Ukraine Invasion: Part 21

[MagicFox]

Another thread, thank you to all

agree with Tiddy :(

I hope they get out, I'm not sure Russia will negotiate.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian negotiator and adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy tweeted this:

Yes. Without any conditions. We’re ready to hold a “special round of negotiations” right in Mariupol. One on one. Two on two. To save our guys, Azov, military, civilians, children, the living & the wounded. Everyone. Because they are ours. Because they are in my heart. Forever.

twitter.com/Podolyak_M/status/1516861218761420802

I know, I know. I was hoping someone would just lie to me tonight though so I could have an easy sleep!

Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

Ethnical cleansing

The "500,000" figure is now obsolete. Russia, as of 15 April, was claiming via TASS to have removed 808,000 Ukrainians to Russia, including 153,000 children. The rate of removals was 20,000 per day. Which means there could be over 900,000 by now.

Indeed, on 18 April 2022, TASS updated its figures to claim 845,000 people taken from Ukraine. At ~20,000 per day they are likely now nearing 900,000.

Alarmingly, Russian law enforcement are trying to convert these people to Russian citizens.

twitter.com/PeterCorless/status/1516699386092261381?t=avYunG0e62ST6BVj8UHE5w&s=19

I sobbed a little at the tweet.

All I can do is keep praying and hoping and reach for my phone to check updates first thing every morning.

I will continue to ask for miracles. Something I stopped doing many years ago but have somehow found the courage to do again. Because this isn't about me. I will of course do all the other practical things as well, God helps those who help themselves and all that, but the least I can do is stand with them in that undefined, sacred space.

If we don't ask, we don't get and if we don't get, well at least we asked.

God helps those who help themselves

I think the Mariupolans really come under that category. So ... I hope a miracle happens.

It's down to the human decisions.

With you on that hills

Positive thoughts and energy tonight for Mariupol

... and I hope God infuses those decisions with, at last, some compassion.

This is an article which is awful, but if you read on it also shows that some perhaps many Russian soldiers tell parents to hide their children. Not all of them are brutal. kyivindependent.com/national/hide-the-girls-how-russian-soldiers-rape-and-torture-ukrainians/

Well, for those with phones, there's this you can do from Zelenskyy's twitter:

Ukraine / Україна
Ukraine government organization
President @ ZelenskyyUa⁦

calls for action:

1. Post a picture with an #ArmUkraineNow sign
2. Call on your government to provide heavy weapons to Ukraine
3. Tag three friends and ask them to join #ArmUkraineNow so that we have the tools to stop Russia and its war crimes!

@AthelstaneTheUnready Thank you for the information.

I posted.

#ArmUkraineNow

mobile.twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1517003066008031232

The Kyiv Independent
@KyivIndependent
Russia rejects proposed Easter ceasefire. Ukraine’s Permanent Representative to the UN Sergiy Kyslytsya said in a Tweet on April 20 that Russia rejected the “Easter humanitarian break” requested the day before by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Russia rejecting the Easter ceasefire, though I suppose there's no trust for Russian ceasefires anyway so little difference really. But symbolic, that even Orthodox Easter in this war supported by the Russian Orthodox Church, isn't respected.

One bit from that, from a phone call from a Russian soldier to his wife, is so utterly depressing. The wife giggling and telling him to rape Ukrainian women. Feel sick just reading that.

The fact Maripul still hasnt been taken by the Russian army is astounding and a testament to how hard the Ukrainians are fighting. I find it so heartbreaking though that the help they desperately need isnt and wont be coming.

Morning all. What do we think of this new suggestion from the Kremlin that the war will end when NATO stop using Ukraine to threaten Russia? BBC attached. I know this is rhetoric Russia has used before but am I right in saying this is the first time it's been front and centre of the motives for invasion? Part of the trend we're seeing in the shifting of the narrative more towards this being a war between Russia and NATO?

Just more Kremlin nonsense I reckon. They've got to keep up the appearance that this is all NATO's fault so the useless right-on idiots in the West will continue blaming NATO.

I cant figure out if the kremlin actually believe the crap they spout or if they think by saying it often enough we might all start saying "well maybe they have a point" either way i dont think anything coming from the kremlin is worth listening too its all lies and (hopefully) empty threats to make them appear powerful

Clever.

At least tactically. The Kremlin are good at turning things around (propaganda) tactically. Not convinced that strategically it is a good move. When the war crimes evidence unfolds over the next five years or so there will be dark clouds hanging over these words.

Yep, agree. Here's that state tv nutter Solovyov saying the same thing but worse. So that's the new narrative and the new threat. Bluster is starting to go off the scales. When I hear him talk to the Russian population I think about his beautiful villa in Italy and the life he's been living. They are all so Janus-like twitter.com/juliadavisnews/status/1516883853431955456?s=21&t=bvTpwvr0gqyfmJ9D3HZ4kA

They've been saying it for several months now from what various articles have said, and the problem seems to be that Putin actually kinda believes it.

One bit from that, from a phone call from a Russian soldier to his wife, is so utterly depressing. The wife giggling and telling him to rape Ukrainian women. Feel sick just reading that.

Yes, that particular incident has been widely reported in shock. But it's one incident and there are many records of gang rapes in the UK, occasionally with women urging the men on.

People can be dreadful and (taking Wagner out of the equation, who probably need hanging) it's hopefully not common.

Again, hate the leaders but not (most of) the soldiers.

Re Russian soilder abused, surely these go against the Geneva convention and normal code's? Ironic When your raiding someone's country but surely more appeals need to go on re codes of honour... Geneva convention, were are those kidnapped Ukrainians taken too the UN calling for the children to be brought back??

Talking of Wagner:

www.forces.net/ukraine/three-thousand-wagner-group-mercenaries-believed-killed-ukraine-mps-hear

Couldn't have happened to a nicer set of cockroaches.

Tim White@TWMCltd
Kherson (under Russian occupation) will hold a "referendum" next week

The options likely to be:
Do you vote in favour of
a) An Independent Kherson People's Republic️
or
b) Jail, torture, maybe death

But Resistance steps up attacks
75 RU soldiers/propagandists reported killed

Difficult to see here at night, but it's reported that this is the Dniprovsky market in Kherson on fire tonight.

There has been ongoing shelling and missiles in many areas of #Ukraine overnight, but this is occupied territory, so no idea how this happened

Jack Detsch AT jackDetsch
Zelensky, tonight: "I am very pleased to say, with cautious optimism that our partners started to understand our needs better ... And when exactly we need this. Not in weeks, not in a month, but immediately. Right now, as Russia is trying to intensify its attacks."

Phillips P OBrien AT PhilipsPOBrien
I'm old enough to remember when whiz-bang Russian hypersonic missiles were going to turn the tide of war. So much of this reeks of Hitler's 'wonder weapons' of World War II.

I see some people saying that these weapons were in train for a while. Of course. Hitler’s V-2s and ME-262 started production in 1942. They were planned for a long time before they became propaganda tools when the war was going badly. That’s the whole point.

And listen to Putin’s rhetoric after the test. The Sarmat has no comparison in the modern world ‘and won’t have for a long time’. This Russia makes the best most awesome weapons in the world is very Hitlerian.

Hitler always overboasted about German industrial and technological prowess during the war. My favorite (and there are lots) was in 1940 and 1941 when regularly told audiences that Germany was the dominant economic and technological power in the war, when it was nowhere close

So the whole point about Hitler’s wonder weapons was that while they actually existed, and had been planned for years, they were not going to make a difference in the outcome of the war but were used to make the German people feel better and distract them when the war went badly

Wonder weapon propaganda in action. Distract the population with visions of technological and military wonders when all the while your real army is suffering. Goebbels would be proud.