ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

Don't know if this has been linked but a very useful interview I was reading last night.

https://jacobinmag.com/2022/03/ukraine-socialist-interview-russian-invasion-war-putin-nato-imperialism/

This interview is on the protests.

“We don’t live in Berlin, where participation in a protest gets you lots of pats on the back. You can end up with a concussion, or spend the night in jail, or have a felony case opened against you. So yeah, in my view people are coming out in force.” https://t.co/du91lBpHNa

— Ross Wolfe (@rosswolfe) March 3, 2022

Agreed that is a good interview with Volodymyr Artiukh. I also linked another essay he wrote above.

Artiukh pretty much destroys the "the West/US caused this" theory that some leftists have been pushing.

About a year ago I started following a communist Russian youtuber by the name of "Vestnik Buri," real name Andrey Rudoy. He has a couple english subbed videos, most notably "How did the collapse of the USSR happen?" Check them out! Recently he was "called in" to the 3rd department of Drerzhinsky* police because of an anonymous complaint that he was "inciting discord, conducting extremist activities, and gathering around himself radical leftist anti-social elements."

Since then, they have changed his destination to a more nearby police station, and told him to wait for a phone call specifying when to show up. He has had time to prepare and hire a lawyer.

Others are not so lucky. Rudoy wrote a couple days ago:

"My comrade Aleksey Dmitriev, a recent guest in my video about ecology and capitalism, had his apartment broken into by the police and FSB. In his words, so much as he was able to tell us, while they were carrying him out of the building and shoving him into the van, he was beaten and not given the opportunity to contact a lawyer."

Last night he added:

"Right now we have a special kind of hell going on by the Himki courthouse (suburb of Moscow). Alexei Dmitriev, detained and beaten yesterday during his arrest, was supposed to be tried today for "minor hooliganism." Because he apparently had sustained a skull/brain trauma, he lost consciousness inside the courthouse.

Comrades called the ambulances, but one of the cops spoke with the EMT and found out who the doctor in charge was...after this they dragged the still unconscious Alexei from the ambulance into the courthouse.

The time is late evening; the court continues its 'activities.' Activists are coming to by to bear witness in solidarity. Several police vans have arrived and started to detain comrades from this group with no explanation (things are moving so fast that we don't know if, or for how long, they're being held).

Alexei is still on the premises, his life can end at any moment; now we have reason to believe that certain interested authorities may actually be in favor of his death. We still don't understand the motives of the powers that be, if it's his ecological activism bothering local business plans, or it's his antiwar position, but this is brutal even by Russian standards."

**Drerzhinsky is a city/town named after the first chief of the Cheka, what would later become the NKVD. Nicholas I also had a police force known as the Third Section. Not sure if the "3rd department" is a coincidence or sarcasm on Rudoy's part.

Worth noting AFAIK neither of these people have participated in recent public protests, i.e. the police's interest in them seems to be purely on the basis of their potential to organize others rather than anything that they've already done.

No small irony that it's Russian communists being arrested and brutally beaten

This twitter thread from the prolific Kamil Galeev may explain why it's communists that are being targeted:

17. Russian parliamentarismhttps://t.co/PDdqet8grv

TL;DR Putinism = supreme leader rules + controlled parliament rubberstamps. To keep parliament under control you need a plug, a pseudo party called "United Russia". The only real parliamentary dissent comes from the Communists

— Kamil Galeev (@kamilkazani) March 2, 2022

The 40-mile convey is breaking up, subsets moving through forest around outskirts whenever feasible, to lessen the pounding they're getting from Ukrainian forces, which is slowing them down. Also, analyst on MSNC this morning pointed out that Kyiv is about the size of Chicago, and at the rate they're going, could take a month to complete the circle. Although I wonder if they're not tightening it as they go, to some extent, cutting through the more vulnerable outskirts. Fucking things up in passing, or establishing a toehold? Might be too much effort required for now, but
meanwhile, down south, in the second largest city, Kherson (wiki: It is the administrative center of Kherson Oblast and an economic center...an important port on the Black Sea and on the Dnieper River, and the home of a major ship-building industry), a Ukrainian source reported on either MSNBC or CNN this moring, that the Russian National Guard, created by Putin for riot control in Russia, is now going door-to-door, while checking social media to see who's been dissenting, have so far arrested 400.

Kherson area residents convey a variety of takes to a Deutsche Welle correspondent; for instance, the mayor says that the Russians stay secluded in town hall, and "there is no one to talk to" when he needs to get things done, although they've made it clear enough that the bridge blocked by 200 bodies of Ukraine military and civilians can't be cleared, even by priests and relatives.
https://www.dw.com/en/about-dw/s-30688

So they've got the south, and when they've taken xpost Dnipro (wiki: built mainly upon both banks of the Dnieper, at its confluence with the Samara River, one of the cities they started boming yesterday, that's a key location in the east--which some analysts/speculators say is what Putin mainly wanted. Given how things are going at home and abroad, will he declare glorious victory, not try to take the west of Ukraine, while still fucking with it?

Would still have supply lines for resistance coming through west, would need some kind of deal with West, after installation of surrogates etc.

Speculative but of interest

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/03/11/from-bad-intel-to-worse

"All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again"

when foreigners casually drop ‘bombing of kyiv’ these pics always come to mind. this is what #RussianColonialism did to chechnya and grozny when they tried to leave the empire in 2000. a war crime of horrific scale, but the rest of the world was like ‘meh’, so moscow continued pic.twitter.com/ysiKKArGFz

— maksym.eristavi 🇺🇦🏳️‍🌈 (@MaximEristavi) February 20, 2022

man that thread is bleak

I'm usually reading about all these in the context of the USSR "consolidating its power" or "winning back lost territory during the Civil War" or "Stalin's repression of X region/people" but yeah, when you let that thread unroll, it's a real eye opener.

CNN, 8 minutes ago:There was substantial damage to the airport at Lutsk in northwestern Ukraine, some 70 miles from the Polish border. Also Ivano-Frankovsk, 150-300 km from the borders of Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia. Which is uh 71-186 miles, rounded. What will NATO do when bombing goes to the borderline, a little over? (Or for that matter,If chemical, biological, tactical nukes, even, are used anywhere?) What can they do? Probably the better question.

X’sP: I might be a little simple, but ffs Russia has by far the largest landmass of any country, abundant natural resources of every type that are in no danger of running out soon, what the fuck is it in the national character that won’t let enough alone? Why always the expansion of empire? To what fucking end?

Altho might as well ask any billionaire when enough is enough. Having more begets wanting more. The human beast is infinitely hungry.

they're vast but isolated. ukraine gives them another important inroad into europe and ports on the black sea.

Indeed. And I wonder if xp hungry Vlad's 70th birthday, coming up Oct. 7, has anything to do with this lunge.
xxp *93*-186 miles, sorry.

X’sP: I might be a little simple, but ffs Russia has by far the largest landmass of any country, abundant natural resources of every type that are in no danger of running out soon, what the fuck is it in the national character that won’t let enough alone? Why always the expansion of empire? To what fucking end?

to attribute this to "national character" is completely insane. look at every empire ever??? jesus christ this thread is fucking bananas.

xxp@warmice

I've often wondered why two countries that emerged in their modern form sometime around the early-mid 1800s are so different in substance. If anything, why haven't some Russian would-be billionaires taken advantage of all those resources and done an America in Eurasia? Why is Russia seen as somehow backward, authoritarian, resource-rich but capital-poor? Why is America, on the other hand, the font of freedom (for some), innovative, resource and capital rich?

There's some easy answers here: aside from being continental powers, USA/Russia come from fundamentally different historical circumstances. One arose as a former vassal of the Mongol empire and eventually conquered a great deal of said empire, while another started out as a colony of an empire in the early stages of capitalism, and eventually became the world's leading capitalist empire. One might be said to have democratic roots and traditions, with the usual litany of caveats that apply to America. The other can be said to have authoritarian roots and traditions, broadly speaking.

However, there's no "American" or "Russian" mentality as such. For instance, Stephen Kotkin points out in many online lectures that Russia has an amazingly prosperous and innovative middle class. It's just not in Russia. The Soviet and Russian diaspora is full of extremely gifted, talented, well educated people who routinely climb to the top of their fields - in other countries.

Conversely, we can act like all remaining Russians are brainwashed by state TV into believing obvious lies, yet here in America we have people who live in parallel universes regarding civil rights, vaccines, elections, and an increasingly growing number of other things that used to be "settled fact" between the parties. Even the old bogeyman of FOX News is now seen as almost quaint compared to the drivel on more right-wing channels and the growth of online conspiracy theories like Q. Is the "American mentality" to be found in these dismal weeds? Is one country really 'free' and the other 'authoritarian?'

There's a great book by anarchist historian Paul Avrich called "Russian Rebels," which is a good corrective to the idea that Russia only experiences political change through military coups (1700s), Tsarist reforms (1800s) or revolution and even stricter top-down control (1900s). The roots of resistance to authoritarianism in Russia go very deep; it's just that the tsars and the Bolsheviks after them have done a good job of playing whack-a-mole with every new iteration of popular rebellion or nationalist movement. Nevertheless, the traditions are there if you look for them. Peter Kolchin's book "Unfree Labor" compares American chattel slavery to Russian serfdom, and points out hundreds of instance of "volnenie," a series of soft regional uprising with specific demands - which were often met by Russian noble landowners. Orlando Figes' book "The Russian Revolution" contains pretty detailed descriptions of "zemstvos," essentially local/regional councils which were a kind of predecessor to the Soviets (workers councils) we might be more familiar with in the 1900s.

One other thing to keep in mind is that America didn't "win" the Cold War so much as the USSR simply collapsed. I'm sure the many people who post on the US Politics thread can attest to the fact that America is not just a "good guy," either during the Cold War, or now around the world. Its own contradictions are catching up to it, as we've seen with the crisis of 2008 and with Trump's unimaginable victory in 2016. These are not the signs of a healthy financial system and political culture - if it ever was.

One way this could all go down is if America keeps stagnating while politicians make noises about critical race theory or transwomen in sports. We'll still manage to Brezhnev our way through one or two decades, but will find it increasingly difficult to deal with foreign and domestic crises. Our army will still be powerful, but that's not going to put gas in your tank or food on the table. An increasingly stratified society with a dedicated core of status quo enforcers starts to sound more and more like late period USSR or Putin's Russia than the American dream of the mid-20th century.

https://imgur.com/a/d9VHrpi

Russia or America? Could be either.

Could be either.

Big clue: the kid is white.

look at every empire ever???

e.g. USA did not start out as "sea to shining sea."

Kazakhstan airline stops flights to/from Russia… Kazakhstan. The country whose president Putin saved with a quick military intervention from a coup… (checks calendar), ah yes, 2 months ago!

Russia’s rapid decline into complete isolation continues… https://t.co/uaebCMQtqv

— Dmitri Alperovitch (@DAlperovitch) March 12, 2022

Last night on BBC, some mention of the xp biological warfare lab claim/possible false flag might also be used to justify invasion, occoupation, since denazification alibi not being taken so well outside of Russia--what, are they trying to rally the Qanon troops? Maybe they will mention Dr. Fauci after all. Also mention of false flag to bring Belarus all the way in, and more on that today:
Ukraine’s state centre for strategic communications said Belarus might launch an invasion of Ukraine today, after a meeting in Moscow between the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko. Ukraine accused Russia of staging “false flag” air attacks on Belarus from Ukraine to provide an excuse for an offensive.

A military facility destroyed by shelling near Kyiv, 1 March 2022.
Was it inevitable? A short history of Russia’s war on Ukraine
Read more
Putin and Lukashenko agreed on Friday that Moscow would supply its smaller neighbour with military equipment and mutual support against western sanctions, including on energy prices, the official Belarus state news agency BelTA said.
Also, from same round-up:
Foreign combatants have already entered the Ukrainian conflict on both sides, but the Kremlin has ramped up efforts to bring in reinforcements from Syria. Syria’s military has begun recruiting troops from its own ranks to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, promising payments of $3,000 a month – a sum of up to 50 times more than a Syrian soldier’s monthly salary.

All of that and so much more:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/12/kyiv-ready-to-fight-as-russian-forces-close-in-ukraine-capital

Russian agents came to the home of Google’s top executive in Moscow to deliver a frightening ultimatum last September: take down an app that had drawn the ire of Russian President Vladimir Putin within 24 hours or be taken to prison.

Google quickly moved the woman to a hotel where she checked in under an assumed name and might be protected by the presence of other guests and hotel security, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The same agents — believed by company officials to be from Russia’s FSB, a successor to the KGB intelligence service — then showed up at her room to tell her the clock was still ticking.

Within hours, an app designed to help Russians register protest votes against Putin could no longer be downloaded from Google or Apple, whose main representative in Moscow faced a similarly harrowing sequence. Titans of American technology had been brought to their knees by some of the most primitive intimidation tactics in the Kremlin playbook.

The unnerving encounters, which have not previously been disclosed, were part of a broader campaign that Putin intensified last year to erode sources of internal opposition — moves now helping him maintain his hold on power amid a global backlash over the invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/12/russia-putin-google-apple-navalny/

I don't know why I keep opening this thread because all I'm reading is stuff I saw on the BBC or Sky a day or more ago.

I mean, I don't know what they're showing on the news in the US, but there is wall-to-wall 24/7 coverage of this over here.

sorry, i thought the washington post broke that story

This thread keeps showing/leading me to stuff I didn't know, balancing speculation.
xxxpost reference to foreign fighters on both sides leads here:
...All volunteers sign a contract with Kyiv’s pro-western government. They are then assigned to training groups where their professional experience is evaluated. Gavrylko said he was learning combat first aid. He also worked as an interpreter.
...Kovzhun pointed out that western military instructors had been training the Ukrainian army since 2014, when Putin annexed Crimea and kickstarted a war in the eastern Donbas region. They included Israelis, Britons and Georgians, he said. Nato refuses to send soldiers to Ukraine. But as Kovzhun noted, many of the volunteers have come from Nato countries to fight Russia.

According to Reuters, dozens of former soldiers from the British army’s elite Parachute Regiment have reached Ukraine. Hundreds more will soon follow, one ex-soldier predicted.
(Boris they'll face court martial if they come back.)
...Other countries have taken a more pragmatic view and have waived legal restrictions. Latvia, long an enemy of Russia, has lifted a 2014 ban on its citizens going off to fight with Kyiv. Germany and Canada have taken similar steps. While most volunteers are from North America and Europe, a few have come from countries such as Colombia, Japan and even Jamaica.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/11/ukraine-russia-war-foreign-fighters-volunteers

Previous Guardian excerpt was posted by them today btw, trying to focus on latest reports now, but all from me for a while.

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I’m not enjoying the long information dumps. More selectivity of what to post may be in order.

sorry, i thought the washington post broke that story

Not that one! I hadn't actually seen that before!

People from around the world are bypassing Putin’s censorship to send millions of text messages/emails about the invasion of Ukraine to ordinary Russians by using a new tool developed by Poland-based @squad3o3 & disseminated by @YourAnonNews https://t.co/FquNFnZlsj via @WSJ

— Bojan Pancevski (@bopanc) March 12, 2022

this sounds kind of like when the Guardian got UK liberals to write to random residents of a town in Ohio telling them to vote against Bush in the 2004 presidential election and it supposedly increased Bush's share of the vote relative to the rest of the state.

Should be OK as long as UK liberals aren't doing the texting though.

xxxxpost@boring_maryland

Sorry! Here's a short information dump:

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

lol at expecting some cutting edge news aggregate out of an ilx thread

I’m not expecting anything I was trying to politely say “post less”.

^^^^

A new mayor has been installed in the Ukrainian city of Melitopol, which is under Russian military control, after the elected mayor was kidnapped on Friday, according to the Zaporozhye regional administration...Melitopol is a city in southern Ukraine that lies between the besieged city of Mariupol and the now Russian-occupied city of Kherson.https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-putin-news-03-12-22/index.html

I suspect some kind of endgame could be taking shape:

Russia’s finance minister revealed today that, due to sanctions, Moscow has lost access to $300 bil of Russia’s $640 bil in reserve funds. As a result, “debts in countries unfriendly to Russia we will pay in ruble equivalents.” That’s a default, folks. https://t.co/CuIXm6xRCl

— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) March 13, 2022

MP Leonid Slutsky, one of the Russian negotiators at the talks with Ukraine, says “significant progress” has been made since the start of those talks & predicts “documents for signing” within days. We’ll see...

— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) March 13, 2022

Also says “no need for illusions” about breakthrough https://t.co/j2uCCAbBZI

— Oliver Carroll (@olliecarroll) March 13, 2022

Frankly, I do not trust the Russian negotiators one bit. Not sure how an endgame squares with bombing a military target in the west and abducting mayors and installing puppets in the east. sorry don't mean to be a jerk, I just can't be as optimistic.

lol at expecting some cutting edge news aggregate out of an ilx thread

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Saturday, March 12, 2022 10:31 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Hard disagree! I get all my news from ilx, normally, and it's better and more widely sourced than anywhere else I could go, filtered through a lot of usually very smart, insightful people with variety of perspectives!

This thread has not lived up to that hopeful standard, alas.

xpost thus my conditional language, you see.

Meantime

Breaking: Russian aviation hit in a significant way again - this time, by Bermuda. Bermuda revokes the licenses of 745 Russian aircraft (that’s 50% of Russia’s airline fleet).

Note: Majority of aircraft flying for Russian airlines are registered in Bermuda for tax avoidance.

— Alex Macheras (@AlexInAir) March 13, 2022

In addition - foreign leasing companies want their jets back from Russia by 28 March.

Russian airlines “simply not answering the phone” one lessor tells me, as they prepare to ‘write off’ dozens of multi-million dollar airline jets that could be “essentially gone for good”

— Alex Macheras (@AlexInAir) March 13, 2022

Anyway, about those negotiations -- notable point here

Ukraine’s lead negotiator says Russia is “looking far more properly” at the situation and thinks they may reach “concrete results” in the next few days.
He says Russia has stopped making “ultimatums”. https://t.co/f2KCcYTloe

— Patrick Reevell (@Reevellp) March 13, 2022

Related to xxxxpost kidnapping and replacement of mayor:
The occupiers on the territory of the Kherson region are trying to repeat the sad experience of the formation of pseudo-republics,” Zelenskyy said. “They are blackmailing local leaders, putting pressure on deputies, looking for someone to bribe.”
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-mevlut-cavusoglu-europe-nato-b33709c6f51d1b580f2c6874066eb819

That Bermuda factoid is something else.