Russia Surrounded

[Mr. Tea]

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Dunno who they are but they look like some top ladz!

 

[WashYourHands]

i'm burned from the afghanistan experience obviously. i know this puts me into the realm of a load of dicks on the internet, who i think also sometimes use this example, but i distinctly remember seeing this in a newspaper in 2001. it was totally untrue, but there was something about the atmosphere of the moment after 9/11 where all kinds of people, from the people in charge at the MoD to the respectable media to the general public, ended up believing a whole load of stuff which was totally wrong. and the consequences of that were pretty horrendous. the thing with russia at the moment really reminds me of that.

View attachment 11103

Tallying up damage to city blocks and critical infrastructure, you don’t have to fully buy into the west’s hysterical descriptions to deduce a massive weight of munitions has been dropped

At the same time, civilian death numbers will be quantifiable through independent examination and witness testimony, medical records etc, all the grim work yet to come. How would you prosecute those seemingly beyond legal accountability if definitive evidence was available, without further weaponising anti-Russian opinion?

It’s not too dissimilar to conspiracy worldviews - take a neutral default position first and then try to extrapolate outward, knowing full well that any actual proof of any war crimes could be full of redacted info/compromised to the hilt

 

[WashYourHands]

Dunno who they are but they look like some top ladz!

think it’s called the Don Cossacks Write to the Sultan of Turkey, completely unaware of imminent incoming gabber bombs

 

[wektor]

i'm NOT saying that this stuff is made up or faked etc. although to be fair more or less anything i see on twitter i'm basically assuming is fake videos etc as a default

you're psyoping yourself basically, even russians don't believe the claims of their news outlets that bucha photos are faked.
what they are doing now goes back hundreds of years and most of baltic nations still have it in memory.

another pub opinion that goes along "oh well it's war what did you expect but rape and pillage lol", well done mate, people get paid for saying shit like this these days but you're doing it for free.

 

[Mr. Tea]

you're psyoping yourself basically, even russians don't believe the claims of their news outlets that bucha photos are faked.
what they are doing now goes back hundreds of years and most of baltic nations still have it in memory.

another pub opinion that goes along "oh well it's war what did you expect but rape and pillage lol", well done mate, people get paid for saying shit like this these days but you're doing it for free.

Pretty much this. Plus photos and video footage are a lot different from a silly CGI cartoon.

I also think the "western warmongers" angle is a bit of a strawman. I mean who is actually calling for Western powers to directly enter the war against Russia? Everyone knows that would trigger a global catastrophe.

 

[shakahislop]

you're psyoping yourself basically, even russians don't believe the claims of their news outlets that bucha photos are faked.
what they are doing now goes back hundreds of years and most of baltic nations still have it in memory.

another pub opinion that goes along "oh well it's war what did you expect but rape and pillage lol", well done mate, people get paid for saying shit like this these days but you're doing it for free.

I mean like I said, I'm not saying that the main things that you read in the news are fake. What I mean is that some of the flotsam and jetsem that comes up on my Twitter is probably fake. That seems like a basic thing of experiencing anything through the internet to me.

I don't that what I'm saying is anything like that pub opinion really.

 

[Clinamenic]

Pretty much this. Plus photos and video footage are a lot different from a silly CGI cartoon.

I also think the "western warmongers" angle is a bit of a strawman. I mean who is actually calling for Western powers to directly enter the war against Russia? Everyone knows that would trigger a global catastrophe.

There do seem to have been a lot of calls for a no-fly zone, which as I understand it would require NATO member nations to mobilize troops around Ukraine and shoot down Russian aircraft that pass into The Zone (still reading Gravity's Rainbow, by the way), which I presume would obviously escalate things to an even bigger international conflict. Hasn't Zelenskyy himself called for a no-fly zone?

 

[shakahislop]

Pretty much this. Plus photos and video footage are a lot different from a silly CGI cartoon.

I also think the "western warmongers" angle is a bit of a strawman. I mean who is actually calling for Western powers to directly enter the war against Russia? Everyone knows that would trigger a global catastrophe.

Well the ukranian government for one, with the no fly zone.

I mean I'm not taking much of a side on whether it's the right thing to do or not, but the west has already come in pretty strongly on one side of the conflict, and particularly if this turns into a long war, they are going to need to find a way to get enough of thier publics on side for the long run.

 

[Clinamenic]

It wouldn't surprise me if there were US policymakers calling for NATO to establish a no-fly zone, seeing as some (even Republicans) have been saying that the US's support has been insufficient.

 

[Mr. Tea]

There do seem to have been a lot of calls for a no-fly zone, which as I understand it would require NATO member nations to mobilize troops around Ukraine and shoot down Russian aircraft that pass into The Zone (still reading Gravity's Rainbow, by the way), which I presume would obviously escalate things to an even bigger international conflict. Hasn't Zelenskyy himself called for a no-fly zone?

OK, I should have been clear: I meant among Western leaders. Zelenskyy is no fool, and surely realises a NFZ is unlikely.

So it hasn't happened and I've heard nothing to indicate that it's at all likely.

 

[Clinamenic]

Yeah I couldn't name any western political leaders who have called for a no-fly zone. There may be some for all I know, but I can't name any.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yeah I couldn't name any western political leaders who have called for a no-fly zone. There may be some for all I know, but I can't name any.

In fact both the US and UK have explicitly ruled it out:

U.S., UK resist calls for no-fly zone over Ukraine's pleas: 'Our goal is to end the war, not to expand it'

Ukraine's allies, including President Joe Biden and NATO, have sought to support Kyiv without deploying troops, despite President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's pleas.

www.cnbc.com

So, contra a lot of "anti-imperialists", it's clearly not the case that Western countries are just itching to have a pop at Russia, risk of WWIII be damned.

 

[Clinamenic]

What other nations would side with Russia here, if a conflict between Russia and NATO were to ignite? I'm under the impression Russia is having a difficult enough time as it is with Ukraine, so what hope would they have in a WWIII situation?

 

[version]

I dunno whether they still are, but Brazil, China and India were apparently somewhat sympathetic to the Russian position at the start of the war, or at least they were still willing to work with them whilst a lot of other people were actively coming out against them.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I dunno whether they still are, but Brazil, China and India were apparently somewhat sympathetic to the Russian position at the start of the war, or at least they were still willing to work with them whilst a lot of other people were actively coming out against them.

Putin is nothing if not popular with other authoritarian nationalists.

 

[Clinamenic]

I dunno whether they still are, but Brazil, China and India were apparently somewhat sympathetic to the Russian position at the start of the war, or at least they were still willing to work with them whilst a lot of other people were actively coming out against them.

Yeah I guess the leaders of these nations would just have to weigh the economic cost of essentially alienating themselves from the western geoeconomic order. Even if they do have ideological nationalist sympathies with Putin's regime, would these sympathies justify the ostensibly immense economic friction promised by siding with Russia? Granted I can only apprehend this in an academic capacity, but I'd be surprised if Russia gets much international support, were the existing conflict to expand unto all of NATO.

I also don't have any idea what kind of treaties Russia is part of, which may force the hand of allies.

 

[WashYourHands]

I dunno whether they still are, but Brazil, China and India were apparently somewhat sympathetic to the Russian position at the start of the war, or at least they were still willing to work with them whilst a lot of other people were actively coming out against them.

when thinking about blocks consider also

 

[Mr. Tea]

This is pretty funny.

 

[Leo]

the more things change, the more they stay the same.

A gangster regime in the Kremlin has declared that its security is threatened by a much smaller neighbor — which, the regime claims, is not a truly sovereign country but just a plaything of far more powerful Western states. To make itself more secure, the Kremlin insists, it needs to bite off some of its neighbor’s territory. Negotiations between the two sides break down; Moscow invades.
The year was 1939. The regime in the Kremlin was led by Joseph Stalin, and the neighboring country was Finland.

The Cold War Never Ended

Ukraine, the China challenge, and the revival of the West.

www.foreignaffairs.com

 

[Mr. Tea]

TШДTS

Kremlin furious as Russian Army suffers 'significant losses' after bombing own unit, mistaken regiment for Ukrainian troops

The Russian Airforce bombed several of its own troops in recent days, confusing the location of its own military unit with Ukrainian armed forces. The

www.cityam.com