ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

Yeah, speaking of Mariupol, where Russians say everybody should leave, but picky about how (and at all, sometimes, as your post indicates):

A convoy of 11 empty buses — driving towards Mariupol to rescue fleeing Ukrainians — has been commandeered by Russian forces, according to the Ukrainian government.

The Russians have driven the buses, along with the original bus drivers and several emergency services workers, to an undisclosed location the government says.

...Recent days have seen several thousand people make the dangerous journey out of the city in private vehicles, en route to Zaporizhzhia, a city more than 200 kilometers (about 124 miles) away which is still in Ukrainian hands.

However, attempts to get empty buses into besieged Mariupol to collect people and bring them out have so far failed.

Just a whole lot of succinct points about significance of Mariupol:
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/23/1088113318/what-mariupol-means-ukraine-russia-military-campaign

No surprise at this point but anyway

We analyzed dozens of battlefield radio transmissions between Russian forces in Ukraine during the initial invasion of Makariv, a town outside Kyiv. They reveal an army struggling with logistical problems and communication failures: https://t.co/om3U9mGLtW

— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) March 23, 2022

Wow, that NYT video is gnarly... when they shoot that sedan with a little dog running by? Ugh

I'm on a couple of the Discord servers where the radio intercepts are piling up, and that NYT report is just a small sample of the chaos.

#Ukraine: What was once a potent Russian R-330ZH Zhitel jamming and radio reconnaissance station, now completely destroyed by Ukrainian fire.

It is notable that recently Ukrainian authorities specifically requested that citizens help them find these powerful systems. pic.twitter.com/vArxeBX5Ho

— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) March 22, 2022

Up to 15,000 Russians soldiers have been killed in one month in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, two senior NATO military officials said. The officials made the estimate during a briefing with reporters on Wednesday.

The officials specified the range could be as low as 7,000 or as high as 15,000 in total Russian soldiers killed in the conflict so far. Their estimate is based on what Ukraine is telling them, what they know from Russia “intentionally or by mistake” and from “open source” information, one of the officials said.

“The estimate we have is based on what the Ukrainians tell us, what the Russian let us know, intentionally or by mistakes, because mistakes happen in a war, and on intelligence we get on open sources, we think that the Russians have lost between 7,000, up to maximum 15,000 dead,” the official said Wednesday.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces estimates that 15,600 Russian soldiers have been killed in the conflict.

Overall, they estimate that there could be between 30,000 to 40,000 Russian soldiers either killed, wounded or missing altogether.

“Statistically in conflicts when you have one killed soldier, you generally have three wounded soldier, so if you go four fold, it would be, I would say between 30,000 to 40,000 losses, losses killed in action, wounded in action, prisoner of war are missing, you don’t know what happened to the soldier,” the official said.

Other US officials have estimated a similar range of as low as 7,000 and as high as 14,000 Russian soldiers killed, but they have expressed “low confidence” in those estimates.

Neither NATO nor the United States have troops on the ground in Ukraine, making it incredibly difficult to get an accurate estimate on the number of Russian casualties. An accurate tally could take weeks or even months and may only be possible after the fighting has ceased.
The Russian government has not put out a number of total soldiers killed in the conflict. The Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda published — then later removed — a report that the Russian Ministry of Defense had recorded 9,861 Russian Armed Forces deaths in the war in Ukraine.

The report from the tabloid originally read: "According to the Russian Defense Ministry, during the special operation in Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces lost 9861 people killed and 16153 wounded."

'We are too tired to be nervous': Some Ukrainian refugees return home, despite escalating Russian attacks
https://www.aol.com/news/too-tired-nervous-ukrainian-refugees-080018482.html

This doesn’t necessarily break new ground or get as blunt as it should, but it’s a valid perspective:

https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-russia-war-failed-world-order-united-nations-nato-council-of-europe-vladimir-putin/

A wrinkle

The US and allies planned to support a Ukrainian insurgency after a swift Russian conventional victory. Now, they are struggling to sustain a Ukrainian Army that has held its ground and needs more ammo to fight a large-scale conventional war. https://t.co/jczDJzYGUt

— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) March 24, 2022

A bit rich for Fukuyama to be lecturing about post-Berlin-Wall complacency!

It seems like that article doesn't have much to say other than "the current world order didn't prevent Russia from invading Ukraine," which is a truism.

Meantime:

Port of Berdyansk, large fire. Russian ships have been unloading there to support operations in Mariupol pic.twitter.com/gGBxdknNvh

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) March 24, 2022

***BREAKING***

Now beyond any reasonable doubt that a #Russian Navy Alligator Class landing ship exploded in #Berdiansk, Ukraine

Reportedly a Ukrainian ballistic missile strike. Two Ropucha Class ships also present, observed sailing away as fire raged pic.twitter.com/eg8kXp6jfy

— H I Sutton (@CovertShores) March 24, 2022

Big question of how severely the port has been damaged. https://t.co/MNcvG0GU7G pic.twitter.com/BFd9JpFoyJ

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) March 24, 2022

Attack ships on fire off the coast of Ukraine

Looks like the Corsairs of Umbar aren't going to make it.

Also, with regards to Ukrainians calling Russian soldiers "orcs," here's what Russians portray them as:

(the crossed out sign on top there says "people")

https://i.imgur.com/9Z8k9nO.jpg?1

Please like, retweet, and subscribe to stop Russian Russophobia against Russians. This is a serious and important issue and we must not shy away from covering it during this difficult and complicated situation.

I watched the NY times video piece just now and I'm wondering - what is the Russian term that translates to "motherfucker"? Is it a calque, or some other Russian term with a completely different meaning that serves the same role as the standard worst thing you can call someone else?

On March 1st, a week after the war to "denazify Ukraine" started, the last independent talk radio in Russia – Echo of Moscow – was shut down.

Now it's former EIC, @aavst20551, a Jew, had this plastered on his Moscow apartment door. "JUDENSAU" is German for Jewish pig (sow). pic.twitter.com/mS7nYRmgnf

— Sergey Sanovich (@SergeySanovich) March 24, 2022

I am beginning to be concerned about the status of the free press in Russia, as well as an increasingly permissive atmosphere where right-wing nationalism and anti-semitic attacks are allowed to happen. If this continues, it could have a chilling effect on leftist politics in Russia for many years, turning it into a mirror image of the fascist, warmongering autocracy that is Zelensky's Ukraine.

Oh yeah, they also left a severed pig's head in a wig on his doorstep. Picture not included, find it yourself if you want.

Maybe we need monthly threads for this now. Not that I plan to post much in any.

Hey MoominTrollin, you contacted me through ILX mail but you didn't include an email address.

So this Times reporter, says that putting pressure on the oligarchs was a time-honored joke, because it just meant putting names on a list, names that in practice were well-hidden behind shell companies---Russian nesting dolls are the appropriate cliche, he adds---also

I mean, let’s take the U.K., for instance. People have been warning for years and years and years that these oligarchs were buying up property — really, really expensive property — all around London. And when our colleague Jane Bradley and I were reporting this story out, she spoke with Phil Mason, who served for decades as a top adviser to the British government on international corruption. And he just said flat out, lawmakers in Britain saw Russian money as a source of jobs and investments.

It was like a willing blindness.

Credit where credit is due

ABC reporter asks Biden if he was too quick to rule out world war 3 pic.twitter.com/OEjl9ijWhu

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 24, 2022

War Reddit was quick to spot that the Alligator-class landing ship that sank in Berdiansk was one of 2 still active after being initially commissioned in... 1964

Also, the sunken ship is now blocking the port.

As tempting as it is, I'm pretty leery of mocking Russia's creaky military capabilities... Putin might just be "Oh yeah? Well check this out!" and start launching chemical, biological, tactical nukes.. like a cornered rat lashing out

That said, BBC had a couple Ukrainian soldiers showing the reporter what the Russians were eating... stolen chickens and MRE's that had expired in 2015

Just sad all around

Yeah I mean...I'm not saying truly world-shattering shit can't still happen, but my feelings a month ago are rather different than now. That ship being sunk is definitely part of it; whether here or elsewhere someone was saying that this was about all the 'victories' they could show on Russian TV, that they were bringing in supplies that way, and now, pfft.

You know, Groucho Marx predicted all this:

"The pay of the common soldier is also reduced to a minimum — determined purely by the production costs necessary to procure him. But he exchanges the performance of his services not for capital, but for the revenue of the state. for Ukrainian carpets, blenders, toasters, TVs, iPhones, and fur coats."

https://i.imgur.com/KtCrMAD.jpg?1

I thought that was Zeppo tbh

I think home court advantage is seriously at play here

Judensau is worse than "Jewish pig." It actually means "Jewish pigfucker."

No? Sau is German for swine.

See also: Lou Castel cursing people out in his role as the doppelgänger of the director in a certain German film about making a film.

Part of an interesting thread about a book re: nationalities and the collapse of the USSR, but this page stands out in light of current events:

The rhetoric from Yeltsin’s office about Russian claims to Ukrainian territory is honestly indistinguishable from Putin’s: pic.twitter.com/TpVScZ5Jtw

— Casey Michel 🇰🇿 (@cjcmichel) March 23, 2022

Another interesting bit is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's ideas about a "Slavic core" of the Russian/Soviet empire apparently influencing Yeltsin with his idea that Russia/Ukraine/Belarus should all be one Slavic state, on the solid ground of "historic Russian lands."

xp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judensau

(NFSW--there are some ugly, ugly images in there.)

Ugh. Thanks. Just looking at the summary text now through google, not looking at the images yet.

Any validity to this? Or hot air?

International hacking collective Anonymous claims to have exploited Russia's Central Bank - and is threatening to release 35,000 files which include 'secret agreements' in the next 48 hours.

The bank is responsible for protecting and ensuring the safety of the ruble, the Russian currency which has plummeted in value since the invasion of Ukraine began last month.

In a post on Twitter late last night by one of the group's accounts, Anonymous revealed its latest hack, though details were limited..

pfft you're an anonymous hacking group, if you have 'secret agreement' documents just fucking release them or shut up

Has Anonymous lived up to their boasts even once?

not that I know of!

Some of Anonymous' data dumps over the past couple of weeks have been interesting but I'd hesitate to say that any of it had strategic value. It does makes for good propaganda though and seeing assholes contort themselves into the most ridiculous statements ("Nestlé denies it was hacked by Anonymous, claiming it accidentally leaked data dump itself") is great. I think the ICIJ, OCCRP, Bellingcat, and Ukrainian Radio Watchers are doing far better work though.

The Squad 303 group's "message a Russian" script was interesting to run for awhile. I'm pretty sure most didn't go through but I did get a couple of failed callback attempts.

Has Anonymous lived up to their boasts even once?

― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, March 24, 2022 7:28 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

although it's phrased as a question, OTM

As tempting as it is, I'm pretty leery of mocking Russia's creaky military capabilities...

I dunno. I know I keep mentioning this, but back in 2011, Russia itself was saying that 20% of its entire military budget was stolen (can we presume that the actual amount is much higher?). Then in 2018, Russian military expenditure dropped for the first time - presumably scrapping whatever modernization programs were happening.

Where that money went:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKYL0H0lgqg

fair warning: homophobia in some lyrics, sarcasm in the refrain; song is from 2009, but at minimum selling half of your diesel is still considered "a human right" in the army. Make of it what you will.

Look, that wasn’t so hard. H/t @owenhatherley pic.twitter.com/SEj1ZgcPjh

— Keith Gessen (@keithgessen) March 25, 2022

Focusing on the issues!

Putin is making a live address. He's currently whining about how Hollywood refuses to make movies about the Russian contribution to defeating Nazi Germany and claiming "progressives" are trying to "cancel Russia".

— Jimmy (@JimmySecUK) March 25, 2022

Putin doing a live speech and just did a bit on "cancel culture" in the West focusing particularly on J. K. Rowling being cancelled. I wish I was joking.

— Sam Freedman (@Samfr) March 25, 2022

Positively (or negatively) Trumpian

Will he pull the troops out if the West promises to uncancel JK Rowling

It appears another general is gone

Ukrainian military confirm the elimination of LTG Yakov Rezantsev, Russia’s 49th CAA commander, in Chornobaivka near Kherson.
Russia is unlikely to confirm — but if he’s alive, let them just show the general verifiably alive and well. pic.twitter.com/B9OfqDHc4f

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) March 25, 2022

Focusing on the issues!

🐦[Putin is making a live address. He’s currently whining about how Hollywood refuses to make movies about the Russian contribution to defeating Nazi Germany and claiming "progressives" are trying to "cancel Russia".
— Jimmy (@JimmySecUK) March 25, 2022🕸]🐦

🐦[Putin doing a live speech and just did a bit on "cancel culture" in the West focusing particularly on J. K. Rowling being cancelled. I wish I was joking.
— Sam Freedman (@Samfr) March 25, 2022🕸]🐦