Ukraine Invasion: Part 24

[MagicFox]

Welcome one and all and thanks again to everyone contributing

Maybe she's not as nuts as I first thought. Maybe it's her cunning survival plan for if they invade. 'Let me go and tell you where the hidden nutella stash is'.

Just read the statement and the last sentence was this is just a political declaration and not a legally binding commitment. Does this mean it might be essentially hot air or what?

Does it matter? How do you legally call it in?

I don't know if it matters or not, was hoping someone else would!

Yes it does. Much like the political declaration during the Brexit process.

Pack a washing machine. Then you can make Russian traps

Iuliia Mendel AT IuliiaMendel
Ukraine offers the Russians to exchange seriously wounded Ukrainian servicemen remaining at Azovstal in Mariupol for captured Russian servicemen.

😂😂 excellent

Well that's less reassuring then...

Political declarations are inherently lies. We vote for politicians because they lie for us, not in spite of that quality.

The inherent value of a written peace document is bum roll. The inherent value of the original signed Article 5 is a paper dart. Both are of equal value and interchangeable.

Way to put an even bigger target on our back!

I genuinely don't understand this viewpoint, do people believe that we haven't had a great big target on our backs for decades ?
We have laundered their dirty money, let them buy a lot of land/housing, given them a seat in the house of lords, allowed them to interefere with our democratic process, shrugged our shoulders when they poisoned people in one of our cities that could easily have developed into a National emergency, dealt with regular incursions into our airspace, sovereign waters and cyberspace.
At what point does anyone think that the Russians don't see us as anything but a very useful foe with a target on our backs ?

Or head to the oligarchs and help them with their laundering.

Yes exact wording on the BBC -

“the agreements with Sweden and Finland are not a legal or automatic security guarantee but a political declaration that the UK would come to their aid”

we should bear in mind that when Theresa May was ousted and Boris brought in the political declaration on Brexit was largely changed and commitments watered down. So it’s only as good as the politician in power at the time.

Are Russian people so poor that they don't have laptops, washing machines or Nutella? 😳

Nutella has existed in Russia. Ferrero have banned further production and importation.

Consumer and electronic goods: Russian GDP/capita is not to helpful because of the extreme wealth at the top end. There are laptops (but a mobile phone does so much for so many people now) and white goods. However my experience has been that acquisition is more comprehensive in Ukraine, but then I have seen only small slices of the populations.

Sending looted washing machines home shows a real gap.

Love your version of the Antiques Roadshow @TargusEasting !

I live in the netherlands. What is this concept of basement? dig down 3m and you get sand and water here.

From 3 years ago. Why those toilet jokes (particularly the Zelensky ones) matter:

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/02/indoor-plumbing-still-a-pipe-dream-for-20-of-russian-households-reports-say-a65049
Indoor Plumbing Still a Pipe Dream for 20% of Russian Households, Reports Say

More than one-fifth of Russian households do not have access to indoor plumbing, according to official statistics obtained by the RBC news website on Tuesday.

Russia leads the developed world with the worst sanitation record, according to the London-based WaterAid NGO. A 2012 estimate citing official data placed the number of Russians whose households are only equipped with outhouses at 35 million, or roughly a quarter of the population.

Of the 22.6 percent of households without a centralized sewage system, 16.8 percent use a system of pipes connected to pit toilets, RBC cited the State Statistics Service, Rosstat, as saying. The other 5.8 percent lack a sewage system altogether.

In rural Russia, almost two-thirds have no access to indoor toilets, 48.1 percent of whom use outhouses and 18.4 percent do not have a sewage system.

That plumbing article is really worth a read. I had always assumed that unglamorous basics like sewerage were something Communist administrations would have been strong on. But no.

ChrisO AT ChrisO_wiki
Video of an apparent Ukrainian attack on a Russian tank on 6 May is getting much attention for the turret's attempt to go to the Moon. It should be getting a lot more attention, though, for where it happened and what this means for Russia. A short thread

This attack wouldn't have been particularly remarkable if it had taken place on the front lines. It didn't. The site of the attack has been geolocated to near Novoazovsk, a town deep in the separatist "Donetsk People's Republic". /2

The town has been under Russia/separatist control since 27 August 2014, when it was the scene of fighting during an attempted advance on Mariupol. It's 100 km inside separatist territory, and only 13 km from the Russian border. /3

So how on earth did the Ukrainians blow up a tank this far inside separatist territory? It shows that Russia's worst nightmare in its occupied territory is coming true: a guerrilla war of roadside bombs, drones and loitering munitions - Iraq or Afghanistan on steroids. /4

Read rest of thread here:
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1524448245539393539

Key tweet:
So what does this all signify? Big trouble for Russia. The strip of territory it controls in southern Ukraine is only about 100 km wide. It's clearly vulnerable to infiltration, and the Russians are unpopular with the local people. It's ideal for insurgent tactics. /13

Just saw this.

ljsbear I always look forward to your round up posts. It will take more than a strike through to stop me reading them. Please keep'em coming.

People use a wire to stop a train in Russia.

That is interesting. I wonder how that works if the train is hurtling at high speed.

Please forgive me for putting the nuclear discussion back on the table but I wanted to share this great article (especially in light of the US intelligence briefing yesterday) that cuts through all the bluster to pinpoint where the real danger lies here (beyond the rhetoric). The author (Gerald Seib) boils it down to two touch points:

1. A danger of nuclear proliferation elsewhere (based on the success of Putin's nuclear blackmail)

1. The danger posed by Russian humiliation that must happen for option 1 to be neutralised but that increases risk of Russia actually going there.

Summary paragraph:

. “If [Putin] fails, notwithstanding his nuclear threats, it shows that nuclear weapons and the threat of their use cannot save you from conventional defeat,” says Mr. Hadley.
But it’s tricky. How does the West calibrate the struggle so Mr. Putin is defeated, thereby showing that nuclear blackmail doesn’t work, yet do so without so humiliating him that he pulls the nuclear trigger? That’s why the period ahead is so dangerous.

Link to article. If it's behind a paywall, google the headline and you can access the archived version: https://www.wsj.com/articles/putins-ukraine-adventure-unleashes-nuclear-genies-11652101354

This is what must be being game played intensely right now. I hope the best and brightest manage it well.

Argh why no paragraphs?!?! I swear that was very neatly and clearly formatted when I pressed post

For those asking what the Swedish security pact means this short podcast (14 mins) details the whole thing: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/coffee-house-shots/id1101754136?i=1000560549840

Me again (am down a rabbit hole this eve). Wanted to also post this good Eliot Cohen piece, 'What Victory will look like in Ukraine': https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/ukraine-russia-goals-win-war/629815/

**

"the West will not have much choice other than to strengthen the states on Russia’s periphery, in Central Asia as in Eastern Europe, and to hope against hope that the new “sick man of Europe” will, somehow and against the odds, recover something like moral sanity. There will be no return to normalcy or status quo ante here. We are, instead, looking at a long, well-armed, and watchful wait."