Ukraine-Russia Megathread 8

This just in: an American Reddit volunteer has just halted the Russian advance by exposing the logical fallacies that were being used in justifying the invasion.

"Perhaps the biggest risk-calculation/moral dilemma of the war so far. A massive Russian convoy is abt 30 miles from Kyiv. The US/NATO could likely destroy it. But that would be direct involvement against Russia and risk, everything. Does the West watch in silence as it rolls?"
Some people literally want to watch the world burn.
- People really seem believe Putin's going to move onto Poland next and then beyond across Europe. They've lost their minds.
  
  Even if that were the case, Poland is a NATO and EU member. That'll trigger a larger war automatically. There's no point rushing into a potential nuclear conflict on a what if.
- Uh my iodine salt tablets have 2 day shipping so please wait
  
  Why on earth would you want to survive a nuclear apocalypse?

- Redditors shaking and crying hearing that Eastern Europeans don’t unanimously despise communism
- Some top tier face pulling in that.
- Is there a translation for the whole clip? My spanish is nowhere near good enough to actually understand any of it

So, about those jets the EU promised to send Ukraine. Well, they're not coming.
Bulgaria has rejected Ukraine's request to supply the country’s airforce with Mig-29 fighter jets to tackle Russian air supremacy.
Seems like Josep Borrell's bold announcement that EU is "going to supply fighter jets” fell completely apart.
I understand that Poland, the other country that was asked by Ukrainians via Borrell to deliver such jets, also declined.
- Good, they'd just be shot down instantly. It would be such a waste to send them over.
  Also good to prevent further escalation
- the eastern European countries are looking infinitely more sensible than the western ones right now
  
  In the end they're just covering their own asses in the event that there would be a confrontation between NATO and Russia.
- :michael-laugh:
  Do you think he promised them without realising they'd have to be ones that the Ukrainians can already fly? Not thinking that they'd likely come from the poorer, underrepresented EU countries who probably aren't going to gleefully hand over millions in hardware to the clown next door, especially if he might lose and a Russia friendly state ends up on their border.
  
  I also can't imagine the logistics of it. Do they fly them in? Are they claiming to be a noncombatant while they're flying a fighter jet into occupied airspace? Or do they drive them in? In that case, who wants to be the guy who drives that big fat juicy target over the border into occupied territory? It sounds like a suicide run to me. Or does the donor country allow Ukrainian military pilots to take off from their own territory? Sounds like an invitation for some cruise missles to arrive at whatever airfield they departed from.
- The only good thing about the development of a totally encompassing media that lowers your attention span due to all the competing interests and corporations vying for it is that, as this is essentially a slow-drip TV series where Putin is the evil Russian villain, most of the west will get bored within the next week or two. Putin simply isn't ordering massive strikes and such that would keep your attention span focussed on it, he's being incredibly deliberate.
- Wait even Poland wont send them?
  edit: the op following up shocked Bulgaria wouldn't send planes it cannot afford to lose when russia is "knocking at their door". Doubt they care much about Bulgaria, but also if that was true you would likely preserve your airforce
- Hungary also declined that military equipment for Ukraine be transported across the country saying it would just bring the conflict to the areas of ukraine where hungarians live.
- Wouldn't matter much anyway, before I went to bed last night I saw a video of SU-34s flying low over Ukraine. No mig is competing with those planes
  
  Su 34 is a ground attack aircraft though. It can defend itself relatively well in air to air combat apparently, but it's primary role is still ground attack.
  It's basically a ground attacker that doesn't need an escort.

i don’t mean to be overly paranoid or accusatory toward anything that doesnt agree with me, but does anyone else feel like Anonymous is just America’s cyber-Wagner? a decade after their core ‘membership’ of highly skilled hacktivists were all vanned, they gone from focusing on American government and Wall Street institutions to exclusively targeting America’s enemies.
have the hacktivists like the hippies before them fallen in line with the empire they once stood up to because at their core they were never more than liberals, or does the US use freelance hackers to target cyber-soft-infrastructure like govt departments’ websites and do high profile propaganda stuff like spamming ukrainian/taiwanese flags? does the difference matter when the outcome is the same?

In Denmark a MP from the Red-Green Alliance (a descendant of the Danish Communist Party and nominally committed to socialist revolution, although left-succdem and radlib in practice) has been condemned in the strongest terms, including by his own party leadership.
His crime? Saying that Ukraine had "followed an inappropriate minority policy" in the years leading up to the war.
These days in the imperial core you're not allowed to make any analysis of the situation, you're not allowed to question the NATO narrative, you're not allowed to criticize the western imperialists. Anything short of crying for Russian blood gets you labelled a Russian Putin-loving traitor.

This isn't a particularly original take, but America/NATO really is just a religion for a lot of people, huh? Like, domestically, most people recognize that America is deeply flawed and needs fixing, but as soon as that switches to international, every Gulf of Tonkin/WMD is forgotten and they gobble up whatever comically obvious propaganda is given.

The west is absolutely using Ukraine as a sacrificial lamb and even the average libs know this. They actually knew that Ukraine isn't going to win, but they doesn't really care about that. What they care about is that the war is making Russia look bad, they're basically giddy at the prospect of Ukrainian civilians getting killed so they can use it as propaganda weapon against Russia. They're already hyped for the prospect of Ukraine becoming a war torn land filled with insurgents throwing their life away to annoy Russia.
The whole thing is just a game for the west. They never face the consequence for the misery they have wrought upon the world. I regretted becoming an atheist in my teenage years, because now I can't ever again comfort myself with the thought that the wicked will go to hell.

For all the years talking of "Russian disinfo", Ukraine seems to be going hard at the disinformation war. Snake Island, "Ghost of Kyiv", just straight up sharing videos of video games as if they were real, claiming they've totally killed 5000 Russians, it goes on.
And of course Westerners eat that shit up and can't take two seconds to think critically about it. And when the truth is pointed out to them they just plug their ears and pretend they didn't see it.

"When you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime." - Fox News presenter said to Condoleezza Rice, former United States Secretary of State, while commenting on Russian-Ukrainian war.
:agony-limitless:

What's been funny about trying to explain the context of NATO and the Ukraine from Russia's perspective to libs is that when I say "can you imagine how the US would react to Russia putting nukes in a country right next to America" they pretend like the US would be fine with it lmao. Cuban Missile Crisis who?

The truth about snake island is just hitting reddit now. We’ve known for like 3-4 days now.
In the meantime Libs were spouting this “fact” everywhere. One of the guests on Bill Mahar Friday night cited it as proof of Ukraine’s iron will to win this (and of Russia’s depravity).
- So far the reactions I’ve seen are “thank god they are okay! They are so brave!” : :brainworms:
- This really surprises me. When propaganda gets debunked libs usually just moves on to the next bullshit story without looking back.
  Why is it different this time?
  
  They’re not tuned into to the OG (very online) sources like we are and it takes time to filter through to their more mainstream media diet. That’s my guess, and of course their bias that makes them believe their preferred narrative and ignore contrary evidence unless it’s on the front page of the Times/the Journal.
- Yeah it's trending on UK Twitter now too.
- Lmao. I finally convinced my partner last night that Russia wasn’t just making it up that they had been captured rather than killed
- Taking a lesson out of the Mayor Pete public opinion book: Make assertions now, people won’t care enough that they were incorrect later

I really, really hate how bloodthirsty everyone's gotten over this. People I knew to be mostly anti-war, or people who just a week ago were hoping this wouldn't go to war, are now salivating over the idea of an all out WW3. Like fucking begging for it to happen, eager and desperate to charge headlong into the possibility of the entire fucking world ending in nuclear hellfire, and it really does point to how war is just spectacle for them. These are people from the imperial core, so far removed from Europe, that they would never be touched by conventional war, and yet they're just fucking revved up for it.
And of course, any suggestion of peace has the libs screaming about how APPEASEMENT DIDN'T WORK WITH HITLER or whatever, as if these are comparable (I'm sure they're not, but I don't know enough to say), and anything less than full bore, 100% support of Ukraine - even if it's 95% support, with an occasional side-eye at the propaganda like that laughable UN bit today - gets you piled on anywhere but here.
I'm going full :doomer: here. I'm scared not just that there's a very real possibility of the world ending within the next few days to weeks, but that everyone I know is fully, completely, on board with either that, or nothing less than genociding all of Russia.

I am not caught up on any news today, but it’s really strange to me how western media and the Ukrainian govt have been trying to paint the Russian offensive as being violently carried out with a wanton disregard for civilian casualties and destruction of infrastructure
Like if this was the case
1 Ukraine fucking drafted everyone over 16. If Russians wipe an apartment complex out of existence they can claim it was full of enemy combatants. The fact no one who’s paid to talk about this war makes this connection is insane
2 Why is there TikTok upon TikTok of old ass (probably still “military age”) Ukrainian folks running up to Russian soldiers cursing them out and telling them to leave the country? Presumably the people who recorded these videos got to go home, so clearly the Russian soldiers have been ordered to suck up the abuse and not murder random people in the street even with the conscription order in effect. In each of these videos they’re just like “uh go home ma’am, we’re doing army stuff here. We cool.” Like what is this lmao
- :this: Russian forces have been really careful not to strike civilian targets, not to use weaponry with more collateral damage, to find alternate routes when Ukrainians have parked their cars in the way of armoured columns, let people film them or yell at them or talk to them. Hell, they've kept major highways out of cities like Kiev clear and actively told Ukrainians those are safe passage if they want to leave.
  I'm not saying it can't devolve but so far but they clearly knew exactly what the accusations from Western media would be and just made sure everyone can watch them not doing it. So the media just isn't showing any of it at all and just yelling it anyway out of pure projection.
  
  Your username reminds of another thing - fucking balcony Molotovs. You’d think we’d see videos of Russians flattening whole city blocks or at least some car/tank burning footage but nah. Fucking wild
  
  Honestly this reminds me a lot of the type of downplaying of civilian casualties pulled by defenders of Israel in their war of aggression against the Palestinians.
  Dozens if not hundreds of civilians have died so far, regardless of whether they could have killed 10,000 by now (or millions if they decided to use nukes) if you can’t see why the West is calling out the brutality against citizens then idk what to tell you. The US has also claimed to minimize civilian casualties throughout the War on Terror and we all know how considerate they have been... war is hell and civilians die in this type of invasion. The Russians don’t deserve props for killing less people than they could be.
  
  War is murder, including this one, but as far as wars go, until now Russia has fought this one as clean as it's reasonably possible. The Ukrainian claims that Russia is preparing a "genocide", a claim that makes no fucking sense at all, is amazingly unbelievable.
  
  It likely will devolve, though not as outright depraved as NATO carpet bombings of civilians and civilian infrastructure. The NATO/UA strategy is designed to ensure massive civilian casualties and drag out any surrender, which will essentially force Russia to use more powerful weaponry and fire it at or closer to where civilians are.
  Consistent with this, there are reports + video that Russia is deploying thermobaric barrages, including on apartment complexes where Ukrainian soldiers are embedded. Dark stuff.

Libs are sexualising Zelensky now, i guess collaborating with fascists groups and larping as a soldier is something they find hot

I love that the wholesome democratic EU is so principled that they would like to "sanction Russia into oblivion", while Blair is just sipping his tea, and Bush is "discovering his inner Rembrandt."
Did I just do a whataboutism?!
- As I was told earlier today: This is not Iraq, this is Europe.
  Western hypocrisy and racism is so glaringly obvious on this one

Starting to think your average american would be fine with nuking Russia and doesn't understand the missiles can fly both ways. Also it's been proven our missile defense system is pretty much worthless.

It's so obvious that Zelensky is sacrificing his people for a PR win, it's all so cynical and disgusting. This dude should have a one way ticket to a war crimes court but we know those are a joke.

But an unlikely hero emerged in the spring of 2022 in Ukraine. A foreign volunteer from the popular western website reddit, named Kevin, going by his online user handle "Kevin1488HH" helped turned the tide in the battle for Kiev. To commemorate the hero, US speaker of the house Nancy Peolosi drafted a new law for aide to Ukraine named "Return To Tradition" after Kevin's favorite subreddit. :very-smart:
- :wholesome:

- He is personally on the frontlines blowing up tanks as a brave soldier, so Halo would probably have been better training.
  
  Zelensky is out there in his MJOLNIR armor, blasting Russian wraiths apart with his spartan laser. He's finishing this fight.
- he's trying to do that infinite manpower exploit right now
- He should just use cav or light tanks to get a cut off ez
  Shame world tension isn't high enough for them to join a faction tho
- he should know you gotta take out their war bear riders first, those things pack a hell of a punch, then your wizards can take out a bunch of their kossars with a well-placed burning head or purple sun of xereus

holy fuck the guy that founded Wagner Group is almost too on the nose as a Nazi caricature
I don’t think you can get much more “I’m an evil nazi” looking and acting than that guy

U.S. radlibs really going all out with the "being anti war makes you an imperialist" huh

Zelensky introduced a visa-free regime for foreign mercenaries who want to come to fight in Ukraine.
Decree signed today. The more comedian talk, the more unfunny he is

Broke: Russia has fucked up, this will bring Europe and the US closer together
Woke: The US has fucked up, this will bring Russia and China closer together
Bespoke: Azov has fucked up, this will bring Nazis and Satan closer together

Trying to do some self crit, realizing I've been kind of "rooting" for Russia. Despite thinking the invasion wouldn't come (and dealing with people who can't point to Russia, let alone Ukraine, on a map saying 'of course they were!' [Healthy media diet there] ) and then disapproving of it since, found myself hoping they take their goals quickly.
Part is hoping for low casualties, pivoting to a multi polar world, Russia having legitimate grievances and finally 'snapping' after NATO provocations. Another is the too-online-brained hating the media, mainstream and social, building up a Ukraine that is not emblematic of anything worth supporting beyond sovereignty, and of course that it all plays into the hands of a reactionary project across the west that'll now find further bolstering.
However, Russia is obviously not emblematic of anything worth supporting beyond being a counter weight to western hegemony, which is good, but they're not the USSR.
So that said, while it's extremely unlikely, if Russia loses this, that's also a good outcome in that it's own project is blunted and hopefully Russians, following in the path of their ancestors when their country loses, force change. Obviously hoping for no nuclear option at any point for Putin. NATO and other like organizations are going to ramp up regardless, a Russian loss may make that less potent. As well, where they're fighting now may at least take out a good percentage of Azov and their supporters.
Idk, I don't think it's likely, and still really just hoping it ends quickly. Russian victory isn't in leftist favor either, though it'll result in fascist deaths and smug posters eating crow. But damn. What shit living in interesting times is.

The Marvelfication of this war is a thing to behold. "The Ghost of Kiev" 6 episode series coming to Disney+ this summer.

I thought Putin fucked up hard but honestly even western propaganda can't overcome the western programmed apathy. In a few weeks I think nobody will really care.

The Donetsk guys announced that today's offensive will be on Mariupol. Critical support to anyone killing the Azov nazis

The (offline) Libs are learning about the Holomodor — from Anne Applebaum
minute 2:50
https://youtu.be/ZHD-D3wfng0
The journalist who first called it a famine-genocide dined with Hitler and Goebbel’s days earlier at a 5-star hotel link

- They probably didn't want to invite panic among civilians too. Makes things a lot harder than they need to be

- People who post this sort of shit should be immediately referred to some sort of mental health support and re-eductation program.
  
  what even prompts these people to even dream this shit up? what the fuck?
  
  :pit:
- With all of these takes like this, I think we have to amend the "In the American psyche, war is just something happens on TV" to war is a plotline in movies and video games.
- We have to stop Russia because they're violating human rights and committing war crimes!!!! :maybe-later-kiddo:

So many photos and videos turned out to be fake;
https://twitter.com/ASBMilitary/status/1498415759512453125
https://www.bbc.com/news/60528276

Ukranian propagandists announce they're getting 70 planes from Poland, Bulgaria, and Slovakia and later on Poland, Bulgaria, and Slovakia all say they're giving Ukraine jack shit

there is going to be a second round of ceasefire negotiations tomorrow

getting really sick of the hourly "look at this le epic entertainment thing zelensky did in 2004" reddit posts
near shirtless putin levels of goofy

Excerpts from this article , shared in the last megathread:
My second conclusion was that in an invasion, even one with air superiority, attacking forces would win ground at about 30km per day. Today, after three days of fighting, Russian forces advancing from Crimea have taken the Antonov bridge at Kherson, about 90 km from their starting positions. Forces moving north-east from Crimea towards Mariupol have also advanced about 90 km, as have forces advancing south from Belarus towards Kyiv, as have forces moving south from the LDNR towards Mariupol. The exception is found in forces advancing towards Kharkov, which appear to have slowed to invest and even penetrate the city.
Just getting across Ukraine even if there wasn't a single soldier to stop them is going to take a couple weeks. Anybody claiming that Russia is losing because they haven't made "sufficient progress" yet has a case of goldfish brain. I've said this before, but the Gulf War, a war that is extremely renown for how fucking fast it was, with a coalition of a long list of the most powerful military forces on Earth, ganging up on a single nation, with no regard for civilian casualties, took 42 days to finish.
The third step would be to keep Ukrainian casualties to the lowest level possible consistent with the steps one and two. The more Ukrainians that die the harder would it be for Mr Zelenskiy to agree a peace deal. In this context it is more informative to think about what Russian forces are NOT doing than about what they ARE doing. Even with effective air control Moscow is NOT:
Bombing logistic flows from rear areas to the contact lines
Cutting power and water supplies to Kyiv
Destroying civil infrastructure (power, water, roads, bridges)
Attacking civilians (video reportage shows civilians moving unharmed alongside and amongst Russian columns, and filming them with impunity)
Attacking political institutions and politicians
Attacking homes or offices (notwithstanding a small number of hits, probably in error)
Cutting rail links to Europe
Wholesale destruction of Ukrainian artillery units on the Donbas Line of Contact
Sinking merchant shipping (though there are a handful of reports of blockading activity)
Fighting its way into Kyiv’s urban areas where civilians would die in large numbers
Using Russia’s complete air superiority and massive airborne strike power to kill Ukrainian soldiers wholesale on all five fronts.
- Yeah I posted this in the other thread. I think the whole article is a pretty good summation of where things stand so here it is if people are interested.

Nuclear war is bad. Very bad. Don't get me wrong. But based on my research so far, it's more survivable than you think. The key to survival is realistic optimism and a positive mental attitude. In the meantime, here's how anyone can start food prep...
Tweet

Gov in Kyiv not doing air sirens even when Russia gives open warning, fucking twitter saved at least one person's life
ALL KYIV RESIDENTS NEAR PSO Center & any relay nodes LEAVE the area IMMEDIATELY — AIRSTRIKE IMMINENT!
Your media is not telling you !!!! RT THIS
Air raid sirens active now — nearly 20 mins later. What a joke via follower @hassan_akhh telling his friend, says she had no clue — you guys potentially saved a life. Good job
— and the Ukrainian propaganda outlets are silent. Not a word. Tweeting about random topics.
https://twitter.com/ASBMilitary/status/1498654303275339778
Fucking unbelievable. They feel they have more of a job propagandizing for reddit than keeping people alive

I've been getting shit like Radio Free Europe pop up in my YouTube feed for the first time ever. Also stuff like "Russians attack apartment complex" and just tons of stuff so outside what I ever normally watch.

Jesus Christ, mainstream TV news are running a fluff piece on the Ukrainian Volkssturm in Kiev. It's old guys who haven't touched a gun in 50 years and young morons saying that they'll "learn how to shoot in battle".
These people are going to be so dead. It's horrible.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ASBMilitary/status/1498651999532990465
:doomjak:

:wholesome: