[Cause]

What’s the long term play here:

Russia takes Kyiv and the Ukraine… okay so we sanction them. Do they just accept sanctions for the next few decades? Ukrainians clearly don’t want them, so do they murder Russian soldiers in the streets for the next few years? How does Russia plan to occupy the whole country and for how long?

Is their plan to create a puppet government and leave? Get Donbas and the Crimea on paper in exhange for giving the test back?

[QuickTidal]

Cause, on 25 February 2022 - 05:01 PM, said:

What’s the long term play here:

Russia takes Kyiv and the Ukraine… okay so we sanction them. Do they just accept sanctions for the next few decades? Ukrainians clearly don’t want them, so do they murder Russian soldiers in the streets for the next few years? How does Russia plan to occupy the whole country and for how long?

Boots on the ground. That's likely what comes next, and the minute that Russia does something to a NATO country or ally who puts boots on the ground, the full weight of NATO will come down on him. He knows this, and won't push it to that point (he's an asshole and a kleptocrat, but he's not stupid). As that would be Russia VS like 30 nations.

[Cause]

I’m sceptical, after all I asked why anti didn’t just put some troops down already and leave the advisors. Than Putin couldn’t risk the attack without hurting a nato solider. They pulled out. I’m not sure they plan on intervening beyond sanctions.

Politicians are cowardly. The strength of the autocrat is they can plan beyond 4 year intervals whereas the west plans according to election cycles.

[Tapper]

Cause, on 25 February 2022 - 05:01 PM, said:

What’s the long term play here:

Russia takes Kyiv and the Ukraine… okay so we sanction them. Do they just accept sanctions for the next few decades? Ukrainians clearly don’t want them, so do they murder Russian soldiers in the streets for the next few years? How does Russia plan to occupy the whole country and for how long?

Is their plan to create a puppet government and leave? Get Donbas and the Crimea on paper in exhange for giving the test back?

Well, the pattern so far is 1-3 years of sanctions and then rolling them back gradually until Putin does another land grab. Before Crimea it was Georgia, for example.
Imho, he doesn't grab Ukraine to make it an equal part of his idea of Greater Russia. Instead, he'll ouppet it, silence whomever could unite the people, hand the natural resources to his cronies for extraction, let corruption run rife, let the economy crash and voila, a Belarus style buffer state.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Cause, on 25 February 2022 - 06:02 PM, said:

Politicians are cowardly. The strength of the autocrat is they can plan beyond 4 year intervals whereas the west plans according to election cycles.

Seems like a prime example:

'the sanctions [...] have a glaring weakness: They largely spare Russia's all-important energy sector, the backbone of its entire economy, and its agricultural center (the country is a major wheat exporter).

The NATO allies have chosen to leave these sectors alone in order to minimize the impact on Western consumers. This need⁠—driven especially by German consumers, but also substantially by the Biden Administration's fear of raising gas prices and fueling inflation in the U.S.—forced the U.S. Treasury Department to blow a hole in what would otherwise have been an effective form of financial retaliation.'

https://slate.com/bu...st-russias.html

What might happen next:

'Some have predicted Kyiv falling in a matter of days, if not hours. This is probably exaggeration. Russians haven't conducted such a large, complex military operation in more than a half-century. It isn't likely to go like clockwork.

But let's say that Russia captures the capital, ousts the popularly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and installs a puppet leader with the mandate to haul Ukraine back into Moscow's orbit—all reasonable expectations. Then what? Ukraine has been an independent country since 1991. [...]

[...] after the main fight is over (whenever that happens), those 150,000 Russian troops in or around Ukraine will have to remain as an occupation force. They will face resistance—not just from Ukrainian soldiers, who will have access to weapons, but from civilian insurgents, who have training in arms as well and who will surely receive supplies (and perhaps more) from U.S. and other intelligence agencies. Without Russian occupiers, the new Quisling regime would be overthrown at once. Even with the occupiers, its edicts are unlikely to be obeyed. The notion that Putin could control Ukraine, in the way that his Kremlin predecessors did in Cold War times, seems improbable.


[...] many more [Russians] will likely die in the war's insurgency phase, if recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are precedent.Will the sight of body bags coming home turn Russia's public opinion against Putin's adventure—and, if so, does that matter?

This is where the sanctions come in, theoretically. [...] ATO allies have stopped short of kicking Russian firms out of the global SWIFT banking network, sometimes described as the financial nuclear option, though some analysts believe Russia would be able to route money through other channels. [...]

[...] Putin may be counting on Beijing to rescue Russia from the sanctions, stepping in with trade and investments that Moscow can no longer conduct with the rest of the world.'

https://slate.com/ne...sastrously.html

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

QuickTidal, on 25 February 2022 - 05:05 PM, said:

Cause, on 25 February 2022 - 05:01 PM, said:

What's the long term play here:

Russia takes Kyiv and the Ukraine… okay so we sanction them. Do they just accept sanctions for the next few decades? Ukrainians clearly don't want them, so do they murder Russian soldiers in the streets for the next few years? How does Russia plan to occupy the whole country and for how long?

Boots on the ground. That's likely what comes next, and the minute that Russia does something to a NATO country or ally who puts boots on the ground, the full weight of NATO will come down on him. He knows this, and won't push it to that point (he's an asshole and a kleptocrat, but he's not stupid). As that would be Russia VS like 30 nations.

... what if the US declines to participate---as a Trump (or similar) administration probably would?

Wonder if he could get more funds and troops by turning more of the non-NATO countries of Eurasia into vassal states. 'Good old fashioned' tribute. Full occupation not necessary, just sufficient terror. Then again IDK if forcibly drafted non-Russians would refuse to fight, or possibly even turn on Russian forces. Or if Putin could render the populations destitute enough they'd agree to fight to eat. Presumably it would take a relatively long time to pickle their brains with propaganda.

Odds could be evened if Trump's in power and both Trump and China support Putin. Might not even need that many troops if technology is ultimately more important, and China's willing to let him test out some of their equipment. (Not sure how much Trump would be able to get away with, or how far gone the rule of law and military command may be by that point... getting US soldiers to fight to help Russia to reclaim its former Soviet holdings would be a hard sell even for Trump, but IDK, maybe Putin will order up a deepfake hologram of a gigantic Jesus commanding it?...)

[Gorefest]

Well, amyone who was claiming that the sanctions against Russia weren't harsh enough, guess again. They've really hit them hard now. Almost inhumane if you ask me. Banned from the Eurovision Song Contest. That is brutal.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Going by 2021 numbers from

https://www.statista...nato-countries/

NATO without the US would have about 2 million military personnel (assuming Putin doesn't manage to strike a deal with Turkey, which has the most by far at 445,000).

Russia has '1,014,000 active duty and 2,000,000 reserve', which is not counting an additional 554,000 'paramililtary'.

Russian Armed Forces - Wikipedia

Of course NATO without the US or Turkey is still much more populous than Russia, but it's not clear whether member countries would be willing to institute a draft (or whether Putin could impose one on of his own on vassal states)...

This article's from 2017, not sure whether the non-US NATO members have taken significant steps to redress this:

'NATO Without America: A Grim Prognosis

[...]

On paper, NATO has the potential to be viable as a collective security organization without the United States. [...] In the long term, a NATO without the United States may not only be feasible, but desirable. However, these rosy structural facts belie a more troublingly reality in NATO's immediate future.


The most obvious item of concern if the US were to leave or moderate its commitment to NATO in the short term would be sheer manpower. In 2016, the alliance had a combined troop strength of around 3.1 million active duty personnel. Without the United States, that immediately drops by nearly half to somewhere below 1.9 million personnel. [So: not fixed, as of 2021.] This ignores thousands of pieces of military equipment that would no longer support NATO, including armored vehicles, aircraft, and ships. Granted, Russia—the most prominent threat to NATO—has significantly cut down its active duty forces in recent years, estimated at just over 900,000 active duty personnel in 2016.[vii] However, the exact number of reservists Russia has at its disposal is unknown, and could be anywhere from 2 to 20 million personnel depending on the scale of a call up.[viii] While NATO forces may have an advantage in training, equipment, and organization, past a certain point quantity surpasses quality. Russia has also been increasing efforts to update its military arsenal, purchasing new weapons and equipment to close that gap as well.'

https://georgetownse...grim-prognosis/

... so Putin could marshal 20 million from Russia alone. So long as he's not marching on Germany (or maybe Poland), I doubt NATO will institute a draft....

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 26 February 2022 - 12:18 AM

[Grief]

Tapper, on 25 February 2022 - 08:35 PM, said:

Cause, on 25 February 2022 - 05:01 PM, said:

What’s the long term play here:

Russia takes Kyiv and the Ukraine… okay so we sanction them. Do they just accept sanctions for the next few decades? Ukrainians clearly don’t want them, so do they murder Russian soldiers in the streets for the next few years? How does Russia plan to occupy the whole country and for how long?

Is their plan to create a puppet government and leave? Get Donbas and the Crimea on paper in exhange for giving the test back?

Well, the pattern so far is 1-3 years of sanctions and then rolling them back gradually until Putin does another land grab. Before Crimea it was Georgia, for example.
Imho, he doesn't grab Ukraine to make it an equal part of his idea of Greater Russia. Instead, he'll ouppet it, silence whomever could unite the people, hand the natural resources to his cronies for extraction, let corruption run rife, let the economy crash and voila, a Belarus style buffer state.

I think Ukraine will be different to Georgia for a few reasons. We can see already a different political reaction and social outcry.

Sanctions are essentially a long-game. There is a (valid) complaint that Russia's energy sector is not being targeted immediately with sanctions. However, I think we will see a much stronger drive in Europe, including countries like Germany, to reduce energy dependence on Russia. We've already seen some statements to that end and I think they're actually serious about it.

Part of the long game is the sanctions and the energy mix is another part. It's obviously doubtful whether Europe is ready to stop Russian gas overnight but its clearly on the cards as a longer term goal. And that hurts, especially if Russia struggle to modernise their economy in the meantime which the sanctions will clearly exacerbate.

(By the way I would agree on the puppet-state point).

Also it probably goes without saying but fuck this all. I hope that those of you with real connections to Ukraine are doing whatever constitutes as OK in a situation like this.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Grief, on 26 February 2022 - 01:10 AM, said:

Tapper, on 25 February 2022 - 08:35 PM, said:

Cause, on 25 February 2022 - 05:01 PM, said:

What’s the long term play here:

Russia takes Kyiv and the Ukraine… okay so we sanction them. Do they just accept sanctions for the next few decades? Ukrainians clearly don’t want them, so do they murder Russian soldiers in the streets for the next few years? How does Russia plan to occupy the whole country and for how long?

Is their plan to create a puppet government and leave? Get Donbas and the Crimea on paper in exhange for giving the test back?

Well, the pattern so far is 1-3 years of sanctions and then rolling them back gradually until Putin does another land grab. Before Crimea it was Georgia, for example.
Imho, he doesn't grab Ukraine to make it an equal part of his idea of Greater Russia. Instead, he'll ouppet it, silence whomever could unite the people, hand the natural resources to his cronies for extraction, let corruption run rife, let the economy crash and voila, a Belarus style buffer state.

I think Ukraine will be different to Georgia for a few reasons. We can see already a different political reaction and social outcry.

Sanctions are essentially a long-game. There is a (valid) complaint that Russia's energy sector is not being targeted immediately with sanctions. However, I think we will see a much stronger drive in Europe, including countries like Germany, to reduce energy dependence on Russia. We've already seen some statements to that end and I think they're actually serious about it.

Part of the long game is the sanctions. I think another part will Europe shifting its energy mix away from Russia which can also be damaging to the country. Especially if they struggle to modernise their economy in the meantime which the sanctions will clearly exacerbate.

(By the way I would agree on the puppet-state point).

... and if an accelerated transition to clean energy effectively looks like an existential threat to Putin's future wealth (even if sanctions are ever lifted) and what remains of Russia's economy... that might make war and plunder more appealing (to Putin...).

[Grief]

Malankazooie, on 24 February 2022 - 08:40 PM, said:

What amount of sanctions have been placed on Russia in the past? How effective were they? And how much more (by analysis calling next shots) will upcoming sanctions have an impact (and how many more will be drawn up)? Asking, because it doesn't seem like this approach has really budged Putin.

Tiste Simeon, on 25 February 2022 - 02:59 PM, said:

Whether this will make a difference or but who knows but the UCL final has been changed from Russia and the Russian Grand Prix is cancelled/moved too.

Like I said I'm not sure it'll do much but these will hit Russia economically and I reckon that's going to do more than NATO posturing...

I would not not expect sanctions to make much difference to the reality on the ground in Ukraine in the near future. That's not really what sanctions are aimed at doing.

If sanctions were going to make Putin budge any time soon then he just wouldn't have invaded in the first place. It was essentially guaranteed that Russia would be hit with sanctions for invading Ukraine, and Putin surely knew that in advance. You don't budge for measures that you always knew were coming.

Sanctions aren't a foreign pool for making change happen overnight on the ground. They are a tool for putting pressure on the leadership of a country over a longer time period. The big question is the one hinted at by Tapper: how long does the West actually stick with the sanctions?

It's a sad reality. The positive side is that it means you can ignore some of the worry I'm seeing elsewhere online that sanctions have not reversed the invasion in a matter of days, meaning therefore they must be ineffective. It doesn't mean they're weak as sanctions go, or that Russia has some kind of "get out of sanctions free" card, this just isn't what sanctions are meant to achieve in the first place. The sanctions have been relatively tough and I expect them to get more severe in the coming days.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Putin waves nuclear sword [...]

It has been a long time since the threat of using nuclear weapons has been brandished so openly by a world leader, but [...] Putin has just done it, warning in a speech that he has the weapons available if anyone dares to use military means to try to stop Russia's takeover of Ukraine.

[...]

By merely suggesting a nuclear response, Putin put into play the disturbing possibility that the current fighting in Ukraine might eventually veer into an atomic confrontation between Russia and the United States.

Putin talks repeatedly about the humiliation of Russia after the Soviet collapse. By waving his nuclear sword, he echoed the bluster with which the Soviet Union had stared down the United States and earned, in his mind, respect.

After Putin's speech, Pentagon officials offered only a muted response to his implied threat to use nuclear weapons against any country that tried to intervene in Ukraine.'

https://apnews.com/a...f437c90d3894b18

If Trump withdraws US support, will France's missile shield (nouveau Maginot) be enough to stop Russia's nuclear arsenal?

Is France far enough away to be nuked without substantial risk to Russia from the fallout? Would it be most prudent to start by nuking the nukes?

I guess the safest thing to do might be to nuke the UK. Or perhaps just make a sufficiently credible threat. Maybe obliterate one city, then threaten to do London next.... #Blitz2.0

Of course in all seriousness I think---and hope---that Putin following through on these threats (or expanding them to blackmail the nations of Europe into becoming Putin's vassals) is extremely unlikely... still, weighted by the cost, it seems prudent to consider. (IDK how large or how deep the underground cities would have to be... or whether shorter stature really would be an advantage for efficient use of space (and tunnels...).)

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 26 February 2022 - 02:36 PM

[Puck]

Here's some defiant Ukrainian humour for your entertainment. Ukraine's State Road Agency is asking people to remove road signs, especially those with locations names and distances. The image they used to do that, voilá:



"Get fucked."
"Get fucked this way, too."
"Fuck off back to Russia."

This post has been edited by Puck: 26 February 2022 - 05:21 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

Puck, on 26 February 2022 - 05:20 PM, said:

Here's some defiant Ukrainian humour for your entertainment. Ukraine's State Road Agency is asking people to remove road signs, especially those with locations names and distances. The image they used to do that, voilá:



"Get fucked."
"Get fucked this way, too."
"Fuck off back to Russia."

That is amazing.

[QuickTidal]

The stories I’m hearing…

The Ghost Of Kyiv taking out Russians in the skies with a MiG 29.
The Ukranian Reaper who has taken out 20 Russian soldiers all on his own.
Zelensky “I need anti-tank ammo, not a ride” rebuke to the US offer to get him out
The 13 Bastards of Snake Island telling a Russian warship to fuck off
The old woman who gave the Russian solider a sunflower seed to keep in his pocket so when his corpse litters the ground a sunflower will grow there.

Holy shit, Ukraine makes their legendary heroes fast.

[champ]

QuickTidal, on 26 February 2022 - 08:20 PM, said:

The stories I’m hearing…

The Ghost Of Kyiv taking out Russians in the skies with a MiG 29.
The Ukranian Reaper who has taken out 20 Russian soldiers all on his own.
Zelensky “I need anti-tank ammo, not a ride” rebuke to the US offer to get him out
The 13 Bastards of Snake Island telling a Russian warship to fuck off
The old woman who gave the Russian solider a sunflower seed to keep in his pocket so when his corpse litters the ground a sunflower will grow there.

Holy shit, Ukraine makes their legendary heroes fast.

There's already Ghost of Kyiv and Russian warship go fuck yourself t-shirts, a site was selling them and donating proceeds to Ukraine charities but I lost the link.


The president is a legend too.


Don't think Russia expected such resistance, the NATO weapon drops and intel to go with people fighting for their country are proving a tough nut to crack... fuck Putin.

[Puck]

Ah, shit, Kharkiv is being bombed right now. Saving opressed Russians, my ass. Kharkiv is majority Russian-speaking and ethnically Russian.

[Puck]

Putin sent kids, freaking kids, into Ukraine. Conscripts that were MADE to ILLEGALLY, by Russian law, sign documents allowing the Russian army to send them into combat after as little as ONE MONTH of training.

Also, oil depot near Kyiv and gas pipeline near Kharkiv have been bombed. Gas pipeline just exploded looking like some mini nuke.

Fuck this war criminal who is killing both his OWN people, children, as well as the people he was proclaiming to come to set free.

This post has been edited by Puck: 27 February 2022 - 12:01 AM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Ukraine suddenly found itself independent and the third-largest nuclear power in the world. Thousands of nuclear arms had been stationed on its soil [...] and they were still there. [...] Ukraine made the decision to denuclearize completely. In exchange, it would get a security guarantee from the U.S., the U.K. and Russia, known as the Budapest Memorandum.

[...] they were told at the time that the United States [...] and Great Britain[...] take their political commitments really seriously. This is a document signed at the highest level by the heads of state.

[...] There certainly is a good measure of regret[...] the narrative in Ukraine publicly is we had the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal. We gave it up for this signed piece of paper. And look what happened. And it really doesn't look good [...] for the international nonproliferation regime because if you have a country that disarms and then becomes a target of such a threat and a victim of such a threat at the hands of a nuclear-armed country, it just sends a really wrong signal to other countries that might want to pursue nuclear weapons.'

https://www.npr.org/...ve-up-its-nukes


'Kyiv civilians [...] mix Molotov cocktails — to fight Russian attack on Ukraine

[...] crumbled chunks of Styrofoam [...] coaxing the white pebbles from her hand inside bottles of sangria mix, Beefeater gin, and beer and wine laid out in front of her.

[...] carefully poured fuel and oil into a funnel, oozing the mix into the bottles. Next to them, a man dipped the wicks — shredded pieces of tablecloths and curtains — before wrapping the heads with bits of twine.

[...] spike in Molotov cocktail production came one day after the Ukrainian Defense Ministry tweeted to "make Molotov cocktails and take down the occupier," even as a TV channel broadcast instructions on how to do so.

[...] Defense Ministry issued a tough-love-toned list of other ways citizens could help. "Block roads, cut down trees, stretch nets from gates, whatever way suits you." Excavator owners were urged to dig so the enemy couldn't pass.

[...] "If you know the enemy stopped in the forest, and you are 100% sure that it is the enemy, do not pity the forest, set it on fire … a new one will grow on the bones of the occupier!!!!"

While each action might have limited impact, taken together they could prove a powerful game-changer on the battlefield, said [...] chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point's Modern War Institute.

"In the urban terrain it doesn't matter how powerful a military you are… Any untrained individual can turn it into hell for the most trained individual," he said, adding that army doctrine dictates you need five attackers for each defender in a setting like Kyiv.'

https://www.latimes....lotov-cocktails

[Mentalist]

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.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 27 February 2022 - 03:23 AM