Russian invasion of Ukraine

[Breccia]

Japan tells businesses not to do business in rubles. Calls out energy sector in particular not to do that.

Related: many Asians are complying with trade restrictions to avoid being sanctioned.

"The restrictions have been in place for roughly a month, a little bit over a month, and we certainly haven't seen any indication that there's non-compliance, in fact we've seen the reverse," Matthew Borman, U.S. Commerce Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Export Administration, told a teleconference when asked about Asia's response.

"I think there's also a fair amount of additional self-sanctioning, if you will, by multinational companies operating in Russia," he added.

Major players know there is a significant risk to their business if they don't comply because of actions the United States could take, including fines or criminal penalties, Borman said.

"We know that Russia is quite dependent upon foreign supplies for some key inputs like semiconductors so I think it will be relatively readily apparent if there is non-compliance and the task will be to trace that back to its origin."

I'm still not sure where China stands on this, seems to be mostly fence-straddling, but since Russia is pushing rope I doubt they're saying "yeah, after all these attempts that failed and these weak excuses from Putin, let's go all-in on that" now of all times. I don't think their love for Russia and their hatred of the US are either/together strong enough to spend significant time, effort, or resources backing the side that is both objectively in the wrong and also losing. I'm not expecting them to shut down trade or anything, but they won't be fencing stolen goods or hiding dead Ukrainian children either.

[CostinR]

Turns out giving over leadership positions to corrupt, unqualified and incompetent oligarchs who operate without any overhead and use their positions solely to enrich themselves is not a great way to run a country.

I'm curious to know if:

1) Putin knew this, but thought Ukraine would fold anyway
2) Putin knew this, but didn't know how bad it was
3) Putin legitimately thought the money was going where it needed to and had no idea his military was in such a bad state.

None of those look very good for him.

How about this. All three at the same time.

He knew to a degree and thought Ukraine would collapse, he also didn't realize that it was this bad, and also he expected that the money stolen wasn't messing his military that badly.

[PhaelixWW]

How about this. All three at the same time.

He knew to a degree and thought Ukraine would collapse, he also didn't realize that it was this bad, and also he expected that the money stolen wasn't messing his military that badly.

I mean, all three of those choices are basically the same, anyway. #3 is just one end of the sliding scale of #2, and regardless of where on the sliding scale you figure Putin was, #1 likely applies as well.

[Voidism]

Oh my God! Does Zelensky know? He's Jewish!

They will conveniently not answer this. They will also completely ignore the fact that Putin has literal Nazi paramilitary IN Ukraine trying to assassinate said Jewish president.

They will always lie, always project and always try to make us run in circles. They love to obfuscate and stir up problems so we won't discuss the actual matter of what's going on:

Putin only wants to destroy Ukraine. That's his goal. To make democracy fail. Because he doesn't want Russians to see a working democracy in a country very close to Russia (culturally, linguistically, ethnically). He needs it to fail, even if he's called a war criminal.

[Breccia]

None of those look very good for him.

4) Beseda ruined everything and he's dead, Shoigu is next if things don't improve. Oh, apparently he's alive.

After the Kremlin’s ultimatums to NATO appeared to fall flat earlier this week, Moscow ratcheted up the crazy on Tuesday with new claims of U.S. mercenaries supposedly preparing a “chemical weapons” attack and a threat of unspecified “military-technical” action.

“Tanks with unidentified chemical components have been delivered to the cities of Avdeyevka and Krasny Liman for the completion of the provocations,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told a meeting of defense officials as President Vladimir Putin looked on.

Shoigu claimed the Defense Ministry was aware of 120 representatives of private U.S. military contractors currently training Ukrainian forces, according to RIA Novosti.

What was most impressive, he said that while Putin was drinking a glass of water.

Putin did have some...interesting words of his own.

Everything that is happening right now...this tension that is unfolding across Europe — it’s their fault. Every step of the way, Russia has been forced to respond in some way. Every step of the way, the situation has constantly worsened and worsened, and deteriorated...and now we have this situation today where we are forced to make a decision

That...sounds like a man who's admitting he's losing.

Putin is right, he is forced to make a decision. Double down on a losing strategy, sending in more poorly-trained poorly-equipped troops and failing rustbucket tanks; give up and go home and try to paint 15,000 dead Russians as a victory with a piece of paper from Istanbul that totally doesn't say "I'm a total bitch and lost to Ukraine" on it; or grab the red phone and order nuclear strikes and hope they're actually carried out before his own men shoot him.

"Couldn't he swap strategies, send in better troops and gear?"

It's possible, why didn't he three weeks ago?

By the way, if @Skroe were here, he'd tell us what the EA-18G is and why it's important in context.

[PhaelixWW]

Shoigu is next if things don't improve. Oh, apparently he's alive.

That article is from December...

[Corvus]

That article is from December...

There was a video a couple of days back released by the Russians supposedly of him addressing a gathering of military officers. He was reading from a prepared statement and slurring his words as he did.

[Breccia]

He needs it to fail, even if he's called a war criminal.

Well for one, we're well past that. But yeah, that stuff I just quoted? Russian lies about Americans in Ukraine with chemical weapons? We've been seeing those lines of Russian propaganda for a while, and everyone who isn't a paid Russian troll admits it's one of two things.

One, a blatant lie.

Or two, a blatant lie, but one prepping for Putin to gas his neighbors then blame us.

Putin's decades of experience in intelligence must have told him that nobody will believe it was US -- not even those who say it was. I'm not going to say "the US would never" but why would we now? Russia is already, well, losing. And we have tons of international allies joining us. Why would we risk that?

"Surely the goal is to false flag Russia, frame them for war crimes, and have an excuse to go in!"

An excuse, like, the last month? If we wanted in we'd have gone in by now. We wouldn't have tried to push Poland in for us. The US has proven Ukraine is not worth the effort for us to use legal weapons, let alone illegal ones. Plus this is the 21st goddam century, information is everywhere, false flags of that scale pulled off successfully are basically QAnon-level unlikely.

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That article is from December...

I swear, I did a Google search from the last 24 hours. Sorry about that. The Korea Times says he's alive March 25. Best I can do.

[PhaelixWW]

I swear, I did a Google search from the last 24 hours. Sorry about that. The Korea Times says he's alive March 25. Best I can do.

That video was not very conclusive. There was an article (or two) written breaking down the purported "evidence" of his alive-ness which cast some pretty serious doubt about its authenticity.

[Breccia]

I do like this one, tho.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Monday called reports that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has suffered a heart attack an "outright lie" being spread by Ukraine and "Russian neo-liberals," but another report indicates that both Shoigu and Russian President Vladimir Putin could be staying in their nuclear bunkers.

"I don't want to comment on nonsense, because this is precisely nonsense that is being spread by the Ukrainian special services and our Russian neo-liberals, who are now abroad," Lavrov said in an interview with the Serbian media about the reports on Shoigu, according to Russian state media outlet Tass. "This is all an outright lie. Everyone is alive, healthy."

Lavrov's comments were also reported through the Russian news service Regnum, saying he had made the "announcement" on Monday.

Shoigu had not been seen in public between March 11 to March 24, when he was shown briefly in a video released by Putin.

The defense minister also appeared in a video Saturday where he was shown chairing a meeting calling on the Russian Finance Ministry to allow for more cash for the war, reports The Daily Mail.

Anton Gerashchenko, the adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, claimed in a Facebook post Saturday that Shoigu suffered a heart attack. There have also been reports that security was tightened around Shoigu, 66, because of assassination threats, but other reports say he's been complaining about his health.

Meanwhile, Bulgarian journalist Hristo Grozev, of the Netherlands-based investigative journalism site Bellingcat, reported in a Russian-language interview this weekend that Shoigu is in his nuclear bunker in Ufa and that Putin is in his own bunker in the Altai region in Siberia.

Grozev, the lead Russia investigator with Bellingcat, said he came to his conclusions after studying the Kremlin airplane pool's flight data.

He noted that the Russian planes haven't been shutting off their transponders, except for the Altai flights in the "last half-hour of flight," and called that a "transparent" action to send a signal to the West.

I've been saying Putin's hiding in a bunker for a while now. I wasn't being literal, well, not on purpose. I said he was there so he wouldn't be shot by his fellow Russians, and I stand by that now that I retroactively wasn't kidding apparently.

[Corvus]

In depth analysis of verified Russian losses by the BBC. 20% of verified losses are officers. Doesn't mean that they make up 20% of the actual losses as they may be getting priority treatment over the poor grunts. The majority of confirmed losses are paratroopers. But paratroopers are only a fraction of the force and took the brunt of their damage in the early days with ill-fated attacks. Some regional governments are pressuring all local media not to publish losses, telling them not to make a fuss and they'll commemorate the dead later. Some regions like Dagestan are much more open to public funerals, which is why they have a much higher number of casualties reported.

Oh, and there are conscripts dying. its just been covered up.

[Breccia]

That video was not very conclusive. There was an article (or two) written breaking down the purported "evidence" of his alive-ness which cast some pretty serious doubt about its authenticity.

Fair enough, we know Russia uses deep fakes.

But why, though? Surely Putin could have said the same himself. Also, do the Russian people care which of Putin's flunkies say something? Surely they're all known corrupt puppets for murdering dictator Putin. Does Shoigu have some special reputation or respect that faking him being alive would be useful?

[Corvus]

Fair enough, we know Russia uses deep fakes.

But why, though? Surely Putin could have said the same himself. Also, do the Russian people care which of Putin's flunkies say something? Surely they're all known corrupt puppets for murdering dictator Putin. Does Shoigu have some special reputation or respect that faking him being alive would be useful?

Possibly having the Minister of Defence go missing or arrested during the middle of a war would send signals that things were going really wrong to the public.

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I do like this one, tho.



I've been saying Putin's hiding in a bunker for a while now. I wasn't being literal, well, not on purpose. I said he was there so he wouldn't be shot by his fellow Russians, and I stand by that now that I retroactively wasn't kidding apparently.

Before the Prophet of Nukes turns up (or is he still banned?), hiding in a bunker doesn't meant nukes. After all Putin's girlfriend is still in Switzerland. Consensus seems to be that they are hiding their out of fear of coup or assassination attempts.

[Kaleredar]

They will conveniently not answer this. They will also completely ignore the fact that Putin has literal Nazi paramilitary IN Ukraine trying to assassinate said Jewish president.

They will always lie, always project and always try to make us run in circles. They love to obfuscate and stir up problems so we won't discuss the actual matter of what's going on:

Putin only wants to destroy Ukraine. That's his goal. To make democracy fail. Because he doesn't want Russians to see a working democracy in a country very close to Russia (culturally, linguistically, ethnically). He needs it to fail, even if he's called a war criminal.

I don't think many people outside of Russia are genuinely under any delusion that this isn't the case.

Again in the realm of "Putin's poor planning," perhaps he thought that vague cries of nazism, coupled with four years of Trumpism and his army of online trolls pushing general misinformation had primed the US into making this a hot-button issue, wherein the GOP camp would be on his side backing the invasion as some liberation movement and they could slander Biden and the democrats into opposing overall US actions against Russia or in support of Ukraine, while his trolls descended on facebook and twitter to push misinformation about Ukrainian nazis or secret Biden conspiracies or talk about how Russia was destined to win an easy fight and opposing them would only hurt the US and Europe so it's best to just let Russia do what it wants. (The last bit should sound familiar for those who have been perusing this thread)

And again, that has failed. All sides of the United States political spectrum are united in their overwhelming support of Ukraine. Biden has caught flak over the situation, but that's because most people think he isn't doing enough.

Trump tried to push the "Russia strong" angle early on, saw it bit him in the ass almost immediately, and balked as quickly from it as someone deep in favor debt to Putin could.

Because I don't think Putin or his little troll farms adequately understand US popular culture as well as they might think:

Russia has been depicted as "the enemy" to the US throughout popular culture for approximately the last 70 years. A few years of online trolls pretending to be "concerned patriots" rambling vaguely about "the lies of western media" and their chosen toadie of Trump who isn't articulate enough to belch out words to make anyone think otherwise is not going to make even a remote dent in that sentiment.

You have an action film that involves the criminal underground? You can bet some track-suit clad Russian gang is going to be standing in our hero's way, after having kidnapped his daughter or killed his dog or stolen something of value to him. Our heroes have to conduct a heist? Odds are, they're going to be stealing something from a Russian oligarch. An international film where a country is causing issues? Boy howdy, here comes Russia, and our heroes are going to sneak into the Kremlin! How does the Russian-trained duplicitous agent Black Widow redeem herself? By joining with the likes of Captain America, of course.

And frankly Russia, as a country, has done very little to reduce that stereotype. One can call it unfair, but... Russia did just invade a neighboring sovereign nation under trumped-up pretenses, so...


Meanwhile, I imagine Europe sees Russia's action in a much more realistic but no less negative light and can assess how their volatility will impact them much more directly. They sat in the line of crossfire for decades during the cold war, and the malicious history of the USSR coupled with Europe's experience with the ambitions of crazed dictators likely has their hackles up far more pointedly than a few online trolls can assuage.

[Breccia]

Oh, and there are conscripts dying. its just been covered up.

There's some good stuff in that twitter thread.



Yes yes. What else?

There is evidence of growing pressure on local journalists in Russia who report on the military losses – some of the earlier publications about soldiers killed in action were deleted. Sometimes it happens in a day or two, sometimes within an hour.

Siberian journalist told BBC: "All local media outlets were instructed by regional government not to publish any data on losses in Ukraine.There are cases when local officials put pressure on the relatives of the victims, ordering them to stay silent. They say, now there is no need to make a fuss, we will find a way to commemorate your boys later." So the amount of losses reported by each region mainly depends on the position that local authorities take. Dagestan has officially reported over 50 casualties. Chechnya - only 2

The darker, the more Russians from there have died.

Russian have confirmed deaths of over 10 military pilots, navigators and flight mechanics. These are unique specialists. Training of 1 fighter pilot takes 7-8 years and costs over 3 million $. So called sniper-pilots need 10-12 years to train and cost over 7mln $

I'll admit, I have no way of knowing how accurate these figures are.

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Consensus seems to be that they are hiding their out of fear of coup or assassination attempts.

Yep, that's my read on it, too. I mean, I'm guessing Putin does in fact have a bunker that could withstand most things, but even as someone with enough hours in Fallout games to get a PhD, I don't see the point of being the last Russian alive. What's he going to do, take a backpack of BlamCo Mac & Cheese and Purified Water and walk to Australia, claiming to be someone else?

Putin's not suicidal, either. He won't launch just to spite the world for his losses.

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Possibly having the Minister of Defence go missing or arrested during the middle of a war would send signals that things were going really wrong to the public.

He arrested Beseda. That ship has sailed.

[Voidism]

I don't think many people outside of Russia are genuinely under any delusion that this isn't the case.

Again in the realm of "Putin's poor planning," perhaps he thought that vague cries of nazism, coupled with four years of Trumpism and his army of online trolls pushing general misinformation had primed the US into making this a hot-button issue, wherein the GOP camp would be on his side backing the invasion as some liberation movement and they could slander Biden and the democrats into opposing overall US actions against Russia or in support of Ukraine, while his trolls descended on facebook and twitter to push misinformation about Ukrainian nazis or secret Biden conspiracies or talk about how Russia was destined to win an easy fight and opposing them would only hurt the US and Europe so it's best to just let Russia do what it wants. (The last bit should sound familiar for those who have been perusing this thread)

And again, that has failed. All sides of the United States political spectrum are united in their overwhelming support of Ukraine. Biden has caught flak over the situation, but that's because most people think he isn't doing enough.

Trump tried to push the "Russia strong" angle early on, saw it bit him in the ass almost immediately, and balked as quickly from it as someone deep in favor debt to Putin could.

Because I don't think Putin or his little troll farms adequately understand US popular culture as well as they might think:

Russia has been depicted as "the enemy" to the US throughout popular culture for approximately the last 70 years. A few years of online trolls pretending to be "concerned patriots" rambling vaguely about "the lies of western media" and their chosen toadie of Trump who isn't articulate enough to belch out words to make anyone think otherwise is not going to make even a remote dent in that sentiment.

You have an action film that involves the criminal underground? You can bet some track-suit clad Russian gang is going to be standing in our hero's way, after having kidnapped his daughter or killed his dog or stolen something of value to him. Our heroes have to conduct a heist? Odds are, they're going to be stealing something from a Russian oligarch. An international film where a country is causing issues? Boy howdy, here comes Russia, and our heroes are going to sneak into the Kremlin! How does the Russian-trained duplicitous agent Black Widow redeem herself? By joining with the likes of Captain America, of course.

And frankly Russia, as a country, has done very little to reduce that stereotype. One can call it unfair, but... Russia did just invade a neighboring sovereign nation under trumped-up pretenses, so...


Meanwhile, I imagine Europe sees Russia's action in a much more realistic but no less negative light and can assess how their volatility will impact them much more directly. They sat in the line of crossfire for decades during the cold war, and the malicious history of the USSR coupled with Europe's experience with the ambitions of crazed dictators likely has their hackles up far more pointedly than a few online trolls can assuage.

I agree with your well written analysis.

Similar anecdote about sentiment here: In Sweden, we have always had the "Stalin killed a lot of people too, not just Hitler" talk from some. People dismissed them as trying to justify Hitler, when they should have thought "maybe they don't like any kind of genocide, neither based on ethnicity NOR 'wrongthink'".

[Vladier]

Fair enough, we know Russia uses deep fakes.

But why, though? Surely Putin could have said the same himself. Also, do the Russian people care which of Putin's flunkies say something? Surely they're all known corrupt puppets for murdering dictator Putin. Does Shoigu have some special reputation or respect that faking him being alive would be useful?

Shoigu is essentially Putin's old friend and the second most important person in Russia, seen as an unofficial successor to Putin as President. That ridiculous photo of Putin riding a horse? Shoigu was there with him on a friendly trip. Him dying, apparently assassinated by Putin himself, would be extremely unexpected, and a sign that Putin's paranoia and ruthlessness reached a new height. Also, the Minister of Defense suffering from a heart attack during a "special operation" invites all kinds of tragically comical images, wouldn't you agree?

[Zaydin]

In depth analysis of verified Russian losses by the BBC. 20% of verified losses are officers. Doesn't mean that they make up 20% of the actual losses as they may be getting priority treatment over the poor grunts. The majority of confirmed losses are paratroopers. But paratroopers are only a fraction of the force and took the brunt of their damage in the early days with ill-fated attacks. Some regional governments are pressuring all local media not to publish losses, telling them not to make a fuss and they'll commemorate the dead later. Some regions like Dagestan are much more open to public funerals, which is why they have a much higher number of casualties reported.

Oh, and there are conscripts dying. its just been covered up.

Is it wrong that part of me finds it hilarious that Russia lost so many paratroopers? There's a reason US airborne divisions don't really jump out of planes anymore and are instead chopper focused.

Using paratroopers to secure key points only works if conventional ground forces are able to quickly link up with them, otherwise by nature of paratroopers they are surrounded by the enemy and cut off from resupply or reinforcements. Russia was that confident they could relieve the paratroopers quickly by taking ground that fast.

[jonnysensible]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/o...ried-7xbqwzdqw

Thats the future of Ukraine under Russia. Rape and murder.

[Gaaz]

Czech Republic, eh? Where in Ukraine is that?

-snip-
Mod Edit: For obvious reasons, don't post personal documents or pictures of them.
Here in Ukraine is that. As for my alleged Czech citizenship - it is actually illegal to have dual citizenship in Ukraine. So think whatever you want, I am not going to show anything of the sort. Both of my parents and my wife are also Ukrainian. And I can not leave this country, taking 3 families with me. I live here. I work here.
Я розмовляю україньською, я говорю по русски, I speak english, mluvím česky, yo domino espanol (un poco).