The Russian Invasion of the Ukraine.

[Ryokan]

Swedish fighter jets intercepted three Russian fighter jets in their territory today.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Swedish fighter jets intercepted three Russian fighter jets in their territory today.

Well there's no way that could possibly end badly!

 

[Olmstead]

I can no longer read RT.com in Belgium, this seems to be censorship. I am always interested in knowing the Russian point of view.

Can't you? Is this a Belgian thing? I'm also in the EU, and I have no problem accessing the site.

 

[Oystein]

What strikes me as bizarre about this whole situation is the weird way that the western media (I'm looking at you BBC) and even the experts are treating the Russian incompetence so far. They all seem to be convinced, absolutely convinced, that any day now Russia will get its act together and use that incredible military might to roll over the Ukrainians. Any day now they will fix their logistics and their troops will no longer be starving, poorly supplied conscripts with zero morale and no fuel. Any day now that "armoured column" will roll right into Kyiv and Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be captured or killed.

No one seems to consider the increasingly likely possibility that they won't fix their "mistakes" because they aren't mistakes. The Russian military is just that flat out rubbish. They won't get their logistics in order because their logistical corps are corrupt, inefficient and not fit for task. They won't bring that huge military might to bear because it isn't actually there. Sure they have loads of tanks and IFVs, but they don't seem to have any fuel for them, do they? Sure they have loads of bodies to throw into the meat grinder, but those soldiers don't seem to have enough food to even hold their territorial gains let alone expand.

I don't understand why no one is even considering that the Russians are failing because they were always going to fail. That they haven't achieved their objectives not because of mistakes and bad luck but because they aren't actually capable of doing it.

How many days of Russia basically faceplanting over and over again will it take for people to realise that they can't do any better?

They don't need to fix their problems. If the war goes on like this, Ukraine will run out of supplies earlier, and even if they don't, the shelling wears them down eventually.

Russia has the upper hand in the East and all around Crimea, and is steadily advancing, taking city after city. Defenders in Mariupol are cut off already.

Russia may never turn itself into a refined wielder of Samurai swords. But their blunt hammer will do the job.

 

[Mike!]

Swedish fighter jets intercepted three Russian fighter jets in their territory today.

Did they knock them out of the sky or just chase them off?

 

[jimbob]

That's debatable, isn't it? If you asked your head of government right now: "Are we at war with Russia?", what would he or she answer? If you asked a scholar of international law: "Are we at war with Russia?", what would he or she answer?

Who decides whether or not we are at war - and how?
In my country (and I am sure: in yours, too), it is the parliament which ultimately must decide that question - and it hasn't done that yet. Sure, the government must act, and it consults with its parliament delegations to ensure it will have a majority. But my government has not yet said that we are at war with Russia. I don't think we are: We have no intention of sending any soldiers to fight.


I agree with that, I am quite happy to see RT etc shut down - but they are actually challenging some decisions in court, and I have not seen that's been decided yet. ("Some decisions" referring to the fact that there are several decisions taken by several actors to black-out Russian state media: private social media companies, state airwaves regulators...)

We might not be at war with Russia, but Russia has been waging hybrid war against us for at least a decade.

 

[Jimbo07]

The only remaining question is why we should care what he thinks.

This is where the analogy falls down.

In the real world case, the abuser has nuclear weapons. There's just no analogy. The police? More abusers piling on? No. None of those things end civilization completely.

Think about it. All of the moralizing of right and wrong, just... gone. Philosophy... gone. Our sense of what's right... gone. News from afar and internet trolls? Gone. The very reading you're doing right now? Gone.

There are good reasons not to start WWIII, even if it has the appearance of appeasement/weakness. The West is going to have to be careful to punish Putin as hard as possible without starting a Russia/NATO shooting war. Realpolitik might require ceding Ukraine territory, like people have been saying here. East/West Ukraine, divided along a Russia/NATO axis. Putin gets some victory/territory, while bringing NATO right to his doorstep. If people think he's going to carry on, it just depends how mad (MAD?) the West evaluates him to be. The West wants to avoid an actual shooting war, but if NATO's border was moved as a response, would Putin be as circumspect? It sucks for the people in that scheme, but I'd rather live under the threat of WWIII, than live through it.

 

[Ryokan]

Did they knock them out of the sky or just chase them off?

They left.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

How many days of Russia basically faceplanting over and over again will it take for people to realise that they can't do any better?

When they pull out. Russia can do better because it has done better, fairly recently. Either this is a fluke, or its other efforts have been flukes, or something has very drastically changed in the past ten years.

The "why Russia will lose this war" twitter thread from earlier postulated the third, that the army is being run into the ground by a yes-man buffoon after his predecessor spent his tenure building it up. That's possible.

It's also possible that they're doing especially bad up until now because initial planning was nonexistent, and their strategy was literally slapping the side of the tank and saying okay Sergei, Kiev's that way, go make us proud. They still haven't gotten their **** together, and we won't know what that really means in terms of paper assets that can be brought to bear until they do it. Or give up trying.

 

[JoeMorgue]

ETA: Thread moved faster than I figured, added quote for clarity.

This is where the analogy falls down.

In the real world case, the abuser has nuclear weapons. There's just no analogy. The police? More abusers piling on? No. None of those things end civilization completely.

Think about it. All of the moralizing of right and wrong, just... gone. Philosophy... gone. Our sense of what's right... gone. News from afar and internet trolls? Gone. The very reading you're doing right now? Gone.

There are good reasons not to start WWIII, even if it has the appearance of appeasement/weakness. The West is going to have to be careful to punish Putin as hard as possible without starting a Russia/NATO shooting war.

The problem with that is how many people have put so much effort into developing a real life and/or online persona that REQUIRES them to be ready to abandon everything in support of some sort of completely detached from reality set of standards.

"If the win is compromised (in accords to a bunch of random, arbitrary standards I'm a fandom of) in anyway, better to let the whole thing burn" is a take that a lot of people will not resist being talked into.

 

[dudalb]

And the we cut Ukraine in half again, and Russia gets the new half!

And again and again and again.

It's perfect!

But,but, Eastern Ukraine will be Putin's last terrotrial demand in Europe.

 

[Frank Newgent]

“It’s been shocking to see that they’re leaving their fallen brethren behind on the battlefield,” said Evelyn Farkas, the top Pentagon official for Russia and Ukraine during the Obama administration. “Eventually the moms will be like, ‘Where’s Yuri? Where’s Maksim?’”

Already, the Ukrainian government has begun answering that question. On Sunday, authorities launched a website that they said was meant to help Russian families track down information about soldiers who may have been killed or captured. The site, which states it was created by Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, says it is providing videos of captured Russian soldiers, some of them injured. The pictures and videos change throughout the day.

“If your relatives or friends are in Ukraine and participate in the war against our people — here you can get information about their fate,” the site says.

The name of the site, 200rf.com, is a grim reference to Cargo 200, a military code word that was used by the Soviet Union to refer to the bodies of soldiers put in zinc-lined coffins for transport away from the battlefield; it is a euphemism for troops killed in war.

...

On Monday, Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, offered Russian soldiers cash and amnesty if they surrendered.

“Russian soldier! You were brought to our land to kill and die,” he said. “Do not follow criminal orders. We guarantee you a full amnesty and 5 million rubles if you lay down your arms.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/us/politics/russia-ukraine-war-deaths.html

 

[dudalb]

Which begs the question...

Why are people engaging this person? Why do people let him set the agenda for this thread?

Because people, otherwise, just can't follow the simple rule of Don't Feed The Troll.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Because people, otherwise, just can't follow the simple rule of Don't Feed The Troll.

Every time anyone says that I'm going to find the closest troll and feed them.

 

[dudalb]

This is where the analogy falls down.

In the real world case, the abuser has nuclear weapons. There's just no analogy. The police? More abusers piling on? No. None of those things end civilization completely.

Think about it. All of the moralizing of right and wrong, just... gone. Philosophy... gone. Our sense of what's right... gone. News from afar and internet trolls? Gone. The very reading you're doing right now? Gone.

There are good reasons not to start WWIII, even if it has the appearance of appeasement/weakness. The West is going to have to be careful to punish Putin as hard as possible without starting a Russia/NATO shooting war. Realpolitik might require ceding Ukraine territory, like people have been saying here. East/West Ukraine, divided along a Russia/NATO axis. Putin gets some victory/territory, while bringing NATO right to his doorstep. If people think he's going to carry on, it just depends how mad (MAD?) the West evaluates him to be. The West wants to avoid an actual shooting war, but if NATO's border was moved as a response, would Putin be as circumspect? It sucks for the people in that scheme, but I'd rather live under the threat of WWIII, than live through it.

Really wiling to sell other peopple down the river, are we?
FUnny, that was tried in the 1930's and did not work.

 

[Frank Newgent]

Because people, otherwise, just can't follow the simple rule of Don't Feed The Troll.

Every time anyone says that I'm going to find the closest troll and feed them.

Are you hungry?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Are you hungry?

No I just don't believe in appeasement, bet it dictators or trolls.

 

[Ziggurat]

Russia is now finally admitting to some war dead.

Russia says 498 soldiers killed, 1597 wounded in Ukraine- RIA

That's less than 1/4 of what western intelligence agencies are estimating, less than 1/10 of what Ukraine is (claiming to) estimate.

Even that much may come as a shock to the Russian public.

In Vietnam, US forces had 58,281 deaths and 153,372 wounded, for a ratio of about 0.38 deaths per wounded (note: this does not mean your odds of dying were 38%).

For the Iraq war, the US military had 4,431 deaths and 31,994 wounded. The deaths are a bit of an overcount since it includes noncombat deaths, but let's use it for a moment anyways. That's a ratio of about 0.14 deaths per wounded.

That drop in deaths to wounded is largely the result of improvements in body armor and battlefield emergency medical care.

OK, so according to Russia's official numbers, their ratio is 0.31 deaths per wounded. That's a bit better than our Vietnam numbers, but WAY worse than our Iraq numbers. Of course, the Russian numbers can't be trusted, there's a very high chance they are under-reporting. But the ratios still might be close. And if so, well, they aren't doing a very good job at protecting their troops.

I doubt this would surprise anyone.

 

[Michel H]

Can't you? Is this a Belgian thing? I'm also in the EU, and I have no problem accessing the site.

I can also not read RT.com's Twitter account: https://twitter.com/rt_com.

I quote:

@RT_com
Russia state-affiliated media

@RT_com's account has been withheld in Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Germany, Greece, Romania, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Austria, Luxembourg, Latvia, Denmark, Lithuania, Croatia, Estonia, Cyprus, France, Spain, Belgium in response to a legal demand.

Which EU's country are you in?

 

[theprestige]

That's debatable, isn't it? If you asked your head of government right now: "Are we at war with Russia?", what would he or she answer?
If you asked a scholar of international law: "Are we at war with Russia?", what would he or she answer?

I'd expect my head of government - or any other politician - to give whatever cynical and politically-expedient answer serves their immediate partisan interests. Their opinion is not the standard by which I judge whether there's a war on.

Nor is "international law".

Who decides whether or not we are at war - and how?

I'm capable of looking at world events and deciding for myself if I think there's a war on.

In my country (and I am sure: in yours, too), it is the parliament which ultimately must decide that question - and it hasn't done that yet. Sure, the government must act, and it consults with its parliament delegations to ensure it will have a majority. But my government has not yet said that we are at war with Russia. I don't think we are: We have no intention of sending any soldiers to fight.

I don't think you need a formal declaration of war from your parliament, to be at war in practical terms. Nor do I think you're not at war simply because you haven't deployed troops yet.

Propaganda is part of warfare. Economic actions are part of warfare. Intimidation and deterrence are a part of warfare. I think your country would do well to recognize that Russia has a geographical, existential conflict with Europe, that this conflict sometimes goes into remission but never actually goes away, and that there are always some elements of a cold war with Russia in play.

I also think that the invasion of Ukraine is a moral and existential insult to all of Europe, and a precursor to open hostilities with other nearby European nations, and that it would be wise for those nations to even now consider what preemptive strikes they can make against Russian power without risking an escalation for which they are currently unprepared. (Things like striking down Russian propaganda outlets for example.)

And I think that Europe should not let itself long remain unprepared. I think war is happening in Europe, that escalation is possible, even likely, if European nations do not recognize that war is afoot, and that they need to be on a war footing.

I agree with that, I am quite happy to see RT etc shut down - but they are actually challenging some decisions in court, and I have not seen that's been decided yet. ("Some decisions" referring to the fact that there are several decisions taken by several actors to black-out Russian state media: private social media companies, state airwaves regulators...)

None of that makes the question any more difficult for me to answer. Your parliament hasn't declared war, which keeps these matters in the realm of the courts, but I still see them as matters of military necessity, and justified on that basis.