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5 hours ago, Still said:

I just don't see what Putin's endgoal is with Ukraine, since occupying the whole nation would be a nightmare for them - they invaded with around 170,000 troops

I feel like the plan could be that soon Zelenskiy and his government will flee or Russia takes Kiev and arrests them. I think put in would rather them fleeing. 

 

But through occupation, instead of taking Ukraine into Russia, will place a pro Russian  puppet government in charge (maybe the return of viktor yanukovich?), claiming that that is the rightful government

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4 hours ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

A facebook friend posted this. There's a lot of fake news being spewed out there about all this. This article is about how to spot fake media.

 

https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2022/how-to-spot-video-and-photo-fakes-as-russia-invades-ukraine/

Hopefully this checking happens on both sides. 

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Siimo van der fietspad
4 hours ago, Phantasmal Fingers said:

@Katya89 what do you think Putin's long term goal is?

 

As far as I can tell, he wants to absorb the Ukraine into Russia and retake its ancient capital. But I don't see how he could possibly succeed in doing this. Not by being autocratic and dictatorial and certainly not now he's invaded - he's basically defeated himself on this one, I think. I'm not surprised the Ukranian president has likened current events to the Nazi invasion. As you have already said above, I don't think Putin will survive this. 

 

If he hadn't launched a full scale invasion perhaps Donbass and Luhansk could be have been annexed more or less peacefully, like the Crimea was? (Should the Crimea ever have been included in the Ukraine anyway?) But never mind about that now. 

 

I think NATO's continued expansion has been goading Putin for quite some time so, for me, the West does bear some responsibility for what's going on atm, but Putin still seems to be the main problem. He seems to have completely lost the plot and demonstrated how seriously delusional he is.

 

I've read an English translation of his declaration of war and, even allowing for the fact that it didn't strike me as being a very good translation - I got the impression it was a bit too 'word for word' - it seemed rambling and incoherent. Despite the fact that I'm not really a fan of an expansionist NATO and don't think very much of Western geopolitical hegemony and the way it is often enforced, I think the 'Empire of lies' Putin mentions in his speech is largely a projection of his own deluded mind. 

My understanding is that gas pipelines and, by extension, the export of fossil fuels in general, which are a major prop to the Russian economy, have something to do with all this too.  If Russia has control of Ukraine they have the existing pipelines running up to the EU borders without having to pay a transfer fee to a third country. (currently no Nord Stream 2 which would have accomplished this via a huge length under the Baltic sea). Given Russia is an oligarchy one imagines the pressure from billionaires who put him in power to increase their profits this way. Perhaps Putin also believes that keeping Europe dependant on Russian gas will be a strong card to play in minimising their response to the invasion.

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Phantasmal Fingers
1 minute ago, Siimo van der fietspad said:

My understanding is that gas pipelines and, by extension, the export of fossil fuels in general, which are a major prop to the Russian economy, have something to do with all this too.  If Russia has control of Ukraine they have the existing pipelines running up to the EU borders without having to pay a transfer fee to a third country. (currently no Nord Stream 2 which would have accomplished this via a huge length under the Baltic sea). Given Russia is an oligarchy one imagines the pressure from billionaires who put him in power to increase their profits this way. Perhaps Putin also believes that keeping Europe dependant on Russian gas will be a strong card to play in minimising their response to the invasion.

We're interlocked though, so it's not so simple. 25% of Rosneft is BP. A lot of the sanctions are a smokescreen. As usual, we have a vested interest on both sides.

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Siimo van der fietspad
5 minutes ago, Phantasmal Fingers said:

We're interlocked though, so it's not so simple. 25% of Rosneft is BP. A lot of the sanctions are a smokescreen. As usual, we have a vested interest on both sides.

That's what I was getting at in the last sentance. However deranged Putin appears making declarations of war he's got enough sense to know damn well that Europe needs to burn the dino juice his country exports and we won't do anything that would risk the lights going out. I see the price of road fuel has already rocketed up to more than during that happy week where people were punching each other over it and I had to get you guys to Oxford on

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7 hours ago, Kimmie. said:

 the goal is to find and take/get rid of the Ukraine government and instead install a government that will do what Kreml wants.

 

Of course it is.  Putin considers Ukraine to always have been part of Russia.  

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Of the many things on the geopolitical stage changing today, energy production is a huge part of it.


Stepping away from Ukraine directly, global energy supply is going to be heavily impacted. As reported, the Saudi-Russian connection has given unprecedented levels of control over worldwide fossil fuel markets. This is something that will cause very sharp global price increases. Also effected are things like fertilizers.

 

All of these things impact the costs of everything, not just gas. Food, transportation (shipping, so everything) can skyrocket soon - and we already coming out of a vulnerable economic position.

 

A side impact of this is that, since we have failed to build new energy infrastructure, and even if we rushed new nuclear and green power plants, it would take a decade for them to start producing, we will be almost forced to expand drilling and oil production domestically to supply ourselves and Europe. Every bit of the small amount of environmental progress we have made is likely going to be absolutely destroyed and pushed back. The Keystone XL Pipeline etc are entirely back on the table, effects and tribal rights be damned. The long term damage, assuming we survive war, is not something we can recover from.

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RoseGoesToYale
2 hours ago, Acing It said:

Hopefully this checking happens on both sides. 

Generally the major moderate news outlets are posting original footage. The problem is when people post old news photos/videos from previous armed conflicts, or even shots from video games, and claiming the footage is what's currently happening in Ukraine. And then it circulates through social media like wildfire. Basically, even if it was posted by someone you know, don't trust it... go straight to the news source.

 

I found out my friend's family are all on the western border, so they're safe for now.

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The funniest (as so far as any of this can be funny) is people using footage from games like Call of Duty - particularly of aerial strikes. This has been done in previous conflicts, but it is pretty pervasive today specifically.

 

 

Aside from that, can someone from, preferably, Germany give a rundown of how you are planning to deal with the energy crisis in near and long term?

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7 hours ago, Phantasmal Fingers said:

@Katya89 what do you think Putin's long term goal is?

 

I think, for today, it is pointless question, because tactics (short term goals) and strategy (long term goal) belongs to the rational realm, but invasion to Ukraine is clear insanity. What was Hitler's long term goal in the year 1944 or 1943? Even attack on the Soviet Union in the year 1941 was suicidal. So we can't analize it from the point of view of strategy and tactics, because we can't analize behaviour of  desperate people with acute psychosis in the framework of behaviour of rational agents.   

 

We can understand his behaviour after consideration of a lot of factors: 1) his poor health (mental and physical), 2) his complexes, 3) his hate of Ukraine, because it challenges his ambitions on the postsoviet space, 4) other factors (including his weird idea that he is lucky and God on his side, because he has special mission determined by God to restore Imerial christian Russia). All these factors are weird for the rational observer.  What would you do with person who is in acute psychosis and dangerous for people around him? Putin is a danger to my country and other countries.

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8 hours ago, Zagadka said:

Understanding the history here, Putin's speech about Ukraine is... utterly imperialistic.

 

"Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood."

...

"Russia assumed obligations to repay the entire Soviet debt in return for the newly independent states giving up part of their foreign assets. In 1994, such agreements were reached with Ukraine, but they were not ratified by Ukraine...

(Ukraine) preferred to act in such a way that in relations with Russia they had all the rights and advantages, but did not bear any obligations...

"From the very first steps they began to build their statehood on the denial of everything that unites us. They tried to distort the consciousness, the historical memory of millions of people, entire generations living in Ukraine."

 

Ukraine has centuries of occupation under the Russian Empire, and then Soviet Union. It is true that Ukraine has never had a tradition of genuine statehood - because they were occupied. Stating this as a reason Ukraine does not deserve genuine, independent statehood is abhorrent. Ukrainian culture has been defined by being a vassal of Russia, and identity shaped by being a sub-state trying to retain its own culture. When the Soviets took over, there was an ideal for a communal state, but we all know how the USSR ended up.

I mean, they struggled to this day to be referred to as "Ukraine" instead of "the Ukraine"... the word means "frontier" (there is nuance in translation about being more of "outskirts" or "[land to be] carve [out and settled]," and "frontier" in English serves both alright), and was used as the "backwater" (it is not) bread basket of the region.

 

 

"Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia, more precisely, Bolshevik, communist Russia. This process began immediately after the revolution of 1917...

"As a result of Bolshevik policy, Soviet Ukraine arose, which even today can with good reason be called 'Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's Ukraine'. He is its author and architect. This is fully confirmed by archive documents ... And now grateful descendants have demolished monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. This is what they call decommunisation. Do you want decommunisation? Well, that suits us just fine. But it is unnecessary, as they say, to stop halfway. We are ready to show you what real decommunisation means for Ukraine."

 

And he is doubling down on co-opting the Soviet identity and empire (without any of the pretenses to communism the USSR had).

Putin has poor understanind of history. Noone can create nations and countries, government can only determine borders of countries, but they can't create them. UK determined borders of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Irak, Afganistan and many other countries, but UK didn't creat India with it's culture, religion, people, custom.  Bolshevick government determined borders of  the Soviet Republics, and Russia after dissolution of the Soviet Union admitted that these borders are lawful. If we try to reconsider borders which were determined by France, UK, bolshevik government then chaos will ensue. Each change of the borders in the modern world should be based on negotiation and political process. 

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1 minute ago, Katya89 said:

Putin has poor understanind of history. Noone can create nations and countries, government can only determine borders of countries, but they can't create them. UK determined borders of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Irak, Afganistan and many other countries. So what? Bolshevick government determined borders of Soviet Republics, and Russia after dissolution of the Soviet Union admitted that this borders are lawful. If we try to reconsider borders which were determined by France, UK, bolshevik government then chaos will ensue. Each change of the borders should be based on negotiation and political process. 

Oh, the eternal pain of borders being decided by the empire in power at the time to fence in (and exploit) resources regardless of the cultures, ethnicities, and basic desires of the people living there, and have those borders persist for centuries out of sheer insistence of maintaining history "national identity."

 

Ukraine *is* divided in a very much east-west sense, on culture, language, and support of the Soviet Union, but many nations have similar conflicts (particularly those who were imperial subjects and had their relationship to their countrymen decided long ago by external powers).

 

Putin's really poor understanding of history may be more devastating in that Russia has a fairly bad track record of invasions, WWII aside.

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13 hours ago, Phantasmal Fingers said:

Despite the fact that I'm not really a fan of an expansionist NATO

There wasn't expansion of NATO there was escape of Eastern European countries to the West, and such escape is justified, especially in the light of recent events.

 

If Russia was democratic  and rich state  which respect human rights and it's neighbours then there wasn't such aspiration in Urkaine to join the NATO in the first place.

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12 hours ago, Siimo van der fietspad said:

That's what I was getting at in the last sentance. However deranged Putin appears making declarations of war he's got enough sense to know damn well that Europe needs to burn the dino juice his country exports and we won't do anything that would risk the lights going out. I see the price of road fuel has already rocketed up to more than during that happy week where people were punching each other over it and I had to get you guys to Oxford on

I went to a petrol station yesterday to wash the car. There were very long queues already. There was definitely some panic buying going on. 

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9 hours ago, Zagadka said:

Aside from that, can someone from, preferably, Germany give a rundown of how you are planning to deal with the energy crisis in near and long term?

This may be a further trigger to expand conversion to more 'in-house' sustainable sources I was thinking. I think that, however puny it feels, we all have to do our bit and not burn the candle both ends when it comes to energy. This doesn't mean freezing to death, but being sensible and less wasteful. 

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9 hours ago, Katya89 said:

his poor health (mental and physical)

Really? I can understand mental, if only from the position that no one can be in his position for that long and not be mentally affected, alone. 

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3 hours ago, Katya89 said:

There wasn't expansion of NATO there was escape of Eastern European countries to the West

And that's exactly where the Russian establishment takes the opposite view I think, either out of conviction or because it's attractive for them for a variety of power related/propaganda reasons. Western countries are not the enemy of the Russian people it's presented as by some and I'm sure that Russian people are not the enemy of 'the west' as it's presented as by some. I'm not saying that all of this can be sorted by 'hugging it out' but some people have a vested interest in not using common sense and some believe them. 

 

I think your post gets right to the centre of what is going in generally. 

Edited by Acing It
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27 minutes ago, Acing It said:

Really? I can understand mental, if only from the position that no one can be in his position for that long and not be mentally affected, alone. 

There are a lot of gossips about his health. Some his former KGB peers claim that he suffers from pedophilic disorder  (he was never very passioned about his wife and adult women) and schizoaffective disorder (it is mild form of schizophrenia) and it was known by KGB. I think it was usual practice for  KGB to recruit  people with some psychological anomalies in order to better controll them. When Putin became director of FSB he destroyed  arhives about his personality and health. Also you should understand the year 1999 when Yeltsin  was choosing his successor. He didn't trust to young prowestern liberals, because they were too independent, but Putin was loayl to Yeltsin and he could  perform any order. That's why Yeltsin felt that he could trust him regarding his safety after his resignation.

 

Regarding physical  health, there are some gossips that he suffers from  incurable cancer, and he feels that he has nothing to lose. 

 

Of course, Noone can confirm these gossips, maybe after  change of power  in Russia  and his death his former physicans will disclosure information regarding his mental and physical health. 

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27 minutes ago, Acing It said:

And that's exactly where the Russian establishment takes the opposite view I think, either out of conviction or because it's attractive for them for a variety of power related/propaganda reasons. Western countries are not the enemy of the Russian people it's presented as by some and I'm sure that Russian people are not the enemy of 'the west' as it's presented as by some. I'm not saying that all of this can be sorted by 'hugging it out' but some people have a vested interest in not using common sense and some believe them. 

 

I think your post gets right to the centre of what is going in generally. 

I think that Russia is intrinsically European country and we will enentually join to European and Western community after big reforms and  repentance  about our mistakes kind of like Germany did. 

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11 minutes ago, Katya89 said:

I think that Russia is intrinsically European country and we will enentually join to European and Western community

Let's hope this happens, or that at least they will stop seeing other European countries as 'the enemy'. 

 

edit: it's great to have you here to offer a different perspective by the way. I wish more people from the affected regions would contribute (politely). 

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Unleash the Echidnas

It's a different topic but I thought it might be worth mentioning SaveEcoBot aggregates and maps some Ukrainian (and Belarussian) environmental sensors, including powerplant γ-radiation networks, and therefore has the actual data being reported on from Chornobyl. Some monitors have unchanged levels, some show an order of magnitude increase. Sharp increases include three of the four monitors adjacent to Reactor 4 but some of the others in the area show larger relative increases. SNRIU's remarks are terse.

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President Zelensky has recently said that, Ukraine has been abandoned by its allies; left to fight Russia alone. That the response from the West is disappointing.

 

I'm Polish. I see what's happening and can't help but see an obvious parallel to what took place in September 1939.

 

EU, US and their close partners have imposed sanctions. As serious as they may seem to someone versed in economy, these won't keep Ukraine from bleeding out. Putin's imperialism doesn't care about trade relations with the West. Putin sees independent nation of Ukraine as a personal affront. There can only be one state in the eastern Europe. One nation, with leader driven by passionarnost, made to achieve greatness. No longer a victim of the rotten West, lost in its hedonism and desire to contain what they fear. 

 

This is not an ideology you can stop by interrupting the flow of money. This is a mindset of a conqueror, whose only goal is to humiliate and beat to submission.

 

There's only one language that a bully like that understands, and it's the language of force.

 

I wish my country would help you, Ukraine. Join you in your fight against the horrifying, neofascist imperialism you're experiencing. The small people of Europe, pawns on the global chessboard, making a stand together. Our right to exist and self govern, vs delusional ambitions of a Tsar wannabe. But my country is weak and afraid. Its defense plan boils down to hiding behind Uncle Sam. We don't have a real army and never made preparations for what's happening now, since like all gullible people in the West, we believed in some modicum of rationality within Russian government, and untouchable sanctity of peace in Europe.

 

We can only watch, how a peaceful nation in our neighbourhood gets destroyed, just because they wanted to take their own path.

 

We have failed you, Ukraine.

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Phantasmal Fingers
7 hours ago, Katya89 said:

There wasn't expansion of NATO there was escape of Eastern European countries to the West, and such escape is justified, especially in the light of recent events.

I agree that countries in Eastern Europe - Poland and Hungary and so on - escaped from what was basically Russian imperialism. And good for them! But I think the fact that membership of NATO then effectively became the security vetting for membership of the EU was very unfortunate. I can see why Putin sees this as an encroaching threat to Russia from NATO. Whilst I also understand that Ukraine might want to join NATO (in order to escape from Russian dominance the prospect of being re-colonised) I think that NATO's refusal to set a stop to its expansion might potentially push things towards a situation in which two large power blocks end up confronting each other, rather in the manner that Orwell imagined in Nineteen Eighty Four. So then, rather than two super-powers in a stand-off during the Cold War, we might conceivably end up with two opposing power blocks (NATO vs Russia-China and its allies) confronting each other in another stand-off that could then deteriorate into another Cold War. This scenario has, I think, been made much more likely by NATO's refusal not to guarantee its further expansion into areas that were historically Russian. So effectively NATO has been saying to Putin, "our borders are not set firmly anywhere - we can expand them whenever we like - but your borders are finite and you must accept them as they now are and never expand them." I can see why Putin objects to this. But obviously that doesn't mean to say that I condone what Putin is doing now.

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Whether it is aggressive NATO expansion, Putin sees it as NATO expansion, or something Putin can use to sell to the people of Russia that an outside threat is coming depends on perspective (and what you want to see).

 

NATO is, however, expanding, and this is the result - something we knew and avoided as the USSR collapsed.

 

Whether we could have prevented this by taking Ukraine joining NATO off the table or not is entirely questionable and, possibly, doubtful, but the perception of it remains something that Putin and, now, China, Iran, and other states are using to justify the invasion.

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48 minutes ago, Phantasmal Fingers said:

(NATO vs Russia-China and its allies) confronting each other in another stand-off that could then deteriorate into another Cold War

I don't believe that China will be Russia's ally. They are too different countries. USSR and China even couldn't be friends when they were governed by the same party (communists).  I think that there is big strategic game between USA (and the West) and China, and Russia is an object of their strategic calculations and struggles and they fight  with each other over  the influence in Russia. Russia government on the other hand can't paticipate in such strategic games and use  desperate malicious tactics while threatening nuclear war, that tactics is used due to weakness, desperation and strategic blindness. Also Russian government is infiltrated by US and Chinese agents, but I am not sure, I don't have access to the top secret documents.  :) I can't otherwise understand such strategic blindness of  establishment  of my country.  Russia doesn't have strategy of it's development at all.

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What China could do (and I think possible/likely) is back Russia economically, with open trade while they face virtually worldwide sanctions, while not forming a formal political or military alliance.

 

Economics is as much a battlefield as warfare or politics. It always has been, but the international monetary community and globalism have made it its own branch, where multinational corporations and investments spanning across countries that can be hostile to each other act independently of the state interests, or actually drive the state interests.

 

Nations - specifically, America - can not act in their interests without consulting (or being prodded) by the companies and markets.

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Siimo van der fietspad
5 hours ago, Unleash the Echidnas said:

It's a different topic but I thought it might be worth mentioning SaveEcoBot aggregates and maps some Ukrainian (and Belarussian) environmental sensors, including powerplant γ-radiation networks, and therefore has the actual data being reported on from Chornobyl. Some monitors have unchanged levels, some show an order of magnitude increase. Sharp increases include three of the four monitors adjacent to Reactor 4 but some of the others in the area show larger relative increases. SNRIU's remarks are terse.

When I read that 'Russian forces have taken Chenobyl' my first thought was 'Is Putin deranged enough that he might actually use the threat of causing a nuclear incident by bombing the site?' Or is that a bit too James Bond?

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Regarding sanctions, it appears that Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Cyprus are blocking removing Russia from SWIFT - likely due to economic ties that would significantly damage their economies.

 

Russia has previously stated that SWIFT sanctions would be seen as a declaration of war.

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A bit more on the situation in Russia:

 

- The Russian markets crashed almost 50% (obviously, markets change rapidly and are very complex - not representing the economy as a whole - so an exact number is hard to say, but it is around 45%). The ruble is at a historical low (versus the US dollar).

 

- Cash availability for Russians is low, with the obvious runs on ATMs and hording.

 

- Russia itself has about a year of reserves, if cut off entirely

 

- Polls of Russians show a split of support for the war, with far less unity than we saw with Georgia or Crimea, and a far louder and larger anti-war movement (which is being cracked down upon by the state, with thousands of arrests reported).

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