Russia invades Ukraine

[DustyBin]

No.

So you're actually arguing that Putin is the good guy here? Seriously?

The Soviet Union broke up in a largely peaceful way and Russia has previously been very tolerant of the expansion of NATO, eg in the Baltic states.

Largely, except for the odd war and civilian massacre. But regardless of that, it's irrelevant. NATO expanded because the majority of Eastern European states felt they needed protection from Russia, having lived and suffered under Russian rule for decades. Russia was powerless to prevent them obtaining this protection by joining NATO; tolerance didn't come into it. As it happens, their fear was entirely justified as well....

A new power is arising: BRICS+, and in the fullness of time that will lead to the decline of the American Empire.

It's been "arising" for well over ten years. If anything it's "power" is declining, rapidly.

 

[gingerheid]

I'm doing a thought experiment: I'm imagining that NATO has been disbanded but that the Warsaw Pact continues to exist and is expanding: how relaxed would London be if the Republic of Ireland became a Warsaw Pact member?

Eire obtained independence from us. We've not invaded it to punish them / get it back.

 

[Sorcerer]

I'm doing a thought experiment: I'm imagining that NATO has been disbanded but that the Warsaw Pact continues to exist and is expanding: how relaxed would London be if the Republic of Ireland became a Warsaw Pact member?

Okay, let's expand further on said thought experiment. Why is Ireland joining the Warsaw Pact?

 

[AM9]

Okay, let's expand further on said thought experiment. Why is Ireland joining the Warsaw Pact?

More to the point in this hypothetical 'thought experiment', why would NATO have been disbanded?

 

[Sorcerer]

More to the point in this hypothetical 'thought experiment', why would NATO have been disbanded?

I think it's a way of flipping the situation and projecting Russia's response towards NATO's expansion onto the UK even though in actuality there would be no need for more states to sign up to the Warsaw Pact since there is no actual threat of British imperialism on Ireland. If said thought experiment does include that idea though then it's practically an alternative reality so far removed from this one that it's not even worth addressing.

 

[Noddy]

I'm doing a thought experiment: I'm imagining that NATO has been disbanded but that the Warsaw Pact continues to exist and is expanding: how relaxed would London be if the Republic of Ireland became a Warsaw Pact member?

What material harm has Russia come to by having NATO directly on its border since NATOs founding in 1949 (Norway)? And what material harm has Russia come to since a number of former Warsaw pact countries (eg Poland) and former USSR states (eg Estonia) joined NATO? The answer is no harm.

Putin even said this in an interview in 2000:

David Frost: Tell me about your views on NATO, if you would. Do you see NATO as a potential partner, or a rival or an enemy?

Vladimir Putin: Russia is part of the European culture. And I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilised world. So it is hard for me to visualise NATO as an enemy…

David Frost: Is it possible that Russia could join NATO?

Vladimir Putin: I don't see why not. I would not rule out such a possibility, but I repeat – if and when Russia's views are taken into account as those of an equal partner.

Interview to “BBC Breakfast with Frost”

en.kremlin.ru

You are absolutely right to remind us the this conflict started in 2014. Can you also remind us who invaded who?

Perhaps you missed my earlier comment. Could you remind us who invaded who in 2014?

 

[DarloRich]

I'm doing a thought experiment: I'm imagining that NATO has been disbanded but that the Warsaw Pact continues to exist and is expanding: how relaxed would London be if the Republic of Ireland became a Warsaw Pact member?

Ireland has no armed forces to speak of, is separated by a considerable stretch of sea, is economically small and would be a poor base from which to launch an invasion - I doubt it would be worth worrying about.

I would be more concerned by France or Germany joining an expanded Warsaw Pact!

 

[Edgeley]

When Russia invaded, illegally annexed sovereign Ukrainian territory before stoking and then supporting with troops, funding and material assistance a separatist movement in the Donbass you mean? You will therefore agree that the easiest way to end the current conflict would be for Russia to withdraw from Ukraine and restore the 2014 internationally recognised borders? Yes?

That might be the easiest but that isn't going to happen. You can't expect that a deal which was available just before hostilities began will still be available after the expenditure of much blood and treasure. Russia in fact has a positive incentive not to make a deal because Ukraine is likely get NATO membership after the war ends.

The most likely scenario now is a very prolonged stalemate. Only active intervention by Western forces themselves might swing things in Ukraine's favour. But even the psychopathic neocons realise that World War Three is a high stakes game. In the meantime, unless it deserts Ukraine, the West is obliged to continue pouring a lot more money and weapons into a bottomless pit.

Perhaps you missed my earlier comment. Could you remind us who invaded who in 2014?

2014 is significant in terms of the Maidan revolution and the overthrow of the then Ukrainian president Yanukovych - and of course Victoria Nuland's cookies.

 

[GS250]

Interesting article on the BBC website. Looks like the Russian Air Force nearly shot down an RAF surveillance plane. Some kind of misunderstanding between ground and pilot which resulted in the pilots having a huge mid air argument.

As the recent 'inside the RAF' documentary has alluded to, it would only take one bad decision by one individual for things to escalate quickly.

 

[Noddy]

2014 is significant in terms of the Maidan revolution and the overthrow of the then Ukrainian president Yanukovych - and of course Victoria Nuland's cookies.

The Euromaidan uprising began and Nuland handed out cookies in 2013 so perhaps you have confused your dates. Could you remind us who invaded who in 2014.

And while you’re at it why don’t you remind us which organisation was Ukraine trying to join and Yanukovych effectively vetoing the trigger for the Euromaidan protests? Hint: the USA is not part of it.

 

[DustyBin]

The Warsaw Pact was only ever superficially comparable with NATO in terms of it's structure and purpose.

Somewhat tellingly, it's only military interventions were against members who wished to leave!

Interesting article on the BBC website. Looks like the Russian Air Force nearly shot down an RAF surveillance plane. Some kind of misunderstanding between ground and pilot which resulted in the pilots having a huge mid air argument.

As the recent 'inside the RAF' documentary has alluded to, it would only take one bad decision by one individual for things to escalate quickly.

This is newly released information about a well known incident that occurred last year, just to be clear.

 

[Herefordian]

That might be the easiest but that isn't going to happen. You can't expect that a deal which was available just before hostilities began will still be available after the expenditure of much blood and treasure. Russia in fact has a positive incentive not to make a deal because Ukraine is likely get NATO membership after the war ends.

The most likely scenario now is a very prolonged stalemate. Only active intervention by Western forces themselves might swing things in Ukraine's favour. But even the psychopathic neocons realise that World War Three is a high stakes game. In the meantime, unless it deserts Ukraine, the West is obliged to continue pouring a lot more mon

By deal, I assume you mean Putin telling Ukraine to give him Crimea and not join NATO?

Ukraine can do whatever it likes. It's an independent, sovereign nation whose territory and population has been violated by Russia.

Russia hasn't, and never will be, in a position to ask for a deal.

2014 is significant in terms of the Maidan revolution and the overthrow of the then Ukrainian president Yanukovych - and of course Victoria Nuland's cookies.

I'm assuming you're avoiding the question because you don't like the answer.

 

[simonw]

You are absolutely right to remind us the this conflict started in 2014. Can you also remind us who invaded who?



Wowzers! Not seen that before!

Others can be found here

Long Before Photoshop, the Soviets Mastered the Art of Erasing People from Photographs — and History Too

Adobe Photoshop, the world's best-known piece of image-editing software, has long since transitioned from noun to verb: 'to Photoshop' has come to mean something like 'to alter a photograph, often with intent to mislead or deceive.' But in that usage, Photoshopping didn't begin with Photoshop...

www.openculture.com

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Fascinating piece in Katya Adler's BBC film on Putin's neighbours this week (part 2 is next week).
It showed a Russian train passing through Lithuania en route from their Kaliningrad exclave via Belarus to Russia.
The train was sealed, and Lithuanian railway staff were attaching a GPS tracker to make sure it didn't stop on Lithuanian territory.
Then there were the ethnic Russians in Daugavpils (Latvia) who were placing flowers on May 8 to remember the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
They wouldn't discuss Ukraine but clearly supported Putin.
We forget there are significant numbers of Russians in all these ex-Soviet states (and most others, eg Georgia and Moldova).
Language policy is a hot potato in these areas.
Ukraine made a mistake when it refused to allow Russian to have status in Luhansk/Donetsk oblasts, one of the reasons for the 2014 rebellion in the east.

 

[Edgeley]

The Euromaidan uprising began and Nuland handed out cookies in 2013 so perhaps you have confused your dates. Could you remind us who invaded who in 2014.

And while you’re at it why don’t you remind us which organisation was Ukraine trying to join and Yanukovych effectively vetoing the trigger for the Euromaidan protests? Hint: the USA is not part of it.

Yes, sorry. the cookies were in 2013. I think Nuland's "f**k the EU" came in 2014.

 

[Noddy]

Yes, sorry. the cookies were in 2013. I think Nuland's "f**k the EU" came in 2014.

And yet after three times where I have explicitly asked, you still haven’t answered the question who invaded who? Or the other question in that post.

I'm assuming you're avoiding the question because you don't like the answer.

I am assuming @Edgeley refusal to not only answer a very basic, if fundamental to the situation, question but to deflect it twice with references to Nuland is because they are a Putinversteher.

Fascinating piece in Katya Adler's BBC film on Putin's neighbours this week (part 2 is next week).
It showed a Russian train passing through Lithuania en route from their Kaliningrad exclave via Belarus to Russia.
The train was sealed, and Lithuanian railway staff were attaching a GPS tracker to make sure it didn't stop on Lithuanian territory.
Then there were the ethnic Russians in Daugavpils (Latvia) who were placing flowers on May 8 to remember the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
They wouldn't discuss Ukraine but clearly supported Putin.
We forget there are significant numbers of Russians in all these ex-Soviet states (and most others, eg Georgia and Moldova).
Language policy is a hot potato in these areas.
Ukraine made a mistake when it refused to allow Russian to have status in Luhansk/Donetsk oblasts, one of the reasons for the 2014 rebellion in the east.

The Russian language is certainly a hot potato. But the question is why? Is it because of a genuine feeling within these Russian speaking communities that they are being persecuted? And if so by who? Is it because these feelings are being stoked by someone or something? And if so by who? Is it something else?

Ukrainian has been the official state language since 1996 but Russian and other minority languages were ‘protected’. As we all know both Zelensky and his wife were brought up in Russian speaking households. Over the years there have been various regional referendums and courts cases surrounding the official use of Russian, and various politicians have said they would introduce Russian as an official language and then failed to do so. Is this persecution? Should Russian speaking Ukrainians feel hard done by? Does the situation have the potential to be exploited by those outside Ukraine? If so has it been?

In 2017 Ukraine did formally introduced a law which has begun to restrict use of Russian. However, this was three years after Crimea was annexed and ‘green men’ appeared in the Donbas. To me this appears to have been instigated after and as a reaction to events rather than a cause? If Crimea and the Donbas regions had been allowed to use a Russian as official languages would it have prevented the war?

 

[Annetts key]

The Russian language issue is a distraction from what I can see. Just like Putin goes on about NATO and Nazism. It’s absolutely clear that this conflict has absolutely nothing to do with the rights of individual citizens.

It is instead all about power and resources. Specifically, more glory, power and resources that Putin and his boot lickers can steal.

 

[edwin_m]

The Russian language issue is a distraction from what I can see. Just like Putin goes on about NATO and Nazism. It’s absolutely clear that this conflict has absolutely nothing to do with the rights of individual citizens.

It is instead all about power and resources. Specifically, more glory, power and resources that Putin and his boot lickers can steal.

Indeed. Worth noting that Zelensky's mother tongue is Russian.

It's pretty much exactly the same trick as Hitler used with Czechoslovakia.

 

[Noddy]

The Russian language issue is a distraction from what I can see. Just like Putin goes on about NATO and Nazism. It’s absolutely clear that this conflict has absolutely nothing to do with the rights of individual citizens.

It is instead all about power and resources. Specifically, more glory, power and resources that Putin and his boot lickers can steal.

Indeed. Worth noting that Zelensky's mother tongue is Russian.

It's pretty much exactly the same trick as Hitler used with Czechoslovakia.

This is my feeling as well, although as with Hilter it will probably only be when the history books are written about this war that we will have access to evidence. I also strongly suspect the Putin and his allies have be fermenting discord over this issue (and other perceived injustices) for the last 15-20 years and this is also also happening today in Georgia, Moldova, the Baltic States etc.

 

[gingerheid]

It is of course also Russian speaking Ukrainians that have suffered first and most in the invasion; all the cities that are recognised as destroyed were majority Russian speaking. This may put cities like Narva off the idea of being liberated the same way, even where they are majority Russian speaking! This is probably only one reason that while there are over 300k Russian speakers in Estonia (before the arrival of Ukrainian refugees), only 4,000 voted for a pro Putin candidate at the last elections!

 

[Sunil_P]

Russia is currently illegally occupying territory belonging to Georgia and Moldova, in addition to lands internationally recognised as Ukrainian. A case can also be made for the South Kuril islands claimed by Japan.

 

[zero]

Russia is currently illegally occupying territory belonging to Georgia and Moldova, in addition to lands internationally recognised as Ukrainian. A case can also be made for the South Kuril islands claimed by Japan.

This graph is somewhat misleading because the total population of the occupied areas is roughly the same in both cases - not to mention that a proportion of people in the Russian-occupied areas are in favour of (or at least neutral/unopposed to) the current situation, whereas I expect a vast majority of Palestinians are not, but this is off-topic for this thread.

 

[DustyBin]

Going back to the RC-135W incident, I’m not entirely convinced that we’re being told the whole truth.

The latest report has only served to further my suspicion that the RC-135W has some kind of defensive capabilities. It’s basically a Boeing 707 (well sort of), an absolute sitting duck of an aerial target. And yet, an Su-27 released two air to air missiles that failed to hit it. The first missed, and the second simply fell from its pylon. There are of course other explanations, but it’s far from impossible in my opinion that some kind of counter measures were deployed.

Obviously very few people will know for sure as it’s a highly classified aircraft, so one can only speculate. It’s an interesting point for discussion though.

 

[najaB]

The latest report has only served to further my suspicion that the RC-135W has some kind of defensive capabilities. It’s basically a Boeing 717, an absolute sitting duck of an aerial target

Mandatory av-nerd interjection... The 707 (not 717) and RC-135 were both based on Boeing's proposed jet transport prototype (the 367-80). So, while it shares some DNA with the 707 it isn't accurate to say that it's 'basically a 707'. The 717 was the final iteration of the DC-9 family.

There are of course other explanations, but it’s far from impossible in my opinion that some kind of counter measures were deployed.

Regular RC-135s have been fitted with infrared countermeasures, so I'd be quite surprised if the Ws hadn't as well.

 

[AM9]

Going back to the RC-135W incident, I’m not entirely convinced that we’re being told the whole truth.

The latest report has only served to further my suspicion that the RC-135W has some kind of defensive capabilities. It’s basically a Boeing 717, an absolute sitting duck of an aerial target. And yet, an Su-27 released two air to air missiles that failed to hit it. The first missed, and the second simply fell from its pylon. There are of course other explanations, but it’s far from impossible in my opinion that some kind of counter measures were deployed.

Obviously very few people will know for sure as it’s a highly classified aircraft, so one can only speculate. It’s an interesting point for discussion though.

One would expect a RC-135W to have electronic countermeasures (ECM) to allow it safer access to the periphery of hostile airspace. Many of the Russian air-to-air missiles are from the Soviet era and consequently, relatively low tech, and their counter-counter measures (ECCM) would be basic or even non-existent. The encounter would of course have provided much useful data for the RAF.

 

[DustyBin]

Mandatory av-nerd interjection... The 707 (not 717) and RC-135 were both based on Boeing's proposed jet transport prototype (the 367-80). So, while it shares some DNA with the 707 it isn't accurate to say that it's 'basically a 707'. The 717 was the final iteration of the DC-9 family.

No problem! It was actually a “fat fingers” typo and I added the “(well sort of)” for the reasons you’ve stated. I wasn’t sure how nerdy to get to be honest!

Regular RC-135s have been fitted with infrared countermeasures, so I'd be quite surprised if the Ws hadn't as well.

There’s not much information available regarding the capabilities though (that I can find). In fact, some articles would have you believe that they are actually pretty helpless. In this instance the aircraft potentially thwarted an enemy fighter aircraft; that’s what I find intriguing.

One would expect a RC-135W to have electronic countermeasures (ECM) to allow it safer access to the periphery of hostile airspace. Many of the Russian air-to-air missiles are from the Soviet era and consequently, relatively low tech, and their counter-counter measures (ECCM) would be basic or even non-existent. The encounter would of course have provided much useful data for the RAF.

See above; you’d expect it to have something but it’s what and how capable that I find interesting.

Fair point regarding Soviet era missiles, although I’m not sure what was used in this instance.

 

[GS250]

Those were exactly my thoughts on the attempted shoot down. You would like to think such an important asset would have particularly strong countermeasures?

Let's be fair theres probably some kit on there that is still classified and has not yet been made available to the public. The UK and US tend to publish their tech about 5-10 years after its been in regular use. Russia, on the other hand brags about what it doesn't really have.

I guess we are just as well there weren't Typhoons in the area otherwise that situation could have become very serious. We all know what bully boy Russia is like when someone dares to have a go back at them.

 

[DustyBin]

Those were exactly my thoughts on the attempted shoot down. You would like to think such an important asset would have particularly strong countermeasures?

That’s the reason for my speculation; why not just say that the aircraft deployed counter measures? That in itself wouldn’t come as a surprise to many people.

Again, it’s possible of course that both missiles simply malfunctioned (but that doesn’t make for a good discussion!).

 

[najaB]

That’s the reason for my speculation; why not just say that the aircraft deployed counter measures? That in itself wouldn’t come as a surprise to many people.

For one thing, it gives Russia an 'out' - it gives Russia the ability to say that their pilot messed up (e.g. he accidentally fired a missile that didn't have a lock) than to say that he tried to shoot down our aircraft and it had to defend itself. That also lets them deny/ignore that one of the missiles failed: it didn't fail, it never had a lock so fell into the ocean due to its...err... built in safety mechanism.

 

[nw1]

In an impressive feat of mental gymnastics, Kim Jong Un has reached the conclusion that invading a neighbouring nation and annexing parts of their territory is in fact anti imperialist:

"We will always support the decisions of President Putin and the Russian leadership... and we will be together in the fight against imperialism,"

Full quote at the 7:57 time stamp here

You couldn't make it up.

Russia has a long history of imperialist arrogance (their greed for land is astounding; as if it doesn't cover enough of the earth's surface already!) yet because they are not "Western", that imperialism is obviously acceptable in the eyes of idiots like Putin and Kim Jong-un.