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.

@jackieh1987

The only real exit ramp is China. Xi does not have the same messianic zeal for total dominance at any cost. I would think that the threat of nukes alarmed the Chinese, because it can't be contained locally.

China is the best hope so far but, it will be to protect & prioritise their economy. I am not convinced they actually care what is happening in the Ukraine, they made a trade deal with Russia just before the invasion to soften any sanctions and have stood by Putin.

But China did do a lot of trade with the Ukraine and with the Russian economy on its knees they probably do not want this to escalate to other markets, especially as their economy is feeling the pinch.

@RedToothBrush

Re 'the Nato threat' i actually think Putin fears soft power from the Internet, films and sport etc more because thats what turns the heads of young people and he can't control.

But he can't directly say 'im turning off everything none russian', without a pretext either.

NATO is the invasion pretext but the threat he really sees is cultural globalism.

Think about it.

(and I suspect that the likes of Abramovich are going to be waking up to this very soon, if they haven't already).

Regarding the above Smart phones in Russia come with Russian Government approved software downloaded, Apple resisted that for a long time and finally agreed to prompt users to download the software when they boot up a new device.

I think you’re right. As awful as the invasion is, Russia does seem to care more about civilian casualties than America typically does when it invades. Reports seem to be saying that the vast majority of deaths so far are Russian soldiers, and thankfully, thus far, front page newspaper pictures are of destroyed cars and buildings rather than people.

There are pictures around of both dead soldiers and dead civilians but the MSM seem a bit squeamish about publishing the same.

Any thoughts about what is or was in those buildings and cars?

A repeated theme DH and I have seen of the Russian vox pop to western media is that it is always a grey haired granny. They always say how much they trust the state media, how whatever is going on is justified.

We are starting to wonder if 'grey haired granny' is perceived as being more trust worthy than a younger person.

Of course once grey haired granny has said her piece she probably gets a new washing machine once the western media has left.

Well if nothing else it might mean thecountries step up their financial contributions to NATO and not rely on America to largely fund it.

Expecting a great power to sit back and just accept it as a former neutral/friendly border country in the space of a few years (or a government coup) turns into a hostile one which is harbouring military and missiles from a hostile superpower is ludicrous

Will you say the same if Russia invades Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia ? All friendly border countries or are they also harbouring military and missiles from a hostile superpower ?

Lewis Goodall continued reports on Ukrainian refugees at the Polish border

twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1498975492032061440?s=21

Who are the groups that are coming over? Am told this divides into several groups

1) Ukrainian women/kids- this is the vast majority of the arrivals. There are also elderly. Mums are often arriving with two, three, four kids (sometimes other people’s kids and more)
2) non-Ukrainian residents: these include huge numbers of students (lots of big universities in Ukraine), many of whom face the prospect of never being able to finish their studies
3) Then there are people from the Belarusian border, itself separated into two groups. We have it on good authority that A) political refugees from the Lukashenko regime are trying to make it across B) some of those people held up at Belarusian/Polish border and allegedly used by Putin as a tool of political pressure
4) this is the smallest number but we’ve been told there is concern within Polish military of Russian agents/provocateurs trying to make it across

@redtoothbrush - well all that depends very much on Putin being alive for an extended length of time and whether the reports of him being ill are correct or not. I'm still of the thought that this is a straight forward power grab under whatever guise he thinks he can get away with. Almost looks like a last hoorah if you like.

I don't think what is happening now is what was planned in even the loosest sense. This has been a botched job from the start. The military leaders who are allowed to have audience with Putin are either too under informed or too frightened to say how badly prepared the Russian forces were.

Sadly I think the Russian forces will prevail simply because there are far more of them than there are of Ukrainian forces. It will come at huge cost on both sides.

Holding Ukraine will be a different story but if the gossip about Putin's health is to be believed I don't think he cares about that.

Make no mistake, this is Putin's war not Russia's war.

@DuncinToffee

twitter.com/MarkUrban01/status/1498942914730369024?t=g1XJGs8MJbHZP-vYQg7JzQ&s=19

Day 7 pointers on the war:

• Kharkiv under intense bombardment & surrounded
• Russia says the coastal corridor from Crimea to Russia has been achieved
• Kyiv under pressure but not yet surrounded
• Russian army performance remains poor even tho invasion force largely committed

An awful lot of this war, like the Crimea War and even WW1, were ultimately about the Sevastopol Naval Base in Crimea. While it's obviously not as practically and geopolitically important as it was in 1853, it's still extremely valuable to Russia. They paid for it's use from the fall of the Soviet Union until 2014. And have had control of it since then. But gaining controlled land access other than just across the Kerch Strait could be valuable enough to Putin to justify this war to himself. Especially as it would cut off Ukrainian access to Crimea.

It is possible that is his ultimate goal here. The worst attacks have been on Kharkiv, which is the main urban area en route from Moscow to Sevastopol. Putin had some justification for attacking/liberating (depending on your viewpoint) the Donbass region. 14,000 people, mainly Russian allied, have been killed in fighting there in the last 8 years. And the Ukrainian Nationalists in those regions, who are doing most of the killing, genuinely are literal Nazis. If he had just invaded Donbass, he could potentially have won quite quickly. He would have had the support of a majority of the populace and he would quite probably have been able to hold the region by installing a Russian sympathetic government. The Western powers wouldn't have liked it but it would have been genuinely very difficult to have stopped him in regions where people want him more than what they had.

But the Donbass region alone wouldn't give him control of the land access to Sevastopol. And I wonder if that maybe explains the extent of his attack now. He doesn't necessarily expect to take and hold all of Ukraine. Even if Zelensky had done as expected and fled and a demoralised Ukraine was captured, I'm not sure he would have expected to hold it all. But, even now, when he is fighting a much harder war than he ever expected to, it's still possible that the ultimate outcome could be his control over the whole region on the Crimean border and controlled access of the fastest routes between Moscow and Sevastopol.

If this is the end goal for Putin, it means there is less likelihood for a coup against him than we would hope. It also possibly allows all sides to potentially declare a victory as Kyiv gets to remain in control of most of Ukraine. I would very, very much like to see Putin's demise from within, as I doubt his successor would be worse. But if the plan is for control of access to Sevastopol, then he probably has enough genuine support around him for his actions to keep him safer than he would otherwise be.

Yeah, Russia cares so much about avoiding civilian deaths it chooses to murder individuals it doesn't like with radioactive substances and nerve agents.

Russian athletes will be competing at the Paralympic Games but they will be competing as neutrals and will not be included in the medal table. Turns out The Kennel Club has more backbone than the IOC.

All Putin had to do was be prepared to committee cultural vandalism and displace ethnic and political opposition. Ukraine's economy is fucked for the next twenty years or more already. It hampers the West who buy huge amounts of grain. And this benefits Russia because it is a competitor in the area

A lot of your analysis here makes logical sense redtoothbrush. Whatever happens now, Putin has ‘won’ in a sense. Even if Ukraine joined the EU, this now just means the EU financially supporting a war torn country. However, I think Russian forces are there for complete annexation of Ukraine.

Viz your thoughts that soft power/media/globalisation is Putin’s biggest threat, I’ve taken to wondering if "Servant of the People" was perceived as more of a threat than NATO…

[quote Thereisnolight]@redtoothbrush
Yes but in this particular case as he seemingly said he views the Ukrainians as Russians might he be planning a lower kill strategy?[/quote]
That is what I have been thinking too.

That he doesn't care about Syrians, but if he genuinely sees Ukrainians as the same as Russians - as per his speech, then on racist grounds he might care more.
And even if he himself doesn't care, that seems to be how he is selling this to the Russian people (as per the Russian media). And it gets harder and harder to sell something as a "rescue" of Ukranians from these "neo-nazis" the more people die at the hands of Russians. Sure, the current Russian media is trying to pin all the civilian deaths on this terrible "genocidal" Ukranian regime - but that is an after attempt. For propaganda purposes, it would surely be easier if he could take the country without those civilians getting in the way and needing to be explained away. And in theory, with the size and strength of his army, he shouldn't need to. So surely civilian deaths of people that matter to the Russian people will hinder, not help him. On the other hand, he can't afford to lose this war, so if it is not working with more minimal civilian deaths then the numbers and brutality will undoubtedly increase.

@Wrongkindofovercoat

The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do...

Military domination, interesting words, doesn't sound quite the same as security concerns...

Why do some now see it as beyond the pale to suggest that a policy of recognising Russia's security concerns there and following a policy of deescalation may have bore fruit?

This is a genuine question @Yeahthat, what sort of deescalation measures do you think the Government of Ukraine could have implemented that would have prevented Russia from invading and implementing a total regime change ?

They have security concerns, which they may seek to address through military domination if they believe that diplomatic channels are shut and that NATO will simply carry on expanding regardless.

That doesn't make it right, but it's what is. I would prefer that countries didn't perceive themselves to have spheres of influence and seek to exercise power over their neighbours, but that's not the world we live in. There will be similar confrontations if/when Russia or China attempt to expand their influence in South or Central America with the US.

As I've said repeatedly, we don't know that in a hypothetical alternate universe that this war could have been averted.

But to sum up - the American foreign policy establishment going back to the time of the Clinton administration had been advised against NATO expansion and warned that Ukraine could be a flashpoint in future. The architect of the Truman-era containment policy, George Kennan was among them. This continued through the Bush era (during which time the US also withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty), through Obama etc.

The US knew that they wouldn't be prepared to defend Ukraine militarily (as stated by Obama). Therefore why involve it in this strategic contest between Russia and the US, knowing that ultimately the Ukranian people would pay the price.

My question is, had Ukraine been maintained as a neutral buffer country and NATO expansion ruled out, could this war have been avoided? In the long term, the goal must be disarmament, detente, and a normalisation of realtions.

That doesn't mean I back Russia's actions, which are abhorrent. But we should (have) focus on deescalation, and even if that failed we'd be in no worse a position than we are now.

@supermoonrising:

Expecting a great power to sit back and just accept it as a former neutral/friendly border country in the space of a few years (or a government coup) turns into a hostile one which is harbouring military and missiles from a hostile superpower is ludicrous.
No, it doesn’t give Russia the “right” to take military action. But we knew it probably would. As would the US facing a similar scenario. As would China.

This is wrong. In 1997 Russia signed the Founding Act, a treaty with NATO under which Russia accepted that NATO would expand and that other nations had the right to choose to join. Many then did, without Russia invading them (e.g. Poland, Romania etc). And NATO agreed not to place missiles in these countries - which it hasn't. There are no NATO missiles in Eastern Europe, and very small conventional forces. These couldn't possibly threaten Russia's huge army and nuclear arsenal. If Ukraine joined, NATO wouldn't have stationed missiles there either, and Russia could easily have secured a commitment to that effect.
Putin has now decided 25 years later that Russia needs countries nearby that he can rearrange as he sees fit (i.e. not really states at all). While this may be based on honest paranoia, it's more likely to be a cover for his "reunification of the Slavic peoples" dream as set out in his long article published last year, which is alarmingly similar to Hitler's ideas of bringing the Germanic volk together in the reich.

the American foreign policy establishment going back to the time of the Clinton administration had been advised against NATO expansion

Who advised the US? Russia?? And a flat out ‘no’ to the Baltic countries who asked to join just to keep Putin happy would’ve been an acceptable strategy?

In the long term, the goal must be disarmament, detente, and a normalisation of relations

You’ve lost me there. This is never going to happen now. The West/the US thought there were limits on what Russia would do / how far they’d go because of economic implications. Now they see that’s not true. There is absolutely no way they’ll be disarmament. Already we see increasing military budgets back on the table.

Putin doesn't give a shit about human lives, civilian or other. Litvinenko and Skripal were his enemies, but the means he used to eliminate them were potentially lethal to those around them in the UK. And much of his population is unlikely to get accurate info about deaths in Ukraine, for obvious reasons, until/unless Russian soldiers start telling them what is happening.

That convoy suggests an imminent bloodbath, for all the logistic and other problems that have hampered it thus far. And it's highlighting Ukraine's inability to shoot at it from the air.

Putin's comms are old and basic, but pervasive. Orban's media are repeating his denazification line, and the anti-vax/gilet jaune wing in France are madly tweeting anti-Ukrainian stuff just now, saying anyone who supports an army that has neo-Nazis (Azov) in it is on the wrong side of history, that Macron is going to use the war as an excuse to postpone elections and there needs to be a popular uprising against him...

Also, we forget how recent, shaky and artificial the borders in Eastern Europe are, and how many countries are home to minority populations from neighbouring states. They rub along, but this war will exacerbate divisions between pro-Russian/pro-EU, young and old, etc. Some in Orban's orbit are keen to swallow up a few neighbours if they can. China is discreetly present in a lot of these countries, via investments, industry, etc. China plays a long slow game...

If you follow Navalny's tweets, he generally chooses his language to push Putin's buttons. I don't know whether he tweeted in Russian originally, but I saw a tweet of his the other day calling Putin and his henchmen "dotards"... the use of "czar" will be v deliberate, too.

Deborah Haynes @haynesdeborah
BREAKING: Ukrainian Air Force says two Ukrainian MIG-29 fighter jets battled 2 Russian warplanes over Kyiv region. Two Russian aircraft destroyed. Ukraine also lost one fighter.

h/t @Reuters

@DrBlackbird

In the following sentence I said: the US foreign policy establishment, including the architect of the USSR containment policies, George Kennan:

“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.”

Yes, a flat out, "No, because it will destabilise Europe and we're committed to a policy of detente and normalisation of US-Russia relations" absolutely would have been acceptable.

There are various politicians and diplomats who did the same, state department memos available etc.

With regards to stating that disarmament is impossible - I'm talking about a timescale of decades. At one time perestroika and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union would have seemed impossible. I don't believe that humanity can go on living on a nuclear knife edge.

[quote kirinm]@RedToothBrush I saw an interview on Sky News last week with an ex RAF guy who said that special forces are most definitely in Ukraine and that the US had been training the Ukrainian army anyway.

He said something about it not being necessary to announce the presence of special forces like you would normal troops. Not sure how accurate that is.[/quote]
I read a news article that's said the x special forces were paid and financed by an anonymous European country.

@dogfishman
But Russia signed the 97 NATO founding act not expecting nor acquiescing to a US backed coup/US puppet regime in Ukraine.

Oh sorry, this particular overthrow of a democratically elected government was a “popular uprising” wasn’t it.

Does anyone know how Putin has squared effectively ripping up treaty with NATO with the Russian people? Has it even been mentioned?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60571737
Wish the general Russian population could be shown the real truth as to what is going on and not just see the propaganda. Are they able to access the WWW without it being restricted?