin an outright reason to start attacking NATO as such.
>> No. 39372 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 2:42 pm
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>>39371
>At the most basic level, any nuclear or conventional attack on NATO forces or member states, whether it's with a 5-megaton civilisation-ending hydrogen bomb or conventional weapons, automatically triggers Article 5.
Kind of. The precedent is that the victim state needs to call in the help. After 9/11, the US called it in. During the war in Syria, Turkey was hit various times and faced actual incursion from Russian aircraft, but refused to invoke Article 5 each time.
>> No. 39373 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 3:18 pm
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So how's that Star Wars thing doing? Back in the 1980s, the least funny of the three Ronnies had a bunch of satellites that could stop nuclear attacks, supposedly. Now, Russian nuclear weapon technology has probably improved a little bit since then, but Western technology, and American technology especially, has improved unrecognisably. This adds to my confidence that we'll be fine.

Of course, that does raise the question: if someone tried to nuke us and failed, would that warrant a nuclear retaliation?
>> No. 39374 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 3:37 pm
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>>39373

Back in the 80s, intercepting nuclear ICBM warheads simply wasn't feasible. The technology and computing power just didn't exist to orchestrate an effective defence. It's not just that the Cold War ended and made it obsolete; it just couldn't be done.

We're probably much closer today to a system like that actually working, but weapons technology has improved as well, with both NATO and Russian ICBMs usually containing a number of decoy warheads which are difficult to tell apart from the real thing, especially given that you've only got a few minutes to shoot warheads out of the sky once they've been released from the missile's tip.

And then there's still the problem that even the most effective anti-ICBM defence system will have a failure rate. Some live warheads will slip through, and as strategic ICBMs usually contain high-yield thermonuclear devices, even a ten-percent failure rate could leave vital parts of your territory destroyed in the event of a full-scale strategic nuclear attack.

The problem with the new hypersonic missiles that Russia says it has, but which have also been tested by the Americans, is that reaction times are drastically reduced. It's a complete game changer, which completely throws the capabilities of current anti-ICBM system out the window.

So yeah, we're still fucked.
>> No. 39375 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 4:06 pm
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>>39371
This is why NATO makes the world less safe. If it wasn't for this treaty we could make the unilateral decision to send in our own military in support of Ukraine. The treaty was only ever about protecting the interests of the United States.
>> No. 39376 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 4:17 pm
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>>39375

> If it wasn't for this treaty we could make the unilateral decision to send in our own military in support of Ukraine

In that case, we would pretty much already be in WW3.

Being members of NATO on the one hand would make a real war between Russia and the West much more deadly and catastrophic. But it also keeps member states from declaring war against Russia unilaterally one by one. Which is how the other two world wars got started.
>> No. 39377 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 4:32 pm
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>>39376
Who said anything about declaring war? It would be a 'special military operation'.

Just like the Falklands. We could send those Russkis packing.
>> No. 39378 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 4:39 pm
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>>39377

>Who said anything about declaring war? It would be a 'special military operation'.


Well we're seeing how that's been working out for ARE Vlad.
>> No. 39379 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 4:40 pm
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>>39375

If it wasn't for this treaty, would we actually have any reason to care enough about Ukraine to do so?

But let's not circle back to that whole discussion, we'll only get zionist neo-con lad shitting the place up again.
>> No. 39381 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 4:57 pm
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>>39379
OK, to indulge your line of argument, why do we care about them joining NATO? Why not just let Russia take over the whole country and let the NATO border stop at Poland?
>> No. 39382 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 5:08 pm
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https://news.sky.com/story/kremlin-says-it-cant-rule-out-sabotage-after-mysterious-damage-to-russia-germany-gas-pipelines-prompts-warnings-12706208

>Undersea 'blasts' recorded at same time Russia-Germany gas pipelines damaged

>The Nord Stream pipeline network, part of which supplies Germany with gas from Russia, has been damaged in three places, its operator has said.

>The damage to the system on the bed of the Baltic Sea - all caused in one day - was "unprecedented", Nord Stream AG added.

>The Kremlin said it could not rule out sabotage as a cause of the damage, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov describing developments as "very concerning news".


It sounds a bit fishy, but we'll of course never know.

Putin didn't need to blow up the pipelines just to halt gas deliveries to Western Europe. He's already done that by shutting off Nord Stream 1. On the other hand, being the n-dimensional chess player that he is, who knows.

Then again, Germany, where both Nord Stream 1 and 2 come out of the Baltic Sea, has been highly dependent on Russian gas, which may have been one reason why they have been hesitant with their support for Ukraine. Not being able to get gas from the Russians anymore now because the pipelines are destroyed rids Russia of a potential bargaining chip and could get Germany to toe the line more.
>> No. 39383 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 5:48 pm
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>>39381

Well, that's essentially what I'm asking. I didn't really have a "line of argument".

From what I've seen, perspectives range from "NATO is a 100% genuine peaceful and purely defensive alliance and nothing more, so anyone who wants to join it should be welcome" to "the previous take is just the cover story, in reality NATO is a defacto imperialist confederation that serves the goals of United States/neo-British Empire/EU Fourth Reich foreign policy". I don't think I would personally go quite so far as the second one, but I know for sure I don't buy the first one.

It seems to me that any discussion of ethics or morality is irrelevant, and appeals to those things when discussion the subject are deflection, because it's all geopolitical realpolitik. There's two big power blocs next door to each other, they're always going to conflict. Russia is always going to try influence it's neighbours and use its power to secure resources or whatever in foreign countries, just like we (ie the US, UK and EU) do. So no matter where you draw the border between them, there's always going to be something like this over any country caught in the middle, because both powers are going to want it to be under their influence, not the other one's.

This is a very "muh both sides" thing I am aware, but I can't bring myself to get enthusiastic about it when it threatens to bring us within a pube's width of nuclear war.

You know that bird shouting LEAVE IT AHT KEV, 'EE AINT WURF IT on a night out? Sometimes she's the voice of reason.
>> No. 39384 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 6:29 pm
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>>39383

>There's two big power blocs next door to each other, they're always going to conflict.

Not entirely untrue, because that's what power blocs have done since the dawn of history. But you can't just shrug at it like that when it's two nuclear powers that could potentially wipe each other out, and all the world's innocent bystanders with them.

I've always been ambivalent towards NATO. On the one hand, they probably protected us and the rest of the Western world from the Soviets, at a time when Stalin in particular left no doubt about Soviet aspirations. Just look at how Moscow installed communist puppet governments in over half a dozen countries of the Warsaw Pact. The founding of NATO in 1949 was in part a direct response to Soviet expansionism following WWII. Or as NATO's first secretary general said, NATO was there to keep the Soviets out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.

On the other hand, you can't completely deny that NATO, to a noticeable extent, has been the military arm of U.S. foreign policy, which in turn sought to expand its own sphere of influence. NATO's eastern expansion in the 2000s wasn't just the result of those former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact satellite states being afraid of an increasingly unstable Russian leadership and wanting to ensure they wouldn't be invaded again. It also expanded the Americans' sphere of influence over Europe while at the same time diminishing that of the Russians.

Probably the best thing after the Cold War would have been to leave a continuous corridor of politically neutral countries between NATO and Russia, from Poland down to the Black Sea, and put it down in writing, with all the signatures of heads of state. Putin has often argued that Russia was promised something like it, in any case no eastern expansion of NATO, and that the West broke that promise because it wasn't codified anywhere.

On the other hand, it doesn't mean Putin never would have become the expansionist that he is today. It probably even would have made it easier for him to reclaim smaller countries like the Baltic states. We've seen what he is capable of in places like Georgia.
>> No. 39385 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 7:33 pm
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>>39381

From what I can ascertain, Russia don't want Ukraine to join because then there's a NATO country right on their doorstep. They'd rather annexe Ukraine, and share a border with Poland, a NATO country.
>> No. 39386 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 7:49 pm
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>>39384

Well, that's what I'm getting at- There's no comfortable compromise because essentially, Ukraine is a minature version of the neutral buffer zone you're describing, and that's why we're in this mess. We never wanted to take it into NATO because Russia always told us that would be seen as crossing the line; but we tried to have our cake and eat it by bringing it into our sphere without the NATO membership. Which is the only reason Putin felt confident enough he could get away with invading it (as opposed to just fucking around and subverting the place's democracy with spies and bribes and the like as we have responsibly restricted ourselves to.)

So inevitably, we would probably have ended up in much the same situation; there would be under the table gaming and election rigging and what have you to influence the neutral countries until one side or the other says "well fuck all this" and sends the army in. Either way the end game would be a situation where the borders of the two blocs are pressed tight up against one another, just less officially.

There's no way out of it by strategy and brinksmanship, at some point one side or the other has to be the bigger man and say "fine, we won't fight over this." That's the only way it can possibly not be a conflict. So I suppose I'm coming to the conclusion that yeah, fuck it, we should have just let Russia have Ukraine, it's not as if NATO isn't already strong enough. It's not like Russia plus Ukraine would suddenly be an overwhelming existential threat (in conventional military terms, I mean) to the NATO members of Western Europe. Strategically, we were pushing our luck with Ukraine, and none of this need have happened if we just let them fall into line with Belarus and Maldova, and it wouldn't make any meaningful difference to the lives of ordinary people.

Things would probably be better if instead of NATO, there had just been a pan-European alliance instead. That alliance could then be mates with America, but not beholden to it like the EU basically is now.
>> No. 39387 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 7:55 pm
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>>39385

They've not been doing well trying to keep their borders short with NATO countries though, with Finland now joining, and thus increasing Russia's land border with NATO by 800 miles.

The end of things in Ukraine is probably going to be that eastern Ukraine gets incorporated into Russia and the rest of Ukraine becomes a full NATO member, after formally and grudgingly giving up territory. Ukraine has said it will never accept the outcome of the sham referendums, as well they should, but Russia has de facto military control over those regions, and once Putin has signed the papers declaring the Donbas a part of Russia, the West nolens volens cannot realistically attempt to reclaim it forcefully without triggering a massive Russian response, possibly involving nuclear weapons.

Ukraine will then get permanently armed to the teeth with NATO personnel and equipment. Which won't be great for regional and global security. But a stalemate like that could preserve a status quo where Ukraine can return to normality and the Russians will know that any future attack on what remains of Ukraine will be absolutely deadly. It'll be a bit like the 38th Parallel between North and South Korea or the Inner German Border.
>> No. 39388 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 7:59 pm
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Russian State Duma Member Andrey Gurulev: We Shouldn't Nuke Ukraine Because We Still Need To Live There, But We Can Nuke Berlin And Turn Britain Into A Martian Wasteland In Just Three Minutes

Russian State Duma member Andrey Gurulev said in a September 18, 2022 interview on the state-run Russia-1 TV that Russia shouldn't launch a nuclear attack against Ukraine because "we still have to live there". Instead, he said that Russia should strike Germany and Britain with nuclear weapons. He also said that it would be useless for NATO to invoke Article 5, as U.S. President Biden has suggested, if Russia turns the British Isles into a "Martian wasteland" in three minutes. In addition, he said that Russia should not be worried about NATO retaliation and that only an offensive attack can grant Russian victory.


https://www.memri.org/reports/russian-state-duma-member-andrey-gurulev-we-shouldnt-nuke-ukraine-because-we-still-need-live
>> No. 39389 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 8:08 pm
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>>39388

They'll shit on their own kebab with that though, because prevailing westerly winds will carry all the fallout into Russia from multiple directions across Europe.
>> No. 39390 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 8:45 pm
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>>39388
Something about the tone of that quote reminds me of whichever of Saddam's adviser's kept going on the radio to boast about how they were winning when they really weren't. Am I being naively hopeful here? It's not like they don't have a history of talking shit their military can't back up.
>> No. 39391 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 9:05 pm
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>>39387
>It'll be a bit like the 38th Parallel between North and South Korea or the Inner German Border.
I don't believe the 38th Parallel touches the Inner German Border.
>> No. 39392 Anonymous
27th September 2022
Tuesday 10:36 pm
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>>39391

>I don't believe the 38th Parallel touches the Inner German Border.

I went to a German border museum a few years ago, they've got a few of those along the former border, and going by the old pictures they had there, it really wasn't that dissimilar to the way the Korean border still looks today. Granted, the German border looked a bit more Bauhaus minimalist, but no less forbidding. They even had thousands of watchtowers within sight of each other down the whole length of the border, and what they told us were close to a million land mines buried in the ground, a few thousand of which are still unaccounted for today. Add to that tens of thousands of spring guns that the fences themselves were armed with in case you still managed to get near them. And you were not allowed within a five-kilometre restriction zone on the East German side unless you lived in one of the villages there or were visiting somebody, for which you needed a permit from authorities each time.

So yeah, they were pretty hardcore about not letting anybody out. Give a German a job, and he'll do it to a fucking T.
>> No. 39393 Anonymous
28th September 2022
Wednesday 12:48 am
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>>39390

I mean it's true they could turn the UK into a total wasteland, but it doesn't matter how quickly they can do it when our nuclear arsenal isn't even based in the country. It's been floating about the Baltic sea aimed squarely at Moscow all year long.

This geezer will certainly be aware of that, unless he's especially thick and full of shit.
>> No. 39394 Anonymous
28th September 2022
Wednesday 2:44 am
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Wait. Why are we in this fight again? Is this another form of European great powers and shite like that from before the world wars?

Will... Will there be a Napoleon or Hitler in my lifetime soon? Did joining the army grant any special shite back in the day? If it happens now, will I get anything good? Like a house?

If not... I don't know lads.
>> No. 39395 Anonymous
28th September 2022
Wednesday 7:44 am
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>>39394
Because the Ruskies never quite learned to be happy with their lot.
>> No. 39396 Anonymous
28th September 2022
Wednesday 11:16 am
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>>39395

Neither did the Americans, but oh well. Let's leave it at that.
>> No. 39397 Anonymous
28th September 2022
Wednesday 4:40 pm
39397 spacer
https://news.sky.com/story/whats-happening-on-russias-borders-as-russians-flee-the-country-over-mobilisation-for-the-ukraine-war-and-where-is-it-happening-12705812

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-28/russians-fleeing-putin-s-draft-stir-fears-in-worried-neighbors?utm_source=google&utm_medium=bd&cmpId=google&leadSource=uverify%20wall


I wonder if all those Russians fleeing the country to escape conscription is a good thing. I mean, you don't have to convince anybody that most people don't want to be blown to bits in an unpopular war if there's any chance they can avoid it, but in the end, it could mean that many of the dissenters will be gone, and only those that support Putin will remain. It could diminish the chances of a widespread people's revolt in Russia, or even a noteworthy opposition movement.
>> No. 39398 Anonymous
28th September 2022
Wednesday 5:40 pm
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>>39397
I'm willing to speculate that the people fleeing are the sort of smug tossers who have jobs in web development and corporate wankery, who might be annoying but are absolutely right and will be Russia's equivalent of me. So we wouldn't want to read their tweets, but they are the backbone of the Russian economy and the country will be massively worse off without them. You know the sort. Over here, they are Remoaners and lefties, the beating heart of every educated professional industry. If Russia loses that demographic, then yes, it will be 100% Daily Mail types left, but I would still say that's a good thing if we want to cripple their country.
>> No. 39399 Anonymous
28th September 2022
Wednesday 5:42 pm
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>>39397

>I wonder if all those Russians fleeing the country to escape conscription is a good thing.

I can't think of any historical examples where the sensible people fleeing was the start of something good.
>> No. 39400 Anonymous
28th September 2022
Wednesday 5:49 pm
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>>39398

>If Russia loses that demographic, then yes, it will be 100% Daily Mail types left, but I would still say that's a good thing if we want to cripple their country.

The risk is that a Russia with little or no capacity to engage with global markets will by default move towards total war. North Korea is desperately poor, it's under one of the strictest sanctions regimes in history, it is led under the principle of economic self-reliance, but it still has the military resources to hold half of East Asia to ransom. You can build a lot of bombs if you don't mind keeping your own population on the brink of starvation.
>> No. 39401 Anonymous
28th September 2022
Wednesday 6:04 pm
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>>39398

It would probably be worth keeping in mind that, as a far less liberal country than us in almost every single respect, you have to recalibrate your assessment. If the people fleeing are the equivalent of our smug Guardian reading quinoa eaters, they're probably still right wing, and everyone that's left is the type of person who wouldn't mind seeing gays rounded up and shot.

As someone (me) brought up earlier in the thread it's going to be the same situation as when we took out Saddam, Gadaffi, the Taliban, the attempt to oust Assad, and on and on- Someone unquestionably worse fills the void, and no matter how much our media tries to assure us that Putin is literally Satan and Hitler fused into one being, there is always someone worse.

Now, I'm not trying to be one of those whingy moany lefties who hates everything about the West, in fact quite the opposite, I'm one of the ones who thinks the present left could do with a shot in the arm of what you might call patriotism; but the fact is the people in charge are making a colossal pig's ear of absolutely fucking everything lately. For the last two decades they have made nothing but disastrous decisions that always come back to bite us in the arse.

It's like they are deliberately trying to sink the ship that is western prosperity and hegemony, without which the world would undoubtedly be a more dangerous, cut throat place.
>> No. 39402 Anonymous
28th September 2022
Wednesday 6:06 pm
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>>39398

>If Russia loses that demographic, then yes, it will be 100% Daily Mail types left

In their case probably RT readers.

On the other hand, maybe the draft dodgers are really just the tip of the iceberg. Putin may have sky high official approval ratings, at least going by web sites like statista:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-rating-russia/

But then again, their method appears to be face to face interviews, which is bound to be problematic in a country that flat out attempts to murder prominent dissidents. It'll produce loads of social desirability bias even on a good day.

So maybe there's secretly much greater opposition against Putin than opinion polls are able to convey.
>> No. 39403 Anonymous
28th September 2022
Wednesday 6:28 pm
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>>39402
Pretty certain the entirety of Russia is run like the Ukrainian referendums tbh.
>> No. 39404 Anonymous
28th September 2022
Wednesday 9:52 pm
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>>39403

It's a blatant sign of a Mad Autocrat when the voter turnout / results are claimed to be >90%. As if someone in the official Press Gang actually believes that this is a big bollocks move, and not at all dubious to anyone beyond their sphere of influence.
>> No. 39405 Anonymous
28th September 2022
Wednesday 10:30 pm
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>>39404
If you don't meet one of the following conditions:
- Compulsory voting
- Fewer than 1000 eligible voters
- Being North Korea
then you didn't actually get the 95% turnout or support that you claimed.
>> No. 39406 Anonymous
28th September 2022
Wednesday 10:34 pm
39406 spacer
>>39401

There is such a thing as dissent drain, and in its own way it's probably even worse than brain drain.

When public opinion towards Fidel Castro became unstable in Cuba in the early 1980s, to the point that there were street riots and protest rallies demanding his resignation, he allowed a large number of his people to flee to Florida in what became known as the Mariel Boatlift. Castro calculated that allowing a significant portion of people who were fed up with the system to leave the country would restabilise support for him. And it worked. They left the country in droves, and public unrest began to quiet down. As a side note, he also took the opportunity to release Cuba's worst criminals from prison on condition that they would also leave, which led to a massive increase in organised crime in South Florida in the early 80s.

A lot of Communist Bloc countries in Eastern Europe did the same thing for a long time, often trading figurehead protest leaders either for hard currency or for arrested Warsaw Pact spies.

What's a big unknown is how big dissent really is in Russia at the moment, and especially tacit dissent. Once a critical mass of people engage in open dissent, those that were so far quietly against the system will often join protests if they feel it's beginning to be safe to do so, without having to fear repercussions in their daily lives. That critical mass materialised in the peaceful revolutions in 1989 in Eastern Europe.

On the other hand, it's difficult to get your hopes up if you see Putin's entourage and Russia itself as a fascist regime and a fascist state. Which you'll icreasingly have trouble denying. If you look at the way that state television has been openly banging the war drum for months, to the point that they're even saying Russia should nuke western European cities, without being challenged, then you can't help feeling reminded of Joseph Goebbels and his Total War speech. It is possible to get tens of millions of people so deluded that they'll be cheering for total annihilation. It happened in Germany. And it can happen again.
>> No. 39407 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 3:51 pm
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Russia annexes 4 regions, Ukraine applies for accelerated admission to NATO.

Lads.
>> No. 39408 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 3:55 pm
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>>39407
It's been nice knowing you two.
>> No. 39409 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 3:58 pm
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>>39407
I've got a better odds of getting Lily James' phone number than Ukraine does of joining NATO.
>> No. 39410 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 5:07 pm
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>>39407

It's an okay idea actually. Defacto stalemate. Vlad gets his sliver of territory, paid for in blood. Ukraine gets its membership. Neither side can any longer afford to make any moves on the other. There won't be a formal peace treaty, but it would essentially end the war.
>> No. 39411 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 5:19 pm
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>>39408
It's been shite knowing you.
>> No. 39412 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 6:09 pm
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>>39407

Isn't there something in the NATO statutes that states can't become members if they are mixed up in unresolved territorial disputes?

Ukraine would have to concede the annexed regions to Russia first, which would mean Selensky would have to go back on his word to liberate them. Which would cause its own set of problems.
>> No. 39413 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 6:22 pm
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>>39412

He has to anyway. If they are now Russian soil in Russian eyes (regardless how much of a fix it is, the UN can't set the precedent of just ignoring self determination), he can't go into them with NATO arms and support. He's been allowed to run his mouth a lot up til now, but the Yanks will pull firmly on his leash to make sure he doesn't give Putin anything that can be construed as a direct NATO attack on Russia.
>> No. 39414 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 6:45 pm
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>>39413
Pretty much this.
A bit more saber rattling, then some sort of scheme to let anyone who wants to leave the new Russian areas and return to Ukraine.
Vauge promises of one day reclaiming them etc.
>> No. 39415 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 6:46 pm
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>>39413
>the UN can't set the precedent of just ignoring self determination
It isn't "self determination" if the Kremlin does the determining for you.
>> No. 39416 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 6:52 pm
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>>39413

So we're essentially in for an Iron Curtain 2.0. With the demarkation line this time not between East and West Germany, but between West Ukraine and East Ukraine. With two militaries staring each other down, armed to the teeth and with all the other pissing contests and poo throwing.

Well, good fences make good neighbours. Still better than Putin throwing the ultimate autocrat hissy fit and nuking the entire West.
>> No. 39417 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 7:11 pm
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>>39415

You're not wrong, but we like to turn a blind eye to that principle when it suits us, so I doubt we're going to pick a fight over it. We'll just firmly refuse to recognise it in official terms, but nevertheless respect it in reality.

Putin is asking for peace talks, the speculation that he did it to look for an exit ramp would appear correct. You can understand and sympathise with Ukraine's willingness to keep up the fight and win properly, they have done a quite spectacular job, but don't be too surprised to see those ambitions shot down when the adults step in and say "that's enough now children."

Ukraine is basically Ryan Gosling's character in Blade Runner 2049 come to think of it.
>> No. 39418 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 7:17 pm
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>>39413

The Yanks want Ukraine in NATO, because they recognise what's actually happening - this isn't a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, it's a proxy conflict between Russia and NATO. Article 5 will come into play sooner rather than later, so we might as well let Ukraine in and get it over with. France and Germany will be the main force opposing Ukraine's membership, but even Germany might be persuaded after the Nord Stream sabotage. Macron is pretty much the only major player who seriously believes that tolerating the annexation might be the best option for NATO; everyone else is fairly clear that the threat posed by Russia will only continue to escalate until Putin is out of the picture.

The factor that isn't being discussed in the Western media is the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, which was rekindled earlier this month after nearly two years of ceasefire. The Armenians are fighting mainly with Russian equipment and there is clear evidence that Wagner operatives were active in the 2020 conflict; the involvement of Iran and Turkey seriously threatens to destabilise the region. The conflict is totally unmanageable for NATO, who cannot possibly overtly support Azerbaijan but don't want to see an expansion of Russian influence. The cherry on the cake is allegations that Turkey have been mobilising Syrian jihadists in the conflict.
>> No. 39419 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 7:20 pm
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>>39417

>Putin is asking for peace talks

It's a sham and everyone knows it. He's asking for peace talks, but only on terms that would legitimise the annexation without committing him to de-escalation. He isn't looking for an exit route, he's looking to consolidate his gains. The Ukrainians won't be fooled again, because they saw what happened last time with the Minsk agreements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements
>> No. 39420 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 7:29 pm
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>>39418

That's supports the argument. The US and friends want Ukraine in NATO, and if Ukraine can't attack "Russian" territory with NATO gear then it double certainly can't attack Russian territory as a NATO member. Ukraine will have to cede control of those regions because at the end of the day, they're actually not massively important. The important part is getting them in NATO, and this provides a perfect opportunity to do so. They will be strong armed into it; they're foolish if they think they really have a say in the matter.

The whole object of the war, from both sides, has really been to secure what terms the new arrangement will look like, and Russia drastically overplayed its hand. They're on the back foot and we would be mad not to press the advantage, but perhaps most importantly at this point, stop our economies from hemorrhaging completely. Europe is struggling with currency devaluation right now, but the Yanks are going to have their own problems with an overvalued dollar before long.
>> No. 39421 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 7:45 pm
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Imagen2-1.jpg
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>>39420

>Ukraine will have to cede control of those regions because at the end of the day, they're actually not massively important.

As for which bits are, pic related.
>> No. 39422 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 7:56 pm
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>>39418

>but even Germany might be persuaded after the Nord Stream sabotage

Am I still alone in thinking that maybe that wasn't the Russians, but perhaps the CIA or some other NATO state foreign intelligence?

Think about it. Germany was still allowing itself to be at the whim of Russia exporting or not exporting natural gas to them. It was a bargaining chip that Putin had against the Germans as one of the more significant NATO countries. So why would Putin have had Nord Stream blown up. It's not even the hard currency that the gas was earning the Russian government, but it was one way he could divide the West. The CIA or whoever else in the West had much more to gain from blowing it up, and they can still blame it on Putin, because of course he did it, what do you think.
>> No. 39423 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 8:21 pm
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>>39422

I think far more people think that than think it was the Russians, the Russians simply have no motive. They could just turn it off. Why blow it up?

It's pretty transparent even for the Yanks, so if it was them it was an overt display of cuckolding Germany in front of the world. Unless it really WAS Russia, with another one of the n-dimensional false flags to make it LOOK like that.

That said, my outside bet is Poland. They've got the only pipeline left now, so they'd do very well out of it.
>> No. 39424 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 8:29 pm
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>>39422

>So why would Putin have had Nord Stream blown up.

From 2014:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/to-understand-putin-read-orwell-110551/

The goal of the war with Ukraine is war.
>> No. 39425 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 8:31 pm
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>>39423

>I think far more people think that than think it was the Russians, the Russians simply have no motive. They could just turn it off. Why blow it up?

The Russians have no motive. Putin has an obvious motive if we consider the possibility that backing down from this conflict would deal a fatal blow to his strongman leadership.
>> No. 39426 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 8:57 pm
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>>39424

No, the goal of the war with Ukraine is rare earth minerals, with which the Russian Federation could continue to be a resource economy after the gas dries up, by extracting and selling the vital raw materials everyone will need in the coming decades to convert over to electric cars and green power and so on. Likewise, this is also the western goal of the war in Ukraine; we were just aiming to achieve it by covert operations and electoral interference and such, instead of with tanks and bombs.

This is why the annexations are not "consolidating gains", because as it stands, they really haven't gained anything of value. All the stuff they wanted is in the heartland of the country, and we've still got it. It's an attempt to save face and back off without admitting defeat. Giving away the eastern fringes as a bargaining chip to force Putin to accept Ukrainian NATO membership and eventually, therefore, EU membership is actually a pretty solid strategic victory for Oceania, and in Airstrip One I even daresay chocoration would go up as a result. Doubleplusgood, comrade.
>> No. 39427 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 11:01 pm
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>>39426

>No, the goal of the war with Ukraine is rare earth minerals, with which the Russian Federation could continue to be a resource economy after the gas dries up

Nice theory, but it's complete nonsense. Ukraine's rare earth mineral reserves represent less than 0.1% of Russia's total reserves. Russia exports more lithium oxide in a year than Ukraine has in the ground.

Russia has the fourth largest reserves of rare earth minerals in the world, but ranks a distant eighth in production. They were trying to increase rare earth production, but it has gone out of the window because of the war - they can't import enough mining equipment and large parts of their exports have been shut off due to sanctions.
>> No. 39428 Anonymous
30th September 2022
Friday 11:10 pm
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>>39427

That's not the point. It isn't about needing more, it's about taking it away from us.
>> No. 39429 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 12:02 am
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>>39428

It isn't "ours" and it isn't anywhere near enough to justify the costs of this war - not the financial costs and certainly not the reputational costs. If Russia were planning on starting some kind of OPEC-esque cartel, they'll have to deal with Brazil, Vietnam, China and India. This whole affair hasn't exactly boosted Russia's reputation as a reliable ally or trading partner.

Also, we (as in Europe and the broader NATO alliance) only directly import trivial quantities of rare earths. The overwhelming majority of our imports are in the form of finished or semi-finished products from countries that still have large manufacturing industries. If a shipload of rare earth minerals turned up at a British port, we wouldn't know what to do with it - we'd send it off to China, Japan or South Korea.

Rare earth minerals are not "the new oil", as is often suggested. They are (relatively) rare, but they're needed in very small quantities as part of extremely specialised manufacturing processes rather than in large quantities at the point of use. They're also infinitely recyclable; we expect recycled rare earths to represent a majority of the market by 2040. The oil market would look very different if you only needed to put petrol in your car once and all of it could be recovered when your car is scrapped.

If Russia have invaded Ukraine for rare earths, then the war was even more pointless than we thought and Putin is unimaginably stupid. I think he's a murderous megalomaniac, but I don't think he's a complete moron.
>> No. 39430 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 12:49 am
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>>39429

You are too committed to the idea of Putin being a comic book villain bent on world domination to contemplate any rational motivations or outcomes. I will grant you, there exists a not insignificant chance you're right. But be honest, it's just that if you are, it's too boring and pointless to bother talking about any of it. We may as well just launch the nukes now and have done with it if that really is the case, spare everyone the bother.

I just don't believe in villains like that, honestly. Not even Hitler was that kind of senselessly and pointlessly evil. Even in the full extent of Nazi depravity and genocide, there were concrete, material, geopolitical motives. The only people, historically, who insist on such a reductive analysis of events and figures are propagandists. There's usually much more complexity to the truth.

We don't make a great use of rare earth yet, but we are going to need them, and lots of them, going forward. The scale of the transition cannot be understated. The urgency to get off fossil fuels necessitates it, and with the ongoing ripple effects on supply chains, all the major players are questioning their reliance on global supply lines. Globalisation itself is starting to show cracks at the seams. Europe has learned the lesson first hand in the past year that if you are reliant on somebody else for something you need, you are liable to get fucked over.

Nobody is talking about "justifying" this war, very little about any war is just. We are talking about power, here, and the methods of gaining it. If you think it's implausible and stupid that Putin is motivated by strategically seizing a major source of raw materials Europe would otherwise have on its doorstep, and thus the power that comes with it, but instead think it makes perfect sense that he's motivated to do it out of, what... Soviet nostalgia? Pure Darth Vader will to dominate? That's kind of self contradictory.

Putin wants Ukraine because it would make Russia, and therefore him, more powerful. That's the same reason we want it. The resources and strategic location of the country are all part of that. There can be no such thing as a neutral Ukraine, free from the influence of Russia or the West. It's one or the other. All this is about whether it's with us or them.

If Putin wanted a pointless war for war's sake like Goldstein's book describes, he wouldn't have chosen Ukraine to start it in.
>> No. 39431 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 1:07 am
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>>39430
I’ve been watching you and otherlad have this back and forth for a while, and I can’t help but conclude that you’re the most unbearable kind of low-rent rhetorician. You keep accusing him of things he’s not even come close to saying, it’s really quite grating.
>> No. 39432 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 1:13 am
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>>39431

Fair enough. But when it all ends the way I said it would I'm going to be a proper smug prick about it.
>> No. 39433 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 1:53 am
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>>39430

>You are too committed to the idea of Putin being a comic book villain bent on world domination to contemplate any rational motivations or outcomes.

His motivation is perfectly rational, it's just entirely about domestic politics. He may have believed that invading Ukraine was genuinely going to be piss easy, he may not have done, but it's essentially academic. The easy victory vindicates his status as a strongman; the long war turns Russia into a wartime economy, with all of the centralisation of control that entails.

You're making the mistake of believing that Putin must be acting rationally in the interests of Russia. Russia has nothing to gain from this invasion, but Putin does.

>We don't make a great use of rare earth yet...

You're still not getting it. Ukraine's reserves of rare earth minerals are completely negligible in global terms. Russia has dozens of seams that individually contain more rare earths than the whole of Ukraine, many of which are completely undeveloped. Russia spent more on this invasion before the first shot was fired than those minerals are worth in total. The idea of Russia invading Ukraine for rare earth minerals is as ludicrous as Saudi Arabia invading Britain for oil.

Putin doesn't particularly care about Ukraine. If he gets it, he's the mighty leader that is re-uniting the Soviet Union. If he doesn't get it, he's the mighty leader defending Russia against the evil imperialist plot. He'd prefer the first option, but either way he has the opportunity to tighten his grip on power and weaken his opponents. The Ukraine that Putin has chosen to invade is purely symbolic; the real Ukraine is essentially irrelevant.

The general mobilisation serves no real military purpose, everyone knows that more poorly-trained, poorly-equipped and totally unmotivated soldiers won't turn the tide, but it serves Putin's aims very nicely. Every young man in Russia is being presented with a test of loyalty - turn up at an enlistment centre in the knowledge that you might be sent to die for Putin's war, be branded a traitor and a coward for the rest of your life, or leave the country. The deaths of so many capable military leaders isn't a strategic blunder, it's entirely intentional; Putin is acutely aware that the majority of dictatorships are ended by military coup and is keen to ensure that his military is led primarily by naive and compliant desk jockeys.

Putin isn't a comic book villain, he's a bog-standard totalitarian leader. There's no hidden economic or geopolitical logic; In those terms, this war is entirely as stupid and self-destructive as it appears at first, second and third glance. Putin isn't trashing Russia's economy and international reputation for a few crumbs of some minerals that Russia already has in abundance on the basis that at some point they might be worth a fraction of a percent of what this war has cost so far. The rationale is entirely based on domestic political concerns.

Precisely because of those domestic political concerns, this war is unlikely to end soon.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/how-the-war-in-ukraine-might-end
>> No. 39434 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 2:37 am
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>>39433

The thing that doesn't make sense to me about that explanation is that Putin didn't exactly have any worries about losing or needing to consolidate his domestic power before. He was (still is, from what I understand, despite growing anger) extremely popular. His generals and commanders etc were all, as has been pointedly discussed in this thread, already servile yes men.

He's only created problems by starting a war he couldn't win, so if that's the real reason behind it all, that only sounds to me like he is stupid. Not bloodthirsty or megalomaniacal, just plain thick. To my mind there had to be something he stood to gain to go to all this trouble, whether or not it was worth paying the price for.

(And I don't mean to sound like a snob but I think the random lads here are about as worth listening to here as the New Yorker. It's not exactly a publication known to be without bias in recent years.)
>> No. 39435 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 2:46 am
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I wonder if people had these kinds of discussions when Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Afghanistan where getting bombed? All seems weird. White people war. "Oh come to my house, white refugees." I really don't care.
>> No. 39436 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 3:08 am
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>>39435

Are you not old enough to remember? There was plenty of very vocal criticism of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, with probably a majority of people concluding they were US led imperialist ventures seeking to secure the oil reserves and opium, using terrorism and security as a pretext. Not that we, the people, are opposed to a bit of imperialism, that is; just that it was our boys getting killed largely for the benefit of the Yanks.

The difference is that we were pretty clearly the "bad guys" there, in this one, Putin is the big baddie, and the complicated part is whether our own motives for helping Ukraine are exactly pure, or indeed if they have to be. If it wasn't for the fact he has the world's biggest nuclear arsenal that bit might not matter either, but he does, so the situation is quite a bit more delicate. Thus it warrants some soul searching if there are ways that the situation can be resolved that don't lead to Cold War 2: Hot Edition.
>> No. 39437 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 11:02 am
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>>39430
>Putin wants Ukraine because it would make Russia, and therefore him, more powerful. That's the same reason we want it. The resources and strategic location of the country are all part of that. There can be no such thing as a neutral Ukraine, free from the influence of Russia or the West. It's one or the other. All this is about whether it's with us or them.

This is the thing I don't agree with. Well, I disagree with a lot of what you say, but I'll pick this bit. If we wanted Ukraine to join NATO so much, why haven't they joined? They wanted to and NATO said no.

I don't see NATO as this colonialist empire that you seem to. NATO are the Amazon of geopolitics. Amazon don't force people to buy things from Amazon; they just sit there and the customers come to them of their own volition. It's perfectly understandable that your local shopping centre (owner: Mr V Putin) will be upset that fewer people want to go there to buy jeans and DVDs, but there's no conspiracy. It's just an unfortunate side-effect of freedom. It's okay to hate Amazon for being an immensely powerful near-monopoly, but Finland and Sweden were doing just fine shopping elsewhere and they only buy from Amazon now because they choose to and Primark wants to nuke them.
>> No. 39438 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 11:59 am
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>>39434

Putin's grip on power has been increasingly fragile over the last 10 years. In the run up to the 2011 legislative elections, there were massive nationwide protests about corruption and vote-rigging (arguably inspired by the Orange Revolution) that just kept going. The protests never gained majority support, but Putin's inability to control them undermined his strongman image and strengthened the opposition movement. Putin naturally won the 2012 presidential elections by a substantial margin, but a poor turnout and increasing levels of electoral fraud pointed to underlying weakness in the regime. The protests ended in 2013, mainly because of a massive crackdown involving the arrest of Aleksei Navalny.

The end of the protests didn't really change the general public's perception of Putin - while he still had plenty of loyal supporters, his popularity was substantially diminished and he was widely perceived as having been weakened by the protests. That changed in 2014 with the invasion of Crimea, which was sold as (and mostly bought as) a re-assertion of Russian dominance against Western hegemony.

The war and the propaganda surrounding it substantially shifted the political debate within Russia away from internal debates about opposition to Putin and towards Russia's international status. Putin's public approval ratings returned to pre-protest levels within weeks of the invasion. Over subsequent years, Putin made increasing moves towards totalitarianism, culminating in the 2020 constitutional reforms to open up the possibility of Putin remaining president for life.

The COVID pandemic went very badly for Putin. We're still not sure how many people died - the answer is somewhere between "lots" and "fucking loads" - but the already weak economy took an absolute battering. Putin's public approval ratings fell to their lowest levels ever.

Given that history, it's reasonable to believe that Putin saw another invasion of Ukraine as a straightforward way of distracting from domestic issues and consolidating his power. It's entirely reasonable to argue that Putin was hubristic, massively under-estimated the scale of Ukrainian opposition and blundered into a war that would ultimately undermine him, but I'm not 100% sold on that narrative. Putin's approval ratings have dipped in the last few weeks, but they saw a massive surge at the start of the invasion and are still substantially higher than pre-war levels. There are protests against the regime, but the hardcore supporters of Putin have been radicalised and are increasingly sympathetic towards brutal measures to crack down on dissent.

The war may ultimately backfire for Putin, but in the short term it clearly has achieved the goal of boosting domestic support for his regime and marginalising his opponents.
>> No. 39439 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 12:03 pm
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>>39435
Yes, mate. The Global War on Terror was and is a universally beloved endevour and not widely regarded as an unpopular and idiotic hiding to nowhere, responsible for undermining the gains "the West" made post-Cold War, helping give rise to ISIS and generally being a colossal waste of public money. If you'll excuse me I have to get ready for the monthly "Everyone Still Loves Tony Blair" party we're having on our street later today. Here's a photo from the one we had at the beginning of September!
>> No. 39440 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 1:33 pm
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>>39438

>The war and the propaganda surrounding it substantially shifted the political debate within Russia away from internal debates about opposition to Putin and towards Russia's international status.

Bit like the Falklands War then. On its own, in the greater scheme of things, whoever was in control of a few remote islands in the South Atlantic didn't really matter, but ARE Mags knew that the war itself and a victory would draw some attention away from the dire situation at home in the early 1980s and boost public morale.
>> No. 39441 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 1:45 pm
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>>39440

It mattered a lot to the people who live there and who had their land seized by a military dictatorship.
>> No. 39442 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 2:04 pm
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>>39441
Really, we should have given those islands back to their rightful owners a long time ago. LAS FALKLANDS SON FRENCH.
>> No. 39443 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 2:12 pm
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>>39437

Saying NATO is the Amazon of geopolitics isn't that far off. You just have to remember that Amazon has the explicit goal of monopolising internet shopping.

It's not a conspiracy, it's just a fact of the world. Power consolidates, because you're shit at wielding power if you don't take steps to ensure you keep hold of it. NATO is the shorthand way of referring to the alliance between powerful Western countries which makes up one of the major power blocs; you could call it the G7 or the Anglosphere or whatever else. America and it's mates (who it doesn't treat very well).

>>39438

Nah, you have a point but I still don't think that's the full story. He can defenestrate and novichok and polonium tea anyone who stands serious opposition to him. Again, if it was entirely about that, he could have chosen somewhere much less existentially threatening to pick a fight. He didn't just throw darts at a map and happen to land on Ukraine, there were geopolitical ambitions in addition to his own domestic agenda.
>> No. 39444 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 2:54 pm
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>>39443

>He didn't just throw darts at a map and happen to land on Ukraine, there were geopolitical ambitions in addition to his own domestic agenda.

Ukraine was the line in the sand of NATO eastern expansion for Putin. Ukraine is the cradle of Russian culture. The whole of Russia is named after the Kievan Rus, a mediaeval country which covered most of present-day Ukraine and extended northwards to the White Sea. To a nationalist like Putin with neo-imperialist aspirations, this matters a great deal. And many Russians still today will tell you that Russians and Ukrainians are "brothers". And to see Ukraine increasingly being incorporated into Western power structures and thus drawn out of Russia's sphere of influence was something that Putin wasn't just going to accept without a fight.

You still have to take the idea with a grain of salt that Eastern European countries freely chose to join NATO. Yes, especially the smaller countries were afraid that Russia would just overrun them. And not without reason. Russia invaded Lithuania in 1990 when the country formally declared its independence. But what is often overlooked is the fact that after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Americans in particular spent billions in those former Warsaw Pact states and Soviet republics influencing and fostering emerging new power structures that were friendly both towards the West and Western capitalism as well as towards NATO. The U.S. still today entertains plenty of NGOs and lobbying organisations in those countries to ensure that public opinion is generally favourable towards the West and NATO.

As Henry Kissinger said - democracy is too important to be left to the votes of the people.
>> No. 39445 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 6:14 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj_wd7Lg4v0

They hit on an interesting question - the oblasts that Putin has annexed aren't even fully under his military control. He'll practically have to redraw their borders in order to be able to shut out Ukrainian forces. Everything else would lead to a war of attrition which could see Putin losing them again after all. Not to mention that it's muddying the waters of what really constitutes an attack on Russian territory, when some of it is de facto still held by Ukraine.
>> No. 39446 Anonymous
1st October 2022
Saturday 8:08 pm
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>>39441
Before the war the government was looking for cheeky ways of doing just that even though the islanders were very clear that they weren't interested. Argentina really fucked up by starting a war and transforming the islands from an inconvenience Britain would like to be rid of to a mid-life crisis coping aid it can't do without.
>> No. 39447 Anonymous
2nd October 2022
Sunday 12:21 pm
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>>39445

I think this refutes the notion that Putin is looking for an easy way out. Including so much Ukrainian-controlled territory within the borders of the annexed oblasts creates a completely unnecessary complication with any hypothetical negotiation. Maybe he included that territory so he'd have something to offer the Ukrainian negotiators, but that'd make it much harder to sell any resulting treaty as a Russian success - he'd be "handing back" what he has loudly told the Russian people is land that now belongs to Russia.

>>39444

All good lies start with a grain of truth. Putin's arguments about Ukraine being a natural part of Russia that has been colonised by NATO is just plausible enough to sell to the Russian people. Russians are naturally cynical, they're habituated to reading between the lines of any official statement, but that also makes them easy prey for conspiracy theories.
>> No. 39448 Anonymous
2nd October 2022
Sunday 1:37 pm
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>>39447

It's difficult to get accurate information about what's actually in Putin's decree to annex those regions, but it appears that Putin did declare the entire oblasts respectively as new Russian territory, and he doesn't have full military control over any of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_annexation_referendums_in_Russian-occupied_Ukraine

This would actually mean that to the Russians, any fighting by Ukrainian troops within the boundaries of those oblasts now constitutes an attack on Russian territory, however invalid the referendum was. It's mainly a dilemma for Putin, because you could argue that he's already not following through with his threats to defend the new territories by all means necessary.

On the other hand, it could give him reason to escalate further, by giving Ukrainian troops an ultimatum to leave those areas, or else. But even then, it's hard to imagine that the Ukrainians would just leave the areas again that they've just reclaimed.
>> No. 39455 Anonymous
3rd October 2022
Monday 3:11 pm
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Interesting twitter thread on opinion polling in Russia, by the "Head of Political Philosophy, The Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences" -

https://twitter.com/YudinGreg/status/1576776046984056832

>Response rates are frighteningly low – 10-25% depending on methodology. Many (although not all) pollsters report that in 2022 the rates further plummeted. A colleague in the industry I trust completely told it was at 1% even before mobilization 11/21

>It is safe to assume that behind the numbers you read there are people completely disoriented and scared about what the state will do to them, approached by someone they believe is an agent of the state 19/21


tl;dr: anybody with a passing grasp of statistics can see that Putin's allegedly huge approval ratings probably don't hold water.
>> No. 39456 Anonymous
3rd October 2022
Monday 3:23 pm
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>>39455

From the perspective of a dictator, does it matter very much whether people actually like you or are just completely terrified of you?
>> No. 39457 Anonymous
3rd October 2022
Monday 4:33 pm
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>>39456

Yes, but which one is desirable depends on the nature of the people, their hierarchy, classes and the make-up of the 'court'. I think Machiavelli goes into it in some detail. The changes in technology may have changed the goalposts since but the theory behind it is probably the same.
>> No. 39458 Anonymous
3rd October 2022
Monday 5:45 pm
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>>39457

I think we also have to factor in that repressive governments generate often profuse bigotry among their people, who will fall over themselves professing their allegiance with the regime in order not to stick out and be dealt with by the regime's apparatus.

Also, the Russians never had any real democratic history. They went from tsarism straight to communism and stalinism, and the barely ten years of proto-democracy from 1990 to 1999 until Putin came to power and began dismantling it don't count for much.

The revolutions in the early 20th century notwithstanding, Russians for as long as anybody can remember had to put up and not speak up. Which led to sort of a passive aggressive view of any government at all, where you know things are fucked and your leader is a despot, but what can you do. Best not talk about it if you don't want to find yourself in a gulag. Or be sent to fight in Ukraine as a punishment for street protest.
>> No. 39459 Anonymous
3rd October 2022
Monday 5:49 pm
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>>39458

Bigotry is a hierarchy of the people, right? He goes on at length about how much it matters if a people are used to being a free people, or used to being oppressed. The latter are much less likely to make a fuss if you keep oppressing them.
>> No. 39460 Anonymous
3rd October 2022
Monday 9:10 pm
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/03/kremlin-unclear-on-which-parts-of-ukraine-it-has-annexed

>The Kremlin is still determining which areas of occupied Ukraine it has “annexed”, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson has said, suggesting Russia does not know where its self-declared international borders are.

>The surprising admission came in a phone call with journalists, during which Dmitry Peskov was peppered with requests to clarify to which Ukrainian territory Putin had laid claim at a pomp-filled Kremlin ceremony last week.


Something they evidently should've figured out before the whole what-have-you.
>> No. 39461 Anonymous
3rd October 2022
Monday 10:48 pm
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>>39460

They can't decide where those borders are until the Ukrainian army stops pushing them back. The Russian military appears to be close to a total morale route. The intention with these "annexations" was to buy some breathing room and a bargaining chip at the negotiating table, assuming it would draw a line in the sand, but the lads on the ground aren't interested in keeping up the fight. By now the Ukranians have such an advantage in military hardware that it's really not a fair fight for the poor Ivan conscripts expected to hold the frontline down.

What's interesting here is that Vlad seems to have bottled it with all his posturing- By declaring those regions sovereign Russian territory, it was supposed to prevent further conflict because pushing onto that turf was then therefore a "direct attack on Russian soil", and that it would mean direct confrontation with NATO because they are using western arms etc, pretty much their exact words before they went through with it. And now they're all like "...Y-yeah, well, erm... We haven't decided exactly where the borders are yet..." to avoid having to put their money where their mouth is.

If this present Ukranian push comes to a stop at any point, that's where the borders will probably end up, but despite all the rhetoric I do get the impression Russia is close to throwing in the towel here. You can tell they want to cut their losses, but the trouble is they can't bring themselves to do it in a humbling, humiliating manner.
>> No. 39463 Anonymous
3rd October 2022
Monday 11:16 pm
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>>39461

They said on the Channel 4 news tonight that Putin was seen meeting up with his national security advisers to discuss the situation. They're probably trying to figure out their next move. If Putin has more bollocks than brains, he might say that the annexed oblasts are Russian in their entirety, and he'll give Ukrainian troops an impossible ultimatum of leaving the territories, or else things might get nukey, as he keeps telling the world since February.


>but despite all the rhetoric I do get the impression Russia is close to throwing in the towel here. You can tell they want to cut their losses, but the trouble is they can't bring themselves to do it in a humbling, humiliating manner.

You're underestimating Putin's Hitler-like determination. He knows that if he retreats from Ukraine entirely, it'll be both the end of Russia as a feared power on the international stage, and quite likely the end of his political career as well. So he's got nowhere to go. And that's why it's still decidedly less than unlikely that he'll start using nuclear weapons. Western observers maintain that his troops are barely equipped and trained to fight conventional battle against the Ukrainians and it would be impossible for them to handle nuclear warfare, but all it takes is one or a handful of nuclear missile strikes ordered by Putin himself. That in itself would already be a catastrophe, regardless of how unprepared Russian ground forces are to deal with the repercussions. As a last-ditch effort to prevent a forced retreat and somehow turn the war around, it could be that he'll actually do it.
>> No. 39464 Anonymous
3rd October 2022
Monday 11:31 pm
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What if we offer Putin safety somewhere? Whoever follows him will be eager to wipe him out. I wouldn't want to have to step down from the Russian presidency, because I'd be murdered by mobsters within a week. But if I could tell the Russian people that I was martyring myself to protect them, that all sanctions would be lifted and the war would end if I just handed myself over and allowed free and fair elections for my replacement, then I could head off to Argentina where all the Nazis went and just live out my days in a big palace with a giant pile of money while Russians remember me as a magnanimous hero. That certainly sounds like a fine way out to me, but then I would never have invaded Ukraine in the first place so perhaps we can't use my personality to gauge what Putin might do.
>> No. 39465 Anonymous
3rd October 2022
Monday 11:37 pm
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>>39463

>He knows that if he retreats from Ukraine entirely, it'll be both the end of Russia as a feared power on the international stage

This already is, there can be no denying that. And let's be real, Russia hasn't really been a "feared" power for a long time, more just a geopolitical inconvenience, and that's ultimately what led to this conflict. An attempt to remind the world Russia is still a big scary military force, that has backfired horribly, because they're just not.

All they have is the nukes at this point. If they have any sense they won't use them, and all this is just damage control, so they hold onto at least a shred of begrudging respect through the fact they could blow us all to kingdom come; but we certainly can't take anything for granted.

My main worry is, to be frank, that the Yanks will try stick the boot in too hard when it comes to the climb down, and provoke what is essentially the nuclear equivalent of a teenager smashing up their room just so they don't give their parents the satisfaction of doing as they're told. This is essentially why I've been saying for a while that we ought to give them a "exit route" to save face- That's just basic conflict resolution, like mediating a domestic abuse case or something. Even when somebody is clearly irrational and in the wrong, sometimes you have to play along for a bit to get them to put the knife down.
>> No. 39466 Anonymous
3rd October 2022
Monday 11:41 pm
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>>39464

You're still approaching this with the idea that Putin is a reasonable person who will admit defeat when it hits him in the face. And who will just abandon his vision of resurrecting a Russian empire.

That just isn't what kind of person he is. Not after so many years of absolute power anyway. He's also not just going to retreat and spend the next ten to twenty years in a sulk over having been wronged by the West.

I have a feeling he will either actually use tactical nukes or he will up his threats to use them yet again. One of those, or both, will probably happen very soon.
>> No. 39467 Anonymous
3rd October 2022
Monday 11:48 pm
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>>39464
>then I could head off to Argentina where all the Nazis went and just live out my days in a big palace with a giant pile of money
Until the new Russian secret service track you down, kidnap you, make you stand trial in Russia when you are in your 90s, and then execute you.
>> No. 39468 Anonymous
3rd October 2022
Monday 11:55 pm
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>>39464

It'd need to be more of a Napoleon approach, if anything. Give him his own island to pretend he's in charge of, call it the true successor to the Soviet Union or whatever to make him happy.
>> No. 39469 Anonymous
4th October 2022
Tuesday 12:16 am
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>>39464
If you sent Putin to Argentina he'd have the Argies back on the Falklands in no time. Then Truss will emulate Thatcher, poorly, by trying to channel Thatcher and failing miserably.

The man is nothing if not a master troll.
>> No. 39470 Anonymous
4th October 2022
Tuesday 12:18 am
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>>39468

The question is if a system that is so Putin-centric will just let somebody come up to take his place. He will have made sure that nobody can threaten his power from within. But I guess that doesn't protect him from the entire system turning against him at some point.

The problem for the Russian people will likely be that whoever comes after Putin, Russia will probably not improve greatly from what it is now, which is a failed state.
>> No. 39471 Anonymous
4th October 2022
Tuesday 1:04 am
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>>39470

I mean that's the thing really. There will come a point where the war is clearly lost, and he's sat there leaning his head in one hand, and he goes "Mudak. Launch the nukes. Cyka blyat." and whatever general he gives the order to will presumably just go "Uh... Nyet, comrade. It's over." He goes "Arrest this man!" and the other guy goes "Nyet, I don't think I will." Then that's it. His power instantly evaporates.

Power is only power as long as people play along, that's the funny thing. Faced with the prospect of life or death people's priorities drastically change and the structures of hierarchy vanish like the mirages they are. I always think about those millionaire apocalypse prepper fantasies where they build a big bunker in New Zealand and they hire private security and blah blah blah... It would last about ten minutes after the actual apocalypse before the private security lot shot the millionaires they worked for in the head and took the place over for themselves.

However this ends, it's probably the end of Putin. We just have to worry about whoever fills the void without him. They almost certainly won't be any better.
>> No. 39472 Anonymous
4th October 2022
Tuesday 2:54 am
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>>39471

Those generals have skin in the game. They're corrupt and complicit in crimes against humanity. Unless they can count a successful coup and seize power for themselves, they're going down with the ship - either the next lot will put them up against the wall, or the ICC will have them.

Putin has very carefully filled positions of power with people who are compliant, unimaginative and lack initiative. He has fostered a culture of paranoia and rivalry in which he and his closest aides are the only bridge of communication between opposing factions. That's a large part of the reason why the Russian invasion has been such a shitshow, but it also secures Putin's position. It's not enough for people to lose faith in him, they need to coalesce around a replacement regime before they move against him.
>> No. 39473 Anonymous
4th October 2022
Tuesday 11:48 am
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>>39472

They only have skin in the game as long as there's a game to have skin in. If you look at dictatorships throughout history, they are resilient when times are good, and they appear inescapable in their oppression, but when the tide turns it turns all at once. By their very nature they are made up of self-serving people trying to cover their own arse, who are unlikely to stick around when it's clear that following that leader will inevitably lead to their death.

I mean, if his domestic position is weak enough that it can be considered a substantial motivation for the invasion, then his regime really can't be so ironclad as to be immune to dissent, can it.
>> No. 39475 Anonymous
4th October 2022
Tuesday 2:40 pm
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>>39471

> There will come a point where the war is clearly lost, and he's sat there leaning his head in one hand, and he goes "Mudak. Launch the nukes. Cyka blyat." and whatever general he gives the order to will presumably just go "Uh... Nyet, comrade. It's over."

Not necessarily. Military personnel that would be tasked with carrying out launch orders in the event of a nuclear war is usually carefully selected for mental stability and the ability to turn the keys on a nuclear missile even if they know that that very action means the certain death of hundreds of thousands of people.

That said, there are some indications from all the near misses we've had in the past that people won't just blindly follow what they were trained to do when the time comes. Like I said before in this thread, whether the Cuban Missile Crisis was going to turn into a global nuclear war ultimately hinged on three men in a Russian submarine off the Cuban coast who were surrounded by American warships. The sub's captain and his two highest ranking officers, who decided in a two to one vote not to fire a nuclear torpedo at the Americans. And then there was the Stanislav Petrov incident, where somebody actually took a minute to think if it was likely that NATO was going to attack Russia with just a handful of ICBMs, knowing full well that it would have triggered a full retaliatory response.

It's difficult to say if it was just the immense luck of having the right people in the right place at the right time, or if we can systematically count on people not to carry out their commander in chief's doomsday orders.

The movie Wargames really did a good job illustrating the problem.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bF1_PGMAj0
>> No. 39476 Anonymous
4th October 2022
Tuesday 4:48 pm
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>>39475

We aren't sure how many humans are left in the Russian kill chain. We do know that their command system is capable of autonomously launching a retaliatory strike without any human intervention under certain circumstances. It isn't beyond the realms of possibility that Putin could have a literal red button.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand
>> No. 39477 Anonymous
4th October 2022
Tuesday 10:59 pm
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The Yanks have given Ukraine more missile systems, but on the condition that the Pentagon retains "target oversight", whatever that means.

(I can't find the bloody link I was reading at work, so I am assuming the CIA memory holed it and I'm supposed to unremember it)

Anyway I'm taking it to mean that comment about the Americans tugging back on Zelensky's leash was on the money. They're letting the Ukranians push as far as they can, but they're not taking any chances. At this stage it's like that bit at the end of the Crystal Maze where the whistle has already gone but you see them stuffing a few cheeky notes in the letterbox anyway.

What I'm saying is I reckon it's either all going to be over relatively soon, or we're definitely going to have WW3. I don't forsee much in between.
>> No. 39478 Anonymous
4th October 2022
Tuesday 11:16 pm
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>>39477

>What I'm saying is I reckon it's either all going to be over relatively soon, or we're definitely going to have WW3. I don't forsee much in between.


https://www.vice.com/en/article/93anx3/ukraine-orgy-russia-nuclear

>Ukrainians Are Responding to the Threat of Nukes By Organising an Orgy

>As countries across Europe review their radiation pill supplies under the looming threat of a nuclear attack by Vladimir Putin, Ukrainians have decided to respond with humour – and plan an orgy on a hill outside Kyiv.

>More than 15,000 people have subscribed to “Orgy on Shchekavystsa: Official”, which was set up on the 26th of September, and the intention is to head there in the event of a nuclear attack – as opposed to finding the nearest bunker.
>> No. 39479 Anonymous
5th October 2022
Wednesday 3:29 am
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>>39477

Ukraine wants access to ATACMS missiles and has unilaterally offered the Pentagon "target oversight", i.e. the right to be in the loop on targeting decisions. Ukraine made the offer because of the extremely long range of the ATACMS system (four times greater than the HIMARS system they've already been provided with), which would give them the capability to strike deep within Russian territory. Ukraine want the ability to launch major attacks on Crimea (almost certainly against Kerch to disrupt overland supply lines to Russia) and want to offer the Americans some reassurance that they're not going to do anything that would be needlessly risky. ATACMS is at the absolute limit of what can be considered a tactical rather than strategic missile, so the deployment of the system could seriously spook the Russians with the obvious risks of nuclear escalation.

From the American perspective, HIMARS does pretty much everything that Ukraine needs, while having much lower risk if misused or captured. ATACMS is no longer being manufactured and the replacement system isn't available yet, so supplying those systems to Ukraine would leave a gap in their own capabilities. The Ukrainian frustration is understandable, but it isn't unreasonable for the Americans to be cautious.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/03/politics/ukraine-weapons-us-atacms-targeting-veto

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/24/ukraine-himars-russia-us/
>> No. 39480 Anonymous
5th October 2022
Wednesday 7:28 pm
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63140098

>In a statement on Thursday, Mr Antonov warned that the US decision "to continue pumping the Kiev regime with heavy weapons only secures Washington's status as a participant of the conflict".

IZT.

It raises an interesting question though - if we accept that Russia and the U.S. are already opposing sides in an armed conflict and that this goes beyond the usual proxy wars of the 1950s to 1980s, then how come we haven't nuked ourselves back to the stone age yet? Humanity has spent over 70 years trying to make sure that Russia and the U.S. would not fight each other directly because it would mean armageddon, but here we are now.

The Russians are probably realising that the price they'd pay would be too high if they started using nuclear weapons and then got nuked themselves by NATO in return. But then where's the threshold that somebody can push you to before you say as a country, ok, enough is enough, we'll use tactical nukes, because we'd rather run the risk of getting nuked by you than lose this war.

It kind of turns the logic of nuclear deterrence on its head. Because the idea that you must never directly fight against each other now becomes a whole different concept, that you can have your way with the enemy all the way because they know that if they nuke you, then you'll nuke them, and they get nothing. Which will not be evened out by the satisfaction of having destroyed you as well.
>> No. 39481 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 9:16 am
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>>39479

>Ukraine want the ability to launch major attacks on Crimea (almost certainly against Kerch to disrupt overland supply lines to Russia)

It turns out that they didn't actually need ATACMS...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63183404
>> No. 39482 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 9:41 am
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>>39481
>The official Twitter account of the Ukraine government responded to the fire by tweeting: "Sick burn."
FFS
>> No. 39483 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 11:18 am
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>>39482

This is what happens when English is your second language.
>> No. 39484 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 11:38 am
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>>39483

The Ukrainian government speak Ukrainian, Russian, Bantz and English, in that order.
>> No. 39485 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 1:46 pm
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How will the West react if Ukraine gets Nuked?
>> No. 39486 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 1:50 pm
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>>39485
>> No. 39487 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 2:43 pm
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>>39486


I'm not convinced NATO will start an all-out global nuclear war.

Making Putin lose the Ukraine War is instumental in giving the Russians a second Afghanistan in the hope of weakening Russia on the geostrategic stage, but I doubt that NATO is willing to stake the West's entire existence on it, even if Putin starts throwing nukes.
>> No. 39488 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 3:51 pm
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>>39485

Difficult one.

If NATO sits on its hand then it's basically the end of MAD, which is not just a spanner in the works of "deterrence", but shows the "world police" as toothless and past it. laplanderstan and India would be nuking each other by the end of the year, Kim Jong Whatever would start running up demands or else Tokyo gets it, China would be balls deep in Taiwan before you can say it...

So we can't do nothing. But nuclear retaliation is obviously, for all intents and purposes, simply pushing a big red button labelled "apocalypse". Not worth it.

I would imagine NATO will respond, just not in kind. It could be a sudden, swift invasion of Russia itself, straight to Moscow and the nuclear silos etc with the 'ardest commando SAS Navy Seal paratrooper madcunts we have. Cut the head off the beast. A ground invasion means that the Russians would be limited in their ability to use further nukes, because if they want to use them to repel invading forces, they'd be nuking their own territory.

It would still be a gamble obviously but I think the defacto principle of MAD would remain where it's only tactical battlefield nuking, not glassing entire cities, because that would only lead to total annihilation.
>> No. 39490 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 5:22 pm
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>>39488
You watch too many Hollywood actions films, lad.
>> No. 39491 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 5:27 pm
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>>39488
American wargaming in 2016 proposed nuking Belarus as a warning that had less escalatory potential.
>> No. 39492 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 5:32 pm
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>>39488

>If NATO sits on its hand then it's basically the end of MAD

You're forgetting that MAD only concerns countries that are NATO members.


>It could be a sudden, swift invasion of Russia itself, straight to Moscow and the nuclear silos etc

It'd be easier to just press the apocalypse button then, because the outcome would be the same.
>> No. 39493 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 6:31 pm
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>>39492

The taboo against the use of nuclear weapons matters. If Russia are seen to have "got away" with using tactical nuclear weapons, the risk of someone else following suit greatly increases. The last 70-odd years of nuclear deterrence are based on the broad belief that nuclear war is unthinkable and apocalyptic; it would be immensely dangerous for anyone to start testing that belief.

I don't know what an appropriate response would be to a Russian tactical nuclear strike in Ukraine; I'm not sure that anyone does.
>> No. 39494 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 7:24 pm
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>>39493

>I don't know what an appropriate response would be to a Russian tactical nuclear strike in Ukraine; I'm not sure that anyone does.

Biden is receiving praise in the press at the moment for being deliberately vague about what kind of action he'll take if Putin uses tactical nukes against Ukraine. But I wonder. Is he just saying that to give the public a false sense of security?

In the end, you cannot win with conventional weaponry against somebody who is throwing nukes around. Because they're throwing nukes around. It's like bringing a knife to a gun fight. So at some point, NATO would have to resort to nukes themselves. And then we're fucked.
>> No. 39495 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 8:07 pm
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>>39494

the thing is its kind of a nothing to lose situation if someone does it. as soon as the nukes have been used, ita only a matter of time until somebody else sees that it went unpunished, does the same thing, and then from there it will snowball into the full deal.

So despite the fact its quite obviously monumentally risky in its own right, launching a last ditch blitzkrieg to try and take down the nuclear madman in question, without escalating to that lever yourself, is a rational move. Chances are it would turn into WW3 anyway, but so would the other outcome. So you have to give it a shot to solve the problem without resorting to escalation.

Thats the thing with all of this, ots all really cold, grim logic. There isnt a lot of room for philosophy or idealism in the matter, its just an if/and/or of armageddon.
>> No. 39496 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 8:23 pm
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>>39495

>So despite the fact its quite obviously monumentally risky in its own right, launching a last ditch blitzkrieg to try and take down the nuclear madman in question, without escalating to that lever yourself, is a rational move

So you're saying, invade Russia, advance through to Moscow and take Putin prisoner?

That's beyond naive. Putin may be letting the advances on Ukraine's annexed regions slide at the moment, because he has no realistic way of getting rid of the Ukrainian troops that are inside their administrative borders. But what's undisputed is where Russia proper begins. And you have to reasonably expect that Putin would counter a NATO attack on Russian territory with ground forces the same way NATO would treat that kind of attack by Russia.
>> No. 39497 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 8:42 pm
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>>39494

>Biden is receiving praise in the press at the moment for being deliberately vague about what kind of action he'll take if Putin uses tactical nukes against Ukraine. But I wonder. Is he just saying that to give the public a false sense of security?

Possibly, but the Russians will be acutely aware of the very broad range of unknown unknowns.

When Little Boy detonated over Hiroshima, nuclear weapons were widely regarded as merely the stuff of theoretical possibility. The Manhattan Project had been pursued with such secrecy that most of the people who built that bomb didn't understand what had happened. Most of the crew of the Enola Gay didn't know what kind of weapon they were dropping.

The Americans continue to spend billions of dollars a year on the development of strategic weapons, to give them the element of surprise in precisely this sort of scenario. The Russians have to weigh up the possibility of nuclear retaliation, but also the possibility that they will be attacked with an entirely unknown class of weapon. It could be biological or chemical, it could be based on some field of physics that is barely understood outside of DARPA, it could be undetectable using current technology. The Americans might not have anything up their sleeve, but there's a significant risk that they do.
>> No. 39498 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 9:20 pm
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>>39497

>The Russians have to weigh up the possibility of nuclear retaliation, but also the possibility that they will be attacked with an entirely unknown class of weapon.

They're not just going to pull some entirely new technology out of their arse. They're not going to start shooting death lasers from military satellites in Earth's orbit. Whatever extremes the Americans will go to if they feel they have to, it's likely going to be some form of nuclear fission bomb. Nothing new in principle.
>> No. 39499 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 9:38 pm
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>>39498

>They're not going to start shooting death lasers from military satellites in Earth's orbit.

Are you sure?

https://breakingdefense.com/2021/08/pentagon-posed-to-unveil-classified-space-weapon/
>> No. 39500 Anonymous
8th October 2022
Saturday 11:12 pm
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>>39499
It's not much of a deterrent if it can't be proven to exist.
>> No. 39501 Anonymous
9th October 2022
Sunday 12:21 am
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>>39500


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j83bGaauRXw
>> No. 39502 Anonymous
9th October 2022
Sunday 1:19 am
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>>39500

That's the subject of much of the article. A known threat is one kind of deterrent. A "Beware Dogs" sign works much better if there are barking dogs. Equally, most people aren't going to shove their hand into a dark hole in a wall without knowing what's on the other side.

Certainty and uncertainty both have a deterrent effect; knowing that your adversary has nuclear weapons is a deterrent, but so is the knowledge that they spend billions of dollars developing new weapons, most of which you haven't seen.

https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/ASPJ_French/journals_E/Volume-07_Issue-3/benhaim_e.pdf
>> No. 39503 Anonymous
9th October 2022
Sunday 9:12 am
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>>39502

They had Trump as president while it was in development.
>> No. 39504 Anonymous
9th October 2022
Sunday 1:21 pm
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>>39502

A popular saying in the Cold War was that the Americans play poker while the Russians play chess.

The U.S. has always been adept at bluffing and exaggerating its capabilities, true to the idea that the enemy can't afford to make a wrong guess about them. While Russian nuclear posture was always much more contrived and intricate, to the point that few in the West even had a clue what their strategy was. Which is yet another way of keeping your enemies at bay by discouraging them from wrong guesses, but the way to get there was much more complex and clandestine. Which to this day is one characteristic of Russian foreign policy as a whole - government decisions are decidedly intransparent and offer few clues as to the decision making process. It was the way things were run during the Soviet era, and Putin has certainly reinstated that black-box government culture, if it ever really went away after the fall of communism.
>> No. 39505 Anonymous
10th October 2022
Monday 4:27 pm
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So what do you lot think of the whole Elon Musk thing where he's tweeting unsolicited solutions to the Ukraine war.

It's almost like Ukraine is Raoul Moat and Elon is Gazza.
>> No. 39506 Anonymous
10th October 2022
Monday 4:54 pm
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>>39505

He's also tweeting unsolicited solutions to the Taiwan issue. I'm not sure why people care. Elon is just a bit gobby and doesn't like being told to stay in his lane. It's like that submarine business in Thailand.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63196452
>> No. 39507 Anonymous
10th October 2022
Monday 5:13 pm
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>>39505
I don't have a clue what he's said, but given he's had one good idea in his whole life and then he got very, very, very lucky, I suspect your metaphor is totally accurate. At least Gazza was a good footballer, he didn't just lie about trains all the time and make cars enchanted with the souls of dead serial killers.
>> No. 39508 Anonymous
10th October 2022
Monday 5:36 pm
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>>39507

Musk is an incredibly talented engineering manager, but he is also a very specific level of crazy. If he were slightly less mental, he would have just taken his Paypal money and gone to live a life of luxury rather than starting a rocket company. He would have joined the very long list of equally brilliant silicon valley multimillionaires that nobody has ever heard of. If he were a bit more mental, he would have gone full McAfee and tried to mount a military coup of Aruba or something. Musk couldn't exist if he was any different, because his entire career has been built on being brilliant and exactly the right amount of crazy.

I strongly believe that society needs some number of people like Musk, we need outrageously talented people with an unshakeable faith in their own ability. Musk has legitimately revolutionised how we think about space and kick-started a renaissance in orbital technology. With that said, we also need to recognise that people like him are loose cannons who shouldn't really be listened to outside of their specific field of expertise.

Musk is incredibly good at building small engineering teams who can have an outsized impact on an industry. He's incredibly good at knowing how to unpick decades of technological progress and work out which bits are just vestigial holdovers that add unnecessary cost and complexity. He has the ambition to take massive gambles on things that will probably fail and the self-belief to disregard conventional wisdom. None of that qualifies him to comment on politics or war or cave diving, but a lot of people somehow think that we should prioritise his opinion over someone who is equally talented at psychotherapy or plastering or table tennis.
>> No. 39509 Anonymous
10th October 2022
Monday 6:04 pm
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>>39508

>None of that qualifies him to comment on politics or war or cave diving

That's the point, thank you. But I guess at his level of - like it or not - certified genius, it's easy to get a God complex where you think you're above everything and everybody, and nobody can touch you.

There's an old saying that millionaires see the world as their playground, they live affluent lifestyles where money, within reason, is no object, but it's mainly for their own enjoyment. But many multi-billionaires think their wealth entitles them to a much more active role in impacting and shaping society. Which basically explains people like George Soros, Bill Gates and also Elon Musk. Not meaning to be tinfoilhatlad here, but you see that play out with many people like them.

It still doesn't mean Elon Musk should run his mouth about politics. As we've just seen, it serves more to aggravate both sides. But he's not somebody who is used to being told to shut up, or at least he's not used to following such a request. Which again brings us back to the point that he thinks he's untouchable, and him being a cunt about exactly that.
>> No. 39510 Anonymous
10th October 2022
Monday 7:00 pm
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>>39505

I thought they were quite reasonable propositions, if you step back and look at everything from a completely balanced, neutral perspective. I'm pretty sure several lads in this thread expressed similar ideas about the direction of the conflict and a potential closure. But of course, with the level of propaganda surrounding all this, nobody is looking at it neutrally, and he's Elon Musk. Nobody would have cared if I tweeted it, would they? Maybe a handful of mewling liberals would have called me a fascist or a tankie or whatever, and that would be about the end of it, but he's Elon Musk.

I don't think Elon is any kind of super genius modern day Nikolai Tesla. He's just a proficient engineer with a lot of (more than he deserves) money and influence, not a god. But politicians aren't exactly renowned for their competence either, are they? I find it amusing how many people suddenly went "maybe he should stick to his own area of expertise" or some variation of thereof, suddenly showing total faith in our establishment and subtly implying we should leave politics to our betters, despite having spent just about the last nine months constantly spewing their own dogshit opinions nobody asked for, most of them being the people least qualified out of the entire human race to speak with authority on any subject- Journalists.
>> No. 39512 Anonymous
10th October 2022
Monday 9:58 pm
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If he didn't want to be told to stay in his lane, he probably should have dug more than one.
>> No. 39513 Anonymous
10th October 2022
Monday 9:59 pm
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>>39510
>I don't think Elon is any kind of super genius modern day Nikolai Tesla.

To be fair, neither was Tesla, he had an intuitive grasp of how electricity works but he wasted half his life trying to do things that broke the laws of physics even as they were understood at the time. There's also evidence that some of his inventions that did work and got him a lot of fame were plagiarised off others.

>I thought they were quite reasonable propositions, if you step back and look at everything from a completely balanced, neutral perspective.
Is it really a balanced and neutral idea to say that China could rule Taiwan the same way they've been ruling Hong Kong, after the event of the past few years?
Yeah making that sort of comment about Taiwan definitely has nothing at all to do with the fact that Musk is heavily invested in China and having the goodwill of the CCP is essential to for anyone to do business there
>> No. 39514 Anonymous
10th October 2022
Monday 10:12 pm
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>>39513

I think that whole business of naming stuff after world famous inventors needs to stop.

Look at the supposedly hydrogen-powered Nikola Truck, which was a scam and investor fraud from beginning to end, it never drove a single yard under its own power, and they just rolled it down a hill to film an advert for it.

Or similarly, Elizabeth Holmes and her company Theranos, with that bogus blood analysis machine named Edison, which was at the centre of another massive investor fraud for which she will probably end up going to prison for a long time, pending sentencing at the end of this month.

Elon Musk may have delivered unlike those two other examples, but still.
>> No. 39516 Anonymous
10th October 2022
Monday 10:19 pm
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>>39513

Well, yeah. Probably more neutral than any politician is ever capable of being. Remember, he's one of the world's richest men. He doesn't have any loyalty to any country in particular. He doesn't give a fuck about NATO expansion or the Putin's Neo-Soviet imperial ambitions or any of that. He's above and beyond all of it, because at that level of wealth, you think about different countries the way ordinary people might think about which restaurant to go for dinner at.

Wether that means his views have merit is a different matter, but one thing you can probably quite fairly credit him is not being biased about it.

I think that's what causes a lot of cognitive dissonance for that particular brand of American right wing Democrat types. It never dawned on them that money doesn't take sides. They fail to realise that capital doesn't serve America's interests alone, so they're up in arms when Blizzard Activision don't speak out about Hong Kong or whatever. The penny just simply never drops. But that's getting off topic.
>> No. 39518 Anonymous
10th October 2022
Monday 10:41 pm
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>>39514
>Elizabeth Holmes

I have such a weird crush on her. Would buy anything she is selling.
>> No. 39519 Anonymous
10th October 2022
Monday 11:06 pm
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>>39518

She won't be doing much more than sell fags to fellow inmates where she is going.

I was tempted to buy Theranos stock back in the day. Possibly because in the back of my head I was somehow fantasizing about a shag with her, but mainly because for a while Theranos just kept going up. But luckily I had second thoughts before I got in, when it occurred to me that they were essentially a one-product company whose only product was already beginning to show some serious teething problems, and whose stock valuation was quite lofty and their cash flow was more a cash trickle, if that.

Didn't see the whole of it coming though, naturally. Few did.
>> No. 39520 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 1:07 am
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https://gizmodo.com/russia-nuclear-weapons-putin-nplate-1849637617

>U.S. Preps for Nuclear Fallout

>The U.S. government purchased an anti-radiation drug, while radiation emergency information posters line PATH trains in New Jersey and New York.


Well that's reassuring.
>> No. 39522 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 3:26 pm
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>>39516
Elon isn't going to sleep with you, m79.
>> No. 39523 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 5:31 pm
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>>39522

The other two lads were significantly more eager to praise Musk than that poster.
>> No. 39524 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 6:50 pm
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Elon fanboys are honestly just weird. He could come out as a baby-eating mass murderer tomorrow, and they would still line-up around the park to suck him off.
>> No. 39525 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 7:11 pm
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>>39523
He isn't going to sleep with them either.
>> No. 39526 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 7:15 pm
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>>39524
Totally agreed. And I've just bought one of his cars. He's a prick.
>> No. 39527 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 7:24 pm
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>>39525

It's still wierd that you picked that post to make such a remark about though. In fact the earlier counterpart by (I'm assuming) the same poster was outright hostile to Musk.

This suggests to me that your problem isn't really with their attitude on Musk, but rather you didn't like something else about the post, and I would like you to come out with that rather than just make snide remarks.
>> No. 39530 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 9:34 pm
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>>39526

https://cities-today.com/ev-charging-costs-in-uk-set-for-sharp-increase/

Looks like the Monday morning office flex will become "Sorry I'm late, had to charge up my Tesla".
>> No. 39531 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 9:43 pm
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>>39530

Just get a cheap diesel generator to charge it up with, problem solved. Take that, Big Electric.
>> No. 39532 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 9:57 pm
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>>39531

That actually seems to work, with some fiddling.

Turns out Teslas are a bit temperamental about non-standard charging equipment.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dPZSvf1cQs
>> No. 39533 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 10:12 pm
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>>39532

That's pretty cool. I wonder if there's perhaps somehow some kind of way to integrate diesel generating capacity directly into the vehicle, that would save everyone a lot of hassle.

Perhaps Lord Elon the Gigantic Cocked Megabrain even clever enough to find a way to make the diesel directly drive the wheels without the need for all that nasty lithium battery business. If anyone is clever enough, I bet it's Elon.

I just weed myself a bit thinking about him, gosh, he's so great isn't he.
>> No. 39534 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 10:25 pm
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>>39533

You could just stick a big V8 petrol engine in it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJk8EEyNfvU
>> No. 39535 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 11:06 pm
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>>39530
Public charging is a total mugs game. Charging at home is half that price. If you have a good overnight electricity deal, even with recent price rises, it's a tenth of that price.

Also, you generally don't buy a 70 grand car to save money; if I wanted that I would have just bought another VW Up.
>> No. 39536 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 11:17 pm
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>>39533

>> No. 39537 Anonymous
11th October 2022
Tuesday 11:52 pm
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>>39535

>Also, you generally don't buy a 70 grand car to save money

Unless you're absolutely minted or you've financed it, that's a lot of money to spend on a car. Electric or petrol.
>> No. 39538 Anonymous
12th October 2022
Wednesday 1:27 am
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>>39537

Financing 70k on a car is still mental.

It's pretty obvious teslalad is minted though. But as a person who dabbles in cars as a hobby, and rarely spends over £3k on one, I'm curious what the consensus on the "right" amount of money to spend one one is. I could probably, definitely justify buying a second hand classic sports or even mid 2000s supercar for 70k, as it's the Thing I Do For Fun, but at the same time I commute in a car that cost £2400 (an Alfa 159, if you must know)
>> No. 39539 Anonymous
12th October 2022
Wednesday 1:51 am
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>>39538
Going anywhere close to £10k is stupid, unless you can buy CAT S/N/D/or whatever it is now, and can fix it yourself. Financing is even dumber for something that depreciates so astonishingly. I would only consider those options if I owned my own home, and had over £90k per annum coming in.
>> No. 39540 Anonymous
12th October 2022
Wednesday 2:12 am
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>>39538

It depends on your priorities, I guess. Being able to afford the monthly payments for a £70K car already puts you somewhere higher up with your income.

My parents know somebody who lived a frugal life all his life, and he's now in his 70s and has close to a million quid in life savings. The most he ever spent on a car was £20K, and not in the 60s or 70s when that really would have been a fair bit of money.
>> No. 39541 Anonymous
12th October 2022
Wednesday 2:39 am
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>>39540

I just can't imagine the stress I'd have driving something that expensive every day, and I also couldn't bare to have someone that's kept hidden away and only taken out on weekends. I'd like to think if I ever did buy an expensive car I would drive it to the shops and so on and not care about scrapes and dings like the Italians do with Ferraris, but in reality I'd be putting a cover over it even parking outside the newsagents for 3 minutes.

I've never been the sort of bloke who stands looking at his car wincing at microscopic paint imperfections, but I fear owning one of the cars I've dreamed about since I was a lad would turn me that way. I also could bear to buy a brand new BMW or whatever for 70k and watch it slowly lose its newness to dings, weather and mechanicals. It's the exact opposite of what I do now, which is buy shitboxes and improve them.

Still, if I was to spend 70k it'd be on a GT-R probably. Sorry Elon.
>> No. 39542 Anonymous
12th October 2022
Wednesday 9:28 am
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>>39538
Before I got on Motability the most I'd spent on a car was £500 for a Peugeot 206SW, gave me 3 years faultless service then just refused to start one day.
>> No. 39543 Anonymous
12th October 2022
Wednesday 12:44 pm
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>>39538

It depends on the state of the used car market, but if you're just after value-for-money motoring I think the best bet is to spend about £3,000 on a deceased-spec runabout - older model, one owner, low mileage, full service history. A lot of people seem to buy a new car with their lump sum when they retire, look after it very well and use it for the weekly shop until they die. Some of these cars get handed down in the inheritance, get passed around by feckless youngsters and end up on the market with three or four previous owners and two new bumpers, but a lot of them just go back to the dealer in mint condition for a quick sale.

If you don't mind something ugly like a Vauxhall Agila or a Perodua Kelisa, you can often pay under £2,000 for a car that'll give you absolutely no bother for years. Towards the £4,000 point you'll start to find Astras and Focuses.
>> No. 39544 Anonymous
12th October 2022
Wednesday 12:50 pm
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>>39541
I think you'll appreciate this picture then. Scratched the paint and kerbed the rims on the first day I owned it. Consolation was that I managed it before my wife did - the 20inch rims are murder, perhaps the only thing I would change.

I love the GT-R and seriously considered one - the M3P is practically speaking the same performance though and I felt, a little more wife friendly.
>> No. 39545 Anonymous
12th October 2022
Wednesday 1:29 pm
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>>39544

>the 20inch rims are murder, perhaps the only thing I would change

You could look for tyres with a more raised rim protector the next time. A lot of tyres are only a bit recessed where the tyre meets the rim, but there are ones that have a raised ridge or even a rubber flap that protects your rim from the kerb when you touch it.
>> No. 39548 Anonymous
13th October 2022
Thursday 2:52 am
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>>39544

I suppose once you've broke the seal as it were it's not as bad, but that still does cause me heartache.

I have friends who have paid between 3 and 5 grand for paintjobs on their cars, I can't think of anything more pointless. I like to buy a car that's already scratched to fuck and then it simply doesn't matter.

Anyway, I do enjoy the instant torque on these things, and I enjoy the tech part of all these full EVs, but other than my aversion to the price, I've sort of painted myself into a corner by spending the last couple of decades accruing the tools, knowledge and skills to repair and maintain ICE vehicles. I'm pretty confident in saying there's nothing I would need to go to a mechanic for now, I can do everything myself - with the exception of the very expensive and unobtainable dealer computers needed to do some shockingly basic things on more modern (anything from the last ten years or so) cars.

I barely have to make the point, I suspect, but having to use a £10k diagnostics computer to do things like enable follow me home headlights and so in is something that puts off a DIYer like myself, not to mention the latest stuff like having to pay a fee or even a fucking subscription for heated seats and so on. I cannot ever let go of the idea of a car being much like a house, where you own the thing and are responsible for knowing how to repair it and maintaining it, and being rewarded with something that doesn't fall apart in a few years.

As enjoyable as putting my foot down in my mates Plaid is, and it fucking is, I just can't see myself going full EV until driving a car from the late 90s to early 10's is rendered impossible by law or impractical by mass adoption of full electric. I am quite excited for EV conversion kits to be refined and reasonably priced. You can certainly do it now, have been able to do it for years, but I'm imagining a company coming out with vehicle specific kits for a few grand, sort of the way you can get piecemeal turbo kits now. An EV MK1 mx5 would be fun, as would an old Defender with independent drive on all four wheels.
>> No. 39549 Anonymous
13th October 2022
Thursday 8:48 am
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>>39548

>I'm imagining a company coming out with vehicle specific kits for a few grand

Vehicle-specific conversion kits are already a thing, but prices are relatively high, mainly due to the cost and availability of batteries. Demand for batteries substantially outstrips supply and the major manufacturers get first dibs, so written-off Teslas are a major source of batteries for conversions.

I'm not terribly worried about the computerisation of stuff. In theory there's an increasing amount of stuff that can only be accessed by a main dealer, but in practice there's a big hacking scene - repairing an EV is a bit like getting your Playstation chipped. The change in technology isn't great for us codgers, but there are a lot of younger people who are coming into the EV world from an electronic rather than mechanical background.

ICE vehicles aren't going to disappear, but I don't think we're all that far from them being a weekend thing for enthusiasts - we'll commute in a self-driving EV, but we'll still lark about in ICE cars for fun.

https://eveurope.eu/en/product-category/ev-conversion-kits-en/
>> No. 39550 Anonymous
13th October 2022
Thursday 8:58 am
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>>39548

I feel much the same. Few things are as viscerally disappointing about the future, to me, as the idea of having a car that treats you like a fucking iPhone does.

I have just about zero mechanical knowledge myself, and what little I do know about conventional cars probably isn't transferable to EVs, but it's like I've always done with computers. I've always found it's worth just having a go at fixing it myself, and no harm done if I can't. The future is being designed specifically to prevent people being able to do that, and in a the same way, it's being designed specifically to strangle the second-hand market. We are beginning to see a future take shape where companies use technology not to innovate, but merely to bump up their margins in the most inane ways possible. I don't know if we're quite there yet, but I won't be surprised when there are cars with fucking DRM, so only the original dealer can transfer ownership, like Microsoft trying to stop you buying pre-owned games on your Xbox.

Just think about the future we are sliding into. It's not even a cool cyberpunk dystopia where everyone has blue hair and robot arms, it's fucking mundane dystopia where you're going to be late for work because you locked yourself out of your car, and they charge you £50 to reset the 12 digit password that must include a special character, number, and capital letter.
>> No. 39551 Anonymous
13th October 2022
Thursday 9:52 am
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>>39550
>I don't know if we're quite there yet, but I won't be surprised when there are cars with fucking DRM
Doesn't Tesla already repossess cars robotmatically?
>> No. 39552 Anonymous
13th October 2022
Thursday 12:35 pm
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>>39548

>not to mention the latest stuff like having to pay a fee or even a fucking subscription for heated seats and so on.


The real piss take is that the subscriptions are non-transferable. Most automakers give you a choice to either activate the heated seats and other features for a monthly fee, or to activate them once and for all by paying one larger amount. But then when you sell the car, the latter becomes void and whoever buys it has to reactivate the seats and again pay for them. So you don't get your money back as the seller who spent 400 quid to have them activated for good, as that potential increase in your car's value is essentially pocketed by BMW when you sell the car.

Greedy cunts.
>> No. 39553 Anonymous
13th October 2022
Thursday 2:26 pm
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>>39549

>but in practice there's a big hacking scene - repairing an EV is a bit like getting your Playstation chipped.

I was going to mention this too but forgot. You're not wrong, and it's been a thing in ICE cars for years too, obviously remapping and things like that have required cracking the ECU for many years, and most car platforms need someone to come out with some sort of custom hardware to read and write to all the modules on a modern car. I have no doubt EVs are the same, and people are working on it all the time.

The problem is, this is expensive. Even for my relatively basic Alfa I had to pay £150 for a special software license to fully access the cars ECU and CANBUS network. And from the looks of things it took the bloke about eight years to crack it in the first place - and that's Italian hardware from 2008. Similarly it cost £350 for a range rover specific OBD reader that lets me do dealer level stuff. I can't imagine the equipment needed for a Tesla crack is cheaper. And yeah, I get that the car costs 70k, you will almost certainly pay a grand for a magic box that unlocks more stuff, but again the difference between my old car and yours is that if I modify mine, I don't lose functionality and the manufacturer can't potentially brick my vehicle remotely.

I'm not anti Tesla or anti EV, because I'm fully aware that ICE cars have this tech onboard now too, and it's only going to get worse. I have hated the implementation of automatic assistance on cars ever since the days of lane assist trying to kill me, so maybe I'm simply a luddite, but I barely trust fly by wire throttles let alone full self driving. The tech nerd in my loves it. The driving enthusiast hates it.
>> No. 39555 Anonymous
13th October 2022
Thursday 3:15 pm
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>>39553

It's kind of sad that the industry has gone back to setting up proprietary hurdles again that prevent you from accessing your car's on-board software and hardware.

OBDII in the 90s was a great step forward, because unlike OBDI and earlier manufacturer-specific protocols like VW's three-lead bus, for the first time nearly everything was standardised. End-user OBDII interfaces were still quite expensive back then, but in principle, you had the ability to get into your car's electronics without going to a garage or authorised dealership and it at least told you things like your fault codes.

But even then, automakers started restricting access again by making certain control units or features only accessible to tinker with if you had the proprietary software for it. One of my slightly dodgier mates had a cracked version of VAGCOM/VCDS for Volkswagen cars once, I think he said something that his cousin in Poland got it for him, but it would have cost several hundred quid to buy legally.

The reason why there are no real open-access standards in car software, at least at the diagnostics and tune-up level, is of course that there's no money in it for carmakers. They'll tell you that an open system would cause vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit against you, and that's not entirely wrong, but what they really want is that you go to their authorised dealerships each time and fork over hundreds of quid to have minor electronic issues resolved.

The way it works with the newest premium cars is that you practically can't do anything on them without a direct data connection to the manufacturer's online servers. A mechanic working at a big Audi dealership told me that even for bog standards things like a brake job, they have to link the car up with Audi's headquarters in Germany, or otherwise the car will simply refuse to acknowledge that you've just changed the discs and pads.
>> No. 39556 Anonymous
13th October 2022
Thursday 5:47 pm
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>>39555
>They'll tell you that an open system would cause vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit against you
This is missing a few key words.
>It would cause vulnerabilities that already exist to be exposed so hackers could exploit them against you [i]and also the manufacturers[/s].

An open system doesn't cause vulnerabilities. Shonky design by the manufacturers does. The more DRM-like stuff they want to do, the shonkier their designs and code are going to be, and the greater the attack surface they create, all because they want both the benefits of standard hardware and the income from optional extras without a trade-off.
>> No. 39557 Anonymous
13th October 2022
Thursday 5:48 pm
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>>39553

I might just have Stockholm Syndrome from working with electronics for years. I'm so used to buying weird widgets from dodgy Chinese sellers to work around proprietary blocks that it no longer shocks me. It probably should.
>> No. 39558 Anonymous
13th October 2022
Thursday 5:53 pm
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>>39551
I'm not sure about that, but they are definitely doing the DRM thing already. There have been lawsuits over how someone "bought" a Tesla with optional extras, wanted to sell it on, listed the paid-for extras in the listing, and sometime after it was sold the new owner had those features taken away because "you haven't paid for them". Then there was the case where they downrated someone's battery capacity in software because when it needed replacing they didn't have one of the right capacity so fitted a bigger one, which seems like it shouldn't be the owner's problem.
>> No. 39559 Anonymous
13th October 2022
Thursday 6:39 pm
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I'm semi rural and venture into megalopolis rarely. Today I saw lots of yellow and blue in places where people tend to pass in a controlled way e.g through a train station. Bottom of the steps, each step upwards, subtle but enough to hit your subconscious. I remember Derren Brown doing this thing about how people get programmed particularly regarding advertising and how in big cities this is a big thing, hitting your subconscious through subtle nudges. No doubt this has now moved on to politics.
>> No. 39561 Anonymous
13th October 2022
Thursday 8:45 pm
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>>39558

>and sometime after it was sold the new owner had those features taken away because "you haven't paid for them".

This is why all those subscriptions are a real cunt move by the auto industry.

It gets worse. You can almost half understand that when a subscription runs out, those features expire again. Somebody paid for them for a limited time, and that time is up. But with most cars from most manufacturers, you can now pay a once and for all fee, meaning no more 20 quid a month to get the heated seats activated, but something like 300 quid and they'll be permanently enabled. That is, for as long as you own the car. Because the licence agreement is with you as the owner and not tied to the car itself, the person you sell it to will have to pay another £300 if they also want the heaters permanently enabled. So what automakers are doing is they're pocketing the potential increase in resale value that you would have as the seller of a car with permanently enabled heaters.

It's as if a building company builds your house and you pay for everything in it, but when you sell your house and the new owner wants to use the bathroom, they have to pay more money to the builders.

There are bound to be loads of lawsuits rejecting these practices in the future.
>> No. 39562 Anonymous
13th October 2022
Thursday 9:07 pm
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>>39561

BMW abandoned the subscription model, possibly because they didn't want people to find out that you can get your ConnectedDrive system reflashed with hooky firmware to turn on all of the options. Any independent BMW specialist should be able to do it for about £50.

The long-term issue I'd be worried about is the increasingly cloud-based nature of self-driving features. It's one thing to hack your car, but it's quite another when your car is permanently connected to someone's servers via 4G.
>> No. 39563 Anonymous
13th October 2022
Thursday 9:08 pm
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>>39559
>Today I saw lots of yellow and blue in places where people tend to pass in a controlled way e.g through a train station

Oh nice, they're bringing back pthalo blue and yellow BR liveries?!
>> No. 39565 Anonymous
14th October 2022
Friday 5:54 am
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On the note of futuristic car silliness, did you see that California just legalised digital license plates?

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/10/digital-license-plates-approved-for-all-vehicles-in-california/

I'm a big lover of e-ink, but $700 and then a $20/month subscription just to be able to put a custom message on the footer of a license plate? The mind boggles.
>> No. 39566 Anonymous
14th October 2022
Friday 9:18 am
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>>39565

They are, allegedly, as technically insecure as is possible.
>> No. 39567 Anonymous
14th October 2022
Friday 12:36 pm
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>>39565

Leave it to the Americans to come of with nonsense like this.
>> No. 39568 Anonymous
14th October 2022
Friday 8:28 pm
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>>39566
I'd be surprised if there isn't already someone flashing them to display something other than the actual number.
>> No. 39569 Anonymous
14th October 2022
Friday 8:35 pm
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>>39568

You are correct.
>> No. 39570 Anonymous
17th October 2022
Monday 12:19 am
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It turns out that Russians in actual wars behave exactly like Russians on CS:GO. Blyat.

https://www.funker530.com/video/ukrainians-monitor-hilarious-russian-communications/
>> No. 39571 Anonymous
18th October 2022
Tuesday 4:06 pm
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>>39570

This is why I fucking love the Russians, and it disheartens me greatly that they're the baddies.
>> No. 39572 Anonymous
18th October 2022
Tuesday 4:16 pm
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>>39571

I wonder how many other nations are disappointed at us being mental bints with flat arses just because our Dear Leader is. Let's just wait for a Sam Fisher to slot the bald midget so we can [hopefully] all get back to business.
>> No. 39573 Anonymous
18th October 2022
Tuesday 4:19 pm
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>>39570
That is quite distressing.
>> No. 39574 Anonymous
19th October 2022
Wednesday 11:35 am
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Fuck the Sun and its fearmongering.

If anybody deserves to be nuked, it's them.
>> No. 39607 Anonymous
15th November 2022
Tuesday 7:38 pm
39607 spacer
Nice knowing you lads.
https://news.sky.com/story/russian-missiles-kill-two-people-in-nato-member-poland-us-intelligence-official-says-12748369
>> No. 39608 Anonymous
15th November 2022
Tuesday 7:52 pm
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>>39607
No one's going to start the Third World War over two Polacks being accidentally blown up. Seems odd and unlikely that a missile would land 50 miles over it's intended target too, I'm pretty sure Germany's V1s were more accurate than that.
>> No. 39609 Anonymous
15th November 2022
Tuesday 7:52 pm
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>>39607

Looks like this was not an intended deliberate attack on Poland, but some stray missiles that accidentally hit near the Ukrainian border on the Polish side.

I doubt that this is the beginning of a land offensive against Poland or other NATO members in the region. Not unless Putin really has a death wish.
>> No. 39610 Anonymous
15th November 2022
Tuesday 7:53 pm
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>>39607
Fuck.
Is DEFCON really a thing? And where's our TEACON poster?
Of course, Poland missiled itself, Russia good guys, NATO bastards, etc, but this does look unhelpful.
>> No. 39611 Anonymous
15th November 2022
Tuesday 8:56 pm
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For the last couple of weeks at least, Russia seems to have been all but backing down. Even the news seems to be getting bored of the story.

How long do we reckon there's left in it now?
>> No. 39612 Anonymous
15th November 2022
Tuesday 8:57 pm
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Never mincing words.
>> No. 39613 Anonymous
15th November 2022
Tuesday 10:15 pm
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>>39609
Reports are saying it looks like a ground-air missile, Russia has been using them to attack ground targets but it doesnt really make much sense that the specific type of missile would have came from the Russians and reached Poland. It could be a stray Ukrainian missile that was meant to take down a missile or drone but malfunctioned.
>> No. 39614 Anonymous
15th November 2022
Tuesday 10:20 pm
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>>39613
I'll add, yes this sounds like the sort of thing a Russian shill would say, but the BBC is citing sources who say this looks like an S-300 missile including USA-based ones, and the range of that missile is meant to be about 93 miles. The only explanation for this having came from the Russians is that they've got some based in Belarus and this was a deliberate false-flag attack, but if that's the case there's a lot of eyes and a lot of radar pointed at the Belarussian border.
>> No. 39615 Anonymous
15th November 2022
Tuesday 10:56 pm
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>>39614

Belarus have an S-300 installation in Brest. The missile landed in Przewodów, which sits on a line directly between Brest and Lviv.

The limit on the range of S-300 missiles in their intended role is limited by the capabilities of the guidance system, not propulsion. They're capable of significantly greater range when fired against stationary ground targets. The 9M83ME missile would be capable of covering the ~150 miles from Brest to Lviv, but the guidance system wouldn't be happy.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russia-now-firing-s-300-surface-to-air-missiles-at-land-targets-in-ukraine-official
>> No. 39616 Anonymous
15th November 2022
Tuesday 11:11 pm
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>>39615
Would they be firing missiles from a population centre like that? Seems like the kind of thing that happens out in the sticks. I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud.
>> No. 39617 Anonymous
15th November 2022
Tuesday 11:31 pm
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>>39616

S-300 is an air defence system. It provides a protective bubble against enemy aircraft and missiles, which can either be deployed along a border to prevent incursions or around a city to protect the population. As a city on the border, Brest is an ideal location for S-300.

The system was never designed to attack ground targets, but the Russians seem to be sufficiently desperate to use them in that role. When you're using a surface-to-air missile system to attack ground targets, you're much more likely to experience guidance errors. S-300 is also quite an old system (introduced in 1978), so there's a good chance of missiles just dropping out of the sky because of a failure in the propulsion system.
>> No. 39618 Anonymous
16th November 2022
Wednesday 12:26 am
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>>39617
Actually I believe the S-300 was designed with a secondary function to attack ground targets, as are the US Patriot systems. Unforunately you'll have to take my word for it as I heard this from someone at RUSI several months ago in a YouTube video.
>> No. 39619 Anonymous
16th November 2022
Wednesday 2:11 am
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>>39618

That's entirely plausible, but as far as we know they never got around to designing a suitable guidance system. There's no reason why the launchers and missiles couldn't be used for land attack, but the guidance systems available are designed solely for homing by radar to aerial targets. Retrofitting a satellite-based guidance system is a viable option, but there's a bit of a geopolitical wrinkle there.

Russia operate GLONASS, their equivalent of GPS, because they don't want to have to rely on an American-owned navigation system. Unfortunately for the Russians, GLONASS seems to have been acting up in all sorts of annoying ways for many years. Russian combat forces seem to be relying on obsolete and possibly second-hand Garmin navigation devices, because military-grade GPS equipment is subject to strict export controls.

This would present the Russians with the choice between a) using military-grade guidance hardware that relies on their extremely flaky GLONASS satellites or b) using whatever parts they can get their hands on to bodge together a GPS-based guidance system.

The second option is harder than you might initially think, because consumer-grade GPS receivers are required to shut down if they detect a speed greater than 1,900km/h or an altitude greater than 59,000ft.
>> No. 39620 Anonymous
16th November 2022
Wednesday 7:45 am
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Well, we're all still here this morning, so I assume the immediate threat of nuclear annihilation has passed.

Right?
>> No. 39621 Anonymous
16th November 2022
Wednesday 8:07 am
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>>39620>>39620
Consensus seems to be it's Ukrainian defense missiles gone off kilter. So still the Ruskies to blame.
>> No. 39622 Anonymous
16th November 2022
Wednesday 10:45 am
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>>39621

That still doesn't absolve the Ukrainians from the responsibility for the deaths of two civilians in a country that isn't party to this war.
>> No. 39623 Anonymous
16th November 2022
Wednesday 11:32 am
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>>39619

>because consumer-grade GPS receivers are required to shut down if they detect a speed greater than 1,900km/h or an altitude greater than 59,000ft.

I hear this all the time but never really have learned how this is implemented. I assume, considering the low cost of these devices, that the block is a very simple one that could be bypassed quite easily, but this fact is always presented as "national militaries can't do it" so maybe not. Is the GPS signal an encrypted one, is that why you can't just take a raspberry pi and some antennas and build your own unit?
>> No. 39624 Anonymous
16th November 2022
Wednesday 11:45 am
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>>39623
Maybe it's something to do with the sattelites orbit hight, diameter or whatever you call it. 'Consumer GPS recievers' may just drop through the net after a certain altitude?
>> No. 39625 Anonymous
16th November 2022
Wednesday 12:00 pm
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>>39623 it's simply in their firmware and I don't think anyone bothered to break it. There are open source GPS/gnss designs that are big, heavy and a bit short because they don't use nicely integrated everything but they don't have the height/velocity/acceleration limits.
>> No. 39626 Anonymous
16th November 2022
Wednesday 12:39 pm
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>>39623
>is that why you can't just take a raspberry pi and some antennas and build your own unit

You can definitely do this, I have a couple of Pi's that act as Stratum 1 NTP clocks - means my other computers have very accurate time; costs about 80 quid to build.
>> No. 39627 Anonymous
16th November 2022
Wednesday 2:16 pm
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>>39623

GPS is no longer encrypted. The velocity and altitude lock-out is generally implemented in silicon rather than in firmware. I wouldn't say that it's impossible to bypass, but it's taken very seriously. If you're a manufacturer of GPS chipsets or devices with similar strategic significance, smart people from three-letter agencies will take a careful interest in exactly how you're controlling their use. If they find a line in the firmware that looks anything like "altitudeLimit = true", you're going to have a very bad time.

There's a lot of quite unexciting technology that is export controlled and the feds will hunt you to the ends of the earth if you try and sell it to the wrong people. Four Eastern European guys are currently awaiting extradition to the US for trying to sell the wrong kind of grinding machine to Russia.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-charges-and-arrests-two-cases-involving-export-violation-schemes

To give a suitably dull example, the machine in the following video is a five-axis milling machine. It cuts shapes out of blocks of metal. Most of the oily bits on your car were made on something vaguely similar. If you get the version that can slide or tilt during cutting, it's not export controlled. If you get the version that can slide and tilt simultaneously to cut complex curves, it's export controlled. There are tens of thousands of simultaneous five-axis machines in the world making things like knee implants and water pump parts, but someone could hypothetically use one to make a rocket engine nozzle or a jet turbine blade. If you try to sell one to someone on the Justice Department's naughty list, you will go to federal prison.

The manufacturer obviously doesn't want to be implicated if someone illegally exports their machine, so the simultaneous version has a sensor that will completely disable the machine if it detects that it has been moved. To re-enable it, a man from the manufacturer has to come out to unlock it with a special encryption key. They were under no legal obligation to include such an annoying feature, they just did it of their own initiative to reduce the risk of accidentally breaking export control regulations.



>>39626

The Ublox module on the Uputronics hat has velocity and altitude controls. Designing your own GPS receiver using software-defined radio is doable, but SDR chips and fast ADCs are export controlled. Building anything that goes on a rocket is non-trivial because of the vibration involved; it takes a lot of simulation and testing to design a PCB and enclosure that doesn't rattle itself to death as soon as the engine fires up. Vibration simulation software and testing equipment is also export controlled.

The export control regime doesn't stop Russia from doing anything, but it does make their life much harder. Getting their hands on sensitive technology isn't necessarily impossible, but the process is a lot slower and more expensive than it would be otherwise. They don't have money to burn, so they seem to end up with a lot of inferior substitutes for things that anyone in the West would take for granted.
>> No. 39756 Anonymous
4th January 2023
Wednesday 3:24 pm
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https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-mobile-networks-being-weaponised-to-target-troops-on-both-sides-of-conflict-12577595

>Ukraine war: Mobile networks being weaponised to target troops on both sides of conflict

>It is also possible that some systems can directly identify the phone's location when the simulators connect to them, for example by accessing the phone's internal GPS system.

>Whichever method is employed - and the finer details are closely guarded military secrets - they all end with the enemy obtaining a reasonably accurate location of whoever is using the phone.
>> No. 39757 Anonymous
4th January 2023
Wednesday 9:20 pm
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Is Zelensky still wearing his Army Jumper? It must need a wash.
>> No. 39758 Anonymous
4th January 2023
Wednesday 9:58 pm
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>>39757
It is green-screen. He is actually naked.
>> No. 39759 Anonymous
5th January 2023
Thursday 9:58 am
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>>39757
I don't know what you're talking about. He's wearing the same white jumper he's had on all year.
>> No. 39760 Anonymous
5th January 2023
Thursday 8:37 pm
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I'm sensing a slight shift in tone of the reporting on the invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64155859

>The deaths of dozens of Russian soldiers in a new year missile strike on a building in occupied eastern Ukraine have prompted recriminations among critics of the Russian military.

>Russia's defence ministry has so far conceded that 89 people were killed in the Ukrainian attack on Makiivka at around midnight on New Year's Eve.

>Ukraine says as many as 400 people were killed or wounded at Makiivka, and numbers into the hundreds have been given by Russian nationalists on social media.

There hasn't been much mention of numbers so far, but this sounds like a massacre to me. Even though it's the baddies being massacred, that's a whole load of teenage conscripts who have just been slaughtered before they've even had a chance to do any evil. It almost makes me feel bad for the Russians now.

And now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-64178912

>Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his defence minister to impose a 36-hour ceasefire on the Ukrainian frontline, beginning on Friday.
>The ceasefire, scheduled to start at 12:00 Moscow time (09:00 GMT), will coincide with the Russian Orthodox Christmas.
>Mr Putin asked Ukraine to reciprocate, but Kyiv quickly rejected the request.
>Ukraine's foreign minister has said the announcement "cannot and should not be taken seriously".

Surely if Russia says, "Please stop killing us all", it would be nice to at least consider it. Are Ukraine getting cocky now they know the entire planet is on their side? Or are Russia just trying to whimper pathetically as a PR stunt?
>> No. 39761 Anonymous
5th January 2023
Thursday 8:58 pm
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>>39760

>There hasn't been much mention of numbers so far, but this sounds like a massacre to me.

They're combatants taking part in an invasion. They're in uniform and they're on foreign soil. It's perfectly lawful to attack them. Nothing in the laws of war say that you can't attack your enemy when they're asleep or if they're new recruits or if you happen to get a lot of them in one go.

There is abundant evidence that Russian forces have committed numerous war crimes, from indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas to torture, rape and summary execution. I'm sure that plenty of Russian soldiers are perfectly decent people who just got conscripted, but the Ukrainians have no way of identifying them. Russian soldiers in Ukraine are the dictionary definition of a legitimate military target. The deaths of those 89 soldiers are entirely the fault of Putin; if he hadn't started this pointless and illegal invasion, they wouldn't even be soldiers.

>Surely if Russia says, "Please stop killing us all", it would be nice to at least consider it. Are Ukraine getting cocky now they know the entire planet is on their side? Or are Russia just trying to whimper pathetically as a PR stunt?

The Russian government don't really care about how they're viewed internationally. The "ceasefire" is for the domestic audience, to try and frame the Russians as compassionate Christians. Everyone knows that the Russians will violate the ceasefire, everyone knows that Ukraine will have to defend themselves and everyone knows that Russian state media will portray it as an unprovoked attack by the Ukrainians.

Russia aren't trying to de-escalate this conflict, they aren't whimpering, they're actively recruiting for a second major mobilisation and scouring the world for weapons. Putin could end this war today, but he doesn't want to. Bogus ceasefires are just an established part of their propaganda playbook. It sucks to be a Russian conscript, but it sucks a lot more to be one of the Ukrainian civilians filling the mass graves in Mariupol, Chernihiv, Izyum or Bucha.


>> No. 39762 Anonymous
5th January 2023
Thursday 9:20 pm
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>>39760

Been like that for a while honestly.

It's always struck me as somewhat self-contradictory how the Russian military is an under equipped, badly trained, low morale force of press-ganged conscripts, but at the same time we're meant to laugh and go "Slava Ukrani!" at the videos of drones dropping grenades on a pair of them trying to give each other a blowie. This one in particular seems to cross a line- They were conscripts who probably didn't even want to be there; but there's all sorts of justifications you can make up if you look at it as "doing whatever is necessary to get the invaders out" or some shit like that.

My mental Polish mate was saying (I think, his English isn't great) a few weeks ago how he has little sympathy for the Ukrainians because of the Volhynian slaughter in WW2. Not that he supports the Russians (he said "Putin" and did a spitting gesture), but just that he doesn't believe the propaganda. The history of these countries is rife with massacres and warcrimes against one another. What we are being fed about this war is almost certainly not the whole truth, and it will be interesting to see what kind of things come to light about this conflict over the next 20-30 years.

It's like in any war, the actual soldiers are very rarely truly baddies (or indeed goodies). They're just lads doing a job. Following orders. Sometimes getting carried away, sometimes shitting themselves and fucking off the other direction. Either way, they're still people with families who will mourn them when they are dead. From that perspective the reporting has been distasteful since the start.

I am predicting that if/when Russia does eventually fold, the tables are going to quite starkly turn against Ukraine, in terms of the propaganda and defence aid and what have you. Expect all of Europe to suddenly eye them and all the fancy weapons we've been sending them with distinct suspicion.
>> No. 39763 Anonymous
5th January 2023
Thursday 9:21 pm
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>>39761

Cheers MoDlad.
>> No. 39764 Anonymous
5th January 2023
Thursday 9:51 pm
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>>39762
>we're meant to laugh and go "Slava Ukrani!" at the videos of drones dropping grenades on a pair of them

What? No, fuck you, I don't do that. The Russians need to fuck off out of Ukraine and the Ukrainians have every right to defend themselves, but these deaths are tragedies, as are all deaths due to war. Who is telling me to applaud this? Who, in fact, is applauding it? Cos they're psychopathic cunts.
>> No. 39765 Anonymous
5th January 2023
Thursday 10:03 pm
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>>39764

You don't often go into the comments sections then, good on you mate. Keep it that way.
>> No. 39766 Anonymous
5th January 2023
Thursday 10:44 pm
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>>39762

>there's all sorts of justifications you can make up if you look at it as "doing whatever is necessary to get the invaders out" or some shit like that.

When you've been invaded, you don't have to justify yourself to anyone. If it's within the laws of war, you are absolutely and unconditionally within your rights to do it. Ukraine have done a far better job of upholding the laws of war than we've ever done. Getting sentimental about the poor cunt who has been sent to do the invading is a luxury afforded only to bystanders. Dead Russian conscripts are Putin's problem, not Zelensky's.

Western media reporting has been a model of restraint compared to practically any conflict that any country has even been even peripherally involved in, mostly because they have been continually in denial about the reality of this conflict. The people who confidently told us a year ago that Putin's military mobilisation was just a bluff continue to tell us things that contradict the views of virtually all military historians, military analysts and the words of Russia's own leaders.
>> No. 39767 Anonymous
5th January 2023
Thursday 11:11 pm
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>>39766
I see swathes of people online going "What about the Russian-speaking civilians in Ukraine?" What about them? The Ukrainians aren't targeting them, they're usually happy when the Ukrainians turn up to liberate them, and those people haven't stopped to consider how they even got there in the first place.
>> No. 39768 Anonymous
5th January 2023
Thursday 11:12 pm
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>>39766

>When you've been invaded, you don't have to justify yourself to anyone

>laws of war
>laws of war
>lAwS oF wAr

Well, make your mind up lad. Either it's all or nothing self defence for the sake of survival, or there's some kind of line you can cross from justified into barbaric.
>> No. 39769 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 12:44 am
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>>39768

>When you've been invaded, you don't have to justify yourself to anyone. If it's within the laws of war, you are absolutely and unconditionally within your rights to do it.

There are rules, encoded in the laws of war. Almost every country in existence has signed up to those rules, including Russia. Ukraine have been very careful to remain within those rules. Anything Ukraine does within those rules - including rocket attacks on army bases, dropping grenades on two soldiers having a nosh or anything else you might find objectionable - has been agreed by everyone to be fair game.

Ukraine didn't start this fight, but they are playing by the rules. Russia did start this fight (which is against the rules), they keep doing things that are against the rules (like bombing hospitals, executing captives, torturing and raping people) but they continually deny it and continually and baselessly accuse everyone else of breaking the rules.

This is as clear-cut a moral position as you're ever likely to see in an international conflict. I know it isn't fashionable, but sometimes there are just goodies and baddies. As I've said before, I'm sure that there are individual Russian soldiers who are perfectly decent chaps, but Ukraine are in no position to tell them from the other chaps in the same uniform who keep perpetrating war crimes. Ukraine really don't have any choice but to keep killing Russian soldiers until either Putin decides to abandon the war or he runs out of soldiers; they tried making peace with Russia in 2014, they tried appeasement, but they have learned the hard way that it's just capitulation by another name.

Ukraine are in the right, Russia are in the wrong and all the blame lies with Putin. You might instinctively feel that it can't be that simple, but for once it really is that simple. You might feel that dropping a grenade from a drone onto a soldier in a foxhole isn't really the done thing, but everyone involved has agreed that it is kosher. Everyone has agreed that shooting an unarmed and handcuffed pensioner in the back of the head isn't kosher, but Russian soldiers keep doing it and keep getting medals for it.
>> No. 39770 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 12:47 am
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>>39766
Would you say the same about ARE BOYS who died in Iraq and Afghanistan? Were the daft militant wogs just defending their nations from invaders?
>> No. 39771 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 3:27 am
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>>39770

Yes?
>> No. 39772 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 4:23 am
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>>39769
>Russia did start this fight [...] but they continually deny it and continually and baselessly accuse everyone else of breaking the rules.
This reminds me of someone describing international diplomacy as "the big poker game where everyone lies".
>> No. 39773 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 1:55 pm
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>>39770

Both of those conflicts were extremely murky. The initial phase of the Iraq war was a fairly straightforward military conflict, albeit with a dubious causus belli. The later stages of that war (and the whole of the Afghanistan conflict) were enormously complicated by the fact that most of those who fought against the coalition forces did not wear identifying insignia and were not part of a functioning command structure; as such, the vast majority of those fighters were acting in violation of international law.

It's difficult to make a clear case that either side were acting lawfully and the whole thing was an ungodly mess from a legal, strategic and political perspective. The western coalition probably shouldn't have been there, but the people fighting against them couldn't be considered as legitimate combatants. Nobody was really in the right and the debate is mainly about who was most in the wrong.
>> No. 39774 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 2:43 pm
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>>39769
>>39773

You're all missing the point. It's not about "is russia right" or "is ukraine right", we all know that's clear cut. Nobody's arguing that.

It's about recognising that the men out there in the trenches are real human beings, whichever uniform that they are wearing. They are both capable of moral and immoral acts, they are both capable of atrocities, and if you think the baddies are the only ones breaking the rules then you are naive.

If you find yourself dehumanising them and dismissing the bad things done by the goodies, like Torygraphlad was earlier on, you have been consumed by the propaganda. Think about why the establishment needs you to so instinctively dismiss the troops of Eastasia as "the other".

You're probably the kind of person to make fun of people being "edgy" too, but the way some of you lot are talking about this war like you've got a little stiffy over it because it's the first proper one in decades that isn't just a curb-stomping against some backward goat herders is disgusting. Viscerally.
>> No. 39775 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 3:13 pm
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>>39774

>It's about recognising that the men out there in the trenches are real human beings

Absolutely, but over-sympathising with the enemy is equally dangerous as dehumanising them. They're just lads who have been sent to fight and die for a cause they don't necessarily agree with or even understand, I don't think that anyone is disagreeing on that point. The issue is that in the current circumstances, the only reasonable course of action is for the Ukrainians to keep killing them until they stop coming. The Ukrainian guns are the only thing separating the Russian army from the NATO border; the only people who disagree with that position are people who a year ago were confidently saying that the massing of troops on the Russian border was an elaborate bluff.

In order for the Ukrainians to push back the Russian army and end the war, they need a lot of very expensive materiel from most NATO countries. They need us to tolerate incredibly high energy prices that are pushing millions into poverty. The Ukrainian people need to maintain their resolve, but so do the billion-odd people who are making tangible sacrifices to support their war effort. If that resolve weakens, Putin will gain the opportunity to re-group and re-arm, with the end result being that this war becomes longer and even bloodier. Every day that this war continues gives Russian factories another day to make bullets, shells and cluster bombs, many of which will end up killing innocent Ukrainian civilians.

Russian conscripts are ordinary human beings like you and me, but they're human beings who are fighting for an unjust cause and need to be stopped. They'll only stop dying if Putin abandons his ambition of re-establishing the Russian empire, or if he succeeds so comprehensively that he has no opposition. That's the brutal reality of fighting a just war. There is no good outcome, just a bad outcome and a worse outcome.
>> No. 39776 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 3:36 pm
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>>39775

What if the enemy are the officers and ruling classes on both Ukrainian and Russian sides rather than the rank and file military of one?
>> No. 39777 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 3:42 pm
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>>39775

The fact that gas prices are down to pre-war levels tells me it all might be coming to an end soon. Not that I'm saying the whole thing was a massive conspiracy to enrich gas barons and arms dealers, but that's also exactly what I'm saying.
>> No. 39778 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 4:13 pm
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>>39776

Large parts of the Ukrainian armed forces are self-organised militias that have been incorporated into the regular army. Many of those militias were formed during the war in Donbas, driven by a widespread belief that the government was not doing enough to counter separatism and Russian interference. The Ukrainian government didn't militarise their population - the Ukrainian people militarised their government. Zelensky won the 2019 presidential election with 73% of the second round votes, despite having less than a quarter of the campaign funds of Poroshenko.

When the invasion happened in 2022, large parts of Eastern Ukraine had been occupied by Russia or Russian-backed proxies for nearly eight years. The Ukrainian people were fully aware of what they were fighting for and what they were fighting against. They knew what the Russians had done in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk and wanted no part of it. More to the point, they remember what the Soviets did to them in 1932.
>> No. 39779 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 4:28 pm
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>>39778

>More to the point, they remember what the Soviets did to them in 1932.

Oh lad. You were doing well. If they remember that, then they should also remember all these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:War_crimes_committed_by_the_Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army

If you didn't have to invoke collective memory of past grievances and turn them (and therefore by extension us) into hypocrites, you'd have had a great point.
>> No. 39780 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 6:09 pm
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>>39779

That wikipedia link proves nothing

See also -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_war_crimes

To sum up: There's hardly a country on Earth which hasn't in some shape or form commited war crimes or crimes against humanity in its history.
>> No. 39781 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 6:27 pm
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>>39780

That is the point lad. There's never just goodies and baddies. Not even this time.
>> No. 39782 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 6:30 pm
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>>39779
Top job there, comparing the actions of a standing army with a daft militant wog group. Well done, have a cookie and go outside and play in traffic.
>> No. 39783 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 6:36 pm
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>>39782

>Large parts of the Ukrainian armed forces are self-organised militias that have been incorporated into the regular army.
>> No. 39784 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 6:53 pm
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>>39783
You were comparing the actions of a 1920s paramilitary group with the 1930s Soviet army. This herring looks a bit too red for my liking.
>> No. 39788 Anonymous
6th January 2023
Friday 11:11 pm
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>>39773
Amazing both sides argument. Here's a question, did Britain do exactly what Russia is doing insofar as invading a country and trying to occupy it?
>> No. 39789 Anonymous
7th January 2023
Saturday 12:37 am
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>>39788
Invading a country and trying to occupy it was pretty much the goal of at least two of our four forays into Afghanistan.
>> No. 39792 Anonymous
12th January 2023
Thursday 6:33 pm
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>>39779
The UPA did indeed commit atrocities, but they were fucking amateurs compared to the NKVD.
>> No. 39793 Anonymous
24th January 2023
Tuesday 10:27 pm
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Nice knowing you lads.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/24/doomsday-clock-at-record-90-seconds-to-midnight-amid-ukraine-crisis

> Doomsday Clock at record 90 seconds to midnight amid Ukraine crisis

>Scientists warn of ‘unprecedented danger’ and say ‘Russia’s war … has raised profound questions’
>> No. 39794 Anonymous
24th January 2023
Tuesday 10:49 pm
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>>39793
The Doomsday Clock is pure bollocks. Alarmist wankers like to move their invented clock closer and closer to midnight so they can be in the news every year or two. It is based entirely on the subjective opinions of a handful of fame-hungry charlatans.
>> No. 39795 Anonymous
24th January 2023
Tuesday 10:55 pm
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>>39794

I still think it carries a certain bit of weight. Atomic scientists do have more insight into these issues than the average Guardian reader person.
>> No. 39796 Anonymous
24th January 2023
Tuesday 11:19 pm
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>>39795
What good does it actually serve? I kind of agree with the lad you're replying to, just seems like a way to increase the general ambiance of increasing anxiety. Even if it were in some way worth anything what in the fuck is your average person meant to do about it?

It's shit for cunts. I've got enough day to day bollocks to worry about, not gonna stress over some bunch of nerds cardboard clock.
>> No. 39797 Anonymous
24th January 2023
Tuesday 11:40 pm
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>>39796

>It's shit for cunts. I've got enough day to day bollocks to worry about, not gonna stress over some bunch of nerds cardboard clock.

It's just a means of visualising where the world stands at the moment. And in that respect, there are worse things you can pay attention to.
>> No. 39798 Anonymous
25th January 2023
Wednesday 3:38 am
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>>39796

>shit for cunts

Name of my new shop.
>> No. 39799 Anonymous
25th January 2023
Wednesday 8:49 am
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It's fascinating to see these Daily Express headlines I get fed every day on the front page of MSN because they are actual war propaganda. Today's is "Putin's plan backfires as £30m worth of Russian helicopters obliterated in just 30 minutes".

Oh no wait it's just updated to "NATO 'shouldn't fear Russia collapse' as Putin defeat in Ukraine will prevent World War 3". What a time to be alive.
>> No. 39800 Anonymous
25th January 2023
Wednesday 11:52 am
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We've not talked about nuclear war for a while, so let's speculate. To what extent do America's fancy space laser defence systems actually exist?

I've a good feeling they're as good as total fantasy honestly, existing in more of less the same cultural mileu as Area 51 and the men in black. Something the government is happy to let people think it has, but in reality it really doesn't, or what it does have is so exponentially less effective than they'd have us believe.

When it comes to nuclear war MAD is still king, and the one thing that's stopped Putin's nuclear sabre rattling is that the Yanks assured him no matter how deep of a bunker he hides in, they'll get to him eventually, like blasting a hole all the way to the water line in a game of Worms.
>> No. 39801 Anonymous
25th January 2023
Wednesday 12:13 pm
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>>39800
I don't think anyone can stop hypersonic gliders of the sort that China has, but I severely doubt Russia has many, if any, of those.
>> No. 39802 Anonymous
25th January 2023
Wednesday 12:32 pm
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>>39800

I'd postulate that even if the yanks had a perfectly effective laser knock down system, launching nukes against them would still trigger the apocalypse even if the nukes got fried and fell into the ocean. It's not like the political climate over there would support anything other than mashing the red button in response.
>> No. 39803 Anonymous
25th January 2023
Wednesday 12:35 pm
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>>39800

The space laser thing never worked and was abandoned in 1993.

Interceptor missiles definitely do work. Although they wouldn't be sufficient to completely stop an all-out ICBM attack, they would greatly reduce the effectiveness of it. The American system is multilayered, with a variety of detection and interception systems to provide some level of redundancy.

The Yanks have learned a great deal from the Israelis, who have a serious amount of practice in shooting down missiles. Obviously Hamas don't have ICBMs, but in many respects it's harder to shoot down a short-range missile. Iron Dome has intercepted thousands of missiles with a success rate far in excess of 90%.

I wouldn't want to have to rely on a missile defence system, but the Pentagon might. The mere existence of their system changes the strategic calculus, regardless of how well it actually works in practice.
>> No. 39804 Anonymous
25th January 2023
Wednesday 6:30 pm
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>>39803

>Interceptor missiles definitely do work. Although they wouldn't be sufficient to completely stop an all-out ICBM attack, they would greatly reduce the effectiveness of it


"greatly reduce the effectiveness" could still mean that you'll end up with a few dozen strategic-sized warheads detonating over the U.S.. Every single one of them could be sufficient to disrupt public life in the whole country beyond repair.

I guess to some extent it's a philosophical question how many hits you would deem as acceptable damage inflicted by the enemy. But just one 5MT blast anywhere along the Northeastern Seaboard, which is not an unusually high yield for a Russian strategic warhead, would make the majority of that region uninhabitable probably for decades.

Current interception technology would probably prevent the U.S. from getting wiped out completely, but it would be lunacy to think that the U.S. could safely defend itself with it.
>> No. 39805 Anonymous
25th January 2023
Wednesday 6:37 pm
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>>39804

It's not about acceptable civilian or infrastructure losses at that point, it's about still having enough missiles of your own left to completely wipe out the other.
>> No. 39806 Anonymous
25th January 2023
Wednesday 6:42 pm
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>>39805

"If I'm going down, I'll take you with me" still isn't a strategy with which you'll meaningfully survive a nuclear war as a country.
>> No. 39807 Anonymous
25th January 2023
Wednesday 6:48 pm
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>>39804

>But just one 5MT blast anywhere along the Northeastern Seaboard, which is not an unusually high yield for a Russian strategic warhead, would make the majority of that region uninhabitable probably for decades.

The long-term impact of nuclear weapons has been over-egged. Modern airburst munitions are designed for maximum yield, which inherently means a low level of residual radiation - any radioactive energy left over after the event is energy that can't go into the explosion.

Contemporary Russian warheads have a stated yield of 550kt or 750kt, which is undoubtedly a devastating attack on any urban centre, but would certainly be survivable for a nation like the US.

>Current interception technology would probably prevent the U.S. from getting wiped out completely, but it would be lunacy to think that the U.S. could safely defend itself with it.

Lunacy on a basic humanitarian level, certainly. Lunacy beyond the realms of the Pentagon? I'm not so sure. I don't think the Yanks are crazy enough to believe that they're safe from nuclear attack, but they would go into any confrontation with Russia under the firm belief that they could "win".

America after a nuclear attack would be completely shattered as a nation, but the American military would remain mostly functional. The complete annihilation of most of the eastern seaboard (with the deaths of tens of millions of people) would do remarkably little to limit the combat effectiveness of the US military. That's very seductive when you've got stars on your shoulder and you think about the world in terms of grand strategy.

That's the basic reason why the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences have been so opposed to missile defence systems - regardless of how much they would change the actual outcome, they change the psychology of the people with their finger on the button.
>> No. 39808 Anonymous
25th January 2023
Wednesday 6:53 pm
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>>39806

>as a country.
see >>39807
>> No. 39809 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 1:24 am
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>>39805

Which brings it again back to the idea of MAD, thus rendering the whole thing effectively a giant waste of time and money, no? The logic is circular.
>> No. 39810 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 1:31 am
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>>39807

>The complete annihilation of most of the eastern seaboard (with the deaths of tens of millions of people)

I'd imagine it would be in the hundreds, that's where most of the population lives.

>would do remarkably little to limit the combat effectiveness of the US military.

Would it though? Surely even a military as big and over-prepared as America's still relies on supply lines from back home, and even then. In the absence of a country to defend, what is that military going to fight for, exactly?
>> No. 39811 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 3:14 am
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>>39810

The sheer size and sprawling urban geography of the US makes it very difficult to cripple, even if you've got a shitload of nukes. The biggest warhead in the Russian inventory will destroy buildings within a radius of about four miles and burn people who are outside or break windows within a radius of about seven miles. That's a huge blast radius in a country like the UK, it's huge for a major city like New York or LA, but it's pissing in the wind once you're out in the Midwest.

For every warhead that the Russians drop, they've got to choose - do they target a military base, a nuclear missile silo, a strategically important production facility or a major population centre? Almost without exception, they can only choose one.

Take the Lima Army Tank Plant in Lima, Ohio. It currently performs final assembly of eleven M1 Abrams tanks per month. It's located within the "city" of Lima, which has a population of just over 35,000. The nearest city (as we'd recognise it in British terms) is Fort Wayne, which is nearly 60 miles away. If the Russians nuked Lima, people in Fort Wayne would hear little more than a faint thud and might just make out the top of the mushroom cloud over the horizon. Multiply that example by several thousand and you start to see the scale of the challenge for the Russians.

America's ability to feed itself, build things and fight wars exists almost entirely within the black parts on your map. A nuclear war could kill two thirds of the population of the US, and a lot of the survivors would only see it on TV - it'd have no tangible impact on their daily lives. The stuff that actually keeps the US functioning on a practical level is mostly spread out across thousands of small towns.

Incidentally, that's at the heart of most of the political divisions in the US. There is a huge geographical divide that separates the kind of people who write in national newspapers from the kind of people who serve in the army, work in a factory or drive a truck. They're basically foreigners to each other.
>> No. 39812 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 3:44 am
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>>39811

All of that goes doubly the other way too though. If you think America is a big and sparsely populated country, have you seen Russia? Two thirds of America is empty space, but practically 95% of Russia is.

Anyway, I'm not intentionally being obtuse or contradictory with you but every time we go around and over this you repeatedly either refuse or fail to understand how interconnected and interdependent the elements of modern economies are. You can't just blow New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia et al off the map and expect the rest of America to go "Oh well. We've still got all the farms, we're fine."

No, those places actually do stuff. The rest of the country would go bankrupt. People would starve despite the abundance of food because such a massive shock would send the economy completely topsy turvy. Maybe there would be a contingency plan implementing martial law, rationing, and a wartime command economy like we had back in the world wars, but that would, in itself, sap a considerable amount of the military's manpower and resources. Not to mention the fact the gears of THAT machine seize up extremely fucking quick without its most important logistical supply- Money.

It would be the end of the US as we recognise it in any meaningful sense. There would be plenty of people left who didn't see the atomic hellfire, sure, but they'd still end up living in a world be very likely to descend into anarchy. Any communities that managed to stay coherent would be plunged back to something resembling America at the end of the frontier era, focused simply on the day to day business of survival. Not pumping out Ambrams tanks.

Look what mayhem it caused when we just asked people to stay indoors for a few weeks. Now imagine the most productive economic centres are all simultaneously vapourised in a matter of minutes.
>> No. 39813 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 5:35 am
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>>39812

>It would be the end of the US as we recognise it in any meaningful sense.

Absolutely, but that's very different from the end of the US. The question we started with was whether the US might take actions that posed a high risk of starting a nuclear war, and whether that decision would be influenced by the existence and efficacy of missile defence systems. I think the answers are "maybe" and "almost certainly".

>No, those places actually do stuff.

They do stuff that has almost no relevance to a wartime economy. The US is really two countries with two distinct economies - the major cities that operate like highly developed service-oriented economies, and the small towns that are still predominantly oriented around goods and resources.

>The rest of the country would go bankrupt.

The country as a whole would be drastically poorer, but rural America already has about half the GDP per capita of urban America. The federal government would invoke the Defence Production Act and a set of very carefully designed machinery would immediately transform the country into a command economy. America essentially cannot go bankrupt, because they print the world's reserve currency - the entire global financial system is underpinned by the US dollar.

>Any communities that managed to stay coherent would be plunged back to something resembling America at the end of the frontier era, focused simply on the day to day business of survival.

You grossly over-estimate the relevance of urban America to rural America. Governance is highly devolved, with the vast majority of decisions being made at state and municipal rather than federal level. American infrastructure is poorly maintained, but it's also designed for resilience due to the preponderance of extreme weather events. There are very few parts of rural America that aren't used to dealing with blizzards or hurricanes or wildfires.

Most rural communities have their own independent water systems and are fully prepared for the loss of grid power. Crucially, all the stuff that runs a modern society is also overwhelmingly rural - oil wells (the US has full independence in this respect) and refineries, logistics hubs, manufacturing, even data centers. Urban America would descend into anarchy in a matter of days if rural America suddenly collapsed, but the inverse is very much not true.

>Look what mayhem it caused when we just asked people to stay indoors for a few weeks.

We asked people to stay indoors. They were very much divided on that matter. Many US states never even asked people to stay at home, let alone ordered to them by law. We might have gone mental, but most rural Americans just carried on as if nothing had happened.

Americans are batshit mental, but red state Americans are batshit in a way that is almost perfectly adapted for coping with a nuclear apocalypse. They've got generators and chainsaws and enough ammunition to kill everyone on earth several times over.
>> No. 39814 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 10:29 am
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>>39813

There's no disputing that the Yanks would be daft enough to go through with it. Your arguments here are exactly what the defence cheifs would be using to reassure the president and high up politicians and what not, no doubt. But you and they are both severely overestimating the resilience of a country with its head effectively cut off,and several vital organs removed.

Most of America would prefer not to have a federal government anyway. What you're assuming is that the existing authorities and command structure remains in place and retains control. I very much doubt it would survive, and instead the Midwest and East coast would fracture and balkanise. People would survive, life would go on, albeit in a dramatically altered and more precarious fashion, that's not what I'm arguing, but it wouldn't be acting as a joined up whole. It wouldn't be a nation state any longer.

It wouldn't be America any more, it'd be what Eastern Europe is to the Soviet Union today.
>> No. 39815 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 10:36 am
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>>39813

Oh, and:

>Many US states never even asked people to stay at home, let alone ordered to them by law.

Yes, that was part of my point. The US only had a few weeks of Veryan lockdowns, nothing approaching the months long national isolation we had over here. And yet the impact was felt by every ordinary American, in a way that they're still picking themselves up from. Store shelves were empty, people were queueing on the highways for emergency food collections, mental stuff. All that just because a small portion of the workforce had to stay home and a few boats were late.

You are vastly, vastly, vastly, vastly, I cannot emphasise enough,VASTLY underestimating the complexity and interreliance of modern society. It's not just about being able to grow food.
>> No. 39816 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 11:01 am
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I would speculate that, at the most generous interpretation, rural America would only be as affected as we would be if New York disappeared. I can't imagine we rely on New York more than they do. And if we lost New York, we could keep fighting a war but we would, broadly speaking, be fucked.
>> No. 39817 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 11:46 am
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Today's Daily Express headline: "'Leave it to me'-Putin's chilling words to Xi Jinping before he 'ordered' downing of MH17"
>> No. 39818 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 2:35 pm
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>>39817
>> No. 39819 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 9:00 pm
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Yesterday Germany's defence minister agreed that Leopard 2 tanks can be shipped to the Ukraine. This comes with the understanding that the US will provide M1 Abrams tanks.
>> No. 39820 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 9:25 pm
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>>39819

German tanks fighting Russian troops, eh.

Let's hope they succeed this time.
>> No. 39821 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 10:14 pm
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>>39819

A Anglo-American Loan Agreement by any other name...

Ukraine is gonna be in the Yanks' and EU's pocket for centuries after this. They'll never be brought into the European project, just kept at arms length as a buffer state against Bad Vlad and his inevitable twisted successor for fear of their national debt crippling the Eurozone.

Poor fucking bastards never stood a chance.
>> No. 39822 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 10:14 pm
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>>39820

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zag-XnwLLpo. Sure, not Russia, but German tanks did well in the past.
>> No. 39823 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 10:48 pm
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>>39821

Are the Yanks actually expecting them to pay it all back? I think I'd rather have just been invaded in that case if I was Ukraine.
>> No. 39824 Anonymous
26th January 2023
Thursday 11:44 pm
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>>39822

That was... educational.
>> No. 39825 Anonymous
27th January 2023
Friday 4:23 am
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>>39821

It's explicitly aid rather than a loan. Zelensky has repeatedly made the straightforward argument that the more arms they're supplied with, the sooner they can end the war and the less they'll have to rebuild.

A lot of the stuff that the west has supplied to Ukraine was basically surplus anyway. The US Army wanted to suspend production of the M1 Abrams back in 2011, because they had massive stockpiles even then; Congress vetoed the idea, because they didn't want to lose the skills in the supply chain and risk losing the ability to suddenly ramp up production when needed.

Biden's reticence to supply the Abrams to Ukraine was mainly about the technology - they don't want the Russians to capture one and sell it to the Chinese. The M1 tanks supplied to Ukraine will have some of the more sensitive electronics stripped out, but they can't strip off the Chobham armour, which is still technically a secret.

Military tech has a natural shelf life, so it might as well get used for something useful rather than sitting in a warehouse until it's obsolete or unserviceable.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/budget-cuts-army-plan-halt-abrams-tank-production/story?id=13582237
>> No. 39826 Anonymous
27th January 2023
Friday 9:44 am
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>>39825

>It's explicitly aid rather than a loan.

From google it looks like a lot of the money is coming with strings to me m8
>> No. 39827 Anonymous
27th January 2023
Friday 11:04 am
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>>39826

Two separate issues. The guns and tanks and various humanitarian gubbins are supplied as aid, with the only strings being things like "please don't lose it or sell it to nutters". They're also borrowing money to keep the economy going; those loans are substantially underwritten by foreign governments (mainly the EU and the US), because the Ukrainian government is obviously a challenging credit risk. Ukraine have borrowed about €50bn so far, which is obviously a lot of money but not absolutely bonkers. They're in a difficult financial position, but their debt-to-GDP ratio is manageable if they can get their economy back on track within the next couple of years.

Several EU countries (most notably Germany) are pushing to provide grants rather than loans to support the Ukrainian economy. That's politically trickier and Ukraine really isn't in a position to wait for the EU to resolve their internal squabbles, hence the loans. Germany has already provided €1bn in grant funding from their own coffers.
>> No. 39828 Anonymous
27th January 2023
Friday 3:26 pm
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Today's Express headline: "Russia 'now at war with NATO' as 'game-changing' support from West sparks furious backlash"
>> No. 39829 Anonymous
27th January 2023
Friday 5:38 pm
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>>39828
>> No. 39830 Anonymous
30th January 2023
Monday 9:31 am
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Today's Express headline: "Russia's top commanders 'terrified' by Putin's new battle plans as 'hope of winning' falls"
>> No. 39831 Anonymous
30th January 2023
Monday 9:37 am
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>>39830
I don't care what that rag has to say. Stop making it my problem.
>> No. 39832 Anonymous
30th January 2023
Monday 9:52 am
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>>39831
Problem? You got beef wif britfa.gs bruv?
>> No. 39833 Anonymous
30th January 2023
Monday 10:01 am
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>>39832
I don't see the value in posting headlines from a newspaper I'm quite certain no one here takes seriously anyway.
>> No. 39834 Anonymous
30th January 2023
Monday 10:51 am
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>>39833

Not him, I find them vaguely amusing. Though I do see them myself anyway because when I'm at wwork I only browse the MSN homepage so I don't look like a weirdo browsing toy soldiers and she'd enthusiast websites.

The bit I find wierd is that the public is more or less unanimously in support of Ukraine,there's no need for propaganda. So why are they over-egging it like that. Sure a few people are skeptical of NATO'S overall intent, and it's pretty valid to observe our hypocrisy over this and the invasion of Iraqistan and all that, but nobody is saying Russia is in the right.

Well. Except my nutter Polish mate who I am increasingly convinced is some sort of neo-Nazi.
>> No. 39835 Anonymous
30th January 2023
Monday 11:23 am
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>>39833

I like keeping up with the increasingly unhinged war propaganda we're feeding the tabloid plebs. I always have a look when I go the shop.
>> No. 39836 Anonymous
30th January 2023
Monday 3:54 pm
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>>39835
I must say, it has felt like a diversionary tactic from the political overlords that right as Rishi Sunak is under fire for his handling of Nadhim Zahawi's tax naughtiness, Boris Johnson suddenly strides back into the news to say Putin threatened to fire missiles at the UK a couple of years ago. That's quite a bonkers story he's unleashing there.
>> No. 39837 Anonymous
30th January 2023
Monday 4:43 pm
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>>39836

It's the Express. Not even they can put a positive spin on this government and they've run out of stories about Princess Diana.
>> No. 39838 Anonymous
30th January 2023
Monday 4:54 pm
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>>39834

>I find them vaguely amusing.

I like rags like the Sun better when they leave no doubt about the thin ground they're walking on. When it comes to politics, especially when there's a war that could turn ugly for the entire world, I don't think it should be left to them to keep the thick unwashed masses informed.

Then again, problem is, there are social stratas among the lower classes where the Sun and the Express, maybe also a bit the DM, are their only means of following current events. You just won't get them to watch the BBC evening news.
>> No. 39839 Anonymous
30th January 2023
Monday 4:56 pm
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>>39837
>they've run out of stories about Princess Diana.

I take it you missed Harry's recent revelation about putting hand cream on his cock that reminded him of his mum?
>> No. 39840 Anonymous
30th January 2023
Monday 6:08 pm
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>>39839

Bit specialist, but ok.
>> No. 39841 Anonymous
31st January 2023
Tuesday 1:58 pm
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Today's Express headline: "Dramatic moment Russian soldiers are wiped out by Ukraine ‘death ray' weapon"
>> No. 39842 Anonymous
31st January 2023
Tuesday 3:23 pm
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/31/us-will-not-supply-f-16-fighter-jets-to-ukraine-says-joe-biden

>US will not supply F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, says Joe Biden

>President’s refusal deals significant blow to Kyiv’s efforts to bolster military capability in war with Russia


At this point, it's probably more accurate to say that it'll prevent WWIII.

Besides, doesn't it take quite some time to train pilots to fly a plane they're not yet familiar with? I think I read somewhere that most Ukrainian air force jets are still MiGs.
>> No. 39843 Anonymous
31st January 2023
Tuesday 5:03 pm
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>>39842
A MiG-29 is hardly a tractor with wings. I suspect a fighter pilot learning to fly a more up-to-date aircraft of a similar design wouldn't struggle terribly with the task, but as you alluded to the idea of an American jet striking Russian territory isn't something the US wants at all.
>> No. 39844 Anonymous
31st January 2023
Tuesday 5:24 pm
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>>39843

Doesn't even have to be Russian territory. The presence of American jets in itself would not go down well with Putin, and it would give him more grounds to say that he's really at war with NATO and the West. Giving the Ukrainians modern NATO tanks is already a gamble on the assumption that Putin is really only bluffing, despite his own assurances last year.
>> No. 39845 Anonymous
31st January 2023
Tuesday 5:58 pm
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>>39844

He already is, but it's really swings and roundabouts. NATO can always steadfastly stand behind the fact Putin started it, but then Putin can point to all the American, German and British hardware and say it proves Ukraine was in NATOs pocket, validating his original point about NATO encroaching on Russia's borders.

It's all very circular because our involvement in this war relies on us stubbornly refusing to admit that we wanted Ukraine in our pocket, which we did, and Putin being the baddie for invading, which he did.
>> No. 39846 Anonymous
31st January 2023
Tuesday 6:22 pm
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I remember they were talking about doing a swap with Poland for a while, but has anyone thought of trying to buy the Angolan or Peruvian air force, or any other far away place with eastern bloc equipment? I mean, you see why you don't want to give F-16s to Poland in exchange for MiG-29s because Russia could always hit back at Poland, but Russia aren't exactly in a position to attack Peru. (Now there's some good news for Paddington's Aunt Lucy.)
>> No. 39847 Anonymous
31st January 2023
Tuesday 6:30 pm
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>>39845

>It's all very circular because our involvement in this war relies on us stubbornly refusing to admit that we wanted Ukraine in our pocket, which we did, and Putin being the baddie for invading, which he did.

Well put.

It probably would have been best to maintain a neutral corridor between Russia and Western Europe after the Communist Bloc fell, with a string of countries from the Baltic to the Black Sea that would not have been affiliated with either, instead of creeping up on Russia both by integrating Eastern Europe into the EU and by dragging the countries into NATO.

Problem is, even a neutral corridor means nothing if it isn't respected. Between Western expansionism and Russian neo-imperialism, it would have been difficult for those countries to stay neutral in the long run. They always would have favoured one side over the other. And Putin being Putin, he would have made short work of former USSR satellite states attempting to maintain their independence. Just look at what he has done in some of the former Soviet republics attempting to decrease their dependence on Russia, especially the smaller ones in Central Asia. And now even Sweden and Finland have been forced to choose sides, for fear of any nasty business along their long borders with Russia.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
>> No. 39848 Anonymous
1st February 2023
Wednesday 8:55 am
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Today's Express headline: "Putin's top army boss boasts thousands of convict conscripts have turned into 'cannibals'"
>> No. 39849 Anonymous
1st February 2023
Wednesday 10:33 am
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>>39848

I know that Russian rations are bad, but that's taking the piss.
>> No. 39850 Anonymous
1st February 2023
Wednesday 11:05 am
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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/feb/01/ioc-stands-by-sanctions-against-russia-and-belarus-over-invasion-of-ukraine

>A week after seeming to open the door for Russia and Belarus to compete at the 2024 Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it is standing by sanctions imposed against the countries over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

>Those sanctions include not inviting any government officials from either Russia or Belarus to international sporting events and not organising sports events in both countries.

>Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that allowing Russia to compete at the 2024 Games would be tantamount to showing that “terror is somehow acceptable.” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on Monday that the IOC was “promoting violence, mass murders, destruction” and that a Russian presence at the Games would constitute giving the country “a platform to promote genocide”.

I'm kind of getting tired of Ukraine playing the foot stomping unruly child who wants everything their way. Yes, they're still under attack from a hostile foreign power, and that's bad enough, but last week it was NATO jets, now it's cancel culture on a government level. And the rest of the world is being guilt shamed into doing the Ukrainian government's bidding.

There used to be consensus that it's not a good idea to politicise sporting events by banning entire national teams, because it tends to punish those who have the least to do with political tensions, as athletes usually only have a small window of a few years where they are in peak physical shape to compete in the Olympics or a World Cup. I'm not going to say I feel sorry for Russia, which I really don't, but when did we abandon the idea that sports should be apolitical.
>> No. 39851 Anonymous
1st February 2023
Wednesday 11:32 am
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>>39850

>There used to be consensus that it's not a good idea to politicise sporting events by banning entire national teams, because it tends to punish those who have the least to do with political tensions

When? There have been mass boycotts of the Olympic Games on at least six occasions. 65 countries refused to attend the 1980 Moscow games in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; the Soviet Union and their allies boycotted the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles in retaliation.

25 African countries boycotted the 1976 Montreal games, because of the IOC's refusal to ban New Zealand, who had broken the sporting boycott against South Africa. South Africa were banned from most international sporting events from 1968 to 1980 due to apartheid.

Organisations like the IOC and FIFA like to perpetuate the idea that sport is a politics-free arena, because they don't want to get involved in political disputes and because they don't want people to look too closely at where their dirty money comes from. In truth, sport is inherently political and always has been.
>> No. 39852 Anonymous
1st February 2023
Wednesday 11:45 am
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>>39851

A boycott isn't the same thing as a ban. Boycotting means you don't participate in an event because as a country you don't want to, for whatever reason. Which, again, hurts the athletes the most who want nothing more than to fulfill a lifelong dream, but outright banning a country, for openly political reasons, is a different thing altogether.

Also, the IOC in 1980 and 1984 had a very clear position that boycotts of sporting events were not the answer to political problems.
>> No. 39853 Anonymous
1st February 2023
Wednesday 1:15 pm
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>>39848
>boasts
?

Anyway, I think the veil has slipped completely from politics not being political now that everything is political and some political positions are seen as totally universal and uncontroversial. Support for Ukraine is the same as putting gay pride flags everywhere. Of course it's political, but who would oppose such a statement?
>> No. 39854 Anonymous
1st February 2023
Wednesday 2:58 pm
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>>39853

>Of course it's political, but who would oppose such a statement?

Few would oppose it, but many are staying carefully quiet about it. Much of the global south is starting to see China as a better friend than the West has ever been to them (and in fairness, can we blame them), and knows it better watch it's mouth about Russia if it wants to stay in their good graces.

I would enjoy reading some tinfoil hat material about how China is using Russia as a puppet the same way America is using Ukraine as a puppet. Must be some quality content out there.
>> No. 39855 Anonymous
1st February 2023
Wednesday 4:28 pm
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>>39853

> Support for Ukraine is the same as putting gay pride flags everywhere

I think some part of it is just an extension of wokeness.

Yes, it's hard to kick somebody like the Ukrainians when they're down, but I suspect that there are some for whom it's just another chance to show off what a good person they are in their compassion for them. I'm not saying it's bigotry, but it's sometimes not miles from it.

I'm all for telling Putin and the Russian Army to get fucked, but what people like Zelenskyy are missing is the fact that there is a threshold in Ukrainian demands towards NATO and the West that cannot be crossed because it would mean certain WWIII. And I, for one, don't think we should allow a single country that's in trouble to drag the entire rest of civilisation down with it. I'm rooting for them and I hope there will be some form of peace achieved soon. But if there comes a point when the chips are down, it's better them than us here.
>> No. 39856 Anonymous
1st February 2023
Wednesday 5:25 pm
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>>39855

I don't think that has anything to do with wokeness, any more than poppy day is.
>> No. 39857 Anonymous
1st February 2023
Wednesday 6:14 pm
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>>39855
>I think some part of it is just an extension of wokeness.

I don't agree at all that supporting Ukraine is an extension of wokeness. I guess it could be seen as a political decision to take, I think most people would see it as humanitarian.
>> No. 39858 Anonymous
1st February 2023
Wednesday 7:09 pm
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>>39855

Not "wokeness" per se, but there's that specific type of (usually American) liberal type who gladly cheers for bombing the fuck out of backward turban people because they have it in their head bringing them Democracy will allow women to attend university or whatever. Those sorts of people can't get enough of shipping forecasting over this.
>> No. 39859 Anonymous
1st February 2023
Wednesday 7:59 pm
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>>39856
You're more right than you think but I'm not sure I can put together a coherent essay about how practically everything is basic human social signalling, no different to wearing football colours or a certain subculture's fashion. People get very judgemental about it (you may signal, but I'm simply acting in the most reasonable way possible, I don't care what anyone thinks...) even though it's something we all do because it's a fundamental part of being part of a social species. People might be getting dafter with it (or you might just see more dafties) now that you can beam those signals out to half the planet rather than sticking to your own narrow social circle, but the basic behaviour is universal.

"Wokeness" is less an ideology and more a collection of vague signs, or actions read as signals. The same is true of anti-wokeness, or even just saying "woke" without irony. It's all signalling. Poppy day is less vague in meaning, but it's the same idea - wear a poppy, don't wear a poppy, wear a white poppy - either way, you're saying something. Long before people were ranting about being cancelled for perceived bigotry, people were getting torn into for not wearing a flower on television. The symbols change, the meanings we ascribe to them change, but the basic group dynamics underpinning them have been with us since we were painting symbols on cave walls.

Ukraine cuts across this in a fascinating way because you can glibly say supporting Ukraine is woke and defending Russia is anti-woke, and that's more true than false, but then you can look at someone like Corbyn who's obviously in the "woke" box but who clearly runs counter to general pro-Ukraine sentiment (Whether his position is "pro-peace" or "pro-Russia" depends on how the reader reads the signals...) The rights and wrongs of his position don't interest me, but the confusing social signals at play certainly do.
But then maybe I'm just trying to signal that I'm so tolerant and above it all. Or oh-so very clever. Or someone you really, really want to get stuck talking to at a party.
>> No. 39860 Anonymous
1st February 2023
Wednesday 8:11 pm
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https://youtu.be/CtSRYpXmdsM
> However, we need to walk this path together until the victory. And -- when we'll be able to end this war by throwing out the occupiers -- in the same manner together we'll be able to start the difficult work of rebuilding Ukraine -- our cities, our economy, our infrastructure. It is already clear that this will be the largest economic project of our time in Europe. It is obvious that American business can become the locomotive that will once again push forward global economic growth.

>We have already managed to attract attention and have cooperation with such giants of the international financial and investment world as Black Rock, J.P. Morgan, and Goldman Sachs. Such American brands as Starlink or Westinghouse have already become part of our Ukrainian way. Your brilliant defense systems -- such as HIMARS or Bradleys -- are already uniting our history of freedom with your enterprises. We are waiting for Patriots.1 We are looking closely at Abrams.

>Thousands of such examples are possible. And everyone can become a big business by working with Ukraine in all sectors -- from weapons and defense to construction, from communications to agriculture, from transport to IT, from banks to medicine. And I believe that freedom must always win. And, I invite you to work with us right now.

Stock/finance lads which American firms involved in the rebuilding of Ukraine would yield the highest profit margins?
>> No. 39861 Anonymous
3rd February 2023
Friday 9:00 am
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Today's Express headline: "Nicola Sturgeon urged to resign after refusing to say if double rapist is a man or a woman"

Yep that's right, I scrolled through the whole MSN homepage and it seems the Daily Express has finally found something more important than a war with global geopolitical implications: Scottish evangelist christian korean youtubers.
>> No. 39862 Anonymous
3rd February 2023
Friday 9:06 am
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Oh sorry, it's come up now. "Putin facing further economic devastation as graph shows damning European gas trend"
>> No. 39863 Anonymous
3rd February 2023
Friday 3:49 pm
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>>39861
>> No. 39864 Anonymous
3rd February 2023
Friday 4:19 pm
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>>39863
Christ almighty, that's just lying. "Russian war losses", as in, the war Russia started, are 200,000 including Ukrainians.
>> No. 39865 Anonymous
3rd February 2023
Friday 5:07 pm
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>>39864

Nobody has accurate data on any of this and there's a lot of scope around definitions. Many people would understand "loss" to mean "dead", but in a military sense it simply means unavailable for combat - dead, incapacitated by wounding or illness, captured, deserted or just unaccounted for. "Russian war losses" could include simply the VSRF, but it could also include a raft of other parties to the conflict on the Russian side including the Rosgvardiya, the FSB, private military contractors and the Russian-aligned militias of Donetsk and Luhansk.

By the broadest definition, it'd be reasonable to estimate Russian losses at about 240,000, versus about 100,000 for Ukraine. The most conservative figure (confirmed VSRF deaths) would be about 22,000.

Russia are undoubtedly in quite a dire situation with regards to manpower. Yes, they've got seemingly endless supplies of conscripts, but unmotivated and poorly trained conscripts are scarcely more than cannon fodder. They still have a core of well-trained volunteers, but it's reasonable to estimate that they've lost at least half of the manpower of the VDV and Spetsnaz, who are the only Russian infantry who could be described as "well trained" by NATO standards.

They've still got thousands of tanks in reserve, but it takes about a year and tens of thousands of dollars in fuel, maintenance and ammunition to turn raw recruits into a combat-effective tank crew. You can teach a crew to drive a tank to a grid reference and make the gun go "bang" in about eight weeks, but you'll just trade one of your tanks and three or four of your men for a couple of their anti-tank missiles. Even with a properly trained crew, tanks are incredibly vulnerable without good infantry support and combined arms tactics, as we have seen in abundance in Ukraine.

The tip of the Russian spear is blunt. They still have vast amounts of artillery, they can still batter the shit out of the Ukrainian front, but they've lost most of the resources they need to advance that front in any meaningful way and it isn't obvious how they can replace those losses within the next 12-18 months. Kyiv is safe, but a lot of Eastern Ukraine is going to look like the Somme or Aleppo (if it doesn't already).
>> No. 39866 Anonymous
3rd February 2023
Friday 7:03 pm
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>>39864

>Christ almighty, that's just lying.

You haven't seen their outrageous headlines on youtube. Somehow the Sun keeps popping up on my youtube recommended videos, and they have a way of taking things about the Ukraine War grossly out of context and blowing them out of proportion in such a way that they'd constantly have you believe we're just hours from the four-minute warning.

I'm no press or journalism expert, but shouldn't there be codes of conduct to curb that sort of thing?
>> No. 39867 Anonymous
3rd February 2023
Friday 7:15 pm
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>>39866

It's the Sun m8. Being grossly misleading is their whole thing.
>> No. 39868 Anonymous
3rd February 2023
Friday 7:41 pm
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>>39867

>https://www.ipso.co.uk/editors-code-of-practice/

I guess they just think it doesn't apply to them.

Which is kind of undestandable, as they barely qualify as "newspapers and magazines".
>> No. 39869 Anonymous
3rd February 2023
Friday 8:01 pm
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>>39868

IPSO is a) voluntary and b) entirely funded by the newspapers that it's supposed to regulate. The only sanctions imposed by IPSO are the requirement to publish a correction, which invariably ends up in tiny print somewhere between the horoscopes and the estate agent adverts. It's the regulatory equivalent of those cardboard cut-out coppers in Home Bargains.
>> No. 39870 Anonymous
3rd February 2023
Friday 8:56 pm
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>>39869

>entirely funded by the newspapers that it's supposed to regulate

So it's essentially the frogs draining the pond.
>> No. 39884 Anonymous
6th February 2023
Monday 10:34 am
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Today's Express headline: "Ukraine LIVE: Russia losing ‘500 soldiers a day' as Putin set date he plans for victory"

Surely 'sets'. Imagine my shock that Express hacks can't use proper grammar.
>> No. 39885 Anonymous
6th February 2023
Monday 10:40 am
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>>39884
Interesting subtle propaganda in there amongst the other obvious propaganda; "losing" implies it's ongoing and will definitely be the same tomorrow. "Loses 500 soldiers a day" would be grammatical but without claiming to predict the future.
>> No. 39886 Anonymous
6th February 2023
Monday 10:52 am
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>>39885
Could be based on the same statistic as The Scum headline above?
>> No. 39887 Anonymous
6th February 2023
Monday 12:00 pm
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>>39884
>>39885
I don't mean to grossly oversimplify things unnecessarily, but nobody should ever, ever, ever, ever trust any newspaper headline anywhere that has speech marks in it. Ever.
>> No. 39888 Anonymous
6th February 2023
Monday 4:20 pm
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>>39887
Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a diseased mind!!
>> No. 39889 Anonymous
7th February 2023
Tuesday 11:01 am
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No Express headline on Ukraine today. There are, however, again, about ten on trans people from multiple newspapers. And a very tiny one from The Guardian about the 5,000 dead people in Turkey.
>> No. 39890 Anonymous
7th February 2023
Tuesday 1:20 pm
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>>39889

Have you tried reading the comments, MSNHomepagelad?

Of course it's not out of the realms of believability that they're wholly representative of the middle England "got mine, up yours" boomer demographic, but at times the stuff you see is so eye rollingly predictable, or sometimes just downright barmy, it's hard not to suspect it's just desperate astro-turfing by Tory interest groups, or some Yank troll farm. These are categorically not the opinions of the average Brit at any rate.

Normally I'd say that's a bit too tinfoil hat to be true, but we know they've done that sort of thing before.
>> No. 39891 Anonymous
7th February 2023
Tuesday 1:25 pm
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>>39890

>socialized
I'm pretty sure all three of the visible commenters are yanks.
>> No. 39892 Anonymous
7th February 2023
Tuesday 2:33 pm
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>>39889
>And a very tiny one from The Guardian about the 5,000 dead people in Turkey.

The pictures from it all are making me sad. Unimaginable devastation.
>> No. 39893 Anonymous
7th February 2023
Tuesday 9:47 pm
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>>39892
It came up at work and was brushed off as being a bit terrible etc.
Then a lad said imagine seeing that happen in somewhere like Leeds or Nottingham. brought it home a bit.
>> No. 39894 Anonymous
8th February 2023
Wednesday 8:17 pm
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So, lads, when our beloved Prime Minister says that 'nothing is off the table', presumably a great many things remain far from the table?
>> No. 39895 Anonymous
8th February 2023
Wednesday 8:38 pm
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>>39894

We don't have all that much to put on the table. The British armed forces are so under-funded - and so much of that money has been spunked up the wall on kit that never worked - that we don't have much stuff left to give.

Eurofighters and more Challengers are really the last thing in the locker that would be of real use to the Ukrainians. We don't have massive numbers of artillery pieces. We don't have any small arms left to spare, the US are providing more than enough already and honestly nobody wants the SA80. Our IFVs are all hopelessly outdated because of the failure of Ajax. We could give them a few Chinooks, but we've only got 40 in service and they'd last all of five minutes as long as the Russians can maintain any kind of operational air defence coverage.
>> No. 39896 Anonymous
8th February 2023
Wednesday 10:31 pm
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Are Sy at it again

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream
>> No. 39897 Anonymous
8th February 2023
Wednesday 11:23 pm
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https://youtu.be/qK9tLDeWBzs?t=9083
The former Israeli PM was apparently close to mediating a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, but the deal was scuppered by the west.
>> No. 39898 Anonymous
9th February 2023
Thursday 12:19 am
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>>39897

To be fair, Bennett concedes that in retrospect he isn't sure if that deal would have been the right thing to do. He also acknowledges that what ultimately sank the prospect of a negotiated peace was Bucha.
>> No. 39899 Anonymous
9th February 2023
Thursday 11:05 am
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Today's Express headline: "Putin's terrifying threat to UK as he warns of consequences for 'entire world' over jets"
>> No. 39900 Anonymous
9th February 2023
Thursday 11:26 am
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>>39899
Why are you monitoring the Express if you won't tell me about Carol's interview with them?

https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/1730059/carol-vorderman-hard-to-be-poor-young-childhood-upbringing
>> No. 39901 Anonymous
12th February 2023
Sunday 2:53 am
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>>39900

She looks like she had loads of work done when you compare the two pictures. She somehow almost had more wrinkles and skin unevenness in the 80s than she does today.
>> No. 39911 Anonymous
13th February 2023
Monday 12:33 am
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Even the Russian state TV cheerleaders are starting to lose it.

Quite hilarious.
>> No. 39912 Anonymous
13th February 2023
Monday 4:04 am
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>>39911

If you follow the Russian telegram channels, it's obvious why their propagandists are losing it. They can't show much of anything from the front, because Russian soldiers are so visibly demoralised. They're making gains here and there, but it's a meat grinder - soviet-era human wave tactics, advancing over the bodies of dead comrades.

Don't get me wrong, the Ukrainians are knackered too, but they've still got an incredibly strong will to fight. At this point I've seen literally hundreds of videos of Russian soldiers just lying down and waiting to die. It's horrible to see, but the Russians don't seem to have a better plan than "keep sending men towards the guns until they run out of ammunition"; unfortunately for the Russian infantryman, the Americans keep sending more ammunition. The Russians are inching towards Bakhmut, but the east of the city is carpeted with their dead. It seems increasingly likely that they'll take the city, but the cost has been so immense that the victory looks pyrrhic before it has even been won.
>> No. 39913 Anonymous
13th February 2023
Monday 7:35 am
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>>39912
Putin doesn't care, because ordinary Russians won't blame him for losing their fathers and brothers and sons, they will blame Nazi Ukraine.
>> No. 39914 Anonymous
13th February 2023
Monday 7:48 am
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>>39913

Russia had an abundant supply of young men in 1939, but it absolutely doesn't now. Birth rates collapsed in the 1990s and patriotic appeals to Russian women have failed to turn that around. Like every developed economy, Russia is facing a crisis of low birth rates and an ageing population.

Between the deaths at the front and the mass migration of people escaping conscription, Russia is in a very literal sense committing a slow suicide; they're rapidly accelerating their trajectory towards being unable to maintain a functioning society due to a lack of young people.

Given the state of the Russian economy and their less-than-welcoming cultural attitudes towards foreigners, it's not clear that they could plug the gaps using immigration even if they weren't being ruled by an ethnonationalist maniac.
>> No. 39916 Anonymous
13th February 2023
Monday 8:36 am
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Today's Express headline: "Ex-Russian commander slams his country's military as 'complete morons' after big tank fail"
>> No. 39933 Anonymous
13th February 2023
Monday 9:11 pm
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>>39912
>They're making gains here and there, but it's a meat grinder - soviet-era human wave tactics, advancing over the bodies of dead comrades.

Have you got actual evidence of this?

>At this point I've seen literally hundreds of videos of Russian soldiers just lying down and waiting to die.

Have you got links to these hundreds of videos of soldiers literally lying down and waiting to die?
>> No. 39934 Anonymous
13th February 2023
Monday 10:39 pm
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>>39933

>Have you got actual evidence of this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/world/europe/ukraine-russia-prisoners.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/10/27/moscows-reliance-human-wave-tactics-catastrophe-russias-working/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/01/12/russian-mercenaries-human-wave-tactics-push-back-ukrainian-troops-in-soledar/

>Have you got links to these hundreds of videos of soldiers literally lying down and waiting to die?

I'll warn you, it doesn't make for pleasant viewing. The Russians clearly just don't know what they're doing and keep getting stuck in completely hopeless situations. It's very common to see Russian soldiers exposed in open terrain, often apparently having lost or abandoned their weapon. There's nobody providing covering fire, nobody trying to render aid and no way out. They aren't fighting, they aren't retreating, they're just fucked.

These are a few videos from the last few weeks on an English-language video sharing site, but you'll find far more on Telegram. One or two might just be unfortunate, but you see the same thing again and again - stranded soldiers, alone in the middle of some godforsaken field, getting picked off by drones or artillery, sent to die by a command structure that couldn't give a fuck. Totally pointless deaths that didn't serve any tactical or strategic purpose, most of which could have been prevented with a basic level of training and leadership.

https://funker530.com/video/nsfw-russian-vehicle-crew-hit-with-drone-dropped-grenade/

https://funker530.com/video/sitting-ducks-russians-picked-off-by-grenades-during-failed-assault/

https://funker530.com/video/nsfw-unlucky-russian-soldier-targeted-by-multiple-drones/
>> No. 39940 Anonymous
14th February 2023
Tuesday 3:54 pm
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>>39934

>I'll warn you, it doesn't make for pleasant viewing. The Russians clearly just don't know what they're doing and keep getting stuck in completely hopeless situations. It's very common to see Russian soldiers exposed in open terrain, often apparently having lost or abandoned their weapon. There's nobody providing covering fire, nobody trying to render aid and no way out. They aren't fighting, they aren't retreating, they're just fucked.

Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't it be a warcrime to kill a soldier who's in such a predicament anyway? Obviously not that that's going to stop a stray bullet or shell catching them, but it doesn't paint the Ukrainians in a great light if they're making easy kills out of it.
>> No. 39944 Anonymous
14th February 2023
Tuesday 4:59 pm
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>>39934

>evidence

>telegraph article

Ah yes. There's a totally unbiased, accurate, reliable selection of sources and no doubt about it.
>> No. 39945 Anonymous
14th February 2023
Tuesday 5:42 pm
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>>39944
Why don't you name some sources that are acceptable, then? You're obviously doing that thing where you loudly announce that you will only accept any claims you don't like if they also come with evidence from sources you are personally willing to accept. I see it all the time, but I don't think it has a name yet (unless that's what sealioning is). Unless you at least provide a list of potential evidence sources you won't just sneeringly ignore, I don't think there's much point in anyone wasting their time trying to convince you.
>> No. 39946 Anonymous
14th February 2023
Tuesday 5:52 pm
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>>39940

>Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't it be a warcrime to kill a soldier who's in such a predicament anyway?

To the best of my knowledge, no. Rule 47 of the Customary IHL states that a combatant becomes hors de combat and therefore protected from attack under three circumstances: if he has been captured, if he has expressed the clear intent to surrender, or if he is unconscious or otherwise incapacitated. Someone can be completely ineffective by merit of being separated from their unit, lost, or just totally incompetent, but would still count as a combatant. Someone who has dropped their rifle and is running away still counts as a combatant - retreat is not the same as surrender.

The bloke in the third video is closest to the line because his gestures might be construed as a clear intent to surrender. If we accept that they are, then the question is to whom? Rule 104 of the Oslo Manual states:

An offer to surrender may not be genuine if manifested in circumstances in which it is not feasible for the opposing party to accept the surrender. Accordingly, the offer of surrender by ground forces to an aircraft may be invalid if taking the forces into custody is not feasible in the prevailing circumstances.

I don't know the circumstances of that drone attack, but I'm not sure how it would be feasible for the Ukrainians to accept the surrender unless there happened to be a Ukrainian infantry unit within spitting distance who weren't busy defending themselves. Even then, the Russian position on troops who surrender (they're cowards and traitors who are subject to summary execution, possibly with a sledgehammer) might make it unreasonably dangerous for Ukrainian troops to facilitate that surrender.

It doesn't look good, but I don't think that anyone could confidently say that it's illegal.
>> No. 39947 Anonymous
14th February 2023
Tuesday 6:00 pm
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>>39944

Having anticipated the likelihood that someone might dispute the reliability of a single source, I gave multiple sources for the same claim. I didn't anticipate that someone would decide that if one of those sources is in their view unreliable, then the claim must therefore be invalid regardless of the reliability of the other sources. If you think that the New York Times, Forbes and The Telegraph are all completely unreliable, then I'll reiterate the statement made by >>39945.
>> No. 39948 Anonymous
14th February 2023
Tuesday 6:02 pm
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>>39945

Don't play silly buggers lad, it's one thing to be picky about "acceptable sources" but it's another thing for you to claim a newspaper that barely prints a believable word during peace time, let alone in the midst of war propaganda, is reliable.

News agencies from states that don't have a horse in the race would be, for reasons that should be obvious, more acceptable.
>> No. 39949 Anonymous
14th February 2023
Tuesday 9:37 pm
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>>39934
Those articles are reporting hearsay from Ukrainian sources and some prisoners. It's sensationalised.

The videos are guys dying without context. For me this doesn't prove much. I can get videos of Ukrainian soldiers getting hit with artillery or refusing to go to the front from Russian propaganda sources too, it's all murky to me, and it's clear that pretty much everyone reporting is a propaganda outlet.
>> No. 39950 Anonymous
14th February 2023
Tuesday 10:29 pm
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>>39949
Oh for fucks sake.
>> No. 39951 Anonymous
14th February 2023
Tuesday 10:33 pm
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>>39950

>people are, quite reasonably, skeptical about obvious propaganda

Really not something you should be getting bumsore over when you think about it mate. I'm not even saying you're necessarily wrong, just taking it all with a massive pinch of salt.
>> No. 39953 Anonymous
15th February 2023
Wednesday 12:04 am
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>>39949

>The videos are guys dying without context.

They are videos of senseless, preventable deaths. Much of the context is obvious in the video if you've been following this war in any detail. I'm going to pick apart that detail in a way that will undoubtedly make me sound like an armchair general, but my point isn't to denigrate the Russians involved on a personal level - it's to point out shortcomings in their training, tactics and morale that are entirely the fault of the Russian leadership.

Video one, six guys in a shellscrape getting blown up.

https://funker530.com/video/nsfw-russian-vehicle-crew-hit-with-drone-dropped-grenade/

This is an artillery and drone war. It's essential to avoid bunching up, because you make yourself a juicy target for drones and you massively increase the damage done by a single grenade or shell. As much as is humanly possible, you stay fifteen or twenty feet apart - close enough to talk, but far enough apart that a grenade might hit you or the guy next to you, but it won't get both of you. As much as possible, you avoid open ground. Fighting in woodland or built-up areas comes with its own dangers, but it surrounds you with stuff that hides you and that you can hide behind.

Why are these guys huddled up together in one piece of cover? Why did they get into a situation where that was the best cover available? They've got weapons, so why are none of them maintaining any kind of sentry position? What was their objective in hiding in that shellscrape, rather than trying to move towards a more defensible position or retreat towards their own lines? However you slice it, they're just waiting to die. That doesn't make them cowards or fools, just people who lack the most basic level of training, or people who are so fatigued or demoralised that they don't care about trying to survive.

Video two, survivors of an ambush picked off by drones.

https://funker530.com/video/sitting-ducks-russians-picked-off-by-grenades-during-failed-assault/

Why is there a higgledy-piggledy assortment of blown-up Russian vehicles in an open field, as in countless other videos? Because Russian vehicle crews are trained to operate their vehicles, but they aren't trained to fight effectively. They drive too close together (see above), they drive through open fields in massed ranks that are a juicy target for artillery, they drive through natural chokepoints that scream danger to anyone who is thinking about ATGMs or mines, they panic when they take incoming fire and scatter like startled birds.

Say you're in an armoured vehicle that has just been disabled by enemy fire. What are your options? Unless your vehicle is currently on fire, staying in your vehicle might be a reasonable choice. It's not going anywhere, but it's also made of thick steel armour. It's no longer a vehicle, but it's a decent pillbox that'll stop bullets, grenades and shrapnel. If your vehicle is currently on fire, you need to get out. Where do you go? Literally anywhere else, because whoever just blew up your vehicle is staring right at you and is looking to finish the job. If you do what these poor fuckers did and hide behind your vehicle, you're dead. Maybe not in the next 30 seconds, but definitely in the next 30 minutes. If you dismount, you need to run like fuck to the nearest piece of cover - you might get gunned down on the way, but at least you stand a chance. All of those poor sods hiding behind burned-out tanks are just waiting to die.

Video three, some poor fucker in a field getting picked apart by a drone.

https://funker530.com/video/nsfw-unlucky-russian-soldier-targeted-by-multiple-drones/

If you're alone in the middle of an empty field during a war, you or your squadmates have done something seriously daft. What exactly was his plan here? If he had to run away from something, fine, but you have to run towards something in an environment where clear skies equal death from above. I don't know how he got in that field, but whatever sequence of events led to him being there (rather than in a clump of trees, or a pile of rubble, or a ditch) amounted to suicide.

Follow the Telegram channels - both pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian - and ask yourself what the people in those videos are trying to achieve by their actions, ask yourself how their skills and demeanour compare to other sources, ask yourself whether they look like professional soldiers doing a job or like scared conscripts just hoping to delay their death. It really doesn't take long to gain a picture of what's happening at the front.

We've been seeing exactly the same mistakes made by Russian soldiers every day for the last year. Things aren't getting better for the Russians, they're getting worse - we see less experienced troops with worse equipment making stupider mistakes. The Russians are incapable of making themselves look competent even in their own propaganda, which is why so much of their propaganda is simply about mocking and denigrating the Ukrainians.

I follow many of the most rabid Z channels on Telegram; they're posting videos of artillery crews and the civilian areas they've destroyed, they're posting videos of people posing hundreds of miles from the front, but they are very rarely posting video of skilled and professional soldiers fighting effectively. They are posting videos of "the struggles of our brave heroes" that show inexperienced soldiers making very basic errors. Conversely, on the even slightly less rabid Z channels, they're complaining about fake helmets, bad boots and a lack of ammunition, blaming the traitors in the Duma who are trying to sabotage Putin's glorious vision for Kievan Rus'. Even in Russia, the narrative is shifting from "we are winning the war" to "we'd be winning the war if Putin hadn't been stabbed in the back", because not even the most deluded Putin supporters actually believe that things are going well for them.

The Ukrainians are tired and bloodied, but they keep getting better at what they're doing. The videos we saw in March and April of last year sometimes showed groups of skilled and well-equipped professionals fighting to NATO standards, but as often as not they showed rag-tag groups of volunteers equipped with a load of cast-off gear figuring it out as they went along. Today, we see those same volunteers with modern kit and first rate skills. Even on the pro-Russian channels, I'm rarely seeing anything that's genuinely suicidally daft from the Ukrainians - some errors of judgement, sure, but understandable errors of judgement made by trained soldiers working on the level of a NATO army.

I'm asking you not to take my word for it. This is the most documented war in history. The internet is awash with primary sources. You can't trust any source in isolation, but the material paints a very clear picture when taken as a whole.
>> No. 39954 Anonymous
15th February 2023
Wednesday 12:38 am
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>>39953

What we're really seeing is similar to what we've seen in a multitude of other conflicts over the last several years, when you think about it, just an order of magnitude deadlier because instead of goat-herders with IEDs it's relatively well trained guys with first world ordnance and drones etc. If the Taliban had had access to that sort of gear, the Yanks and us would have taken vastly higher casualties trying to occupy and subdue them- And on top of that, the Russians aren't even fielding a force as modern as we were twenty years ago.

It's obvious why they are taking such a beating, but nevertheless it's sensationalised/ist to say stuff like "soviet-era human wave tactics, advancing over the bodies of dead comrades". There's definitely a bit more to it than that, even if they're not very good at it, and even in the bleakest possible interpretation it's not exactly Verdun or Passchedale we're talking about here. They're not just blowing a whistle and yelling "charge", because in this type of warfare there's very rarely an enemy to actually charge at.

I mean, if you're an armchair general, maybe you've played milsim games like ARMA? Whenever you die you don't know the fuck where from, and if you ever come closer than "tiny speck on a distant hillside" range of an enemy something went seriously wrong. That's as close as I hope I ever have to come to fighting in the modern day anyway because one thing is clear, and that is that in modern warfare, infantry are totally and utterly fucked. You're not really there to fight, you're there because on an entirely functional and dispassionate level, there simply needs to be some meat in boots "holding" the position. Other than that you're just waiting for death to come out of the beyond, while the artillery and drones and air support actually do the killing.

Hell knows how bloody it'd be if Russia was actually up to par in terms of their gear and tactics though. Doesn't bare thinking about.
>> No. 39955 Anonymous
15th February 2023
Wednesday 12:45 am
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>>39953
It's not like I think Russia is secretly hyper competent and stomping the Ukrainians. I just don't like the obvious propaganda stories we're being fed.

So this is your footage of them lying down waiting to die? Their vehicle is blown up and they take cover and then get hit by drones? And, you, no doubt a general, or a field marshal, or an SAS commando, would definitely do better and make your way to safe cover in the same situation, but I'm not sure I'd call this lying down and waiting to die, which, to me, implied total demoralisation rather than simply failing to avoid grenade drones while under fire.

Do you have footage of these human wave attacks, stepping over piles of bodies, charging machine gun nests in this most documented of wars?
>> No. 39956 Anonymous
15th February 2023
Wednesday 12:48 am
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>>39954
It's already bloody enough.

https://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Casualties
>> No. 39958 Anonymous
15th February 2023
Wednesday 3:17 am
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>>39954

>in modern warfare, infantry are totally and utterly fucked. You're not really there to fight, you're there because on an entirely functional and dispassionate level, there simply needs to be some meat in boots "holding" the position.

That really isn't true; for proof, we need only to look at what the Ukrainians are doing. Their infantry are working as recon and spotter teams, finding enemy locations, relaying the coordinates to artillery batteries and giving corrections for follow-up shots. They're working as hunter-killer teams, tracking vehicles and setting up ambushes with ATGMs. They're providing close support for tanks, acting as their eyes and ears when they're buttoned up while being protected by the tank's firepower.

Infantry are still essential and can be fantastically effective - they can be stealthy and agile, getting in and out of places where tanks can't go and where drones can't see. To use those advantages effectively, they need the right training, equipment and support. The Ukrainians fight like NATO troops, because they were trained by NATO armies. We helped them to transition away from the hierarchical doctrines of the Eastern Bloc where the job of a soldier was simply to obey orders, to the modern doctrine of using your initiative to complete a mission task.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-military-success-years-of-nato-training-11649861339

>>39955

>So this is your footage of them lying down waiting to die?

Yes, because that's literally what happened, in these and many other videos. Russian soldiers who, despite having other options, decided to just lie down and do nothing. No fight, no flight. I'm not saying that I would do better; I'm saying that the Ukrainians do better, consistently.

>Do you have footage of these human wave attacks, stepping over piles of bodies

Doctrinally, the Russian infantry is wholly mechanised; they do not march anywhere that a vehicle can't take them. The Russians are entirely willing to perform human waves in BMPs.

Google the word "Vuhledar" (Угледар), which is Russia's latest utterly pointless waste of life.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/13/europe/russia-ukraine-vuhledar-donetsk-fiasco-intl/index.html
>> No. 39960 Anonymous
15th February 2023
Wednesday 9:10 am
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Ooh, two today:
"Putin taunts US with Russian nuclear ‘Bear' bomber flypast day after Biden shoots down UFO"
and
"Putin's elite unit of 5,000 marines almost totally destroyed in single battle with Ukraine"
>> No. 39974 Anonymous
15th February 2023
Wednesday 9:02 pm
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>British troops 'are up for a scrap' and ready to be first line of defence against Putin

Come on Express lad, I'll not cover for you again.
>> No. 39975 Anonymous
16th February 2023
Thursday 12:39 am
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>>39974
Is that sort of the point of army? Do we need to check if the RN are okay with long voyages, or if the RAF are scared if heights?
>> No. 39978 Anonymous
16th February 2023
Thursday 1:49 pm
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>>39975

More amused me that the guy, supposedly a colonel major or something, made 21st century warfare sound more like a bar brawl.
>> No. 39979 Anonymous
16th February 2023
Thursday 2:43 pm
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>>39958
When you say 'human waves' do you really mean 'assault an enemy position'?
>> No. 39983 Anonymous
16th February 2023
Thursday 5:56 pm
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsQVgE0wGks
>> No. 39984 Anonymous
16th February 2023
Thursday 6:58 pm
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>>39979

The first attempt to cross a minefield under heavy artillery fire might count as an assault. The repeated subsequent attempts are, at best, strategically questionable.
>> No. 39985 Anonymous
16th February 2023
Thursday 7:17 pm
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>>39984

Just send the penal conscripts in the first wave, then all the mines have been blowed up to make way for the wave of non-penal conscripts. After that you send your real soldiers, out of harm's way.

Perfectly solid strategy, just ask ze Germans.
>> No. 39986 Anonymous
17th February 2023
Friday 7:23 pm
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Never stand too close to an open window in Soviet Russia.

https://www.businessinsider.com/top-russian-military-official-dies-fall-window-high-rise-2023-2?op=1

>Yankina's death comes after a number of Russian officials have died in unusual or unexplained circumstances since Putin launched his unprovoked war on Ukraine nearly a full year ago.
>> No. 39987 Anonymous
19th February 2023
Sunday 11:21 pm
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I'm reading this book about Iran, and there's a bit about the Iran-Iraq war which all feels very familiar. The book was published in 2021, so it's a pure coincidence how much this all seems to be happening again in Ukraine. Unfortunately, this seems to suggest the war will continue for a very long time.
>> No. 39988 Anonymous
21st February 2023
Tuesday 12:18 pm
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64716380

>Ukraine war: Biden to frame conflict as battle for democracy


I'm not saying I disagree that somewhat the opposite of a democracy as we understand it would loom for Ukraine if Putin wins the war and either installs a puppet government in Kyiv or incorporates the whole of Ukraine into Russia. But there's too much of that old World Police vibe coming from Biden and the U.S. again. When the actual track record of the U.S. promoting freedom and democracy across the globe is quite poor. I don't think it was ever about generously bringing democracy to the Ukrainians, the same way that that was not the underlying mission goal in Iraq or Afghanistan. It's about America's geostrategic goal of weakening Russia, and about protecting the interests of American business in Ukraine.

It's a little known fact that foreign direct investment in Ukraine by U.S. companies stands at around half a billion dollars in recent years. Note that that number is just foreign direct investments and doesn't include portfolio investments in shares of Ukrainian companies, which could easily be many times that. Which also means that the American corporate elite are keenly looking at the U.S. government to protect their investments. The whole spiel about bringing democracy to the Ukrainians, not unlike 20 years ago in the Mideast, is just a cover. Something to tell to the media and foreign political elites, so they'll get on the bandwagon.
>> No. 39989 Anonymous
21st February 2023
Tuesday 12:42 pm
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>>39988
You're getting tail-wags-dog here: The reason there's been investment in Ukraine in recent years by what can be considered the deep-state is precisely because Ukraine is geopolitically important. You can't do strategic offshoring or have a viable Ukrainian state without the butter and many analysts pre-invasion presumed that Russia was periodically ramping up tensions as a means to discourage investment in Ukraine.

Of course it's all a bit moot mind as, if you look at your own graph, what happened is a drop-off following that time the Ukrainians threw their government out of office. Western money flows all over the place as we see with western investment in Putin's Russia pre-war and that continues in China.
>> No. 39990 Anonymous
21st February 2023
Tuesday 12:59 pm
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>>39988
Is US investment in Ukraine disproportionate though? "US companies" are everywhere including, until last year, Russia, so I'm not convinced so much American money is tied up in a relatively poor, Eastern European, kleptostate to motivate the full might of the American nation. Which even now, isn't really the case anyway, because it's not as if Ukraine is receiving WW2 Lend-Lease levels of support.

I suspect far more money has been pulled out of Russia than was ever in Ukraine. Indeed, my own Statista screengrab would suggest as much, as the amount of money put into Russia dwarfs the Ukrainian numbers by orders of magnitude. As for the "geostratigic goal of weakening Russia", no one forced Russia to invade Ukraine, not in 2014 or 2022. In fact, most of the world had all but stopped caring about the annexation of Crimea. So even if you think Euromaidan was some kind of CIA black op that only Obama, the CIA director and two aliens were privy to, Russia stepping on every rake laid out in front of them, over and over, is still all their fault. And for the record, I don't think that way about the Euromaidan. Regardless there's nothing actually stopping Russia from being a normal, prosperous country. The way they behave on an international scale is like if we went around trying to re-annex Sri Lanka and Jamaica, it's absurd. Russia's such a resource rich state but they hobble themselves by behaving like mad people; can you imagine what a nation like Germany would do for all the land, oil and mineral resources Russia has? Wait, on second thoughts don't think about that.
>> No. 39991 Anonymous
21st February 2023
Tuesday 3:40 pm
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>>39990

>The way they behave on an international scale is like if we went around trying to re-annex Sri Lanka and Jamaica, it's absurd.

A lot of Russians never got over the fact that their country was degraded from a global superpower to a regional power often struggling to maintain even that position.

You'd think that people in Russia would be as thankful to Gorbachev for ending the Cold War as many in the West still are. But I've got a friend who was on a student exchange near Moscow a few years ago, and he told me that a large number of Russians think of Gorbachev as the one who fucked it all up. Of course many people never thrived in post-Soviet Russian oligarchic capitalism, so it's easy for them to say that under communism you at least had a job and a comfortable roof over your head. And in a way they're right, because what good are whatever amount of freedom and democracy your country offers you if you're too poor and marginalised to take any part in it.

But there are also many Russian nationalists who are better off and part of the modern middle or even upper class who still mourn the loss of their great empire. So it's not like the Russians only have that one kook at the helm who wants to get the band back together. A sizeable number of people may not wish for communism to be reestablished, but they would certainly welcome Russia reassuming the kind of power and influence that it once had.

It's also why we're not seeing a widespread revolution, yet, that would oust Putin. Because there are still too many who think near enough like him. There's still no critical mass of people who are fed up. And it's doubtful that Putin would be replaced by somebody with entirely different aspirations who would put a stop to it, because not unlike in the days of the Soviet politburo, conviction in the Russian government runs much deeper than that. You'd have to have a much more widespread revolution, but again, there's still no critical mass for that.
>> No. 40031 Anonymous
7th March 2023
Tuesday 6:37 pm
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>>39953

The videos you posted still seem a far cry from the characterisation I hear so often from Western commentators that Russia is simply sending wave after wave of troops into the 'meat grinder', WWII style. I'm inclined to think if that was the case the Ukrainians wouldn't stop posting evidence of them repelling the Russian hordes, but all I seem to see are the same few videos showing the Ukrainians blowing up a handful of troops.

I think this recent account from the Kyiv Independent is more revealing of what is actually going on: https://kyivindependent.com/national/ukrainian-soldiers-in-bakhmut-our-troops-are-not-being-protected

>Some have characterized the Russian attacks as huge waves of cannon fodder, while others say that the invaders’ tactics have evolved to keep up with the battlefield.

>The older Serhiy says that the enemy likes to send a team of three or four expendable foot soldiers to attack and make the Ukrainians expose themselves by shooting at them. At that point, the more elite forces zero in on the defenders’ position.

>Once they begin exchanging fire, the Ukrainians are struck with heavier weapons like Russian mortars and rockets from Grad multiple launch rocket systems or BMP infantry fighting vehicles and BTR armored personnel carriers with machine guns.

>“They get the positions where we are, establish the coordinates, then they hit us from seven to nine kilometers out with mortars,” as well as from closer by with grenade launchers, says the older Serhiy. “They wait for the house to fall so we have to jump out. The building catches fire and then they try to finish us off.”

>“Their birds come out and they chase us with fire,” adds the younger Serhiy, referring to Russian UAVs, like quadcopters and Orlan-10 fixed wing drones that spot distant heavy weapons. “They hit accurately.”
>> No. 40032 Anonymous
7th March 2023
Tuesday 8:25 pm
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>>40031
The Wagner mercenaries are much, much better at fighting than the Russian army. There's barely any Russian army left now, just Wagner people, so things do seem to be balancing out a bit more.
>> No. 40058 Anonymous
15th March 2023
Wednesday 3:10 pm
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The Express hasn't got a thing on The Mail.

>>40032
>There's barely any Russian army left now, just Wagner people
That seems unlikely given how long the frontline is in this war. How big is Wagner?
>> No. 40059 Anonymous
15th March 2023
Wednesday 3:56 pm
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>>40058

The Sun is also still in on the race to the bottom.

Not saying that people aren't getting killed and that Russia isn't run like an organised crime syndicate, but it seems a bit lazy to put it that way.
>> No. 40060 Anonymous
16th March 2023
Thursday 12:01 am
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>>40031
This is, hands down, the most on-line war in history so it's tough to untangle what is shitposting and what is reporting. Is it "waves of cannon fodder" or sending in a few gopniks, wait for them to be shot at — does not matter if they die — so the artillery knows where to fire? A lot of video is of of people fleecing corpses and drone footage, it's like a nightmare version of video games and online culture. Nazis to the left, fascists to the right, here sure as fudge am I not caught in the middle of this but stuck with it anyway... but none of us three are (hopefully) in the middle of things that go whizz and boom and want to remove bits you'd rather keep.

This isn't going to end with everyone singing Kumbaya, watching "Ну, погоди!" or whatever. This feels different. But I'm sure it'll be OK.
>> No. 40061 Anonymous
16th March 2023
Thursday 2:17 pm
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>>40060

With Eastern Europe, nothing ever ends with people liking one another more. But if it's gone on this long without a nuclear war I don't think we need worry too much.

It'll drag on and be miserable for everyone involved, but I think it's going to be pretty boring in the end. I reckon it'll possibly just end up as an Israel/Palestine type thing. Always there, never officially settled, occasional flare ups now and again, but just sort of becoming the status quo.
>> No. 40062 Anonymous
17th March 2023
Friday 6:05 pm
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/17/vladimir-putin-arrest-warrant-ukraine-war-crimes

>ICC judges issue arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes

>The international criminal court in The Hague has issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, for the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children.


The number of fucks given inside the Kremlin should be fairly limited.
>> No. 40063 Anonymous
17th March 2023
Friday 7:03 pm
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>>40062
If there was ever an international machine more pathetic and less effective than the UN, it'd be the ICC.

How can the CIA systematically cripple half of South America but yet Putin has been doing the same shit for twenty years? Oh, right they can, it's just that the military-industrial complex exists.
>> No. 40064 Anonymous
17th March 2023
Friday 7:26 pm
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>>40063
Well the US isn't signed up to the ICC, it only has jurisdiction from 2002 and in the rare instances it can prosecute anyway it has to go to the UNSC. I hate when people attack international institutions like this because they can do a great job in very difficult circumstances and yet still they get attacked because they're not running a NWO-style one-world government and if they did then the people talking shit would just go the other way.

I bet you're just attacking the ICC because kidnapping children sounds a bit carpet-baggery and that's something you like.
>> No. 40065 Anonymous
17th March 2023
Friday 7:39 pm
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>>40064
>I bet you're just attacking the ICC because kidnapping children sounds a bit carpet-baggery and that's something you like.

You've got me dead to rights, m8. I wish they'd leave my African child trafficking alone :'(
>> No. 40066 Anonymous
17th March 2023
Friday 7:43 pm
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>>40064
> they can do a great job in very difficult circumstances
Can you name a time when they caught a war criminal who would not have been caught without their help? My complaint really is with how the media reports these things as if they matter. It's the same as arguing whether or not the invasion of Iraq was "illegal". Nobody's going to get arrested either way. It all just feels so performative and futile.
>> No. 40067 Anonymous
17th March 2023
Friday 9:54 pm
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>>40066
The ICC doesn't catch criminals (although it arm-twisted Senegal into the trial of Hissène Habré etc.) What they do is operate as a court with international legitimacy that is used to pressure sovereign states to act with observance of human rights law and by extension create accountability for state actors that are in theory able to exercise complete power in their recognised jurisdictions.

In that sense it's been highly successful with states acting in deference to its rulings, a highly novel invention, and its rulings have the effect of being a source of law with its founding document actually serving as the formal definition for the sources of international law.

>It's the same as arguing whether or not the invasion of Iraq was "illegal". Nobody's going to get arrested either way. It all just feels so performative and futile.

Your sex life is performative and futile, defining the limits of national sovereignty while trying to maintain the great peace is one of the most important questions of the 21st century. Iraq was effectively justified by UN resolutions and the process behind where we got there works to define further how and when states are entitled to uses of force. The Iraq war was justified.

The invasion of Ukraine is in a sense Russia's attempt to reframe the great peace of the post-war into one of great powers with spheres of influence. There's an intellectual argument to be had against this form of madness that wants to effectively drag humanity back to the 19th century.
>> No. 40068 Anonymous
17th March 2023
Friday 10:09 pm
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>>40059

Out of everything, this is probably the least propagandised thing they're reporting about Russia. It's never exactly been a secret that Russian officials who don't cut the mustard tend to have quite nasty window related accidents.

>>40067

It's only ever been spheres of influence, you massive tit. It's just that for the last 30 odd years, there has only really been one.

>the great peace of the post-war

What fucking peace? Jesus christ I've never read such tripe.
>> No. 40069 Anonymous
18th March 2023
Saturday 3:19 am
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>>40068
>It's only ever been spheres of influence, you massive tit. It's just that for the last 30 odd years, there has only really been one.

No, states may have interests but there is no overlordship at work. We didn't let Japan invade Manchuria without effectively excluding them from the good boy's club and it's why the UN Charter opens with a strong defence of state sovereignty - a concept that had been developed over the lifetime of international law.

I'm not being some glassy eyed liberal internationalist that usually talks about this stuff, it's very clear the world is run as a community of states that jealously guard their sovereignty and are well aware of the inherent instability when others get grabby. That's why Russia's annexation of Crimea was so massive even if you embrace the lie that Crimeans were an oppressed minority. It's also why Somaliland is currently getting into a fight with Somalia that is actually a proxy-war involving the PRC and Serbia against Taiwanese interests.

>What fucking peace? Jesus christ I've never read such tripe.

The one where we've had no direct contest between the great powers and no collapse of the international system, which has been the norm across human history.
>> No. 40071 Anonymous
18th March 2023
Saturday 11:11 am
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>>40069

So there was no Korean war, Vietnam, Afghanistan 1 and 2, Iraq 1 and 2, all that Balkan shit in the 90s, all the various shit in Africa since... Forever. It may be true that there has been no direct contest between the great powers, but it certainly hasn't been in any way shape or form peaceful.
>> No. 40078 Anonymous
19th March 2023
Sunday 4:43 pm
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>>40071
He's not saying those conflicts didn't happen, just that they don't really matter because the big boys didn't see direct fighting on their own turf.
>> No. 40082 Anonymous
25th March 2023
Saturday 7:39 pm
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65077687

>Putin: Russia to station nuclear weapons in Belarus

>President Putin told Russian state television on Saturday that Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko had long raised the issue of stationing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

>"There is nothing unusual here either," he said. "Firstly, the United States has been doing this for decades. They have long deployed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allied countries."

I was almost going to say fair enough... but yeah, no... we'll be out of their reach here, but still. It'll only put countries like Poland and the Baltic states in harm's way. This isn't just a counterbalance to deter an eastward advancenent of NATO troops. Which will never happen anyway. What if old Vlad decides that the Baltic states belong back with Russia. They are only connected to other NATO territory via a narrow 50-mile land border with Poland. You would have to attack NATO territory to cut them off, which would mean WWIII in its own right, but having tactical nukes with a range of 300 miles in Belarus doesn't make that region any safer.
>> No. 40083 Anonymous
25th March 2023
Saturday 8:29 pm
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>>40082
Putin is a dangerous imperialist but I think he's more giving message about Belarussian security with this. Afterall Kaliningrad already has nuclear weapons ready to level Warsaw and the entire Oblast represents a fortress.

It's more like saying that Russia will be staying in Belarus in a very different way to the pre-war balancing act Lukashenko tried and that Lukashenko now can't be toppled by anyone but Putin who is now the real wellspring of authority. The most immediate risk having been if Ukraine launched some insane move to capture Minsk on the assumption that Moscow wouldn't use nuclear weapons.
>> No. 40084 Anonymous
25th March 2023
Saturday 8:43 pm
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Bear with me on this potentially moronic question: how does international trade work? Russia seems to only have one ally in the entire world right now, and that's Belarus. So I guess those two countries can trade with each other and reap the economic benefits, such as they are. But Russia is huge. It's bigger than the entire European Union, which is lots of countries trading with each other for economic benefits. Can't Russia just trade with itself? Let Saratov sell its wares to Vladivostok. Would that not work? Why not?

And does this mean all sanctions against Russia are fundamentally doomed to fail?
>> No. 40085 Anonymous
25th March 2023
Saturday 9:21 pm
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>>40084

They do a lot of trade with China, as far as I understand. If you only trade with one other country, and it's China, then you're not doing badly, because it's fucking China, innit. The world's factory. Russia is basically a resource economy, entirely based on digging shit out of the ground and selling it to people who want to make stuff, so they would still do just fine if China was the only country in the world buying from them.

And beyond that, most of the global south is having none of it when it comes to the sanctions. The thing is with trade sanctions, they only work if everybody is in on it; Russia might prefer to sell to us at a higher price, but it's not the end of the world if they have to sell to India or Brazil instead.

There have been commentators saying this is folly on the part of the west, arrogantly assuming we can control the world by closing our own doors, and bullying the little poor countries to fall in line; which this time, after the chaos caused by covid, they're kind of understandably refusing to. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it's a massive long term sea change, but it's definitely caused raised eyebrows in some Washington meeting room or other.

I do think these sanctions have failed, and at best they've caused us as much harm as they've caused Russia, ending up a bit of an own goal. And that's even with the farce early on where everyone was like "Oh Russia you naughty boy you, we are definitely sanctioning the fuck out of you! We'll sanction your bollocks off mate! After we buy this last bit of gas, yep, that's it, you've had it!". But it's more because of the surrounding circumstances than the idea of sanctions (against Russia specifically or otherwise) is fundamentally broken.
>> No. 40086 Anonymous
25th March 2023
Saturday 9:27 pm
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>>40085
Are the Chinese exploiting the situation? They must be in a much stronger bargaining position when they deal with Russia than they were before this all kicked off.
>> No. 40087 Anonymous
25th March 2023
Saturday 9:45 pm
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>>40086

One would have thought so, but for obvious reasons it's hard to have a particularly accurate picture of the balances involved. I'd imagine there's something of a gentleman's understanding between Vlad and Xi that they'll keep buying at a modest discount, as long as Russsia doesn't drag them into any shit and keeps it on the hush. They both need each other; China needs the minerals and fuel, Russia needs the money and equipment.
>> No. 40088 Anonymous
26th March 2023
Sunday 4:09 am
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>>40084

>Russia is huge. It's bigger than the entire European Union, which is lots of countries trading with each other for economic benefits. Can't Russia just trade with itself? Let Saratov sell its wares to Vladivostok. Would that not work? Why not?

Russia doesn't have the industrial capacity to go it alone. Before the fall of the iron curtain, the Soviet Union mostly was a closed economy - they bragged that they could produce everything except bananas. Of course, that doesn't mean that you can produce everything cheaply and well, which was one of the many causes of low living standards in the Soviet Union.

One of the most important principles behind globalisation is the idea of comparative advantage. Even if you have no underlying advantage in terms of resources, you can create an advantage out of thin air by specialising in something. If you and I are stuck on a desert island, we're likely to be better off if you spend most of your time fishing while I spend most of my time farming; we'll be more productive as experts than as generalists. The only modern economy to choose self-sufficiency over global trade is North Korea, and even they have to cheat and do a bit of trade with China.

The most crucial example of comparative advantage in the modern economy is microchip production. Making chips requires unimaginably vast amounts of investment and incredibly specialised skills. Lots of countries can make the sort of simple chip that might power a digital watch or a microwave, but only two countries can produce the sort of chip that powers your smartphone - South Korea and Taiwan, with the latter having by far the biggest market share. In turn, those chip manufacturers are totally reliant on a Dutch company (ASML), who are the sole manufacturer of a vital bit of machinery called an EUV stepper.

In the last couple of years, politicians have started to realise that microchips are a strategic resource, which is the main reason why you're hearing a lot more grumbling about China and Taiwan. The complexity and fragility of their relationship poses a risk to the entire global economic order. The problem for those politicians is that catching up with the Taiwanese in chip manufacturing would require an investment of hundreds of billions of dollars, a sum approaching the UK's annual government budget. The west is now frantically trying to prevent China from developing a domestic chip manufacturing industry, but we haven't yet committed to developing our own chip manufacturing capacity, which obviously greatly heightens tensions over the status of Taiwan.

Nobody really knows how this will all play out. Since the end of the cold war, we've developed a stable economic system based on the free flow of international trade; for a long time, the collapse of that system seemed unthinkable. If the world breaks apart again into two rival economic blocs, we don't know where the lines will be drawn or who will have the upper hand.
>> No. 40102 Anonymous
8th April 2023
Saturday 5:36 pm
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https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-hackers-used-russia-drone-money-for-sex-toys-2023-4

>The Cyber Resistance group said on Telegram on Monday that it hacked Mikhail Luchin's AliExpress account, and used it to buy $25,000 worth of sex toys.

It said the money was going to be spent on drones for the Russian army, according to Politico's translation.

>"Now instead of drones, he will have to send trucks full of vibrators, strapons, and other very valuable things for the Russian people," the group said.


I don't see the problem.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3Lf9NujFSg
>> No. 40103 Anonymous
9th April 2023
Sunday 2:52 pm
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>>40102
>"Now instead of drones, he will have to send trucks full of vibrators, strapons, and other very valuable things for the Russian people," the group said.
All the single Russian women in my area I've met are already closeted, depraved, and absolutely gagging for it. Can't imagine what it'll be like when the borders reopen and there are a couple hundred thousand widows looking for a pity shag.
>> No. 40104 Anonymous
9th April 2023
Sunday 4:01 pm
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>>40103

Russia already had an issue with imbalanced population, they never recovEred after WW2.
>> No. 40105 Anonymous
9th April 2023
Sunday 5:03 pm
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>>40104
Mate if you want to shag women who lost their husbands in WW2 good luck to you but I'm not too keen.
>> No. 40111 Anonymous
10th April 2023
Monday 12:54 pm
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>>40105

Your loss m8.

What I meant though, was that the loss of men was so profound that it's still a factor in their demographics generations later. There were already tons of cock-starved Russian women who have to settle for some toothless gopnik.

Christ knows what it'll be like after all this, but if you want a bird who's out of your league, Russia is the place to go.
>> No. 40112 Anonymous
10th April 2023
Monday 1:11 pm
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>>40111
Men outnumber women in Russia up until their late thirties.
>> No. 40113 Anonymous
10th April 2023
Monday 1:20 pm
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>>40111
Also, how do you reckon that the loss of WW2 soldiers is affecting gender distribution today? That makes no sense at all, ya weird granny fucker.

It's bloody vodka that is killing Russian men.
>> No. 40114 Anonymous
10th April 2023
Monday 1:30 pm
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>>40113

>It's bloody vodka that is killing Russian men.

To be fair, the problem isn't just vodka. The problem is also moonshine, aftershave, mouthwash, cough syrup, hand gel, floor polish and anything else that might give you a buzz.
>> No. 40115 Anonymous
10th April 2023
Monday 3:21 pm
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>>40114

And smoking. Russia still has one of the highest numbers of smokers outside developing countries. And older men smoke the most.


https://www.smokefreeworld.org/health-science-research-2/health-science-technology-agenda/data-analytics/global-state-of-smoking-landscape/state-smoking-russia/
>> No. 40116 Anonymous
10th April 2023
Monday 3:38 pm
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>>40111
>There were already tons of cock-starved Russian women who have to settle for some toothless gopnik.
>Christ knows what it'll be like after all this, but if you want a bird who's out of your league, Russia is the place to go.

I have a feeling that desperate war widows may not exactly have you in mind when they think of a future husband. And Russian women are impossible to get your leg over, the liberals ones here seem sex-positive and open-minded but from my experience they're extremely temperamental and traditional. It's a wonder Russian demographics work at all.
>> No. 40117 Anonymous
10th April 2023
Monday 3:54 pm
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>>40116
As the lad that started this whole tangent about the fuckability of Russian women: I was speaking from experience. Granted the two women I got my leg over (and numerous others I flirted with) were born and bred in SPb, far and away Russia's most liberal city, but I've also taught English over there in the Russian interior and got much more than a few smiles from the local spinsters.
>> No. 40118 Anonymous
10th April 2023
Monday 4:26 pm
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>>40117
Oh, two women?

If that counts as experience then you should head down to Crawley. Right slags down there and much easier to travel to.
>> No. 40151 Anonymous
25th April 2023
Tuesday 6:08 am
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>>40150

>interesting

That word is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
>> No. 40152 Anonymous
25th April 2023
Tuesday 6:24 pm
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>>40150
Mods are dead, post complete and total horseshit.
>> No. 40153 Anonymous
25th April 2023
Tuesday 8:07 pm
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>>40152
Why not you tell me how to recognise horse shit instead? Help me out, man. We're not all as educated as you.
>> No. 40154 Anonymous
25th April 2023
Tuesday 8:31 pm
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>>40153

It's an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory on a website full of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. There are lots of "citations", but they're pretty much all just one bloke with a YouTube channel who claims to have insider knowledge. Someone more patient than me can probably take it apart line-by-line, but I'm just not inclined to explain why blaming everything on the Jews is bad. If you honestly don't get it, then this Wikipedia page is a good a starting point as anything else:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitic_trope
>> No. 40155 Anonymous
25th April 2023
Tuesday 10:38 pm
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>>40153
Oh, I'm sorry, have you recently suffered a traumatic brain injury? Look at it, for fuck's sake. Where the Hell do I begin?

I'm not spending my evening taking apart obvious nonsense. As stated previously I don't work for Prevent, and so there isn't any confusion I'm also not employed by BBC on their disinformation team or Bellingcat or any other sods who are reimbursed for their time teaching morons why 2 + 2 doesn't equal the Tartarian Mud Flood.
>> No. 40222 Anonymous
10th May 2023
Wednesday 11:14 pm
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>Wagner boss fumes that Russian brigade ‘fled’ from Bakhmut area
>The remarks are the latest in a series of public criticisms from him of Moscow’s Ministry of Defense for the faltering invasion of Ukraine – and, in particular, the failure to capture the city of Bakhmut. But while Prigozhin has frequently poured scorn on the Russian military and its leadership, he has not previously accused Russian units of running from battle and allowing Ukrainian forces to recapture territory. Prigozhin said the 72nd brigade “just ran the hell out of there.”

>Responding to questions from a Russian media outlet, Prigozhin said: “There is a serious risk of encirclement of PMC Wagner in Bakhmut as a result of the failure of the flanks. The flanks are already cracking and falling through. At the moment, within the city of Bakhmut, there is only Wagner PMC, there are no other units. Outside Bakhmut [there is] only the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. PMC Wagner is not there,”
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/10/europe/prizoghin-bakhmut-russia-ukraine-losses-intl-cmd/index.html

Yevgeny Prigozhin has already called Putin a moron and been releasing increasingly desperate videos for ammunition. I reckon the entire Russian frontline might start to disintegrate even before Ukraine's summer offensive.

I bet OP must feel pretty silly at this point.
>> No. 40223 Anonymous
10th May 2023
Wednesday 11:19 pm
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>>40222
I wonder if it was Wagner who flew that drone into the Kremlin.
>> No. 40224 Anonymous
11th May 2023
Thursday 6:46 am
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>>40223
I doubt it. He's been dead for over a century.
>> No. 40225 Anonymous
11th May 2023
Thursday 11:12 am
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>>40224
Don't be silly. He flew that helicopter in Apocalypse Now.
>> No. 40226 Anonymous
12th May 2023
Friday 1:57 am
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>Russia's defence ministry has denied reports by pro-Russian sources that Ukrainian soldiers have made advances on the front line in east Ukraine. Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group fighting on the Russian side, accused regular Russian troops of abandoning positions around Bakhmut.

>Russian military bloggers reported Ukrainian advances or troop movements in several areas on Thursday. In a statement, Russia's defence ministry said: "The individual declarations on Telegram about a 'breakthrough' on several points on the frontline do not correspond to reality. The general situation in the special military operation zone is under control".

>According to Mr Prigozhin, the situation "on the flanks" at Bakhmut, the ruined city at the centre of bloody fighting for months, was "developing in line with the worst of the predicted scenarios. The territories that we have been taking for many months at the cost of the blood and lives of our brothers-in-arms, covering dozens or hundreds of metres a day, are now being abandoned, practically without a fight, by those who should be holding our flanks," he said.

>Pro-Kremlin Russian war correspondent Sasha Kots claimed that Kyiv's much-anticipated counteroffensive had begun. Ukrainian tanks were on the Kharkiv ring road heading towards the border with Russia, he said, quoting "trusted" sources. His claims could not be independently verified. "There are low loaders in the columns carrying Western [tank] models among others, In other words, Kiev [Kyiv] has decided to aggravate the situation along the northern front in parallel with the start of offensive actions on the flanks of Artyomovsk [Bakhmut]." Another Russian war correspondent, Alexander Simonov, wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian forces had broken through near the village of Bohdanivka, close to Bakhmut, taking "several square kilometres" of ground.

>Ukrainian military analyst Oleksandr Musivenko said Kyiv recognised that the anticipated counteroffensive might not necessarily defeat Russia "in all occupied areas". He told Ukrainian NV radio there was every possibility the war could continue into next year. "It all depends on how the battles develop. We can't guarantee how the counteroffensive will develop," he said.

>Western officials estimate between 20,000 and 30,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded at Bakhmut, while Ukraine's military has also paid a heavy price. Russia's defence ministry also said it had stopped several Ukrainian attacks throughout Thursday and said an ongoing battle near Malynivka, in eastern Donetsk, involved both air and artillery forces.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65567143

In two weeks time the ground will have dried to enable a Ukrainian counteroffensive and small Azov units might well already be smashing the Russian frontline. Betting odds are that Turkey is to have ended it's neo-sultanate period with a unity government that will wave Sweden into NATO and Japan already in discussion on a NATO liaison office. Russia has now dusted off T-54s to work as mobile artillery because they've run out of shells of the right calibre, despite supposedly being supplied by North Korea.

It's frankly astonishing how badly Putin has fucked up.
>> No. 40230 Anonymous
13th May 2023
Saturday 11:33 am
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I bought a Lada recently and would just like to know when I can resume ordering parts from Russia.
>> No. 40240 Anonymous
22nd May 2023
Monday 9:15 pm
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>Russia said on Monday it was battling a cross-border incursion by saboteurs who burst through the frontier from Ukraine, in what appeared to be one of the biggest attacks of its kind since the war began last year.

>The governor of Russia's Belgorod region said a Ukrainian "sabotage group" had entered Russian territory in the Graivoron district bordering Ukraine and was being repelled. But the Ukrainian outlet Hromadske cited Ukrainian military intelligence as saying two armed Russian opposition groups, the Liberty of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), both consisting of Russian citizens, had carried out the attack. The Telegram channel Baza, which has links to Russia's security services, said there were indications of fighting in three settlements along the main road leading into Russia. The "Open Belgorod" Telegram channel said power and water had been cut off to several villages.

>A group calling itself the Liberty of Russia Legion - a Ukraine-based Russian militia led by Russian opposition figure Ilya Ponomarev that says it is working inside Russia for Putin's overthrow - said on Twitter it had "completely liberated" the border town of Kozinka. It said forward units had reached the district centre of Graivoron, further east. "Moving on. Russia will be free!" it wrote. In a written statement to Reuters, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak echoed Ukrainian intelligence. "The violent Russian resistance movement, whose architects are exclusively citizens of Russia itself, is gradually coming out of the underground," he said. "They are independent in their decisions, have certain experience, and are free from fear."
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-says-it-advances-bakhmuts-flanks-entrap-russians-2023-05-22/

Remember lads, saboteurs could be anywhere.
>> No. 40241 Anonymous
27th May 2023
Saturday 11:00 pm
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https://www.zelenskyos.com/order/p/zelenskyos

I've seen Ukraine War postage stamps, tea towels, chocolate, socks, t-shirts - all operating from companies in the UK and they all claim to be giving proceeds to charity. Seems a bit like war profiteering industry to me.
>> No. 40242 Anonymous
28th May 2023
Sunday 12:59 am
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>>40241

The world was almost more simple when it was still all about fighting tham tarrists. Nobody was peddling cereals to fight Bin Laden.
>> No. 40243 Anonymous
28th May 2023
Sunday 12:10 pm
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>>40242
Because the post-Great Recession grift economy hadn't been given form. There was already a coterie of country music hacks ready to take advantage and much more besides that, but the desperate need to "monetise" every semblence of life and rapidly develop new vectors of financial parasitism was still a ways off in the noughties. However, I do think the psychological debasement of the War on Terror, along with We Live in Public (sans all honesty) becoming actually how we live now leads directly to people thinking it's okay to hawk ephemeral, vapid, war-meme-junk and see no issue with it. I'm not saying it's the first time in human history serious things have been treated unseriously, but two decades of politics being lying to cover someone's arse and zero-sum managerial politics have helped foster a widespread "who gives a shit" attitude, something I used to think people grew out of.

Seems I'm carrying a touch more resentment about this stuff that even I realised, soz'.
>> No. 40244 Anonymous
28th May 2023
Sunday 12:54 pm
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>>40242
That actually implies to me that it's more simple now. Everyone is on the side of Ukraine, to the point that it's starting to feel a bit weird. I will always support Ukraine against Russia because I'm racist against Russians; they are po-faced humourless neo-Nazi psychopath hooligans, while Ukraine has a certain charm to it in spite of its own failings. It would be like if India invaded Uzbekistan to impose a culture of gang-rape, acid attacks and shitting in the street. I would back those plucky Uzbeks to the hilt. But I don't think most people feel anywhere near as strongly as I do, and yet absolutely nobody supports Russia. This is a completely black-and-white conflict. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden wasn't too much of a heartthrob, but anti-American sentiment was pretty strong, nobody liked George W Bush either, and once we invaded Iraq, everything became a confusing morass. A breakfast cereal that sent money to the US Army would have been far more contentious than a cereal that sends money to the Ukrainian army.
>> No. 40245 Anonymous
28th May 2023
Sunday 1:04 pm
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>>40243

In a world like that, it only follows that that kind of culture trickles down to businesses attempting to make money off a cereal that supports Ukraine. In the end, it's not a charitable act. No cereal company will produce a cereal whose proceeds are meant to go to Ukraine at a loss. And even if 50p of every box go to those purposes and it reduces their profit margin by roughly that amount, somebody at that cereal maker will still see it as an image campaign that will rub off on the demand for their other products.
>> No. 40246 Anonymous
28th May 2023
Sunday 1:12 pm
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>>40243
>I'm not saying it's the first time in human history serious things have been treated unseriously, but two decades of politics being lying to cover someone's arse and zero-sum managerial politics have helped foster a widespread "who gives a shit" attitude,
I saw a video of some Ukrainians and Russians (living in the US) arguing in Russian about that city they're fighting over at the moment and the commenters were mostly saying how sad it is that immigrants hold on to issues from the old countries. Just bizarre.
>> No. 40247 Anonymous
28th May 2023
Sunday 1:14 pm
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>>40244

>A breakfast cereal that sent money to the US Army would have been far more contentious than a cereal that sends money to the Ukrainian army.

Interestingly, Kellogg's has a long history of supporting the American military.

https://newsroom.kelloggcompany.com/2018-11-6-Kelloggs-History-of-Supporting-our-Veterans

Nobody likes to remember that their founder was also a glowing antisemite and racial purist, but there we go.
>> No. 40248 Anonymous
28th May 2023
Sunday 1:43 pm
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>>40247
He should have had a wank to chill out.
>> No. 40249 Anonymous
28th May 2023
Sunday 3:54 pm
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>>40247

In fairness how many figures in American history weren't huge racialists? It's just kind of like basically every ancient culture's massive reliance on slavery, you kind of just have to accept that it was part of the fabric of the place.
>> No. 40250 Anonymous
28th May 2023
Sunday 8:39 pm
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>>40249


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLjr3dzOUpQ

Walt Disney also didn't like Jews.

Thing is, to many, it was a quite reasonable set of beliefs to have until the early 20th century. It was only when the Nazis took it to extremes and went to full on genocide with it that a dislike for Jews became more than just somebody's strong opinion.

Same with eugenics, social darwinism and racial hygiene. Nobody saw much actual harm in those ideas until the Third Reich.
>> No. 40278 Anonymous
4th June 2023
Sunday 4:13 pm
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Tuesday is June 6th - anniversary of D-Day.
>> No. 40279 Anonymous
4th June 2023
Sunday 4:24 pm
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>>40278
It's my friend's birthday. Her B-day is two days before D-day. I tried to explain this wordplay to her, but she kept replying with, "Yes, my birthday certainly is close to D-day!" and she seems oblivious to the point that B is two less than D.
>> No. 40281 Anonymous
4th June 2023
Sunday 6:06 pm
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>>40279

>and she seems oblivious to the point that B is two less than D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_measurement
>> No. 40296 Anonymous
7th June 2023
Wednesday 11:05 am
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/06/nord-stream-pipeline-explosion-ukraine-russia/

>U.S. had intelligence of detailed Ukrainian plan to attack Nord Stream pipeline

Interesting.
>> No. 40297 Anonymous
7th June 2023
Wednesday 9:42 pm
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>>40296
surely every worthwhile country has played 'how would you blow shit up' games? If we don't have a plan for fucking up various infrastructure all over the place, I'll be disappointed. But not surprised, since we seem to be a bit shit at the old forward planning these days.
I know what I'd do to really fuck the UK up, but I don't think I'll post it on this obscure shed fanciers' board.
>> No. 40298 Anonymous
8th June 2023
Thursday 1:03 pm
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>>40297

I feel like the UK is probably exceptionally fragile to that sort of thing, and I also feel like the current crop of clowns in government have fuck all contingency plans if anything did happen.

All it would take is probably knocking out on or two of the busiest ports, even just for a few days, and taking out a few bridges on the M1, M4, M62 etc, and the country would already be on its knees before you even have to think about power and water.
>> No. 40299 Anonymous
8th June 2023
Thursday 6:04 pm
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>>40298
>All it would take is probably knocking out on or two of the busiest ports

But that's a regular occurrence? Do Ukrainian's cause the school holidays?
>> No. 40300 Anonymous
9th June 2023
Friday 2:47 am
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>>40297
>I know what I'd do to really fuck the UK up
Unfortunately, our government appear to have beaten you to it.

They're taking a lead from Roll Safe. Attackers can't fuck up the country when it's already fucked up.
>> No. 40301 Anonymous
9th June 2023
Friday 4:21 am
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>>40298
You say all that like knocking out multiple ports and strategically important bridges is really straightforward and easy. I also don't think Britain's terribly unique in that regard. Obviously being an island nation we've always been more at risk to things like convoy interdiction, but I'm pretty sure if you Rotterdam was blown up the Netherland's would be in a spot of bother the perpetrator would most likely be killed by Narcos/Cosa Nostra before the Dutch could even rig their sails. Maybe the Dutch are a bad example, because they're almost, sort of, kind of' an island too.
>> No. 40408 Anonymous
23rd June 2023
Friday 10:47 pm
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>The head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group is being investigated for inciting mutiny after accusing the Russian military of a launching a deadly missile strike on his troops. Yevgeny Prigozhin said the "evil" in the military leadership must be stopped and vowed to "march for justice".

>In an audio message posted to the social media platform Telegram, he said "the evil which the Russian military leadership carries must be stopped. Those who killed our lads, and tens of thousands of lives of Russian soldiers [in the war in Ukraine] will be punished, I ask you not to resist. Anyone who does will be considered a threat and destroyed. That goes for any checkpoints and aviation on our way. Presidential power, the government, the police and Russian guard will work as usual. This is not a military coup, but a march of justice. Our actions do not interfere with the troops in any way."

>Russian state media reports that the FSB, Russia's security services, have opened a criminal case against Prigozhin, accusing him of "calling for an armed rebellion". The Kremlin has also said "necessary measures are being taken", according to Russian news agency Interfax. The Russian defence ministry said in a statement that "all reports by Prigozhin spread on social media" of Russian strikes on Wagner camps were "not true and are an information provocation".

>Earlier on Friday, he said the war in Ukraine had been started "so that Shoigu could become a Marshal". "The Ministry of Defence is trying to deceive the public, deceive the president and tell a story that there was some crazy aggression by Ukraine, that - together with the whole Nato bloc - Ukraine was planning to attack us," he said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66005256

Catching some of his talk earlier today he openly discussed how for 8 years the parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia were looted by generals who used ghost numbers to steal money from Russia while robbing the people they were assigned to protect. Putin of course being unaware of this or how unprepared Russia was to attack Ukraine due to fraud. The boyars are turning on each other but still you don't see them going against Putin.

Also China just secured transit-free access from Vladivostok and has openly started calling it Haishenwai in its statements and maps. The region having been secured as part of the unequal treaties where Moscow threatened to burn Beijing to the ground during the Opium War.
>> No. 40412 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 3:22 am
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Rostov is now under the control of Wagner, the military units sent to stop them having mostly laid down their arms. Until they didn't.
https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1672409948221833217

Wagner now claim to have shot down a helicopter attacking a civilian convey while HOMO are on video just watching them drive past rudimentary roadblocks. Oh, and e-scooters remain to be all over the streets even in a warzone.
>> No. 40420 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 11:55 am
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This man is going to be the next President of the Russian Federation and it's going to be fucking terrible, but a slightly different kind of terrible from what we've currently got.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-66006142
>> No. 40426 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 12:44 pm
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My enemy's enemy's enemy's enemy is - oh fuck, what's going on.
>> No. 40427 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 12:54 pm
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>>40426
My enemy's enema is still full of shit.
>> No. 40429 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 1:33 pm
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So is this Wagner revolution likely to go anywhere or will Putin blow them to bits within a day?
>> No. 40430 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 1:43 pm
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>>40429
Apparently Kadyrov is going to stop him so I guess depends on how highly you rate people dressed in airsoft gear. The other question is whether Ukraine should continue the counter-offensive or just kick back and watch Russia destroy itself.
>> No. 40432 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 2:20 pm
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So about those mines places on the cooling for Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and reports of Wagner now entering nuclear warehouses. Luka also fled Belarus this morning which may soon mark the end of Belarus with all those Russian nukes now placed on location. Oh and the US recently passed a measure that any radioactive fallout that lands in NATO will be considered an Article 4 scenario.

Probably about time for some kind of global intervention into Russia isn't it?
>> No. 40435 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 3:38 pm
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So is Putin Yuri or Romanov?
>> No. 40436 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 3:47 pm
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>>40430
I suppose getting private army 1 to shut down private army 2 isn't the worst shout in the world, given the circumstances.
>> No. 40438 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 4:19 pm
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Wagner has now crossed all but the innermost blockades to Moscow. Nobody knows what's about to happen Putin's own militia the Rosgvardiya are about to face him which means either street fights in Moscow, they'll lay down arms as some shitty paramilitary should, or maybe nukes will start going off.

Russian state television is the best source for news at the moment:

>> No. 40439 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 4:30 pm
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>>40438
Who would be nuking who in this situation? The Russians and the Russians?
>> No. 40440 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 4:38 pm
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Day 485 of a 3 day Russian SMO in Ukraine, to "liberate" the country
Moscow now is preparing for a siege from a mercenary outfit ran by the president's former chef.
>> No. 40442 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 4:55 pm
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Wagner are mercenaries; they fight for money. We've been sending money to Ukraine for their counter-offensive, and that money so far seems not to have resulted in a very good counter-offensive. Do you think Ukraine just kept the money and offered it to Wagner to make them turn round and invade Russia instead?
>> No. 40443 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 5:09 pm
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>>40442

Possible, but highly unlikely.

Regarding the counter-offensive, a lot of people seem to have had unreasonable expectations of the rate of progress. Russian forces have spent the winter digging in and laying mines, creating a very tough defensive line. Zelensky is actually bothered about the lives of Ukrainian soldiers and can't afford to waste materiel and trained men. That means careful, steady operations to probe Russian defences and push back the front line in increments, rather than a big bloody banzai charge. The front has been moving at a meaningful rate, it just looks like a crawl compared to the incredibly rapid movements in the early months of the war.
>> No. 40445 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 6:19 pm
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>>40442
>> No. 40446 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 6:56 pm
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This has been a very bizarre day. Yevgeni Prigozhin has now said he's turning back and calling off the coup, because he doesn't want Russians to be killing other Russians. And Aleksandr Lukashenko, president of Belarus, is somehow trying to take credit for this. I have seen both of those confirmed on proper TV news, after seeing both points made on 4chan and immediately dismissing them as absolute bollocks. It's weird to think that I have definitely, at some point today, fallen for some kind of disinformation, and that I don't even know yet which stories weren't true.
>> No. 40448 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 7:44 pm
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>>40446

>and that I don't even know yet which stories weren't true.
Probably all of them. We're firmly living in a post truth world in which the truth simply isn't in the public sphere. Where every opposing belief, viewpoint, tribe, or side you have to choose between is a fabrication. Fabricated, but not false, merely untrue. The lack of falsehood comes from the fact that enough people believe it to make it a viable option.
>> No. 40449 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 7:50 pm
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I get the feeling the whole thing has been some sort of orchestrated charade.
>> No. 40450 Anonymous
24th June 2023
Saturday 11:12 pm
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>>40449

I'm not sure why Putin would orchestrate something so humiliating for him, or who else would be capable of orchestrating something of this scale.
>> No. 40451 Anonymous
25th June 2023
Sunday 1:31 am
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>>40449
Boring Answer: It's more like squabbling amongst the boyars that had one of them go running to the Tsar. In a way it was more like a peasants revolt where a group slowly marched to petition the King rather than a coup that has to happen quickly and involves seizing all the state apparatus.

It does seem like the MOD and FSB were trying to kill him and his men. I don't see reason to doubt his claim that they really were also sabotaging him in Bakhmut which is an established feature of Russian warfare dating back to at least the Polish–Soviet War. Now he's gone into exile in Belarus while his men are free but are being offered army contracts so I see Wagnar getting absorbed. I imagine we'll see a shakeup of Russian security leadership as part of whatever deal has been struck.

Fun Answer: Ask yourself this; who has balanced his Russian alliance with avoiding all blame for the Ukraine War? Who then appeared at a press conference with the Russian war plans behind him? Who used Russian troops in a brutal crackdown to save his own skin? Who has been having numerous meetings with Xi recently? Who not only brokered a ceasefire after 2014 but is now the guarantor of Russian internal stability? Who manages to surround himself with young attractive women everywhere he goes?

It's all part of Luka's plan to achieve the Union Treaty with Russia that places himself as president. We mocked him as a soviet potato bandit but all along we've been puppets dancing on his string. Some say that for every man Luka will kill once his rise to power is complete he grows a moustache hair, it's looking pretty thick now isn't it.
>> No. 40452 Anonymous
25th June 2023
Sunday 10:33 am
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So who's going to have an unfortunate window-related tumble first?
Putin's not notorious for his sense of humour in such matters, and he seems to still have power?
>> No. 40454 Anonymous
25th June 2023
Sunday 12:40 pm
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>>40452
Sergei Shoigu and that Geronimo guy are probably moving into bungalows right now and that's why we haven't heard from them.
>> No. 40455 Anonymous
25th June 2023
Sunday 8:11 pm
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>>40451

The coming of the antipotato would have been prophesised in ancient times but they didn't have a word for potato in Europe until the late 1500s.
>> No. 40456 Anonymous
27th June 2023
Tuesday 12:01 pm
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The news keeps saying that Russia's running out of things to lob at Ukraine (except maybe tacnukes).
On these assumptions:
They can't buy enough replacements from friendlies
They're ramping up in-country weapon production as hard as possible
They will replenish, then overshoot once this adventure is over
They will be strapped for cash and sell excess stuff to anyone

Who's going to buy modern Russian weapons and where are they going to point them? Is Ukraine just a warmup to a proper shitshow?
>> No. 40457 Anonymous
27th June 2023
Tuesday 12:28 pm
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>>40456
A number of third-world dictatorships are not fussed about this war. I bet Burma/Myanmar would love to buy all the Russian weapons they can get their hands on for the next disagreement about their country's name.
>> No. 40458 Anonymous
27th June 2023
Tuesday 1:18 pm
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>>40456
>They can't buy enough replacements from friendlies

You've got it backwards, Russia was a major arms exporter and that represented it's only advanced sector outside of space launch. Aside from specific low-tech solutions like Iranian drones and Korean artillery it's even now not in the business of imports. It'll instead be a drop off in supplies because sanctions have crippled its advanced production capability which means it can't fulfil the orders it already has (that get stolen anyway), nobody is buying Russian kit anymore and the factories are busy trying to replenish what Russia has already lost and failing at it.

When an artillery-based army is importing shells from North Korea and pulling T-55s from storage you don't really have to worry. We already had the collapse of the Soviet Union, we now have the dodgy banana republic using the scraps to fight a dictators dumb war.
>> No. 40459 Anonymous
27th June 2023
Tuesday 5:19 pm
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>>40458

>sanctions have crippled its advanced production capability

This, only more so. The Russian industrial base is incredibly weak, due to the dominance of oil and gas exports in Putin's economic model. Sanctions have crippled their defence industry and it isn't just the high-tech stuff - they're struggling to get hold of basic things like ball bearings and precursor chemicals. They're working very hard to evade sanctions, but that pushes up costs and reduces quality; no-name Chinese components are a very shoddy substitute for the German and Japanese components they used to rely on.

The war in Ukraine has been a gift to the defence sector in China and India, because they're getting all the low- to mid-value export contracts that Russia used to compete for.
>> No. 40460 Anonymous
27th June 2023
Tuesday 6:05 pm
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any electronics people might find Belarus semiconductor knockoffs fun
https://en.integral.by
>> No. 40461 Anonymous
27th June 2023
Tuesday 7:42 pm
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>>40458
>We already had the collapse of the Soviet Union, we now have the dodgy banana republic using the scraps to fight a dictators dumb war.
A banana republic that has nukes and some of them probably still work.
>> No. 40886 Anonymous
23rd August 2023
Wednesday 6:25 pm
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>>36687
Sounds like Vladimir has got his man.
>> No. 40887 Anonymous
23rd August 2023
Wednesday 6:41 pm
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>>40886
I reckon he's been captive since the day his coup failed tbh.
>> No. 40888 Anonymous
23rd August 2023
Wednesday 7:04 pm
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>>40887
And they flew him to Africa to film that video?
>> No. 40889 Anonymous
23rd August 2023
Wednesday 7:11 pm
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>>40886
Imagine getting on the plane and seeing he's one of your fellow passengers. I suppose it's normal for a plane to explode mid-air?
>> No. 40890 Anonymous
23rd August 2023
Wednesday 7:17 pm
40890 BBC Russian footage of crash
https://twitter.com/bbcrussian/status/1694406373348413680

I'm no expert, but this seems unusual. I don't think I ever managed to make a plane just fall out of the sky even as a ten year old playing Il-2 Sturmovik with a keyboard.
>> No. 40891 Anonymous
23rd August 2023
Wednesday 7:18 pm
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>>40888
Was it ever verified as Africa?
>> No. 40892 Anonymous
23rd August 2023
Wednesday 8:19 pm
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Suggestions now that he might not have been on the crashed plane, and took another.
>> No. 40893 Anonymous
23rd August 2023
Wednesday 8:56 pm
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>>40892

Prigozhin does not strike me as the kind of man who travels on his own passport. His name being on the passenger manifest is incredibly sus.
>> No. 40894 Anonymous
23rd August 2023
Wednesday 11:22 pm
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>>40893
I don't think we'll ever know for sure when it's a master of disguise at work.
>> No. 40895 Anonymous
24th August 2023
Thursday 12:33 pm
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Even if he’s alive, he might well take this opportunity to appear dead and let everyone think he’s dead, so that Putin doesn’t try and shoot down any other planes that he might be on.
>> No. 40896 Anonymous
24th August 2023
Thursday 12:48 pm
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I mean. If I was the kind of guy who started and then aborted a coup against Vladimir Putin, shooting down four Russian helos in the process, I think I might have half a mind to fake my own death.
>> No. 40897 Anonymous
24th August 2023
Thursday 2:23 pm
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>> No. 40898 Anonymous
24th August 2023
Thursday 7:07 pm
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>>40897
Punished Prigozhin.
>> No. 40899 Anonymous
28th August 2023
Monday 11:41 am
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>>40894
Russia is confirming that he's dead, saying they DNA-tested all the corpses from the plane and the list of passengers was accurate: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66632924

So his sexy wife is back on the market!
>> No. 40900 Anonymous
28th August 2023
Monday 2:15 pm
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>>40899

Say what you like about authoritarian regimes, but they get shit done.
>> No. 40901 Anonymous
28th August 2023
Monday 3:44 pm
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>>40900
I'm not sure I'd call having to reestablish mafia-like authority by killing the head of the pseudo-private paramilitary that's your most effective fighting force, (probably because it's free from the decades of rot that afflicts your regular forces) in the wake of an abortive mutiny that he launched in order to force you, IE, Putin, to commit to a wholesale change of his, seemingly, useless senior military leaders "getting shit done". Shit is happening, but I don't think anything's getting done.

That's a terribly written sentence, but I don't have a copy editor so you're all just going to have to deal with it.
>> No. 40902 Anonymous
28th August 2023
Monday 4:19 pm
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>>40901

Irony, lad.

Irony.
>> No. 40903 Anonymous
28th August 2023
Monday 9:22 pm
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>>40900
>they get shit done
Like successfully invade and occupy smaller, weaker neighbouring countries in three days with little to no casualties.
>> No. 40904 Anonymous
28th August 2023
Monday 10:36 pm
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>>40902
Fair enough. Did you like how I referred to Putin as "you" and then moments later used "his", completely mental. Also you're going to have to break the news to >>40903
>> No. 40905 Anonymous
28th August 2023
Monday 11:24 pm
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>>40903

It was always a bit deceptive to say Ukraine is smaller and weaker, really, though. For sure they are and always were the underdog, but it was never quite David versus Goliath. Russia is huge but its population is smaller than you'd expect, only about twice that of Britain, and demographically they were never exactly dwarfing Ukraine, who despite their smaller population always had a very high proportion of their fighting age men actively serving, both due to the geopolitical reality of being next door to Russia, and the recent civil war. Add western support to that and it was never as one sided as we are supposed to believe.

To a large extent Russia is weak and ineffective because of decades of corruption and poor organisation, but you also have to give Ukraine credit for being a pretty tough opponent to have picked on in the first place. Which is why despite all our support, we're very reluctant to give them the really good stuff- It's a taboo subject to talk about right now but the country has its own problems with extremist far right elements, and we really don't want top notch Western military hardware ending up in the hands of people like that with a massive military and loads of fresh battlefield experience backing them up.

When they win, as I believe it's only matter of time until they do, they will go right back to being kept at arms length.
>> No. 40906 Anonymous
28th August 2023
Monday 11:47 pm
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>>40905
I was being a bit hyperbolic there, and I know authoritarian-regimes-get-things-done-lad was just joking, but I think Russia is just too incompetent to even joke about them being efficient in any way. And yes, it is funny that if you have far right views in Britain, the British government will lock you up, while if you have far right views in Ukraine the British government will give you rocket launchers.
>> No. 40907 Anonymous
28th August 2023
Monday 11:59 pm
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>>40905

At the start of the invasion, Russia had 4x the population, 15x the nominal GDP and 20x to 50x more military hardware than Ukraine. Nobody in NATO seriously thought that Ukraine could hold out for more than a few weeks. Even Britain, which has been exceptionally proactive in supporting the Ukrainian military since 2014, was operating on the assumption that we'd essentially be supporting a guerilla resistance. We knew that Ukraine had a strong will to fight and a decent base of modern military leadership and strategy, we knew that the Russian armed forces were mired with corruption, neglect and poor morale, but everyone grossly underestimated the extent of those factors. Russia turned out to be vastly less effective than anyone seriously thought and the speed and effectiveness of Ukrainian mobilisation was nothing short of miraculous.

The far-right elements in Ukraine have been broadly overstated and have greatly diminished since the invasion. Azov have grown greatly beyond their far-right origins, marginalising the far-right elements in their leadership, while martial law has allowed Zelenskyy to quite ruthlessly deal with political figures who might jeopardise Ukraine's relationship with the west. Likewise, a lot of Ukrainians who might have sympathised with either Putin's Russia or some form of ethno-nationalism have shifted substantially towards a pro-Western position, because everyone there understands that Ukraine's continued survival depends on the goodwill of the west.

Poland and Hungary are much further to the right than Ukraine and while there might be tensions over their EU membership, nobody would seriously entertain booting them out of NATO. Ukraine's application to join NATO is basically a done deal. If they survive the war (and it's still an if, rather than a when), they have small but realistic chance of eventually joining the EU, contingent on achieving sufficient progress on anti-corruption and anti-oligarchy reforms.
>> No. 40908 Anonymous
29th August 2023
Tuesday 2:46 am
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>>40907

Poland might lean to the right by our standards, but at least it doesn't have to have supreme court cases ruling that Nazi symbols aren't actually Nazi symbols so that its regiments can keep wearing them.

Hungary is a bit mental yes, but they have 22,000 active armed forces personnel compared to 250,000. Which one do you think warrants greater consideration.

>(and it's still an if, rather than a when)

I will be absolutely fucking amazed if the Russians can turn it around at this stage honestly. The closest they'll get to victory is bringing Ukraine to the negotiating table by sheer bloody attrition, the frontline has barely moved in the last year.

Point is, there's a long history of Western support for countries that would later end up pointing the guns we gave them right back at us. Ukraine doesn't get a carte blanche just because big bad Vlad started on them first, and that would be an exceptionally naive position to take.
>> No. 40909 Anonymous
29th August 2023
Tuesday 4:04 am
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>>40908

The ultranationalist Svoboda bloc won 10.4% of the vote in the 2012 parliamentary election, but just 2.1% of the vote in 2019. Right Sector is defunct, National Corps has suspended political activities indefinitely and most of the smaller extremist groups have been banned.

On top of that political decline, the hardcore far-right activists have been literally decimated by the war. They were happy to go to the tip of the spear in Bakhmut and Mariupol, most of them didn't come back and the survivors have largely been dispersed into other units. Some of those dead neo-Nazis might be valorised as heroes, but they're treated as martyrs for Ukraine, not their political movement.

I accept the possibility that far-right politics in Ukraine might make a resurgence when the war ends, but it has been in clear decline for many years and I don't see what factors would cause the direction to shift. If you're a disaffected young Ukrainian in 2035 and you're looking for someone to hate, I'm not sure why you'd choose to hate gypsies or Jews when everyone around you can give persuasive reasons to hate the Russians instead.

On a more philosophical level, Ukraine's experience of the war has overwhelmingly been an indictment of authoritarianism and a vindication of international cooperation. The strongman Putin has been humbled by little Volodymyr and his NATO allies. There are an awful lot of Ukrainians who owe their lives to Western military aid and those memories aren't likely to fade any time soon. The war has fundamentally changed the meaning of Ukrainian nationalism, if not forever then certainly for a generation. Arguably the only thing that could change that is a perception of abandonment or betrayal by the west.
>> No. 40910 Anonymous
29th August 2023
Tuesday 10:24 am
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>>40909
>but it has been in clear decline for many years
If the far right in Ukraine is so marginal, then why does every photo of a Ukrainian soldier come with a sonnenrad patch?

>There are an awful lot of Ukrainians who owe their lives to Western military aid and those memories aren't likely to fade any time soon.
Why would you think they'll have fond memories of us? If you read between the lines in the reporting it's obvious the offensive isn't going well. They're going to end up with a lot of dead and damaged young men, their country is smashed to bits and flooded with weapons, for what? Is there even a promise they'll get into the EU at the end of this? It's an absolute nightmare.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/22/ukraines-army-is-running-out-of-men-to-recruit/
>> No. 40911 Anonymous
29th August 2023
Tuesday 11:12 am
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>>40910

>If the far right in Ukraine is so marginal, then why does every photo of a Ukrainian soldier come with a sonnenrad patch?

It doesn't. The Azov Brigade do use the wolfsangel and some elements use the sonnenrad, but they represent a small and shrinking part of the Ukrainian forces - a few thousand, of a total strength of around half a million. That small minority of troops with a far right background have been disproportionately visible, partly because of Russian propaganda but mainly because they've been consistently involved in some of the bloodiest battles. For obvious reasons, this has rapidly depleted the size of the Ukrainian far right.

Azov has been integrated into the Ukrainian Armed Forces and is subject to military discipline, the most politically outspoken leaders in the Azov movement have been removed, marginalised or have died at the front and the Azov Brigade is now largely apolitical. Nobody is denying that Ukraine has a very recent history of worrying levels of far-right sentiment and organisation, but the situation has radically changed over the last decade. I think it's entirely reasonable to draw parallels with the rise and fall of the British Union of Fascists - home-grown fascism looked like a serious threat in 1935, but it was an irrelevance by 1945.

>If you read between the lines in the reporting it's obvious the offensive isn't going well. They're going to end up with a lot of dead and damaged young men, their country is smashed to bits and flooded with weapons, for what?

Survival. Every single Ukrainian knows what happened in Bucha, Irpin, Izium and Hostomel. They've all heard the rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin and Russian state media. They are all acutely aware of the Zachistka in Chechnya. This war is brutal and awful, the pace of Ukrainian advances have slowed substantially due to the scale and depth of Russian entrenchments, Ukrainians are painfully aware of the costs of fighting, but they're also under no illusions as to the fate that would await them if they surrendered - for Ukraine, Russkiy Mir is a synonym for genocide.
>> No. 40912 Anonymous
29th August 2023
Tuesday 11:48 am
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>>40907

>Ukraine's application to join NATO is basically a done deal. If they survive the war

Big "if" there.

Obviously they can't become a NATO member while the war is going on, because not only do NATO statutes keep countries from joining if they are in the middle of territorial disputes, in this case mainly surrounding Crimea, but of course even if the Ukrainians conceded Crimea to Russia in order to join NATO, you would from one day to the next have a NATO member state that is under attack and under occupation by the Russians. And where we'd go from there doesn't bear thinking.
>> No. 40913 Anonymous
29th August 2023
Tuesday 12:03 pm
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>>40911
>It doesn't.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/world/europe/nazi-symbols-ukraine.html
Then why did the ny times feel the need to address it?

>survival
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/15/bribes-and-hiding-at-home-the-ukrainian-men-trying-to-avoid-conscription
These lads have different ideas about survival.

Do you really think that if Russia's first attacks were fully successful they would have tried to occupy all of Ukraine and then do a genocide?

When do you think the war should end? Do you think the war should continue until the Russians are driven out of Crimea?
>> No. 40914 Anonymous
29th August 2023
Tuesday 12:10 pm
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>>40913
I’m not him, but I think the war should continue until the Ukrainians have at least tried to get the Russians out of Crimea. There’s plenty more fighting left to try yet before they should just give up.

I also think it’s worth remembering that far-right fascism tends to thrive in places where the economy is doing very badly. A country whose entire east has been decimated by war, and has spent all its money fighting off the Russians, is going to be poor for a while.
>> No. 40915 Anonymous
29th August 2023
Tuesday 12:35 pm
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>>40909

>If you're a disaffected young Ukrainian in 2035 and you're looking for someone to hate, I'm not sure why you'd choose to hate gypsies or Jews

I have a lot of experience with our Slavic cousins and trust me, they don't need a very strong excuse to hate gypsies or jews.
>> No. 40916 Anonymous
29th August 2023
Tuesday 1:05 pm
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>>40913

>When do you think the war should end? Do you think the war should continue until the Russians are driven out of Crimea?

That's for the Ukrainian people to decide. They have every right to fight for every square inch of Ukraine, but I would completely understand if they agreed to an armistice that did not give them control of Crimea or parts of Donbas. The problem for anyone arguing for a negotiated end to the war is that Russia still show no signs of being willing to accept any outcome other than total capitulation.

>Do you really think that if Russia's first attacks were fully successful they would have tried to occupy all of Ukraine and then do a genocide?

Yes. The stated aim of the invasion constitutes genocidal intent under Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The mass deportation of children from occupied Donetsk and Luhansk has clearly demonstrated that the Russians were good to their word - their fundamental goal is the destruction of the Ukrainian nation and the complete subsumption of Ukraine into Russia. The invasion was planned as an act of genocide and has been pursued from the outset as an act of genocide.

https://newlinesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/English-Report.pdf
>> No. 40917 Anonymous
29th August 2023
Tuesday 1:20 pm
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>>40914

>I’m not him, but I think the war should continue until the Ukrainians have at least tried to get the Russians out of Crimea.

It's not just about taking over and reclaiming a piece of land that the Russians stole from you. Crimea had loads of Russian military infrastructure even before 2014. It is the headquarters of the entire Russian Black Sea fleet, and has been since earliest Soviet times, and aside from being armed to the teeth, the Russians would defend Crimea to the last man due to its strategic importance. I'm not sure the Ukrainians would even have enough personnel and firepower. And also, no matter how illegal the annexation of Crimea was, it would drastically change the tone of the war if Russian territory was attacked in force by Ukrainian ground troops, and it could provoke reactions by Putin that could end in a much greater war.
>> No. 40918 Anonymous
29th August 2023
Tuesday 2:38 pm
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>>40917
Russian territory has already been attacked. Putin has annexed parts of Ukraine that aren't even under his control and Crimea is subject to attack including raids, missile strikes and prior to the war the cutting of water. He's even threatened nuclear war multiple times including a radioactive tidal wave that will sweep across the British isles rending it uninhabitable for centuries.

They should keep going until they take every inch. Crimea is well-defended but becomes a prison once severed from the mainland and the general state of Russia both invites a realistic chance of victory and acknowledges the near certainty that if Russia isn't soundly beaten it will start a new invasion later. It's not like Ukrainians aren't aware either of what will happen to anyone now on the wrong side of any peace deal.
>> No. 40919 Anonymous
29th August 2023
Tuesday 3:14 pm
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>>40918

> both invites a realistic chance of victory and acknowledges the near certainty that if Russia isn't soundly beaten it will start a new invasion later

That is still assuming that Putin accepts to cut his losses at some point. But what if he doesn't. What if for once, his threats will not be empty.
>> No. 40920 Anonymous
29th August 2023
Tuesday 3:38 pm
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>>40919
>But what if he doesn't

If Russia is militarily defeated in Ukraine then it doesn't matter. A state using T-54s and horses at the front while its state coffers run dry and a mercenary group can drive to the capital is finished.

>What if for once, his threats will not be empty.

At the moment what stops the west turning Russia into the world's largest munitions testing range is the threat of nuclear retaliation. That's about as far as you can take nuclear blackmail before it gets counter-productive when it concerns a state bent on genocide, using radioactive weapons on British soil and demanding NATO pull back to West Germany.
>> No. 41032 Anonymous
23rd September 2023
Saturday 1:25 pm
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But was Russel Brand a Russian plant?
>> No. 41034 Anonymous
23rd September 2023
Saturday 2:00 pm
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>>41032
We're all Russian plants, some of us just don't know it yet.
>> No. 41035 Anonymous
23rd September 2023
Saturday 2:06 pm
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>>41034

Speak for yourself, Comrade.
>> No. 41263 Anonymous
16th November 2023
Thursday 8:21 pm
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What is this? A president for ants?
>> No. 41264 Anonymous
16th November 2023
Thursday 11:04 pm
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>>41263

At least he's got enough time out of the trenches to put a different jumper on.
>> No. 41329 Anonymous
19th January 2024
Friday 1:36 am
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>British fish and chips could be under threat if Vladimir Putin's Russian government goes ahead with ripping up a longstanding agreement with the UK.

>The Russian government is said to be ready to terminate a decades-old deal with the UK that allows British boats to fish in the Barents Sea - leading to an accusation that it is "weaponising food". Russian newspaper Izvestiya reported that the country's agriculture ministry has submitted draft legislation to ban the UK from the key fishing grounds famous for cod and haddock.

>It would put an end to an agreement between the then USSR and the UK, signed in 1956, which allows UK ships to fish in the Barents Sea, off the north coast of Norway. Last year, Sky News reported that up to 40% of cod and haddock consumed in the UK comes from Russia and Russian territory.
https://news.sky.com/story/russia-could-rip-up-barents-sea-agreement-with-uk-posing-threat-to-cod-and-haddock-supplies-for-fish-and-chips-13050772

Best get a chippy in while you still can.
>> No. 41352 Anonymous
16th February 2024
Friday 12:14 am
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>>41263
Those Americans have certainly had some interesting reactions to Cameron's recent article in the Hill:
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4465907-david-cameron-pass-ukraine-funding-for-the-sake-of-global-security/


Where do we even go from here, lads. It's starting to look like Europe will be going it alone on this.
>> No. 41353 Anonymous
16th February 2024
Friday 12:26 am
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>>41352

I was saying it two years ago that the Yanks will only hang us out to dry if things don't go their way. And now look, their best mate in the Middle East is in trouble and they have totally forgotten about Ukraine, what did I tell you?
>> No. 41354 Anonymous
16th February 2024
Friday 1:27 pm
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>>41352
To be fair, that is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is absolutely mental.
>> No. 41355 Anonymous
16th February 2024
Friday 1:50 pm
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>>41354

I couldn't help myself and I had to find out more. Not only did she confuse Neville Chamberlain with Hitler leading up to that surreal outburst, but she also once made reference to a "Gazpacho police": https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1491525010997096449
>> No. 41356 Anonymous
16th February 2024
Friday 7:06 pm
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Say what you want about Putin, but at least he knows how to get things done. Eventually.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68315943

I am checking out a stream of Rossiya-24 to see if they are reporting on it at all, and they aren't as far as I can tell. Vladimir Putin is sitting in a chair and talking to some people in Chelyabinsk. https://mediabay.tv/tv/234/Россия%2024
>> No. 41357 Anonymous
16th February 2024
Friday 11:56 pm
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>>41356
I don't know, for whatever reason the Alexei Navalny thing isn't really doing it for me right now.
>> No. 41358 Anonymous
20th February 2024
Tuesday 10:44 am
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>>41356

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68337794

>Russian pilot Maxim Kuzminov who defected to Ukraine 'shot dead' in Spain

>A few months after Mr Kuzminov defected, Russian state TV showed a man said to be a Russian intelligence officer saying: "I don't think he'll live long enough to face trial."
>> No. 41359 Anonymous
20th February 2024
Tuesday 12:45 pm
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I'm sorry to be a prick about this, but what the Hell is/was all that Navalny coverage? He was being lionised by some as if he'd only just missed out on toppling Putin, when in reality he didn't make a dent. He stood up to Putin, got bundled off to prison and now he's dead. It's completely inhumane and totally unjust, but that doesn't change the fact that Navalny's political project got no further than my lockdown Warhammer 40k army; three Imperial Guard built, one painted and all forgotten in a trunk until this exact moment.
>> No. 41360 Anonymous
20th February 2024
Tuesday 2:30 pm
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>>41359
Remember when people used to pretend to care about Pussy Riot? It's like that.
>> No. 41361 Anonymous
20th February 2024
Tuesday 5:41 pm
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>>41359

It's that "enemy of our enemy" thing. You know like how ISIS were the brave freedom fighters helping to oust Assad, until they completely unforseeably formed their own caliphate and started attacking us? It's the sane with Putin right now, because he's the big bad du jour so anyone who opposes him must be good. Definitely don't Google what sort of people he was affiliated with in the early 2000s, that's all misinformation.

Meanwhile people won't bat an eyelid when the exact same thing happens to Assange.
>> No. 41362 Anonymous
20th February 2024
Tuesday 10:31 pm
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>>41359
It's like how Stauffenberg or the White Rose group is lionised in Germany. There aren't many Russian heroes at the moment but you need them and as hackneyed as it is there's nothing a totalitarian regime really fears more than people who can make a fool of it and aren't afraid to die.

And the 2011–2013 Russian protests certainly posed a threat to the regime

>>41361
1. ISIS were not and are not the only opposition to Assad nor were they marked as heroes in the west. This is literally playing into the strategy of Assad.
2. Of all the ways you can attack Navalny complaining about the schizo politics of the Russian opposition is not one of them. Navalny would've represented a dangerous nationalist if he was in power all the same, but the accusations levelled against him really expose the speakers lack of understanding of Russian politics.
>> No. 41363 Anonymous
20th February 2024
Tuesday 10:35 pm
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>>41362

1 I mean that ISIS didn't exist until we started shipping weapons to the region. Don't try memory hole that. I remember it.

2 You might be right here, I don't claim to understand much of Russian politics, but the point stands. There's a parallel timeline out there where their places are swapped and nothing would be substantially different.
>> No. 41364 Anonymous
21st February 2024
Wednesday 12:59 am
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>>41363
ISIS existed years before the Syrian Civil War. Come on, lad, it's a textbook example of the regular extremists in Al Qaeda (extremism classic) getting supplanted by a hip new offering of extremism (cherry extremism) that pissed off the Iraqi tribes so much you got the awakening and caused much handwringing from Bin Laden himself.

Plus there's the whole business with whatever the fuck the US was doing when they did lock up extremists if you want to go that route.

>There's a parallel timeline out there where their places are swapped and nothing would be substantially different.

This is the interesting one for me because it underlines just how catastrophically bad Putin is for his own foreign policy. Navalny is part of the broad church movement of the opposition that would have threatened to send things back to the Yeltsin era where Russia would still act in surprising ways but you wouldn't have Russia managing to reinvigorate fucking NATO when the alliance was clearly on the wane. It would mostly chill and wait, the most effective strategy to adopt when facing off against the west.

Imagine it, the US would gladly support some form of European security architecture and France and Germany were more than accommodating to make it happen for their own ends. Russia could even play the West and China against each other while reaping the benefits of its enormous natural resources.
>> No. 41365 Anonymous
21st February 2024
Wednesday 3:16 pm
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>>41361
>>41362
It's true that Nalavny isn't some sort of liberal reformer, but in those early days he was talking to whoever would listen. The impression I get is that he was more in it for the means rather than the end.

Navalny put it best in the 2022 documentary: Given how Russia has developed since the fall of the Soviet Union, politics has had to descend to basic levels, and there's little point in focusing on sophisticated policies when you don't have the freedom to advocate for them and freely elect representatives who will enact them. His point is that "normal politics" has to wait until the fascists are out.
>> No. 41366 Anonymous
21st February 2024
Wednesday 3:23 pm
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>>41365
That was my impression too. Perhaps we saw the same programmes. All he cared about was getting rid of Putin. If he could get closer to that by appealing to neo-Nazis, that is exactly what he would do, right until they were out of the room and then he would agree with Putin-hating leftie hippies instead. Anything to get rid of Putin. I confess I have no idea what he would have done if he ever got rid of him, but I don’t think his comments about immigrants from the -stans ever counted as him telling us.
>> No. 41367 Anonymous
21st February 2024
Wednesday 5:37 pm
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>>41365
>>41366
Let me get this straight just so we're clear: he did a comedy sketch wherein he called eskimos cockroaches and shot one in the head all as part of some elaborate scheme to oust Putin?
>> No. 41371 Anonymous
21st February 2024
Wednesday 8:04 pm
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>>41365
>>41366

You are both proving the original point yet again. Completely short sighted. How many times does it need to be demonstrated that using a despot to take down a despot just leaves you with another despot before we learn the lesson?

>>41364

The one thing the USA fears more than Putin invading and dominating Europe, is a co-operative peace between Europe, Russia and China that would economically displace them.

I'm absolutely no supporter of people like Putin but US interference is just all over every event that led up to this war and I guarantee you, they are just going to leave us up shit creek when push comes to shove.
>> No. 41372 Anonymous
21st February 2024
Wednesday 8:19 pm
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>>41366
The Oscar-winning documentary is currently on iPlayer. He has a message for the Russian people at the end. About two-thirds of the way through he basically says that had be been allowed to run for President and win, his efforts would be focused on dismantling and rebuilding the apparatus of the state, because you can't really achieve any other meaningful change without doing that.
>> No. 41373 Anonymous
21st February 2024
Wednesday 8:22 pm
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>>41372

So did you believe Boris about his oven ready Brexit too?
>> No. 41374 Anonymous
21st February 2024
Wednesday 8:46 pm
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>>41373
Given that Navalny more or less committed suicide by dictator to prove a point, his words carry a little more weight than a two-bit Bullingdon Tory who likely can't order in a restaurant without fibbing to the wait staff.
>> No. 41375 Anonymous
21st February 2024
Wednesday 9:12 pm
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>>41374

I really can't interpret it as being that principled, honestly. It's more like how high level gangsters know they run the risk of being shot in the back any time they leave home. Mother Russia is a mafia state, and I'm sure all her political figures know the stakes they are playing with.
>> No. 41376 Anonymous
21st February 2024
Wednesday 11:11 pm
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>>41373
No, but then again if we're comparing the two situations Boris is very much the Putin of his story.
>> No. 41377 Anonymous
22nd February 2024
Thursday 11:33 am
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>>41375
I genuinely don't think you know what you're talking about. After Navalny was poisoned and taken to Germany for treatment, something I suspect the Russians allowed in the hope that he'd remain outside the country like a lot of Russian dissidents, he did indeed reenter Russia once he was well enough. He was immediately arrested, as he surely knew he would be, and now being totally in the grasp of people who had already tried to kill him once, he can't have had many illusions about how this whole thing was going to play out. You're painting an act of total self-sacrifice sound like he was just "married to the game".

It's a funny situation you've put me in, as I was the one who originally took issue with the over the top nature of the Navalny reporting that started this whole conversation. But while I don't think he achieved much of anything, it certainly wasn't for lack of want.
>> No. 41378 Anonymous
22nd February 2024
Thursday 3:37 pm
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>>41377

I'll admit it's possible I am just too cynical, but I mean. Even if he hadn't gone back to Russia, his days were numbered, and he'll have known that. This way at least he gets to look like a martyr.
>> No. 41380 Anonymous
26th February 2024
Monday 5:12 pm
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>Harald Kujat (born 1 March 1942) is a German retired General of the Luftwaffe. He served as Chief of Staff of the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, from 2000 to 2002, and as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 2002 to 2005.

>Since July 2016, Kujat is a member of the Supervisory Board of the Berlin-based Research Institute Dialogue of Civilizations[4] (DOC), allegedly financed by Vladimir Yakunin,[5] until 2015 CEO of the Russian Railways and by some sources considered a member of the Russian president Vladimir Putin's inner circle[citation needed].

>By some conservative German media (Bild-Zeitung, Die Welt) Kujat was criticized for his pro-Russian views in German TV talk shows,[6][7][8] allegedly being considered with misgiving by the German Federal Government.[9]

https://youtu.be/U21-RrB8E6Q?feature=shared&t=81

tl;dw one of America's greatest fears is a strong Europe guided by the industrial and technological might of Germany, supported by the resources of Russia. Ukraine has been used to drive a wedge between Germany and Russia to prevent this from happening. A very old talking point that has also been planned out in depth by the RAND Corporation in a paper titled Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground:

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR3000/RR3063/RAND_RR3063.pdf

Interesting to hear it presented by a German general who's been in the upper echelons of power and has seen how the sausage is made.
>> No. 41381 Anonymous
26th February 2024
Monday 7:36 pm
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>>41380
Damn, I can't believe in order to weaken Germany in 2022 the United States tricked Russia into invading Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in 2014. In the Summer of 2021 the CIA even managed to get Putin to write and publish an entire essay called On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, in which he outlined his ideological opposition to Ukrainian sovreignty. To think of how powerful these people are, that they can trick a president and Command-in-Chief of the second army of the world [citation needed] into openly admitting why he's invading another country, and not so much as blinking as he condemns western aggression in the same breath, it's truly frightening. Still, even after all this, generous Uncle Putin is still so kind as to demand absolutely everything he ever wanted in return for "peace" with Ukraine. If only there were more brave truth tellers like yourself and General der Luftwaffe Harald Kujat the Nobel committee would be tapping up Putin already.
>> No. 41384 Anonymous
26th February 2024
Monday 7:42 pm
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>>41380
>Ukraine has been used to drive a wedge between Germany and Russia to prevent this from happening

So, Russia invading its neighbour, destroying cities and killing tens of thousands of people alongside many other atrocities could have been totally cool and fine with us if it weren't for those meddling Americans? Hmm I think these guys are right.
>> No. 41385 Anonymous
26th February 2024
Monday 9:12 pm
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>>41381
>>41384
nice histrionics and 4chan memes ladm8s, dem conspiracy theorist kremlin shills wont know wot hit em
>> No. 41386 Anonymous
26th February 2024
Monday 9:35 pm
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>>41385
Have you actually got anything to say?
>> No. 41387 Anonymous
26th February 2024
Monday 9:48 pm
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>>41380
>>41381

It's a little more complicated than that.

The Soviet Union installed KGB personnel and political and ideological institutions in East Germany following WWII that meant that the GDR was much more closely tied to the Soviets than many of the other eastern European satellite states. To Stalin, this was important to both punish half of Germany for WWII and to ensure that at least that part of Germany was never going to attack the Russians again. A lot of these old Communist Bloc loyalties persisted after the Iron Curtain came down, and Putin as a former KGB field liaison officer in East Germany whose job it was to ensure Stasi compliance with Soviet or KGB directives knows Germany intimately.

Add to that the general feeling of guilt by all Germans towards their former war enemies and the Russians in particular, and you'll see how Putin exploited the growing friendship between the two countries in the last 30 years. Putin knew early on that unified Germany wasn't just going to be a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming formation of the EU, but that it was also going to continue being a key NATO member at the heart of Europe. And so he knew he needed to ensure Russian influence on German foreign policy and decision making, under the cover of bolstering peaceful relations. The Germans have just now in the last two years been realising that they've pretty much been had.

Also, nobody "tricked" Putin into invading Ukraine. Putin's lifelong dream since the fall of communism has been to rebuild the Soviet Union, and to do so by means of covert influence wherever possible, and at gunpoint if necessary. Just look at numerous invasions and skirmishes with former Soviet, Central Asian countries in the last 20 years. And especially with NATO's eastern expansion, which saw all the old eastern European satellite states essentially switch sides, Ukraine was always going to be the last straw on Russia's western flank. So now here we are.
>> No. 41388 Anonymous
26th February 2024
Monday 10:10 pm
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>>41387
The issue is that the articles quoted by >>41380 presents the idea that because a lot of powerful Germans cultivated relations with Putin, as you explain, it means that it's in Europe's interests to be friendly with Russia, but the Americans have taken away our opportunities to be more autonomous by turning us against Russia. It suggests that Russia would be our natural and better partner if we weren't being played by the Seppo imperialists. In an abstract sense that's not implausible, some European countries have a history of good relations with Russia, but in the world we live in we can see that Russia is very happy to butcher Europeans who stand in the way of their own imperialist goals. So claiming that Russia could have been the key to Europe's autonomy is a load of hooey. Of course the people behind this don't really care about that as you probably know, it's just a shoddy disguise for justifying Russia's imperialism.
>> No. 41389 Anonymous
26th February 2024
Monday 10:52 pm
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Oh no, it appears that the US Suez Crisis has now spread as far as Sweden!

I've made so much fucking money investing in weapons and I keep making more. Holy shit.

>>41388
>us

Someone securing the world island is absolutely bloody not in Britain's interest. Having some authoritarian nutter do it doubly so. I don't know what your argument is here, 'wouldn't it be smashing if Russia was a nice liberal democracy' yes. But it's not. The American political establishment would even love it if they could leave Europe and focus on other areas but they can't.

Maybe we'll just have to find out what happens when Russia collapses again and the west has to reintroduce civilisation.
>> No. 41390 Anonymous
26th February 2024
Monday 11:08 pm
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>>41389
>I don't know what your argument is here

My argument is that Russia isn't actually our friend, despite what the article I responded to claims, where did you get this stuff about me saying Russia should be a liberal democracy? I think you might be getting confused about who is posting what.
>> No. 41391 Anonymous
26th February 2024
Monday 11:52 pm
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>>41387
>Also, nobody "tricked" Putin into invading Ukraine.
Yeah, no way, you complete wally. How sarcastic do I have to be? I thought I was over-egging it by suggesting Putin get a Nobel Peace Prize, but my only other option was to end the post with "/s", but I'd sooner top myself. Not that that's saying much.
>> No. 41392 Anonymous
27th February 2024
Tuesday 12:01 am
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>>41391
Not him, but I think we have overdosed on sarcasm. Ever post since >>41380 has resulted on several guys who seem to basically agree on the issue having a cunt off with each other.
>> No. 41393 Anonymous
28th February 2024
Wednesday 1:07 pm
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/feb/27/russia-ukraine-war-live-france-macron-ground-troops-latest-news

>The Kremlin has suggested that conflict between Russia and the US-led Nato military alliance would become inevitable if European members of Nato sent troops to fight in Ukraine, Reuters reports.

>Sweden, Poland and the Czech Republic have distanced themselves from Emmanuel Macron saying on Monday that there was “no consensus” on sending western troops to Ukraine but “nothing should be excluded” (see post at 10am).


There is a definite risk that it could escalate into a bigger conflict between NATO and Russia, but on the other hand, two years of fighting have shown that while taking Ukraine hasn't been a slam dunk for Putin, the Ukrainians despite receiving shedloads of weapons and other aid haven't succeeded at driving the Russians out, and it doesn't look like they will anytime soon.

The Ukrainians can't win a pure war of attrition, even with unlimited access to Western weapons and other aid. They've only got a fraction of the population of Russia. So at some point, Ukraine will inevitably run out of military manpower of its own.

This isn't like the 1980s nuclear arms race or Russia's ten-year invasion of Afghanistan. The West's hope is probably that Russia will spend itself into bankruptcy similar to the way the Soviet Union did when it could no longer keep up the West's pace and had to sink untold billions of rubles in Afghanistan. But it won't work out like that this time. The Soviet Union was crumbling from the early 80s with or without Afghanistan and the nuclear arms race. Even if there is a lot of inequality in Russia today, it still has enough resources to wear down Ukraine for years to come.
>> No. 41394 Anonymous
28th February 2024
Wednesday 4:17 pm
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>>41393
>There is a definite risk that it could escalate into a bigger conflict between NATO and Russia, but on the other hand, two years of fighting have shown that while taking Ukraine hasn't been a slam dunk for Putin, the Ukrainians despite receiving shedloads of weapons and other aid haven't succeeded at driving the Russians out, and it doesn't look like they will anytime soon.
This is a thing a lot of people are missing. I've had crusty types try and tell me that less defence spending would be a good thing actually and that Russia isn't a threat because they can't even win Ukraine properly. They miss that the current operation has been going on for almost two years, and the overall war for almost a decade, and Ukraine is no closer to getting its territory back. They miss that at least part of that has only been achieved through continued support, and that while Russia's grunts may be useless, their elites are proving highly effective. They have done a great job of fomenting unease in the support for Ukraine, working some cracks in the solidarity, and have come very close to getting some states to drop their support, including the US. There's a tendency amongst some, frequently on the left but also increasingly among isolationists on the right, to fall into the trap of thinking that if we just stopped doing shitty things people would stop trying to attack us, which is very much not the case when it comes to Russia under Putin.
>> No. 41395 Anonymous
28th February 2024
Wednesday 6:15 pm
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>>41393
>The Ukrainians can’t win a pure war of attrition, even with unlimited access to Western weapons and other aid.
Perhaps you only meant hypothetically, but the access they have to Western weapons is in no way unlimited. They lost Avdiivka because we stopped sending them artillery shells so they ran out. I don’t think they have any F-16 fighter jets even now.
>> No. 41396 Anonymous
28th February 2024
Wednesday 9:17 pm
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>>41395

The question still is, what's the endgame going to be. Looking at other conflicts in eastern Europe and the Mideast the last 30 years, it's possible that both sides will just spend the next eight to ten years bombing the shit out of each other, and the country of Ukraine and its infrastructure and population. But at what point, and under what circumstances will the matter eventually be settled.

Putin knows that he's got his political career riding on a victory in Ukraine. But he's enough of a 4D chess player to have entangled the West and NATO in a way that they, too, can't afford to lose. Because losing Ukraine would set a precedent and could jeopardise the safety of other countries along Russia's and Ukraine's border. And even if the Baltic states are NATO members, they'll be difficult territory to defend once Ukraine falls to Russia.

So then what do you do when neither side is willing to cut their losses and back down. The last time NATO/America and Russia/the Soviet Union were staring each other down in Cuba, in the end cooler heads prevailed and the Russians agreed to withdraw their missiles from Cuba, while the Americans in turn dismantled their nuclear missiles in northeastern Turkey that were pointed right at Moscow. But this was while you had a youngish American President in power who was able to rein in his military command who were urging a first strike, while Khrushchev eventually also came to his senses and realised that their whole game of nuclear chicken was only going to end badly.

If Trump regains power this autumn, and that's not as unlikely as many on the Left still hope, then you'll have a doggedly determined madman in Moscow paired with an erratically unstable geriatric U.S. President who has said that under him, Russia would have carte blanche to attack NATO members who don't pay their dues. Even assuming that that's all just talk at this point, there is no denying that the last thing that's needed now is a U.S. President who's as harrowingly inept at statecraft as Trump. But I digress.
>> No. 41397 Anonymous
28th February 2024
Wednesday 10:15 pm
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>>41396

I don't think that either side has the endurance to drag this out for more than another year or two. The rate of attrition is just too high. Ukraine is running out of manpower and international support. Russia has firmly established a war economy, but at enormous cost to the living standards of the civilian population and the financial interests of the oligarchs.

Someone is going to reach the point of exhaustion and sue for peace. If it's the Ukrainians, they're probably going to have to accept handing over Donbas and Crimea, in the knowledge that Putin will still have ambitions on Kyiv. If it's the Russians, it could go two ways - either Putin will need to find some way of selling it as a victory, or there will be some kind of regime change.
>> No. 41398 Anonymous
28th February 2024
Wednesday 10:57 pm
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>>41397

>Ukraine is running out of manpower and international support.

But that's just it. With that prospect, Putin isn't just going to accept the consolation prize of Crimea and Donbas, which are, even though not internationally recognised, already Russian territory. He has his eyes firmly set on the grand prize of claiming Ukraine proper, and either turning it into a puppet state or incorporating it into Russia whole.


> Russia has firmly established a war economy, but at enormous cost to the living standards of the civilian population and the financial interests of the oligarchs.

>or there will be some kind of regime change.

It won't happen so easily this time. Czar Nicholas II overestimated his people's support in WWI, and believed that whatever hardship he'd put Russians through, they would remain loyal to him no matter what. He was oblivious to the fact that there was a strong and growing opposition that was increasingly a real threat to his power. Putin, on the other hand, knows that he needs to suppress the opposition and dissent wherever he can to keep them from challenging his power, now that the war economy is demanding a good bit of sacrifice from many ordinary Russians. If just to keep himself from ending up like Nicholas after all.
>> No. 41399 Anonymous
3rd March 2024
Sunday 12:59 pm
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Screenshot-2024-02-29-at-10.45.23 AM-904x1024.png
413994139941399
Why do so many Europeans want Putler to win?
>> No. 41400 Anonymous
3rd March 2024
Sunday 1:29 pm
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>>41399
I have no idea. That's really shocking. I guess most people are just sick of the war happening. There also haven't been any big wins for Ukraine in the news lately, so perhaps it now just feels like they're prolonging the inevitable and should just hurry up and lose now. Russia are losing over 1000 soldiers a day, but it really does feel like nobody cares about this and they aren't even missing them.
>> No. 41403 Anonymous
3rd March 2024
Sunday 1:57 pm
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>>41399
I think wanting to pull the plug on Ukraine is an easy and (seemingly...) risk-free "fuck you" to unpopular governments determined to support Ukraine's fight. Sadly, I also think many people probably don't care about what happens to countries on former USSR territory, and I don't underestimate Russia's ability to influence people.
>> No. 41404 Anonymous
3rd March 2024
Sunday 5:28 pm
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>>41400

>That's really shocking

I don't think it is. This war has impoverished millions of people and it's no surprise at all they want it to end. It doesn't matter who the good guy or the bad guy is, people don't care about that when they're struggling to pay the heating bill and do the weekly shop, and it's really, genuinely that simple.

The countries lowest on that chart are the ones most economically affected, Italy's manufacturing, which was behind only Germany's, has been totally kneecapped by energy hikes, for instance. When you add in the fact that this looks like it'll drag out into another forever war like last decade's Middle Eastern adventures, nah, I don't think it's surprising at all.
>> No. 41405 Anonymous
3rd March 2024
Sunday 7:36 pm
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>>41400
>>41403
>>41404
I think the key thing to grasp is the wording. The blue option is "taking back the territories occupied by Russia", while the red option is "negotiating a peace deal with Russia". When pollsters ask their questions, they ask the question on the card, maybe define a couple of words, but don't elaborate, so you were to ask them what they mean by "negotiating a peace deal with Russia", they'll just tell you it's exactly as it says. The problem here is that these aren't semantic opposites, even though they're effective opposites, so some people might be attracted to "negotiating a peace deal with Russia" without realising that this basically means telling Ukraine to give up territory in exchange for ... well, it's not exactly clear. The conflict has been going on for almost a decade, and Putin has already gone back on undertakings made during that time, what makes anyone think that if Ukraine just gives him four provinces he won't come back for more in a couple of years?
>> No. 41406 Anonymous
3rd March 2024
Sunday 8:57 pm
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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html
https://archive.is/sMlWw


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW9cCWm53H4
>> No. 41407 Anonymous
4th March 2024
Monday 12:05 pm
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>>41405

>what makes anyone think that if Ukraine just gives him four provinces he won't come back for more in a couple of years?

Exactly. It's not just about Ukraine. His mission is to reclaim former Soviet Union territory any way he can. Or at least install Russia-friendly puppet governments.

If we let him keep parts of Ukraine, then there's nothing stopping him from coming back for more. And it will set a precedent for the West's inability to stop his expansionism.
>> No. 41408 Anonymous
4th March 2024
Monday 5:19 pm
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>>41407

And yet, people still don't care.

To the kind of person who is feeling the impact directly on their wallet, it's very difficult to explain why exactly having Europe taken over by a revived Neo-Oligo-Soviet Union is any worse than what they have currently. Same shit different name.

If America wanted Europe to back this war indefinitely, it should have been spending the money to prop up European industries, shield European economies from the energy impact, and keep the public in jobs and warm houses. But instead, the US has taken this opportunity to weaken Europe as well as Russia (while China watches and pisses itself laughing.)

You can say "but why should they", and I will just point you right back to >>41399
>> No. 41409 Anonymous
4th March 2024
Monday 6:09 pm
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>>41408

Also, wishful thinking. A lot of people are saying that it's ridiculous to suggest that Russia, China and Iran are taking us ever-closer to the brink of a third world war, but a lot of those people asserted that Russia would never be stupid enough to invade Ukraine and all those tanks he was lining up on the border were just a bluff.

It's easy to imagine that the war in Ukraine is just a regional conflict that has nothing to do with us. It's easy to imagine that Putin will be satisfied with the Donbas and Crimea, or that he'll be satisfied if he takes Kyiv, or Warsaw. It's easy to imagine that China would never actually invade Taiwan. It's easy to imagine that Iran is just making trouble for Israel. It's hard to accept that the world is a lot more chaotic and the western-dominated order is a lot more fragile than it was a few years ago.
>> No. 41410 Anonymous
4th March 2024
Monday 6:41 pm
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>>41409

It's like when a politician has their one well rehearsed line and they stick to it no matter what the question actually was.

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