Yes let’s mock the Baltic states desire to protect itself from an imperial and nuclear power that just started a war on a neighbour.
Good faith vs Bad faith
― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, 24 February 2022 22:36 (two years ago) link
Rusya'nın Ukrayna'ya yönelik işgal operasyonuna karşı Moskova başta olmak üzere birçok kentte eylemler düzenleniyor. Moskova'daki Boulevard Ring çevre yolunda toplanan yüzlerce kişi "Savaşa Hayır" sloganlarıyla yürüyüş gerçekleştirdi. pic.twitter.com/QRwLaKLox7— Yeryüzü Postası (@yeryuzupostasi) February 24, 2022
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 24 February 2022 22:44 (two years ago) link
― Van Horn Street, Thursday, 24 February 2022 bookmarkflaglink
I'm just mocking you.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 24 February 2022 22:46 (two years ago) link
137 Ukrainian soldiers died today in order not to let Ukraine be conquered. And 20hour long battle against a mighty state showed they succeded. 316 wounded. – Zelensky said. 57 civilians were killed by Russia, 169 were wounded according to Health Ministry.— Nataliya Gumenyuk (@ngumenyuk) February 24, 2022
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 24 February 2022 22:59 (two years ago) link
xp - they say that jerk reflexes bypass the brain
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Thursday, 24 February 2022 23:00 (two years ago) link
So you just farted then?
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 24 February 2022 23:05 (two years ago) link
Charming, everyone
― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 24 February 2022 23:08 (two years ago) link
can you petty dickheads (you know who you are) either grow the fuck up or go throw sand at each other somewhere else & not ITT because JESUS FUCKING CHRIST
― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 24 February 2022 23:13 (two years ago) link
^otm
― rob, Thursday, 24 February 2022 23:27 (two years ago) link
jesus
Reportedly audio from Snake Island in Black Sea:-This is a Russian military ship. I suggest you lay down your weapons and surrender to avoid bloodshed and unnecessary victims. Otherwise we will open fire on you. -Russian military ship, go fuck yourself. They were all killed https://t.co/QmD9RkYamE— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) February 24, 2022
For clarity. The 13 Ukrainian defenders of the island were killed, after refusing to surrender, as per Ukrainian official info. President Zelenskiy said they’d all be given hero of ukraine medal posthumously.— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) February 24, 2022
― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 24 February 2022 23:28 (two years ago) link
that island is like 15 miles off the coast of (nato member) romania
― mookieproof, Thursday, 24 February 2022 23:35 (two years ago) link
yeeeepp
― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 24 February 2022 23:36 (two years ago) link
Kuleba in Foreign Affairs:
The only effective way forward is the comprehensive deterrence plan that Ukraine and its partners are currently crafting. The first component is to send clear political signals to Moscow. That means making it plain that Ukraine is part of the West and a future member of the EU and NATO and that Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are nonnegotiable. The second part of the plan involves consequences: in the worst-case scenario of an invasion, the West will enact severe sanctions. Crafting these devastating measures now could spare the West the need to apply them later.The third and final part of the plan is to deepen military assistance to Ukraine. We have our own capable military forces in Ukraine, and we don’t expect Western countries to put boots on the ground. We do, however, need more weapons to be able to defend ourselves. Everything counts, from ammunition to medical equipment, but we are in particular need of air and missile defenses.
The third and final part of the plan is to deepen military assistance to Ukraine. We have our own capable military forces in Ukraine, and we don’t expect Western countries to put boots on the ground. We do, however, need more weapons to be able to defend ourselves. Everything counts, from ammunition to medical equipment, but we are in particular need of air and missile defenses.
― Van Horn Street, Thursday, 24 February 2022 23:38 (two years ago) link
grow the fuck up or go throw sand at each other somewhere else & not ITT because JESUS FUCKING CHRIST
― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, February 24, 2022 6:13 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
THANK YOU
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 24 February 2022 23:42 (two years ago) link
mega otm
― The creator of Ultra Games, for Nintendo (Doctor Casino), Thursday, 24 February 2022 23:48 (two years ago) link
Saw a claim of Russian soldiers surprised they were shooting at regular ol' Ukrainians. It could all be disinformation, psy ops or whatever, but I've seen several posts indicating that Russians just don't want this. Putin, yes, but not Russian citizens.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 25 February 2022 00:14 (two years ago) link
there were widespread protests (and many many arrests): https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/world/europe/russia-protests-putin.html
― rob, Friday, 25 February 2022 00:24 (two years ago) link
The potential silver lining is that for Putin this is the moment of hubris that will eventually destroy him, but sadly from what I read that seems unlikely. The sanctions will have minimal impact on the general population; all oppositional infrastructure in Russia has been obliterated meaning that even if there was a groundswell of anti-war sentiment it would be very hard for people to organise; and as for getting stuck in a bloody quagmire in Ukraine, Putin's scorched earth approach has an almost perfect record in winning guerrilla wars in former USSR territories.
― Zelda Zonk, Friday, 25 February 2022 00:31 (two years ago) link
Louis CK has a show in Kiev on Friday. Wow. https://t.co/jKmVenhTtQ— Jason Zinoman (@zinoman) February 24, 2022
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 25 February 2022 00:57 (two years ago) link
another potential silver lining
― roflrofl fight (voodoo chili), Friday, 25 February 2022 01:00 (two years ago) link
Happening shortly if true:
❗️Reports from Ukrainian defence officials that a Russian bombing raid will hit Kyiv at 3AM. Heading to shelter.— Neil Hauer (@NeilPHauer) February 24, 2022
― deep luminous trombone (Eazy), Friday, 25 February 2022 01:01 (two years ago) link
Louis CK has a show in Kiev on Friday
What about Covid, braw?? Not cool
― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, 25 February 2022 01:11 (two years ago) link
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/4EB6/production/_123405102_0000--1.jpg
Actually looks like a Blue Angel flying over San Francisco during Fleet Week (from the bldg window style and jet contrail)
― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, 25 February 2022 01:14 (two years ago) link
xpost Doing it for the exposure obv
― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes), Friday, 25 February 2022 01:15 (two years ago) link
lol
― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, 25 February 2022 01:19 (two years ago) link
― Zelda Zonk, Thursday, February 24, 2022 7:31 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink
I get a queasy when I read commentators already jumping to the conclusion “Well Putin has really shit the bed now” “this just shows how weak he is” “he can’t possibly benefit from this” etc. That kind of wishful thinking seems all too convenient, because it means we can just pretend this is all going to go away sometime soon on its own. I have no ability to opine on Putin’s strategic aims and how this does or doesn’t serve them, and anyone can blunder, but he’s been relatively savvy so far at hanging onto power and at expanding territory without serious consequence.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 25 February 2022 02:08 (two years ago) link
hasn't his whole run of leadership basically been the west giving him enough slack to get away with shit? why would he think it's going to change anytime soon?
― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Friday, 25 February 2022 02:36 (two years ago) link
Go to Google maps and turn on live traffic, and have a look at all of the freeways to the Polish border :(
― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Friday, 25 February 2022 03:16 (two years ago) link
― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 24 February 2022 bookmarkflaglink
Correct. People shouldn't be asking for US troops on the ground. I completely agree that's childish behaviour.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 25 February 2022 09:32 (two years ago) link
I have no ability to opine on Putin’s strategic aims and how this does or doesn’t serve them, and anyone can blunder, but he’s been relatively savvy so far at hanging onto power and at expanding territory without serious consequence.i think his strategic aims are opaque, partly because it’s so hard to work out how he gets to a good outcome from this war. it doesn’t look like it’s full annexation of Donbass and Luhansk, because why invade the whole country? So, the obvious option is regime change, which the use of the phrase “denazification” as an aim supports. but how on earth do you maintain and sustain that in such a large country, with an antagonistic population. i’m not sure anyone else is clear on this either tho:
It seems to me that the only well planned part of this entire play has been the military piece. No one beyond the military and the services seems to have even been in the loop. I wouldn’t be surprised if the post-invasion plan is about as good as the US one in Iraq was.— Samuel Charap (@scharap) February 25, 2022
― Fizzles, Friday, 25 February 2022 09:54 (two years ago) link
The calculation might be that Ukraine can’t sustain a defence and agrees to a bad Minsk III at gunpoint within a few days, ceding Crimea, committing to ‘neutrality’, etc.
― Scampo di tutti i Scampi (ShariVari), Friday, 25 February 2022 10:00 (two years ago) link
Germany placed harsher economic restrictions on Greece than on Russia lmao https://t.co/ztoH8xN05Y— balkan tennis dad (@mathaiaus) February 25, 2022
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 25 February 2022 11:17 (two years ago) link
There are several lines from the Kremlin coming in on Reuters:Putin will meet the UN Security Council today and hold several international phone callsRussia will impose retaliatory sanctions on western countriesRussia recognises Volodymyr Zelenskiy as president of UkraineSanctions will cause problems but are solvable since the country has reduced its dependence on foreign importsRussia expects relations with the west to normalise once people understand it was forced to act to protect its securityNo comment on the duration of the military operations
Putin will meet the UN Security Council today and hold several international phone calls
Russia will impose retaliatory sanctions on western countriesRussia recognises Volodymyr Zelenskiy as president of Ukraine
Sanctions will cause problems but are solvable since the country has reduced its dependence on foreign imports
Russia expects relations with the west to normalise once people understand it was forced to act to protect its security
No comment on the duration of the military operations
They completely lost their minds.
― Van Horn Street, Friday, 25 February 2022 11:42 (two years ago) link
NEW - Putin says he’s ready for negotiations. https://t.co/Z99enVnq8M— Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) February 25, 2022
There have been multiple lines on this as well - with Peskov saying they’d look at Ukraine’s suggestion of discussing neutrality and Lavrov saying that they would finish the military campaign first.
― Scampo di tutti i Scampi (ShariVari), Friday, 25 February 2022 11:59 (two years ago) link
It's what happened after Crimea after all.
― Meet the Irish Queer Archive Poet In Residence (Tom D.), Friday, 25 February 2022 12:05 (two years ago) link
Yes, if Russian ‘normalises’ relations with Ukraine via treaties signed under permanent threat of invasion, I’m not sure how long you can expect reluctantly-implemented sanctions to last.
― Scampo di tutti i Scampi (ShariVari), Friday, 25 February 2022 12:19 (two years ago) link
Got a lot of gas to sell to countries that need it.
― Meet the Irish Queer Archive Poet In Residence (Tom D.), Friday, 25 February 2022 12:21 (two years ago) link
‘Forced to act on security concerns’ is not what the West will accept, no one in NATO or EU believe it’s legitimate. They might accept a status quo of Ukraine has a puppet state, but that’s because Russia has tremendous power.
― Van Horn Street, Friday, 25 February 2022 12:31 (two years ago) link
Believing it is legitimate or not is irrelevant to whether NATO and the EU will accept it.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 25 February 2022 12:33 (two years ago) link
Agreed. I’m responding to ‘once people understand’.
― Van Horn Street, Friday, 25 February 2022 12:36 (two years ago) link
oh yeah that's pure propaganda
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 25 February 2022 12:37 (two years ago) link
Yes. They couldn't give a fuck what the EU and NATO think about it
― Meet the Irish Queer Archive Poet In Residence (Tom D.), Friday, 25 February 2022 12:48 (two years ago) link
"We never had the slightest intention of defending Ukraine, not the slightest. Even though Britain and America and the NATO secretariat to the Bucharest Conference in 2008 came out for NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia (the NATO HQ was completely behind it on American orders), no contingency plans were drawn up, not the most remote or contingent ones, for how NATO could defend Ukraine and Georgia. There was no intention of ever doing that at all.
That raises the question, since we never intended to defend them, of what in God’s name were we doing? Claiming that we were going to admit them to NATO: It goes beyond actual irresponsibility. In my view, this was deeply immoral, to make such a commitment that we had no intention of fulfilling. This does not in any way excuse or justify the Russian invasion or the monstrous lies with which Putin justified this invasion. Maybe this isn’t the moment, but at some stage, I do hope that we have an honest and searching discussion of the errors of Western strategy that led to this disaster"
https://prospect.org/world/worse-than-a-crime-its-a-blunder-russia-ukraine-lieven-interview/
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 25 February 2022 12:53 (two years ago) link
Unfortunately, the current situation is straight out of the WWII playbook: pick a fight and claim the Sudetenland, based on long simmering grievances imposed by the west and insisting it was really full of your people, anyway, but then promise that's all you want. Feckless West sees it as bullshit but does nothing, or next to nothing, which furthers the aggressor's aim of destabilization and potentially future expansion, which they never fully take off the table, because what if they need to defend themselves from outside agitators? So when England and France belatedly form the Agreement of Mutual Assistance with Poland, Germany takes *that* as a threat but really just uses it as a pretense to do what it planned to do all along.
That's the problem with dangling the prospect of negotiation *after* you've already violently invaded a neighboring country, let alone more than once. Even the notion of negotiation comes off a threat, because even negotiation becomes conditional on recognizing the thing that's already happened. And hey, if you refuse to negotiate (which is to say, first recognize the land grab), that's just a sign that *you* are the aggressor, and a peaceful invader - we just want the Sudetenland, that's it! - is forced, forced, to defend itself by any means necessary.
Now, as many/most/all have noted, Putin doesn't have particularly coherent goals, at least not compared to Germany in WWII, and there are other important pieces in play, too (NATO, global nuclear proliferation). But a my way or the highway approach *after* you've already violently invaded makes it really hard to operate under the assumption that you are not willing to do it again, which kind of hangs a cloud over any negotiations.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 25 February 2022 13:19 (two years ago) link
Its hard to game out what possible terms Russia would accept, when Putin has been saying all along that Ukraine is not a real country and never should have existed.
― o. nate, Friday, 25 February 2022 14:13 (two years ago) link
― Van Horn Street, Friday, February 25, 2022 6:42 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
No, I don’t think so. The rhetoric of aggressive military expansion often takes on a form similar to trolling. There’s a “you lose either way” logic to it. Josh I think explained it pretty well.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 25 February 2022 14:34 (two years ago) link
In other words, I don’t think Putin truly literally believes people will “understand it was forced to act,” that’s more like a veiled threat.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 25 February 2022 14:35 (two years ago) link
Ukraine claims it's killed almost 3,000 Russian soldiers in the first 36 hours of the invasion.As ever, you have to take these things with a grain of salt, but anything even remotely close to that number would be stunning – the US lost 4,431 in two decades in Iraq— max seddon (@maxseddon) February 25, 2022
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 25 February 2022 14:38 (two years ago) link
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, February 25, 2022 9:35 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
Thanks for the explanation!
― Van Horn Street, Friday, 25 February 2022 14:41 (two years ago) link
The unfortunate difference is that the US still has a government with some accountability to the families of soldiers. Putin presumably is willing to just “spend lives.”
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 25 February 2022 14:41 (two years ago) link