The invasion is a Week Old...Part 7

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Unbelievable. Thread 6 is almost full, to be found here : www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/4495271-The-Invasion-is-ongoing-Part-6?pg=1

Still a fascinating and thoughtful set of documentation of our evolving thoughts, fears, questions, analyses and updates. And still a credit to the eyes, ears and knowledge of those on here.

Pinched from one poster on thread 6 whose name I can't recall:

Latest claims from both sides about casualties
Ukraine's army regularly puts out updates on the damage it says it's inflicting on Russian forces, which continue to press on key cities, particularly in the south.

We should stress that the BBC can't verify this information, but the latest update from the General Staff of the Armed Forces says that approximately 9,000 Russian personnel have been killed or wounded.

It also says Ukrainian forces have destroyed:

217 tanks
90 artillery systems
31 helicopters
30 planes or other aircraft
For its part, Russia yesterday for the first time gave a specific number for casualties it had suffered in Ukraine, saying 498 Russian soldiers had died and nearly 1,600 had been wounded.

It said it had killed 2,870 Ukrainian soldiers and "nationalists".

@CallyfromBlakes7

Ukraine was systematically starved in 1932-3 by Stalin, who sent his army there to steal most of the food the Ukrainians had grown that summer. Estimated deaths 5 million. This is one of the forgotten genocides of the 20th century. If I were Ukrainian I would have absolutely NO truck with Russian government or domination whatsoever

I didn't know about this (although I knew Stalin was responsible for many millions of deaths across the Soviet Union) until I read a book on the history of the Soviet Union that I had had since I was a student but hadn't read. Coincidentally there was an article in the Sunday Times around the same time about a Welsh guy who had been in Ukraine at the time and tried to get reports out to the West about what was going on.

There’s a film with James Norton starring.

It is emotionally gruelling but very good.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Jones_(2019_film)

What has really hit me is how much can happen in a week. Last week Ukrainians were going about their position, as were we and now this. I understand it isn’t quite that simple and that this has all been in the background since 2014 but it is the sheer speed at which cities and lives are destroyed. I can’t quite get my head around that.

My first paragraph was in relation to the comment about the Department of Energy's Nuclear Incident Response team not being sabre rattling.

@DGRossetti

I didn't know about this (although I knew Stalin was responsible for many millions of deaths across the Soviet Union)

Our history teacher commented that the only difference between the Nazis and the Soviets was the Nazis kept records.

Yes. I knew that Stalin had systematically killed off many millions but I didn't know that he applied special treatment to Ukraine. I actually also hadn't realised that he did the same as Mao and the Khmer Rouge and systematically killed off the intelligentsia too.

@MusicMan65

Putin’s grandfather was Stalin’s cook? Really?

@nonono1

I thought the long table was more of a silly power play thing than fear of catching a disease. After all, he’s been photographed shaking hands with other people (such as Imran Khan) so can’t be too worried.

It’s whether people will take specifically Russian covid tests that decides whether he’ll meet close up or not, apparently.

I read something about it a while ago.

@CaveMum

I’m going to say this in a delicate fashion, please be aware that there may be people trying to rile up those with anxiety on these threads.

It’s going to be tough to have any thread on this subject without raising anxiety levels…

I’d be interested to see the posts that some claim are put in place to deliberately wind people up because most of the stuff I’ve seen is fairly objective.

Their pathetic approach to sanctions, unwillingness to move away from Russian energy and to send any kind of weapons or defences

I think it would be fairer to say that was their initial reaction, things have changed.

"Michael Portillo went there on one of his Great European Rail Journeys and I thought it looked lovely and wanted to go - may have missed my chance now sad."

Speaking from experience of Ukrainian and Polish trains, unless you really like being in very close proximity with people you don't know for long periods of time then you haven't missed much believe me. Because of the huge distances, most inter-city trains in Ukraine are overnight sleepers of a rather basic nature. The railway stations, on the other hand, are almost works of art...

"Our history teacher commented that the only difference between the Nazis and the Soviets was the Nazis kept records".

Absolutely right! China also. Wish we had the same amount of TV documentaries about Bolshevik Russia and Communist China as about Nazi Germany, that might at least provide some balance to these discussions.

Hitler was actually only the 3rd most murderous b***d of the 20th century after Mao and Stalin, but everyone in the west assumes he was #1 by a long way. Not so!

I’d be interested to see the posts that some claim are put in place to deliberately wind people up because most of the stuff I’ve seen is fairly objective.

I would classify "we are in WW3 and anyone who says different has their head in the sand" in that vein.

@CaveMum

I’m going to say this in a delicate fashion, please be aware that there may be people trying to rile up those with anxiety on these threads.

I agree with you. Some people are also inadvertently feeding each other's anxiety.

Wars aren't just about physical fighting. There is a psychological element to be fought too. This incident is designed to stoke fear rather than being a serious attempt to cause a nuclear incident.

On Germany

www.ft.com/content/ab3857f4-666f-45c9-b191-be5aa5abcb41
In the space of 30 minutes, Olaf Scholz overturned decades of German foreign and defence policy.

Berlin
Thousands of people in Berlin have gone to the central train station to offer fleeing Ukrainians a place to stay. Really moving.
twitter.com/marceldirsus/status/1499339110502256641?t=dPwZI4hYmMVR4qcVtEFKLQ&s=19

I don't understand why a pp had a pop at Germany? It is doing more than the UK as far as I can see.

Whataboutery

Place marking

Does anyone think putin will take up the offer of in person talks with Zelenskyy?

It would be a shame if these threads get too bogged down in agendas, scaremongering etc. They started off well as calm discussions of events with lots of information sharing. I have learned a lot from them so far.

While I'm here, let's also nail Putin's lies about "Nazis".

Having suffered unimaginably under Stalin, when in 1941 the Nazis invaded Russia, some Ukrainians did choose to fight with them on the basis that, however brutal the Nazis might be, they at least didn't steal all the Ukrainians' food as Stalin had done a few years before (see previous post).

If the only two alternatives available in the real world are both extremely brutal, then the only choice for any of us is what we think is the "least worst" alternative of the two. Having experienced Stalin's rule, it would have made perfect sense at the time to some Ukrainians to join the Nazis to fight against Bolshevism and just hope that the Nazis might become a bit less brutal. Nazi promises to Ukraine in 1941-2 about "independence" etc were of course also just lies, but some people believed them.

SO - if Putin claims that some Ukrainians fought with the Nazis in WW2 he is semantically correct. However, the present day Ukrainian Nazis are a very VERY tiny minority, as they are also in Poland, Hungary, Germany and, erm, Russia.

Let's be clear about this. Ukraine, with no previous history as a country and no tradition of democracy, has in 30 years done as much as any country possibly could to fight internal corruption and establish true democracy, despite malicious interference from Russia. The real Nazi here is Putin, who is operating exactly as Hitler once did.

@yoolia

I’d be interested to see the posts that some claim are put in place to deliberately wind people up because most of the stuff I’ve seen is fairly objective.

I would classify "we are in WW3 and anyone who says different has their head in the sand" in that vein.

OK I’ll give you that as one that is over the edge, but unfortunately potentially not by that much.

Fundamentally where do you stop, especially as it is fairly clear what the thread is about, right from the get go….

You can today. Turn off news alerts, don't look at social media, don't watch the news.

I just take a one minute check of the headlines of one online newspaper and then will spend 20 minutes reading/discussing on an online forum if there’s something specific I’m curious about.

Engaging with the rolling 24 hour news coverage and clicking through the twenty new articles and live feeds on each and every online paper isn’t healthy IMO. Their primary purpose is pretty dubious IMO.

Hitler was actually only the 3rd most murderous b***d of the 20th century after Mao and Stalin, but everyone in the west assumes he was #1 by a long way. Not so!

I think the sheer calculated engineering of the holocaust sets the Nazis apart. The UK government hasn't a fucking clue what the carbon footprint of a 100g letter from the HRMC is (I know, I've asked) but the Nazis knew to a gramme how much Zyklon-B they needed to kill 1,000 people. If you want a grim day, read about the careful design of the death camps for maximum efficiency. The experiments they carried out to see the best (i.e. cheapest) way of killing people.

You can study history in one of two ways. The first is to look back and see what happened. The second is to look forwards and see what will happen. I had hoped I was doing the former, But maybe the latter is the reality.

@Thewayshetalks

Does anyone think putin will take up the offer of in person talks with Zelenskyy?

I am guessing they would be via video link, as I suspect he won't be leaving Russia anytime soon! I hope he does agree to talks, but possibly a forlorn hope.

I hope they do agree to talks, I have a feeling putin would only do it to make it look like he is attempting peace so his own people get a bit more behind him

Stalin's cook