ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

But of course, it would be an empty rhetorical question. Anyway, sorry to derail, just really pissed off/saddened by that footage of the maternity hospital.

Profoundly sad, depressed, angry, hard to feel any other way. Hard to process it as I watch the snow fall on my completely quiet, affluent northeast American town.

For all our takes, good or bad, I think we are all partly just trying to cope with despair and helplessness watching atrocities unfold in real time.

OTM

Hell of a lot in this thread but it’s good info

Many argue that sanctions are "ineffective". That’s false. They are already highly effective in undermining Russian military efforts and can be made even more efficient. They can guarantee that Russia loses this war if they are goal-oriented and not moral crusade-oriented🧵 pic.twitter.com/gfLhTUIvqw

— Kamil Galeev (@kamilkazani) March 9, 2022

Thanks! Was just now reading about banks, sanctions, and oligarchs, on a Swiss news site (several links in the original):

...In the current case, no bank would want to risk the reputational damage of being seen to have indirectly supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Despite Switzerland only imposing an asset freeze on February 28, it is likely that Swiss banks would already have been observing EU and US sanctions put in place days earlier.

“Banks would have closed their doors since the introduction of US sanctions,” Peter V. Kunz, director of the Institute for Business Law at the University of Bern, told Swiss public broadcaster SRF. “No Swiss bank wants to get caught in the crosshairs of the US authorities.”

The introduction of sanctions might entail winding down trades or loans a bank has arranged on behalf of a sanctioned client. Even before the latest round of sanctions, Credit Suisse had reportedly off-loaded the risk of oligarchs defaulting on loans issued to buy yachts, jets and real estate. The Financial Times has seen documents that report defaults caused by “US sanctions against Russian oligarchs”.

Shortly after the article was published, the bank allegedly asked hedge funds and other investors to destroy documents relating to oligarch yacht loans. Credit Suisse later issued a statement saying the request to dispose of documents was not linked to sanctions on Russians.
A separate article about that is also linked from this page.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/the-russian-oligarchs--billions-frozen-in-swiss-banks/47399240

xpost Interesting stuff. That's where I give some weight to stories of Putin's covid-induced isolation, especially after his perhaps confidence inflating run with Trump. Did he really not foresee any of this happening? Did he really envision himself winning (whatever that looks like) militarily *and* economically? As many have noted, Russia's economy is a relative pittance, and as that thread points out, China is neither peer nor ally, just the only big economy willing to do relatively unfettered business with them on any real scale. As I posted somewhere way upthread, when the only people firmly on your side are North Korea, Syria, and Belarus, and even China is somewhat ambivalent (and in a position to be so), you know you've really stepped in it. Because even if Russia withdrew *right now*, today, how do things go back to normal? How can the country be trusted? Putin took what was essentially an uneasy detente with the west and turned the bullshit dial up to red with very little to gain and a ton to lose.

Related:

🧵Two weeks ago, as Vladimir Putin was declaring his vicious war on Ukraine, he called the West an "Empire of Lies." In fact, the Kremlin's disastrous move was itself rooted in lies, misconceptions and giant lapses of expertise & intelligence. 1/ pic.twitter.com/5vi5J0Begq

— Alexander Gabuev 陳寒士 (@AlexGabuev) March 10, 2022

The Pentagon on Wednesday ruled out any U.S. participation in efforts to send Ukraine additional fighter aircraft, warning that such a step could be seen by Russian leaders as “escalatory” while assessing any potential gains would be “low.”

“We do not support the transfer,” the Defense Department’s chief spokesman, John Kirby, told reporters at the Pentagon, citing intelligence suggesting that the United States taking such steps at this time could be a “mistake.”

Many people are asking how they can help people in Ukraine right now. One way is to make a donation.@valeria_wants and I have a list of confirmed orgs that are accepting individual donations. More to come as we update. Useful options here. https://t.co/SzTanQYO8O

— Tom Rowley (@te_rowley) March 2, 2022

If I had to randomly guess -- and it's pretty fucking random I grant -- but given these past two weeks and where things are, I kinda assume at this point that Russian losses overall -- people as well as equipment -- are much higher than anyone's claimed, and that that's intentional obfuscation all around. (Russia would never admit it, while Ukraine would find it useful to underplay a bit in turn, even while claiming higher numbers than Russia is.) That's as much as I'll ever guess on anything in this horrible mess, though.

NYT reported this morning that Russia has at this point arrested 13K of its citizens for protesting

there are anecdotal stories about Russians who have not attended protests or posted on social media receiving visits from the police who say "We've heard you are against the government."

And then again, there's this

Even Kremlin TV Admits Ukraine Disaster Has Putin in Trouble

State propagandists called for Putin to end the “special military operation” before “frightening” sanctions destabilize his regime and risk civil war in Russia.https://t.co/jiJqylzB0g

— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) March 10, 2022

Even the infamous show run by Vladimir Soloviev—who was recently sanctioned as an accomplice of Putin by the European Union—became dominated by predictions of Russian doom and gloom. Andrey Sidorov, deputy dean of world politics at Moscow State University, cautioned: “For our country, this period won’t be easy. It will be very difficult. It might be even more difficult than it was for the Soviet Union from 1945 until the 1960s... We’re more integrated into the global economy than the Soviet Union, we’re more dependent on imports—and the main part is that the Cold War is the war of the minds, first and foremost. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union had a consolidating idea on which its system was built. Unlike the Soviet Union, Russia has nothing like that to offer.”

State TV pundit Karen Shakhnazarov pointed out: “The war in Ukraine paints a frightening picture, it has a very oppressive influence on our society. Ukraine, whichever way you see it, is something with which Russia has thousands of human links. The suffering of one group of innocents does not compensate for the suffering of other innocent people... I don’t see the probability of denazification of such an enormous country. We would need to bring in 1.5 million soldiers to control all of it. At the same time, I don’t see any political power that would consolidate the Ukrainian society in a pro-Russian direction... Those who talked of their mass attraction to Russia obviously didn’t see things the way they are. The most important thing in this scenario is to stop our military action. Others will say that sanctions will remain. Yes, they will remain, but in my opinion discontinuing the active phase of a military operation is very important.”

Resorting to the traditional propaganda tropes prevalent in Russian state media, Shakhnazarov accused the United States of starting the war—and trying to prolong it indefinitely. He speculated: “What are they achieving by prolonging the war? First of all, public opinion within Russia is changing. People are shocked by the masses of refugees, the humanitarian catastrophe, people start to imagine themselves in their place. It’s starting to affect them. To say that the Nazis are doing that is not quite convincing, strictly speaking... On top of that, economic sanctions will start to affect them, and seriously. There will probably be scarcity. A lot of products we don’t produce, even the simplest ones. There’ll be unemployment. They really thought through these sanctions, they’re hitting us with real continuity. It’s a well-planned operation... Yes, this is a war of the United States with Russia... These sanctions are hitting us very precisely. This threatens the change of public opinion in Russia, the destabilization of our power structures... with the possibility of a full destabilization of the country and a civil war. This apocalyptic scenario is based on the script written by the Americans. They benefit through us dragging out the military operation. We need to end it somehow. If we achieved the demilitarization and freed the Donbas, that is sufficient... I have a hard time imagining taking cities such as Kyiv. I can’t imagine how that would look. If this picture starts to transform into an absolute humanitarian disaster, even our close allies like China and India will be forced to distance themselves from us. This public opinion, with which they’re saturating the entire world, can play out badly for us... Ending this operation will stabilize things within the country.”

The host frowned at the apparent departure from the officially-approved line of thinking and deferred to the commander-in-chief. However, the next expert agreed with Shakhnazarov. Semyon Bagdasarov, a Russian Middle East expert, grimly said: “We didn’t even feel the impact of the sanctions just yet... We need to be ready for total isolation. I’m not panicking, just calling things by their proper name.”

Soloviev angrily sniped: “Gotcha. We should just lay down and die.”

Also, a bit rich

To lighten the mood in the studio, the host resorted to one of the favorite pastimes of many Kremlin propagandists: playing yet another Fox News clip of Tucker Carlson and his frequent guest Ret. Col. Doug Macgregor. In the translated video, Macgregor predicted Russia’s easy military victories over Ukraine and its total invincibility to western sanctions. Soloviev sighed and smiled: “He’s a lot more optimistic than my previous experts in the studio.”

https://i.imgur.com/TX84ZoV.jpg

As usual, they didn't take into account the opinion of the Ukrainian Tractor Babushka Strike Force

For those looking to relax a bit, here is some light reading and very, very sexy pictures of tractors. Looking forward to the OnlyFans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv_Tractor_Plant

Idiot warmongering

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) on not to providing Polish fighter jets to Ukraine: "It seems to me that Vladimir Putin simply deterred the U.S. government from providing these aircraft by saying they would view this as escalatory." pic.twitter.com/lC1QrczJ3H

— CSPAN (@cspan) March 10, 2022

Even Kremlin TV Admits Ukraine Disaster Has Putin in Trouble

Dag, when you've lost the state sanctioned propaganda channel that you control and run ...

Wow @ that talk show summary!

This apocalyptic scenario is based on the script written by the Americans. They benefit through us dragging out the military operation.

Ehhh, not sure about this part

If it allows the war to end sooner and gives the Russians a path to their full withdrawal from Ukraine while saving face, I'd be happy to let them blame it all on the US.

This morning on US cable news networks: drone footage, apparently, from outskirts of Kyiv, showing Russian tank formations in flames, gutted. Mayor quoted: city now half empty, but Russians still consider it the great prize.

Also, The EU leaders meet in Versailles outside Paris for a two-day summit starting Thursday and will be working on ways to “phase out our dependency on Russian gas, oil and coal imports,” said a draft of the summit declaration seen by The Associated Press.

The European Commission unveiled proposals Tuesday to make that happen, including diversifying natural gas supplies and speeding up renewable energy development. The EU’s executive arm said its measures “can reduce EU demand for Russian gas by two-thirds before the end of the year.”

...Besides ramping up renewables, the EU’s commission said Europe could diversify its energy supply by purchasing more liquefied natural gas brought by ship instead of through pipelines from Russia and by getting more pipeline imports from non-Russian suppliers. Those could include Norway and Azerbaijan.

Larger volumes of biomethane from organic sources such as agricultural waste and production of hydrogen for fuel cells could contribute, too.

The EU commission also said it would seek legislation to require that underground gas reserves be filled to at least 90% by the start of the winter heating season. Failure to do that this year led to extremely high gas prices.

The commission said it also was looking at more measures to help consumers, such as temporary limits to electricity prices.

Execution of much of the EU’s plan rests with national governments that all have different energy mixes and levels of vulnerability to a gas embargo or cutoff. Germany, Italy and several Eastern European EU members are most dependent.

Europe’s pipeline system is not set up so that shipments of liquefied gas can easily reach all corners of the continent. While liquefied gas shipments have increased, energy analysts say a total cutoff of Russian gas could only be overcome by forced reduction in gas use, first by industrial users.
from https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-europe-paris-european-union-f48482d9cc49497c186f85f556181322

Sure it's shaped for propaganda...but it is interesting.

An interesting and notable change in the last day in public communications by Zelensky and the Ukrainian Defense Secretary. There is talk of victory in a more imminent sense. https://t.co/ibYGK7TL3W

— Phillips P. OBrien (@PhillipsPOBrien) March 10, 2022

A clear sense of confidence, indeed a taunting of the Russians. https://t.co/g09r3J471o

— Phillips P. OBrien (@PhillipsPOBrien) March 10, 2022

Last night on BBC, an American, former Defense Dept. consultant, saying that Russians may create a false flag attack with chemical or biological weapons, to justify their own use in Ukraine (they used them in Syria). Now Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, along with denying invasion, is saying that the US is manufacturing biological weapons there, although don't think he's mentioned xp Dr. Fauci yet.

One of the few upsides to this catastrophe is that hopefully people will get used to the idea of collectively 'sacrificing' in order to achieve a greater good. As creepy as that sounds, we're entering a century of climate change and possible political upheaval that we haven't really had since the 1600's at the apex of "the Little Ice Age."

https://www.amazon.com/Global-Crisis-Climate-Catastrophe-Seventeenth/dp/0300153236

(Parker's theses have been challenged but this remains a good introduction)

In short, we can't continue to rely on, or hope for, unlimited gas and oil, low energy prices, unlimited consumer goods and low prices, and so on and so forth. It's not just "unsustainable" in an abstract sense. The "business as usual" approach will either kill us through famines/droughts/extreme weather, or contribute to worldwide political instability that will finish the job.

From this standpoint, it's not a coincidence that Russia is one of the few countries openly slavering for more global warming (to exploit its northern energy deposits and the Arctic overall). Nor is it by chance that one of the world's foremost oil and gas exporters has started a war of choice with Ukraine, where just a decade ago large deposits of shale were discovered on its territory, and large deposits of natural gas in the Black Sea (many of them in territorial waters around Crimea).

We should have spent the last twenty years pouring billions upon billions into renewable energy; it is both the moral and the strategically sound thing to do. I know most of you probably agree, but we're still living in a world where conservative media blames Greta Thunberg's climate activism for the Ukraine war.

Do we really need a new vcr, dvd player, blue ray player, 4k tv, 8k tv, every couple years? $1,000 iPhones? I love my games and shows as much as anyone but if "sacrifice" means chilling out about buying new tech every year, it doesn't seem as bad as turning the world into Mad Max so we can stream the new Marvel movie on our internet-connected refrigerator.

Reminds me:
LONDON/WASHINGTON, March 3 (Reuters) - Countries of the Arctic Council said on Thursday they would boycott future talks in Russia over its Ukraine invasion, throwing international cooperation in the region into upheaval at a time when climate change is opening it up to resource exploitation.

The Arctic Council brings together countries with Arctic territories to collaborate on matters that affect the region's residents. It does not deal with security issues.
Russia, which currently holds the council's rotating chairmanship, has posed "grave impediments to international cooperation, including in the Arctic," the council's other seven member countries said in a statement.
... it was unclear whether the United States and other council members see Russia as part of the group's work going forward. Russia accounts for 50% of Arctic landmass.

Unless challenged, Russia, which calls its actions in Ukraine a "special operation," would hold the Arctic Council chairmanship until 2023.
...Russia also currently holds the chairmanship of the Arctic Coast Guard Forum, a group dedicated to ensuring safe, secure and environmentally responsible movement through Arctic waters.

The Russian Coast Guard and the U.S. Coast Guard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
from https://www.reuters.com/world/arctic-council-countries-halt-meetings-over-russias-invasion-ukraine-2022-03-03/

I consider American car companies' late 90's/early 2000s reclassification of SUV's into "light trucks" in order to evade MPG standards as one of the most devastating self-owns in recent history.

I mean yeah that’s what’s so frustrating about the climate change debate, it’s not a choice between clean and dirty energy it’s “do you pay for this now or pay 10x more later plus suffer a hundred other consequences” - or sucks that few US politicians outside of Bernie phrase it this way (well, some do now, but hammering that message would’ve been nice 15 years ago)

re: Mariupol maternity ward bombing, Russian embassy has a remarkable response. No shame.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e0107364bdf2dda725a692db149e4d9a6772449d/0_0_1136_1091/master/1136.jpg?width=620&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=ae8ef8d3f76322165cb397fd27b3f9ee

Actual tweet has since been removed by Twitter.

If you don't believe that story, they've got you covered with another one:

This is how the Russian Embassy in London has responded to the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol. Utterly obscene. pic.twitter.com/l4Udc1SmM0

— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) March 10, 2022

Busing in injured pregnant women to make it look like a maternity hospital was used as a maternity hospital, sounds likely

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/maria-butina-russian-agent-says-ukraine-bombing-itself-1318782/

Idiots at BBC thinking oooh we should get her on.

Little girl singing "Let it go" in a shelter#UkraineRussianWar #Ukraine #UkraineUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/GodURBfmuz

— Ukraine (@Gadhwara27) March 6, 2022

Propaganda is as propaganda does, but Ukraine isn't winning the propaganda war in the West due to some clever 'wag the dog' production team behind the scenes. There are some things you just can't fake.

My older one used to sing that all the time, I probably can't watch it without bawling

Rats leave the ship first.

FSB people are actively selling apartments in the Crimea.

Number of new apartments for sale in the last few days. Mostly families of the FSB and the occupation administration. pic.twitter.com/eB66DbJLxC

— Liubov Tsybulska (@TsybulskaLiubov) March 10, 2022

Seen that but also some questions about sourcing.

That seems really unlikely to me - what's the rationale? They think Ukraine is going to retake Crimea? The climate there is turning more anti-Russian?

I really can't say and I'm surprised it's happening at all. To my knowledge there was no immediate threat of Ukrainian forces going to Crimea, despite the two countries being at war and all that.

A more likely explanation is that they're trying to sell their property so they can leave the country. Their FSB status makes it (possibly?) easier for them to do so, so they're getting all the money they can together and planning to decamp to Turkey, Transnistria, wherever.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/8/we-are-refugees-russians-flee-rising-authoritarianism

"Those wishing to leave from the European side of the country are crossing the land border to Finland or the Baltic states (Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania). Those who do not have European visas head to Georgia, Armenia and Turkey, where a Russian dissident community is growing."

https://www.ft.com/content/a8b53d7a-08c5-484e-9dc6-cd4b2d889e3f

"With almost all European airspace closed to Russian aircraft, flights to Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Yerevan, Baku and Tbilisi have been sold out for days, while other travelers have packed on to buses to the Baltic states."

"Georgia’s economy minister said on Monday that as many as 25,000 Russians had arrived in the country in the past few days, according to local media outlet Sova. Vahe Hakobyan, chair of the Armenian parliament’s economic affairs committee, said this week that about 6,000 Russian and Ukrainian citizens were arriving in the country every day."

Anyway, avocados

Let's discuss Russian economy. Many underestimate its dependency upon technological import. Russia's so deeply integrated into Western technological chains that severing these ties will lead to its collapse. Sanctions are already effective and can be made even more efficient🧵 pic.twitter.com/gKUZ665ePm

— Kamil Galeev (@kamilkazani) March 9, 2022

How does this make any sense?

Russia has hit back at western sanctions for invading Ukraine by imposing export bans on a string of products until the end of 2022.

The ban covers exports of telecoms, medical, vehicle, agricultural, and electrical equipment, as well as some forestry products such as timber.

The economy ministry said further measures could include restricting foreign ships from Russian ports.

It said: "These measures are a logical response to those imposed on Russia."

So ikea won't get birch for the nightstands? I don't get it

Last burgers in Moscow’s flagship McDonald's. Asked one man as he was leaving for his thoughts and he said "I only ever use the toilets." pic.twitter.com/Bn8XYfbaP0

— Marc Bennetts (@marcbennetts1) March 9, 2022

they had some piece this morning interviewing Russian people at McDonald and a few were saying how sad they were about no more bigmacs which made me want to puke

hey send them big macs, blue jeans and rock'n'roll and they'll all be capitalists in a year!

Have watched CNN the past few days, and boy does Jake Tapper want a no-fly zone aka shooting war involving nuclear powers.

One thing I'll say about a no-fly-zone without trying to sound like Buck Turgidson:

There's this constant worry that no matter what America/Europe does, they are "escalating" and "forcing Putin" to: carry out intimidating military maneuvers, quarter troops in another country (Belarus), invade Ukraine, bomb cities, do war crimes, etc etc.

Meanwhile the Russian army has now conducted two attacks on nuclear power plants in Ukraine with seemingly no worries of escalation. Moreover, they appear to be settling into their usual pattern of pulling up artillery and hammering cities into the ground like Grozny in the 90s and Aleppo in the 2010s. If these 'escalations' are driven by any moves on the part of the West, I'm not sure what those are. Mining civilian evacuation routes with impunity and shooting at individual cars trying to get out of cities does not seem to be a high-risk low reward tactic in their mind.

But the idea remains that whether it's sanctions, or transferring planes to Ukraine, or just sending weapons, or foreign fighters, will "inflame tensions" and "make Putin do something terrible." He's going to do something terrible no matter what, is the more likely scenario. The real questions is what that will look like and when it will come.

I'm not going to argue for a no-fly-zone because I also appreciate living, but nevertheless it's worth considering exactly which Western actions, and in what way, are actually "escalating" anything. A more likely source of escalation seems to be frustration felt at missing out on a splendid little 3-day war and the 'birth of a new world' from that article about the "Ukrainian question" that was published too soon. Now that Putin has invested the Russian army and is still a ways from pulling back or conceding anything, he seems to be stuck on a one-way track of escalation or continuing the indiscriminate bombing and war crimes he's been doing already. Neither will endear him to the West or encourage retreat when it comes to sanctioning Russia and sending aid to Ukraine. There is no way back for Putin that doesn't entail humiliation, admitting you were wrong, or ceding territory to Ukraine. Hard to imagine him doing any of these things.

The crackdown on most independent media and the ginned-up "Z" events in Russia also stink of a kind of cultural escalation of this conflict. It's telling that instead of promoting a brilliant upcoming victory, the new motto is "we won't leave ours behind."