How should west respond to potential (likely) Russian invasion of Ukraine?

[Jayjay]

Putin isn't losing. The trouble is, he isn't winning either.

You don't know that.
As far as support of the locals, Russia is most certainly winning.

Nonsense. Most locals have fled, and not to Russia, but other parts of Ukraine or abroad. Mariupol for example had a population of about half a million, but is now down to 100,000 or less. Those who left most certainly don't support the Russian occupation of their homes.

And those who remained, are either collaborators, unable to flee for some reason or another (for example, the old and the poor), sent to "filtration camps", or ended up in a ditch like the folks in Bucha, borodyanka and other towns around Kyiv. The remaining people are prisoners being fed Russian propaganda 24/7. Under those circumstances, who's going to raise their hand and say they disagree with the occupation?

'You can't imagine the conditions' - Accounts emerge of Russian detention camps

Those who have fled the Ukrainian city say people are being held in cramped, unclean camps.

www.bbc.com

"The filtration camps are like ghettos," she says. "Russians divide people into groups. Those who were suspected of having connections with the Ukrainian army, territorial defence, journalists, workers from the government - it's very dangerous for them. They take those people to prisons to Donetsk, torture them."

As far as gaining the territories they have been less concerned about that.
They are more concerned with exterminating man power and equipment at the lowest possible cost. Russian forces can start bombing cities into dust tomorrow. But that would be unacceptable and very politically expensive. We are still in Eastern Ukraine, which is pro-russian and very likely become a part of Russia. Destroying it would be stupid. Ukrainian army on the other hand is less concerned with destruction and murder of pro-russian population. As far as they are concerned they are all russian separatists and more of them to die the better.

That argument doesn't seem to hold water. Russia bombed Mariupol to the ground when it resisted. It doesn't care about infrastructure (except for bridges or railways it needs to wage war elsewhere) much less civilian lives. The fact that now Russia has to do it mostly with artillery rather than cruise missiles indicates that they've only got a limited supply of the latter.

 

[Gun Nut]

Barbie is not concerned with her arguments holding water... she is concerned with maintaining alignment with daddy puttie-in-me. russians cannot afford rationality... they cannot even afford bread anymore. They don't even get a capital "R" even at the beginning of a sentence anymore, they are so not a part of the future of Earth.

 

[bilby]

As far as support of the locals, Russia is most certainly winning.

Yup, that much is obvious, from the fact that the locals are so insistent that Russia no longer needs her tanks, trucks, and fuel dumps, and so are blowing them up in a show of support and solidarity.

 

[Elixir]

the locals are so insistent that Russia no longer needs her tanks, trucks, and fuel dumps, and so are blowing them up in a show of support and solidarity

Lol!
Too bad Barbos is missing all this fine humor. Oh well… hopefully he is paid well. The more of the Pootler regime’s money spent on ineffective clownage the better.

 

[Jayjay]

WarOnFakes is a Russian propaganda site that has been caught disseminating false information numerous times.

You finns ARE slow. No, you are not convincing me with this simple "let's put a label on them" strategy.

But presumably, I convinced you with the facts and proof that the site was lying. Why else would you have left out this part:

The link I provided earlier already debunked the false claim that Maxar didn't take pictures over Bucha on March 19th:

This claim is wrong. The reason why the screenshot does not show imagery from March 19 is that it has been filtered out of the search results due to the angle of the satellite imagery (the nadir). A simple change of the filters in the search gives the options below, which includes March 19 imagery.

... as well as the false claim that the shadows don't match the date:

Do the shadows match the satellite imagery?

The report by WarOnFakes attempting to ‘debunk’ and discredit Maxar’s satellite imagery from Bucha also indicates that there was a discrepancy on the shadows in the satellite imagery.

The report references work done by Telegram account ‘Rybar’ as the origin of these findings.

According to Apollo Mapping the acquisition time of Maxar’s March 19 satellite image was at 09:08:31 UTC.

On March 19, Ukraine’s Bucha was in the UTC+2 timezone. The specific time in Ukraine moved to UTC+3 on March 27, 2022.

Therefore the satellite image was taken at 11:08AM local time in Bucha, Ukraine.

Rybar’s claim was that the shadows seen in Maxar’s satellite imagery from March 19 could not have matched the timestamp of 09:00AM, as the shadows would have looked different at that time. However, this seems to be an error in converting the times, as Rybar was attempting to match shadows from a 09:00AM timestamp, and not an 11:08 timestamp.

The satellite imagery was taken at 11:08AM local time, or 11:08 UTC+2; a link to this reading can be seen on Suncalc at this link.

These findings can also be confirmed by matching the angles cast by the shadows in the satellite imagery.

By layering the imagery into Google Earth, we can obtain the angle at which the sunlight would have been coming from, which is in proportion with the angle of the shadow. The heading for the direction of the sun was 161 degrees in the image. The location of the post is 50.541771, 30.230175.

(images removed)

At exactly 11:08UTC+2 on March 19, 2022, which is when the satellite image was claimed to have been taken, the direction of sunlight was at 161 degrees - an extremely similar figure to that seen in the direction given from the reading on Google Earth. This indicates an accurate fit as to the time and date of the satellite image.

The link to the suncalc.org with the prefilled values as seen above can be seen here. A screenshot is included below to see these readings.

And yes, Kharkiv City hall bombing was fake

Repeating a false claim doesn't make it true.

Check the fucking video and you'll see that the "missing" frame actually does have a shadow where the missile should be.

 

[bilby]

I consider it highly disrespectful. I have never been caught making shit up. Because I don't.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Got your back Jack.

US gives interim security guarantee to potential NATO member Sweden.

 

[marc]

So from what I hear most of the damage being done is to eastern Ukraine.. The same region that had most of the pro-russian Ukrainians. Congrats pootie, you have devistated the lives of the ones that were most likely to support you. This leaving Ukraine much more anti-russia than when you started

 

[ZiprHead]

So from what I hear most of the damage being done is to eastern Ukraine.. The same region that had most of the pro-russian Ukrainians. Congrats pootie, you have devistated the lives of the ones that were most likely to support you. This leaving Ukraine much more anti-russia than when you started

You think Putin actually gave a crap about those people?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Got your back Jack.

US gives interim security guarantee to potential NATO member Sweden.

Very nice. How will Putinstan and Vladolph Hitler behave over the next year? I think we all know.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

So from what I hear most of the damage being done is to eastern Ukraine.. The same region that had most of the pro-russian Ukrainians. Congrats pootie, you have devistated the lives of the ones that were most likely to support you. This leaving Ukraine much more anti-russia than when you started

You think Putin actually gave a crap about those people?

He doesn't give a shit about anyone that doesn't serve his personal desire for power and wealth. Barbos has probably already been sterilized anyway.

 

[marc]

So from what I hear most of the damage being done is to eastern Ukraine.. The same region that had most of the pro-russian Ukrainians. Congrats pootie, you have devistated the lives of the ones that were most likely to support you. This leaving Ukraine much more anti-russia than when you started

You think Putin actually gave a crap about those people?

Nope, but when you are trying to make everyone kiss you ass, it probably doesn’t help to start off by beating up the people already inclined to kiss your ass.

 

[Jarhyn]

So from what I hear most of the damage being done is to eastern Ukraine.. The same region that had most of the pro-russian Ukrainians. Congrats pootie, you have devistated the lives of the ones that were most likely to support you. This leaving Ukraine much more anti-russia than when you started

You think Putin actually gave a crap about those people?

He doesn't give a shit about anyone that doesn't serve his personal desire for power and wealth. Barbos has probably already been sterilized anyway.

I would as soon expect Putin to sterilize himself as to sterilize such a faithful parrot of his views.

I expect Putin would want that to see much reproduction of such "faithfulness".

 

[Harry Bosch]

Separate issue: but May 9 will be pivotal date. I'm hearing signals that Putin may finally start to draw down on his invasion. Maybe he'll declare victory, and send his troops home. Or maybe he'll declare full on war with the west and will escalate. If so, Finland and Sweden will for sure join NATO on May 12. This week is very important to the future of Europe.

Sweden and Finland cannot "join NATO" on May 12. They may be able to apply to join NATO (or more likely make a decision to apply to join) but the process of actually joining takes time because all members have to ratify it. Could be years. On the other hand the date of May 12th was based on unofficial reports from Finland, which could be false. Sweden is probably a few steps behind but the two countries could scheme to apply at the same time.

Well, I'm sorry to say but it won't really matter. Just the fact that Finland/Sweden are considering will be excuse enough for Russia to attack. They'll add some BS about some street sign in Finland named after a Nazi. And they will attack. We're all in the same boat. We need to find a way to stop Russian aggression.

 

[SLD]

You all, on the other hand, parrot CNN garbage which they admitted to be lies.
CNN admitted they are lying. Do you even realize what it means?
CNN lies to to create impression that Putin is losing and Ze is winning.
They think that Putin is watching them. Ze is watching for sure (reminds you anyone ?), but Putin is unlikely.

Putin isn't losing. The trouble is, he isn't winning either. This quickly turned into a WWI stalemate. The fact that the tense for the conversation remains present and not past, implies that after over two months, Russian advancements in Ukraine have been insufficient to justify stopping the incursion. And the loss of the ship at sea has made things harder. Russia has been shelling the heck out of Ukraine. And yet, the gains for Russia and its army have been pretty small.

When Putin talks, it isn't a guy who is clearly on the verge of victory. Instead, he warns Finland and Sweden from joining NATO, about the West supporting Ukraine. You complain about CNN lying. But if Putin was winning, if he had won, this would be over. He wouldn't be whining about these things. He'd be annexing eastern Ukraine into Russia. But there isn't much territory to annex. Certainly not enough to justify the cost of this invasion to the oligarchs and the nation.

I respectfully disagree. Putin is indeed losing. He must conquer or he loses. From ISW today’s analysis:

“Ukrainian defenses have largely stalled Russian advances in Eastern Ukraine. Russian troops conducted a number of unsuccessful attacks in Eastern Ukraine on May 4 and were unable to make any confirmed advances. Russian forces attacking south of Izyum appear increasingly unlikely to successfully encircle Ukrainian forces in the Rubizhne area. Ukrainian forces have so far prevented Russian forces from merging their offensives to the southeast of Izyum and the west of Lyman, Slovyansk, and Kramatorsk, as Russian forces likely intended.”

They haven’t been able to do shit. A stalemate is a loss. They’re being thrown back around Kharkiv as well today. Even around the Azov steel plant in Mariupol, they’re getting thrown back.

Putin May have to announce full scale mobilization on May 9th. But if he does he’ll be telegraphing that he’s losing. Which he is. Watch the Russian people avoid service. In the late 80’s, something like 90% of conscripts just didn’t show up. we could see massive but passive resistance to the war. That’s Russia’s fundamental dilemma. It’s troops aren’t willing to fight and die in Ukraine. Ukrainians are. And it will only get worse as the war drags on interminably.

 

[barbos]

Russian nazis were found!

She asked him if he paid internet bill.

 

[Elixir]

Separate issue: but May 9 will be pivotal date. I'm hearing signals that Putin may finally start to draw down on his invasion. Maybe he'll declare victory, and send his troops home. Or maybe he'll declare full on war with the west and will escalate. If so, Finland and Sweden will for sure join NATO on May 12. This week is very important to the future of Europe.

Sweden and Finland cannot "join NATO" on May 12. They may be able to apply to join NATO (or more likely make a decision to apply to join) but the process of actually joining takes time because all members have to ratify it. Could be years. On the other hand the date of May 12th was based on unofficial reports from Finland, which could be false. Sweden is probably a few steps behind but the two countries could scheme to apply at the same time.

Well, I'm sorry to say but it won't really matter. Just the fact that Finland/Sweden are considering will be excuse enough for Russia to attack. They'll add some BS about some street sign in Finland named after a Nazi. And they will attack. We're all in the same boat. We need to find a way to stop Russian aggression.

Thanks to the Ukraine debacle it could be decades before Russia can get their shit together enough for another invasion. Unless the plan is to exhaust every bit of their conventional warfare capability, then pretend they’re Switzerland.

 

[Jayjay]

Separate issue: but May 9 will be pivotal date. I'm hearing signals that Putin may finally start to draw down on his invasion. Maybe he'll declare victory, and send his troops home. Or maybe he'll declare full on war with the west and will escalate. If so, Finland and Sweden will for sure join NATO on May 12. This week is very important to the future of Europe.

Sweden and Finland cannot "join NATO" on May 12. They may be able to apply to join NATO (or more likely make a decision to apply to join) but the process of actually joining takes time because all members have to ratify it. Could be years. On the other hand the date of May 12th was based on unofficial reports from Finland, which could be false. Sweden is probably a few steps behind but the two countries could scheme to apply at the same time.

Well, I'm sorry to say but it won't really matter. Just the fact that Finland/Sweden are considering will be excuse enough for Russia to attack. They'll add some BS about some street sign in Finland named after a Nazi. And they will attack. We're all in the same boat. We need to find a way to stop Russian aggression.

Thanks to the Ukraine debacle it could be decades before Russia can get their shit together enough for another invasion. Unless the plan is to exhaust every bit of their conventional warfare capability, then pretend they’re Switzerland.

Unfortunately, Russia will be able to keep the territory it can wrestle from Ukraine forever. So in Putin's calculations, it doesn't matter how much it costs or how long it takes to replace the tanks and ammunition used. After all, there is no real existential threat to Russia from NATO or anywhere else that they would need those weapons for.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Unfortunately, Russia will be able to keep the territory it can wrestle from Ukraine forever.

That is not a given. During the cold war lots of things seemed permanent too.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That'd be a retired lieutenant-general Trevor Cadieu. He was to take over Canadian Military, but a sexual misconduct accusation came forth back in 2021

Sending to Ukraine was his punishment?

Do you not realize there are a bunch of foreigners who have volunteered to go fight for Ukraine? Of course they're former military people, Ukraine wouldn't be sending people without training to the battle lines even if they wanted to go. It's not like the Russian "volunteers" who still were serving in the Russian military, these are genuine retirees.