Ukraine Conflict - "History never looks like history when you are living through it."

[Mamoulian War]

A small glimpse on a few facts about how the current invasion started and how the Russian propaganda is strong and skews even the minds of the people who doublecheck all the stuff and are wathing closely on the relations between Russia and Ukraine for a long time, like myself... Even I was fooled with some of their justifications of invading, because "Ukraine is attacking civilians in Donbas". I was under the impression, that due to the clashes, a lot of Russian and Ukrainian civilians die each year... The official OHCHR report gives data, that in last three years on both sides died 27, 16 and 25 civilians respectively, and this is what Russia has been calling a genocide... And now compare it to officially 4600+ killed civilians during the last 4 months of the invasion... The number is factually much higher, because Russia does not allow any official UN representatives to document the civilian casualties in Russian occupied territories.

here are two latest pre-war reports:

https://ukraine.un.org/index.php/en/149895-32nd-report-ohchr-human-rights-situation-ukraine-covers-period-1-february-31-july-2021-it

https://ukraine.un.org/index.php/en/176043-report-human-rights-situation-ukraine-1-august-2021-31-january-2022

And here is the YT video about it, if you do not feel like reading it in the middle of summer...
 

 

[Darkpriest]

More voices to stop supporting war in UA. 

https://www.zeit.de/2022/27/ukraine-krieg-frieden-waffenstillstand

@Lexxcan probably translate nuances

[xzar_monty]

Russia withdraws from Snake Island. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-says-russian-forces-have-withdrawn-snake-island-2022-06-30/

[Lexx]

7 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

More voices to stop supporting war in UA. 

https://www.zeit.de/2022/27/ukraine-krieg-frieden-waffenstillstand

@Lexxcan probably translate nuances

tl;dr - war will keep going and Ukraine can probably not win back the lost territory, so we should just stop fighting. Then lots of hot air about diplomacy, but no proposals about what exactly should be done except basically "just let russia have what they have now." They conclude that to reach peace, fighting should be ceased right now - which by the way I don't agree, as that just gives russia time again to reorganize... we have seen that in the past, more than once.

I get it. War needs to stop, but the way they write it just sounds like "waa-waa, let just have russia take what they want, so we can get back to normal again."

Edited June 30, 2022 by Lexx

[Mamoulian War]

25 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Russia withdraws from Snake Island. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-says-russian-forces-have-withdrawn-snake-island-2022-06-30/

That Russian spin in the article... Unless the task assigned to Russian soldiers stationed there would be to die while losing few hundreds of millions of USD worth of Pantsirs and other AA defense systems

[xzar_monty]

Extremely interesting stuff on the extent and manner of corruption in Russia and the Russian army. This would make me sad and sorry if the country wasn't engaged in such slaughter at the moment. Interesting tidbit from one of the many threads this ChrisO has provided: the corruption of course is nothing new -- in his 1854 Sevastopol Sketches, Tolstoy wrote of Russian officers: "While they are in the service their main aim is the acquisition of money."

On threadreader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1542269393945903105.html

And a Twitter thread:

Edited June 30, 2022 by xzar_monty

[Mamoulian War]

4 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Extremely interesting stuff on the extent and manner of corruption in Russia and the Russian army. This would make me sad and sorry if the country wasn't engaged in such slaughter at the moment. Interesting tidbit from one of the many threads this ChrisO has provided: the corruption of course is nothing new -- in his 1854 Sevastopol Sketches, Tolstoy wrote of Russian officers: "While they are in the service their main aim is the acquisition of money."

On threadreader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1542269393945903105.html

And a Twitter thread:

Speaking of Russian officers corruption, here is one more example...

 

[xzar_monty]

Given how the culture of the Russian army is likely to brutalize everyone in it, I'm not surprised.

[pmp10]

2 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Well, a lot of people with a little bit more knowledge on Russia/Ukraine relations said that in a lot of different places, including myself, because no rational person would ever do this kind of action against country of 50 million with battle hardened army, with many allies, and would consider it as an easy and profitable task... Even the most powerful/rich oligarch in Russia Deripaska has released the statement few days ago at one of the schools, that destroying Ukraine is completely stupid idea, which would not bring anything to Russia, and that Russian has lost in 4 months every economic progress, which they achieved after the break-up of USSR...

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/tycoon-deripaska-casts-doubt-russia-quest-victory-ukraine-2022-06-28/

Everyone sane in Russia except the ideological leaders and people deeply lost into their propaganda are seeing this from the beginning, and even before beginning of the war, that this conquest will bring Russia absolutely nothing...

It's pointless to look for financial profit in imperial logic.
All the captured territory, industry, resources and population don't mean much compared to the importance of Russian self-perception. 

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, pmp10 said:

All the captured territory, industry, resources and population don't mean much compared to the importance of Russian self-perception. 

This is true. Sad but true.

Btw, I've recently been wondering whether Putin is intentionally lying or whether he's clearly deluded. I suppose there is no way to know the answer to this. As an example of what I mean, after the shopping mall strike he said that Russia doesn't attack civilians and that it always strikes the right targets (I'm paraphrasing but the gist is about right). Now, this is clearly at complete odds with reality. But is he lying or deluded?

Also, given Russia's previous NATO stance, I suppose Putin is sort of admitting Russia's powerlessness of sorts when he says that “If Finland and Sweden wish to, they can join. That’s up to them. They can join whatever they want.” This is not the Putin of last year.

Edited June 30, 2022 by xzar_monty

[Darkpriest]

53 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

This is true. Sad but true.

Btw, I've recently been wondering whether Putin is intentionally lying or whether he's clearly deluded. I suppose there is no way to know the answer to this. As an example of what I mean, after the shopping mall strike he said that Russia doesn't attack civilians and that it always strikes the right targets (I'm paraphrasing but the gist is about right). Now, this is clearly at complete odds with reality. But is he lying or deluded?

Also, given Russia's previous NATO stance, I suppose Putin is sort of admitting Russia's powerlessness of sorts when he says that “If Finland and Sweden wish to, they can join. That’s up to them. They can join whatever they want.” This is not the Putin of last year.

Considering the narrative is they aimed for somemvehicle repair building, which was also destroyed, it is not unreasonable to believe that one of the rockets got off target or operator mistaken the other building as a part of some combine. 

It's just not easy to admit that they have failing targeting equipment/incompetent staff...  So they keep to the narrative off secondary munitions explosions causing fire 

[Malcador]

3 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Russia withdraws from Snake Island. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-says-russian-forces-have-withdrawn-snake-island-2022-06-30/

Makes sense to, just there getting shelled,  I guess that was practice for the Ukrainian troops.  Not sure it changes much w.r.t the Black Sea. 

Appears the withdrawal from Lysyschansk is going well.

Edited June 30, 2022 by Malcador

[Zoraptor]

13 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

Considering the narrative is they aimed for somemvehicle repair building, which was also destroyed, it is not unreasonable to believe that one of the rockets got off target or operator mistaken the other building as a part of some combine. 

It's just not easy to admit that they have failing targeting equipment/incompetent staff...  So they keep to the narrative off secondary munitions explosions causing fire 

You can see the type of missile used from one of the security cams and it was an anti ship system they have a lot of in storage which uses inertial guidance- not a precision system. They hit an industrial building about 100m away from the mall at the same time which was presumably the intended target for both missiles.

[kanisatha]

6 hours ago, Lexx said:

I get it. War needs to stop, but the way they write it just sounds like "waa-waa, let just have russia take what they want, so we can get back to normal again."

It's just so utterly despicable when people are so cavalier about other people's land and lives just so they can get back to their own decadent and carefree lives. And in this case even more deplorable as they're trying to portray themselves as supporting "peace."

[Malcador]

4 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

It's just so utterly despicable when people are so cavalier about other people's land and lives just so they can get back to their own decadent and carefree lives. And in this case even more deplorable as they're trying to portray themselves as supporting "peace."

Not all that outrageous, see conflicts in the third world over the years.

[pmp10]

Interesting bit of info from NATO summit - Ukraine was supposedly provided with 600 tanks. 
Deliveries we know of don't even come up to 300 so I wonder if everyone missed a massive donation. 
Or maybe they are just confusing IFVs and tanks again. 

[Elerond]

On 6/29/2022 at 5:27 PM, Malcador said:

What else do you think Turkey would want ?

Today Erdogan told that Finland and Sweden needs to change their laws and extradite at least 73 "terrorists"

[Mamoulian War]

The continuation of the report about one of the most elite Russian VDV (paratrooper) regiment from Kostroma, which I linked in April, after their failed assault on Kyiv. After operational pause in Belgorod, they were sent to Izyum. It definitely looks like, that the common Russians (at least in the towns where are the soldiers garrisoned) are slowly getting, what they were forced into...

 

Edited June 30, 2022 by Mamoulian War

[Zoraptor]

5 hours ago, pmp10 said:

Interesting bit of info from NATO summit - Ukraine was supposedly provided with 600 tanks. 
Deliveries we know of don't even come up to 300 so I wonder if everyone missed a massive donation. 
Or maybe they are just confusing IFVs and tanks again. 

Bit over 300 tanks are meant to have been delivered (about 250 Polish, 80 Czech). Certainly nowhere near 600 though. Could be including AFVs, could be future plans...

Biden also does have a bit of a tendency to misspeak, eg welcoming Switzerland to the NATO alliance yesterday. Saying the wrong number is a bit less likely to be corrected immediately than getting a nation's name wrong.

[Darkpriest]

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/first-half-fubar-stocks-worst-60-years-bonds-bitcoin-worst-ever

 

With this bad H1, a really bad outlook for Q3 and projected abmysall Q3 earnings just before midterms in US, i wonder how quickly UA will be elbowed into concessions before winter time this year. I doubt Western economies (EU much more than US) are ready to explain their citizens spending money on a foreign countries war with an economic crisis on their hands. 

[Gromnir]

trigger warning:

more than a few o' the folks who were wrong 'bout the possibility o' russia invading ain't giving themselves enough credit. not only were some o' overt and explicit wrong 'bout the invasion, but it seems a few is selective forgetting the criticism they directed at the sources which observed the threat o' a russian invasion were not only real but increasing likely. and yeah, there was many unknowns in early 2022, so predict wrong is hardly an unforgivable sin, but more than a few folks weren't just wrong 'bout the actual invasion. were wrong 'bout the threat and were wrong 'bout the history and they is same folks who habitual indulging deflection, whataboutism and gaslighting. 

so yeah, is hardly surprising to now see reflexive efforts to gaslight. trying to convince folks that being wrong 'bout the russina threat in early 2022 is actual a kinda misunderstood perspicacity and insightfulness? is it any wonder we continue to largely avoid this thread?

so it goes.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited June 30, 2022 by Gromnir

[Malcador]

If only Zelensky had not listened to the members here.

 

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Malcador

[Zoraptor]

Bit of an open question whether there's many defenders left in Lisichansk now anyway, though they had a lot of troops (allegedly 4 brigades plus independents, from a pro Ukraine source) in the area and not many options on retreat routes.

 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Zoraptor

[BruceVC]

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/01/europe/russia-brittney-griner-trial-intl/index.html

This " trial " is just theater and political. Parading her around her around on the Russian news channels as a "criminal " when was caught with 0.702 grams of cannabis oil

I realize its not the US cops involved so it wont automatically create BLM outrage but Im surprised we seeing such little concern?

Edited July 2, 2022 by BruceVC

[Mamoulian War]

On 7/1/2022 at 2:57 AM, Zoraptor said:

Bit of an open question whether there's many defenders left in Lisichansk now anyway, though they had a lot of troops (allegedly 4 brigades plus independents, from a pro Ukraine source) in the area and not many options on retreat routes.

 

According to Ukrainian sources, including GRU, the Ukrainian soldiers did get retreat order few days before the capture of Hirske and Zolote, southeast of Lysychansk-Sievierodonetsk agglomeration. It is announced officially by Ukrainian government more than two weeks. And then the soldiers started controlled retreat from all of of the areas. The current number of soldiers is allegedly about 10% out of the number, which they had there in middle of may. Which is 500-2500 soldiers. No one knows the exact number, but if we go by the example how they handled Zolote/Hirske retreat (Only few dozens of their soldiers out of 3000-4000 were not able to evacuate), then the number should be in the lower interval. We have to keep in mind, that retreating from Lysychansk is much more dangerous, than was the retreat from Zolote/Hirske.