Ukraine-Russia Megathread 4

My friend in Ukraine successfully fled to Lviv from Odessa :crab-party:

Hey is it normal for a country to just go "Alright, all dudes age 18-35, you cant leave you have to stay here to take up arms and fight trained soldiers"?
The news here mentioned this so fucking casually that it barely even registered for me what they actually were saying, thats like super fucked up to order your civilians to do right? You're literally opening them up to be justifiably slaughtered.
Edit: Oh when I google it says specifically reservists but the news over here literally just said "men" like any random dude of the right age is essentially being conscripted?
Edit to the edit: Ok so further googling, all men ages 18-60 are banned from leaving the country under martial law, reservists are being conscripted but regular dudes are still being told by the president to come forward and be given weapons to fight.
- 18-60
  
  Jesus christ, my brain sanitized it automatically cause I didnt wanna think it was that fucking bad yet accepted.
- Yeah I searched some more and that seems to be the situation, thats extremely fucked up.
  
  Wonder what they're doing to disabled/ill people, stuff like a spinal fusion isn't externally obvious aside from the scars of the operation, can walk just fine and even run in certain cases and everything fitness wise. Yet make someone like that carry a heavy backpack/rucksack like they do in the military, and their spine will be ground to nothing very quickly due to vastly reduced spinal compression.
  I know military recuiters in most countries won't touch someone with a back operation or fused spine, even with regular conscription or the bloodthirsty US recuiters. But the Ukrainian ghouls seem really desperate now.
- :democracy
- Hey is it normal for a country to just go “Alright, all dudes age 18-35, you cant leave you have to stay here to take up arms and fight trained soldiers”?
  Countless countries have enacted drafts before. It’s fucked, but it’s not new.
  
  Yeah but like, I always assumed that everyone understood it to be like, proper training and arming and integration into the military and all that, not doing fucking volkssturm, I always thought that it was unanimous that the Volkssturm was bad as a general concept?
- Ever heard of the draft in the vietnam war? Now imagine what america would do if the war was on US soil not on the other side of the earth….

watching reddit jerk themselves off over zelensky saying 'i need anti-tank ammo, not a ride' like he's fuckin rambo is stupifying. these mother fuckers think nuclear holocaust is a joke. 'he's so badass, omg :panting: .'

Handing out guns to random people has been a mess. Government armed civilians are shooting up cars they suspect to be enemy saboteurs. Then the Ukrainian forces are shooting up armed civilians that they think are enemy saboteurs.
Technically I think under the Geneva Protocols, those civilians forfeit so many protections that they can ** legally** be mass trialed and executed as collective punishment for the crimes of one, even if you surrender.

Reading the front page of :reddit-logo: it looks like the Russians are losing the actual combat, have stalled out, and all their forces are about to defect.
It's been like that since the start of the invasion
- Pure propaganda and western cope to be honest, not that it's a good thing they Russia is invading, but they're clearly "winning"
  
  The alternative is admitting Ukraine is getting rolled up and that after fanning the flames for years NATO ultimately hung them out to dry. In that context, being like "Look, we were right! We told you it was going to happen." is kind of eclipsed by the results.
  To be clear, I have no clue what the current situation is on the ground, but considering the sheer disparity in forces I'd imagine Putin's position will only advance until Zelinsky comes to grips with the new reality and discusses terms.
  It really sucks. I work with a few Ukrainian guys. One of them came in today to relieve the first shift and he had the look on his face like he spent the better half of the morning crying. :doomer:
- Reading the front page has been just awful the past few days.
  
  I pulled up F5 O'Clock (well, their dev site) for the first time in years just to see if the story about Zelensky offering up a cease-fire was being reported anywhere else, and holy shit, it's so much State Department/RussiaGate cope.
- All comments I heard on tv (western europe) say pretty much the opposite. That the Russian offensive pretty much met almost all of its objectives. This included generals that were commenting

full video of snake island https://youtu.be/hReBGy7YvS4
fucking insane all 13 committed suicide vs a russian warship. they had no weapons and chose to not surrender. the insanity of nationalism
edit: now that theyre all dead and ukraine is surrendering... what incredible stupidity on their part. people keep calling it brave

US: Our thoughts and prayers are with Ukraine:deeper-sadness:
Also the US: What the fuck do you think you're doing trying to negotiate for peace?:angery:

If there were ever a lesson to be learned from the West's history of egging on and abandoning military commitments, it would be in the city of Nasiriyah, Iraq. In the leadup to the First Gulf War, George H.W. Bush publicly told the citizens of Iraq to form militias and fight against Sadaam Hussein, and the US military would support them. That's just what a large force of Shi'ite militants did. The Ba'ath Party violently suppressed this force while the US military used the revolt as cover for their evacuation to Kuwait after Gulf War hostilities had ended. Estimates for deaths during the revolt and subsequent suppressions range in the hundreds of thousands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Iraqi_uprisings#U.S._radio_broadcasts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Iraqi_uprisings#U.S._non-intervention_controversy
This would come back to bite the US when Marines approached Nasiriyah during the Iraq War(2003), expecting light Ba'ath Party resistance. Instead, they found a population of angry Shi'ites willing to fight the Americans in retribution for their military abandonment a decade prior.
Another prime Lucy-with-the-football moment from western military powers.

The instant I post anything about historical context or say anything about NATO or how the Ukrainian government are Nazis I get banned for being a "Russian bot", even in forums I have actively posted to for years. Anything not 100% pro American intervention is Russian propaganda and not a real person.
Is this what the lead up to Iraq was like? I'm seeing people I previously thought were fairly sane and rational people act like rabid dogs about this.
Edit: I actually feel like I'm being gaslit. People are denying things from only a few years ago all over the news as having never happened. People are claiming easily verified historical facts that should be taken as a given aren't true and wanting sources for basic stuff like "where was the border of the USSR in the 70s".

i tell people how this is all the fault of the US and i get "TANKIE" from liberals i thought i was friends with. anymore i consider it an honor. suck my dick, blue MAGA.
- i post the timeline of events and someone just goes "NICE REDDIT COPY AND PASTE"
  ok then fuck off forever, blue MAGA
- I've even said this along side Putin shooting himself in the foot and still get people yelling at me
  
  same. it's bloody frustrating.
- The old case of Americas foreign policy comes to roost.

Continuing to report on the PMC university libs. Verbatim:
honestly why are the Democrats becoming such a warmongering party!
YES FINALLY SOMEONE GOT …
we should be focusing all on China, our real enemy..
WHAT THE ACTUAL YOU JUST SAI …
Instead of Ukraine we should be protecting Taiwan and all the other countries China is threatening!
:agony-limitless:

Can you imagine if there were people waving Iraqi flags in major European cities right after the US invaded? Or people online giving Iraqi citizens gamer pro tips through google translate? :think-about-it:

Azov nazis saying they’re waiting for battle in Mariupol — “won’t surrender till last drop of blood”
Sounds grand to me, hope they all suffer before the last drop spills out :fash-bash:

Fun fact! The "Ghost" of Kiev derives his nickname from the fact that he doesn't exist

Interaction wirh my dumb guy room mate just now
"You seen the news? Theres like a war in Ukraine"
"Yeah I feel bad for the—"
"Putin going beast mode"
"Hahahahah"
"Hahahahha"

feels so good to leave random inflamatory comments on youtube with my notification turned off 😎

Russia may nationalize property of US, EU citizens in response to sanctions - Medvedev

For a brief moment the Ukraine military operation paused after Russia thought Ukraine was coming to the negotiation table as a rational state actor but then resumed operations after being repudiated by Ukraine who said "we refuse to surrender"

Russia vetoes draft UNSC resolution condemning special operation in Ukraine

Im so fucking done arguing about this fucking situation with other Swedes, they are so fucking eager to ally with the fucking great beast that devours entire nations at least once a decade, and the second you imply "hey thats kinda fucked up and against our supposed stated morality" they call you a pro-fascist.
Everyone fucking knows NATO is synonymous with American protection, yet when I fucking invoke that to point out how ridiculously evil and bloodthirsty they are and how fucked up it is to claim their protection suddenly NATO is a completely neutral "defensive" alliance that I cant associate with American war crimes?

A CNN military used a term and it's the first time for me to hear it. He talked about the "Ukrainian resistance".

some dude on Twitter said America can support Ukraine by redirecting business contracts there. dude no one is going to start a business agreement with a country that might not exist in a week

Apparently not trusting Nato makes me a delusional Putin stan.

There's so much propaganda on Reddit it's alarming. People posting videos directly from the Ukrainian military as if they're real.

if youre not getting banned from reddit every month or two, youre not trying hard enough. telling volunteersforukraine to go die willingly in battle is apparently threatening violence. uhhhh they are consenting to it but ok lol

Posted cautioning about overhyping Ukraine's position. Sourced every claim, specifically called out Russia, have a reddit account that's 10 years old, literally linked a picture of my American passport with a piece of paper for username and date. Results? -60 points, dozens of comments claiming I'm a Russian bot spreading disinformation, people DM'ing me to kill myself. Big reddit moment.

People are in real time discovering the fog of war

He's a dumb idiot, but I sort of sympathise with Zelensky and feel a tiny bit bad for him. He's not one of these post-Soviet collapse nationalist ghouls of the early 90s, I see just a guy that has been thrown into a situation that is way bigger than him and now he's just throwing shit at the wall. Don't forget that he's literally an actor who ran for president because people liked a fictional character.
- Eh I really have no sympathy for him tbh. I don't want him to be killed, but he's got blood on his hands, in regards to what Ukraine has done to the separatist regions and ordering his people to fight and die in an unwinable war.
- I think you're right on some level, at some point. But he's also a wealthy, famous, member who has completely fucked it. He refuses to concede an impossible war. He throws the Ukrainian people under the bus by forcibly conscripting them while he hides and escapes. He sacrifices ordinary people on the alter of forced nationalism, of convenient Nazism, for his ego and the chance of a future abroad. While turning ordinary people into combatants.
- i kinda did until he forced every man 18-60 into comabt, the man has blood on his hands
- I don't. He should have stopped shelling the Donbas. He literally campaigned on being a peace candidate.
- I feel worse about Ukranians who voted for the guy for his promises of peace and measured dialogue with Russia
- Why are you feeling bad for the guy that continues to arm up the various nazi factions?
- He was never a detente president. He welcomed US weapons and wanted more. Not very peaceful, and as we see, not very discerning. They got $2bn worth of weapons and all it gave them is a couple more days till they fall. And now they are arming civilians.

I checked in the worldnews thread on r*ddit, and it's absolutely wild. They are living in a different reality over there.
"The Russians look really weak right now, they thought this was going to be easy"

Ok. So Louis CK is apparently 57. Does this mean he is stuck in Ukraine? Maybe they conscript him?

"US Intel contact tells us the USG is urging Zelinsky to hold off for a few more days so that the narrative can shift to "Putin is slaughtering civilians." Zelensky expected to sacrifice untold UKR lives to feed desired US narrative. Interesting if he takes the bait."
https://twitter.com/BhadraPunchline/status/1497422365114134528

La dee da dee da

Gosh, this sounds familiar:
President #Putin: Banderites and neo-Nazis are putting up heavy weapons, including MLRS, right in the central districts of large cities, including Kiev and Kharkov. In effect, they are acting in the same way that terrorists act all over the world – using people as shields
- Israeli settler moment

UN Security Council voting on resolution condemning Russia.
Yes
United States
United Kingdom
France
Norway
Ireland
Albania
Gabon
Mexico
Brazil
Ghana
Kenya
No
Russia
Abstain
China
India
United Arab Emirates
- No
  Russia
  What a plot twist
  
  Would be funny to vote yes for the meme, but also not really
- (UAE voice) heyyy cmon, i'm just a little guy! it's my birthday! i'm just a little birthday boy!
  
  This is interesting, because IIRC India and UAE both made pretty condemnational statements at the UNSC meeting the other day
  E: Oops, replied to wrong comment oh well

so that stuff about Ukraine miraculously winning battles is all bunk right?

Man this war sucks :yes-honey-left:
So how much is the Kremlin paying you, Vlad? :maybe-later-kiddo:

This day, Zelensky probably discovered that the acting skills of European and American politicians are far superior to his so-called professional actor.

I feel like I’m going insane. Even the most progressive (read: still liberal) people I know think that because Putin bad; arming Ukrainian military must be good.
Even when I explain in their terms that they hold the same or more extreme right wing views than the January 6 people it just doesn’t translate

Fucking USA
wants to prolong , establish a President in exile ...