Zoraptor

Russia has very little actual capacity for an amphibious assault. They landed troops during this war, but not many, 1-2000 at Berdyansk being the largest. In a situation where the Ukrainians had a lot of troops around Perikop etc you also have reserve troops and troops guarding your flanks and those 1-2000 are going to have a hard time of it. The bigger problem is that you can't just wave your hands and put, say, 10000 soldiers above Crimea. They have to come from somewhere else. Do you want them around Kiev or Kharkov instead? Sigh. I didn't bother with the 'full quote' because I know what the compromise offered turned out to be. The 'compromise' the EU wanted was... Russia could still donate the 20bn (iirc) they were offering to bail out Ukraine. No RBK membership, but they could still provide the sweetener. Now imagine what it would have been labelled had the Russians suggested a 'compromise' where the EU and IMF still provided their aid package and took on Ukraine's debt, but not the association agreement. I'd have heard the squeals of outrage here, and most of the population of Brussels would need hearing aids. The edit part is extraordinarily sophist though, I'm afraid. If it were my opinion then sure, legit argument and I probably wouldn't even have that opinion in the first place without the quote- but critically, relevance is not based on my opinion of it, is it, since I didn't make the quote? No kidding, actual membership was not on the table in 2013. Barroso thought it was relevant enough to bring up though, that is absolute fact, as is that he explicitly frames it as one or the other. So, you're essentially telling the EC President that he was being irrelevant on something regarding the EU, not me. I know Wali said that recently, but I'm very skeptical that actually is happening on any scale. It supposedly happened with the soviets in WW2, but actual evidence of it happening is very scarce. Or he accepted the intelligence but showed skepticism publicly. Indeed, most of his comments on it were more along the lines that it "~wasn't helpful~" having outsiders shouting the odds when they were still negotiating, rather than that it wasn't real. You can move the people around fairly easily, but it's hard to organise. I don't think there will be anything like a 'full' mobilisation though, that's a million people, if they feel they need 100-150k more troops they'd try for inducements or prorogue the current conscripts while adding the next class; and that level of 'mobilisation' is handled regularly. The only difference would be they'd need new weapons rather than picking up those left by the last group of conscripts.

José Manuel Barroso, February 25, 2013: "one country cannot at the same time be a member of a customs union [ie the agreement with Russia] and be in a deep common free-trade area with the European Union". I think the President of the European Commission trumps the BBC as a source for EU policy, and it's 100% clear from that that the choice was forced by the EU, not the Russians. If he was going off the reservation you'd also expect that Herman van Rompuy, who was standing right next to him, would correct him. I can provide a long list of citations too, if you like, but all yours did was illustrate how bad the coverage was.

And that really is the thing. Pro EU people like to say that anti EU populists are there because of Russia and people vote for them because of Russian influence; because that means their views don't have to be taken seriously. Which ignores the fact that 'anti EU populists' have always been there, and they're only 'populists' because, well, such a disproportionately small number of mainstream politicians represent their views. Even when the EU was still the E(E)C and basically still just a trading bloc you regularly got 1/3 of voters not wanting to join. If Brexit had been a parliamentary vote it wouldn't have even been close; probably a 4:1 margin for staying in when the popular vote was ~1:1. And to keep it relevant, you can see that in all the current talk of NATO accession for Sweden and Finland where politicians who are and always have been disproportionately pro NATO want to accede by parliamentary fiat- and really don't want it put to referendum.

No, that's precisely why they have no significant issue with the EU. Because... it's easy to influence. And as above, they know there's zero actual chance of Ukraine joining. Whereas when Ukraine first talked about joining NATO they probably had to hose down the walls at the Pentagon after all the spontaneous 'celebrations'. Sigh. A few hours ago you were railing against Orban being an autocrat as well- someone who is, well, in the EU. There's no serious suggestion that Putin would actually have lost an election at any time though, especially to 'pro western' candidates. Have fun with the actual alternatives, Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky, both far more revanchist than Putin, both of whom would almost certainly have outright invaded Ukraine in 2014 instead. If they'd been Yeltsin's successor they'd probably have invaded the Baltics to stop them joining NATO... There were, of course, protests in Russia in 2012 as well. Some even, rather amusingly, tried labelling them as 'pro democracy'. Pro democracy people waving... Soviet and Russian Imperial flags? If you want there to be significant pro western electoral sentiment in Russia you need to build a time machine and go back to roughly 12 months in the 90s before Yeltsin asterisked everything up- doing what the west told him to, to be fair to him, difficult as that is. Otherwise; (1) all attempts to influence us or our friends are bad, by bad people. You can tell, because they're trying to influence us. They do it because they're weak [if we want to feel better about ourselves] or strong [if we want to advocate for buying more shooty pew pews or instill fear] (2) our attempts to influence others are good- and only for the benefit of others. We'd never use our influence for bad reasons. We're just nice like that, unlike them. (3) ...why do some people think we're a bunch of judgemental narcissist hypocrites? Could we have done something to make them think that? No! They're... just victims of disinformation! Or maybe they've been paid! Perfect, recent example: Solomon Islands signs defence agreement with China and the toys being ejected from cots in Canberra and Washington at above escape velocity, while wondering why they aren't getting fulsome support outside of the old ANZUS troika. If you want the west to be the unequivocal good guys build that time machine, go back to <2000, and get NATO to offer Russia membership. Good luck though, the one thing an alliance needs absolutely is an enemy, and NATO policy has always been to make sure Russia stays that enemy.

No. They don't have an issue with the EU for three reasons. (1) It's not very effective (2) they'd actually like an EU army, as that weakens NATO and (3) Ukraine is not getting into the EU anyway. 45 million extra people whose country has a GDP/c 60% of Belarus's? If nothing else the Ukrainian agricultural sector alone would bankrupt the CAP (or whatever they're calling it now). No. They. Didn't. Really, it's not that hard to actually check these things. The EU made it an 'us or them' situation, not the Russians. The EU stated that their offer was dependent on Ukraine refusing to join the Customs Union with Russia. The Russians did not put any such stipulations on their end, and said that so far as they were concerned they could sign both. Let's take the emotive names out of things. New Zealand wants a FTA with Samoa and Fiji. Samoa says it's fine with us having both. Fiji says we can have one with them, or one with Samoa. Clearly in that case Samoa is unreasonably blocking out agreement with Fiji by saying... they're fine with it? Haha no, it's Fiji blocking it themselves. [for the more directly relevant, up until 2014 New Zealand was looking to join the Russian free trade bloc itself, while still negotiating TPP etc]

They definitely made money off of Tomb Raider (and Deus Ex, to a lesser extent) but not as much as they wanted, and not as fast as they wanted. IIRC the only title using a 'classic' Eidos IP to actually lose money semi recently was Thief. Of course, SE's solution to the studios not being profitable enough was licensed Marvel games that they somehow contrived to lose- apparently- $200 million on.

Thing is, Russia has never really had a problem with the EU, just NATO. They were fine with Ukraine joining the EU back in 2014 when Yanukovich was in charge, and they're fine with Ukraine joining the EU now. This, really. People talk about Bucha as if it's uniquely brutal when we're well within living memory of something like My Lai, which was nowhere near as much as an aberration as people would like it to be- which shows the level of killing you can get if it's deliberate policy. And where at least the perpetrators were punished for their crimes via... 3 years house arrest for Lt Calley was it? We're within living memory of British troops gelding suspected Mao Mao rebels in Kenya too, for which no one has been punished either. Then there's the French in Africa training the Hutus for example, and god forbid any mention of Belgians in the Congo. You have a situation where the civilians are 'the enemy' then every country ends up targeting them, whether it's deliberate policy to or not. That's especially true when you have a bunch of guys fighting out of uniform. Which is of course why you're meant to wear them, and why fighting out of uniform is itself against the GC- and that did happen a lot in the early stages in Ukraine. The whole thing is a classic vicious circle of escalation. Perhaps the best recent example is actually Afghanistan. The primary problem there was that every step taken to target the Taleban negatively effected civilians- and indeed, most of the Taleban's actions got blamed on the occupier too. Yeah, the incompetence and corruption of people like Ghani didn't help, but the ultimate reason why the whole house of cards collapsed before the US even formally left was that for all the 3.4tn dollars spent what the majority of Afghans got from the coalition was people being randomly blown up, randomly detained, randomly stopped etc etc and all the old problems too. Doesn't really matter if every single incident involving civilian casualties actually were an honest mistakes instead of heinous warcrimes to the people who were on the receiving end. Good luck trying to tell your troops to sit back and take it though, but as soon as you respond incidents like those involving the Australian SAS are absolutely inevitable; and just as inevitably they make a bunch more civilians see you as the enemy. I mean, we here had a highly publicised incident involving civilian casulaties in Afghanistan. It probably didn't involve deliberately killing civilians, but that didn't matter to the guy whose 3 year old daughter got killed. Indeed, years later they still absolutely loathed us when interviewed, and it's impossible not to accept it as justified loathing. All that and we didn't even verifiably get a single Talib. We just killed 6 people, injured 20 more and blew up a dozen of their houses. Why? Because we had a guy killed by an IED and Something had to be Done, and that was Something. No matter that it actually made things worse...

I was being a bit facetious about it... (very mild spoilers; unless you're majestic) Uh, kind of? There's some violence there, and the cause of it was mostly a classic nuTrekism (covered in the spoilers in the previous post) where the problem could easily have been avoided but then you wouldn't have the 'dramatic tension' that they wanted. And there is a bit of playing fast and loose with some Trek 'laws', though they do set up the justification for it, um, well actually. OTOH the set up for the main plot was actually kind of interesting and resolved largely without melodrama- some speechifying, but not overly stultifying speechifying- or overt stupidity. I can't really go into too much more detail without spoilers though. (If it were the 1st nuTrek episode released I think I'd actually be pretty enthusiastic about it, as it is I expect all the old problems to creep out of the woodwork later)

So I watched Strange New Worlds Ep1. It was, to be fair to it, better than merely OK, though there are definite signs of old problems (see spoilers). If I'd seen it in isolation I might even think it was good, but the expectation is very much there that any potential will be squandered. There is though at least some suggestion that they may, just may, have taken on board some of the criticisms of Discovery by doing really basic things like, well, actually introducing the bridge crew even if they aren't all 'important'. I do kind of want to criticise them for sending the top three ranking officers on an away mission- which I'm sure never happened, certainly not once, in any earlier Treks- and there was at least one obvious plotting problem with that

My short take would be that they wanted to take a lot of territory quickly- which, broadly speaking, they did- to spook Ukraine into a quick political rather than military capitulation. The problem came when the political capitulation didn't eventuate and their efforts were far too diffuse to be effective militarily. That explains pretty much everything of how they went about it though; trying to take Kiev, airborne assaults, not really trying to compartmentalise things by blowing up bridges and infrastructure and the like. It was all designed to leave a more or less intact Ukraine with a new Russian friendly government/ Russian friendly conditions imposed on it. And it also has to be said; as much as I thought that trying for Kiev was a stupid idea* from the outset and a political rather than military decision there were a lot of people expecting it to work, not just the Russians- there were multiple assessments that Kiev would fall in days from western military analysts. *at some point I will probably do something with more detail on what I think they should have done, but it actually wouldn't be significantly different from what I said before everything kicked off.

Doubtful even the 2014 Ukraine army would have outright lost by now, assuming everything else stays the same, as the initial Russian plan was too unrealistic. What the Russians were banking on was lack of will to fight, which they shouldn't have been since the Ukrainians actually had plenty of that in 2014- you can compare the Donetsk Airport Cyborgs with Mariupol, for instance, and most of their military disasters there came from not wanting to retreat when they ought to- and that they'd be as badly led as then. There's a decent amount of evidence that the Ukrainians were badly led now too in places, such as the Russians strolling out of Crimea like it was a picnic, but that was more than balanced by the Russian strategy being hugely... over ambitious in other areas. Kiev urban area is 3.2 mn people. You couldn't take that (quickly) with the entire Russian invasion force unless close to literally no one decided to fight back. As it was they dissipated all their momentum in the south too trying to achieve the unrealistic in the north. Russia actually is across the Dniepr anyway, it's a bit of a silly milestone. Being across the Dniepr north of Kiev was disastrous, and they've been across the lower Dniepr for 2 months at Kherson (and Nova Kharkovka for that matter). Yep. Erdogan went from 'personally ordering it' to it 'all being a US/ Gulenist plot to bring him down and sour relations with Russia' in a year. Russia even outright blew up 33 Turkish soldiers with nary a peep of criticism of them from Turkey. That's diversionary- on both sides- as it strategically unimportant. If nothing else the Russian border is right there, even if Russia withdrew without a fight Ukraine would still need to keep most of its troops there or risk having the Russians walk back in later. Ukraine has made no progress around the areas that might actually threaten Izium though because there the western Russian defensive line is along highly defensible river and swamp.

Not really alluding to anyone, except nebulous 'people' in general. And to be fair to people in general, rather a lot of them wouldn't even have been born in 1999. Thing is though, Putin's Russia has been so stable, relatively speaking, that people in general do forget how unstable it was under Yeltsin. Apart from the bankruptcy in 1998 he also had 5 Prime Ministers in 4 years from 1996-99, as opposed to 6 (including of course a certain VV Putin for 4 years) in the next 22 after he'd gone. He'd got rid of the VP, he was beholden to a load of oligarchs whose power makes the current crop look like children, he didn't have a succession plan, he didn't bother building a Party at all, and he really was a few vodka shots away from a drug/alcoholic coma for pretty much his entire time in office. We only knew who his successor was for sure on 1 Jan 2000, since after his resignation he literally couldn't fire Putin any more. Allegedly, the reason Putin was picked so far as Yeltsin was concerned was extremely simple; he promised not to go after him once he'd left office so his family could keep all the money he stole and he could die in peace. He'd never have got the same from Zyuganov or Zhirinovsky who outright hated him and may well have formally brought back the death penalty just for him. And his approval ratings and those of his political friends were subterranean- 2%- so there was no point any of them standing. If Putin dies Mishustin takes over temporarily, that is known. It's also very strongly suspected that he won't be the successor but just interim. There will be a successor who stands in the election after that, and one who has already been decided on. But there's literally no point in saying publicly that it's say, Medvedev, (who it likely isn't either) because all it does is 'reassure' westerners and make him a target immediately. Really though, most of the 'concern' from the diplomatic/ media side of the west is, basically, concern trolling. "Russia is so unstable, I wish we knew who Putin's successor is [and as above we actually do, at least in the interim] so maybe it wouldn't be quite as bad, but we don't, so you can see how unstable Russia is" sort of thing.

People tend to forget how quickly Putin himself came on the scene. August 1999 was when he was appointed PM, prior to that he was unknown at a national level; not much over 4 months later Yeltsin resigned. And Yeltsin was extremely paranoid about succession, so much so he abolished the VP position. Last thing I'd be worried about is no succession plan, because it would be stupid to have a public one. The succession plan failing on the other hand could be a disaster, but at least the British Tabloids assure us that the Russian nuclear arsenal doesn't work, so there is that.

You've left out the other part of Ukraine that she didn't acknowledge Russian sovereignty over, Rostov. As above, happened, though I tend to see it as the geopolitical equivalent of karma farming/ virtue signalling rather than a serious statement of intent. It's just that a lot of the metaphorical upvotes for their statements actually expect them to follow it as policy (lord knows why, given their history of promises). I'm mostly amused that it's the UK saying it though. 13-1 vote against them on the Chagos from the ICoJ (in 2019, so not exactly back in the bad old days of colonialism), violation of Resolution 1514 in splitting them off from Mauritius in the first place, forcibly deporting the entire indigenous population of two thousand people (having claimed that they didn't exist and the islands were uninhabited) to Mauritius and managing to get a princely 5 (no typo, five) supporters in the UNGA for their position- all for a military base to blow brown people up from with no chance of retaliation. Slight whiff of hypocrisy there.

Particularly funny when Britain has depopulated islands half a world away to hand over to the US for a military base (the one they've spent the past 20 years droning civilians in the Middle East from) and refuse to hand it back to its rightful owners. Still that forced depopulation was long ago, back in the dark ages of, uh hmm, 1973. The people of Britain also aren't responsible, unlike Russians they get to vote in democratic elections for their leaders and this means they aren't responsible for their leader's actions unlike the Russians, who for some reason are. But hey, demand someone hand back land full of Russians who want to be in Russia. It's particularly stupid for other reasons too, per bottom. There isn't going to be a general mobilisation, nukes are actively more likely. Some sort of limited mobilisation or proroguing of the current conscript intake's term though is a lot more likely. There's a risk in that for the west as well though, tied up with demands like 'hand back Crimea'. What happens if they, well, don't end up handing back Crimea? You've knocked the spigot out on western arms deliveries and... nothing has changed on the ground. You've shown what your conditions are for victory, and haven't achieved them- that means you've, well, lost, doesn't it? All those years supplies of western wunderwaffe NLAWs/ Javelins/ PanzerFausts/ Stingers/ Starkstreaks etc and you didn't achieve your goals? Will the west recover from this massive collapse in their credibility, and why would anyone want to buy arms from them when they can't win against cheap Russian tat? You've essentially got two options; the war aims are meant to actually be fulfilled, whatever the cost and whether it takes, say, two million Ukrainians dead. In which case Alexander Boris de FFeffffel is literally doing the fight to the last Ukrainian thing and because western prestige must be protected at all costs. Or they're not meant to be fulfilled and just make the west look weak when they aren't. And ironically, Russia made exactly the same mistake a couple of months ago. Half their 'prestige' problems come from implying that they'd roll straight over the Ukrainians and be in a position to take Kiev and replace Zelensky etc and not doing so. If they'd been more realistic their prestige would be in far better shape.

The Orville cast has been released from their contracts. Sadly that's about as close to confirmation it's the last season as you can get short of an official announcement. MacFarlane and Grimes supposedly have a new series for NBC/ Universal already as well.

D/LPR leadership has never been stable. All the old leaders are literally dead except Strelkov/ Girkin (Givi, Motorola etc). The obvious comparison to Kadyrov was never really appropriate, as he has actual leverage. The only potential Kadyrov type figure would have been if an oligarch like Kolomoisky had flipped, and for that they would have needed Mariupol in 2014. Haha no. People may make jokes about a lot of the equipment being sent going because it's cheaper to get the Russians to blow it up than to scrap it at home, but with Germany's 'heavy equipment' that seems to literally be the case. Their Gepards have been doing the proverbial sitting around in a shed for ten years. Or 12, depending on source. I'm not particularly critical of Germany when it comes to Ukraine but the Gepards are... virtue signalling. Plus of course Germany is a proud country that can't be blackmailed and won't pay in rubles, their private companies will instead.

Yeah, my expectations are not high either. The actors at least were fine (Mount better than fine) in Discovery S2 and they managed to avoid the somewhat 'pod people' feel a lot of its cast had. But that's irrelevant if the rest of the problems with nuTrek aren't addressed. I did actually read the article Shady linked and there was one quote that stood out: "In short, it’s designed to appeal to people who, when asked what their favorite live-action Trek show is, unironically say The Orville." No, not that one, that just makes me smile because I'm exactly the sort of person who'd unironically say that The Orville is the best Trek series out there and feel incredibly smug while doing so. "Sadly, it’s trapped in the usual mix of faux-melodrama, clanging dialogue and dodgy plotting with the usual lapses in logic. Many writers are blind to their own flaws, which is why it’s so amusing that this is what Kurtzman and co. feel is a radical departure from their own work." That's the one. They either cannot fix the actual problems or worse, don't think the problems are problems.

Embracer/ THQNordic have been one of the better publishers. No idea where they're getting their money though, they've bought more studios than Microsoft over the past few years. They're a lot more likely to accept that maybe 5 million copies sold isn't the absolute disaster Square always seemed to think it was and not waste time with garbage Marvel microtransaction delivery vehicles that are meant to sell 20 million copies (but don't). Or NFTs/ blockchain, since apparently that's where SE wants to invest the 300 mill they get from the sale...

Let me guess, all the same problems Discovery and Picard have, but less serialised? As predictions go I suspect that is close to 'sun rises in morning' tier. It's on free to air (well, free to internet) here so I may as well see for myself.

Simple answer is a complete lack of critical thinking married to an intense desire for 'their' side to win. And if you start out believing it you'd feel kind of dumb if you were wrong, so it can 't be wrong. Fortunately that doesn't really describe many people here, but it describes an awful lot of people, in general. Plus some media actively promoted the story as true for clickbait eg the Mirror; though I'm definitely not linking them to avoid giving them clicks. Unfortunately, those sorts of media are also where a lot of people get their 'news'. You'll still find some people who think Jessica Lynch fought off waves of Iraqi fedayeen while critically injured because they believed it and the alternative is that the US government made the story up- and that's despite her always maintaining that the initial story was a load of old bollocks and saying so pretty much from the instant she got rescued. [And on the subject of propaganda: Sarex mentioned a claim that the Chief of Staff of the Russian Army had been injured. Ukraine has confirmed that Gerasimov is fine. But they've upped the deaths caused from 20 to 200 to compensate...]

Ukraine confirms Ghost of Kyiv didn't actually exist. Not so much relevant here, but good lord there were a lot of people who thought any hint he wasn't real had to be Russian disinformation. Think Ukraine (and the Beeb) got tired of him being killed off more times than Shoigu's been arrested/ sacked/ had a heart attack just so the British tabloids could sell more copies. Best article quote, and approaching peak passive aggressive: "Military experts told the BBC they doubted that one pilot could have downed as many as 40 Russian planes"- oh, really? [The Daily Mirror (British tabloid) killed him off two days ago, and that's where the 40 Russian planes shot down quote got published]

There are two factors at work there- you only tend to hear about police work when it goes wrong. That's especially true if it involves a foreign police force, when it generally has to go spectacularly wrong to get attention. Second, yeah, police forces have considerable influence in how they're portrayed on TV. Even here* back in the 90s we had a police commissioner order a halt to cooperation with a TV production because it wasn't showing police in a good light (for bonus points, the show was actually a satire sketch show whose biggest crime against police was depicting them as being mildly stupid and utterly humourless; go figure). To this day you still get a massively disproportionate number of plainclothes officers portrayed on NZ TV so that the Commissioner can't pull the cars or uniforms if he doesn't like how they're portrayed. *where police totally don't frame people for murder** or lie about the circumstances they shoot people in, never happened once. Or at least when we do it doesn't make it out of the country. **personal favourite, the Police Commissioner going to the funeral of a bent cop (Bruce Hutton) because... one incident of framing someone for murder doesn't outweigh all the good he did as a police officer. To be fair, that was back in the bad old days of, uh hmm, 2013, when a bit of light framing people for murder was still tolerated no doubt things have changed in the intervening 9 years.

It isn't particularly noticeable here, though there is a bit of related stuff- "The Russians are barbarians, they did this to Finland in the 1700s" --> The British are Barbarians, they starved tens of millions of indians to death and fought a war to sell opium to the Chinese in the 1800s (and depopulated Diego Garcia plus merrily tortured their way through Kenya and other colonial possessions well within living memory). It's mostly on the internet in general (and broadcast media) where official says --> media report --> it must be true! happens. But I don't really want to get into that specifically because it's been done to death and even I get bored of it eventually. Publishing most certainly does imply belief*, the way that those claims are published. It's like asking someone if they think the opinion- and what is opinion on such things, but weighting of facts?- they're stating is the correct one; of course they think it is, or they'd state a different opinion. Journalists are people and will always frame it as stuff they believe vs stuff they think is false, and 'unnamed US official' pretty much always seems to get treated as truth, even when stating things that aren't consistent to even a cursory examination. And the people publishing know that many will simply repeat those claims as if they're true because they see them on the news. For the point above there's also a very strong irony/ dichotomy and indicator in that. The 'mainstream' media shouts loudly about how terrible it is that alternative media gets believed over them and how there are a lot of idiots around who have fallen down the rabbithole or whatever, but try to have their cake and eat it to by saying that they don't influence people to their beliefs but just do 'the news'/ 'the facts'. *ok, it doesn't for trash/ agenda media, unfortunately just about all media can be trash media- and especially agenda media- under the right (wrong) circumstances.

When it comes to Ukraine it happens pretty much everywhere, and for everything. The US even admitted that it was releasing low confidence intelligence- ie stuff they either suspect or know is garbage- and it still gets repeated acritically (I mean, that's literally in the article numbersman linked). But hey, I'm sure those 2 Il76s Marco Rubio swore were full of paratroops and got shot down really did, despite there being literally no evidence of them for 2 months and all the others being brought in by helicopter... (I gave the example of the cruise missiles but of course I only used two parts of that and there actually is a 3rd- their failure rate is super duper high. So not only have they run out of them yet are shooting them at homes for orphaned bunny rabbits but the Russians have managed to selectively fire working ones at said kitten hospitals. Extra bonus if the evidence for the high failure rate provided is... a smersh rocket engine, which isn't meant to explode)