[Aptorian]

I think people should seriously consider what they're saying yes to. Drones are really cool when they're being used against the bad guys. They're less cool when the bad guys are using them.

Let's not make automated killing machines acceptable just because they're convenient.

[Cause]

Isn’t deliberately targeting a power station a war crime? Not that people ever care in actual wars.

I think the us often pilots drones in the Middle East from the USA. I’ll try and check. Drones are often just flying weapon mounts, the 3 second delay isn’t significant. Not like they are dog fighting.

However what technology does seem to be showing is that when an elite military (modern equipment) goes against an elite military casualties are now unavoidable. No matter how skilled, how well planned you can’t avoid every missile, every drone. I mean if they actually occupied Kyiv I can’t imagine the hell of ieds, modern mines etc they would face. Short of Russia going full war crime collective punishments how would they fight such a resistance movement?

Maybe the combination of dead bodies, and sanctions will force Russia to the table. Although a autocrat like Putin probably can’t admit to a mistake, lose too much face. So he might just take russianover the cliff with him.

Do we have any idea of real Russian combat casualties? Propaganda is out in force for both sides.

Also I thought it was interesting that China although abstained in the security council, apparently did denounce the attack through their foreign minister. The world should keep in mind that they are also basically signaling to China what their invasion of Taiwan will look like. We need to cover Ukraine, because ultimately by doing so we are covering ourselves and everybody else.

[Terez]

https://respondcrisi...en/get-involved

These guys are looking for volunteers who can translate/interpret to assist refugees and asylum seekers. They're not limited to Ukrainian refugees but I saw the call in that context.

[Macros]

Interest rates up to 20% in mother Russia, a possible run on several banks in the offing, do we finally see average Joseph have enough of Putin?

[Gorefest]

It is becoming more and more clear that Putin has made a huge calculation error. He is so caught up in his own narrative of the great Russian state, with Ukraine not being a real country and Ukrainians being an integral part of Russia instead of considering themselves a true nation, that he assumed that after some protests and grumblings Ukraine would just roll over and accept Putin's new puppet regime. It worked in 2014 with Crimea, so he probably assumed the same would hold for the rest of the country. But the longer the Ukrainians hold out and the fiercer the opposition becomes, the more his narrative collapses. That in turn has incentivised the rest of the world to take Ukraine seriously as an independent entity instead of as a Russian annex, prompting them to take increasingly firmer action. Stopping Nord Stream 2, putting heavy financial embargoes on Russia, providing weapons and funding to Ukraine and even remilitarising Germany for crying out loud, something that would have been utterly unthinkable even a month ago. Russia may continue to win battles, but you'd have to assume that the ideological war is already utterly lost for Putin. Even if he were to conquer Ukraine, he would not have anticipated active resistance from its citizens.

Regardless of where this goes, Ukraine have really put themselves firmly on the world map as an independent nation to be taken notice of and respected. Let's just hope that Putin finally comes to his senses soon and tries to minimise further damage to both Ukraine and Russia by coming to the negotiation table again in a constructive manner. The alternative is not one I'd want to think about now.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 28 February 2022 - 12:27 PM

[Mentalist]

 Gorefest, on 28 February 2022 - 12:26 PM, said:

It is becoming more and more clear that Putin has made a huge calculation error. He is so caught up in his own narrative of the great Russian state, with Ukraine not being a real country and Ukrainians being an integral part of Russia instead of considering themselves a true nation, that he assumed that after some protests and grumblings Ukraine would just roll over and accept Putin's new puppet regime. It worked in 2014 with Crimea, so he probably assumed the same would hold for the rest of the country. But the longer the Ukrainians hold out and the fiercer the opposition becomes, the more his narrative collapses. That in turn has incentivised the rest of the world to take Ukraine seriously as an independent entity instead of as a Russian annex, prompting them to take increasingly firmer action. Stopping Nord Stream 2, putting heavy financial embargoes on Russia, providing weapons and funding to Ukraine and even remilitarising Germany for crying out loud, something that would have been utterly unthinkable even a month ago. Russia may continue to win battles, but you'd have to assume that the ideological war is already utterly lost for Putin. Even if he were to conquer Ukraine, he would not have anticipated active resistance from its citizens.

Regardless of where this goes, Ukraine have really put themselves firmly on the world map as an independent nation to be taken notice of and respected. Let's just hope that Putin finally comes to his senses soon and tries to minimise further damage to both Ukraine and Russia by coming to the negotiation table again in a constructive manner. The alternative is not one I'd want to think about now.

Continue winning battles?

They'd have to start somewhere

Besides massacring (mostly) Russian civilians in cities like Kharkiv.

[QuickTidal]

 Mentalist, on 28 February 2022 - 02:21 AM, said:

30k people in Toronto today. THIRTY. THOUSAND.
Not all were Ukis, ofc- loads and loads of other flags. But contrary to what Russians like to say about us "bloodthirsty Nazi Banderites", anyone we can teach how to respond to "Slava Ukrayini!" automatically becomes one of us, ragrdless of their language, background, political leanings, etc.

A bunch of them walked by our condo on their way to it, and I went out on the balcony and cheered them on as they went past. I wish I could have gone out myself to stand with them, but my son is under the weather and I was in looking after him. I was super pleased to see so many turn out for Ukraine!

[Aptorian]

 Mentalist, on 28 February 2022 - 02:04 PM, said:

 Gorefest, on 28 February 2022 - 12:26 PM, said:

It is becoming more and more clear that Putin has made a huge calculation error. He is so caught up in his own narrative of the great Russian state, with Ukraine not being a real country and Ukrainians being an integral part of Russia instead of considering themselves a true nation, that he assumed that after some protests and grumblings Ukraine would just roll over and accept Putin's new puppet regime. It worked in 2014 with Crimea, so he probably assumed the same would hold for the rest of the country. But the longer the Ukrainians hold out and the fiercer the opposition becomes, the more his narrative collapses. That in turn has incentivised the rest of the world to take Ukraine seriously as an independent entity instead of as a Russian annex, prompting them to take increasingly firmer action. Stopping Nord Stream 2, putting heavy financial embargoes on Russia, providing weapons and funding to Ukraine and even remilitarising Germany for crying out loud, something that would have been utterly unthinkable even a month ago. Russia may continue to win battles, but you'd have to assume that the ideological war is already utterly lost for Putin. Even if he were to conquer Ukraine, he would not have anticipated active resistance from its citizens.

Regardless of where this goes, Ukraine have really put themselves firmly on the world map as an independent nation to be taken notice of and respected. Let's just hope that Putin finally comes to his senses soon and tries to minimise further damage to both Ukraine and Russia by coming to the negotiation table again in a constructive manner. The alternative is not one I'd want to think about now.

Continue winning battles?

They'd have to start somewhere

Besides massacring (mostly) Russian civilians in cities like Kharkiv.

I'm actually curious about this part of the reporting.

Don't know what kind of coverage other members are getting in their woods but in Denmark we're not getting footage of actual fighting, only the aftermath. We're not getting reports on wounded or killed, beyond the numbers Ukraine's government are announcing - Which is mostly, for lack of a better word, propaganda about how many Russians they've killed.

You'd expect Ukraine to be suffering heavy casualties when engaging the Russians head on? Are they only doing nightly hit and run attacks?

[Mentalist]

 Aptorian, on 28 February 2022 - 04:05 PM, said:

 Mentalist, on 28 February 2022 - 02:04 PM, said:

 Gorefest, on 28 February 2022 - 12:26 PM, said:

It is becoming more and more clear that Putin has made a huge calculation error. He is so caught up in his own narrative of the great Russian state, with Ukraine not being a real country and Ukrainians being an integral part of Russia instead of considering themselves a true nation, that he assumed that after some protests and grumblings Ukraine would just roll over and accept Putin's new puppet regime. It worked in 2014 with Crimea, so he probably assumed the same would hold for the rest of the country. But the longer the Ukrainians hold out and the fiercer the opposition becomes, the more his narrative collapses. That in turn has incentivised the rest of the world to take Ukraine seriously as an independent entity instead of as a Russian annex, prompting them to take increasingly firmer action. Stopping Nord Stream 2, putting heavy financial embargoes on Russia, providing weapons and funding to Ukraine and even remilitarising Germany for crying out loud, something that would have been utterly unthinkable even a month ago. Russia may continue to win battles, but you'd have to assume that the ideological war is already utterly lost for Putin. Even if he were to conquer Ukraine, he would not have anticipated active resistance from its citizens.

Regardless of where this goes, Ukraine have really put themselves firmly on the world map as an independent nation to be taken notice of and respected. Let's just hope that Putin finally comes to his senses soon and tries to minimise further damage to both Ukraine and Russia by coming to the negotiation table again in a constructive manner. The alternative is not one I'd want to think about now.

Continue winning battles?

They'd have to start somewhere

Besides massacring (mostly) Russian civilians in cities like Kharkiv.

I'm actually curious about this part of the reporting.

Don't know what kind of coverage other members are getting in their woods but in Denmark we're not getting footage of actual fighting, only the aftermath. We're not getting reports on wounded or killed, beyond the numbers Ukraine's government are announcing - Which is mostly, for lack of a better word, propaganda about how many Russians they've killed.

You'd expect Ukraine to be suffering heavy casualties when engaging the Russians head on? Are they only doing nightly hit and run attacks?

Ukraine is attacking armored columns mostly. With drones, artillery, air power. Tank battles as well, but those are positional.

Most of the fighting is done in urban centers and Russian armored marches aren't really working against infantry units armed with loads of tank-busters.

Ukrainian news aren't reporting soldier casualties, just civilian. You get occasional numbers of killed as wounded Ukrainians in some news stories, but for obvious reasons its not being aggregated.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'[...] breath-taking in its simplicity. The Fed, of course, is a "United States person." So it means that, henceforth, the Fed will not honor requests from the Russian Central Bank to "cash in" any portion of their dollar holdings.

So that stack of 600 billion or so dollars that Putin and his cohorts have gathered together to ride out the war? [...] a substantial portion of that stack is "held" in US financial institutions that are ultimately under the Fed's control, and the Fed is now prohibited from transferring control over those funds to the Russian Central Bank (or to anyone else designated as the recipient by the Russian Central Bank).

And if the Germans, and the Swiss, and the British, and the others who "hold" these assets that "belong" to the Russian government also get on board, the stack gets smaller and smaller.

It starts a kind of death-spiral, because Putin will really need those dollars to prop up the ruble. That's almost certainly why he put the stack together in the first place - a rainy day fund for buying up rubles to keep the price stable. [...] It will continue to fall, because as the sanctions noose tightens a ruble can buy fewer and fewer things; and the drop accelerates as more people become increasingly desperate to unload the rubles that they have and convert them into something of value before they fall further.

The Russian Central Bank can stop all this from happening by promising to keep buying rubles, at a set and stable price, in exchange for good old American dollars.

Except now it can't.

This is the kind of thing that brings governments down - when the price of bread goes up 500% because your leaders have done something very stupid. Isolated from the global financial system - with nobody willing to take their rubles, or even their dollars and deutschemarks and euros in exchange for goods and services - the Russian economy will go into free fall. And Putin surely knows that. His oligarch friends know it, too. The suffering this will impose on the Russian people will be immense, and many of them may not take kindly to having had that imposed on them in order to satisfy Putin's imperial fantasies. If they're not worried about that, they should be.'

https://reason.com/v...war-in-ukraine/

Not sure if China can completely mitigate that though, or whether sanctions might then be applied to China in turn....

'China says US sanctions over Ukraine should not affect right to trade with Russia

Normal trade with Russia will continue, foreign ministry in Beijing said'

https://www.scmp.com...t-affect-lawful

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'China's largest state controlled banks are limiting financing to purchase raw materials from Russia

ICBC and Bank of China fear secondary sanctions

This is big'

https://twitter.com/...628213392068612

'Only restricting the buying in $, not in RMB. That is even bigger.'

https://twitter.com/...628959894384640


'"Really graphic images coming from near centre of Kharkiv right now — hit, it would seem, by a Russian rocket strike. Corpses. Women without legs. I'm not going to post it. But my god. All this during peace negotiations."'

https://www.thedaily...kraine?ref=home

'Russia bombed the city using suspected cluster munitions, a type of bomb that causes damage in a large, imprecise area—and banned by 110 countries because of the incredible harm it can inflict on civilians.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Bellingcat have all said that Russian cluster bombs were used in civilian areas in Ukraine. Cluster munitions are either fired from a rocket or dropped from a bomber. They break apart and release bomblets which spread destruction in the targeted area. They're indiscriminate'

https://www.vice.com...ns-on-civilians

'defence secretary also warned Russia could, in theory, use so-called tactical nuclear weapons in the fight against Ukraine. But this would amount to a massive – and still unlikely – escalation against what Putin has described as "one people" with Russians.

"They could be every bit as powerful as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs; most people say there is no such thing as a non-strategic nuclear weapon,"''

https://www.theguard...ns-putin-threat

[amphibian]

I take a different view of things than many here - there's several people posting about how they hope Putin realizes this is a mistake and stops now/soon. That's not how he works. Take a look at the apartment bombings back in 1999, FSB agents were caught putting explosives in buildings and Putin just spun that into the invasion of Dagestan, which went on for 9 months and turned into 9+ years of sporadic fighting before he made a deal with the Kadyrov clan.

Stopping now isn't what a thug like Putin does, even if it's a disaster. He will keep going because in the past, the pattern was that the foreigners get tired of dealing with him and kinda cave, so he gets most of what he wants.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 28 February 2022 - 07:56 PM

[QuickTidal]

 amphibian, on 28 February 2022 - 07:55 PM, said:

I take a different view of things than many here - there's several people posting about how they hope Putin realizes this is a mistake and stops now/soon. That's not how he works. Take a look at the apartment bombings back in 1999, FSB agents were caught putting explosives in buildings and Putin just spun that into the invasion of Dagestan, which went on for 9 months and turned into 9+ years of sporadic fighting before he made a deal with the Kadyrov clan.

Stopping now isn't what a thug like Putin does, even if it's a disaster. He will keep going because in the past, the pattern was that the foreigners get tired of dealing with him and kinda cave, so he gets most of what he wants.

This is a fair comment. I like to think that Putin is not stupid enough to provoke the world, but maybe he is. He's definitely not the type of guy to gracefully back down without a concession, so this will probably get worse before it gets better. Our only hope is that Ukraine continues to rebuff him as well as they have been. If they tweak his nose long enough is he going to do something drastic and fucked up enough that NATO will step in maybe?

Also, can we talk about how the Right Wing US Media and Fox News talking heads are all sort of siding with Putin, Russia, and defending his actions....while he vocally said he wants to reinstate the USSR....in a country that spent 3/4 of a century with the "Red Scare", McCarthy stuff, and all the anti-Soviet views until the USSR fell...how did we get to people like Fox News and Right Wingers WELCOMING this shit a bare few decades later? What planet are we on?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

 QuickTidal, on 28 February 2022 - 08:32 PM, said:

 amphibian, on 28 February 2022 - 07:55 PM, said:

I take a different view of things than many here - there's several people posting about how they hope Putin realizes this is a mistake and stops now/soon. That's not how he works. Take a look at the apartment bombings back in 1999, FSB agents were caught putting explosives in buildings and Putin just spun that into the invasion of Dagestan, which went on for 9 months and turned into 9+ years of sporadic fighting before he made a deal with the Kadyrov clan.

Stopping now isn't what a thug like Putin does, even if it's a disaster. He will keep going because in the past, the pattern was that the foreigners get tired of dealing with him and kinda cave, so he gets most of what he wants.

This is a fair comment. I like to think that Putin is not stupid enough to provoke the world, but maybe he is. He's definitely not the type of guy to gracefully back down without a concession, so this will probably get worse before it gets better. Our only hope is that Ukraine continues to rebuff him as well as they have been. If they tweak his nose long enough is he going to do something drastic and fucked up enough that NATO will step in maybe?

Also, can we talk about how the Right Wing US Media and Fox News talking heads are all sort of siding with Putin, Russia, and defending his actions....while he vocally said he wants to reinstate the USSR....in a country that spent 3/4 of a century with the "Red Scare", McCarthy stuff, and all the anti-Soviet views until the USSR fell...how did we get to people like Fox News and Right Wingers WELCOMING this shit a bare few decades later? What planet are we on?

A lot of them think he's the savior of Christianity, or White Christian civilization:

'whiteness, Christianity and conservative values. [...]

[...] Russia is neither all white nor all Christian — it is a country that encompasses several regions, religions and ethnicities. Still, it is often perceived as white. The white nationalist Richard Spencer has referred to Russia as "the sole white power in the world." [...] In 2018, [...] Pat Buchanan said [...] Putin and [...] Lukashenko were "standing up for traditional values against Western cultural elites." "Russia is our biggest inspiration," Mr. Heimbach told The Times in 2016. "I see President Putin as the leader of the free world."'

Opinion | How the American Right Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Russia - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Then there's Trump's influence....

'[...] Putin might actually use nuclear weapons, particularly tactical (short-range) nuclear weapons, to achieve his military objectives in Ukraine. Again, this is a major reason countries develop such weapons in the first place — to achieve what they think conventional forces cannot.

[...]

Putin might also turn to medium-range nuclear weapons to coerce neighbors in Europe who are seeking to support Ukraine militarily, diplomatically, or politically. Of course, doing the latter against any NATO ally would be extremely escalatory and invoke U.S. commitments to defend its NATO allies [...]

Amid reports of Russia's lagging conventional invasion, Putin may now believe that climbing up to the next rung on the so-called escalation ladder is the only way to achieve the coercive effect he wants.'

The Ukraine crisis is now a nuclear crisis - The Washington Post

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 28 February 2022 - 09:11 PM

[amphibian]

Dr. Tressie McMillian-Cottom is a sociologist I pay attention to. She put up a short tweet series that I'll copy here (starting at https://twitter.com/...937992224710662):

"You may laugh but one place I have seen this [Putin is seen as displaying allyship to white Christian patriarchal rule] on the ground? Research about online dating and visa marriages over the last decade. There is marked uptick in white western men AND women desiring former Soviet country partners because they are “traditional”.

(This doesn’t matter at all.) I remember seeing a presentation on this about six years ago. I logged on to some of the discussion boards to follow up. It was like a Trump rally but before Trump. A lot of reverence for Russian leaders as a cultural pinnacle.

It was clearly about race. And once Trump was elected, there was a lot of reflection about Melania as an avatar, with her ethnic origin as a white credential. (Again, none of this matters. It just came to mind.)

For me it was an example of how contemporary Russian myth making was in very basic everyday white American cultural spaces. I still don’t know what to make of it all. But I do know that “oooh Russia” doesn’t sound un-American to as many people as one might assume"

This is somewhat bizarre to me, even though we were seeing "I'd rather be Russian than Democrat" shirts among Trump supporters in 2018. https://www.vox.com/...r-democrat-ohio

I think there's an additional level beyond "Putin/the Russians have a traditional white Christian model that we like" to "if Russia is strong like it was in the post-WWII USSR era, then the world will be more defined by two white Christian strong nations and that's better for our lives and businesses" that Fox News and the talking heads also like because it's easier to talk about an enemy that's more readily understood by them than the Xi Jinping's China or black/brown people in general across the world.

But as much as Putin is a thug, the US has been absolutely doing stuff like that in the last 30 years too. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are somewhat similar in terms of excuses being made and wreckage of lives, although not flavored as strongly with "this is our country now". The abysmal treatment of Iran and many other things are bad too. I want to be clear that I'm thinking heavily on how the US's actions and reactions internationally have encouraged Putin to do what he's been doing all along.

[Puck]

 Mentalist, on 27 February 2022 - 03:22 AM, said:

They really underestimated who they were messing with.

My mom was a Russian-speaker living in Western Ukraine her whole life. She was bilingual, obviously, but she identified more with "soviet" culture than "Ukrainian". She never really understood or shared the nationalism me and my dad displayed.

After that 1-hour speech where VVH declared a war of extermination on Ukraine, she wants to tear his throat out.

very few people are actually scared; most are furious . With that cold, tempered fury where we realize this won't end until that regime is shattered.

Molotovs, people stopping ATPs unarmed, 37 thousand volunteers who picked up guns in the first 2 days (there's loads more willing, but cities need more guns)... Millions being transferred to the Army, insane info presence, thousands of the diaspora members coming out worldwide, being joined by so many other communities.

And, shockingly, Zelensky was the populist we needed. The one who had nothing to lose and publically called the West out on the bullshit hypocrisy we've seen since 2014. The one who was able to shame the West into being the West.

The sanctions are absolutely nuclear. With quarter to a third of Centrobank's assets frozen, RIP ruble on Monday. There's already a report that 5k contract troopers in Belgorod are mutinying, because they don't want to go to Ukraine and get fucked up like everyone before them.

they're asking for talks already. At this point the general mood is "Zelensky'd better not fucking DARE make any deals until we finish messing them up so that they scramble out of Donbas and Crimea to boot". People want this fucker buried, and he's got nothing. The vaunted VDV paratroopers, Kadyrov's personal guard, the legions of their armor corps... It's all gonna be scrap and meat if it keeps coming.

Huge rally in Toronto tomorrow. I was at one at the consulate yesterday, and there was over a thousand people there; tomorrow there'll probably be a lot more, since it's a Sunday.

They woke up a slumbering anger over 9 years of dehumanizing slurs, bullshit fearmongering, and very real war that cost our people 15 thousand lives; I oughta thank VVH for so comprehensively forging the Ukrainian political nation; but he's a psychopathic shitheel, so I will wish him a quick and merciful death instead.

Half of my paycheck got sent back home. I'm gonna keep spreading awareness, since that's all I can really do, being so far away.

But just as in 2013-2014, I feel part of something much greater. We are making history, and we will keep making it, and those who think they can stop us better be ready to jump out of our way, because once Ukrainians start to collectively organize to get smith done, we've been quite literally unstoppable, until we decide to spread out again ourselves.

You have put it into better words than I could.

 amphibian, on 28 February 2022 - 07:55 PM, said:

I take a different view of things than many here - there's several people posting about how they hope Putin realizes this is a mistake and stops now/soon. That's not how he works. Take a look at the apartment bombings back in 1999, FSB agents were caught putting explosives in buildings and Putin just spun that into the invasion of Dagestan, which went on for 9 months and turned into 9+ years of sporadic fighting before he made a deal with the Kadyrov clan.

Stopping now isn't what a thug like Putin does, even if it's a disaster. He will keep going because in the past, the pattern was that the foreigners get tired of dealing with him and kinda cave, so he gets most of what he wants.

I'm with amph here. Putin will realise nothing. He may pretend to so he can safe face, but it will be a farce. Although there is no way for him to safe face anymore. He already doubled down today and had missiles hit Kharkiv during the day, while the first round of peace talks was under way.

I want him gone from the face of this earth. If he comes out of this still in office, if his oligarch friends and his people let him get away unscathed, I hope they choke on the sanctions. I do not wish bad things on normal people in Russia, but I am tired of the evil Putin has been spewing into the world, which has been poisoning people I know. I do not talk about it, but I have felt an anti-Ukrainian sentiment from Russians ever since 2014, I have been told to identify as Russian instead of Ukrainian, when Ukraine if where I was born, and if wishing for Ukraine to remain a sovereign state and be left alone to grow and develop as a country, if wanting to be able to enjoy Ukrainian culture in peace makes me a nationalist, so be it. Language is losing all meaning anyway, it seems.

This post has been edited by Puck: 28 February 2022 - 10:31 PM

[Mentalist]

Hard day. They keep shelling, killing civilians, destroying infrastructure, so that these cities are left without power, heat and water.

Kharkiv holds. Mariupol holds. Kyiv is doing fine.

Sumy, Chernihiv and Okhtyrka, the 3 cities on the North-Eastern flank are holding, but are getting leveled. Yesterday they torched a local museum and destroyed a UNESCO -protected set of paintings. Before that they torched the Mriya, the largest transport plane in the world.


Right now they're trying to storm Kherson again. Really wish some of those Russian tanks were captured in the North could be brought down there. The South is hard area to hold, but we gotta have faith.

We will win. Because we don't have any other choice.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 01 March 2022 - 01:26 AM

[Gwynn ap Nudd]

 amphibian, on 28 February 2022 - 07:55 PM, said:

I take a different view of things than many here - there's several people posting about how they hope Putin realizes this is a mistake and stops now/soon. That's not how he works. Take a look at the apartment bombings back in 1999, FSB agents were caught putting explosives in buildings and Putin just spun that into the invasion of Dagestan, which went on for 9 months and turned into 9+ years of sporadic fighting before he made a deal with the Kadyrov clan.

Stopping now isn't what a thug like Putin does, even if it's a disaster. He will keep going because in the past, the pattern was that the foreigners get tired of dealing with him and kinda cave, so he gets most of what he wants.

I agree. I don't see Putin backing down anytime soon. I do think he miscalculated this time, as the long term steps being taken by other countries are not likely to be undone and the short term ones (sanctioning the federal bank for example) are harsher than we have seen before.

 amphibian, on 28 February 2022 - 09:36 PM, said:

But as much as Putin is a thug, the US has been absolutely doing stuff like that in the last 30 years too. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are somewhat similar in terms of excuses being made and wreckage of lives, although not flavored as strongly with "this is our country now". The abysmal treatment of Iran and many other things are bad too. I want to be clear that I'm thinking heavily on how the US's actions and reactions internationally have encouraged Putin to do what he's been doing all along.

Iraq is an arguable comparison (we were attacked by Saudi terrorists based in Afghanistan, so let's invade Iraq). Afghanistan is not. No sovereign country with the means to retaliate would have stayed out of Afghanistan if they had been hit with an attack similar to 9/11.

[QuickTidal]

 Azath Vitr (D, on 28 February 2022 - 09:10 PM, said:

'[...] Putin might actually use nuclear weapons, particularly tactical (short-range) nuclear weapons, to achieve his military objectives in Ukraine. Again, this is a major reason countries develop such weapons in the first place — to achieve what they think conventional forces cannot.

[...]

Putin might also turn to medium-range nuclear weapons to coerce neighbors in Europe who are seeking to support Ukraine militarily, diplomatically, or politically. Of course, doing the latter against any NATO ally would be extremely escalatory and invoke U.S. commitments to defend its NATO allies [...]

I'll go one further, even though Ukraine is not currently NATO, if Putin uses ANY sort of Nuke against Ukraine or anywhere else...NATO will step up and go "absolutely the fuck not". ANY nuke launched and landed anywhere threatens everyone, and as such Putin would be a dead man walking if he did it. He knows this. He's not stupid. It's just a matter of if he's mad enough to use one....but yeah, it would be the last thing he ever did. The world's hesitation at getting directly involved would evaporate and we'd all be at war.

In fact, the Ukrainian ambassador at the UN said "Putin doesn't need to use Nukes to commit suicide, he should be doing it with a gun to his head in a bunker like Hitler did in 1945".

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Putin has reportedly used 'the Father of All Bombs'---the vacuum bomb---in Ukraine:

https://en.wikipedia...er_of_All_Bombs

https://www.theguard...ow-do-they-work

'[...] ignites a fireball that sucks in all surrounding oxygen[...]

[...]

The blast wave can last for significantly longer than a conventional explosive and is capable of vaporising human bodies.

[...] Hellyer says what we may see in Ukraine is Russia using them in a "bunker-buster" role to destroy defensive positions. Extremely large, air-launched versions are designed to destroy caves and tunnel complexes.

[...] "[...] their effects can be pretty horrific, because of that effect of creating a vacuum and sucking the air out of the lungs of defenders," [...]

Given their use is "pretty standard" in terms of Russian tactics, [...] expected to see more thermobaric warfare in Ukraine.

"One of the things we know about Russian tactics is that they are willing to destroy everything.

"It's clear that the Ukrainians are hunkering down in some of the cities … as that continues the Russians are going to resort more and more to using … whatever weapons they have including thermobaric weapons in built-up urban areas."'

https://www.theguard...ow-do-they-work

'the most powerful non-nuclear explosives in the world.

[...]

Where MOABs mainly try to crush a target, however, FOABs provide a giant one-two-punch of crushing and incinerating.

[...]

FOABs are designed to break up and incinerate their targets like nuclear weapons, but without the radioactive fallout.'

https://www.business...b-damage-2017-4