ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

the USA day shift is here; our thread police are the fucking worst and it's me

― dig your way out of the shit with a gold magic shovel! (Karl Malone), Thursday, February 24, 2022 11:16 AM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Nah it’s not you Karl (it’s never you), and I do think posts of predictive nature is fine, if only because it helps with anxiety, it’s just that some will insult or demean people who don’t agree with their predictions and it’s gross.

Can't really square this feeling of seeing something historically atrocious happening with running victory laps c&ping posts that got it wrong but ok.

yes otm

thread police is not rly it lads its have a fucking word with yrself police which isnt policing its someone saying to u have a word with yrself

Another one to follow on Twitter. He's not an analyst or a journalist but he posted a very prescient thread back in December, correctly analyzing Putin's intentions (which I linked in the original thread revive):

https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch

KM and VHS, the discussion moved on a while ago and this is getting extremely tiresome

of all things, second captains had a decent intro focusing on putins speech taking a lot from a paper he published last year ito "justification" etc

k

I would really like to be able to use this thread to understand what's happening in Ukraine so it would be great if it were less petty/stupid here? I say as someone not knowledgeable about the topic.

Thanks for the twitter follows upthread btw, those are coming in very instructive.

Alperovitch thinks the West needs to be careful that severe economic sanctions don't provoke Russia into a broader conflict. He makes the counterintuitive suggestion that putting intermediate range missiles in the Baltics may be a better response and ultimately less destabilizing than sanctions.

Russia would need to believe they would be used, which seems unlikely, but idk.

On the analysis errors, it has been interesting to see everyone from Russian political scientists to EU security analysts and journalists to critics from / of the U.S. like Mark Ames and Gary Brechter, to the dope who runs RT’s English web service all taking the same line of ‘we were wrong and we don’t know why’:

Not just our rationality that failed us, but also Russia’s. Few among Russia’s expert class believed this would happen. Contradicts most things we know about the logic, aims and means of Russia’s foreign policy.
So I feel I was wrong together with the Russians, not with the West https://t.co/CLWioWxQFp

— Kadri Liik (@KadriLiik) February 24, 2022

I realise that's not the main point here, but: ppl use the term postmodern in the weirdest ways

Xpost

I just saw that thread on Twitter too, he did seem to be quite prescient.

james meek and paul rogers (a v good, all too rare left poltics military analyst), were being more cautious.

Fizzles were you also listening to a Mare Nostrum podcast on SC? After that Paul Rogers excerpt, the podcast queued up but I didn’t notice til it was over cause I had just been listening to my own ambient playlist (not on SC), with some of the same artists. Don’t think SC has embedded itself that deeply into my neurons yet?

I realise that's not the main point here, but: ppl use the term postmodern in the weirdest ways

Maybe "post-reality" would be a more accurate term. People choose to pretend aspects of the real world do not exist because acknowledging them would create too much cognitive dissonance.

Something I saw in passing which was like a real life #onethread was that the west/US was uncomfortable imposing the most severe sanctions (removal from SWIFT) not because they're worried about further provoking Russia but because it would weaken the dollar and boost crypto currency, which Russia could in turn use to circumvent sanctions (as if there were not another reason to hate or distrust crypto).

Fizzles were you also listening to a Mare Nostrum podcast on SC? After that Paul Rogers excerpt, the podcast queued up but I didn’t notice til it was over cause I had just been listening to my own ambient playlist (not on SC), with some of the same artists. Don’t think SC has embedded itself that deeply into my neurons yet?

I thought this was interesting/sad/scary:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/world/europe/putin-russia-ukraine.html

On the country’s internet, still mostly uncensored, Russians saw their vaunted military sow carnage in a country in which millions of them had relatives and friends.

This missile attack is brought to you by Applebees!!

THIS is CNN... pic.twitter.com/JIUIhrQBHh

— ForAmerica (@ForAmerica) February 24, 2022

I feel like the west has been laboring under the assumption that Putin may be powermad and a klepto, but that he's a shrewd, rational actor playing 4D chess or whatever

But maybe he's just a madman after all? All this talk of nuking anyone that steps in to assist Ukraine is pretty unprecedented

Maybe he's trying the "crazy uncle" approach that seems to have worked for Trump?

From that Times piece:

During the pandemic, analysts had noticed a change in Mr. Putin — a man who isolated himself in a bubble of social distancing without parallel among Western leaders. In isolation, he appeared to become more aggrieved and more emotional, and increasingly spoke about his mission in stark historical terms. His public remarks descended ever deeper into distorted historiography as he spoke of the need to right perceived historical wrongs suffered by Russia over the centuries at the hands of the West.

The political scientist Gleb O. Pavlovsky, a close adviser to Mr. Putin until falling out with him in 2011, said he was stunned by the president’s dark description of Ukraine as a dire threat to Russia in his hourlong speech to the nation on Monday.

“I have no clue where he got all that — he seems to be reading something totally strange,” Mr. Pavlovsky said. “He’s become an isolated man, more isolated than Stalin was.”

Ms. Stanovaya, the analyst, said she now felt that Mr. Putin’s heightened obsession with history in recent years had become key to understanding his motivation. After all, the war against Ukraine appeared impossible to explain strategically, since it had no clear resolution and would inevitably only increase anti-Russian sentiment abroad and escalate Russia’s confrontation with the NATO alliance.

“Putin has brought himself to a place in which he sees it as more important, more interesting, more compelling to fight for restoring historical justice than for Russia’s strategic priorities,” Ms. Stanovaya said. “This morning, I realized that a certain shift has taken place.”

I'd say the nuke talk is crazy, but it is calculated, too. The US/NATO will be heavily inclined to funnel aid to Ukraine via one or more sympathetic, smaller nations, as a less confrontational option; Putin's threat is designed to deter such vulnerable nations from pinning a target on themselves. He's daring NATO to push all their chips into the pot, by entering the battlefield. His calculation would appear to be that they never will.

that is frightening

xp

Well they’ve taken Chernobyl so that’s uh not great

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/chernobyl-power-plant-captured-by-russian-forces-ukrainian-official-2022-02-24/

i believe this will be bad for russia, soon and eventually. it makes no sense, why they're doing this, other than just empire building. so, in other words, shades of 2003 iraq invasion, which also made no sense for the united states, but happened anyway

i know nothing about war other than reading about them and playing videogames, but i would guess the significance of capturing a power plant is that the aggressor immediately gains the ability to cut off power or otherwise affect the regional grid (?), and also that the military can use the newly captured power plant as a forward base of operations?

xpost Well, they also had the Chechnya fiasco, and that didn't end well either

I assume Chernobyl has been offline for decades..?

That NY Times (the bit quoted) seems like nonsense.

Thus thread from December was a sober analysis, and pretty accurate, so far.

Quoting it from where he thinks it will go, and where it ends for Putin

He is unlikely to invade Western Ukraine but can relatively easily split the country in half along the Dnieper and establish a permanent buffer zone between Europe and Russia, as well as a land bridge to Crimea

— Dmitri Alperovitch (@DAlperovitch) December 21, 2021

The most rational explanation I’ve heard is that it’s a shorter route to Kyiv and if the Russians set up a base there you can guarantee no one will fuck with it

xp full disclosure this is from a quora question from 5 years ago, but it seems the nuclear reactors were decommissioned back in 2000, but that also...

...However, parts of the plant remain operational to this day. The massive electrical switchyard is still live, and continues to be operated from the Phase I electrical control room located in the deaerator building between Reactors 1 and 2 (in below photograph). The switchyard handles some of the highest voltages in the European distribution system, 750 kV. Chernobyl is a major distribution hub in northern Ukraine for electricity originating at the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant to the southwest.

iirc correctly there was internationally funded containment work and obv the exclusion zone is radioactive. it’s directly in the line to kyev from the north.

good nyt article i read earlier in the year here.

xpost to andy the g

I'm thru with thinking of "he is unlikely"s.

I don’t have anything to say about Ukraine and Russia despite my Russophillia. My friends who’ve asked me are, for whatever reason, surprised that I know about Russian rock bands or computers but don’t know anything about Ukrainian and Russian politics. I will say, as a Russian speaker, the translations I’ve read or heard are strange. Either the translations are good and my ability to understand Russian is now terrible, or the translations are bad and that’s surprising because I was under the impression many of the world’s news services had plenty of Russian speakers on staff. Maybe they’ve been replaced with Persian or Mandarin speakers.

I don’t know anything about politics or the military but I will say this about the attacks in Chornobyl. I feel like it’s mostly politics to whip up fear. Vyshhorod is where many of the electrical services for Kyiv operate from. I imagine they are more interested in the operating power plants rather than the sarcophagus!

biden's speaking now

Ah, I see someone beat me to it. This:

> ...However, parts of the plant remain operational to this day. The massive electrical switchyard is still live, and continues to be operated from the Phase I electrical control room located in the deaerator building between Reactors 1 and 2 (in below photograph). The switchyard handles some of the highest voltages in the European distribution system, 750 kV. Chernobyl is a major distribution hub in northern Ukraine for electricity originating at the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant to the southwest.

is absolutely correct. For perspective, Chornobyl is as far away to Kyiv as Springfield is to Boston.

Well, Ukraine seems to be putting up a hell of fight so far... I imagine they're a bit more motivated than the invaders

And this:

At least 735 people have been arrested at anti-war protests across Russia today following the invasion of Ukraine, an independent monitor says.

Demonstrators were detained in 40 cities, according to OVD-Info, which tracks arrests at opposition rallies.

More than 330 people have been detained in Moscow, it says.

Maybe "post-reality" would be a more accurate term. People choose to pretend aspects of the real world do not exist because acknowledging them would create too much cognitive dissonance.

Hmmm maybe I'm missing something but that describes most societies through the ages, I think?

Just in terms of predictors screwing up by assuming an excessive level of rationality we have the example of the belief in Balance of Power pre-WWI.

I guess I also get suspicious of the use of postmodern with an EU flag next to it because it reminds me of ppl who use postmodern and multicultural as synonyms.

Weird to have this conversation on a thread while events happen tho, might revive a postmodernism thread or something.

This presser is the most raucous I've heard in awhile

"I've read everything he's written. Have you read--ehh, I'm not gonna be a wiseguy."

"C'mon, man!"

Biden indicating they will bolster number of troops in Germany, what a timeline.

This presser is the most raucous I've heard in awhile

― Andy the Grasshopper

I hate to use "they" but they want American troops sent.

It felt like Biden was about to say, "Jesus Christ, do you really think we're going to fight this motherfucker?"

I'd guess there will be quite a few troops sent, and even more contractors and military-industrial complex sent in. as someone pointed out here (and elsewhere), i think, an occupation is very good for business. on the more formal us military troops, if russia takes all of ukraine, the pledge to defend "every inch of NATO" suddenly becomes much more intense, as that brings them right up the borders of Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary.

Baltic states as well, which i would think are most at risk after Moldova