Ukraine Conflict - "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."

[Mamoulian War]

18 hours ago, Keyrock said:

Diplomacy. It would be one thing if I could see any scenario where Ukraine could take back the Donbas, let alone Crimea, but I don't. I understand fighting for freedom and one's homeland, but there comes a point where one needs to recognize an unwinnable situation and make a plea for the best diplomatic deal they can get. Unfortunately, I fear, the time when Ukraine was in the best position to get a deal was nearly a year ago and I can't see them getting back enough territory to put themselves in that position again.

The thing is, there's no scenario where Russia just leaves the Donbas, this isn't like Afghanistan. I'm not going to spend several paragraphs explaining the geopolitical situation, nor the many times Russia has been invaded via the very strip of land they are currently occupying, nor the geography of the Eurasian Steppe and why it's so important. Suffice to say that Russia considers NATO in Ukraine an existential threat, and rightfully so. There is no giving up the Donbas for Russia, it's not happening. I'm Polish, us Poles are all too well acquainted with Russians. We have a very long history with them, a lot of it not exactly friendly. Russians are no strangers to wars of attrition, which is exactly what they're in currently. They excel at this type of war because they have the mentality and the manpower. The Russians will send as many men as it will take for as long as it takes. Even if Ukrainians are prepared to do the same they are facing an overwhelming manpower deficit and Russia has the defender's advantage. In this situation the best the Ukrainians can reasonably hope for is to trade even, but trading even is nowhere near good enough when you are staring at a 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 manpower disadvantage, not to mention that Russia has an order of magnitude larger a population from which to replenish their troops.

Just look how diplomacy with Putin worked out for Prigozhin.

 

Russia plans to fight with NATO for a very long time, to get back their east eauropean colonies back. Ukraine is just the beginning. They spent 20 years of Hybrid Warfare to attack my country aswell with bribing corrupt politicians, which used our state fleet to kidnap Vietnamese businessman from Germany, and have close relations to N’Dranghetta, which have now won elections. When Ukraine falls, in 10 years or less it will be my people dying, and West will be paying much bigger bills for that…

[Mamoulian War]

1 hour ago, Keyrock said:

Oh I agree, I get why many former Eastern Bloc nations wanted to join NATO. But at the same time I can see the Russian perspective and why Ukraine is a red line for Putin. Again, this was no secret, this was known by NATO, they knew damn well that this would trigger a war. Putin made pleas before he invaded trying to prevent this from happening. His demands were a written agreement that Ukraine would never join NATO and the removal of missile bases from his borders, namely in Poland. I always try to see things from both sides (or all sides if there's more than 2). I can see why NATO rejected this, but I can also see it as a reasonable demand from Russia's point of view.

If you really want to see the thing from the perspective of both sides, here is one more perspective from the Russian PoV, which you are still missing. At the end you have also a google translate link from Russian Media.

 

 

[Keyrock]

I get the fear from the NATO side. That access point to Russia's Eurasian Steppe works both ways. Yes, Russia could also line up column after column after column of soldiers and tanks and use it to attack parts of Europe. Hence why this is such a hotly contested strip of land.

Edited October 7, 2023 by Keyrock

[Mamoulian War]

As Lexx said, the NATO fear is just a bull**** excuse. If there would be any fear of NATO, Russia would never reduce their personnel and vehicle numbers by 80% after Finland Joined NATO and doubled the length of NATO borders with Russia. This is the best evidence, that Russia always knew very well, that there is absolutely no threat from NATO to them. They just want to have back their vassals, which they lost during Yeltsin's rule.

[bugarup]

6 hours ago, Keyrock said:

Putin made pleas before he invaded trying to prevent this from happening.

Yeah, nah. That semi-sentient infected ballsack did not want to prevent anything for quite some time, if ever. On the contrary, it was itching for conquest lately and the only question is how much of that was pragmatism of grabbing rich lands/keeping zone of influence and how much revanchistic delusions of grandeur of aging mediocrity of a dictator whose grip on its country had't been challenged for a long, long time. It is wary of USA, not sure how much of that is inheritance of sovietistan's archenemy -- that thing is very fond of sovietistan's "legacy" -- or deliberately constructed bogeyman for its country's people that had gotten out of hand and affected those that created it in the first place, but it's there alright. It definitely didn't think EU was a threat, and to be completely honest it was deserved - have Ukraine folded overnight, I'm certain EU would just tut disapprovingly and invoke some weak-ass excuse of "sanctions", like it was with Crimea in 2015 or Georgia in 2008. So "NATO is a threat" is just a piece of propaganda. 

Anyway. It's kind of funny in "really not funny at all" way that russia's blitzkrieg turned into blyatzkrieg largely because of russia's signature penchant for lying about everything all the time and corruption of immeasurable proportions. Fingers crossed they will finish the job eventually.

[Malcador]

6 hours ago, HoonDing said:

The Baltics are next on the list.

Assuming Russia thinks they can attack a nuclear armed state, for some reason. Never understood why people buy this from Ukraine.  Not like NATO is going to snap into slumber even if Ukraine loses somehow

[Zoraptor]

Really guys, lay off on the special pleading. Pick Russia stronk! so everyone frightened of them or Russia weak! so no threat and stick to one or the other. Swapping between the two post to post is pretty silly.

3 hours ago, Keyrock said:

I get the fear from the NATO side. That access point to Russia's Eurasian Steppe works both ways. Yes, Russia could also line up column after column after column of soldiers and tanks and use it to attack parts of Europe. Hence why this is such a hotly contested strip of land.

Yeah, nah. If it would have been a close run thing in the 70s or 80s when it was USSR/ WP vs NATO it wouldn't have been close at all once the WP and part of the USSR had swapped sides- and the start point had shifted back, what, 2500+km in places? End of the day it's, what, 750mn people vs 150mn now, and the 150mn don't really have any advantages at all. Not even nukes, since both sides have them.

In any case, it's clear 'the west' would use nukes in exactly the same circumstances Russia would, ie if an invasion looks like it would be successful.

 

Edited October 7, 2023 by Zoraptor

[pmp10]

On 10/6/2023 at 10:23 PM, Keyrock said:

Diplomacy. It would be one thing if I could see any scenario where Ukraine could take back the Donbas, let alone Crimea, but I don't. I understand fighting for freedom and one's homeland, but there comes a point where one needs to recognize an unwinnable situation and make a plea for the best diplomatic deal they can get. Unfortunately, I fear, the time when Ukraine was in the best position to get a deal was nearly a year ago and I can't see them getting back enough territory to put themselves in that position again.

And how do you get Russia to abide by any diplomatic arrangement?
Oil price cap was about the final stick that west had available.

[BruceVC]

9 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Really guys, lay off on the special pleading. Pick Russia stronk! so everyone frightened of them or Russia weak! so no threat and stick to one or the other. Swapping between the two post to post is pretty silly.

 

 

Well two things can be true at the same time and this would apply to Russia and what people think about there military effectiveness but also the  military threat they represent 

And we can use Ukraine as an example to demonstrate that, Russia didnt defeat Ukraine in 2 months and we all seen the numerous failures with there military strategies and how ineffectively they do certain  things. But they  have successfully destroyed cities, killed thousands of Ukrainians and continue to use missiles to attack infrastructure and spread terror

And no country would want to face this, so you live in fear of a Russian attack but that doesnt mean you think there military is the problem. Its the overall strategy they will use to achieve victory. And also a small country like Estonia would not be able to create the same resistance like Ukraine so it differs from country to country 

So you can definitely criticize aspects of the Russian military but thats not the same thing as saying most East European countries  dont have a legitimate fear of Russian invasion 

[BruceVC]

12 hours ago, Keyrock said:

I get the fear from the NATO side. That access point to Russia's Eurasian Steppe works both ways. Yes, Russia could also line up column after column after column of soldiers and tanks and use it to attack parts of Europe. Hence why this is such a hotly contested strip of land.

I would assume you now see that NATO was never going to attack Russia which means that was not a  justification for the invasion 

You might now be asking "so why did Russia attack Ukraine " and this is more subjective but very relevant. I can share my opinion if you interested and other people can give there's?

Let me know if you want to debate this 

[xzar_monty]

On 10/7/2023 at 4:02 PM, Lexx said:

That's some deja vu. i'll just repeat what I wrote 2 years ago: If russia wouldn't be such a huge **** to all its neighbors, maybe they wouldn't feel the need to join NATO.

Yeah, pretty much this. There is no "NATO expansion", there's just "countries close to Russia trying to get as much safety as possible by desperately wanting to join NATO".

(Finland was an exception for a long time, and Finland's policy can be criticized, even in very strong terms. And has been, lemmetellya.)

[Gorth]

2 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Yeah, pretty much this. There is no "NATO expansion", there's just "countries close to Russia trying to get as much safety as possible by desperately wanting to join NATO".

(Finland was an exception for a long time, and Finland's policy can be criticized, even in very strong terms. And has been, lemmetellya.)

After November 1939, it would be surprising if Finland felt anything other than resentment against it's neighbour. But then, they sometimes get all friendly with Sweden who historically was no better than the Soviet Union

[xzar_monty]

58 minutes ago, Gorth said:

After November 1939, it would be surprising if Finland felt anything other than resentment against it's neighbour. But then, they sometimes get all friendly with Sweden who historically was no better than the Soviet Union

In some sense, yes, probably no better. But in terms of dependability and lack of arbitrary cruelty, such as rape and slaughter of parents / children in front of their children / parents, Sweden was an awful lot better. So, even two subjugating powers can be wildly different, culturally.

And once the powers have become other than subjugating powers: well, just make a guess as to which neighbour has been more dependable in everything in the past 70 years. Russia is a terrible, terrible country. (Also, in the 1980s, the mighty Soviet Union was just a pitiful country. Oh the Finnish youths who went there as hockey players and got some rubles and were extremely happy about it and then found out to their utter astonishment that in the mighty Moscow there was nothing worthwhile they could buy with their money. Seriously, nothing. What that aroused, more than anything, was pity.)

[xzar_monty]

On 10/7/2023 at 5:49 PM, Mamoulian War said:

Russia plans to fight with NATO for a very long time, to get back their east eauropean colonies back. Ukraine is just the beginning. They spent 20 years of Hybrid Warfare to attack my country aswell with bribing corrupt politicians, which used our state fleet to kidnap Vietnamese businessman from Germany, and have close relations to N’Dranghetta, which have now won elections. When Ukraine falls, in 10 years or less it will be my people dying, and West will be paying much bigger bills for that…

I don't know how any of this is going to end, but it is very interesting to note how open Russia has been about its plans. For instance, shortly after the start of the war, Peskov pointed out that if Viktor Medvedchuk's policies had been allowed to foster in Ukraine, there would have been no special operation.

Well, Medvedchuk received an awful lot of money from the Kremlin for his project of providing Ukraine with full-on Russian propaganda with the intention of keeping Ukraine very firmly in Russia's grasp, Belarus-style. This was what Russia was prepared to accept as Ukraine's position. When the project failed, thanks to some rather drastic decisions from Ukraine's leaders, Russia went to war.

So, in effect, Russia was and is not prepared to accept the existence of Ukraine as a sovereign country who makes its own decisions. It's either subservience or destruction for Ukraine, as far as Russia is concerned. And Russia was and is very open about this.

All talk about diplomacy as a tool to prevent this war is essentially nonsense, given the perimeters of what Russia was prepared to accept. The war in Ukraine is manifestly not a failure of diplomacy. (Heck, that's the tragic truth of why you need an army in the first place: if your opponent is not prepared to talk about things rationally and simply attacks you, diplomacy is a worthless tool and what you need to do is bring the opponent down, physically. Taking this to an individual level, this is the same reason why it's probably a good idea to be able to hurt someone very badly, as unpleasant as that is, because you may need to, one day.)

And yes, the recent developments in Slovakia: man, oh man, that's depressing.

[xzar_monty]

@Gorth: Now that we got into talking about good neighbours, you may be interested to know that both a gas pipeline and a communications cable between Finland and Estonia (underwater, that is) have been damaged. The Finnish government will hold a press conference about this in two hours. This is not taken to be accidental in any way whatsoever.

Given the neighbours that we've got, I'm pretty certain, as I'm sure you are as well, that the culprit has to be Sweden.

[BruceVC]

10 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

@Gorth: Now that we got into talking about good neighbours, you may be interested to know that both a gas pipeline and a communications cable between Finland and Estonia (underwater, that is) have been damaged. The Finnish government will hold a press conference about this in two hours. This is not taken to be accidental in any way whatsoever.

Given the neighbours that we've got, I'm pretty certain, as I'm sure you are as well, that the culprit has to be Sweden.

Are you being serious? Why would friendly  Sweden do that, you joking right?

[Gorth]

16 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

Are you being serious? Why would friendly  Sweden do that, you joking right?

Please don't tell me only Nordic people get the joke

[Malcador]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/09/biden-israel-ukraine-aid/

In crisis, opportunity

[BruceVC]

14 minutes ago, Gorth said:

Please don't tell me only Nordic people get the joke

I dont get it, please explain ?

[Elerond]

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

I dont get it, please explain ?

Finland's northern neighbor is our Nato partner Norway

In south we have our Nato partner Estonia

In west there is unallied Sweden 

In east, there is great yellow and we don't talk about it

Also every nation except Sweden (and yellow, which we don't talk about) around Baltic sea are members of Nato

So it has to be Sweden

[xzar_monty]

It will be interesting to see how this one develops. The responsible party is quite obviously Russia; they are the only ones who would want to destroy this kind of infrastructure between Finland and Estonia.

But the really interesting part will be the Russia apologists. Will they ignore this, as if it never happened? Will they point to Finland and Estonia's nasty Nato behaviour as a justification? Will they point to how awful a country the US is, so Russia is effectively guilt-free and actually rather nice? I'm pretty sure we will see all of this, but the exact phrasings will be interesting to see.

[BruceVC]

9 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

It will be interesting to see how this one develops. The responsible party is quite obviously Russia; they are the only ones who would want to destroy this kind of infrastructure between Finland and Estonia.

But the really interesting part will be the Russia apologists. Will they ignore this, as if it never happened? Will they point to Finland and Estonia's nasty Nato behaviour as a justification? Will they point to how awful a country the US is, so Russia is effectively guilt-free and actually rather nice? I'm pretty sure we will see all of this, but the exact phrasings will be interesting to see.

How serious is the damage? How soon till  its repaired 

It will be interesting to see the response from Vatniks and Russian apologists especially after the denial of the Nord pipe being attacked

What it tells me is something I already believed, Russia does have the Special Force training to commit this type of attack

[xzar_monty]

9 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

What it tells me is something I already believed, Russia does have the Special Force training to commit this type of attack

To paraphrase the historian Timothy Snyder: Russia does not have the capacity to make itself stronger, so it is committed to weakening everyone else as much as it can. Heartbreaking to think of the human waste in all of this: with its population, size and natural resources, Russia could be a leading light it technology, engineering, what have you -- it could produce superb machines, computers and all the rest of it. It chooses not to[*], even if education levels have at least been quite good -- I'm pretty sure they're going to plummet now. (Lovely trivia: during the Cold War period, the Soviet Union was unable to produce even a decent car, but one thing that it was in fact able to build well was nuclear fallout bunkers underneath major cities. Zelenskyi and his staff took shelter in one during the first weeks of the war.)

As for the damage, my understanding is that the gas pipe will take months to fix. It has taken a big hit. Not sure about the information cable and its condition.

 

[*] A former Finnish prime minister went (very dubiously) to work for the Russians in order to build better trade networks with them. He subsequently told that all the plans had to be abandoned, nothing became of any of them. Russians simply couldn't get their heads around a trade arrangement that wasn't build on exploitation and cheating. They just couldn't co-operate, they wanted to steal. So the whole idea was scrapped.

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

What it tells me is something I already believed, Russia does have the Special Force training to commit this type of attack

Submarine, almost certainly, not special forces.

Don't think anyone disputed that Russia could have hit Nordstream, just that it would have been completely moronic and counterproductive for them to have done so. This one makes far more sense for Russia to have done since (1) it benefits them (2) there was no response to the Nordstream attack so it's open slather on infrastructure and (3) the time of year means no gas over Winter.

Better hope they're keeping a close eye on that pipeline from Norway. If that goes up Europe is in for Interesting Times.

[BruceVC]

15 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

Submarine, almost certainly, not special forces.

Don't think anyone disputed that Russia could have hit Nordstream, just that it would have been completely moronic and counterproductive for them to have done so. This one makes far more sense for Russia to have done since (1) it benefits them (2) there was no response to the Nordstream attack so it's open slather on infrastructure and (3) the time of year means no gas over Winter.

Better hope they're keeping a close eye on that pipeline from Norway. If that goes up Europe is in for Interesting Times.

Here is  a question for you and this aligns into why Russia did have a valid reason for attacking the Nord pipe (but we dont know for certain who attacked the Nord pipe )

I assume you agree Russia is behind the attack on the Finnish pipe, so why would Russia attack the Finnish pipe? What do they achieve by doing this from your perspective