Russia Invades Ukraine

[Angst]

So about world reaction and popular support...

I think the Russian government thought it could get away with it after most of the world let them roll through Crimea. What the government didn't get was that the world's opinion was indeed really sore after it, and from what I could gather troops were mostky secluded to those areas.

So basically the world got angrier, not more docile, and a full scale invasion if Ukraine was much more ill received than a localized one. It does reek like a massive miscalculation on Putin's part. There is a timeline somewhere where Zelensky fled the country and the west condemned the actions but would be mostly indifferent, but it's not how things shaped up.

edit spelling of zelensky

 

[AmtrakQuebec]

So about world reaction and popular support...

I think the Russian government thought it could get away with it after most of the world let them roll through Crimea. What the government didn't get was that the world's opinion was indeed really sore after it, and from what I could gather troops were mostky secluded to those areas.

So basically the world got angrier, not more docile, and a full scale invasion if Ukraine was much more ill received than a localized one. It does reek like a massive miscalculation on Putin's part. There is a timeline somewhere where Zenesky fled the country and the west condemned the actions but would be mostly indifferent, but it's not how things shaped up.

Captain Ukraine (yes, they are actually call him that) has turned out to be the right man for the time... a modern day Churchill with a sense of humour.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Germany is getting more totalitarian by the day, as fascists are tightening their grip on the country and Europe. Can't even make music if you have wrong citizenship.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2...valery-gergiev-over-failure-to-denounce-putin

It's because of who he chooses as his 'close personal friend' than because of his citizenship.

 

[Kyriakos]

I think there are some people from Ukraine here, so I definitely do not want to sound as if I am not sympathetic to them, since it is Ukraine which stands to lose the most (unlike western countries half or more a continent away from Russia).
But: I doubt the seriousness of the ukrainian situation is being realized here*. Once again, we have a war that only lasted 4 days by now, and virtually all territories Russia wants to control are already under its control (like virtually all the Azov coast). Resistance for your country is always admirable. However I don't see how this ends well for Ukraine, and media presenting it as somehow potentially ending well, is dangerous (let alone false).

I also don't like at all the effective ousting of any russian tv/media from the west. Are you sure this won't help then oust/ban/belittle any western media which aren't one with the official line on matters (and not just this war)?

*when I mentioned the second Scheswig-Holstein war, it was also due to the various peace talks (during the war) which failed, until the final succeeded. At the time there was even the suggestion, by the end, that all of Denmark becomes a province of Prussia.

 

[red_elk]

Russian Ministry of Defense announces that it is going to do precision bombardments on technological centres of the Ukrainian Security Service SBU in Kyiv.

https://twitter.com/StevenDerix/status/1498649771636105217

They warned civilians to stay away, pretty much like Israel does.

 

[Verbose]

In 2014, sure.
Since then, Russians have invaded them twice, not sure Ukrainians want to be a bridge anymore.

If the bridge actually leads to Europe also for Russia, why not.

Putin has pulled all of Russia down into a dark, paranoid bunker with him. Not obvious they will want to live like that indefinitely.

 

[AmtrakQuebec]

I think there are some people from Ukraine here, so I definitely do not want to sound as if I am not sympathetic to them, since it is Ukraine which stands to lose the most (unlike western countries half or more a continent away from Russia).
But: I doubt the seriousness of the ukrainian situation is being realized here. Once again, we have a war that only lasted 4 days by now, and virtually all territories Russia wants to control are already under its control (like virtually all the Azov coast). Resistance for your country is always admirable. However I don't see how this ends well for Ukraine, and media presenting it as somehow potentially ending well, is dangerous (let alone false).

I also don't like at all the effective ousting of any russian tv/media from the west. Are you sure this won't help then oust/ban/belittle any western media which aren't one with the official line on matters (and not just this war)?

Much like many of your posts.

 

[Kyriakos]

Much like many of your posts.

My posts aren't dangerous for anyone, though. Cfc OT is read by a few hundred people, if we are being generous...

 

[Verbose]

I think there are some people from Ukraine here, so I definitely do not want to sound as if I am not sympathetic to them, since it is Ukraine which stands to lose the most (unlike western countries half or more a continent away from Russia).
But: I doubt the seriousness of the ukrainian situation is being realized here. Once again, we have a war that only lasted 4 days by now, and virtually all territories Russia wants to control are already under its control (like virtually all the Azov coast). Resistance for your country is always admirable. However I don't see how this ends well for Ukraine, and media presenting it as somehow potentially ending well, is dangerous (let alone false).

I also don't like at all the effective ousting of any russian tv/media from the west. Are you sure this won't help then oust/ban/belittle any western media which aren't one with the official line on matters (and not just this war)?

Putin has to first take Ukraine, before he can hold it. Experience shows that the holding can be the far more difficult, dangerous part. But up to the Ukranians to prove in the end.

The whole point of the exercise is to deny the Ukranians any choice in the matter of their country. Giving a lie to that can a surprisingly powerful motivator. Especially if it has been instigated by someone like Putin, on the assumption that Ukranians are just sheep, and he should be able to lead them around by the nose. Since he assumes that it already the situation in Ukraine.

 

[Hrothbern]

They warned civilians to stay away, pretty much like Israel does.

How does that work with millions living in Kyiv without the money to stay elsewhere ?

But they are warned so
civilians remaining are "therefore" fighters making casualties more acceptable ?

Israel ?
My sympathy waning since Golda Meir was gone
My sympathy gone when Rabin was murdered
Israel not my beer

 

[Kyriakos]

Putin has to first take Ukraine, before he can hold it. Experience shows that the holding can be the far more difficult, dangerous part. But up to the Ukranians to prove in the end.

The whole point of the exercise is to deny the Ukranians any choice in the matter of their country. Giving a lie to that can a surprisingly powerful motivator. Especially if it has been instigated by someone like Putin, on the assumption that Ukranians are just sheep, and he should be able to lead them around by the nose. Since he assumes that it already the situation in Ukraine.

There's the Melian dialogue, settling this kind of angle (ethics).
I think the crucial issue for people in Ukraine is to at least have a country, when the war has ended.

 

[Snowygerry]

Meanwhile over 100.000 women and children have fled West.

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/02/25/vluchtelingenstromen-uit-oekraine/

 

[Samson]

Meanwhile over 100.000 women and children have fled West.

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/02/25/vluchtelingenstromen-uit-oekraine/

Other numbers are available:

• Beeb: the UN said that more 660,000 people had entered [Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Moldova] from Ukraine.
• Daily sabah (?) Over half a million people leave Ukraine amid Russian invasion
• Time: Exodus Grows as Nearly 370,000 People Flee Russia's Ukraine Invasion. Millions May Follow

 

[Verbose]

So about world reaction and popular support...

I think the Russian government thought it could get away with it after most of the world let them roll through Crimea. What the government didn't get was that the world's opinion was indeed really sore after it, and from what I could gather troops were mostky secluded to those areas.

So basically the world got angrier, not more docile, and a full scale invasion if Ukraine was much more ill received than a localized one. It does reek like a massive miscalculation on Putin's part. There is a timeline somewhere where Zelensky fled the country and the west condemned the actions but would be mostly indifferent, but it's not how things shaped up.

edit spelling of zelensky

I listened to a rather angry Belorussian in the radio this morning – guy came as a political refugee from the Putin-Lukashenko auticratic tag-team back in 2020. To him it was clearly a bitter pill that the Belorussians rejected Lukashenko so clearly, and yet he was allowed to remain in place, with Putin's support, and Putin was allowed to just puppet Belorussia, and no one in the west did a damn thing about it. No sanctions, no nothing, really.

And that's the situation. The rapid reorientation of a slew of confirmed "Putin Versteher" (Putin understansders) in German politics is a case in point. For the longest time in western Eruope it was assumed that if Russia is just peacefully engaged with, tied to the west with a thousand threads of finance, economy, culture, science, whatever, in the end Putin will become more like a "normal" European president, and Russia a more or less normal European country.

And now it has gone to the point of realization that all those policies have just failed. So now the understanding is rather that the first line of European collective defense against Putin's Russia lies in the Ukraine – and if Ukraine is not aided but the rest of the Europeans as a whole, Putin might go on to the next victim, thinking that this time the craven Europeans will not dare really try to do anything about anything, except hope Russia will just spare them.

 

[Verbose]

There's the Melian dialogue, settling this kind of angle (ethics).
I think the crucial issue for people in Ukraine is to at least have a country, when the war has ended.

They just have to outlast Putin. Many ways of doing that.

Edit:
There is a kind of built-in paradox in the Melian dialogue, since the point supposedly was that the weaker part always gives in to the stronger, for how could it not be so?

But then it turns out that's nor necessarily the case. The strong might be forced to back off, orthey may have tpo just genocide the weak to save appearances, but what has that in then end proven, except that power might make genocide practicable?

The Melians told the Athenians they would trust in their gods, and take their chances, and then the Athenians destroyed them utterly. That was a disaster for the Melians, but whatever it did for the Athenians, it didn't actually prove them right.

 

[Kyriakos]

They just have to outlast Putin. Many ways of doing that.

You think this war will go on for years? :/

 

[thecrazyscot]

So about world reaction and popular support...

I think the Russian government thought it could get away with it after most of the world let them roll through Crimea. What the government didn't get was that the world's opinion was indeed really sore after it, and from what I could gather troops were mostky secluded to those areas.

So basically the world got angrier, not more docile, and a full scale invasion if Ukraine was much more ill received than a localized one. It does reek like a massive miscalculation on Putin's part. There is a timeline somewhere where Zelensky fled the country and the west condemned the actions but would be mostly indifferent, but it's not how things shaped up.

I don't know that it ultimately matters if this was a miscalculation or not on Putin's part. He will not back down unless he can "save face" and turn it into a win of some sort. The angrier he gets that things aren't going his way it's likely the worse the war will get.

I think there are some people from Ukraine here, so I definitely do not want to sound as if I am not sympathetic to them, since it is Ukraine which stands to lose the most (unlike western countries half or more a continent away from Russia).
But: I doubt the seriousness of the ukrainian situation is being realized here*. Once again, we have a war that only lasted 4 days by now, and virtually all territories Russia wants to control are already under its control (like virtually all the Azov coast). Resistance for your country is always admirable. However I don't see how this ends well for Ukraine, and media presenting it as somehow potentially ending well, is dangerous (let alone false).

No one seriously thinks Ukraine can win the war on their own. The best they can hope to do is make it so costly for Russia that they can be brought to the bargaining table, where peace can be made with some territorial and security concessions to Russia.

If anyone else gets involved, I don't know if anyone can predict what will happen next. But it won't be good.

I also don't like at all the effective ousting of any russian tv/media from the west. Are you sure this won't help then oust/ban/belittle any western media which aren't one with the official line on matters (and not just this war)?

Russia has never had any problems clamping down on non-state media and have always belittled western media. The Russian media that is being "ousted" are essentially state propaganda outlets, because those are the only Russian media channels that are really allowed to exist.

 

[Akka]

You think this war will go on for years? :/

No. Either Ukraine or Russian war machine will have broken far before that.
Russia has an overwhelming advantage, so Ukraine is liable to crumble in the next weeks. Without active Western intervention, that's sadly the most probable outcome.
But if it can endure that long, Russia will simply economically and industrially collapse. No way they can supply their army for so long.

 

[Kyriakos]

Russia has never had any problems clamping down on non-state media and have always belittled western media. The Russian media that is being "ousted" are essentially state propaganda outlets, because those are the only Russian media channels that are really allowed to exist.

I agree. But do you want to emulate Russia on media? I don't.

 

[thecrazyscot]

I agree. But do you want to emulate Russia on media? I don't.

Journalism =/= propaganda. I'm totally fine with removing platforms for state-sponsored disinformation.