ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

Meanwhile, seems notable

Russian General-major Vitaly Gerasimov, deputy commander of Russian 41st army, was liquidated near Kharkiv, Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate said. This is Russia’s second general KIA within the last 11 days. https://t.co/rWpuAHihdg

— Sergej Sumlenny (@sumlenny) March 7, 2022

Another update on the 40-mile column of Russian doom that was descending on Kyiv a week ago. It hasnt moved. In that space of time according to google maps I could have driven to Kyiv and back from Scotland. https://t.co/mzlXgd8Ynn

— Phillips P. OBrien (@PhillipsPOBrien) March 7, 2022

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-07/russia-swaps-signal-80-chance-of-default-on-ruble-payout-decree

The cost of insuring Russia’s government debt rose to a record high after President Vladimir Putin signed a decree allowing it to repay foreign creditors in rubles, raising concerns about the prospects of a default across the country’s $33 billion of dollar bonds.

Credit-default swaps insuring $10 million of the country’s notes for five years were quoted at about $5.8 million upfront and $100,000 annually on Monday, signaling around 80% likelihood of default, according to ICE Data Services. ICE is the main clearing house for European CDS. The upfront cost that protection sellers demanded on Monday rose from around $4 million last week.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FM9mRnbUUAgqXhd?format=jpg&name=large

'liquidated' is so fucked up

Wow---wonder how they'll pay mercenaries, if any sign up---Pentagon press secretary today confirmed (to CNN's Jake Tapper) the WSJ report that the Russians are indeed approaching Syrian independent contractors .

What happens if they default?

doesn't china have an interest in propping up russia as a counterweight to american power? they might get bailed out by china. n.b. i am not an international power broker and have only a loose grasp of how this all works.

china is the senior partner.

russia is the junior partner.

(caveat, caveat, hedging, ass-saving)

i am an international power broker

China has to worry about sanctions/active support for Russia impacting its ability to sell to the US and EU.

no need to worry about all that, we're gonna Havana Syndrome Russian jets

Separately, some members of congress are beginning to advocate for a non-kinetic no-fly zone – something to the effect of using electromagnetic pulse, sonar, and cyber to keep Russian jets on the ground so they can never take off. Unclear how much support this will end up getting

— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) March 7, 2022

they can do that?

Today on war twitter:

Jesus, Ukraine just killed Gen. Maj. Vitaly Gerassimov, chief of staff of the 41 Army. At Kharkiv.
Russia, if you're listening: delete your army.

— Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) March 7, 2022

tl;dr: Russian Army was equipped to use expensive encrypted phones guaranteed to work "in all conditions" however they require a 3G or 4G signal to operate. Most of these cell towers were destroyed so much of the army is using unencrypted phones with local sim cards.

war twitter is weird to me. time was we talked about indie music.

it does seem like the russian army has proved incompetent in this conflict, though -- sustaining more losses than expected. best case scenario would be this turns the tide against putin domestically

Kharkiv is 40km from the Russian border. It’s probably safe to assume Russia isn’t going to nuke it.

Was it ever confirmed (one way or the other) that chemical weapons were used in Chechnya?

Putin’s war @home dealing w tech etc., and several other Russia items in this round-up:
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2022/03/07/putins-war-home-00014783?nname=politico-nightly&nid=00000170-c000-da87-af78-e185fa700000&nrid=00000172-4d9a-d3ba-a9f3-6f9e04a20000&nlid=2670445

they can do that?

Absolutely not but some very stupid people in the US government want to DO SOMETHING without doing something that involves an actual war.

Also these people think Havana Syndrome is real so they probably also think we have our own magic rays squirreled away in the defense budget.

Probably easier to jam the GLONASS (Russian GPS) system?

Has anyone had any experience donating directly to Ukraine?

Thinking this https://www.facebook.com/groups/armia.sos

I can't say that I have, but I've been picking up a slew of charity/donation releases lately, especially on the just passed Bandcamp Friday, thus:

https://standard-deviation.bandcamp.com/album/together-for-ukraine

https://homenormal.bandcamp.com/album/places-for-peace

https://chitrarecords.bandcamp.com/album/pacification

https://ochildren.bandcamp.com/album/9-live-in-kyiv

https://bspliveseries.bandcamp.com/album/bsp-live-series-2021-09-04-kharkiv

https://post-dreifing.bandcamp.com/track/sunflower-seeds

Details about where the funds go to found on each page (O. Children being the slight exception but I'm sure they've got something planned.)

Another one here

https://chuckjohnson.bandcamp.com/track/carpathia

S-'s link is for donating directly to the Ukranian military to help with buying weapons, quite a different thing than bandcamp charities for children affected by the war and such I think.

I mentioned some time ago on here that the Ukranian army is crowdfunding, which I still find a bizarre and afaict unprecedented development. Logistically I can't imagine it making much of a difference (is it a PR move to shame Western nations into contributing more, maybe?) but also I've never even seen this kind of initiative suggested in leftist circles for, say, Palestinian or Kurdish armed struggle...and am pretty sure that if I did somehow come upon a fund related to that, I'd be getting a call from my bank as soon as I tried donating.

fwiw a czech friend has donated and thinks I should, too, seeing Western squeamishness at financing violence as the privilege of someone in a territory that isn't under threat. But by that same account, I am also uncomfortable with financing violence that I have zero possibilities of being affected by.

This must have been peak Davos brain pic.twitter.com/qjMstWrgE1

— Will Davies (@davies_will) March 8, 2022

I mentioned some time ago on here that the Ukranian army is crowdfunding, which I still find a bizarre and afaict unprecedented development.

i think it isnt a stretch to say that this is just an online version of the "for the cause" collections that have been a feature of (surely?) many guerilla campaigns in history, certainly IRA fundraising was not a new thing when i was born

Not sure collecting money for "the lads" at a pub in Kilburn at the end of Saturday night is quite the same.

im not sure its any different!

but say then rather the sinn fein jaunts to the states, i mean thats no different imo

Quite a few neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian army so no thanks.

not saying ito approval saying ito "this is a new and remarkable thing"

Looks like this is happening

SCOOP: US to ban imports of Russian oil, sources tell @annmarie @SalehaMohsin and me. White House announcement as soon as TODAY.

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) March 8, 2022

IRA funding from the US is close I guess but still on less official/public standing than this, I think?

jesus dont look at me im saying nothing wink wink

Yep: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/08/biden-bans-russian-oil-imports/

Not that they'll do it, but this would be a good opportunity to push/accelerate/fund alternative energy sources. Infrastructure!

you know it won't happen that way.

I turned on the Maddow show last night and heard an ex-General saying that since Putin regards sanctions as an act of war then there's no difference between sanctions and a no-fly zone as far as sparking a war, so we should just go ahead and do the latter. Like there are literally military guys itching for nuclear war on lib TV with zero pushback.

Not that they'll do it, but this would be a good opportunity to push/accelerate/fund alternative energy sources. Infrastructure!

a short response to that is on the US politics thread.

one of my oldest anarcho friends has been posting non-stop about neo-nazis in the ukraine military for the last week and is now accusing all of his friends, as well as facebook in general, of being neo-nazis because they're not speaking out about it enough. so that's been fun.

it is a real fucking mess, because of course there are neo-nazis in the ukraine military. there are neo-nazis in the US military too, and also in the russian military. some of the information coming out about neo-nazis in ukraine's military must be true. some of it is definitely not true, either through misinformation or disinformation. i don't have any far-right friends who care about europe or russia, but the frustrating thing among my friends on the left is that they post 100% of the neo-nazi ukraine military stuff that they find, seemingly without even looking at it themselves or thinking about it, and then when it turns out to be a doctored photo from 6 years ago, there is no retraction or apology or change in course, it's just the same, like nothing happened.

anyway, that, too, is for another thread.

The dynamic you're describing sounds genuinely bad, but I think it's a bit disingenuous to equate the neo-nazis in the ukraine mil with those in the usa's; the countries' histories are v different. Not that I think the problem of neo-nazis in the us or canadian or etc. military should be ignored

But don't listen to me, I'm continually surprised people have the energy & determination to have such strong takes on this war

yeah, i didn't mean to equivocate: obviously it's a stronger presence in Ukraine and various groups and countries have been trying to get Ukraine to disband the neo-nazi regiment for years:

In June 2015, both Canada and the United States announced that their own forces will not support or train the Azov regiment, citing its neo-Nazi connections.

The following year, however, the US lifted the ban under pressure from the Pentagon.

In October 2019, 40 members of the US Congress led by Representative Max Rose signed a letter unsuccessfully calling for the US State Department to designate Azov as a “foreign terrorist organisation” (FTO). Last April, Representative Elissa Slotkin repeated the request – which included other white supremacist groups – to the Biden administration.

Transnational support for Azov has been wide, and Ukraine has emerged as a new hub for the far right across the world. Men from across three continents have been documented to join the Azov training units in order to seek combat experience and engage in similar ideology.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/1/who-are-the-azov-regiment

yeah, i didn't mean to equivocate

but yeah, i guess i did, even if i didn't mean to. i fucking suck. i hate that everything on this thread is monitored and then discussed by a small group before they deliver the counterattack. everything fucking sucks

I turned on the Maddow show last night and heard an ex-General saying that since Putin regards sanctions as an act of war then there's no difference between sanctions and a no-fly zone as far as sparking a war, so we should just go ahead and do the latter. Like there are literally military guys itching for nuclear war on lib TV with zero pushback.

I saw some of Lawrence O'Donnell's show and he was openly musing about what would happen once Putin sent the signal to blow up America, like whether Biden would inform people the missiles are coming or what. obviously he was quite somber about it but this shit can't be good for people's mental health right now. it certainly isn't good for mine. the idea that we should just start shooting down planes because Putin said sanctions are an "act of war" is so dangerously stupid. Putin thinks everything is an act of war. I just don't see how us getting involved is going to lead to any less suffering. The best we can do is make Putin unpopular in his country and directly fucking them up seems like it might have the opposite effect

xp
you don't suck! it's just hard to talk about complex/contradictory stuff on social media, he said unhelpfully

nah, that helps, it does. it's really easy to step it in, these days, is another way of putting it

step in it, i meant.

*goes back to land of humiliation*

as president of the land of humiliation, i hope you've brought your papers*

*these are polka dot underwear worn over your pants

excuse me, can a mod please remove the "the" before "land of humiliation" in my post? oof, i've done it again.

As a former Moscow bureau chief for @nytimes, I am saddened to report that we are pulling our journalists from Russia.
Here is a statement from @meslackman, assistant managing editor, to the company. pic.twitter.com/TGrb2w2wqB

— Cliff Levy (@cliffordlevy) March 8, 2022

Latest discussion online seems to be: should Ukraine accept a peace deal which involves ceding parts of the country to Russia, and agreeing never to join NATO and the EU?

Not for me to judge, but some UK socialists are saying: yes, they should.

Even if all shooting stopped now, the physical state of the country - all those destroyed homes and cities - would be appalling. I suppose Ukraine would receive a lot of Western aid to rebuild.

What part of the deal would ensure that Russia doesn't just grab a bit more land next year?