Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

TwoSheds said:
They are entirely unalike other than involving people dying.
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And when it comes to the peace talks which will involve something very similar, structurally, to what went on in Northern Ireland insofar as sectarianism and paramilitaries go. That's the comparison and it holds. Or are we saying that there was no Russian influenced paramilitary organization in the two separtist states which fought over, however externally charged, a concept of "identity"?

If you don't think "identity" (Russian/Ukrainian) played a part in this war, however small, insofar as events post-2014 go, then how are you accounting for the separtist paramilitaries? It's a typical reaction. Again, if South Africans made up more of this board's population, I'd be makng the case in that direction, too. Everyone thinks their personal struggle is unique, and in a sense it is, but structurally, insofar as war and civil war go, with respect to identity and states playing states off states, the logic hasn't changed in a long, long, time. Anti-logic, really, because it's all a false state of being.
 
The "only victory for Ukraine is peace " argument has taken a bit of a knock over the last ten months.

Clearly there are still people who can't let go of the idea of Russian invincibility even with the mounting evidence that they are in fact losing. Defeat for Russia in Ukraine is not certain but its now the most likely outcome. What happens inside Russia then? It will be interesting but its not the Ukrainians problem.

Putin will be ousted if/when the defeat becomes undeniable. As strong as his position seems it will happen and quicker than people will expect.
 
Anybody who is a Russia apologist needs their heads checked. You’d do well by researching the Nazis foreign policy prior to WWII as there are many similarities between the Nazis at the time and the current Russian leadership.
Europe & the West does not want conflict with Russia and are not anti Russian at all. But they can’t just stand idly by whilst another European democracy is being invaded & having their independency threatened. There can be no peace deals, the only workable & acceptable solution is a Russian retreat and demilitarization of the Donbas & Crimea. The Russian people need to stand up for themselves and throw out the current regime as their country is heading in to the abyss.
 
Simbo said:
A desperate move? Desperate for what?
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No idea. But how else do you describe the decision to invade Ukraine? Other than desperate? A last salvo which many never thought would happen.

Don't Kill Bill said:
Russian invincibility
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I never had that idea in my mind at all. They are fighting a war against Ukraine which is armed to the teeth by NATO which group alone accounts for something like 75% of all military spending upon the planet. It still doesn't change the fact that the only victory anyone ever achieves in any war (to ever have been fought) is peace.
 
neverdie said:
No idea. But how else do you describe the decision to invade Ukraine? Other than desperate? A last salvo which many never thought would happen.
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A territorial conquest. Which has been happening since the beginning of human civilization. Similar to World Wars, or another million other wars.

Russia was desperate for nothing. They have more territory than the remaining part of Europe and US combined, and a shitload of natural resources, and have a few thousand nukes which means that no one will try to invade them. They chose to go to war so they can further increase the size of their empire.
 
neverdie said:
No idea. But how else do you describe the decision to invade Ukraine? Other than desperate? A last salvo which many never thought would happen.
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I don't think anyone has figured out the motivation yet for sure. It's why I ask, difficult to speculate about what peace agreements without knowing why he did this in the first place. I lean toward the idea he couldn't have democracy blooming in Ukraine and prospering on the back of it, as that would influence across the border. So yeh, perhaps he was desperate to stop that, or he was just bored...
 
Revan said:
A territorial conquest. Which has been happening since the beginning of human civilization. Similar to World Wars, or another million other wars.
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if you mean a "war game", then I'm inclined to agree but I'd need someone more disciplined than myself to trace the outline going back a few hundred years.

Simbo said:
lean toward the idea he couldn't have democracy blooming in Ukraine and prospering on the back of it, as that would influence across the border.
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which is arguably what "nato" meant in the context of invasion. just war-games imo. but this one was desperate. it was an all in move, that's why I call it desperate.
 
Revan said:
A territorial conquest. Which has been happening since the beginning of human civilization. Similar to World Wars, or another million other wars.

Russia was desperate for nothing. They have more territory than the remaining part of Europe and US combined, and a shitload of natural resources, and have a few thousand nukes which means that no one will try to invade them. They chose to go to war so they can further increase the size of their empire.
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Meh, I've not seen yet any expert saying this was for territory. Most seem to conclude that it was to conduct regime change in Kyiv.
 
neverdie said:
if you mean a "war game", then I'm inclined to agree but I'd need someone more disciplined than myself to trace the outline going back a few hundred years.
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Or you can just listen to Putin, why he decided to invade.

neverdie said:
which is arguably what "nato" meant in the context of invasion. just war-games imo. but this one was desperate. it was an all in move, that's why I call it desperate.
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It was not an all in move though. He genuinely thought that Kyiv will fall within 3 days, and with no war going on, EU (especially Germany) won't set harsh sanctions. A bit like Crimea 2.0.

Btw, are you Indian?
 
VorZakone said:
Meh, I've not seen yet any expert saying this was for territory. Most seem to conclude that it was to conduct regime change in Kyiv.
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I mean, there are talks of Putin drawing it for you. 'Ukraine is a fake country, created by Bolsheviks. Ukraine is Russia, yadda yadda yadda'. It doesn't necessarily mean that it would have been a full annex, could have easily been a partial annex followed by a puppet regime on the remaining part of Ukraine.
 
neverdie said:
No idea. But how else do you describe the decision to invade Ukraine? Other than desperate? A last salvo which many never thought would happen.
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Putin planned for this war for more than a decade, it’s only desperate in a sense that he’s realized that he’s getting old and needs to act now as he dreamed to be written in the history along the great czars of Russia. Heck just a week ago he compared himself to Peter the great because he managed to get Russia an access to Azov sea. He always considered a fall of USSR to be the biggest blunder in Russian history.
 
Revan said:
Btw, are you Indian?
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No.

Revan said:
It was not an all in move though. He genuinely thought that Kyiv will fall within 3 days, and with no war going on, EU (especially Germany) won't set harsh sanctions. A bit like Crimea 2.0.
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But he had to also think that even if this was the 95% chance, the one he was expecting, that there could also be a chance it wouldn't work, as it didn't. There's no way that wasn't factored in before imo. Ukraine in 2022 was not Ukraine in 2014 and if the world knew that there's no way Putin's regime, which had been financing the separtist war effort directly, also didn't have an idea of it.
 
VorZakone said:
Meh, I've not seen yet any expert saying this was for territory. Most seem to conclude that it was to conduct regime change in Kyiv.
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control more than territory, i think, is exactly correct.

Rajma said:
Putin planned for this war for more than a decade, it’s only desperate in a sense that he’s realized that he’s getting old and needs to act now as he dreamed to be written in the history along the great czars of Russia. Heck just a week ago he compared himself to Peter the great because he managed to get Russia an access to Azov sea. He always considered a fall of USSR to be the biggest blunder in Russian history.
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i just don't fall into the line of absolute personalization. of it all coming down to putin's psyche. there's an entire state apparatus built around him and levels within levels which he may control but which he also has to take account of. not even Stalin was certain of his position in the USSR except post-War. When he reacted too slowly to the German advance, he thought his inner circle had come to kill him. so there's a dialectical thing going on there. of course Putin is important, but the regime is not just Putin alone (the reason he takes care to cultivate it).
 
neverdie said:
But he had to also think that even if this was the 95% chance, the one he was expecting, that there could also be a chance it wouldn't work, as it didn't. There's no way that wasn't factored in before imo. Ukraine in 2022 was not Ukraine in 2014 and if the world knew that there's no way Putin's regime, which had been financing the separtist war effort directly, also didn't have an idea of it.
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Underestimating of Ukraine (and the Western response), overestimating of Russia forces *. Miscalculations happen all the time.

* To be fair to him, everyone did that. Russia was a paper tiger after all.
 
Revan said:
Underestimating of Ukraine (and the Western response), overestimating of Russia forces *. Miscalculations happen all the time.

* To be fair to him, everyone did that. Russia was a paper tiger after all.
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sure, i just still think that Ukrainian resistance, of it all not going exactly as Putin wanted, was taken into account. has there ever been a war which just supposed "it'll go like this and there's no way it could happen differently"? even going back to the Romans, I don't think that's true (read Caesar's commentaries).
 
neverdie said:
sure, i just still think that Ukrainian resistance, of it all not going exactly as Putin wanted, was taken into account. has there ever been a war which just supposed "it'll go like this and there's no way it could happen differently"? even going back to the Romans, I don't think that's true (read Caesar's commentaries).
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Annexation of Crimea and the Russia-Georgia war? That was the blueprint for this war.

It just was a completely wrong blueprint.
 
Revan said:
Annexation of Crimea and the Russia-Georgia war? That was the blueprint for this war.

It just was a completely wrong blueprint.
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yeah, i agree that that is the optimal scenario if you're putin's regime, but i also think you have to assume they knew the difference between an entrenched ukraine in 2022, battlehardened after eight years of sectarian struggle and financed/supported by a military bloc responsible for >75% of all military spending. the US alone, the main backer, represents 50%.

the first wave, imo, was to see what difference had materialized. that long line of encirclement around Kyiv. which didn't last long. at that point the contigency comes into play. even the americans, when they outgunned Iraq in every possible way, made contigencies in case something went wrong. too many examples in recent history of war not going as you think it will, if it ever does, for generals and planners to just assume their best case scenario will hold.
 
neverdie said:
yeah, i agree that that is the optimal scenario if you're putin's regime, but i also think you have to assume they knew the difference between an entrenched ukraine in 2022 battlehardened after eight years of sectarian struggle and financed/supported by a military bloc responsible for >75% of all military spending.
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You are looking at it from hindsight, and using rationality. Putin is a megalomaniac who thought that Russia is superior not only compared to Ukraine, but compared to the West. He genuinely believed that the West is in an irreversible down trend, at that Russia is at least equal to them. 'Sure, the West have more money, but Russia has better weapons cause of the corruption on the west, and capitalistic private companies charging their governments far more than for equal products in Russia' (an opinion shared back then by our resident commies).

Ukraine was also not that much armed by the West at that stage (compared to now). Sure, the javelins played a pivotal role, but other than that, it was mostly ex-Soviet weapons. Heck, even after successfully defending Kyiv, they were still losing the War, until HIMARS and other advanced (although far from state-of-the-art) Western weapons arrived there.
 
Revan said:
You are looking at it from hindsight, and using rationality. Putin is a megalomaniac who thought that Russia is superior not only compared to Ukraine, but compared to the West. He genuinely believed that the West is in an irreversible down trend, at that Russia is at least equal to them. 'Sure, the West have more money, but Russia has better weapons cause of the corruption on the west, and capitalistic private companies charging their governments far more than for equal products in Russia' (an opinion shared back then by our resident commies).

Ukraine was also not that much armed by the West at that stage (compared to now). Sure, the javelins played a pivotal role, but other than that, it was mostly ex-Soviet weapons. Heck, even after successfully defending Kyiv, they were still losing the War, until HIMARS and other advanced (although far from state-of-the-art) Western weapons arrived there.
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the distinction isn't all that important when push comes to shove, but I don't think there's any way of knowing beyond inferrence. when it ends, the stories will go in the direction of the resolution. less reliable in five years than it is now. I interpret that they made said calculations based on everything that happened prior and after, but not saying they could see the future, only that part of it where things didn't go according to plan and Kyiv didn't fall. whatever else Putin is, [insert any description ranging from Tsar Nicholas to Hitler], he was/is also a highly analytical mind. he came from that position, the KGB. it's also not just him drawing up the battleplans. i don't doubt he wanted it to go ahead as it had in 2014 but I do doubt that the Russian administrative state didn't have contingencies in place.
 
neverdie said:
the distinction isn't all that important when push comes to shove, but I don't think there's anyway of knowing. I interpret that they made said calculations based on everything that happened prior and after, but not saying they could see the future, only that part of it where things didn't go according to plan and Kyiv didn't fall. whatever else Putin is, [insert any description ranging from Tsar Nicholas to Hitler], he was/is also a highly analytical mind. he came from that position, the KGB. it's also not just him drawing up the battleplans. i don't doubt he wanted it to go ahead as it had in 2014 but I do doubt that the Russian administrative state didn't have contingencies in place.
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Probably. But 10 years of absolute power and rounded by sycophants, after more than 10 years of massive power, means that current Putin does not necessarily have a highly analytic mind.

We have seen similar things with every conqueror.
 
Revan said:
Probably. But 10 years of absolute power and rounded by sycophants, after more than 10 years of massive power, means that current Putin does not necessarily have a highly analytic mind.
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also true. again, it won't be known. we can only infer. if it goes one way, we get one definitive version. if it goes another, we get another. but in all scenarios no one will ever convince me that this wasn't also a Russian administrative state decision. a bad one? yes, but one which ruled out the possiblity of it not going entirely the way they wanted (Kyiv falls, puppet installed)? I doubt it. even if you put it at 1%.
 
neverdie said:
also true. again, it won't be known. we can only infer. if it goes one way, we get one definitive version. if it goes another, we get another. but in all scenarios no one will ever convince me that this wasn't also a Russian administrative state decision. a bad one? yes, but one which ruled out the possiblity of it not going entirely the way they wanted (Kyiv falls, puppet installed)? I doubt it. even if you put it at 1%.
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I think you're grossly underestimating the impact that having a one man dictatorship has on the decision making. As if Putin comes along, says I'm going to invade Ukraine and enact regime change and the 'administrative state' says actually, this isn't such a good idea, perhaps we can try other approaches instead.

I'm sure the generals, either explicitly or implicitly, also came up with plans for what to do if the initial plan didn't work but this doesn't seem to be what you're suggesting.
 
neverdie said:
also true. again, it won't be known. we can only infer. if it goes one way, we get one definitive version. if it goes another, we get another. but in all scenarios no one will ever convince me that this wasn't also a Russian administrative state decision. a bad one? yes, but one which ruled out the possiblity of it not going entirely the way they wanted (Kyiv falls, puppet installed)? I doubt it. even if you put it at 1%.
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But it does not matter what they thought, when there is one person who makes the decision. We saw Maria Zakharova (spokeperson of foreign ministry) saying just a couple of days before the invasion that there won't be any invasion, it is just Western propaganda. We heard similar things said by Lavrov a week before the invasion. Some minor generals might have thought that invading Ukraine might not be smart, but it does not matter.

You also have to acknowledge that Russia is not a meritocracy state (no one is, but the more corrupt a state is, the less meritocratic is). They have morons in high positions in every department. We saw generals being killed in the first few weeks, a lot of logistic problems (tanks running out of oil on the first day, or the entire supporting war column for Kyiv running out of oil and so unable to move). Idiots with a superiority complex were running the war, so it is not surprising to think that they might not have had good contigency plans.

Add to it, like in all other extremely corrupted states, it is disadvantageous to write objective report, if it puts your superior, or state not in great position. We have many leaks of how only the reports on 'how on great state the military is' reaching the higher command, with the objective ones that show problems getting prohibited.

This was will be a case-study on how to mismanage a war. A manual of 'what to not do'.
 
Foreign volunteers explaining their mindset:
After Abelen was killed, Tai had informed the G.U.R. that he was going home. He spent a week in a hotel in Kyiv and bought a bus ticket to Poland. The morning that he was to leave, however, he returned to Donetsk. He’d joined the Legion to escape his “mundane and boring” life in New Zealand, he told me, where he’d worked as a mail carrier since being discharged from the Army. In the end, the prospect of resuming that existence had been more intimidating than staying in Ukraine. “I knew that, as soon as I got home, there’s nothing there I’d rather do,” he said. “So I came back.”
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He’d once told me that many volunteers who quit the Legion did so because they hadn’t been honest with themselves about their reasons for coming to Ukraine. “Because when you get here your reason will be tested,” Turtle said. “And if it’s something weak, something that’s not real, you’re going to find out.” He was dubious of foreigners who claimed to want to help Ukraine. Turtle wanted to help, too, of course, but that impulse was not enough; it might get you to the front, but it wouldn’t keep you there.

I asked what was keeping him there.

“In the end, it’s just that I love this shit,” he said. “And maybe I can’t escape that—maybe that’s the way it’s always gonna be.”
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/02/trapped-in-the-trenches-in-ukraine
 
neverdie said:
And when it comes to the peace talks which will involve something very similar, structurally, to what went on in Northern Ireland insofar as sectarianism and paramilitaries go. That's the comparison and it holds. Or are we saying that there was no Russian influenced paramilitary organization in the two separtist states which fought over, however externally charged, a concept of "identity"?

If you don't think "identity" (Russian/Ukrainian) played a part in this war, however small, insofar as events post-2014 go, then how are you accounting for the separtist paramilitaries? It's a typical reaction. Again, if South Africans made up more of this board's population, I'd be makng the case in that direction, too. Everyone thinks their personal struggle is unique, and in a sense it is, but structurally, insofar as war and civil war go, with respect to identity and states playing states off states, the logic hasn't changed in a long, long, time. Anti-logic, really, because it's all a false state of being.
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It's great that you think you understand Northern Ireland, I would advise you to go there and actually learn about it. It's a lovely place, friendly people (mostly!) and the history is fascinating.

Ref your arbitrary assertions about paramilitaries, the paramilitary forces in Donetsk and Luhansk are probably a lot smaller than they were before this war and either way will not be welcome after the war. You are presupposing that there will be a peace negotiated and all these people will stick around. I think it's incredibly unlikely, and any that do will be a tiny minority. Northern Ireland was never an open war between two nation states no matter whether you would like to draw false parallels.
 
Russian propaganda really did a number on German population, a very sad watch:


Having Finland and Sweden in Nato is such a relief seeing Germany’s reaction military wise to this brutal WW2 style invasion just a few hundred kilometers away.
 
Why are Ukraine saying Feb for peace talks? Why not say tomorrow and keep seeing what happensm Feels like its asking for chaos till then. Am I missing something?
 
Rajma said:
Russian propaganda really did a number on German population, a very sad watch:


Having Finland and Sweden in Nato is such a relief seeing Germany’s reaction military wise to this brutal WW2 style invasion just a few hundred kilometers away.
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Germanys reaction has been a wet fart. Horrific really given their history, you'd have thought they would be right with Ukraine every step of the way.
 
LARulz said:
Why are Ukraine saying Feb for peace talks? Why not say tomorrow and keep seeing what happensm Feels like its asking for chaos till then. Am I missing something?
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To put it simply, there's no point. Remember, when Ukraine talks about negotiations with Russia, they will be talking about complete withdrawal from Ukraine, hundreds of $billions in reparations, return of kidnapped citizens and war crime tribunals, etc.
 
RedSky said:
Germanys reaction has been a wet fart. Horrific really given their history, you'd have thought they would be right with Ukraine every step of the way.
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If you thought that you missed how much a lot of German society got in love with pacifism, that they will stay out of any war they can. Love for military action was successfully eliminated.

Everyone who doesn't like this, please direct your anger at the occupation forces, especially at the UK who cared the most about this.
 
RedSky said:
Germanys reaction has been a wet fart. Horrific really given their history, you'd have thought they would be right with Ukraine every step of the way.
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I think their history is precisely one of the major reasons for their response so far.
 
africanspur said:
I think their history is precisely one of the major reasons for their response so far.
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Partly although I think it's more complicated than that. that said, facing down russian fascism is the best way that Germany can show what it has learned from its own history.
 
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