ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

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?

Go to Google maps and turn on live traffic, and have a look at all of the freeways to the Polish border :(

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 bookmarkflaglink

Correct. People shouldn't be asking for US troops on the ground. I completely agree that's childish behaviour.

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

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.

Germany placed harsher economic restrictions on Greece than on Russia lmao https://t.co/ztoH8xN05Y

— balkan tennis dad (@mathaiaus) February 25, 2022

There are several lines from the Kremlin coming in on Reuters:

Putin will meet the UN Security Council today and hold several international phone calls

Russia will impose retaliatory sanctions on western countries
Russia 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.

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.

They completely lost their minds.

It's what happened after Crimea after all.

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.

Got a lot of gas to sell to countries that need it.

‘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.

Believing it is legitimate or not is irrelevant to whether NATO and the EU will accept it.

Agreed. I’m responding to ‘once people understand’.

oh yeah that's pure propaganda

Yes. They couldn't give a fuck what the EU and NATO think about it

"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/

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.

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.

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, 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.

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.

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

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, February 25, 2022 9:35 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks for the explanation!

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.”

Xp to Josh

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar:
Russian forces had suffered the following losses:
Tanks – up to 80
Aircraft – 10
Helicopters – 7
Personnel – 2,800
Armored combat vehicles of different types – 516

that feels like a high number of vehicles as well. i very much would love for that to be true, but there's no way they are not exaggerating.
xpost

even tho it’s obviously out of date kofman’s analysis at War on the Rocks from the end of January is worth reading.

Prediction is always a fraught business, but it seems plausible that Russian forces would seize Ukraine’s eastern regions, as well as the southern port city of Odessa, and encircle Kyiv. The Russian goal would be regime change, perhaps via constitutional reform, and a settlement that would secure Russian influence over Ukraine. From a position of leverage, Russia would try to attain a U.S. commitment to give it a free hand in this part of eastern Europe. With Belarus firmly in Russia’s orbit, Moscow is eyeing using force to change Ukraine’s strategic orientation in an effort to create its own cordon against Western influence. An expanded invasion of Ukraine may not herald a prolonged occupation, but Russia appears prepared for that contingency. Russian force posture can enable a range of choices, but it is difficult to see how Moscow accomplishes any lasting political gains without having to resort to maximalist options.

18 hours ago they were reporting Ukranian losses - soldiers and civilians both - as being at 137, so that number for Russian soldiers seems ludicrous

Putin presumably is willing to just “spend lives.”

This has long been the Russian way, for good and for ill, no?

some very weird posts today

It has been the way of most warfare for a couple centuries, probably at least through Vietnam. The idea of minimal military casualty war is a pretty recent development.

The low casualty number might have been just the results of shelling and missiles and whatnot, or a plane or helicopter here or there. Bigger numbers always arrive when the more exposed troops advance in. Does seem like a big number, though, and regardless can't possibly be particularly accurate.

and kofman’s summary of where he thinks we are now: maximalist war aims are going to be difficult to fulfill despite on paper superiority seems to be the summary of the summary.

Some very early impressions of the last two days. It's an operation with maximalist war aims, and Moscow's thinking on this war seems to have been colored by war optimism. It looked as though Russian forces were expecting a quicker UKR military collapse and easier gains. 1/

— Michael Kofman (@KofmanMichael) February 25, 2022

and a highly necessary caveat

The one thing I will add to my earlier thread, is that we should take care making assumptions on how this war will progress based on the opening 24-48 hours. The Russian military clearly tried something. I think it at best yielded mixed results for them. They will adjust.

— Michael Kofman (@KofmanMichael) February 25, 2022

If Putin had any hopes that the Ukrainian army would fold immediately a la the Afghan National Army, presumably he has been disabused.

i… don’t think the model putin would have been hoping for was afghanistan tbh.

i remember reading boys in zinc by svetlana alexievich and *as with voices from chernobyl* the first entry had me in tears which was unfortunate as i was on the tube.

Not that it really matters what any of us think, but I think it’s extremely unlikely that the Russian military fails or backs down here. It’s significantly stronger in numbers and technology. And for Putin to even partially back off there would have to be some kind of face-saving option where he can claim it’s the victory he wanted all along, and that seems unlikely to me as well.

A prolonged insurgency wearing down an unmotivated Russian army seems more likely.

Its hard to tell if Putin is really as disconnected from reality as his public statements. An autocrat who has been in power as long as he has may have an inner circle that has shrunk to only the few who tell him want he wants to hear.

xp

Afghan National Army was a reference to recent events, if that wasn't clear, not the Russia Afghanistan invasion.

got you.

If Putin had any hopes that the Ukrainian army would fold immediately a la the Afghan National Army, presumably he has been disabused.

Maybe it was smart. I'm not blaming them. Just saying Ukraine army seems to maintaining morale in the face of the Russian assault. Thats an important first test.

No matter what happens on the ground, Russia has already lost:

Russia kicked out of 2022 Eurovision Song Contest by the European Broadcasting Union following Ukraine invasionhttps://t.co/pZ7uOWtOMU pic.twitter.com/ihqQPcbki5

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) February 25, 2022

Interesting that Putin is now openly calling for the Ukraine army to overthrow Zelensky and negotiate with him directly. Seems perhaps a tacit acknowledgment that they are more of a force to be reckoned with than he may have initially hoped.

Or that the demands are politically impossible, so would have to be implemented by an undemocratic military junta.

The fierceness of the Ukrainian defense does at least seem encouraging for the prospects of an effective insurgency if Ukraine falls. I guess I shouldn’t be talking about this as a foregone conclusion, just feeling grim rn.

They know the land, and they have the motivation - Russia might have a massive army, but it doesn't seem like Ukraine has a small one

This is something indeed.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky: "We're all here. We are in Kyiv. We are defending Ukraine."#StandWithUkraine https://t.co/iBJpFarqSL

— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) February 25, 2022

wow

the CIR created a map showing russian military activity based on twitter searches

https://maphub.net/Cen4infoRes/russian-ukraine-monitor

A lot of footage is being posted online of Russian military movements along the Ukrainian border. We’re working with the #OSINT community to document, verify & map this information. You can find our map of verified movements here: https://t.co/2uqsSML5Qe pic.twitter.com/ToGku2xX8G

— Centre for Information Resilience (@Cen4infoRes) February 9, 2022