Russia's Invasion of Ukraine (Official Thread)

[Baka's Weird Case]

“Moscow had claimed the Kerch crossing was virtually untouchable – protected by layers of defences from trained military dolphins to the latest missile systems – making the attack particularly damaging.”

 

[Piff Perkins]

The potential truth in that statement that worries me is that Ukraine doesn't have infinite resources, and western democracies don't have infinite patience. Russia has lost material but not nearly enough to "run out" of material in the foreseeable future. So they literally could keep throwing bodies at Ukraine until the Russian people full-on rebel or the West gets tired of spending money on Ukraine and turns back to domestic issues. Democrats lose the House in November, Europeans get tired of being in emergency mode on energy supplies, Ukraine starts running into basic issues of even maintaining a society due to all the infrastructure damage and population loss....there are multiple deadlines here and it's not a given that Putin's deadline is gonna hit first.


Perhaps there's another way, but it feels like there's at least a serious possibility that Putin needs an off-ramp or there needs to be a coup. I haven't heard anyone give a realistic 3rd way. And the US has had a pretty poor track record in history of hoping/waiting for coups that never actually materialized.

Russia is currently scouring North Korea for weapons. They're running out of tanks and artillery. They may have more bodies to throw at Ukraine but they don't have warm clothes or adequate weapons for the winter, and political cracks are already beginning to appear (Yevgeny Prigozhin openly criticizing the war effort, Ramzan Kadyrov sniping at Sergei Shoigu, etc). I don't believe an attrition campaign works under these circumstances. Nor is Europe losing resolve, yet at least.

We're about to enter a phase where mobilized, barely trained troops are thrown into artillery range to retake fortified positions in the winter. I'm not sure any military mind would tell you that's going to work out well for them.

Under normal circumstances - say if Russia had a competent army that was losing but effectively trading losses with Ukrainian forces - I'd agree that attrition would catch up. But Ukraine mobilized their male population nearly eight months ago, still has reserves, and clearly has arms superiority. Given the botched first mobilization in Russia, how are things going to go x months from now when they try to mobilize more people, including Moscow?

 

[987654321]

There isn't one so just forget about it. An off ramp is just a "get out of jail free card" and nobody is having it. Russia is going to get fukked in the ass slowly in front of the entire world and it's Putin's fault. NATO gonna make Putin moan and tell them he likes it.

Seriously though, why don't you think this is Putin's plan?

This is Russia's Zerg War. What do you think the Z stands for?

Russia is about to be proxy paige in a legalporno scene

 

[Orbital-Fetus]

Ukraine doesn't have infinite resources, and western democracies don't have infinite patience.

@ me when the HIMARS stop popping off.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

you kNow how sticky it gets!

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

The potential truth in that statement that worries me is that Ukraine doesn't have infinite resources, and western democracies don't have infinite patience. Russia has lost material but not nearly enough to "run out" of material in the foreseeable future. So they literally could keep throwing bodies at Ukraine until the Russian people full-on rebel or the West gets tired of spending money on Ukraine and turns back to domestic issues. Democrats lose the House in November, Europeans get tired of being in emergency mode on energy supplies, Ukraine starts running into basic issues of even maintaining a society due to all the infrastructure damage and population loss....there are multiple deadlines here and it's not a given that Putin's deadline is gonna hit first.


Perhaps there's another way, but it feels like there's at least a serious possibility that Putin needs an off-ramp or there needs to be a coup. I haven't heard anyone give a realistic 3rd way. And the US has had a pretty poor track record in history of hoping/waiting for coups that never actually materialized.

Bruh. Just draw the map you want already.

 

[wire28]

There isn’t anything else to escalate. Russia has had the door wide open, they’re just incapable. They don’t expect Russia to do anything but continue to meet them head on. Russia has done far too much to expect a treaty. It’s like how dirty the GOP can be until they’re on the opposite end, then they want everyone else to turn the other cheek. It’s simply time to throw hands on an international scale. Ain’t no teachers to break it up, ain’t no time outs, cease-fires, etc. it’s pointless. Everyone knows Russia won’t honor it. It’s just time to fight it out.

And I wouldn’t exactly call Russia honor driven, more of a “law of nature” type of culture. An “If I’m bigger and stronger than you and I want you have then you must give it to me or I’ll punch you in the face” type of culture. They strive to be a blend of early Turkish, mongol, and Euro cultures.

Well not everyone. Early on some people thought letting Russia take over half of Ukraine would be good because that’d mean the war would stop and Russia would be satisfied on some oh ok we good now we’ll stop shyt

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Well not everyone. Early on some people thought letting Russia take over half of Ukraine would be good because that’d mean the war would stop and Russia would be satisfied on some oh ok we good now we’ll stop shyt

We really got hand people sharpies and let them draw their preferred maps. All this fake concern about escalations and annihilation is boring.

 

[42 Monks]

Well not everyone. Early on some people thought letting Russia take over half of Ukraine would be good because that’d mean the war would stop and Russia would be satisfied on some oh ok we good now we’ll stop shyt

that's what happened before so i get it and if the international response then was anything close to half of what we're seeing today, then that would've played out different too

 

[88m3]

you kNow how sticky it gets!

lmao

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

 

[mastermind]

It's aimed at slandering left-leaning posters in general, the ones that wire28 and 88m3 have recently referred to disparagingly as "HL All-Stars". It's not even really about Russia-Ukraine at all, it's about poisoning the well against said posters to shut down discourse in general.



There was a decent article about this in The Atlantic recently, regarding how modern online troll objectives have steered away from persuasion and reasoned discourse, and are instead focused solely on tainting the opponent in order to shut down dialogue. They don't want to to make an argument on a certain subject so much as they want to create a general feeling of disgust towards the people they disagree with:


"When I began to read the posts myself, I saw even more clearly how the Russians had gone about this work. They had done more than fan the flames of division. They had encouraged the view that the basic activity of democratic life—the changing of minds—had become futile. The troll farm wanted Americans to regard people with different views as immovable, brainwashed, disloyal, repulsive. “The IRA knows that in political warfare disgust is a much more powerful tool than anger,” Linvill and Warren wrote. “Anger drives people to the polls; disgust drives countries apart.”

Americans didn’t need outside help to see one another in these ways. The culture of the write-off, of mutual contempt and dismissal, could be found everywhere you looked. If anything, this attitude was a rare point of commonality across left and right."

Persuasion Isn't Dead

What Russian trolls can teach us about American voters

www.theatlantic.com

In time, a more sobering analysis emerged. The Russian mission, far from dropping something on America from outer space, had been to fertilize behaviors already flourishing on American soil. “The IRA’s goals are to further widen existing divisions in the American public and decrease our faith and trust in institutions that help maintain a strong democracy,” Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren, scholars at Clemson University who became prominent analysts of Russia’s campaign, have written. “The IRA has used Trump—and many other politicians—as vehicles to further these twin goals, but it is not about Trump himself.” A report by the research firm New Knowledge provided to Senate investigators described similar goals: “to undermine citizens’ trust in government, exploit societal fractures, create distrust in the information environment, blur the lines between reality and fiction, undermine trust among communities, and erode confidence in the democratic process.”

So fukking true. You see it on here.

In February of that year, a Twitter account with the handle @Crystal1Johnson began to tweet—and it tweeted precisely what @CrystalSellsLA was tweeting. On the first day of 2013, the real Crystal Johnson wished the world Happy New Year—as did her clone. That would be nearly the end of its mimicry, though. The account went silent for two years. And then suddenly it became one of the most influential accounts operated by the IRA’s troll farm.

The second week of December 2015 was a tense one. Trump, still a relatively new presidential candidate, had proposed “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” Political observers started saying that his campaign was more than a curiosity or a carnival, that it recalled the beginnings of some of the most dangerous movements in history. On December 10, @Crystal1Johnson was back in action. “#BlackLivesMatter,” the account declared. @Crystal1Johnson would tweet 11 more times that day, a major increase relative to the real Crystal’s posts, and in this noticeably different vein. “KKK was terrorizing us decades before #ISIS appeared,” it thundered. “But in America #KKK still is legal!!” Crystal1 also weighed in on a television remake of The Wiz, a remix of The Wizard of Oz with an all-Black cast. “So white people see #racism in an all black cast but not when black people are victims of #policebrutality?"

A new Crystal Johnson had emerged, less interested in real-estate advice than in deep-rooted racial injustices. That first day, @Crystal1Johnson received only a handful of likes and appears to have acquired a single follower. But over the next two years, the account sent another 8,000 tweets and garnered more than 56,000 followers, putting it in the top 1 percent of Twitter users globally. Measured by retweets, Crystal1 was the second-most-powerful Twitter user in the entire sprawling Russian effort, with some 3.8 million repostings.

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

Does thermite actually work that way? I've never heard of thermite being used in demolitions outside of WTC conspiracy theories.

I’ve seen it used on bridges and concrete. Was trying to find some good examples but YouTube is just tons of junk now. There’s a few cooling towers and bridges I found though.

edit: trying to find more but not really trying to get put on a list

 

[levitate]

arrogant a$$hole

They can fukking move to Russia then.