Russian invasion of Ukraine

[Iphie]

He got rich, got his influence, and built his cabal through his corrupt deals with the west. It very much suited western business and neo-liberal politicians to overlook a lot of things and present him as one of our friends while he took that money and consolidated power, even better when they got kickbacks in return, pretty much until he invaded Ukraine.

Sure it wasn't a direct installation, but his opposition wasn't desirable because they couldn't offer the same, because they wanted to do things like invest money in the country instead, so when they fell out of windows nobody asked too much about it.

So yeah, because of, and with a lot of help and support from.

putin promised Yeltsin he'd leave him and his family alone and in return he was installed as heir apparent, the west had very little to do with that.

[Wilian]

It seems like Russia did manage to destroy large Ukrainian power station in last night's terror bombing campaign, primarily due to western failure of providing sufficient air defense capabilities. The company itself states the station is utterly, irrecovably destroyed which is a big hit because it was one of the major plants of energy. In a fair world this would be the sign to move in collectively and start setting Russia with red lines but alas probably we'll tell how appalled we are and continue business as usual..

[Corvus]

russia has been spotted using cargo trucks with cope cages loaded with infantry to directly assault Ukrainian positions across open terrain. It went about as well as you would expect.

Something that has been noted of late is that russian losses in armoured vehicles have been so high of late that there appears to be a shortage of them - Rob Lee, who has been fairly doomer now for a while, has pointed it out. Last month russia lost around 460 IFVs - and they make about 15-20 a month. Already in the first week of this month another 100 were lost. But commanders have been told to attack, so I guess throwing trucks at the Ukrainians is what they are doing now. They must have drugged up the troops before sending them out cause there is no way they wouldn't know that was a death sentence.

[Edge-]

russia has been spotted using cargo trucks with cope cages loaded with infantry to directly assault Ukrainian positions across open terrain. It went about as well as you would expect.

This reminded me...have we talked about the turtle tank?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidax...nd-blew-it-up/

Because that was a thing for a hot second and it seemed like cope cage 2.0 but dumber.

In terms of battlefield innovations I feel like Ukraine has proven to be far more effective.

[Corvus]

It got destroyed later when the warehouse it was in got hit.

It was a mine clearing tank so in theory that much caging to prevent fpv drones disabling it was a good idea. Just didn't work.

In just the last 4 days, visually confirmed russia damaged and destroyed equipment was 262, including 40 tanks and 51 ifvs.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/s...Krka5dAhg&s=19

[Xyonai]

Bad news for the Kiev regime.
Slovakia just elected a Ukraine-sceptic President (and rightly so), while a Ukraine-sceptic PM (that wields executive power) is already in office.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/07/e...ntl/index.html

Ukraine will never win this war. Even beggar Zelensky admitted that Ukraine will lose the war without additional aid. But the US will only be sending more Ukrainian men to their deaths with by prolonging this war with additional aid. No winners here, just more deaths. It's time for a truce. It's up to the comedian. Calling for a truce is not a loss, but a win for everyone.

When posts like this come up, it's always fascinating how the onus to stop the war is always put on Ukraine (The defender) and not Russia (The aggressor).

It's like chiding someone for fighting back after they got punched in the face.

[Sunseeker]

When posts like this come up, it's always fascinating how the onus to stop the war is always put on Ukraine (The defender) and not Russia (The aggressor).

It's like chiding someone for fighting back after they got punched in the face.

More importantly, why would Russia be interested in a truce? If it's clear that the Ukraine will lose(which it isn't, just framing the idea here) what is the incentive for Russia to call it "good enough"? Why not finish the job? Even if they did, Russia has no incentive not to simply rebuild their forces and start again. And no reason not to attempt this in another nation.

Ukraine has every incentive to fight to the death, to make this as slow and painful for Russia as they can. Even if Russia wins eventually, if the USA and the West collectively get bored and stop helping, Ukraine still has every incentive to make a Russian "victory" as costly as possible.

[Fuiking]

When posts like this come up, it's always fascinating how the onus to stop the war is always put on Ukraine (The defender) and not Russia (The aggressor).

It's like chiding someone for fighting back after they got punched in the face.

I once told my bully in school to fuck off, and if he didnt we would fight... He got the teachers and all, giving me a full week of detention.. did the bullying end? no way, he kept doing it, and everytime *I* finally snapped I got punished... metaphor of today basically

[Xyonai]

More importantly, why would Russia be interested in a truce? If it's clear that the Ukraine will lose(which it isn't, just framing the idea here) what is the incentive for Russia to call it "good enough"? Why not finish the job? Even if they did, Russia has no incentive not to simply rebuild their forces and start again. And no reason not to attempt this in another nation.

Ukraine has every incentive to fight to the death, to make this as slow and painful for Russia as they can. Even if Russia wins eventually, if the USA and the West collectively get bored and stop helping, Ukraine still has every incentive to make a Russian "victory" as costly as possible.

Like if they bothered sticking with the 'We shouldn't be sending -our- money to fight in -someone else's- war' line, it'd at least be an argument. A stupid argument, but at least it's got a foundation.

Shit like this is just saying that we should capitulate immediately to violence because violence bad without the fundamental understanding that rewarding violence just means that they'll keep doing violence to get what they want. For people who push this point of view legitimately, it's absolute, sniveling coward shit.

- - - Updated - - -

I once told my bully in school to fuck off, and if he didnt we would fight... He got the teachers and all, giving me a full week of detention.. did the bullying end? no way, he kept doing it, and everytime *I* finally snapped I got punished... metaphor of today basically

If I wanted to think too much about it, it (the idea that Ukraine should just give up) could just stem from some fucked up ideology about how The Strong must always be respected and not immediately folding to the Bully's unreasonable demands means you deserve to be destroyed until you buck up and give them what they want.

But Occom's Razor likely tells us it's just a shill making up bullshit under a vapid assumption that left leaning folks will be mesmerized and dumbstruck by the use of 'Peace and love' language that they'll immediately side with them.

[Sunseeker]

Like if they bothered sticking with the 'We shouldn't be sending -our- money to fight in -someone else's- war' line, it'd at least be an argument. A stupid argument, but at least it's got a foundation.

Shit like this is just saying that we should capitulate immediately to violence because violence bad without the fundamental understanding that rewarding violence just means that they'll keep doing violence to get what they want. For people who push this point of view legitimately, it's absolute, sniveling coward shit.

And it is always so amusingly out of touch with the conversation around it. Like, contextually here is the thread, talking about destroyed Russian assets, and out of the blue, they post about how Slovakia elected a "Ukraine skeptic", I'm not even sure what that means, and how Ukraine fighting back is just pointless.

It's like the Kool-Aid man just burst into a concert hall. Just completely out of touch.

Which frankly is why I generally think they're paid shills or bots.

I'd love to have better international relations with the other world powers, I think that'd be great. But they gotta stop acting like assholes first. It ain't gonna happen by deep-throating them.

[Xyonai]

And it is always so amusingly out of touch with the conversation around it. Like, contextually here is the thread, talking about destroyed Russian assets, and out of the blue, they post about how Slovakia elected a "Ukraine skeptic", I'm not even sure what that means, and how Ukraine fighting back is just pointless.

It's like the Kool-Aid man just burst into a concert hall. Just completely out of touch.

Which frankly is why I generally think they're paid shills or bots.

I'd love to have better international relations with the other world powers, I think that'd be great. But they gotta stop acting like assholes first. It ain't gonna happen by deep-throating them.

Shills, bots, and violent anti-western contrarians aside; The main thrust of Russia's support in this War from folks in the West really comes down to them being ideologically on Russia's 'side'. To them, Russia's a bastion of their entire ideology; Manly men doing manly things because there's no woke telling them that it's wrong, a strong religious foundation, a deep adoration of 'Family Values' (IE: Being anti gay), also that whole Authoritarian thing.

To them, Russia winning is just another facet of their stupid Culture War and they're literally willing to let innocent people die to prove that their ideology is the correct one through the only way it can ever be reasonably enforced: Mass scale Violence and oppressively cracking down on dissent.

[Sunseeker]

Shills, bots, and violent anti-western contrarians aside; The main thrust of Russia's support in this War from folks in the West really comes down to them being ideologically on Russia's 'side'. To them, Russia's a bastion of their entire ideology; Manly men doing manly things because there's no woke telling them that it's wrong, a strong religious foundation, a deep adoration of 'Family Values' (IE: Being anti gay), also that whole Authoritarian thing.

To them, Russia winning is just another facet of their stupid Culture War and they're literally willing to let innocent people die to prove that their ideology is the correct one through the only way it can ever be reasonably enforced: Mass scale Violence and oppressively cracking down on dissent.

Yeah, I agree with that.

[AntiFascistVoter]

InB4 one of our putin trolls goes "US Senators are saying". Without context or reflection.

JD Vance pens an OPed for the NYT. "J.D. Vance: The Math on Ukraine Doesn’t Add Up"
Cribbed from the fascist appeaser's playbook. Dictators are strong, democracy is weak, defeat is inevitable; it’s Lindbergh stuff. The far-right believes in Russia precisely because Russia's military commits war crimes, doesn't believe in human rights etc. They saw the footage of buff VDV guys doing hand-to-hand combat drills and jerked themselves off to it (even tho all those guys got killed on the first day of the war).

That the western democracies turned Ukraine - which should've been an easy win for Russia - into a humiliating stalemate and defeat for Putin just by shipping weapons and sharing intel creates a huge ideological problem for authoritarians like Vance and so they're trying to engineer a Russian win.

[Edge-]

JD Vance pens an OPed for the NYT. "J.D. Vance: The Math on Ukraine Doesn’t Add Up"

Ukraine’s challenge is not the G.O.P.; it’s math. Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies.

Yet no commentary on Russia yanking lads outta prison and rounding up younger and older lads for conscription. It's fine when Russia does it, not fine with Ukraine expands their eligibility!

Also, they have no hope of winiing so why support them!? We only support winners in the US!

And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide.

Why the elitest tilde on a standard word? And yes, they do need more than just the US can provide. That's why Biden rounded up support before Russia invaded and why other western nations have been supporting them.

This is fucking two paragraphs in and the NYT op-ed section is still a barren wasteland of interesting pieces and still largely serves to give a platform for insane nutjobs. Oh, and they keep David Brooks employed so he can continue getting invited to fancy dinner parties with political elites because otherwise he might just unalive himself or something.

[Yunru]

Oh no russa shot a ICBM missle test.... now people will panic. Nah not rly, its just false treat. Same tactic north korea uses.

[Iphie]

Oh no russa shot a ICBM missle test.... now people will panic. Nah not rly, its just false treat. Same tactic north korea uses.

I see a MRBM being reported, I don't thinks that's the same as an ICBM. (Reported range is also 1500 km, so ya know...)

[alach]

Looks like a large assault by the Russians has begun in the east. They apparently have 100k troops and have already claimed a village. Ukraines air defenses are overwhelmed.
Putin is probably feeling pretty good with how his pets in the US congress performed.

[Saradain]

Looks like a large assault by the Russians has begun in the east. They apparently have 100k troops and have already claimed a village. Ukraines air defenses are overwhelmed.
Putin is probably feeling pretty good with how his pets in the US congress performed.

And the shills are silent. I thought they wanted peace at any cost? Nah, Russia is trying to progress so no peace needed. Until they occupy another piece of land, then before Ukraine gets it back, it's time for peace-talk narrative for shills. With Ukraine of course ceding temporarily occupied areas.

[Specialka]

And the shills are silent. I thought they wanted peace at any cost? Nah, Russia is trying to progress so no peace needed. Until they occupy another piece of land, then before Ukraine gets it back, it's time for peace-talk narrative for shills. With Ukraine of course ceding temporarily occupied areas.

The issue is that without more Western support, Ukraine won't push back Russia (unless major fuck-ups from their part, though we could argue that this whole war is a major fuck-up because it showed Russia true military power). And the West is not decided to give Ukraine that support. Ukraine, while needing more equipment, needs also more manpower, which they do not have. You see where I am going, they need the West to send combat forces (which would mean that the West would declare war to Russia), which the West won't do. So Ukraine is in for a war of attrition like WW1. I would say that we could hope Russia follow the example of Germany in WW1, but we know where it could lead.

[alach]

They need ammo for air defense systems that were sent by the west and take western ammo that the Americans promised they would keep supplied and now they don't have anymore. It was a really shitty thing to do them.