The Russia-Ukraine War has begun

[Noodles]

I understand the argument that sanctions hurt common Russian people a lot which is why they don't like them. ...but I still support the sanctions as a necessary evil.

It sucks for regular Russian people, but maybe they should take it as why their leaders are shit and need to be kicked to the curb.

 

[Sid]

Most Russians, especially those who don't live in the major cities, only have the Russian state radio and television as their news sources.
I think that they tell a completely different story on why the economy is falling apart at the moment. They will not blame Putin and his sock puppets.
There are severe punishments on spreading news that is not conform the Russian propaganda lines with the new media laws in Russia.

Always keep in mind that Russia isn't and never was a democracy as we know it, with a broad range of free press to choose from.
Opposition leaders with to much influence tend to get ill, then very ill and then die.
Alice Cooper's 1989 hit single comes to mind: Poison.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

It sucks for regular Russian people, but maybe they should take it as why their leaders are shit and need to be kicked to the curb.

The problem is that how many people watching Faux propaganda know what's happening here, on the regular?

Also, oil bans won't hurt normal people, its one of those resources that are great for dictators because well, they get all the wealth from selling it.

 

[Beebo Brink]

It sucks for regular Russian people, but maybe they should take it as why their leaders are shit and need to be kicked to the curb.

That would require an armed rebellion -- since Russia's recent elections have been completely bogus -- and result in significant civilian casualties. That's a very high price to pay for disagreeing with your government.

I don't remember too many Americans taking arms against our U.S. government when we decided to invade Iraq and bomb them into the dark ages.

 

[WolfEyes]

I don't remember too many Americans taking arms against our U.S. government when we decided to invade Iraq and bomb them into the dark ages.

Maybe because we'd already had Korea and Vietnam happen. The American people were lied to about both. Mainly the troops were lied to as to the real reasons they were deployed.

 

[Romana]

Thread :

 

[Romana]

 

[Chin Rey]

I came across this interesting video on YouTube:

It's almost two weeks old now but Jake Broe foresaw a lot of what has happened since then and although the claim he makes in the title is rather far fetched, it's not a totally impossible scenario.

However, one part of what he said has a lot wider implications than he seems to realise.

Russia really only has five ports, Murmansk, St. Petersburg, Kalingrad, Sevastapol and Vladivostok. Now look at the map.
In a conflict St. Petersburg can easily be blocked by the Nordic and Baltic countries. So can Kalingrad and it's even an enclave completely surrounded by NATO nations. Murmansk is far up north, away from the densely populated parts of Russia and would also be fairly easy to block by NATO forces stationed in Norway. Sevastapol is more or less at the mercy of Turkey and with an indepdentent Ukraine, it's another enclave. Vladivostok is far away from the main part of Russia and in an area that was contested by China until very recently and may well become contested again.

All of them are in hopelessly bad locations from a strategic point of view but they are all Russia has and they can ill afford to loose any of them.

There are so many aspects of this it's a topic for a whole book, not just post at an obscure message board but I think we can all see how important Ukraine is to Russia, how much they depend on China and how vulnerable Russia is right now.

 

[Romana]

The port thing is probably part of why Russia invaded Ukraine. As paranoid as Putin is, he probably thought he’d be blockaded by NATO for some other reason (or something else he’s planning).
Driving this afternoon the news was talking about the failed talks between Russia and Ukraine. Lavrov said, “Russia did not attack Ukraine. Russia will not attack other countries.”
Does he believe himself? Does he expect Ukraine to believe him? Or the rest of the world?

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

The port thing is probably part of why Russia invaded Ukraine. As paranoid as Putin is, he probably thought he’d be blockaded by NATO for some other reason (or something else he’s planning).
Driving this afternoon the news was talking about the failed talks between Russia and Ukraine. Lavrov said, “Russia did not attack Ukraine. Russia will not attack other countries.”
Does he believe himself? Does he expect Ukraine to believe him? Or the rest of the world?

I think rather more that Putin wants the largest historical version of the Russian Empire.

Because apparently no one else in power; political or economic, wanted to do this.

That or its an excuse to crack down on his own people further.

 

[Chin Rey]

I think rather more that Putin wants the largest historical version of the Russian Empire.

Yes but the port issue is a very important part of that. A landlocked nation will never ever be a world power.

 

[bubblesort]

Last time I saw a story about Anonymous hacking Russia, it was complete bullshit. The file they dropped had nothing of value. I'm not even going to look at this file, because I assume it's crap, again. Just in case it's an important dump this time, instead of the stupid clickbait it usually is, here's the link...

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-700940

Why bother even mentioning it? Obviously, somebody is trying to discredit citizen hackers by dumping garbage, to bait journalists into writing more clickbait about it. That's how Russia protects itself from hacks. Best to at least skim the hacks, rather than dismiss them out of hand, because you never know when an important, real hack might happen.

 

[danielravennest]

I understand the argument that sanctions hurt common Russian people a lot which is why they don't like them. ...but I still support the sanctions as a necessary evil.

Living in a kleptocratic oligarchy-police state hurts people too. The Russian people would be much better off if their leaders weren't siphoning off money and sending it overseas.

 

[Free]

(Nauseda is the President of Lithuania)

So if this all gets worked out and Ukraine is fast tracked into the EU, what then? The EU goes to war with Russia?

 

[Lexxi]

(Nauseda is the President of Lithuania)

So if this all gets worked out and Ukraine is fast tracked into the EU, what then? The EU goes to war with Russia?

I guess.

This clause provides that if an EU country is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other EU countries have an obligation to aid and assist it by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. This obligation of mutual defence is binding on all EU countries.

Mutual defence clause - EUR-Lex

eur-lex.europa.eu

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

The EU is no military organization nor pact. That would be NATO. And if Ukraine ever would join NATO, then Russia would go ballistic because what Russia is about in Ukraine is reducing possible attack corridors to Russia. Russia views NATO as a hostile, aggressive organization and enemy. The thing is that strategically Russia has not enough people for its enormous land mass to be able to defend it. This was different within USSR, when there were ~100 million more people.

And its population is in a steady decline.

In fact Peter Zeihan adressed the Russian problems back in 2017, and told that Russia has roughly a time window left of about 5 years before its army will crumble and closing possible invasion gaps will become much, much harder for them to do. I mean Zeihan often speaks rubbish, according to him China would have vanished 10 years ago by now. But this here seems to be accurate.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

And now for an important announcement of the Russian ministry of truth: "We do not plan to attack other countries; we did not attack Ukraine either." So says Russian foreign minister Lavrov.

Russia 'did not attack Ukraine' says Lavrov after meeting Kuleba

 

[Essence Lumin]

Last time I saw a story about Anonymous hacking Russia, it was complete bullshit. The file they dropped had nothing of value. I'm not even going to look at this file, because I assume it's crap, again. Just in case it's an important dump this time, instead of the stupid clickbait it usually is, here's the link...

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-700940

The links to the actual files are here, where the links are in the sidebar to the right. This does not sound promising enough to me to bother looking at.

Files
Over 360,000 files from the Roskomnadzor network, totaling 526.9 GB. According to the timestamps, some of the files are as recent as March 5, 2022. The download link can be found in the sidebar.

Users are advised to be extra careful as some directories, like ПОЧТА Приемная, appear to contain large numbers of email attachments. Email attachments are often a vector of malware and phishing attempts, so use caution and tools like Dangerzone and others.

Databases
There are two directories that we identified as containing the raw data files in proprietary formats for a pair of databases. Together, they total 290.6 GB. We are releasing the raw data while we look for solutions to extracting the data. One appears to be a legal research database that was, according to the file timestamp, last modified in 2020. The other appears to be a database for HR procedures.

The download link can be found in the sidebar.

 

[detrius]

And now for an important announcement of the Russian ministry of truth: "We do not plan to attack other countries; we did not attack Ukraine either." So says Russian foreign minister Lavrov.

Russia 'did not attack Ukraine' says Lavrov after meeting Kuleba

So if any Western nation sends tanks and fighter jets to Ukraine and encounters people wearing Russian uniforms, those are just criminals who stole military hardware and are using it to terrorize the civilian population, hmm?

 

[Sid]

That Z on the Russian tanks stands for "Our leaders are nuts".
(If Lavrov can produce utterly bull shit, so can I.)