Ukraine-invasion-part-15

[Ijsbear]

Next part.

[quote Yeahthat]@forinborin
You haven't, therefore the videos we've seen with our own eyes are fake? We don't know the specifics of those involved, but there are videos circulating of people being publicly tortured in Ukraine tied to lamposts and abused.

@JamieNorthlife
I haven't seen that. I'd assume it's done for public humiliation and degradation. That's always been used as a weapon of war. Look at the Spanish Civil War and prisoners being forced to drink castor oil then paraded through towns.[/quote]
So who is torturing whom in Ukraine on those videos you've seen with your own eyes? And are you sure the videos are actually from Ukraine? How do you know that?

So you choose to believe that people are publicly tortured for speaking the language that most of the country has as their mother tongue, the language of more than 80% of the books sold, the language that is officially widely taught in schools? Honestly, I despair.

@MrsLargeEmbodied

Could be. We don't know. There's all sorts of claims from them being saboteurs, ethnic Russians targeted by ultranationalist groups, looters, to fighting age men trying to flee.

@forinborin

I didn't see anyone claiming that. I certainly didn't. The reference to native speakers was so that they could identify the accent/dialect of those involved.

@Tuba437 so rtb isn’t allowed to post her opinion/conclusion about what all the previous things she’s posted amount to? But other people are allowed to post their opinion without sources? Seriously? Double standard or what! There was nothing cryptic about the post in question.

Also the surrender stuff didn’t come just form Twitter, it was also on Reuters and other news sites and at 1am had made the radio news bulletins, hardly gossip or rumour on all the media sites.

@MrsPsmalls

Thanks for posting RTB. Have always valued your posts.

Agreed. RTB's posts are incredibly informative and have been so helpful signposting towards information I wouldn't have found on my own. Most of what is posted here is speculation, which is fine in my book because it generates useful debate that helps generate debate that challenges me to see things from a variety of angles.

It was clear from the series of posts that the comment related to the situation in Mariupol. I'm also extremely concerned that the situation there is going to escalate horribly beyond the atrocities we are already seeing.

None of us are party to any intelligence not available to everyone else, all we can do is place our own interpretation on what is available for everyone to see. I'm very worried about the situation in Ukraine, and the broader geopolitical implications, but I'm not worrying about a nuclear escalation. I can't see any evidence to suggest this is imminent.

Does anybody feel it’d be realistic for any NATO or even neutral Countries to demand a cease fire under humanitarian grounds to going into cities such as Mariupol? I understand it’d be taking a chance as Putin could well ignore the request. But this could be the only thing we can do. Therefore it will not start a wider war as our troops are simply on a humanitarian mission. Do we think Putin would attack knowing NATO or neutral troops are in Mariupol for example, I can’t believe this is happening to them, it’s totally horrifying, I’m not advocating for a WW at all but my heart is breaking for the innocent Ukrainian people right now. It just seems the entire world is powerless.

Thomas C. Theiner @noclador
I was asked for the reason that putin/russia is so hell-bent on conquering Mariupol.

Let me explain. Thread:

Originally putin assumed the invasion would be a cakewalk, allowing for a quick annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk (dark red). Other regions (light red) would then have seen "spontaneous" "people's republics" appear, which would have demanded annexation to russia too.

putin would have slowly dismembered Ukraine after fake referendums, leaving a rump Ukraine under a russian-controlled quisling government.

That plan failed.

putin now understands that Ukrainians hate russia and will fight a decades long insurgency if russia occupies their country.

putin now also realizes that he has too few troops to conquer and occupy the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine he originally planned to annex.

putin's new plan seems to be to annex a smaller part of Ukraine.

Besides Donetsk and Luhansk also:

• southern Kherson (light green)
• southern Zaporizhzhia (light yellow)
• eastern Kharkiv (light purple)

(russia might even try to take all of Kherson (dark green)).

This territory would be protected on its western side by the Dnieper river, and the eastern Kharkiv part by the Donets river.

If russia annexes these territories then Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv are all in easy reach if russia invades again in the future.

If russia controls these territories then russia controls the water supply for Crimea and can block shipping on the Dnieper.

Mariupol is the second-largest city in these territories and the only major harbor. Mariupol was also the only major Donbas city, that resisted russian attempts to take it over in 2014.

Now putin wants to punish the city for having resisted him in 2014; and putin needs the city so he can declare the liberation of Donbas to be complete; and he needs the city before he can annex these territories.

But putin just needs the city for its symbolic value. He doesn't want the city's people, who defied him before.

Just like Hitler wanted Stalingrad for the symbolism and nothing else, putin wants Mariupol for the symbolism and nothing else. Fascist nihilism then and now.

To sum up this post and the one above from the Times there are new objectives been speculated on in terms of what the end goal now is.

We seem to be into 'keep Kyiv busy' so we can take these other bits completely. Its a consolidation plan now, rather than a complete conquest.

But it does leave this open question of 'next time' and what happens to those Ukrainians in those areas.

The answer doesn't appear to be coming up well.

i think that is what nato fear
going into mariupol would incite putin

[quote Yeahthat]@forinborin

I didn't see anyone claiming that. I certainly didn't. The reference to native speakers was so that they could identify the accent/dialect of those involved.[/quote]
Think for inborn is talking about this post, which was the beginning of that discussion.

*I saw a lot of videos circulating with Ukrainians taping (it looks like tape or cling film) people to posts and torturing them. The captions were that these were Russian speaking Ukrainians being tortured by Ukrainian ultranationalists and this is not new behaviour.

Has anyone else watched these videos or knows if these videos are real or staged?*

[quote Yeahthat]@forinborin

I didn't see anyone claiming that. I certainly didn't. The reference to native speakers was so that they could identify the accent/dialect of those involved.[/quote]
Show me the video, I will tell you, to the best of my ability, where the accents come from. Mind you, that it would be impossible to differentiate between the accent from the Donetsk region of Ukraine and Rostov region of Russia, for example.

@Shuuu

Does anybody feel it’d be realistic for any NATO or even neutral Countries to demand a cease fire under humanitarian grounds to going into cities such as Mariupol? I understand it’d be taking a chance as Putin could well ignore the request. But this could be the only thing we can do. Therefore it will not start a wider war as our troops are simply on a humanitarian mission. Do we think Putin would attack knowing NATO or neutral troops are in Mariupol for example, I can’t believe this is happening to them, it’s totally horrifying, I’m not advocating for a WW at all but my heart is breaking for the innocent Ukrainian people right now. It just seems the entire world is powerless.

Yes I think they would be attacked as we’ve seen civilians in already terrible circumstances

It would likely be the same - attacked but with the same denials

I rate David Rothkopf's analysis. Here's his take on where we are now and the potential strategy we're all trying to make sense of : www.thedailybeast.com/david-rothkopf-says-us-ukraine-nato-have-a-secret-weapon-against-russia-patience?ref=scroll

@Tuba437

Message deleted by MNHQ. Quotes deleted post

I didn't think RTB's post was cryptic at all. In the context of the thread, the situation in Mariupol was being discussed and I think it was reasonably clear that the post related to the situation there becoming more bleak.

To be clear, I'm sympathetic to people feeling anxious about a wider escalation. I'm not an expert by any stretch, but I know quite a bit about the nuclear deterrent and how it works from my own research. I'm happy to reassure posters who are feeling worried. But it's not fair to place responsibility on RTB to caveat her posts where she expresses concern.

I think there are two kinds of ‘worry’

One is that something appalling will happen in Ukraine.

The other is the ‘lizard brain’ fear that something awful will happen that will affect us in the UK shortly or imminently. Perhaps that isn’t a very noble or unselfish fear, but it’s a primitive and powerful one for some people.

If I see something posted that seems to be suggesting the second kind of fear I check it on the BBC, the Times, Reuters, the US quality newspaper sites, etc.

I was stunned to realise a doomsday plane meant nuclear attack was imminent last week when I’d been listening to BBC R4, 5L and Times Radio on a longish car journey. I thought they might have mentioned it.

Seriously, if something is mentioned here and on limited parts of Twitter only and it seems terrifying, it’s probably exaggeration.

Russia's going to pummel the absolute shit out of Ukraine soon by the looks of it, much more than it already has.

I've gone from stay out of it to how much longer do Nato allow this to continue, even if it means we are at risk. It's unconscionable.

Thanks for your posts RedToothBrush, very informative, I hope you continue to post.

[quote Onceuponatimeinalandfaraway]@Tuba437 so rtb isn’t allowed to post her opinion/conclusion about what all the previous things she’s posted amount to? But other people are allowed to post their opinion without sources? Seriously? Double standard or what! There was nothing cryptic about the post in question.

Also the surrender stuff didn’t come just form Twitter, it was also on Reuters and other news sites and at 1am had made the radio news bulletins, hardly gossip or rumour on all the media sites.[/quote]
The surrender post I made WAS a reuters journalist...

It wasn't cryptic in the slightest. It was an implicit threat to Mariupol.

It did not say what the consequences were to be if Mariupol did not surrendered. It was already clear that surrender wasn't an option given how Russia was treating people in the city and the reports that have been coming out over the last 48 hours.

Of course there is goddam concern about what this might result in and how governments might react to this. When we start talking about genocide and it becomes hard to refute that its genocide because there is so much mountaining evidence for it, its going to start changing conversations.

Indeed my very first post this morning was about looking for what that might involve on the the ground to clarify it. That wasn't available in the reporting at just after 10pm uk time yesterday.

Given the conditions in Mariupol (which were well documented - in the FT article linked yesterday) the fact that Mariupol can't surrender and the horrific situation already, is what I put REALLY out there?

Are others incapable of reading and figuring out why its just so BAD?

Honestly this is starting to feel like a witchhunt of nitpicking about what I didn't say instead of looking at what I DID say.

If I start to say 'well they are going to round them up and ship them to concerntration camps in Russia' I'd get a barrage of 'stop scaring people' there's no evidence for that, they won't do that, blah blah blah. Cos thats what happened the other bloody day.

Engage your own brains and critically think, and process things on your own terms rather than expecting spoon feeding at a level that you approve of.

Twitter is that way ^

Can the self appointed Thread Police bugger off please, it's so tedious. People can post what they like, how they like, whenever they like, so long as it's within Talk guidelines.

Much like the panic with the romanian jet crash, the planes leaving Moscow, the imminent nuclear disaster at the Power plant and the ultimatum of mariopul, were all examples of imminent escalation that didn't come to fruition.

In terms of anxious or not this becomes a factor for me where I decide to get off the rollercoaster news spiking reactions, everyone is different of course and I appreciate updates. But as with the China situation and peace talks it feels this is a bit of a wait and see still. So I’m parking reacting until something more concrete comes up. That’s absolutely not to say I don’t appreciate Tuba’s updates on peace talks or posts from Twitter, just that I’m disengaging slightly until I know.

Anyway keep posting, no one needs to stop unless misinformation, then it’s deleted.

Seriously, if something is mentioned here and on limited parts of Twitter only and it seems terrifying, it’s probably exaggeration.

agree

@MarshaBradyo

Much like the panic with the romanian jet crash, the planes leaving Moscow, the imminent nuclear disaster at the Power plant and the ultimatum of mariopul, were all examples of imminent escalation that didn't come to fruition.

In terms of anxious or not this becomes a factor for me where I decide to get off the rollercoaster news spiking reactions, everyone is different of course and I appreciate updates. But as with the China situation and peace talks it feels this is a bit of a wait and see still. So I’m parking reacting until something more concrete comes up. That’s absolutely not to say I don’t appreciate Tuba’s updates on peace talks or posts from Twitter, just that I’m disengaging slightly until I know.

Anyway keep posting, no one needs to stop unless misinformation, then it’s deleted.

Absolutely agree. There are just so many factors in the air that could change the outcome.