Ukraine War Watch Thread

[Ozzie guy]

A month or so ago I predicted if Putin starts war it will be over for him. I stand by this prediction.

[wjfox]

Ukraine: Kyiv apartment building hit by missile

2 hours ago

Video has emerged of the apartment building near Kyiv's Zhuliany airport that was struck earlier on Saturday.

The pictures show a hole covering at least five floors that were blasted into the side.

Authorities say the number of casualties is "being specified" while an evacuation is under way.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-60536614

[wjfox]

Turkey is now blocking Russian warships from passing through the Black Sea!

[Xyls]

Russia no longer needs diplomatic ties with West - ex-President Medvedev

February 26, 2022 10:25 AM GMT
Last Updated 9 min ago

MOSCOW, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Russia doesn't really need diplomatic ties with the West after it imposed sanctions on Moscow over what he called Russia's military operation in Ukraine, former president and top security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ru ... 022-02-26/

This is such strange thinking... and I doubt is going to make the average Russian citizen happy. If Russia is going to take the pariah route than the West IS going to build up their military strength along the border, Sweden and Finland ARE going to join NATO, the West WILL kick Russia out of SWIFT and the Russian economy is going to go into reverse as their customers in Europe stop buying. China also isn't going to like this as they are going to be worried they are breaking Western sanctions and they are already having rocky relations with the West to start with...

I actually don't see why Russia would want to do this, and this is likely going to further inflame public opinion in their own country...

[Certain Russian user]

Hello. I’m “Certain Russian user” mentioned here and once very active on this forum (veterans shall recall, the rest shall not care). The most recent events brought me to see what’s going on here.

Well, everything here is exactly as I expected. Perhaps you’ll find this interesting: “defeated and destroyed” Russian forces that landed in Hostomel airbase are actually won the battle, and “heroically fallen” Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island are actually alive and well (as our POWs), and Russian military vehicle that ran over old man was actually Ukrainian and this happened on the streets of Kiev. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but NO, there are still no “thousand dead Russians” and most of broken/burned/abandoned stuff and the like you may have seen labeled as "punished invaders", are also Ukrainian.

Anyway, this all doesn't matter. There was only one thing here that hurt me deeply (and, actually, brought back to this place): your sentimental viral “Video of Ukrainian father saying goodbye to his kids while he stays behind to fight” on page 26.

You know what? This video is few years old, and this is actually Russian man, defender of Donbass from Ukraine. Back then, no one of you shed a single crocodile tear over this father and his children, as well as hundreds and thousands of other children of Donbass, still alive or already dead. And now, suddenly, you found this video fitting for your purposes and pulled it from your archives...

Abomination.

That’s all I wanted to say here. Does this looks as invitation for further debate? Not at all... And the last thing. To every one of you, the progressive gender-fluid hipsters, who could not contain their feelings and, in this very thread, wished pain and death to our Russian soldiers, I deeply and sincerely wish the same.

[Xyls]

Thank you for posting. We always appreciate the fiction.

You are correct on the tank video though! It was indeed Ukrainian.

[Xyls]

So Russia seems to be wanting to risk the backlash of public opinion with the thermobaric rocket route... this is going to seriously up the intensity of the war and cause civilian casualties which Russia was claiming they wanted to avoid... means they are indeed meeting more resistance than they thought...

[caltrek]

To every one of you, the progressive gender-fluid hipsters, who could not contain their feelings and, in this very thread, wished pain and death to our Russian soldiers, I deeply and sincerely wish the same.

I guess this doesn't apply to me as I have not wished pain and death on Russian soldiers. I have expressed a desire for a peaceful diplomatic resolution of the situation. What do you wish for the protestors in Russia who have publicly expressed a desire for the war to end?

At any rate, what I came here to post:

Russia Just Seized Chernobyl. Here’s Why It Matters.
Isabela Dias interviewing Kate Brown
February 24, 2022

https://www.motherjones.com/environment ... t-matters/

Extract:

(Mother Jones) (Kate Brown): I’m not a military strategist. I’m just a simple environmental historian. But they have all these troops in Belarus and the shortest way to get to Kyiv is through the Chernobyl zone. Belarus, the border, is located 6 kilometers from the Chernobyl plant. It looks as if from the Ukrainian press, they’re being met by forces of the Ukrainian National Guard who are fighting against these arriving Russian forces. The question is what might happen if they’re fighting there. A fire in the Chernobyl zone would be bad. The last couple of years have been hot, with dry summers, and we have seen forest fires rage. The leaf litter and trees have a great deal of radioactivity stored in them. In fact, a majority of the plutonium and a lot of the other radionuclides that were released in the accident in 1986 are still around inside that zone. They are in the top 10 centimeters of the soil. When they go up in smoke, that’s troubling. Last June 2020, forest fire scientists calculated that radionuclides were detected in the Netherlands and in Belgium. They were directly harmful to the firefighters.
…
The carcass of that nuclear power plant has a cover over it and it’s supposed to be sealed off for the next 100 years. But if something, God forbid, should fall on that cover, it could cause some kind of fire of the materials that are still in there and that would create another nuclear excursion with radioactive smoke…If somebody gets in their head to create a big dirty bomb, the Chernobyl zone would be a good place to devise it.
…
Nuclear power as a response to climate change—when we know climate change is gonna cause a lot of instability, mass migrations, and probably more local and maybe more extra local wars—I don’t see how nuclear power safely fits into that picture.
…
I’m not quite sure what the volume of radioactive waste buried in that Chernobyl sarcophagus is, and I think they don’t really know. But if it were to be hit by some kind of bomb and just go up in smoke, then that would really be dire.

[caltrek]

Biden to Sanction Putin, Locking the Russian leader out of Financial Assets in the U.S.
by Rose Wagner
February 25, 2022

https://www.courthousenews.com/biden-to ... in-the-us/

Introduction:

It's unknown whether this move will mark a blow to Putin or Lavrov's finances since the Russian leader's financial holdings and where they are located are shrouded in mystery, but they signal a strong condemnation of Putin and the Kremlin.

"The steps that we are doing in alignment and in coordination with Europeans just sends a clear message about the strength of the opposition to the actions by President Putin and the direction in his leadership of the Russian military," Psaki said.

Tung Yin, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School with a focus on national security and terrorism law, said the more countries that sanction an individual, the more effective the penalties become.

"If you can identify a certain bank account belonging to that targeted individual and it's within control of the sanctioning country, so us in this case, you could freeze those assets. And so, of course, this is why getting as many European and Asian allies to join in will magnify the effectiveness of the sanctions," Yin said.
…
"When you get down to the real side of things, Russia is a nuclear-armed state. And if we were to actually get involved in the warfare side of things on the side of Ukraine, basically it would be kind of a replay of the Korean War," Yin said. "And on top of that, nuclear and cyber warfare capabilities of each side could easily spiral completely out of control. So, I think that's why the idea of sanctions is viewed as a more targeted approach," Yin said.

[Cyber_Rebel]

Well, everything here is exactly as I expected. Perhaps you’ll find this interesting: “defeated and destroyed” Russian forces that landed in Hostomel airbase are actually won the battle, and “heroically fallen” Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island are actually alive and well (as our POWs), and Russian military vehicle that ran over old man was actually Ukrainian and this happened on the streets of Kiev. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but NO, there are still no “thousand dead Russians” and most of broken/burned/abandoned stuff and the like you may have seen labeled as "punished invaders", are also Ukrainian.

Anyway, this all doesn't matter. There was only one thing here that hurt me deeply (and, actually, brought back to this place): your sentimental viral “Video of Ukrainian father saying goodbye to his kids while he stays behind to fight” on page 26.

You know what? This video is few years old, and this is actually Russian man, defender of Donbass from Ukraine. Back then, no one of you shed a single crocodile tear over this father and his children, as well as hundreds and thousands of other children of Donbass, still alive or already dead. And now, suddenly, you found this video fitting for your purposes and pulled it from your archives...

Abomination.

And the last thing. To every one of you, the progressive gender-fluid hipsters, who could not contain their feelings and, in this very thread, wished pain and death to our Russian soldiers, I deeply and sincerely wish the same.

Damn, and here I recently expressed legit concern for your safety saying how much I hated this war your dear leader imposed on us. It's all good though. Assuming you are who you say you are, why aren't you fighting then, comrade?