Ukraine Invasion: Part 22

[MagicFox]

Here we are again

I prefer to get my news from Radio. Zelensky's Easter Address was the top item on Radio 4 6 O'Clock news. Also an item on the young mother and baby killed in Odesa. Her husband was interviewed 'She was perfect', he said. He'd gone back into the destroyed flat to retrieve personal effects. He came out with a pack of his baby daughter's nappies and asked the reporter to pass them to charity as he no longer had any use for them.

The Mail Online also has top story on Russia's military losses. No matter what you think of this particular organ of the press, there's no doubt that it has an absolutely massive audience
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10747991/Russia-lost-873-tanks-179-aircraft-21-800-troops-just-two-months-fighting.html]

@prettybird Mine was only this thread too, strange. Though it seems to have fixed itself now (🤞🏼)?

I suspect none of us here get to see the raw intelligence so analysis, analysis of analysis, etc etc is to some degree suspect.

I am confident that the military support to Ukraine goes well beyond training of troops with equipment and tactics and extends to sophisticated intelligence and strategy - it’s obviously not shared on Twitter or debated by experts in the media - and if anything is proactively communicated to the public it will have a strategic rationale that might not be obvious. The rest is just white noise.

That's true DFOD... the" I suspect" was somewhat rhetorical....

We'll only get anything like the true story years if not decades after all this is finished...and even then maybe not.

Feck sake, I only went away for the weekend.
When the German soldier fires their first bullet which side will they be aiming at?

How is Moldova coping with this threat from Russia?

Another lurker here saying thank you for these threads. They are my go-to place when I’m scared to read the news. The posts here are always informative and strangely calming.
I’m becoming somewhat obsessed by the people stuck in Mariupol and can’t understand why the humanitarian corridors keep failing? Can nothing be done to help these poor people?
Did the people sheltering under the theatre ever get rescued?
And those in the steel plant, how long can they survive down there? There are children there 😰
Surely something has to give, and soon.
Why are there no online petitions about this? Just about everything has a petition nowadays.
Sorry, so many questions! You might not be able to answer all of them.
I’m literally praying for a miracle.

@KeepScrapingBy
re people trapped in Mariupol and in the steel works.
I’m literally praying for a miracle
Yes. The same.

The Times Saturday 23 April page 10-11
”Russia plans head-turning show of might on Victory Day”.

^It is not only the armed forces that are preparing for Victory Day. State television has been stepping up its rhetoric. “God is on our side. And with Ukraine - the devil,”
Olga Skabeyeva, a prominent television presenter, said.^

⚡Russian missile strikes, again. This time, Poltava region. Five strikes

Every day they send their missiles somewhere else. No region in Ukraine is safe, you can sit in your kitchen, drink tea, thousands km away from the enemy, and be killed in the next moment"

Russia are just sporadically firing to cause terror.

@ScrollingLeaves It is interesting to note Alexei Zhuravlyov who says "We need to carry out the 'de-Americanisation' and 'de-Britainisation' of Europe."

Invading Ukraine is clearly not compatible with such an aim. Quite the reverse.

This is also the guy who said he would put on a uniform and fight the UA in the Donbas. But obviously just went home instead.

When the German soldier fires their first bullet which side will they be aiming at?

I am going to start this by saying that I am not German, but I do think this blaming a country and its citizens for the actions of a few of its politicians is exactly where Putin and his cronies would love us to be right now. Division is very useful in a war.
Is there any reason that you think German soldiers will be less well trained and have less of a reason to roll their eyes at their government, as our's do ? They are still people just doing the job ? @PestorPeston

Projections are that Macron has beaten Le Pen. Wonder if we’ll see France step up more in the coming weeks. There seemed to be lots of commentators suggesting he has been focussing on internal matters in recent weeks so as not to deter voters.

Well, Biden just said that Turkey committed genocide against the Armenians. Which they did, but it will piss them off now we need them on this side, not cosying up to Putin.

Austria's foreign minister said that Ukraine should not be offered EU membership.

The cracks are beginning to show. This isn't good and the longer it goes on the worse the cracks will show.

And it's not only food that will be affected. Ukraine is a big steel producer, and their problems will affect us all. Those housing new builds might not be coming to a site next to you, which will only prop up house prices.

@Wrongkindofovercoat

Is there any reason that you think German soldiers will be less well trained and have less of a reason to roll their eyes at their government, as our's do ?

You are right in that no is not the time to stimulate dissent but there's no way of avoiding the fact that there have been lots of eyes raised about the Bundeswehr's capabilities for some time now..

warontherocks.com/2022/03/how-the-bundeswehr-should-spend-its-money/

www.dw.com/en/german-military-big-budget-little-efficiency/a-61136184

A German soldier will fire at what a German government decides. Three months ago I would not have bet on the Germans being the ones to break NATO. Now it seems inevitable.

How is the land bridge to kaliningrad coming along?

In not saying no, we said yes.

Ukrainians captured some Russian soldiers responsible for killing civilians in Bucha.

On the one hand I obviously hope that they suffer some horrendous fate.

On the other hand I kind of hope they’re tried for war crimes and made a proper example of - to show that international law still means something and humanity isn’t entirely lost.

@KeepScrapingBy

To answer your questions in short:

• The corridors keep failing becuase Mariupol is utterly surrounded so no relief efforts can get through. The Russians won't let them. There are a lot of shot-up cars with dead bodies in. A few get out now and then but it's in the tens rather than the thousands I'm afraid. Occasionally the Russians lay on evacuation busses themselves ... but they all go to Russian or Russian held territory and there's a considerable danger that all men will have to fight for the Russians because their families are held hostage.


• The Mariupolan theatre - the last estimates I saw were that there were about 300 in it at the time. About a hundred survived and escaped. I read the figure 100 were killed / died afterwards unable to escape. No proper rescue attempts were possible because the Russians kept firing. Don't know about the last missing 100.


• The Steelworks? apparently they can survive forever :o seriously, they are truly incredible. It seems that quite a few war-plans were run before war actually broke out and there was the awareness it could hold out for a long time if it was supplied, so a lot of supplies were stockpiled. there are huge labyrinthine tunnels underneath. The Ukrainians have been doing some incredible resupply runs - god knows how, those pilots are superhuman - but things are difficult yes. But so far, they are keeping going. The Russians are not attacking quite as hard and more working on keeping the soldiers penned in now, and some battle groups have headed up onto the more active front lines higher up in the East.


• petitions? no idea.

Macron win is a relief and keeps the alliance stable.

Thank the Lord that Macron beat Le Pen

Regarding any POWs I really hope Ukraine keeps to the rules, however hard it is. So far they are building a reputation for reasonable honesty and not the sort of brutality that the Russian soldiers exhibit. They need to keep that high ground. Apart from anything else, a rep for treating their POWs well will mean that Russian soldiers who consider surrendering won't be put off.

Three months ago I would not have bet on the Germans being the ones to break NATO. Now it seems inevitable.

Can you explain why you think that @PestorPeston ?

Tim White
@TWMCLtd
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12m
CONFIRMED: US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin are already in #Kyiv! They're meeting right now with the President of #Ukraine.

@KeepScrapingBy as one horrified lurker to another, what would you want a - British? - petition to say? Or would you address it to Putin? Given the fact of invasion in the first place and now the brutality of it, he wouldn’t care. I wish there was a functioning god I could pray to for Mariupol. Fw little iw I’d be cautiously supportive of more British involvement for them now, or a while ago.

It might be worth remembering that the current discussion of Germany is concerning its actions from 2014 onwards more than right now, and that all EU countries are guilty of similar. The U.K. was as bad with its financial sector dealings.