Russia, US, Ukraine, and the Future

[irontaino]

“They seem so like us."

They are 'civilised' and 'look like us':The Guardian.

Nothing like reporters throwing a bit of casual racism into their reporting.

You know, I used to think the reason for Western double standards were geopolitical games. But they might genuinely be that racist.

It's especially prevalent in Eastern European countries like Poland and Hungary. They're only slightly more subtle about it in the west.

I noticed in the initial confusion early in the invasion when videos and images were being circulated purported to be of Ukraine that actually turned out to be Syria or Afghanistan, people changed their tunes pretty much instantly. They went from empathy to trying to justify why the Afghans and Syrians were in their predicament.

It is different in Ukraine than in Afghanistan. That’s just a fact. And there’s nothing wrong with it. And I distinctly recall people reiterating that ad nauseam to explain why the US should gtfo and why the Afghans are too uncivilized to do democracy because they are “premodern savages” who deserve Taliban rule because of their nature.

Oof, someone is projecting hard.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Oof, someone is projecting hard.

You forgot the picture. Boilerplate accusations of racism and hypocrisy stopped being new and edgy years ago, as have the ivory tower journos who use them as filler.

I noticed in the initial confusion early in the invasion when videos and images were being circulated purported to be of Ukraine that actually turned out to be Syria or Afghanistan, people changed their tunes pretty much instantly. They went from empathy to trying to justify why the Afghans and Syrians were in their predicament.

Imagine reacting differently to completely different situations lmao. Mind blowing.

[Ludicus]

Misquoting Woody Allen. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about ... But Were Afraid to Ask.

Unexpected Friendships: Cooperation of Ukrainian Ultra-Nationalists with Russian and Pro-Kremlin Actors
Umland, Andreas; Tarasiuk, Taras
2021

Abstract: This descriptive analysis details and explains often paradoxical contacts between Russian and Russia-related actors, on the one side, and post-Soviet Ukrainian far-right parties such as Svoboda (Freedom), the National Corps, the Right Sector, and Bratstvo (Brotherhood), as well as of some other ultra-nationalist groups in Ukraine, on the other. The investigation also covers Ukrainian far right connections to Moscow-related Ukrainian oligarchs, the Yanukovych regime of 2010-2014, and other Kremlin-related actors beyond Russia's borders. It starts with a survey of Ukrainian ultra-nationalist parties and then details contacts of Ukrainian right-wing extremists with various Russian ultra-nationalist groups, pro-Russian actors in Ukraine, as well as with Kremlin-related actors in Russia.
It finally briefly examines the cooperation of Ukraine's far-right with non-Russian - mostly European Union - actors who have voiced pro-Putinist views or collaborated with Russia. The study uses primary and secondary sources in the Ukrainian, Russian, English, and German languages. These sources include press reports, party documents, interviews, previous analyses, and investigations by agencies such as Bellingcat. The introduction and conclusions provide some historical contextualization and political interpretation of this paradoxical aspect in the evolution of the Ukrainian far right.
Institution(s): Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies

This paper was commissioned by Viola von Cramon-Taubadel, Member of the European Parliament and First Vice-Chair of the EP’s EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Association Committee.

Full paper, Unexpected Friendships: Cooperation of Ukrainian Ultra
---
February 24 2022
The Intercept - Facebook Allows Praise of Ukraine's Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion If it fights Russian Invasion

FACEBOOK WILL TEMPORARILY allow its billions of users to praise the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi military unit previously banned from being freely discussed under the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, The Intercept has learned.
...In a tacit acknowledgement of the group’s ideology, the memo provides two examples of posts that would not be allowed under the new policy: “Goebbels, the Fuhrer and Azov, all are great models for national sacrifices and heroism” and “Well done Azov for protecting Ukraine and it’s white nationalist heritage.”

The Intercept -For Senate Dems Pushing Weapons for Ukraine, Neo-Nazis ...

Last month, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., introduced legislation to give Ukraine $500 million for arms purchases and impose what he’s called the “mother of all sanctions” on Russia if it invades.

But it makes no mention of reports to oversee whether U.S weapons go to white supremacists like the Azov Battalion, a unit in the Ukrainian National Guard with ties to the country’s far-right, ultranationalist National Corps party and Azov movement. Last year, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., called on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to label the Azov Battalion a foreign terrorist organization, saying it “uses the internet to recruit new members and then radicalizes them to use violence to pursue its white identity political agenda.”

The issue was not on Menendez’s radar Wednesday. “That’s a level of detail I’m not sure [about],” he told The Intercept when asked if his bill includes monitoring provisions.
Menendez is the Democrats’ most powerful foreign policymaker in the Senate, and his stance appears to reflect the dominant mood in Washington.
Last reporting shows that the U.S. doesn’t have sufficient procedures in place to track where its arms are going and prevent them from ending up with extremists. What’s known as the “Leahy vetting” process is supposed to certify whether foreign forces have committed “gross human rights violations” before greenlighting U.S. government support. But that proved ineffective in making sure that neo-Nazis in the Azov Battalion weren’t receiving U.S. training.
Congress has also passed measures, signed into law repeatedly since 2018, forbidding funds from going to arms and training for the Azov Battalion.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian-American researcher Oleksiy Kuzmenko reported in September that officers belonging to an informal right-wing group called Military Order Centuria, which has ties to the international Azov movement, have trained at a Western-backed military institution.
Menendez and Shaheen appeared unaware of past failures to enforce the law against funding the Azov Battalion.

February 11 2022
The Intercept Ukrainian Lobbyists Mounted Huge Campaign on U.S. in 2021

An analysis of FARA filings shows they contacted members of Congress and others over 10,000 times.
To put this extraordinary campaign into perspective, the Saudi lobby — known for being one of the largest foreign lobbies in D.C. — reported 2,834 contacts, barely a quarter of what Ukraine’s agents have done.
More specifically, the far-reaching campaign has been focused on stopping the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which Ukrainian officials argue is as much of a threat to their security as Russian troops. If completed, the pipeline would allow Russia to export natural gas directly to Germany and the rest of Europe, jeopardizing the billions Ukraine currently earns from transiting Russian gas to Europe.

... The Ukraine lobby amplifies the voices of those pushing for more aggressive U.S. responses to the current crisis, but Ukrainian interests are far from the only players in this behind-the-scenes lobbying battle. The U.S. defense sector, for example, spent more than $117 million on lobbying in 2021. With U.S. weapons manufacturers making billions in arms sales to Ukraine, their CEOs see the turmoil there as a good business opportunity.

[antaeus]

2000 is a high number for anything short of carpet bombing. But what I find the most surprising how little legitimate coverage we're getting, compared to Syria for example. The information war is just as strong as the military one.

The general rule of thumb is to take own military casualty reports as the minimum of the range, and enemy reports on my casualties as the maximum. The same rule is true in reverse for civilian casualties. It is logical when facing existential threats and the need to maintain morale in increasingly desperate scenarios, for this to occur. Ukraine needs the West to believe that there is a chance of survival, and that Russia is committing atrocities - both to maintain investment in their cause. Both are probably true to an extent. We are getting enough social media footage to be certain that Russian casualties are high, but we're getting nothing at all on Ukrainian casualties, which speaks to really effective and disciplined control over the media space on both sides - In the early days Russia had reason to downplay casualties entirely on both sides.

We have two races going on now, and casualty reports are integral to both.

The first race is for public opinion in Russia. At the moment Putin is keeping a lid on protests, but if they're losing even a quarter of the claimed 5-6000 troops, that's still 200 a day. If it is anywhere near that, it is still a shockingly high rate if it's at the high end, that's worse than Chechnya. And soon the funerals are going to start adding up to the point where they can't be hidden any more. The popular narrative will change within Russia from "we're doing a security operation in far away Donbas" to "I think we're doing a full scale war and a lot of people are dying" - which will come with questions about how narrative two came from one. This race will continue even if Ukraine's resistance collapses and an insurgency eventuates. It is a locked-in and ongoing cost.

The second race is that of the impact on civilians in Ukraine. Right now the world is shocked, but that's nothing compared to the pressure to act on world leaders once the perception that this is a war against ordinary people sets in. It's like Yugoslavia all over on steroids. The failings to prevent genocide in Bosnia gave significant free reign to Western Governments to act more decisively later on, especially once the Kosovo situation came up. Every shopping mall we see go up here will put increasing pressure on governments to act.

In both races, Putin is up against the clock. If the rumours of the invasion timeline are true, his planners accounted for 2 weeks to complete the operation. If the economic cost has already superseded their expectations (and again this is a locked in cost that won't go away with a cease fire), that clock is probably ticking faster now. Ukraine is playing the same game. Their clock is ticking too - Putin has to wrap things up fast, Ukraine have to hold out as long as possible. Their only victory pathway that gives them territorial integrity is if Putin's clock runs out.

So the politics around casualties are really important here...

[bitterhowl]

Oh, one more place in the internet where Russia already defeated.
Well I suppose you already have seen, but if not:


Also - have you had heard official casualties report from Russian defence ministry spokesman? 498 dead 1500 injured.
Ok, it's a lie. So you can easily provide footage with medical transport colums which are necessary to evacuate such casualties.

Finally - my heart is bleeding while I am looking at struggle of Slavic people smashing each other for the sake of Western world's profit. You're laughing among us, look at American users creative

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[antaeus]

Also - have you had heard official casualties report from Russian defence ministry spokesman? 498 dead 1500 injured.
Ok, it's a lie. So you can easily provide footage with medical transport colums which are necessary to evacuate such casualties.

For an indication of how heavy the fighting has been, Dutch group Oryx have been verifying and cataloguing vehicle losses reported online here.

They've accounted for more than 500 Russian and 150 Ukrainian separate vehicles lost in the last week. They have stated their accounting under-counts both sides, because they're only counting what can be verified from social media and news sources. They also note a discrepancy - that they're simply not seeing a lot of recording of Ukrainian losses, because it is largely Ukrainian civilians taking the photos, that doesn't mean they're not happening - they likely are in large numbers, they're just not making it to the internet to be noted.

Regarding your scepticism of the death count based on lack of seeing medical infrastructure? there has been quite a lot of reporting of videos of this, but Russia has a blackout and is censoring the war in general, so you're unlikely to get a full picture. You're welcome to label losses as lies, it can't yet be proven either way.

[Vanoi]

The Ukrainians have lost their first major city. Kherson in southern Ukraine has fallen.

[antaeus]

Looks to be the case... although it also looks like there is still some fighting in the suburbs.


In other news... British based aviation and transport lawyer Jan Nedvidek illustrates further evidence of the ticking clock at play for Russia...

Summary: because of a dependence on Boeing and Airbus, parts, servicing, payments, insurance, aircraft leases; air-based transport to, from, and within Russia has at best, 3 weeks of full operation left, before planes start being parked up. After that point air transport is going to witness a reduction to about 5-10% of current capacity on international routes, and even substantial reductions of domestic service.

At that point I'm assuming air transport will be rationed... if it isn't already starting to happen. For Russians who still have enough hard currency to fly, that means no funeral trips, not business trips, no vacations. It means limits on other things that go in the belly of aircraft... no more time sensitive fresh produce, limits on postal services and courier deliveries. Russia is a big country and very dependent on it's air transport network. The vast majority of things that usually go by plane, will go by train. China may mitigate some of this damage, but this will be mitigation that keeps the state functioning, not a substitute for what keeps the people functioning.

It is a tragedy what we're going to see unfold in Ukraine over the next week regarding the expected escalation of war. But there is also a tragedy of a different but equally unfathomable nature coming for ordinary Russians. It is both awe inspiring, and awful.

[Canterbury]

The overall question is what sensitivity there is in Russian society, both the elite and the public in general, to economic/financial/industrial damage, as well as relatively trivial cultural issues like sport.


I'm sceptical. Putin's regime has been defined by its ability to control and shape all layers of society, even in time of great adversity. Oligarchs are his employees, the people his servants. The protests are trivial, tiny in relation to Russia's massive population.


The idea that Russia's exclusion from the various functions of the western world will lead to significant problems in time of war is not based on any historical precedent. Quite the reverse. Adversity is giving Putin even greater control over Russian society, and the elimination of non-government controlled media has shown. Stalinism awaits.


Russia will murder Ukrainian citizens until Ukraine surrenders. Given that there is not even a hint of Western deterrence in this, let alone intervention, that Nato seems to be settled into an acceptance of Russian atrocities irrespective of their magnitude, it would seem that Ukraine could concede hundreds of thousands of dead and nobody will intervene, not Nato, not the Russian elite, and certainly not the Russian people.


Russia's only real problem is how much artillery ammunition it has. Russia have not used infantry/tech in a major way because that would expose their troops to Ukrainian weapons. Don't give the Ukrainians targets for Javelins etc, and they cant use them. The Russians will occupy a graveyard, not attack a fortress.

[bitterhowl]

Ukrainian soldiers?

[irontaino]

The overall question is what sensitivity there is in Russian society, both the elite and the public in general, to economic/financial/industrial damage, as well as relatively trivial cultural issues like sport.


I'm sceptical. Putin's regime has been defined by its ability to control and shape all layers of society, even in time of great adversity. Oligarchs are his employees, the people his servants. The protests are trivial, tiny in relation to Russia's massive population.


The idea that Russia's exclusion from the various functions of the western world will lead to significant problems in time of war is not based on any historical precedent. Quite the reverse. Adversity is giving Putin even greater control over Russian society, and the elimination of non-government controlled media has shown. Stalinism awaits.

We've seen with Iran and Cuba, for example, that sanctions and exclusions on deeply entrenched authoritarian governments only serve to even further entrench them.

[antaeus]

We've seen with Iran and Cuba, for example, that sanctions and exclusions on deeply entrenched authoritarian governments only serve to even further entrench them.

That's not entirely true. It was sanctions (including SWIFT) on Iran that forced them to come to terms with Obama's nuclear deal. It was also that sense of frustration at restrictions at the time that enabled a more progressive government to be elected.

However, the restrictions on Russia are an order of magnitude worse for everyday Russians. Iranian society is to an extent 'sanction resilient' - as in it has lived under a sanction regime for the best part of 40 years - and it's economy has evolved into that space. Russia is highly dependent on the international financial system. It is heavily integrated at all levels. As I illustrated in my previous post, the impacts of what is happening are only now becoming apparent... how does Russian society respond when their domestic air fleet is largely grounded because they can't get insurance on the planes, or because their planes are largely leased from foreign owners? What happens to every day businesses when their databases go offline because Oracle has closed shop? What happens to the potential literal millions of people when they show up for work and their foreign impacted company has locked the doors? How do you ship your freight to anywhere when the freight companies have all stopped leasing containers? What happens to everyone's jobs when the Moscow Exchange finally decides to bite the bullet and open after a week of closure?

This could entrench Putin's position. But because of the scale of the sanctions, and the promise of more, this is an unknown. The wealth that has or is in the process of fleeing Russia, is with no other word to describe, unprecedented. Literally double Russia's annual defence budget has vanished from the country in 5 days, and that's just from the billionaires. Putin likely banked on sanctions, but the decoupling process that has begun that is being fuelled by public pressure in the west goes far beyond sanctions. It is a systemic response. The world's businesses, schools, banks, NGOs etc etc are withdrawing from Russia of their own accord even when not affected by sanctions.

So yes, there is the potential for sanctions to entrench Putin - but it will largely depend on how well he convinces people their sharp move towards poverty is the fault of the West, and not him (body bags might impact on this) but this is coming so quick, and it will hit so hard, that we really don't know what will happen.

[PointOfViewGun]

Also - have you had heard official casualties report from Russian defence ministry spokesman? 498 dead 1500 injured.
Ok, it's a lie. So you can easily provide footage with medical transport colums which are necessary to evacuate such casualties.

At what exact number did Russia require medical transport columns to transport those casualties?

[sumskilz]

So you can easily provide footage with medical transport colums which are necessary to evacuate such casualties.

Here: Russia Evacuates Wounded Soldiers to Belarus as Its Casualties in Ukraine War Rise

Which matches eyewitness accounts from Belarus:

In Mazyr, Belarus, a string of seven bus-size Russian military ambulances — their windows blocked with gray shades — pulled up to the back entrance of the main hospital about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the border with Ukraine on Tuesday evening, ferrying casualties from the front.

The convoy was part of what residents and doctors said has in recent days become a steady flow of Russian soldiers wounded in fierce fighting around Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, where a Russian advance has stalled in the face of strong resistance.

A doctor at the hospital — which is in southern Belarus’s Gomel region, a main staging ground for Russia’s offensive — said injured Russian troops began arriving on Monday. “I hope they don’t jail me for sharing this,” she said.

Steady flow of injured Russian troops returning from front seen in Belarus

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Germany will deliver 2700 "Strela" Anti-Air-Missiles from former GDR army to Ukraine.

Russland greift Ukraine an - Aktuelles im Liveblog - ZDFheute

Strela:

9K35 Strela-10 - Wikipedia

[Canterbury]

So yes, there is the potential for sanctions to entrench Putin, but this is coming so quick, and it will hit so hard, that we really don't know what will happen.

While that's true, with the magnitude of Russia's integration exaggerating its vulnerability, in the short term, meaning until the end of the war, there is no evidence that the Russian state would not be able to absorb the damage, colossal though it might be.

For me, the real question is when will the sanctions be lifted after the end of the war? Putin will certainly be expecting the substance of them to be gone almost immediately, and that he will be able to hold Ukraine hostage to ensure that happens. I think that is a gross miscalculation. While there will be internal pressure for sanctions to be lifted, rationalised as being in defence of Ukraine, in fact a means of somehow reviving the failed political-economy of the last thirty years advocated by European elites, no major political figure in the West will be anything other than entirely hostile to Russia for the next decade.

This invasion has annihilated/converted the political class that supported Russia, even if there will be a bureaucratic class who remain. There will simply be nobody in power to deliver that release from sanctions and massive structural change. And the more Ukrainians that Russia murders, the longer those sanctions will last. Russia will be forced onto a completely different economic/financial/technological trajectory, one that will make either cause it to collapse yet again, or turn it into a client state of China.

Russia has declared war on the west with the invasion of Ukraine. It is effectively finished as a European country. For Russia, this war is a political/economic/financial/social/cultural Chernobyl.

[bitterhowl]

At what exact number did Russia require medical transport columns to transport those casualties?

It should be endless merry-go-round of helicopters there.

[Coughdrop addict]

I am still floored by just how slipshod the Russian invasion has been. If I had to guess it's a direct result of Putin's fear-based leadership.

Like many autocrats, Putin relies on fear to run his government. You do what he says and you do it well, or you will be imprisoned or shot. The problem with this style of leadership is that it encourages buck-passing and covering up problems instead of fixing them and possibly bringing them to a superior's attention. So, for instance, Putin is told that Russia has enough food reserves for the war when in fact food reserves are too low, leading to the embarrassing spectacle of hungry Russian troops having to loot stores.

This has likely been a problem in Putin's government for decades and we're only now becoming aware of it. And it will continue to be a problem as long as the only options he offers are hide your mistakes or die.

[Inkie]

There's been a lot of (warranted) denunciation of the right's drift towards Putinism. Here's a solid article concerning leftwing Russia apologists.

[Condottiere 40K]