Ukraine War Watch Thread

[Yuli Ban]

More like "No shit," since that's kind of the whole point of NATO.

[Maximus]

More like "No shit," since that's kind of the whole point of NATO.

Well yeah, but that was more like a holy shit we are this close to the Article 5 moment. Right on the precipice. If even a stray missile goes into Poland, it's WW3.

[andmar74]

More like "No shit," since that's kind of the whole point of NATO.

Well yeah, but that was more like a holy shit we are this close to the Article 5 moment. Right on the precipice. If even a stray missile goes into Poland, it's WW3.

Yes Nato has to respond, but not with nukes of course.

[Maximus]

Yes Nato has to respond, but not with nukes of course.

My confidence in cooler heads prevailing if NATO enters the conflict is zero. Despite all the bluster of the Cold War, the US and Russia were never direct participants in a war against the other. This would be a step into unmarked territory. Maybe NATO would respond by moving into Western Ukraine to set up a buffer zone with the East. Maybe they would set a limited no-fly zone over Western Ukraine. Or maybe they would say a no-fly zone covers the entire country, and begin shooting down Russian jets and missiles. In no scenario do I see Putin just standing by and deciding this is as far as he's willing to go. He loves his analogies about rats being cornered, and the Russian nuclear doctrine reportedly includes the concept of "escalating to de-escalate". This is in line with everything else Putin has done; he doesn't back down, he just goes that one step further to make others back down. Dropping a tactical nuke on NATO forces would seem likely if they succeed in changing the outcome of the war in Ukraine.

[wjfox]

[erowind]

.

[R8Z]

So you believe this blatant violation of international law is somehow justified?
[...]
Examples?
[...]
"Slightly"? Russia is slaughtering innocent men, women and children. These are war crimes. Why are you trying to excuse these atrocities and make it appear like there's some "balance" here?

1. I don't believe in international law. International law is whatever the one with the biggest weapon has to say. I won't even go into this detour as there are plentiful examples of massacres which have been shrugged off as the perpetrator had the say in what was a crime and what wasn't. This isn't really a meaningful discussion.

2. Examples of propaganda in this thread are, for example, showing a tank fighting in urban warfare, blowing up some random building, and saying it is shelling civilians. In an effort to see the full picture I've joined a few international telegram channels are reporting both sides of the coin, it's quite good I've to say.

3. Would you consider the 20+ civilians killed in Donetsk by a Ukrainian missile today a war crime as well? Now both are countries are criminals, and again, Ukraine is just slightly less criminal.

blocked/638

A reminder: Ukrainian and Russian people aren't criminals, their governments and whoever is pulling the strings are. Those who follow the orders of the puppet masters are also criminals (eg. soldiers).

I think you make a fairly interesting point with your example. At a certain level, my response would be to go ahead and write your 10,000 word essay and post it. I will then read it and inform you as to what I agree with and with what I disagree. Now, as to "unprovoked war." That is my opinion and I will stand by it. Does that mean I think that I believe that I have received the absolute truth through some means of divine revelation?

Thank you for your answer and I have to say I fully agree with you on the topic of truth and fact checkers (as one's own opinion is what in the end matters). I won't go into writing the 10k words essay because I am lazy and it was just an hyperbole to make my point. If you're seriously intending to hear the other side I suggest to watch the documentary Ukraine on Fire (2016, released 2017), while trying to ignore it is an obvious propaganda piece for the neo-USSR. It shines a bright light into on war that has actually started in 1991 and that's why I say that this isn't a good-and-bad type of war; like most of them aren't. There's much more to be seen than this present conflict to be able to understand what is actually going on there.

It's also interesting to know why the Russians are actually thinking this war is not really a bad thing and why they are still siding with the dictator Putin.

---

To make it clear to both of you: I still side with Ukraine in this conflict and still think they have the moral high ground. On the other hand I don't side with Nazis or Bandera's followers nor think the WEF-Puppet government of Ukraine is any better than the Russki-Puppet they've "won"-over.

Edit: added telegram link, formatting and clarification.

[R8Z]

Note that I've distanced myself from the topic of fact checkers as I believe these aren't a discussion relevant to this thread. If we want to discuss their validity, intentions, sponsors, truthiness or anything related to them I believe we should do it in another one.

[Ozzie guy]

Elon Musk has started making fun of people who support Ukraine in an attempt to be anti woke and make fun of other minorities in order to get revenge over his ex girlfriend dating Chelsea Manning who is trans.

[wjfox]

He's such a dick.

[andmar74]

US tells allies China signalled openness to provide Russia with military support

Why would Russia need military support? It's crazy.
I got this eerie feeling tonight, the war will not go away, but spread out instead.

https://www.ft.com/content/52ea7aab-f8d ... 545c5ef9b9

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[Yuli Ban]

I dunno, I'm doubting that one

[erowind]

.

[Xyls]

He's such a dick.

Did he not get his Starlink for Ukraine as a response?

Is he not supporting them too?

What is wrong with this man?

[Xyls]

The United States doesn’t have embargo rights over international waterways, the global community would likely turn on the US over attempted enforcement of such policy. Panama itself enforces neutrality. Moreover embargo of Russian trade would be illegal under international law and not enforceable without making enemies greater than Russia. Even Cuba isn’t truly “embargoed.” Cuba can trade with non-US companies, governments, subsidiaries, etc.

The U.S. can only enforce this if other countries go along, and there is no guarantee that they will... also this will almost certainly be looked at with consternation by our government here in Canada... since there is a dispute with the US over the Northwest Passage. And contrary to what the US thinks they do not have jurisdiction over all the world's oceans... If they shut down these waterways then they are undermining their argument in a lot of maritime jurisdiction disputes globally...

[Maximus]

All the more reason that NATO should let it go if a stray missile does hit.

If our societies showed the Russian people a true alternative to war, one that provided a substantively greater quality of life for all people and which was not built on the exploitation of the common man, they would listen, and the the Russian State would dissolve.

But that's not what our societies are showing Russians today. There are minorities sure that think that western liberal "democratic" models of governance would serve them better, but the reality is that more Russians are closer to PheonixRu than not, though his hypernationalism itself is a minority all the same. Those Russians will never be swayed by the West showing itself as a competitor to Russia. The only way to win is not to play, and moreover to develop a strategy that doesn't permit play to begin with.

That comes back to my comment in the status updates ages ago now. The one on building real missile defenses. Perhaps MAD would be threatened by sociopathic governments who couldn't accept they don't have a planetary suicide button anymore. Even so, perhaps the people in those nations might not tolerate such policy if the "evil" nations in question that developed greater defense capabilities truly acted in defense and disarmed their own nuclear armaments once a robust missile defense system was constructed.

I agree, it would be reasonable to treat a stray missile as an accident. That's also why I was so taken aback, because the statement from that conference made it clear even such an accident would be treated as an attack. By the sounds of it, there's no more room for error or miscalculation here.

We're gonna have to disagree on that. A utopia as you describe in our society is more likely to incite jealousy and fear on the part of dictatorships such as Russia. They are more likely to clamp down society even further and prevent outside information about this wonderful paradise from getting in, just so the elites can cling to power. With the amount of West-ophobia (new word?) in Russia, it would not be hard to convice people to blind themselves to foreign propaganda of utopia. Russians are united by suspicion and fear of the West, and a feeling of superiority over our "degeneracy". I don't think they would take kindly to any ideology originating here. But hey, I could be wrong. After all communism didn't start in Russia.

Yes, I can agree on Russians being largely nationalist and backing the current war. I've said as much in other posts. I'm not sure about the second part of that statement, what would such a strategy look like?

That's an interesting point regarding MAD, I hadn't considered such a situation before. We would need very high confidence in our ABM systems though. Even then, there are nuclear devices that cannot be shot down or intercepted, like Russia's idea of a radioactive tsunami bomb. And though I'm a lot more familiar with horrors of nuclear weapons after the past few weeks, it's still worth asking if we'd really be better off without them? It's hard to see a scenario where NATO and the USSR didn't go to war if it weren't for nukes. Likewise, NATO would most likely already be in Ukraine if it weren't for the nuclear threat. There's no easy answer to this problem. You either risk a lunatic leader using a nuclear weapon and dragging us into the stone age, or war between great powers becoming thinkable again. One is more likely to happen than the other, I would say, though it seems right now that everything that can go wrong is going wrong with regards to the first scenario.

[R8Z]

Russians are milking the Ukrainian attack on civilians in Donetsk for propaganda like crazy. I have never seen so many publications like that on their channels. I mean, it's quite bad, but it's nothing compared to what Russia has been doing to Ukraine in the last weeks. What a useless loss of life from both sides.

https://www.youtube(dot)com/watch?v=ANNhDKGjNK8

(I don't want to embed NSFW).

[weatheriscool]