The Invasion is ongoing...Part 5

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Unbelievable to think that a few days ago the world was starting to look more positive..ye we find ourselves on a fifth thread discussing the horrors of the war in Europe. An unbelievable change has happened to the world we live in.

Some incredible firmed posts have been written, informing, discussing, and occasionally derailing. Let's hope the news is more positive by the end of this one.

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It's been a while since we had geopolitics play out in Europe in quite such a dangerous way although there have been some high stakes negotiations (such as after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR).

However, history is a series of land and resource grabs. Leaders used to be valued for defending land and resources well and even for appropriating them from others.

In crude terms, leaders always have reasons for their expansions and appropriation plans. In Europe and the West we've become accustomed to asserting a moral authority for a variety of interventions and wars by virtue of democracy, liberal capitalism, freedom, and concern for human rights. More recent wars and interventions have raised tough questions about the ability to claim moral authority that is greater than anybody else's on the geopolitical stage.

What we might be considering now is that there are no geopolitical actors who can claim unquestionable moral authority. As adults, we may need to make decisions about which geopolitical actor is the least worst? Crudely, China (actual concentration camps and atrocities within its borders; battens down the contact that its people have with the social media elsewhere), Russia (eye-watering record on democide and human rights violations, and has never had a democratic transfer of power; as per China for restrictions on access to news and social media), or The West (with a record of interventions and wars that have consequences for people in countries elsewhere and use them to fight proxy wars)?

that the US and Europe appear to have chosen a path of escalation (or at least, not chosen a path of de-escalation) means they must believe there is something they can achieve by following that path

Escalation? thats a bit of a leap - the West has been extremely restrained.
Even the re enforcing of nato has been modest in order not to escalate.

I haven’t had time to read the whole thread so forgive me if this has been raised before but what I don’t understand is how the Russian people don’t know the truth about what is happening. I know that the Russian media is controlled but surely the internet cannot be censored and controlled?

I think it's reasonably easy, especially in times of conflict, it's going on currently in the West with RT/Sputnik stations no longer being allowed to be broadcast here. We are going to see/hear less and less about what's being said on the ground in Russia as the Russians are going to be able to access what's going on outside of their own country.

Outside of conflict, when you have countries that don't like freedom of speech and democracy, the likes of China, North Korea, then it's just a blanket ban on anything outside of state control. It's like a massive firewall.

How DO we all know what’s true and what isn’t?

There I do go with people reporting from Ukraine generally, so if they say they are being invaded and bombed etc they get the choice of words

@ChardonnaysPetDragon

My understanding is that as Ukraine is not a NATO country it’s not easy to intervene under international law. As soon as a NATO country is attacked then that would mean NATO joined the war.

Just as well it's not, because then we're all fucked. This is why we need a buffer of non Nato states around Russia as badly as they do.

But I realise my opinion is unpopular.

Not with me.

How DO we all know what’s true and what isn’t?

There was definitely some amateurish attempts as disinformation circling on social media last week - one classic being images of an air show accident from almost thirty years ago being presented as an example of the plucky Ukrainian Air Force at work on day one or two of the invasion.

Fortunately and AFAIK the western MSM didn’t do a C&P.

Putin can't have expected Zelenskyy to have become a kind of hero around the world.
A few days ago loads of people outside Eastern Europe hadn't heard of him.
And then he showed he would stay and fight for his country and not leave his people behind.
He's become suddenly massively popular internationally.
He's got, according to various sources, 90% rating at home.
There've been stories and pictures and videos of him all over social media, memes comparing him very favourably to Putin - hero vs coward stuff.
Comments like, oh isn't he brave/lovely/funny/capable/handsome etc, and he seems to be seen too as very human.
Putin isn't a "hearts and minds kinda guy." Quite.Blofeld can't have seen this coming.

Thank you for these threads, it's nice to have a calm voice amongst all the news at the moment. I hope it's ok to share these, it might be helpful for posters who have little ones asking questions. They're from a local nhs trust so I'm sure others will be publishing similar.

@DuncinToffee

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@DuncinToffee

Wow! what a picture, that's got me where others haven't.

@DrBlackbird

If this is what’s being reported in govt sanctioned Russia media, then seeing it repeated here makes it all that more suspect.

"What you see in Ukraine is the result of the West's actions"
"The EU is acting like an enemy"

This sentiment - that NATO forced Russia to act - has all the hallmark of an angry controlling man absolving himself of any blame because his wife drove him to violence against her.

Why not seek an explanation for NATO’s westward expansion and argue that ‘if only Russia/Putin had not been an aggressive, unstable neighbour then none of the Eastern European countries would have asked to join NATO’.

"What you see in Ukraine is the result of the West's actions" "The EU is acting like an enemy"

Just going back to this as a good post, but aren’t we just spreading his messages for Putin when looking to fault of NATO / West / EU

The BBC are good at fact checking, they have been running articles on various videos/pictures circulating on social media saying that they’ve been verified or shown to be false.

I know a lot of people claim the BBC is biased, but for me when both political parties/supporters of said political parties claim the BBC is biased then it shows they are actually pretty balanced!

@dreamingbohemian

I wish people would stop giving credence to this idea that Russia deserves a 'buffer state'. This is not 1941. Russia doesn't need defence in depth to protect itself against NATO sending 1000 tanks across the Ukrainian plains. If there's going to be a war with NATO it will be nuclear. And in that event it won't matter whether Russia owns Ukraine or not.

What is it about NATO expansion that makes Russia feel weak? I mean, why on earth would Russia feel weak when they have the largest nuclear arsenal in the world? When they know that means no one can attack them?

Putin feels threatened by NATO/EU because it is a threat to his regime. Not to Russia -- no one is going to attack or occupy Russia. But it is a threat to his regime, because it makes him look weak and raises the possibility that people in Russia might also want a different leader, a different kind of system.

So when people say 'oh but Russia has reasonable security concerns and so Ukraine must stay neutral' what you are really saying is that a whole country has to sacrifice its independence so that a malicious old dictator can stay in power. You can dress it up however you like but that is the reality of what you're saying.

Spot on

Here’s a BBC article on how Russian TV is portraying the invasion: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60571737

Just going back to this as a good post, but aren’t we just spreading his messages for Putin when looking to fault of NATO / West / EU

Wouldn't we be just like him if we didn't and insisted we didn't make any mistakes?

The invasion is not NATO/EU/West's fault, but that doesn't mean we handled everything well all the time.

Actually Dreaming’s post re quoted a few up sums it up incredibly well for me

@CaveMum

The BBC are good at fact checking, they have been running articles on various videos/pictures circulating on social media saying that they’ve been verified or shown to be false.

I know a lot of people claim the BBC is biased, but for me when both political parties/supporters of said political parties claim the BBC is biased then it shows they are actually pretty balanced!

I agree, although they did broadcast some footage of jets on an exercise before realising that was what it was. The weather and the formation should have alerted them that all was not what it seemed.

@vera99

Putin can't have expected Zelenskyy to have become a kind of hero around the world. A few days ago loads of people outside Eastern Europe hadn't heard of him. And then he showed he would stay and fight for his country and not leave his people behind. He's become suddenly massively popular internationally. He's got, according to various sources, 90% rating at home. There've been stories and pictures and videos of him all over social media, memes comparing him very favourably to Putin - hero vs coward stuff. Comments like, oh isn't he brave/lovely/funny/capable/handsome etc, and he seems to be seen too as very human. Putin isn't a "hearts and minds kinda guy." Quite.Blofeld can't have seen this coming.

No, he didn't, did he?

Zelensky was seen as not capable of statesmanship because of his background and he really showed them wrong.

This was one of the biggest miscalculation in Putin's campaign.

Some light relief, funny video of Zelensky applying for EU membership 5 years ago

twitter.com/VeraMBergen/status/1498814410911006723?t=8pQ33i4mVd_llDGTbJUwDQ&s=19

[quote DuncinToffee]Some light relief, funny video of Zelensky applying for EU membership 5 years ago

twitter.com/VeraMBergen/status/1498814410911006723?t=8pQ33i4mVd_llDGTbJUwDQ&s=19[/quote]
Isn't that from when he was playing the role of the president?

Putin isn't a "hearts and minds kinda guy." Quite.Blofeld can't have seen this coming

Does Putin care, perhaps even know what is happening on the ground?

I mean who is going to tell him the invasion hasn't gone to plan... plus We are all making assumptions that he is failing in Ukraine but we don't even know what his plan was.

As Putin sees Ukraine as some sort of spiritual Russian homeland, its unlikely he wants to turn it to dust, the plan may have always been a longer campaign, we just don't know.

Is Russia very slowly closing in on Kyiv - giving the citizens plenty of time to evacuate - as Putin sees them as Russians and doesn’t necessarily want too many deaths.
Would that explain the stalled convoy to the north, just waiting, and the lack of planes overhead and the noisy Russian march up from the south, leaving the western route still clear atm for those who still want to leave?
Am I a wonderful armchair army strategist?

Chardonnay

Yes, it was.

From the tweet author
To clear up the confusion in my mentions: before he was elected, Zelensky starred in a hit TV show where he played a teacher who accidentally gets elected President.

@DGRossetti

Not quite sure of the veracity, but the former Russian PM said that Germany was stopping buying gas from Russia. Not quite sure why Martha didn't pick up on it ...

The war on Ukraine has made it abundantly clear of the risk for any country depending on Russian gas.