Ukraine Conflict - "There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare"

[Malcador]

Putin announcing HL3.

[Lexx]

Since they are still trying to recruit people, I fear that special announcement won't be "we are leaving Ukraine."

/Edit: Here's more for the war crime list.

 

Edited September 20, 2022 by Lexx

[Malcador]

Okay, don't mind the music in that one.  Also might not be a war crime if there aren't civilians present, as if they fled in fighting or whatever.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Malcador

[Lexx]

Looks like nobody believes this referendum is a good idea.

 

[Elerond]

It is because of the fact if referendums are held and areas are joined to Russia, it will mean in current situation that areas that Russia claim to be Russia will be held by Ukraine, which means that it can't anymore be special military operation but a war where Russia is under attack. Which means that all the laws considering state of war will come in effect and that isn't usually good for business.

[kanisatha]

I think the referendums are an attempt by Putin to mollify China and India by being able to try and tell them he is only fighting to protect Russian territory and not invading Ukrainian territory (since they both are veru concerned about sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine). It's silly, though, because not even Xi is going to be fooled by any of this. Smacks of desperation in Moscow.

Edit: Posted at the same time as @Elerond. We're essentially making the same point.

Edited September 20, 2022 by kanisatha

[BruceVC]

41 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Looks like nobody believes this referendum is a good idea.

 

The Russian stock market lost 8% of its value today  in anticipation of the full war announcement ....investors dont like war and the instability it brings

Edited September 20, 2022 by BruceVC

[Malcador]

 

Huh. Now that's interesting.

[Chilloutman]

sounds like mobilization is on the menu, now lets see how Russian public will react

[xzar_monty]

16 minutes ago, Chilloutman said:

sounds like mobilization is on the menu, now lets see how Russian public will react

This can get quite interesting. Contrary to most other fascist states, Russia has made a concentrated effort to DEmobilize its citizens, not mobilize them, and it has been relatively successful in this: "the rulers" and "the people" exist in two different realms altogether, and these realms almost never meet (everyone knows there have been no real elections for quite some time, for instance, so "the people" don't even affect "the rulers" via that mechanism). Thus, a significant proportion of the population has been able to live thinking that the war in Ukraine has nothing to do with them.

A mobilization will change this dynamic immediately.

[pmp10]

25 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

This can get quite interesting. Contrary to most other fascist states, Russia has made a concentrated effort to DEmobilize its citizens, not mobilize them, and it has been relatively successful in this: "the rulers" and "the people" exist in two different realms altogether, and these realms almost never meet (everyone knows there have been no real elections for quite some time, for instance, so "the people" don't even affect "the rulers" via that mechanism). Thus, a significant proportion of the population has been able to live thinking that the war in Ukraine has nothing to do with them.

A mobilization will change this dynamic immediately.

Realistically Russia would need only a small portion of their reserves, so that passivity need not change.
Especially if they target the 'right' conscripts.

Well, Putin is 2 hours late for supposed speech so either there are last minute negotiations or he is just recompensing all the waiting he had to do in Teheran.  

Edited September 20, 2022 by pmp10

[Malcador]

Politicians can't be on time any more.

Looks like nothing today/tonight

 

Edited September 20, 2022 by Malcador

[Chilloutman]

25 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Politicians can't be on time any more.

Looks like nothing today/tonight

 

maybe he wanted to announce great results of referendums but they told him its wrong day

[xzar_monty]

In one sense, the delay is obviously meaningless (or can be; depends on the cause). But in another, it's yet another example of poor planning and poor execution. Or just maybe making it up as he goes along.

Ahem. Just realized that "poor execution" up there. Sorry.

[Malcador]

Pretty sure it's meaningless in end. Is moved to coincide with start of the business day in the eastern part of the country (well or not, Moscow's 7 hours behind Khabarovsk, damn).

Obviously, the asiatic horde button has been pressed.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Malcador

[Lexx]

How many hours till they wake up?

Edited September 20, 2022 by Lexx

[Zoraptor]

8 hours ago, majestic said:

He kind of missed the footnote "unless it's against Kurds" I suppose.

Or the Cypriots. Or the Greeks. Or the Armenians. Or the Syrians. Not many neighbours the Turks haven't invaded.

The Cypriots are particularly egregious, since it's just about exactly the same playbook Russia has used in Ukraine. And included pretty blatant attacks on actual allies too, like the Brits (who bravely ran away).

Erdogan's view on Ukraine- as with most things international- is predicated pretty much entirely on neo Ottomanism. Crimean Tartarate/ Khanate was an Ottoman protectorate for most of its existence and much like Aleppo, Mosul, Cyprus, Yerevan and Rhodes he and a lot of Turks believe it's 'really' Turkish. Just wait for the suggestion that it not go back to Ukraine, but be held in trust pending final status by a neutral 3rd party (ie Turkey).

5 hours ago, Malcador said:

Reminded myself that that genius Wesley Clark gave an interview this past week, sounded almost some kind of Wehraboo as he was trying to dump on Russia's military by referring to their reliance on their reputation from WW2 - which was unfairly earned as they just threw conscripts at the Germans and only won from Lend-Lease.  Any moron can wear stars, I guess.

Wesley Clark is a bona fide cretin who still packs a sad about James Blunt not starting WW3 when ordered to/ the Russians ruining his Imperial Triumph by grabbing Pristina airport. His invasion of Yugoslavia was inept, and he was responsible as commander of occupying powers for massive ethnic cleansing. Ego inversely proportional to talent, and as prior he has a stupendous ego.

(The US should never pick a Clark to lead an army, they're inveterate glory hounds. 1944 Mark Clark let the Germans retreat more or less unmolested from the Gustav Line because he wanted to go get on the talkies liberating Rome instead and be remembered for the ages. History had the last laugh though, since he liberated Rome on June 5th...)

3 hours ago, Lexx said:

Edit: Here's more for the war crime list.

Use of thermite is not a warcrime. I guess at least they've called it thermite, it's usually labelled as white phosphorus, stupidly, since Russia has no WP munitions of that type, maybe someone has finally got around to circulating the memo.

Reports have however consistently given thermite all the properties of WP, eg the constant and quite obviously orchestrated use of 'flesh eating' as a descriptor dating back at least as far as May. The reason WP is proscribed* (but thermite isn't; WP is legal for smoke though) is that WP will stick to you and eat right the way through to the bone. Try washing it off and it just gets worse. It'll also completely ruin your lungs if you breathe in the vapour. You wouldn't want to be hit by thermite either but its effects are because... it's hot- and you wouldn't really want to be hit by anything coming out of a grad warhead.

Thermite is incendiary, but it's also anti materiel. It's not as hot as a penetrator from an ATGM or similar, but it'll do the job on most light vehicles and is inherently top down.

*Main users of WP on civilians are, of course, Israel and the US. Which is probably part of the reason they've decided to talk about thermite nowadays instead of calling everything WP. If you want a 'fun' five minutes try an image search for phosphorus burns. Pretty much all of them are Palestinians, and rather a lot of them are children. Sorry, I forgot this thread is only for talking about how bad Russia is...

[Lexx]

Yes, using the weapon in itself is not a war crime, but showering a civilian village in flames is. Funny, I was wondering how long it will take till the first whataboutism post shows up. This thread is about ukraine and russia, if you want to talk about Israel then maybe make your own thread, nobody is going to silence you. Else just shove it up your pants, I don't care.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Lexx

[Malcador]

31 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Yes, using the weapon in itself is not a war crime, but showering a civilian village in flames is. Funny, I was wondering how long it will take till the first whataboutism post shows up. This thread is about ukraine and russia, if you want to talk about Israel then maybe make your own thread, nobody is going to silence you. Else just shove it up your pants, I don't care.

It's not necessarily though, if the village has civilians present and they know it then it is.  Lots of wiggle room when they did up these rules. with WP they could also have the excuse that they were just obscuring themselves. 

RuAF sure loves incendiary weapons though - I guess this village was out of range to get thermobaric'd into oblivion at least.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Malcador

[Zoraptor]

32 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Yes, using the weapon in itself is not a war crime, but showering a civilian village in flames is. Funny, I was wondering how long it will take till the first whataboutism post shows up. This thread is about ukraine and russia, if you want to talk about Israel then maybe make your own thread, nobody is going to silence you. Else just shove it up your pants, I don't care.

Do you a deal. You stop claiming things are warcrimes when they aren't. I'll stop pointing it out. Sounds fair to me.

Showering a civilian village with flames is not a warcrime in and of itself. If it were pretty much everyone would be guilty- kind of the point. The excuse is always: military targets present. Which is a legitimate excuse. It's a legitimate excuse when it's made by Saudi Arabia, or the US or Russia or anyone else. Don't like it? Well then, rewrite International Law to remove that excuse. Make sure to appoint someone unbiased and omnipotent as War Crimes arbiter though, because if you rewrite that you're going to have a lot of cases if applied even handedly. Indeed, applied even handedly and without fear or favour it'd probably stop every single war in its tracks, full stop.

Still not whataboutism either. If you're making warcrimes accusations showing that similar events weren't is directly relevant. Solution is as above.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Zoraptor

[Mamoulian War]

The wait time on alleged Russian speech has a very interesting side effect

 

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/09/20/7368367/

 

Top google searches today in Russia were “how to leave Russia”, and “How to defer military service”.

Edited September 21, 2022 by Mamoulian War

[BruceVC]

5 hours ago, Lexx said:

Yes, using the weapon in itself is not a war crime, but showering a civilian village in flames is. Funny, I was wondering how long it will take till the first whataboutism post shows up. This thread is about ukraine and russia, if you want to talk about Israel then maybe make your own thread, nobody is going to silence you. Else just shove it up your pants, I don't care.

Absolutely, Zora cant help himself. And then he will justify his defense of Russian war crimes with some irrelevant technical reason and   say something like " yes but you  cant call it a war crime because even though hundreds of men, women and children died and civilians buildings were destroyed the Ukrainians had a sniper in one building so its justified because that makes it a legitimate military target ", or " the Ukrainians are to blame because they fighting back, stop fighting  back and you wont see this response from the Russians  "

But he genuinely cant help himself, its a compulsion  but he means well so dont take it seriously.

And it is whataboutism, its his form of whataboutism 

 

 

[Lexx]

6 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Do you a deal. You stop claiming things are warcrimes when they aren't. I'll stop pointing it out. Sounds fair to me.

Showering a civilian village with flames is not a warcrime in and of itself. If it were pretty much everyone would be guilty- kind of the point. The excuse is always: military targets present. Which is a legitimate excuse. It's a legitimate excuse when it's made by Saudi Arabia, or the US or Russia or anyone else. Don't like it? Well then, rewrite International Law to remove that excuse. Make sure to appoint someone unbiased and omnipotent as War Crimes arbiter though, because if you rewrite that you're going to have a lot of cases if applied even handedly. Indeed, applied even handedly and without fear or favour it'd probably stop every single war in its tracks, full stop.

Still not whataboutism either. If you're making warcrimes accusations showing that similar events weren't is directly relevant. Solution is as above.

 

Quote

Protection of civilians and civilian objects

1. It is prohibited in all circumstances to make the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects the object of attack by incendiary weapons.

2. It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons.

3. It is further prohibited to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by means of incendiary weapons other than air-delivered incendiary weapons, except when such military objective is clearly separated from the concentration of civilians and all feasible precautions are taken with a view to limiting the incendiary effects to the military objective and to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.

4. It is prohibited to make forests or other kinds of plant cover the object of attack by incendiary weapons except when such natural elements are used to cover, conceal or camouflage combatants or other military objectives, or are themselves military objectives.

 

I can even go a step further and tell you that Israel did not sign it ... but Russia did. Woops. Also, yes, it is whataboutism since you are defending russia with pointing out that others do it as well. Again, just make your own thread about it, nobody in the west is going to try to silence you. Which is, by the way, one of the perks we have here - you can speak your mind without having to fear to go to the gulag, or re-education camp, or getting drafted to die in a stupid war as cannon fodder.

Edited September 21, 2022 by Lexx

[xzar_monty]

So it's partial mobilization, then.

[pmp10]

A little surprising Putin announced it himself.
I thought that Shoigu was there for that. 

Edited September 21, 2022 by pmp10