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Russian Invasion of Ukraine


Zathras
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46 minutes ago, Cerina said:

I'm too angry at Abbott to even think about another country right now. I'm sure I'll get there though. 

I had no idea what you are talking about so I had to look it up.

And holy shit...and then I kept scrolling and now I am unsure which wtf you are upset about.  So he ordered the power grid to charge the maximum during the winter storm and is using this trans child abuse as a cover?  That what I pieced together in a 30 second google.  

I can't even anymore.

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Hey guys remember that one time one country mounted a military invasion on another with an intent to install a new government?

The invaders claimed that they were rightfully doing so because their target might have large scale weapons with the intent to use them.

Meanwhile the international community condemned their military actions.

But enough about W invading Iraq!

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33 minutes ago, Hobbes said:

I had no idea what you are talking about so I had to look it up.

And holy shit...and then I kept scrolling and now I am unsure which wtf you are upset about.  So he ordered the power grid to charge the maximum during the winter storm and is using this trans child abuse as a cover?  That what I pieced together in a 30 second google.  

I can't even anymore.

Me either. He's desperately trying to cling to Trump's base and keep their votes.

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I'm in the meeting with the Ukrainians right now and they're... pretty blasé about it. All they said when asked is "well we still have internet." When people were saying things are a lot more important than work right now, they literally said nothing, and went on with the demo they were giving us. It was a little weird.

I'm not sure exactly WHERE in Ukraine they are. I had assumed Kyiv but not sure. Maybe they're on the western side of the country and aren't affected much. Yet.

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57 minutes ago, D-Ray Kenobi said:

Hey guys remember that one time one country mounted a military invasion on another with an intent to install a new government?

The invaders claimed that they were rightfully doing so because their target might have large scale weapons with the intent to use them.

Meanwhile the international community condemned their military actions.

But enough about W invading Iraq!

That definitely rings true and I think emboldened Putin.  SO did Trump's coddling of Putin.

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He's going to have a hard time holding Ukraine, if annexing the entire country is his goal..which I am skeptical of.

Ukraine is full of battle hardened combat vets, and a staunchly patriotic population who might lose this initial invasion, but they're no pushovers. They'll start an insurgency and Putin will have an Iraq on his hands. And it will be misery and death for all. Grim.

I think maybe Putin is launching this invasion to prove that Ukraine cannot defend itself and for them to not become a member of NATO. Basically he wants NATO off his doorstep and is giving the west a good bite to make his point. But I think it's very dangerous game to play and he's kind of going an odd way about trying to get what he wants. 

Who knows what's going on in his mind really. Maybe he's just another Napoleon short man little dick fuckwit 

I feel for the Ukrainian people. They have experienced a hell of a lot in the last four decades. 

 

 

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They'll install a Russia-friendly puppet government so Ukraine doesn't join NATO. But the ripple effect is that NATO will most likely now get a lot membership applications from other countries close to Russia's border. My country's current president has been pro-NATO all his political life and for there to be a referendum vote about application for membership. If there is a vote while people still remember what happened to Ukraine, it will pass.

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I thought I had nothing really to say about it, no opinions, but a quick check of my notebook shows more than a little nothing. Like a couple heaps of nothing. Three or four nothings, at least! Here you go!

[Edit : Each time I try to post I get an error message. Going to try and divide my post up a bit into multiple posts. Trying to see if whatever the problem is (hyperlinks? the image?) sneaks through that way. You're welcome and/or I'm sorry.]

[Edit : yeah, it was some of the links in the very last part! Or one particular link? Whatever, I dumped most of the links from there. You can suss out the context on your own!]

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Nothing #1

 

I understand that looking for consistency among these sorts of people is a lost cause (e.g. “So much for the tolerant left!” or “Christian values much!?” is kind of dumb; seeming hypocrisy or apparent incompatibility among moral stances taken by ideological outsiders always always always have an explanation that to the ideological outsider themself is convincing and obvious and immediate — and, in any case, what are we doing here, this isn’t debate class, there’s no referee, there’s no umpire, who cares if someone you disagree with has taken incommensurable positions. if you’re getting kicked in the face no way now how will a sneering “Umm, logical fallacy! You kick me in the face even though YOU YOURSELF would not want to be kicked in the face!” stop your face from getting kicked in) but I don’t understand how a certain species of right winger — your Tuckers Carlson, your Candaces Owens, your Charlies Kirk — have come to the conclusion that Justin Trudeau is an evil power hungry tyrant but Vladimir Putin is making some good points when you actually listen to him.

 

I mean, surely it’s got to be either they’re both bad or they’re both good or the super obvious normie position regarding which one’s good and which one’s bad!? There are four available opinions here on this matter, here you go :

 

1) Justin Trudeau good, Vladimir Putin bad

2) Justin Trudeau bad, Vladimir Putin bad

3) Justin Trudeau good, Vladimir Putin good

4) Justin Trudeau bad, Vladimir Putin good

 

I feel like they’ve chosen the one that makes the absolute least sense. Opinion 4 is so dumb!

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Nothing #2

 

 

Oligarchies don’t function like, I don’t know, S.M.E.R.S.H. in the movies. There’s not one big guy at the top with absolute control giving orders to obedient underlings. Putin is the tip of the spear. He manoeuvred himself into a position of power on behalf of existing interests. Some of whom he immediately betrayed once his position was secure!

 

What he’s doing now makes no sense (asides from being, of course, evil! The making of unprovoked war by one country upon another was adjudged by the Nuremberg Tribunals to be the supreme crime!) so it’s best to see this as the standard truism of all politics, even foreign politics, being at their heart local. It’s a play to his domestic constituency. It’s a show of strength on the world stage made to impress ordinary Russians and not to actually gain any advantage in the long-term.

 

I don’t buy the argument that he was sincerely scared of Ukraine. I don’t buy the argument he even wants an additional 35 million Russians in the Russian Federation. I think the entire point of this for him is to have a war he can declare victory over. Go in, blow things up, say that he has established a few viable client states (it doesn’t matter to him if they collapse once Russia leaves), have a parade for the returning heroes.

 

It must be that his standing is far more untenable than most people other than him have thought (does he think that maybe somebody somewhere was about to kill him and blame covid-19 for it!?) because the only thing that could push him to such a rash action would be the belief that he was vulnerable. I mean, it’s entirely possible that the West gets its act together and puts together a package of responses that genuinely threatens him. They could seize every asset by a citizen of Russia valued at a high enough number, freeze every full enough bank account, they could squeeze everyone and everything outside of Russia, revoke all those investors’ visas, really deal with the global kleptocracy as a whole. I wouldn’t bet on it, of course, but it could happen. And there’s no way it ever would have happened before but now it’s a genuine possibility! If that does go down then it’s very possible he goes down too and gets replaced with someone pliant.

 

The very thing he’s done to make it impossible for them to get rid of him now makes it slightly more possible that they’ll get rid of him.

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Nothing #4

 

He keeps doing this thing where he gathers together a large group of cronies in a big big room (it looks like they’re on the planet Naboo! it looks like they’re debating what they should do about Nute Gunray’s latest plot! it looks like those dumb scenes from TPM and AotC where they’d sit around in a semi-circle and calmly argue in cool but stentorian tones about something or other! the ones with Sio Bibble!) none of whom get to sit at an actual table and sort of advises/admonishes them about what’s going to happen next.

 

At the last time he did this – before the war itself technically started – one of these dumb dumbs said something like “I agree! Russia should occupy Donetsk and Luhansk!” and he just casually dismissed that as not being what’s up for discussion and then the dumb dumb immediately turned on a dime and said “Yes! We should recognize their independence!”. BUT THEN it turned out that Putin’s announcement of the invasion was filmed on Monday (because of what he’s wearing and because of the metadata that remained unstripped from the video) so the dumb dumb was just getting a little over the skis. Just looked a little bit ahead in the playbook!

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16 hours ago, Darth Krawlie said:

I hadn't even thought of it during all the news lately, but this morning I was reminded I have coworkers I meet with every other week in Ukraine. They sent us a message saying all is good so far and they still plan on having today's meeting, but to "stay tuned." Ugh.

It was pointed out to me today that we have a Russian engineering team that we were going to work with on a project. The other team mates have worked with her on a past project and said she is great to work with, and so far she seems competent and really nice. And then they pointed out today that maybe we won't be working with her for the near future with the sanctions. Yikes.

Given what I've read over the last week about this invasion and the 2014 "annexation" of Crimea, I honestly don't think financial sanctions are going to work. Putin don't give a shit. But military action is going to start WWIII. This is going to be ugly.

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5 hours ago, Destiny Skywalker said:

It was pointed out to me today that we have a Russian engineering team that we were going to work with on a project. The other team mates have worked with her on a past project and said she is great to work with, and so far she seems competent and really nice. And then they pointed out today that maybe we won't be working with her for the near future with the sanctions. Yikes.

Given what I've read over the last week about this invasion and the 2014 "annexation" of Crimea, I honestly don't think financial sanctions are going to work. Putin don't give a shit. But military action is going to start WWIII. This is going to be ugly.

Really, we’re putting on a show of caring, but Ukraine will be part of Russia.

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7 hours ago, Fozzie said:

Really, we’re putting on a show of caring, but Ukraine will be part of Russia.

You are not wrong but NATO is absolutely freaked out right now.   Maybe Putin just wants Ukraine, or at least a puppet government there, but you never know what additional land he may want.  He's acting like pre-WW2 Hitler in that way, and appeasement won't work.  Doesn't help that China is in Putin's corner, and I would not be surprised that he is counting on China to offset sanctions.

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16 minutes ago, Zathras said:

You are not wrong but NATO is absolutely freaked out right now.   Maybe Putin just wants Ukraine, or at least a puppet government there, but you never know what additional land he may want.  He's acting like pre-WW2 Hitler in that way, and appeasement won't work.  Doesn't help that China is in Putin's corner, and I would not be surprised that he is counting on China to offset sanctions.

Everyone is definitely freaked, but we don’t really care that much about Ukraine itself. I mean, hell, we don’t even have sanctions against Putin himself. 
 

It also doesn’t help that two of the most influential Republicans (Trump and Tucker) support Putin.

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I think Putin would be satisfied with a puppet government, but he would also love to scare off NATO with his sabre rattling. And NATO is freaked out but NATO also wasn't willing to let Ukraine join their club because they felt the Ukrainian government had too much corruption. I dont know enough to judge whether that was true, but NATO needs to think about what their purpose is nowadays. It was formed to stand firm against the USSR, and Putin would seemingly love to return to those days.

I really don't like how emboldened Putin has become. If he gets away with this, what is next? Our sanctions are ultimately too weak because Europe is worried about the impact on their own economy. Sometimes taking the hard line means you are going to take a hit, too.

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