Ukraine Invasion: Part 25

[MagicFox]

Hi all, another thread for supporting and sharing

Trent TelenkoAT TrentTelenko
Ukraine as retaken more ground in/near Kharkiv than Russia's vaunted Donbas offensive has managed.

And now Ukraine is counter-attacking at Izyum in the Donbas as well

Fao @RedToothBrush

every word is true.

Not Uzbekistan?

Ooo thanks for that. Finding that was on my list of things to do! You have saved me a job.

Yw!

On a far nastier and less honest note. I hope it's propaganda but I don't think I believe that it is.

The Kyiv Independent, [16/05/2022 19:18]
⚡️Official: Russia seeks to extract false testimony from Mariupol residents.

Russian occupiers have announced that they would give compensation for destroyed housing and killed family members, Petro Andryushchenko, an advisor to the mayor of Mariupol, said. The compensation will be paid in exchange for false testimony that Ukrainian troops killed relatives or destroyed property, he said. The occupiers offer roughly $6,000 for a destroyed house and $33,000 for a killed relative, according to Andryushchenko.

What did North Korea do to miss out on an invite.

I wasn't counting them because they withdrew from the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States alliance, though they stayed in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which is China's as well. They might not be interested any more.

In 2002 six of the original nine ex-Soviet states which had joined up not Azerbaijan, Georgia, or Uzbekistan agreed to become the military alliance known as the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

I don't know why the names are crossed out; they were not when I previewed before posting. Drat and drabbit the new board!

❗️According to the British intelligence, Russia has focused its efforts on the Donetsk area. There, on May 15, they fired from all available weapons.

In the Kharkiv direction, the Russians are trying to hold their positions, and in the Siverskiy direction, they have tightened control over the Ukrainian-Russian border in the Bryansk and Kursk regions.

UkraineNOW

Sorry for slight derail for less important matters but...
@ScrollingLeaves Hopefully you've received this email too.
Good news re a funding page for Zhu Zhu.

Oh that's lovely desdemona :)

The watered down rhetoric from Kremlin is thought to be due to the fact that Putin actually wants to avoid an escalation, or what would be seen as escalation from Russia. This is according to Arestovych and the like.

Last week the Russian installed administration in Kherson declared they are happy to be annexed by Russia. What did Kremlin do? Peskov very quickly backpedalled, and said it has to be people's decision, and done "properly", via a referendum.

Why? Because that would be seen as escalation, which means more sanctions and more weapons for Ukraine. They can't afford that (well, they couldn't from the start but the penny finally dropped).

They are now instead doing a referendum in South Ossetia in July. This will let them gauge whether it actually works (and then they would repeat it in Kherson), and what the reaction from the West is going to be. I guess they are also hoping that with focus being on Ukraine, no one will give it much notice or care.

Also their most recent statement released by Russian MID about Finland joining NATO last week - it is almost word for word what they've put out on their news, except over there they were talking about it being "an existential threat" (aka nukes), but in official statement they didn't. The reasons are obvious - the pro war Russians are still buying the willy waving rhetoric, but the West doesn't, so they need to be careful what they're actually saying.

(I feel like my posts are a bit out of sync from what is being discussed right now, so I do apologise, but the thread is moving very fast sometimes!)

@DesdamonasHandkerchief erchief · 16/05/2022 18:48
Sorry for slight derail for less important matters but...
@ScrollingLeaves Hopefully you've received this email too.
Good news re a funding page for Zhu Zhu.

Very good news. Thank you Desdemona for alerting me - I’ve just found I had an email too. It’s good there has been a lot of interest, so that will mean extra money for various needs.

Your posts are always very insightful owls. Don't stop, please :) The various themes weave in and out of the threads so it's easy to match with the relevant stuff, even if the post itself happens not to be directly by that particular theme (iyswim)

Does anyone find it weird it seems to have gone quiet or Putin seems to have very much toned down a lot? I can’t work out if that’s a good thing or not? Obviously not toned down on regards to plane poor people of Ukraine, but I mean like Sweden and Finland joining nato, no victory speak with threats ect.. what does everyone make of this?

@OwlsDance recent post gives a good insight I think.

Yes, I have thought that there’s been an element of good cop, bad cop when comparing France’s and the UK’s approach. They’re just different ways of trying to gain some leverage.

Ohh sorry I think I missed that one, but thank you for pointing that out, I definitely feel a lot better now than I did in the fact that it seems Putin wants to avoid escalating with us and nato

Isn’t it just… Interesting.

The threats were to try and scare Finland and Sweden away from joining, when the threats didn't work he has to move the goal posts because he can't afford to follow through, it would be too risky a move. I am almost certain that if there was a build up of military infrastructure due to joining NATO he'd shift the goal posts again. Though tbh I'd rather avoid that, I think its better to have no permanent NATO bases here.

The parliamentary debate about joining NATO is still going on though, started at 10am and is expected to carry on until 2am, a short break for sleep, then back again in the morning. Not going into this lightly but discussing and debating every eventuality (which I hope will shut up some of the idiots I've been arguing with lately who claim Finland is doing this without thinking)

HIs modus operandi seems to be threat threat projection threat threat.

I took it seriously at first. When he's dealing with individual people he carries his threats out - there are a lot of dead ex-enemies of Vladimir. But this ridiculous desperate attempt to ratchett things up by talk of nuclear weopons gets to the eyerolling stage now. Still think the whole nuclear thing not impossible.
But I do think it's extremely, extremely unlikely and if it's going to happen it'll have nothing to do with what he mouths off about.

Really the problem with constantly going, er, nuclear with the threats is that in the end there's nowhere higher to go and people just shrug.

Putin’s got to be careful. He’s powerful, but how much of his power depends on others? If there are rumblings of discontent over Ukraine in the upper echelons, I’m pretty sure there must be rumblings about Putin’s actions bringing about the situation with Finland and Sweden, bringing the NATO wolf to right to the door. Added to the fact that many people support Putin as they see him as someone who sorted out the economic chaos of the 90s, yet his actions have led to a massive de-stabilisation of the economy which will start to bite ordinary Russians. Add in the growing realisation of the casualty numbers and Putin might be in trouble here. Time will tell.

I hope I'm not speaking to soon but in terms of the nuclear risk I think it's more to do with proliferation elsewhere as a result of all this. And a related unwillingness to engage in nuclear non-proliferation agreements. So this will be a fear that we are living with for a long time and that will get increasingly dangerous without proper management. And I don't know what that looks like! What I meant to say is that my anxiety about imminent nuclear is less than it was but I do worry about the future and the strategy going forward

Too soon, sorry