Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

Suedesi said:
And here's the great John Pilger calling it right - "above all, this is a war of propaganda, and I think almost nothing one reads in the Western press about the invasion of Ukraine is to be trusted. The skills of skepticism, but I'm not sure the reading public, the watching public particularly in the United States possesses that is crucial now because nothing can be believed. Everyday when I scan the media, I look at the source and it's Ukrainian intelligence. The propaganda operation in Ukraine is quite brilliant. They've managed to invent a chemical warfare attack when there wasn't one. They've managed to keep out of the Western media that so much of Ukraine is infested, if not run by, infested with true extremists, fascists, neo-N@zis they're called. The United States may be about to fight, or to encourage a war in which it plays a leading role in Ukraine. What to remember here is the US doesn't give a damn about Ukraine. Ukraine is simply a pawn in this. But the object as the US Defense Secretary says (and I paraphrase him) is to destroy the Russian Federation. That's been known for a long time. That is the most dangerous project in the world today, because the Russians are not going to allow that."



John Pilger everybody, clearly a Russian agent...
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John Pilger is not that special. Good on certain things, horrible on others. Not a Russian "agent", just someone who over-corrects in his anti-Western views (Milosevic apologist etc).
 
Lets say we even entertain the dumb idea that this war did start because Ukraine didn't agree not staying neutral and out of NATO, how does that absolve what Russia has done since? Firing tonnes of missiles into residential areas and killing tens of thousands of civilians, using banned munitions, raping, murdering and torture in areas they've taken over, the kidnapping of children and moving them to other areas, destroying infrastructure just to make the people starve/suffer more. All this is deserved by Ukraine just because they entertained entering NATO according to Moscow? Isn't that a good sign they should have entered NATO a hell of a long time ago?
 
atkar83 said:
Lets say we even entertain the dumb idea that this war did start because Ukraine didn't agree not staying neutral and out of NATO, how does that absolve what Russia has done since? Firing tonnes of missiles into residential areas and killing tens of thousands of civilians, using banned munitions, raping, murdering and torture in areas they've taken over, the kidnapping of children and moving them to other areas, destroying infrastructure just to make the people starve/suffer more. All this is deserved by Ukraine just because they entertained entering NATO according to Moscow? Isn't that a good sign they should have entered NATO a hell of a long time ago?
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What they're really saying is that Ukraine, for its own sake, should have submitted itself to Putin's wishes. And they would have been spared this outcome. Which is a debatable argument in itself.

Hardcore pro-Russian people probably absolve Russia but others frame it as a realpolitik thing, "you should have waited until Putin died" kind of framing. Which, in my opinion, is also just a shitty argument.
 
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VorZakone said:
What they're really saying is that Ukraine, for its own sake, should have submitted itself to Putin's wishes. And they would have been spared this outcome. Which is a debatable argument in itself.

Hardcore pro-Russian people probably absolve Russia but others frame it as a realpolitik thing, "you should have waited until Putin died" kind of framing. Which, in my opinion, is also just a shitty argument.
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If you're talking about Suedesi, he unironically made a point "Ukraine should have just focused on joining EU, but stay out of NATO", which is something special when coupled with his insights on Maidan.
 
africanspur said:
Isn't Sudesis position essentially just a variation of Raoul's position on foreign affairs? That might is right? Except Russian might is more regional compared to the American global might.

I disagree fundamentally with Sudesi on this, as I do with Raoul.
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That is my argument on Ukraine as well, except as you say Russia is largely a regional power and just as they could bully Ukraine militarily, they are just as vulnerable to being bullied by the west militarily (by way of arming Ukraine), economically through sanctions and so on.

That's a very different argument from Suedesi, who is clearly clutching at straws by way of random Putin talking points to defend his flimsy, half thought out position that war was avoidable if Ukraine simply capitulated to Putin's demands. That has long been debunked by Putin's own words.
 
The FT article among other things mentions the worries about rising gas prices in an election year.

 
VorZakone said:
The FT article among other things mentions the worries about rising gas prices in an election year.

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Cynical cowards, didn’t provide Ukraine with required weapons during the previous years and brought Ukraine to the breaking point by halting the aid completely since the last September. I genuinely hate Biden administration as much as Trump, woefully incompetent and useless. That’s probably the main reason behind Sullivan’s recent visit to Ukraine.

 
Rajma said:
Cynical cowards, didn’t provide Ukraine with required weapons during the previous years
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I agree it's terrible that US politics are carried out on the back of the Ukrainians.

However, it's clearly the GOP (aka Trump) which are blocking the funds for weapons and aid to the Ukraine for months now.
60 billions USD are blocked.

Very similar to the southern border crisis where Trump is playing an extremely dirty game. On one hand he attacks Biden for the border crisis while on the other hand it's Trump and his Republicans who block any measures to solve the crisis just for political gains.

I'm honestly puzzled that not more Americans are outraged by this hypocrisy.
 
VorZakone said:
The FT article among other things mentions the worries about rising gas prices in an election year.

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Interesting conundrum. Some Ukr will be thinking they need to carry on until US gives them an alternative, but its the same yanks blocking aid that would love rising energy prices in an election year.
 
VorZakone said:
The FT article among other things mentions the worries about rising gas prices in an election year.

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And what if Ukraine keeps attacking the refineries? Will the US decrease the aid from the, erm, $0 that they provided over the last few months?
 
VorZakone said:
The FT article among other things mentions the worries about rising gas prices in an election year.

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Zelensky should tell those feckers to eat a pie. Fire everything at the refineries and destroy Putin's economy; that is how you can win a war in the long term.

Sounds to me this bullshit is more like stuff expressed by the big oil cartel, especially those in the Middle-East.
 
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IMO completely logical and obvious path going forward, one that US “deescalatory” admin wing couldn’t see coming because of their stupidity. Should have given Ukraine everything when they were asking at the beginning of the invasion, this would have been long finished.
 
@harms What's your prediction on things like this? Will we see increased mobilization or are you sceptical?

 
Rajma said:
IMO completely logical and obvious path going forward, one that US “deescalatory” admin wing couldn’t see coming because of their stupidity. Should have given Ukraine everything when they were asking at the beginning of the invasion, this would have been long finished.
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If anything pushes it through, this will.
 
VorZakone said:
@harms What's your prediction on things like this? Will we see increased mobilization or are you sceptical?

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Or, the question isn't will we see it, the question is when we'll see it.

The most realistic prediction is that we'll see it later this summer or in the early autumn like the last time. It probably won't happen in the upcoming months for the simple reason that there's a regular conscription campaign that starts at the 1st of April and finishes in the middle of June and the military bureaucracy likely doesn't have the capacity to process both things simultaneously.

That's the rational prediction though and these don't always work out in Russia, especially with the number of daily losses being that high.
 
harms said:
Or, the question isn't will we see it, the question is when we'll see it.

The most realistic prediction is that we'll see it later this summer or in the early autumn like the last time. It probably won't happen in the upcoming months for the simple reason that there's a regular conscription campaign that starts at the 1st of April and finishes in the middle of June and the military bureaucracy likely doesn't have the capacity to process both things simultaneously.

That's the rational prediction though and these don't always work out in Russia, especially with the number of daily losses being that high.
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If it does happen, would it be announced publicly or do you expect that it will be carried out in 'silence'?
 
VorZakone said:
If it does happen, would it be announced publicly or do you expect that it will be carried out in 'silence'?
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It won't be in silence since the silent mobilization is still, technically, happening. If they try to mobilize a 200-300k people it's going to be huge news, they'll have to say something.
 
harms said:
It won't be in silence since the silent mobilization is still, technically, happening. If they try to mobilize a 200-300k people it's going to be huge news, they'll have to say something.
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Alright, thanks.
 
Simbo said:
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It really seems to be a bit of a nuanced issue. Yes, crude oil price should be unaffected or even lower, if Russia can't process it anymore and has to sell it. Oil products however could become more expensive, as Russia was exporting quite a bit of (mostly) Diesel.

However about three weeks ago Russia reportedly issued a ban of exportinging refinery products, at least for the next half year, to fight the increasing prices. So if we see a price increase here, it originates in that ban and not in the recent attacks that started after the ban became active.

I would even go so far and suggest that this export ban could be a key reason why Ukraine started these attacks now - Russia admitted a weakness, and they saw a chance to really put the knife in there and twist it.
 
Raoul said:
Its a limited strategy in the end, since Putin can simply retaliate with sending more missiles into Kiev and the other big cities.
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He does that anyway, and has been for over 2 years.

Whenever they can, Ukraine should hit Russia's wallet, oil prices be damned.
 
VorZakone said:
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What I don't get is why if these missiles are in range of Polish air defences they don't intercept them. Is it in case they mistakenly shoot down a fighter or something? Or more because they might shoot down a Ukrainian AA missile or something?
 
TwoSheds said:
What I don't get is why if these missiles are in range of Polish air defences they don't intercept them. Is it in case they mistakenly shoot down a fighter or something? Or more because they might shoot down a Ukrainian AA missile or something?
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39 seconds is a very short period of time. If the cruise missile flew along the border it might not have been possible to shoot it down inside polish airspace within that time frame.
Both US and Polish fighter jets where scrambeled and if the missile would have kept on flying inside Polish airspace I'm sure they would have neutralized it.
 
the hea said:
39 seconds is a very short period of time. If the cruise missile flew along the border it might not have been possible to shoot it down inside polish airspace within that time frame.
Both US and Polish fighter jets where scrambeled and if the missile would have kept on flying inside Polish airspace I'm sure they would have neutralized it.
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And what about shooting it down pre-emptively on the Ukrainian side?
 
TwoSheds said:
And what about shooting it down pre-emptively on the Ukrainian side?
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Pretty sure this wasn't the first time a piece of Russian ordinance. There was at least another instance in 2023 and possibly something landing in Romania or nearby earlier.
 
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