651–660 of 791 posts
One thing I don't understand is Russia's opening missile salvos, they barely even struck at the heart of the Ukrainian Air Force. I guess you could theorize they didn't want to destroy that infrastructure in the event that the Ukrainian government rolled over, but that seems to have been a risky bet that is currently playing out.
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Don't forget about option (d), try to kill everyone in Ukraine. Less than 100 years have passed since Stalin attempted exactly that, by killing all the farmers and selling all the food.
It's hard to know what that would serve to accomplish, considering it contradicts Putin's entire ethos for invading in the first place: he fundamentally views Ukrainians as culturally Russian, and wants to bring them back "into the fold." His entire rhetoric is adamant about that--it's why he uses words like genocide when talking about eastern Ukraine. I can't see how (d), which in effect would be genocide, would do…
An empty, derelict Ukraine would serve nearly as well as a puppet state for this purpose.
1. It's worth reading some geography and history. Russia has been invaded a lot, and has a justifiable fear of invasion. Sure, the West might not want to invade now, but who can predict what the situation will be in 2070 or 2170?
2. Putin also wants to maintain the viability of Russia's warm-water port at Sevastopol. The Crimean peninsula was formerly supplied with water by a canal from Ukraine, but that was blocked after Russia annexed Crimea, and Crimea is now desperately short of water. And there is the small matter of major unexploited gas fields in the Black Sea between Crimea and (the rest of) Ukraine...
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Has the use of thermobarics been confirmed? I know they were spotted in the area and there was an explosion in Kharkiv, but it could have been gas pipelines that were hit, and I've also see that explaination for the explosion videos.
Thermobarics are standard issue fuel/air bombs correct? I thought they were specifically designed for anti-personnel use, are they banned or somehow out of the ordinary? I don't understand why it would be notable if they were used.
I believe they were working under the assumption it would be a walk in the park, once the central government was captured or killed. To strengthen this assumption here's a canned article which was likely meant to be published had things gone according to plan, but pulled, since they hadn't. https://web.archive.org/web/20220226224717/https://ria.ru/20... RIA is a state owned news agency. Why precisely they thought the…
What's Russian for "We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators"?
Funny how westerners are surprised by this. Not telling the grunts what they are going into has been Russian modus operandi since forever... Just like throwing bodies at the problem, sending conscripts from Central Asia first (throwing actual Russians into the meat grinder might prove unpopular), rampant looting (including of the most absurd stuff like toilets in Georgia 2008), etc, etc.
Somehow most of the pundits and analysts have been blindsided by this stuff, even though it's common knowledge in Eastern Europe.
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Fallujah and Mosul were pretty bad in terms of city levelling. We just don't like to remember them, or think about depleted uranium dust causing birth defects, or what happened to the refugees, or a million other things.
You can't just compare Fallujah and Grozny. Of course urban warfare is destructive to the city no matter what, but the US and Russian tactics are very different, and so is the destruction. Dropping tons of low precision thermobaric weapons on a city is a Russian thing, unmatched in its destruction. (The is no American equivalent to the TOS-1[1] for instance). That being said, that doesn't mean I approve US invasion o…
That's a fair statement. Depleted Uranium is a gift that keeps on giving.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-depleted-uranium-as-ma_b_3...
https://www.nuclear-risks.org/en/hibakusha-worldwide/falluja...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Iraqi_populat...
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Are the States of the US suzerains of the Federal government?
>> Are the States of the US suzerains of the Federal government? This word was new to me, but looking it up I wanted to say "Yes" but have since changed to "no". Definition: Suzerainty (American accent: soo-zer-en-tee) happens when a country X has its own government but cannot act independently because of a more powerful country Y. This more powerful country Y is called the suzerain and can usually control the foreig…
Lobbyists can easily create big zoom meetings that still get everyone virtually in one spot.
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That was my thought too. They have the luxury if just sitting there waiting safely for the right time while the capital self implodes. Western press talks a lot about it, meanwhile in the South the war is going badly.
Sources? I'm trying to diversify media and would love anything that doesn't filter through a pro- or anti-Russia lens. So far Al Jazeera is the best I've found.
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You only need to read/listen to German news, to know that there can't have been a "grand conspiracy" of Europeans to not show enough resolve. It is very clear that many (on both sides of the political spectrum, but particularly on the left) did not believe Putin would attack, they considered this the usual sabre-rattling and were completely shocked when he attacked. Also, the risk of deploying secret weapons into a s…
If you assign conclusive weight to recent "news", rather than historical precedents, I think you'll remain at the mercy of constructed narratives about what's really happening in high-stakes diplomacy & warmaking. The US was shouting from the rooftops that they expected an attack, in a manner putting real credibility at risk. While laypeople, & left footsoldiers, may have completely discounted the possibility, German…
It's much more likely that many politicians were genuinely surprised by the invasion. They ignored the Eastern Europeans, as always, who were just being paranoid about Russia, as always. People tend to ignore problems that are hard to deal with, especially when solving them seems costly, until they can ignore them no longer.
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> I speculate that Russian airforce weaponry is not generally high-precision, and the order to avoid targeting civilians implies restraint on use of indiscriminate bombing. Again, we've seen counterexamples which could be explained by all of the above reasons, plus the possibility of friendly fire from failed Ukrainian air defences. That doesn't explain this, though: > Vastly outmatched by Russia's military, in terms…
bombing cities in the twitter era creates an undelible trail of images of dead civilian infants that make you lose the war. russia simply decided to give Ukraine gov. the exclusivity of bombing civilians. Photos are already out there despite the massive international PR/PSYOP campain. Search for dombass