Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

As per Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria

Transnistria, officially the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR),[c] is an unrecognised breakaway state that is internationally recognised as part of Moldova. Transnistria controls most of the narrow strip of land between the Dniester river and the Moldovan–Ukrainian border, as well as some land on the other side of the river's bank. Its capital and largest city is Tiraspol. Transnistria has been recognised only by three other unrecognised or partially recognised breakaway states: Abkhazia, Artsakh and South Ossetia.[11] Transnistria is officially designated by the Republic of Moldova as the Administrative-Territorial Units of the Left Bank of the Dniester (Romanian: Unitățile Administrativ-Teritoriale din stînga Nistrului)[12] or as Stînga Nistrului ("Left Bank of the Dniester") under Russian military occupation.[13][14][15]

The region's origins can be traced to the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which was formed in 1924 within the Ukrainian SSR. During World War II, the Soviet Union took parts of the Moldavian ASSR, which was dissolved, and of the Kingdom of Romania's Bessarabia to form the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1940. The present history of the region dates to 1990, during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was established in hopes that it would remain within the Soviet Union should Moldova seek unification with Romania or independence, the latter occurring in August 1991. Shortly afterwards, a military conflict between the two parties started in March 1992 and concluded with a ceasefire in July that year.

As part of the ceasefire agreement, a three-party (Russia, Moldova, Transnistria) Joint Control Commission supervises the security arrangements in the demilitarised zone, comprising 20 localities on both sides of the river.[citation needed] Although the ceasefire has held, the territory's political status remains unresolved: Transnistria is an unrecognised but de facto independent presidential republic[16] with its own government, parliament, military, police, postal system, currency, and vehicle registration.[17][18][19][20] Its authorities have adopted a constitution, flag, national anthem, and coat of arms. After a 2005 agreement between Moldova and Ukraine, all Transnistrian companies that seek to export goods through the Ukrainian border must be registered with the Moldovan authorities.[21] This agreement was implemented after the European Union Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine (EUBAM) took force in 2005.[22] Most Transnistrians have Moldovan citizenship,[23] but many also have Russian, Romanian, or Ukrainian citizenship.[24][25] The main ethnic groups are Russians, Moldovans/Romanians, and Ukrainians.

Transnistria, along with Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Artsakh, is a post-Soviet "frozen conflict" zone.[26][27] These four partially recognised states maintain friendly relations with each other and form the Community for Democracy and Rights of Nations.[28][29][30]
 
BayernFan87 said:
Can someone please give me a quick history lession about Transnistria?

Is it like in the Donbass region where Russia just installed a puppet government and the majority of citizens don't want to belong to Russia?
In this case I don't get how they would want to fight against Ukraine?

Or do the citizens of Transnistria consider themselves to be Russian?

Whats Moldovas stance on Transnistria and the current war?
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Strongly backed by Russia, de-facto independent state (similar to South ossetia/Abkhazia) but universally unrecognized.

Only 1/3 of people are Russian, with the majority being Moldovan and Ukrainian, but they seem to lead it.
 
A couple threads of optimism, from guys with apparent credential, if anyone would like a dose of that.


 
Loads of similar clips to these doing the rounds now, looks like some sort of cheap drone/grenade combo being used to terrorise Russian troops. Keep it muted... :nervous:

 
BayernFan87 said:
Can someone please give me a quick history lession about Transnistria?

Is it like in the Donbass region where Russia just installed a puppet government and the majority of citizens don't want to belong to Russia?
In this case I don't get how they would want to fight against Ukraine?

Or do the citizens of Transnistria consider themselves to be Russian?

Whats Moldovas stance on Transnistria and the current war?
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It’s quite a bit different to the situation in Ukraine because it has been frozen in this state for 30 years. It’s founding was very much from the mindset of someone like Putin who saw the Soviet Union falling apart as a massive tragedy. The people there wanted independence from the rest of Moldova, because they thought Moldova may unify with Romania, whereas they wanted to remain with the Russian-bloc or the Soviet Union successor, which never came to pass. The area had a predominantly Soviet/Russian identity.

One one hand, Moldova could never assert its authority over the region militarily, as Russia would squash them. On the other hand, it was never worth the political capital for Russia to somehow invade and occupy this narrow strip of landlocked territory to make it part of the Russian Federation. So we have a three-way stalemate of Moldova, Transnistrian and Russian peacekeepers.

I think I remember Michael Palin visiting there in one of his travelogues.
 
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The BBC reports:

" Russian forces will collapse in weeks, predicts military expert

Russia's assault on Donbas has "sort of fizzled" and the battle for the region will be over in two to four weeks, says military expert Dr Mike Martin.

The war studies visiting fellow at King's College London says: "Basically the Russians are gonna run out of troops, and the Ukrainians are going to counterattack."

The Russians have squandered their one chance to take the region, he believes.

"They pulled all of these mauled units out of Kyiv, and then tried to reconstitute them for combat in the east," he explains.

But they were "bruised and damaged" by the battle for the Ukrainian capital and Russia failed to build them up and "do some bold manoeuvre".

And Martin says there has been a "major strategic shift" in the war, with the UK declaring its aim is to clear Russian forces from Ukraine, including Crimea.

He adds that UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is "wrong", however, to say this would take 10 years, insisting: "Russian forces will collapse before that, and we’ll see a coup."

And with the US announcing US$33bn (£26bn) of funding for Ukraine, "that is an extremely clear signal of intent", says Martin.

It also means Nato and the US have decided Vladimir Putin is bluffing about using nuclear weapons if Nato up the ante, he adds."
 
A newbie wrote this in the thread on the Newbie forum. He can't post here, but I thought it would be interesting to share with everyone. I thought it was a very interesting read (thanks, @DT12!).
DT12 said:
I only just realised there's a political thread for newbies, and since I've been almost exclusively a lurker on this forum for the last 8 years I obviously don't have the ability to post in the main Current Events forum. But I'm a Brit (born in Manchester) who moved to Russia in 2001 and I've been here ever since. I live now in St Petersburg (been here since 2008). Prior to the war and immediately after most Brits left Russia on the advice of the Foreign Office but a bunch of us remained behind for various reasons.

I'm not especially intending to post about the politics of this war here but rather to offer whatever insight I can into the actual situation here in Russia from a social perspective. I know there's another user here based in Russia (‘harms’) but for understandable reasons he isn't posting as much as he used to, and over the last 2 months there have been a lot of questions in the main thread about how Russian people are reacting, what the social and economic situation is here, and so on. I can offer my perspective to anyone interested.

I’ll start here. Someone in the main thread asked this today:

"There's been less reporting lately (to my knowledge anyway) as to what the sanctions are doing to Russia's economy. How bad is it at the moment? Signs of default? Shortages of basic needs?"

For now (that's a very important caveat) the sanctions have had a negligible effect. Firstly as regards products, supermarkets are all fully stocked despite those (frankly silly) tweets you see of an empty shelf somewhere. Where I live all the supermarkets are still stocked full of Western stuff like - to give deliberately trivial examples - Coke, Skittles, Toblerone, Budweiser. Even Boddingtons bitter is sold here at my local store. Prices have increased but not by much, and less than in Manchester (my parents live there). I know this is an unpopular opinion at a political level but sanctions of these kind don’t and won’t work in the way that is hoped. Not in a country like Russia and certainly not in this particular situation. The only way they will work is if China and to a lesser extent India turn on Russia. That may happen down the line (China has spent way too much on its Belt and Road Initiative to have Putin mess up the whole of Europe’s economy) but for now it isn’t.

As an example my wife's company - who have contracts with the major Western tobacco companies like Philip Morris and British American Tobacco - relied on the Czech Republic for components it uses in its machines (her company prints the cigarette packets for the Russian market). In early March the Czech Republic sanctioned Russia and so the supply of components was cut off, but within literally a day her company had cut a deal with a Chinese firm to act as go-betweens. More expensive of course but not to the extent it significantly harms operations. In addition to that the government of this country are literally gangsters and getting around import bans is not a challenge for them. Stuff is streaming in across the Chinese (and also Mongolian and Kazakh) borders, and while that continues to happen Russians aren’t going to be seeing shortages of Western perks.

The 2nd factor is that since the start of the war Russia’s revenues from oil and gas have not only remained constant, they’ve actually doubled:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...fuel-revenues-since-invasion-of-ukraine-began

Joe Biden just announced a planned $33 billion of aid (and suggested that it’s got to last Ukraine for the next 5 months) but for perspective Russia has taken in 63 billion euros for its oil and gas since the invasion started (see the article). Again, while that situation remains unchanged, the war machine will be financed (tweets posted in the main thread about how the Russian military can’t get parts for its weapons are nonsense). Economically things are more or less stable, for now. Most of the people in the Russian government are drawn from the military or intelligence services, they’re in their 70s, they have their positions due to cronyism, and they’re not especially intelligent, but as long as Elvira Nabiullina is running the economy there’s a decent chance she’ll steer it to some kind of safety, albeit via unorthodox methods. She was supposed to retire this summer but Putin (I quote) “requested” that she stay on for another 5 years and Nabiullina (I quote again) “happily agreed to do it” (sarcasm obviously, he ‘pressured’ her to stay on because he knows nobody else can do the job that needs doing).

So that’s about the economy, but as I said at the start, that’s the situation only now. What will be in the future depends entirely on how things go on the ground in Ukraine. The Russian Central Bank has been doing some ludicrous things to keep things afloat, everything from currency manipulation to allowing stuff to be imported without the copyright owners’ permission. Short-term it allows the war machine to carry on but long-term it obviously isn’t how any healthy economy is supposed to work. It's not sustainable for long, which is why Putin is in a hurry to 'win' the war and then hold various entities to ransom.

About the people and their attitude to the war. I can only speak of my own circle but I think it’s representative of broader opinion. When the invasion began there was bemusement here as to what was happening. The messaging leading up to the war was surprisingly badly done, focusing on Putin’s strange hour-long lecture about Ukrainian history which nobody I know listened to for more than 15 minutes. For months the propaganda machine had convinced everyone, including myself, that Putin was going to go into the eastern 'republics' under the guise of a "peacekeeping mission" (and most people here were supportive of that because the war in Donbas is a major issue over here), but what on earth happened in the days that followed nobody quite knew. From February 24th to about the beginning of March the state media here went mostly silent, making occasional references to a “special military operation” in Donbas, but this was before Twitter and Facebook were banned, so what all young people here were seeing was the Russian army attacking Kiev and seizing the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Given Putin’s own words about how he was not seeking to replace the government in Kiev (he directly said that in his war declaration) it was clear that he’d been lying, which is fair enough, he does that a lot, but nobody understood why he was lying about this. The aims of this apparent full invasion made no sense to anyone with any degree of understanding of history. Occupying a nation of 44 million people, most of whom want nothing whatsoever to do with Russia - did Putin sleep through the Afghan debacle?

I’d say the mood at the time was very sombre (pretty much every person in St Petersburg has either friends or relatives in Ukraine), very stressed (everyone – including me - ran to withdraw their savings from banks), and not supportive of the war, but also not actively against it either (I emphasise that nobody had any clue what was actually happening in those first few days). For years our propaganda and media have been preparing people in various subtle ways for Alexey Dyumin to take over as president in the next few years (he almost certainly will be the one who replaces Putin, he’s ‘completed’ all the usual career trajectory points – Putin’s personal body guard, then FSB, then the guy who orchestrated the annexation of Crimea, then governor of a relatively small city to see how he handles administrative work). Now it seems that Putin is going to try to see this project of his through to the end himself and we’re heading for a years-long war. Everything we were expecting about the future of Russia was upended in the space of about 4 days.

So that was then. Now 2 months on the prevailing mood is mostly apathy. That may be judged as disgraceful given the atrocities being carried out but people aren’t designed for this level of bad news and it gets tuned out as a defense mechanism. Everyone is still using Twitter and Facebook (VPNs), sites like CNN and all the European news networks except BBC are freely available here, and now and again I take public transport and look at what people are looking at on their screens, but compared to early March it’s rare now I see anyone paying attention to the war. Like I said, in terms of how this is affecting people’s day to day lives, it isn’t (for now), other than flying to Europe is more expensive now (you have to go via Turkey or Israel), cinemas are closing because of a lack of repertoire (though illegal streaming is rampant here), and some Western brand shops are "temporarily" closed. If the internet didn’t exist and you're not the kind of person who eats at McDonalds and buys clothes from Zara (in other words the vast majority of Russians) then most people here wouldn’t even know anything was happening, which (I’ll keep saying it: for now) means the state news can continue to mostly downplay the severity of what has begun. People here know a war is happening in Ukraine and they know Russia started it, but in my opinion based on conversations with people, they don’t grasp the scale of this (quite frankly neither do the vast majority of people in the West, it seems to me).

There’s a lot more I’ll add later on - some other posts in the main thread I want to respond to - but for now that’s enough. This is all only my own perspective but it’s based on actually living here and being deeply involved in the country and culture for 20 years (almost the entire period of the Putin regime’s ‘rule’). If anyone has any specific questions relating to life here during this war, let me know and I’ll answer as best I can.
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@harms, @MoskvaRed, or @Demyanenko_square_jaw might have comments on this as well.
 
GlastonSpur said:
The BBC reports:

" Russian forces will collapse in weeks, predicts military expert

Russia's assault on Donbas has "sort of fizzled" and the battle for the region will be over in two to four weeks, says military expert Dr Mike Martin.

The war studies visiting fellow at King's College London says: "Basically the Russians are gonna run out of troops, and the Ukrainians are going to counterattack."

The Russians have squandered their one chance to take the region, he believes.

"They pulled all of these mauled units out of Kyiv, and then tried to reconstitute them for combat in the east," he explains.

But they were "bruised and damaged" by the battle for the Ukrainian capital and Russia failed to build them up and "do some bold manoeuvre".

And Martin says there has been a "major strategic shift" in the war, with the UK declaring its aim is to clear Russian forces from Ukraine, including Crimea.

He adds that UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is "wrong", however, to say this would take 10 years, insisting: "Russian forces will collapse before that, and we’ll see a coup."

And with the US announcing US$33bn (£26bn) of funding for Ukraine, "that is an extremely clear signal of intent", says Martin.

It also means Nato and the US have decided Vladimir Putin is bluffing about using nuclear weapons if Nato up the ante, he adds."
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Ah yes, “military expert” Mike Martin:









And this is a guy who actually knows a lot more about Afghanistan than he does Russia and Ukraine.
 
Cheimoon said:
A newbie wrote this in the thread on the Newbie forum. He can't post here, but I thought it would be interesting to share with everyone. I thought it was a very interesting read (thanks, @DT12!).

@harms, @MoskvaRed, or @Demyanenko_square_jaw might have comments on this as well.
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Thanks @DT12.

The problem with the SWIFT sanctions is that Russia has something like 50 banks, and we've only cut a handful of them from SWIFT. Pointless. Even now Sberbank and Gazprombank are connected, so EU can pay gas/oil money.

I bet every Russian company now has a Sberbank/Gazprombank account and is doing business with the world as normal. The loophole is just too big.
 
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Cheimoon said:
A newbie wrote this in the thread on the Newbie forum. He can't post here, but I thought it would be interesting to share with everyone. I thought it was a very interesting read (thanks, @DT12!).

@harms, @MoskvaRed, or @Demyanenko_square_jaw might have comments on this as well.
Click to expand...

I left Moscow many years ago so I can’t speak from experience but that description accords with what I have heard from people living there. It seems that, beyond foreign travel and the difficulty of transferring money, the full impact of sanctions will take a while to filter through. Also, from my circle, I don’t know anyone who is actually in the military (most of them middle-class Muscovites who would get a friendly doctor’s certificate to excuse them from the draft).
 
Could not care less if the Chief Rascist is micromanaging the war. Ukraine has now access to an unlimited amount of arms. US will make sure that Rascist forces are defeated on battlefield.
 
Do y'all expect something to happen in Transnistria? Could be an attempt to fix Ukrainian forces away from the frontlines.

 
Unbelievable that Putin is just going to be welcomed to the G20. Not until October, though.
 
TMDaines said:
Unbelievable that Putin is just going to be welcomed to the G20. Not until October, though.
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Probably the Chinese influence. With a bit of luck, he might have succumbed to his (allegedly) terminal illness by then or suffered a Mussolini-type fate.
 
VorZakone said:
Do y'all expect something to happen in Transnistria? Could be an attempt to fix Ukrainian forces away from the frontlines.

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Yeah, there's been some very suspicious activity there in the past few days.
 
VorZakone said:
Do y'all expect something to happen in Transnistria? Could be an attempt to fix Ukrainian forces away from the frontlines.

Click to expand...


Just seems like a lot of bluster trying to create a media distraction, rather than a military one. They reported have 1.5k troops there? Plus some drafted security. Ukraine has at least double the troops available to it than before this kicked off, so 450k+, they got spare. It would occupy some and their equipment for sure but I'd expect its already there and this threat covered for the most part.

The alternative is an attempt to fully take Moldova... They don't have the forces but in true Putin style is there a possibility of staging a coup? I did see some reports that the leadership there may be vunerable but don't know much about that. Then there is always the question of whether Romania would step in.

Reports that western countries have advised all citizens to leave Moldova is apparently twaddle:


Certainly seems to be something going on there though.
 
Cheimoon said:
A newbie wrote this in the thread on the Newbie forum. He can't post here, but I thought it would be interesting to share with everyone. I thought it was a very interesting read (thanks, @DT12!).

@harms, @MoskvaRed, or @Demyanenko_square_jaw might have comments on this as well.
Click to expand...
Well thats fecking depressing. If no-one is feeling sanctions then maybe we should stop, my gas bill will come down at least.
 
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