Русский корабль - иди нахуй

[MillerEP 30455]

 

[Rimbo 25936]

https://snyder.substack.com/p/how-does-the-russo-ukrainian-war?utm_campaign=auto_share

Quote

At first, no one could imagine that the Russo-Ukrainian war could begin. And yet it began. And now, no one can imagine how it will end. And yet end it will. 

Spoiler

War is ultimately about politics.  That Ukraine is winning on the battlefield matters because Ukraine is exerting pressure on Russian politics.  Tyrants such as Putin exert a certain fascination, because they give the impression that they can do what they like.  This is not true, of course; and their regimes are deceptively brittle.  The war ends when Ukrainian military victories alter Russian political realities, a process which I believe has begun.

The Ukrainians, let's face it, have turned out to be stunningly good warriors.  They have carried out a series of defensive and now offensive operations that one would like to call "textbook," but the truth is that those textbooks have not yet been written; and when they are written, the Ukrainian campaign will provide the examples.  The have done so with admirable calm and sang-froid, even as their enemy perpetrates horrible crimes and openly campaigns for their destruction as a nation.

Right now, though, we have a certain difficulty seeing how Ukraine gets to victory, even as the Ukrainians advance.  This is because many of our imaginations are trapped by a single and rather unlikely variant of how the war ends: with a nuclear detonation.  I think we are drawn to this scenario, in part, because we seem to lack other variants, and it feels like an ending. 

Using the mushroom cloud for narrative closure, though, generates anxiety and hinders clear thinking.  Focusing on that scenario rather than on the more probable ones prevents us from seeing what is actually happening, and from preparing for the more likely possible futures.  Indeed, we should never lose sight of how much a Ukrainian victory will improve the world we live in.

But how do we get there?  The war could end in a number of ways.  Here I would like to suggest just one plausible scenario that could emerge in the next few weeks and months.  Of course there are others.  It is important, though, to start directing our thoughts towards some of the more probable variants.  The scenario that I will propose here is that a Russian conventional defeat in Ukraine is merging imperceptibly into a Russian power struggle, which in turn will require a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine. This is, historically speaking, a very familiar chain of events.

Before I lay this out, we will first have to clear away the nuclear static.  Speaking of nuclear war in a broad, general way, we imagine that the Russo-Ukrainian War is all about us.  We feel like the victims.  We talk about our fears and anxieties.  We write click-bait headlines about the end of the world.  But this war is almost certainly not going to end with an exchange of nuclear weapons.  States with nuclear weapons have been fighting and losing wars since 1945, without using them.  Nuclear powers lose humiliating wars in places like Vietnam and Afghanistan and do not use nuclear weapons.

To be sure, there is a certain temptation to concede mentally to nuclear blackmail.  Once the subject of nuclear war is raised, it seems overwhelmingly important, and we become depressed and obsessed.  That is just where Putin is trying to lead us with his vague allusions to nuclear weapons.  Once we take his cue, we imagine threats that Russia is not actually making.  We start talking about a Ukrainian surrender, just to relieve the psychological pressure we feel. 

This, though, is doing Putin's work for him, bailing him out of a disaster of his own creation.  He is losing the conventional war that he started.  His hope is that references to nuclear weapons will deter the democracies from delivering weapons to Ukraine, and buy him enough time to get Russian reserves to the battlefield to slow the Ukrainian offensive.  He's probably wrong that this would work; but the rhetorical escalation is one of the few plays that he has left. 

As I'll explain in a moment, giving in to nuclear blackmail won't end the conventional war in Ukraine.  It would, however, make future nuclear war much more likely.  Making concessions to a nuclear blackmailer teachers him that this sort of threat will get him what he wants, which guarantees further crisis scenarios down the line.  It teaches other dictators, future potential blackmailers, that all they need is a nuclear weapon and some bluster to get what they want, which means more nuclear confrontations.  It tends to convince everyone that the only way to defend themselves is to build nuclear weapons, which means global nuclear proliferation. 

Insofar as there is some kind of nuclear threat, it is directed not against us, but against the Ukrainians.  They have been resisting nuclear blackmail for seven months; and if they can do it, surely we can too.  When prominent Russian political figures such as Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov talk about nuclear use, they mean in Ukraine.  But this is also not how the war is going to end.  Kadyrov also claims that he is sending his teenage sons to fight in Ukraine.  So that they can be irradiated by Russian nuclear weapons? 

Russia claims to be mobilizing hundreds of thousands of new troops.  This is not going at all well, but even so: would Putin really take the political risk of a large-scale mobilization, send the Russian boys to Ukraine, and then detonate nuclear weapons nearby?  Morale is a serious problem already.  It appears that more than half a million Russian men have fled the country rather than be sent to Ukraine.  It would not help the situation if Russians thought that they were being mobilized to a zone where nuclear weapons would be detonated.  They will get no appropriate protective gear.  Many mobilized soldiers lack the appropriate gear for a conventional war.  

Russia has just declared that parts of eastern and southern Ukraine are Russia.  This is of course ridiculous.  But would Moscow really use nuclear weapons on lands that it claims are Russian, killing or irradiating the people it claims are Russian citizens, civilians and soldiers alike?  It's not impossible.  But it's very unlikely. 

And even if it happened, it wouldn't end the war, or at least not with a Russian victory.  I have been reasoning thus far without even mentioning deterrence: the anticipation that use of a nuclear weapon would trigger powerful responses from other countries.  The Americans have been given months to think about this, and I would imagine that their response to nuclear use by Russia has been calculated to be disabling for the Russian armed forces and humiliating for Putin personally.  Another more indirect form of deterrence is the sure knowledge that the use of a nuclear weapon would lose Putin and Russia support around the world.

I also wonder whether Russia would take the risk of bringing nuclear weapons into or even near Ukraine, given Ukraine’s accurate long-range artillery, Russia's leaky logistics, and the ability of the Ukrainians to get hold of weapons systems the Russians have brought into their country.  It is hard to overstate the difficulty the Russians have in to keeping hold of their own stuff.  Sure, the Russians might use a missile instead; but some of their missiles fall to earth and more are shot down.  Russian planes tend to crash and to get shot down, to the point that Russian sorties are rare -- and attract negative attention.

Assuming that Russia did want to detonate a small nuclear weapon in Ukraine and succeeded in doing so, despite all of this, this would make no decisive military difference.  There are no big clusters of Ukrainian soldiers or equipment to hit, since Ukraine fights in a very decentralized way.  If there were a detonation, Ukrainians would keep fighting.  They have been saying so for months, and there is no reason to doubt them.

There is also the problem of motive.  Putin wants us to sympathize with his situation, which is of course a highly suspect move in itself.  But is what he says even credible?  We say that "Putin is backed to the wall.  What will he do?"  That is how we get ourselves talking about nuclear weapons: Putin gets us into what we are to supposed to believe is his own psychological space. But this is all just feeling.  It is not really a motive.

If sheer emotion resulting from defeat was going to motivate nuclear use, it would already have happened, and it hasn't.  Little can be more humiliating than the Russian defeat at Kyiv, a month into the war.  The collapse in Kharkiv region last month was also a shock.  As I write, the Ukrainians are making significant gains in regions that Putin just claimed would be Russia forever in a giant televised ceremony; the official Russian response has been to say that their borders are not defined. The Russian reaction to superior force has been to retreat.

So let us take a harder look at Putin's position.  The Russian armed forces are not "backed against a wall" in Ukraine: they are safe if they retreat back to Russia.  The "wall" metaphor is also not really helpful in seeing where Putin stands.  It is more like the furniture has been moved around him, and he will have to get his bearings again.

What he has done in Ukraine has changed his position in Moscow, and for the worse.  It does not follow from that, though, they he "must" win the war in Ukraine, whatever that means ("can" comes logically before "must").  Holding on to power in Moscow is what matters, and that does not necessarily mean exposing himself to further risk in Ukraine.  Once (and if) Putin understands that the war is lost, he will adjust his thinking about his position at home.

Through the summer, that position was simpler.  Until very recently, probably until he made the speech announcing mobilization in September, he could simply have declared victory on mass media, and most Russians would have been content.  Now, however, he has brought his senseless war to the point where even the Russian information space is beginning to crack.  Russians are anxious about the war now, thanks to mobilization (as opinion polls show).  And now their television propagandists are admitting that Russian troops are retreating.  So unlike the first half-year of the war, Putin cannot just claim that all is well and be done with it.  He has to do something else. 

The earth has moved under Putin's feet.  His political career has been based on using controlled media to transform foreign policy into soothing spectacle.  In other words: regime survival has depended upon two premises: what happens on television is more important than what happens in reality; and what happens abroad is more important than what happens at home.  It seems to me that these premises no longer hold.  With mobilization, the distinction between at home and abroad has been broken; with lost battles, the distinction between television and reality has been weakened.  Reality is starting to matter more than television, and Russia will start to matter more than Ukraine.

 

 

 

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There is a cleft both in elite and public opinion in Russia, and it is now becoming visible on television.  Some people think that the war is a holy cause and can be won if heads roll, leadership behaves honorably, and more men and materiel are sent to the front.  Among them are the military bloggers who are actually at the front, and whose voices are becoming more mainstream.  This is a trap for Putin, since he is already sending everything that he can.  Those voices make him look weak.  Other people think that the war was a mistake.  These voices will make him look foolish.  This is just the most basic of a number of contradictory positions that Putin now faces, from an exposed and weakened position.

If a war abroad is weakening your position, and if that war cannot be won, it is best to end it today rather than tomorrow.  I would suspect that Putin does not yet see this.  He has, however, come far enough to understood that he must act in the real world, though thus far his choices have not been good ones. 

Mobilization was the worst of both worlds: big enough to alienate the population, too small and above all too late to make a difference before winter.  It was probably the result of a compromise, which shows us that Putin is not ruling alone.  Putin is trying to command the troops in Ukraine.  His failures open him up to criticism (indirect, so far).  But Putin seems to be stuck: just ending the war now, without the the subject changing, would strengthen some of his critics.  But now that mobilization has already been tried, he has few means of applying greater force.  So how does the subject change? 

It is changing on its own. Putin is now trapped by an event that was supposed to be televisual and about a faraway place, but which has taken on an immediate political form inside Russia.  Two prominent Russian political figures, Ramzan Kadyrov and Yevgeny Prigozhin, have criticized the Russian high command quite brutally.  Given that everyone knows that Putin is doing the actual commanding, this has to be divisive.  The Kremlin responded to Kadyrov directly, and army propaganda has been showing a criticized commander with his troops in the field.

 

 

Recruitment poster for Wagner, with Prigozhin portrayed as the great Russian Leader. The slogan on the death’s head patch is “Death is our business. Business is good.” One of the Wagner detachments is openly fascist.

By what I take to be no coincidence, both Kadyrov and Prigozhin control something like a private armed force.  Kadyrov, the de facto dictator of Russia's Chechnya region, has his own militia.  It was deployed to Ukraine, where it seemed to specialize in terrorizing civilians and instagramming itself.  After pushing for mobilization in Russia last month, Kadyrov then announced that no one from Chechnya would be mobilized.  One might conclude that he is saving his men for something else. 

Prigozhin is the leader of the murky mercenary entity Wagner, and has been making himself more visible in that capacity.  (He is also responsible for the Internet Research Agency, which was one of the actors in the hybrid war against Ukraine in 2014 and the cyberwars against Britain and the United States in 2016.)  Wagner has been involved in a number of attempts at regime change, including blood purges of the Russian puppet governments in Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and the attempts to assassinate Volodymyr Zelens'kyi at the beginning of the war.  These were at Putin's orders, no doubt.  But it is an unnerving skill set.

Right now Wagner is leading the daily Russian attempts at offensives in the Bakhmut area of Donetsk region, which are not actually going anywhere.  Wagner does not seem to be very active where the Ukrainians are advancing, which is rather more important.  Yesterday Gulagu.net reported that a Wagner fighter shot a Russian army officer, which would seem to indicate that all is not well on that part of the front.  Is it a stretch to suppose that Prigozhin is sparing whatever valuable men and material he has left?  He has been openly recruiting Russian prisoners to fight for Wagner in Ukraine; I would venture the supposition that he is sending them to die and keeping back the men and equipment who might have a future in some other endeavor. 

Prigozhin and Kadyrov are calling for is an intensification of the war, and mocking the Russian high command in the most aggressive possible tone, but meanwhile they seem to be protecting their own men.  That too seems like a trap.  By criticizing the way the war is fought, they weaken Putin's informational control; by forcing him to take responsibility even as they will not do so, they expose his position further.  They are telling him to win a war that they do not, themselves, seem to be trying to win.

In the overall logic that I am describing, rivals would seek to conserve whatever fighting forces they have, either to protect their own personal interests during an unpredictable time, or to make a play for Moscow.  If this is indeed the present situation, it will soon seem foolish for everyone involved to have armed forces located in distant Ukraine, or, for that matter, to get them killed there day after day.  Then comes a tipping point. Once some people realize that other people are holding back their men, it will seem senseless to expend (or alienate) one's own. 

At a certain moment, this logic applies to the Russian army itself.  As Lawrence Freedman has pointed out, if the army wants to have a role in Russian politics or prestige in Russian society, its commanders have an incentive to pull back while they still have units to command.  And if Putin himself wants to remain in power, neither a discredited nor a demoralized army is in his interest. 

Mobilization itself starts to look like a spear pointed the wrong way: is there a point in sending thousands of unprepared and underequipped men into what they increasingly know is doom?  Putin's presupposition, of course, is that mobilized soldiers will either die or win; but if they flee instead, they become a dangerous group, perhaps ready for another leader.  

And so we can see a plausible scenario for how this war ends.  War is a form of politics, and the Russian regime is altered by defeat.  As Ukraine continues to win battles, one reversal is accompanied by another: the televisual yields to the real, and the Ukrainian campaign yields to a struggle for power in Russia.  In such a struggle, it makes no sense to have armed allies far away in Ukraine who might be more usefully deployed in Russia: not necessarily in an armed conflict, although this cannot be ruled out entirely, but to deter others and protect oneself.  For all of the actors concerned, it might be bad to lose in Ukraine, but it is worse to lose in Russia.

The logic of the situation favors he who realizes this most quickly, and is able to control and redeploy.  Once the cascade begins, it quickly makes no sense for anyone to have any Russian forces in Ukraine at all.  Again, from this it does not necessarily follow that there will be armed clashes in Russia: it is just that, as the instability created by the war in Ukraine comes home, Russian leaders who wish to gain from that instability, or protect themselves from it, will want their power centers close to Moscow.  And this, of course, would be a very good thing, for Ukraine and for the world.

If this is what is coming, Putin will need no excuse to pull out from Ukraine, since he will be doing so for his own political survival.  For all of his personal attachment to his odd ideas about Ukraine, I take it that he is more attached to power.  If the scenario I describe here unfolds, we don't have to worry about the kinds of things we tend to worry about, like how Putin is feeling about the war, and whether Russians will be upset about losing.  During an internal struggle for power in Russia, Putin and other Russians will have other things on their minds, and the war will give way to those more pressing concerns.  Sometimes you change the subject, and sometimes the subject changes you.

Of course, all of this remains very hard to predict, especially at any level of detail. Other outcomes are entirely possible. But the line of development I discuss here is not only far better, but also far more likely, than the doomsday scenarios we fear. It is thus worth considering, and worth preparing for.

 

Edited October 6, 2022 by Rimbo
article paste failed the first time

[MillerEP 30455]

 

 

[MillerEP 30455]

 

[Teddyballgame 441]

2 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

doing God's work ....

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Anyone  that can watch this video and think Ukraine should capulate anything they don’t agree too is a fucking coward  

[Teddyballgame 441]

I dont know how quoting Putts post got so screwed up but my point was, Anyone  that can watch this video (82 year old laying in the mud) and think Ukraine should capulate anything they don’t agree to,  is a fucking coward  

[atomheartbevo 89670]

Internal power struggle in the government/among the oligarchs happening as we speak?

 

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1577780691626037248

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[MillerEP 30455]

Site's gone wonky, I'll wait and post later.

Edited October 5, 2022 by MillerEP

[atomheartbevo 89670]

If that doesn’t come through 

It definitely seems that there is a power struggle going hot within the Russian govt/elite right now, centered on Sergei Shoigu, the minister of defence, and Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Wagner Group.

—-

Interestingly, earlier today in Moscow police detained an employee of Prigozhin's media group Patriot Aleksey Slobodenyuk who runs a network of telegram channels known for attacking Shoigu, Volodin and others. So a hot war among Russia's elite is very much a reality at this point

——

In an weird twist this guy, whose name I think now can be revealed (Sergey Surkov) drops with yet another complaints and allegations against their commanders and organizers of the Russian mobilization. Says they're "somewhere in Belgorod region".

The video was posted on and being reposted by pro-Wagner channels, which matches Prigozhin's "Fire Shojgu" narrative (https://t.me/rsotmdivision/1596…). Also some Wagner patches are visible on it. Nearly all "poor mobiks" on the video wear balaclavas

https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1577778132173594631

https://twitter.com/kromark/status/1577753851544977411

But this could also come into play

[atomheartbevo 89670]

From wartranslated

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1577769972515934208

Interesting opinion by Russian reporter Kotenok on Ukrainians implementing Western intelligence which uses located signals of Russian forces and equipment to create online interactive maps.

[Gravy Train 974]

Related, following article was just revised and is buried within a reply-thread:

https://snyder.substack.com/p/how-does-the-russo-ukrainian-war?utm_campaign=auto_share

Quote

By what I take to be no coincidence, both Kadyrov and Prigozhin control something like a private armed force. Kadyrov, the de facto dictator of Russia's Chechnya region, has his own militia. It was deployed to Ukraine, where it seemed to specialize in terrorizing civilians and instagramming itself. After pushing for mobilization in Russia last month, Kadyrov then announced that no one from Chechnya would be mobilized. One might conclude that he is saving his men for something else.

 

Prigozhin is the leader of the murky mercenary entity Wagner, and has been making himself more visible in that capacity. (He is also responsible for the Internet Research Agency, which was one of the actors in the hybrid war against Ukraine in 2014 and the cyberwars against Britain and the United States in 2016.) Wagner has been involved in a number of attempts at regime change, including blood purges of the Russian puppet governments in Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and the attempts to assassinate Volodymyr Zelens'kyi at the beginning of the war. These were at Putin's orders, no doubt. But it is an unnerving skill set.

 

Right now Wagner is leading the daily Russian attempts at offensives in the Bakhmut area of Donetsk region, which are not actually going anywhere. Wagner does not seem to be very active where the Ukrainians are advancing, which is rather more important. Yesterday Gulagu.net reported that a Wagner fighter shot a Russian army officer, which would seem to indicate that all is not well on that part of the front. Is it a stretch to suppose that Prigozhin is sparing whatever valuable men and material he has left? He has been openly recruiting Russian prisoners to fight for Wagner in Ukraine; I would venture the supposition that he is sending them to die and keeping back the men and equipment who might have a future in some other endeavor.

 

Prigozhin and Kadyrov are calling for is an intensification of the war, and mocking the Russian high command in the most aggressive possible tone, but meanwhile they seem to be protecting their own men. That too seems like a trap. By criticizing the way the war is fought, they weaken Putin's informational control; by forcing him to take responsibility even as they will not do so, they expose his position further. They are telling him to win a war that they do not, themselves, seem to be trying to win.

 

In the overall logic that I am describing, rivals would seek to conserve whatever fighting forces they have, either to protect their own personal interests during an unpredictable time, or to make a play for Moscow. If this is indeed the present situation, it will soon seem foolish for everyone involved to have armed forces located in distant Ukraine, or, for that matter, to get them killed there day after day. Then comes a tipping point. Once some people realize that other people are holding back their men, it will seem senseless to expend (or alienate) one's own.

 

At a certain moment, this logic applies to the Russian army itself. As Lawrence Freedman has pointed out, if the army wants to have a role in Russian politics or prestige in Russian society, its commanders have an incentive to pull back while they still have units to command. And if Putin himself wants to remain in power, neither a discredited nor a demoralized army is in his interest.

 

Mobilization itself starts to look like a spear pointed the wrong way: is there a point in sending thousands of unprepared and underequipped men into what they increasingly know is doom? Putin's presupposition, of course, is that mobilized soldiers will either die or win; but if they flee instead, they become a dangerous group, perhaps ready for another leader.

 

And so we can see a plausible scenario for how this war ends. War is a form of politics, and the Russian regime is altered by defeat. As Ukraine continues to win battles, one reversal is accompanied by another: the televisual yields to the real, and the Ukrainian campaign yields to a struggle for power in Russia. In such a struggle, it makes no sense to have armed allies far away in Ukraine who might be more usefully deployed in Russia: not necessarily in an armed conflict, although this cannot be ruled out entirely, but to deter others and protect oneself. For all of the actors concerned, it might be bad to lose in Ukraine, but it is worse to lose in Russia.

 

[atomheartbevo 89670]

5 minutes ago, Gravy Train said:

In the overall logic that I am describing, rivals would seek to conserve whatever fighting forces they have, either to protect their own personal interests during an unpredictable time, or to make a play for Moscow. If this is indeed the present situation, it will soon seem foolish for everyone involved to have armed forces located in distant Ukraine, or, for that matter, to get them killed there day after day. Then comes a tipping point. Once some people realize that other people are holding back their men, it will seem senseless to expend (or alienate) one's own.

And tying into this, Kadyrov has representatives threatening Russian students in all Russian regions (not just Chechnya) to not stand against the regime  claims Kadyrov has people monitoring all regions.  

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1577765896877219840

Chechen deputy Adam Deilmkhanov threatens all students of Russian universities with consequences if they stand against the regime. This is quite unheard of given he is Chechen, indicating increasing influence of this party in the country.

video at link above if you speak Russian

 

[InkaUtexas 25942]

oh noes.... Putin found the Surl and is bombarding us with shitty adds. 

[Deej 76793]

I blame Keef.

[atomheartbevo 89670]

18 minute watch, and the first few minutes are boring civilian transports of personnel around the world, but once it gets going into the amount of stockpiles we have around the world, and how we can project power, and the ability we have to tap into reserves, you begin to appreciate how our logistics chains are fucking massive compared to the Russians.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIpPuJ_r8Xg

 

 

[MillerEP 30455]

 

[TexasEd 8067]

Remember this from Feb 25?  Keeping his promises.

 

 

[SL Xpress 7514]

8 minutes ago, TexasEd said:

Remember this from Feb 25?  Keeping his promises.

 

 

"I need ammo. Not a ride."

[MillerEP 30455]

 

[InkaUtexas 25942]

3 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Kadyrov will go down with the Putin ship. His clan pushed all its cards in on “siding with the tsar.” Putin and the Russian military are the source of his authority and position and he cannot change now. The North Caucasus do not forget or forgive, once the winds shift if Russia Kadyrov either gets to some hot emirate or his fate is worth than Gaddafi. 

He could always do the Haji Murad trick. Promise to support and then head back to the mountains at the end depending on how he sees the winds. 

West needs to call him a war criminal, sanction the hell out of him and put a nice bounty on his head if he does that. 

[InkaUtexas 25942]

3 minutes ago, MillerEP said:

 

Track it. See who it was sold to originally and nail them. 

Iran has quite a few internationally assigned "buyers". One that was funny was the maker of the trailers supporting US Forces in Iraq was Iranian with a base in Dubai. They wanted the company I worked with to handle their maintenance in Kuwait. Dudes said hell no. 

[MillerEP 30455]

^Ukraine is killing it on the media front

 

[MillerEP 30455]

 

[InkaUtexas 25942]

all good except the dude shooting right over his buddy. Center dudes cover the center, flank dudes cover the flanks. 

[Deej 76793]

[MillerEP 30455]

 

[MillerEP 30455]

 

^This guy gets it

 

[TexasEd 8067]

4 hours ago, SL Xpress said:

Let's be real clear about the "separatists'" notion.

What happened in 2014 wasn't some popular uprising with a grassroots element that felt like the rightful president had to flee in a coup. 

The popular uprising occurred in Kyiv. It was massive, ongoing, and lengthy, through Ukraine's bitterest cold. Eventually, after massacring his people didn't make it stop, Yanukovych was faced with prosecuting the kind of national annihilism Assad did in Syria to retain control of the country. He chose to flee instead. 

Afterwards was a time of tumult. It wasn't clear who was in charge. No one had any popular mandate to rule. 

The military had been purposefully gutted by Yanukovych in favor of his security forces. Corruption was rife (always has been, and frankly, almost certainly exists now even if muted). 

In this turmoil Putin's first concern was Sevastopol, the historical Russian naval base, home of the Black Sea Fleet, and inarguably the single biggest military asset in all of Ukraine. He wanted to make sure he secured that in the face of a Western dominated Ukraine. So the green men (unmarked Russian soldiers) took over Crimea without a shot being fired, including several Ukrainian warships. The commanders on those vessels complained of no chain of command, no instructions on how to handle the current situation. The sailors on those ships were offered Russian citizenship, or were sent back to Ukraine in humiliation. 

The referendum to annex Crimea wasn't as much of a joke as the recent one involving the four regions of Ukraine, but it was close. Same armed troops at the ballot box. They intimidated the local Tartars to stay away from the ballot box. This is in addition to Crimea being primarily Russian, mostly because Stalin round up the native Tartars and sent them to Siberia while migrating huge numbers of Russians to the area. 

After that was secured in good order, Putin expanded into the Donbas, a region that has been a historical manufacturing base for Russia, including military vehicles in modern times. The green men systematically took over law enforcement, judicial buildings, and political centers of control practically overnight throughout the area. They were repelled in some places, but in town after town most civilians woke up with someone else in charge and a feeling that there wasn't much that could be done about it. New Russian appointed leaders announced their control of the regions. 

The political leadership in Kyiv was a complete clusterfuck trying to respond to any of this. Eventually they did send the hollowed shell of a military they did possess down to recapture the regions, including thousands of volunteers, most notably what became known as the Azov battalion. Many of these volunteers were the foundational source of what Putin has described as the "Nazification" of Ukraine.

It's important to note, and I've done it on this thread before, but I wouldn't expect anyone to remember, and I sure wouldn't expect anyone to go back and read about it, but when Russians call elements of Ukraine Nazis, they don't mean it in the way westerners think about it. That's why it's idiotic to bring up Zelensky as a Jew as part of the response. Russians don't primarily associate the Nazis with the Holocaust the way westerners do. Heck, Russians have their own ambivalent historic relationship with Jews. Russians associate Nazis with Operation Barbarossa, and the whole sale massacre of Russians, the vast destruction wrought, the rapes, the terror campaigns, both incoming and in retreat. 

Regarding Ukraine itself, Stephen Bandera is the central polarizing figure. For Ukrainians who associate with the west, he's a national hero, a wanna be liberator. For Russians he was a Nazi collaborator, who was responsible for atrocities against the Russian people. 

It was under Bandera's banner that many of the volunteers headed east with the Ukrainian army to recapture the Donbas region, many of them part of the so called Azov Battalion. And, frankly, they were wiping the floor with the rag tag groups Russia had pulled together to take over the Donbas regions. Until the Russian army crossed the border and virtually wiped them out. Russia wasn't willing to openly invade Ukraine at that point (they probably should have given what has happened to them in the last 8 months). They took out the Ukrainian forces, and after that the front line stabilized, and would remain that way for the most part for 8 years. 

But while there was always a more pro Russian sentiment in eastern Russia (Zelensky himself is a native Russian speaker, and favored a softer approach to Kremlin than his predecessor, Poroshenko), it was Russian machinations which created the breakaway Donbas region in the first place. Not some separatist movement. That part was fictional. 

Another aspect of the Nazi moniker is Nationalists. People that want their territory to be a nation and not a substate of Russia. This is why you hear Putin say that Ukraine doesn’t even exist because it is the counter nationalist argument. That horse got out of the barn back in the 1990s and with the failure of Russia economically the one thing that can unite them to Putin is ironically Russian nationalism. Yearning for the glory days when Russia was feared. 

[Ghost of LL 15531]

43 minutes ago, MillerEP said:

 

It’s pretty clear to me that Belarus isn’t getting out of this with it’s sovereignty. The only question is whether the flag that ends up flying over Minsk will have a blue stripe between the red and white ones.

[SL Xpress 7514]

24 minutes ago, TexasEd said:

Another aspect of the Nazi moniker is Nationalists. People that want their territory to be a nation and not a substate of Russia. This is why you hear Putin say that Ukraine doesn’t even exist because it is the counter nationalist argument. That horse got out of the barn back in the 1990s and with the failure of Russia economically the one thing that can unite them to Putin is ironically Russian nationalism. Yearning for the glory days when Russia was feared. 

I feel like that ignores the fact the story of Stepan Bandera as told in both Ukraine and in Russia. In Russia, he's emblematic of a Nazi sympathizer who turned on mother Russia and committed atrocities while cooperating with Nazi Germany. In Ukraine, at least among many Western leaning Ukrainians, he's a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism and a desire to be independent of Russia. It's an extremely popular narrative in both countries. It's taught in Russian history books. It's THE chief reason why Russian propaganda regarding Nazi sympathizers in Ukraine is so powerfully persuasive among Russians and has been from the word go. They're not inventing a narrative out of whole cloth. They're tapping into a narrative that already exists from Russian educated childhood. 

It's not simply Nazi = Ukrainian Nationalism.

It's Nazi = support for Stepan Bandera and other Ukrainian collaborationists with Nazi Germany, who were fighting against Russia. 

I don't know why we're trying to spin it as something else. That's the root of it. From the Russian perspective, it makes sense. From my perspective it's propaganda being used to fuel imperialist policy. But that's how imperialist policy works. I'm just saying the narrative makes sense based on how Russia teaches WWII history, in particular how much they've always emphasized the portion of the Ukrainian population that sided with Hitler. It also makes sense because there is genuine support for Bandera as a national hero. Not niche, covert, under wraps support. Mainstream, in your face, "how you feel about Bandera indicates how you feel about Ukraine" type support. 

That doesn't make Ukrainians Nazis, IMO. It's certainly not any kind of stain on Zelensky's administration, which if anything had been more desirous of working with Russia than the previous administration prior to the war. Part of the reason he won with 70% of the vote. 

None of this gets into the very definite Austro-Hungarian Empire borders with Tsarist Russia, but that isn't about the Nazi moniker, either. Not directly, anyway. 

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2021/03/19/in-ukraine-stepan-bandera-s-legacy-becomes-a-political-football-again

Spoiler

In Ukraine, Stepan Bandera’s legacy becomes a political football... again 

COMMENTS

By Emil Filtenborg in Kyiv  •  Updated: 26/03/2021

A man dressed in Ukrainian insurgent army uniform seen by a young supporter of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army holds a portrait of Stepan Bandera.   -   Copyright  Sergei Chuzavkov/AP2009

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There are few figures in Ukrainian history as controversial as Stepan Bandera, and fewer still are able to influence so profoundly modern politics more than six decades after their death.

Bandera, who died in 1959 after being poisoned by Soviet agents, is seen as a national hero who fought for Ukrainian independence during the 1930s and 1940s. To others, he is a war criminal whose nationalist forces carried out atrocities against Jews and Poles during WW2.

Now the authorities in Lviv, in western Ukraine, have reignited the debate over the wartime militia leader by requesting the government to rename Arena Lviv in honour of Bandera and forcing Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenskyy to pick a side during a bitter election battle.

 

 

“They are pressuring Zelenskyy and [Denys] Shmygal, the prime minister, to decide if they are nationalist or not,” said Alexei Jakubin, a senior politics lecturer at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.

Zelenskyy, who won the 2019 election in Ukraine by a landslide with over 70% of the vote, is currently polling at just 19%.

 

Lviv’s authorities, dominated by right-wing parties including Svoboda and European Solidarity, the party of former president Petro Poroshenko, smell blood.

“Zelenskyy and Poroshenko have a fight going on about who is the most patriotic [and] Zelenskyy is in a difficult position because his support is much lower he is moving [towards] the right wing, which is the territory of Poroshenko,” said Jakubin.

 

“This is a test to see whether or not he is a real patriot,” he added.

It is not the first time by any means that a war over Bandera’s legacy has been waged in the highest echelons of Ukrainian politics.

In 2010, Bandera was named a “Hero of Ukraine” by the outgoing President Viktor Yushchenko, sparking anger in Europe, Poland and Israel.

He was stripped of the title in 2011 under Yushchenko’s replacement, President Viktor Yanukovych, but when Yanukovych was ousted in 2014, Kyiv’s City Council renamed the city’s Moscow Avenue Stepan Bandera Avenue after the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine.

There are monuments to Bandera throughout western Ukraine and in 2018, the authorities in Lviv, just 46 miles from the Polish border, announced that 2019 would be the ‘Year of Stepan Bandera’, again sparking protests from Israeli and the Polish government.

Lviv, near Ukraine's border with PolandCredit: Euronews

Who was Stepan Bandera?

Following World War One, Poland and Ukraine fought a short war which resulted in Poland capturing the city of Lviv. Bandera, who studied in Lviv, was a member of various nationalist Ukrainian organisations before joining the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), becoming second in command of the militia group in 1933.

The following year, Bandera orchestrated the assassination of Polish Minister of Interior Bronisław Pieracki and was sentenced to death by a Polish court, later commuted to life imprisonment. When the Nazis invaded Poland, Bandera and other nationalists escaped from prison.

Bandera was trained by the German Abwehr to do counter-espionage in the Soviet Union, occupied Poland and Ukraine, which he did until 1941. That year, Bandera and his followers signed a declaration of independence for Ukraine and announced an alliance with Germany.

To their disappointment, Nazi Germany refused to recognise Ukraine’s independence and ordered Bandera to withdraw the declaration. When he refused, he was arrested and later jailed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, which held high-profile political prisoners.

During Bandera’s time in Sachsenhausen, the OUN carried out thousands of murders of Poles, most of them civilians, during a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Volhynia and later Eastern Galicia. As many as 100,000 people may have died during the two-year campaign.

• Ukraine takes Russia to European Court of Human Rights over alleged assassinations
• Activists demand Ukraine does more to combat violence against women
• Holocaust Memorial Day: Plans unveiled for vast memorial complex at Ukraine's Babyn Yar

While Bandera was not directly involved in the ethnic cleansing - as he was in jail - he had openly stated that both Jews and Poles had no place in a sovereign Ukrainian state. During the Holocaust, one-sixth of the Jews murdered by the Nazis were from Ukraine.

During Bandera’s time in prison, the Nazis began executing other leaders of the OUN and in the final years of World War Two, the organisation found itself at war with both Germany and the Soviets, which considered the country part of the Soviet Union.

Danish players attend a training session on June 12, 2012 at the Arena Stadium in LvivCredit: AFP

For his supporters, the fact that Bandera fought to prevent the Soviet occupation of Ukraine is more significant than his collaboration with the Nazis. Since the 2014 Euromaidan revolution, Bandera has been a rallying cry for many Ukrainian nationalists, particularly after the Russian annexation of Crimea and the backing of separatist movements in eastern Ukraine.

“The main thing for the people following Bandera today is that he fought for an independent Ukraine. They ignore that his organization cooperated with the Nazi regime, that they were anti-Semitic, and that Bandera was also anti-Polish,” said Jakubin.

“After Euromaidan, some people have tried to create a new image of Bandera as a person fighting the Soviets for Ukrainian independence.”

_Euronews has reached out to President Zelenskyy's office for comment. _

 

[SL Xpress 7514]

4 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

It’s pretty clear to me that Belarus isn’t getting out of this with it’s sovereignty. The only question is whether the flag that ends up flying over Minsk will have a blue stripe between the red and white ones.

 

Lukashenko had aspirations to be another Tito. Then his own populace started rioting and he had to make a similar decision to Ukraine's Yanukovych. He chose to go all in with Russia and suppress his population by any means necessary. He sacrificed his sovereignty then. Now it's simply playing out its course. I think the main thing is he's trying to push chits to Russia's side that prevents him from crossing the Ukrainian border with Belarus forces and getting directly involved with the conflict. A sort of, "if I show Putin more of my belly maybe he won't make me" kind of deals. 

[atomheartbevo 89670]

28 minutes ago, SL Xpress said:

That's the root of it. From the Russian perspective, it makes sense. From my perspective it's propaganda being used to fuel imperialist policy. But that's how imperialist policy works. I'm just saying the narrative makes sense based on how Russia teaches WWII history, in particular how much they've always emphasized the portion of the Ukrainian population that sided with Hitler.

My problem with it, is that it ignores that Russia sided with Hitler early on until he turned against them.

[atomheartbevo 89670]

British reporter hanging out with MLRS crew and then doing a shoot and scoot.

 

[cactusflinthead 27598]

1 minute ago, atomheartbevo said:

My problem with it, is that it ignores that Russia sided with Hitler early on until he turned against them.

Shh. They really want to forget the part about the rest of the allies telling Stalin it was about to go down and him being shocked that Hitler would go back on a deal.

Oh and don't mention lend lease either. Bell would appreciate it.

[cactusflinthead 27598]

I damn near choked laughing 

 

[SL Xpress 7514]

4 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

My problem with it, is that it ignores that Russia sided with Hitler early on until he turned against them.

It's propaganda. I have all kinds of problems with it. I'm just talking about why it's effective. It's not because to Russians Nazi = Ukraine nationalism. It's because Ukraine Nationalism = support for Stepan Bandera = Naziism. 

It's still not true. But that's the source of it. And like all effective propaganda, there's a kernel of truth that's exploited for a bigger, powerful message. 

Everyone looks in the mirror and figures out a narrative for why they're the good guy. This is a big part of how Russia does it as a nation. 

The good news is they're getting whipped on the battlefield in ways I could only dream about when this started. 

This is a complete emasculation of not only their military but the Russian system of governance. You can't have truth there. You can't have rule of law. There's no mechanism to talk about hard facts without finding yourself jumping from a tall building. The military isn't built to serve the country. It's built to serve the ruler, and that's a big distinction. He can't have the military as a threat. Corruption is allowed and even encouraged at every level. It's the basis for how the country is run from the top down. The generals can't give up control to rank and file soldiers. Internal security is given more weight, more resources and more power. Technological innovation is more for show than for practical use.

The thing is, the Chinese military has some of the same issues. There's a political officer embedded in every unit, and they have real power over people's lives. It's a separate promotion track from the regular military. Soldiers swear oaths to the Communist Party, not to their country. 

The difference is China has millennia of history of non expansionism. Not saying it can't change, but it's embedded in their culture. Russia has a history of brutalizing their neighbors. It's really nice to see them get a comeuppance that hopefully ends up being an existential threat to Putin's regime and to the whole mindset behind his long reign as ruler. I'm not expecting it, but who knows what happens. 

[Not a cat 5657]

1 hour ago, SL Xpress said:

I feel like that ignores the fact the story of Stepan Bandera as told in both Ukraine and in Russia. In Russia, he's emblematic of a Nazi sympathizer who turned on mother Russia and committed atrocities while cooperating with Nazi Germany. In Ukraine, at least among many Western leaning Ukrainians, he's a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism and a desire to be independent of Russia. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

In Ukraine, Stepan Bandera’s legacy becomes a political football... again 

COMMENTS

By Emil Filtenborg in Kyiv  •  Updated: 26/03/2021

A man dressed in Ukrainian insurgent army uniform seen by a young supporter of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army holds a portrait of Stepan Bandera.   -   Copyright  Sergei Chuzavkov/AP2009

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

• 
• 
• 
• 
•  
•  

• 
• 
• 
• 

 

There are few figures in Ukrainian history as controversial as Stepan Bandera, and fewer still are able to influence so profoundly modern politics more than six decades after their death.

Bandera, who died in 1959 after being poisoned by Soviet agents, is seen as a national hero who fought for Ukrainian independence during the 1930s and 1940s. To others, he is a war criminal whose nationalist forces carried out atrocities against Jews and Poles during WW2.

Now the authorities in Lviv, in western Ukraine, have reignited the debate over the wartime militia leader by requesting the government to rename Arena Lviv in honour of Bandera and forcing Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenskyy to pick a side during a bitter election battle.

 

 

“They are pressuring Zelenskyy and [Denys] Shmygal, the prime minister, to decide if they are nationalist or not,” said Alexei Jakubin, a senior politics lecturer at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.

Zelenskyy, who won the 2019 election in Ukraine by a landslide with over 70% of the vote, is currently polling at just 19%.

 

Lviv’s authorities, dominated by right-wing parties including Svoboda and European Solidarity, the party of former president Petro Poroshenko, smell blood.

“Zelenskyy and Poroshenko have a fight going on about who is the most patriotic [and] Zelenskyy is in a difficult position because his support is much lower he is moving [towards] the right wing, which is the territory of Poroshenko,” said Jakubin.

 

“This is a test to see whether or not he is a real patriot,” he added.

It is not the first time by any means that a war over Bandera’s legacy has been waged in the highest echelons of Ukrainian politics.

In 2010, Bandera was named a “Hero of Ukraine” by the outgoing President Viktor Yushchenko, sparking anger in Europe, Poland and Israel.

He was stripped of the title in 2011 under Yushchenko’s replacement, President Viktor Yanukovych, but when Yanukovych was ousted in 2014, Kyiv’s City Council renamed the city’s Moscow Avenue Stepan Bandera Avenue after the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine.

There are monuments to Bandera throughout western Ukraine and in 2018, the authorities in Lviv, just 46 miles from the Polish border, announced that 2019 would be the ‘Year of Stepan Bandera’, again sparking protests from Israeli and the Polish government.

Lviv, near Ukraine's border with PolandCredit: Euronews

Who was Stepan Bandera?

Following World War One, Poland and Ukraine fought a short war which resulted in Poland capturing the city of Lviv. Bandera, who studied in Lviv, was a member of various nationalist Ukrainian organisations before joining the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), becoming second in command of the militia group in 1933.

The following year, Bandera orchestrated the assassination of Polish Minister of Interior Bronisław Pieracki and was sentenced to death by a Polish court, later commuted to life imprisonment. When the Nazis invaded Poland, Bandera and other nationalists escaped from prison.

Bandera was trained by the German Abwehr to do counter-espionage in the Soviet Union, occupied Poland and Ukraine, which he did until 1941. That year, Bandera and his followers signed a declaration of independence for Ukraine and announced an alliance with Germany.

To their disappointment, Nazi Germany refused to recognise Ukraine’s independence and ordered Bandera to withdraw the declaration. When he refused, he was arrested and later jailed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, which held high-profile political prisoners.

During Bandera’s time in Sachsenhausen, the OUN carried out thousands of murders of Poles, most of them civilians, during a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Volhynia and later Eastern Galicia. As many as 100,000 people may have died during the two-year campaign.

• Ukraine takes Russia to European Court of Human Rights over alleged assassinations
• Activists demand Ukraine does more to combat violence against women
• Holocaust Memorial Day: Plans unveiled for vast memorial complex at Ukraine's Babyn Yar

While Bandera was not directly involved in the ethnic cleansing - as he was in jail - he had openly stated that both Jews and Poles had no place in a sovereign Ukrainian state. During the Holocaust, one-sixth of the Jews murdered by the Nazis were from Ukraine.

During Bandera’s time in prison, the Nazis began executing other leaders of the OUN and in the final years of World War Two, the organisation found itself at war with both Germany and the Soviets, which considered the country part of the Soviet Union.

Danish players attend a training session on June 12, 2012 at the Arena Stadium in LvivCredit: AFP

For his supporters, the fact that Bandera fought to prevent the Soviet occupation of Ukraine is more significant than his collaboration with the Nazis. Since the 2014 Euromaidan revolution, Bandera has been a rallying cry for many Ukrainian nationalists, particularly after the Russian annexation of Crimea and the backing of separatist movements in eastern Ukraine.

“The main thing for the people following Bandera today is that he fought for an independent Ukraine. They ignore that his organization cooperated with the Nazi regime, that they were anti-Semitic, and that Bandera was also anti-Polish,” said Jakubin.

“After Euromaidan, some people have tried to create a new image of Bandera as a person fighting the Soviets for Ukrainian independence.”

_Euronews has reached out to President Zelenskyy's office for comment. _

 

And in Texas, he's still unable to get the Texas game.

[tx 3 putt 76958]

 

[MillerEP 30455]

^I doubt it's because "it's more organized" as much as they have nowhere to go, so geography forces them to not fall as far back.

Edited October 6, 2022 by MillerEP

[MillerEP 30455]

^No shit put maggots on it as medical care, Russia really is still living in medieval times. 

[MillerEP 30455]

^SMH

[InkaUtexas 25942]

4 minutes ago, MillerEP said:

^No shit put maggots on it as medical care, Russia really is still living in medieval times. 

Add to that the one boot and the one knock off Croc. This is fucking ridiculous. I mean my Afghan medics had better sense than this crap and training. Can you even think of the training a Russian Medic gets? Here ya go Yuri, a bottle of vodka and some maggots. Bandage? nah, just put leave the shirt on. The fibers will hold the wound together. 

Now think about what winter will do to them. They are going to be Stalingrad level of fucked. 

[tx 3 putt 76958]

hopefully this war is over soon and these families can get back to a normal life ....

 

[MillerEP 30455]

 

[tx 3 putt 76958]

 

give anyone that wants to fight a weapons, keep marching

[InkaUtexas 25942]

Fuck Putin. What is he going to do? Take it apart and ship it to the other side of the Urals? 

 

[atomheartbevo 89670]

[LCHorn 2620]

3 hours ago, SL Xpress said:

The difference is China has millennia of history of non expansionism. Not saying it can't change, but it's embedded in their culture

Not to quibble because I’ve been digging your contributions to the thread, but this is wildly incorrect unless you and I have very different understanding of what expansionism means.  Tibet, South and East China seas most recently and back to the Manchus and the Mongols that preceded them.  It’s partly why the diversity of our regional allies include a nominally communist Vietnam to Korea in partnership with their historical antagonists the Japanese-everyone else is the lesser evil in the wake of a millennia of Chinese territorial grabs.

[tx 3 putt 76958]

these poor fuckers are going to be cut down by frost bite. 

 

[tx 3 putt 76958]

russian elites going after each other ...

 

Edited October 6, 2022 by tx 3 putt