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

[TV and credit cards]

Russia admits, it isn't going the smoothest.

Russia’s Defense Ministry on Wednesday announced that 498 service members had died in the Ukraine war and 1,597 have been wounded, conceding for the first time the high death toll in just a week’s fighting.

Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said 572 Russians had been captured. He denied reports that Russian conscripts were taking part in the fighting and said Russia’s forces had showed bravery and honor.

572 Russians have been captured? That number sounds fishy, as well as a trap.

500 killed, 1600 wounded. Likely under-reported and a relatively pathetic showing. They aren't using conscripts though... odd they'd say that they weren't if they actually weren't. Families of them will know.

Maybe he meant "defected".

 

[Copernicus]

Putin has promoted the ultranationalist right wing claptrap that Ukraine is not a real country, but those following this thread have learned quite a bit about the history of the Ukrainian nation. Barbos has also claimed similarly that Ukrainian is not a real language and how terrible it is to make Ukrainians use it. Here is a video (about 17 minutes long) that explains the history and differences between the Russian and Ukrainian languages. Barbos won't see it, because I am in his ignore list, but it is information like this that got me membership in that group anyway.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

2,000 people is a lot of casualties. But, when you've sent 150,000, not anything like enough to declare the campaign a loss.

Tactically true.
But politically, it could be a loss, depending on the expectations and the promises made. It was supposed to be a walk in the park. Death tolls SHOULD have been parrallel to those encountered on a military exercise in their own country.

That's what we found in Desert Storm. Casualties most resembled a desert training exercise.

Finding the enemy armed and dangerous? What's up with THAT?!!?

To me, if you are fighting a limited front war, out of the blue... and you are the aggressor, 2,000 is a lot!

 

[Copernicus]

UN votes to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and calls for withdrawal​

141 vote to condemn
35 abstain
only 5 vote against the resolution: Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, and Syria

Eritrea coming to Russia's side was the only one that surprised me. Putin to Xi: Et tu, China?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Cuba, Venezuela, and China abstain, don't vote no. China is walking a tightrope. Want the ability to do this with Taiwan, but would want to do it with a bit more class.

 

[Keith&Co.]

2,000 people is a lot of casualties. But, when you've sent 150,000, not anything like enough to declare the campaign a loss.

Tactically true.
But politically, it could be a loss, depending on the expectations and the promises made. It was supposed to be a walk in the park. Death tolls SHOULD have been parrallel to those encountered on a military exercise in their own country.

That's what we found in Desert Storm. Casualties most resembled a desert training exercise.

Finding the enemy armed and dangerous? What's up with THAT?!!?

To me, if you are fighting a limited front war, out of the blue... and you are the aggressor, 2,000 is a lot!

And if what you're doing is liberating a country, and being welcomed by the freed masses, it's a metric shitload.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Cuba, Venezuela, and China abstain, don't vote no. China is walking a tightrope. Want the ability to do this with Taiwan, but would want to do it with a bit more class.

And by 'class' you mean 'not becoming destitute and alone.'

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What confuses me is that I haven't seen (doesn't mean it doesn't exist) video of guns firing... the type of warfare that'd lead to deaths. Where are Russians dying (I'm assuming the Ukrainians are responsible, not Russians dying from starvation, their guns exploding in their faces, and exposure)?

 

[Gospel]

Putin has promoted the ultranationalist right wing claptrap that Ukraine is not a real country, but those following this thread have learned quite a bit about the history of the Ukrainian nation. Barbos has also claimed similarly that Ukrainian is not a real language and how terrible it is to make Ukrainians use it. Here is a video (about 17 minutes long) that explains the history and differences between the Russian and Ukrainian languages. Barbos won't see it, because I am in his ignore list, but it is information like this that got me membership in that group anyway.

Replying to become a member.

 

[bilby]

It might seem a little harsh, but if individual Russians don't feel some of the pain that their government is causing, Putin will never stop.

Thats how things work in democracies.

Russia isn't a democracy.

The opinions of individual Russians are of no interest to Putin, except in the trivial sense that if they are dumb enough to express them publicly when they don't agree with Putin's, they will be arrested.

We've had democracy now for long enough that we take it for granted; But it's actually fairly novel, and certainly not something we can just assume.

If you don't sway enough Russians to cause a revolution, then you can't achieve anything by targeting individual ordinary Russians. And making them suffer (economically or otherwise) won't make them mad at Putin, it will just make them mad at America.

This unwarranted assumption of democracy is the same mistake American foreign policy makes over and over again. Dictators don't give a shit about public opinion, or about the suffering of their citizens - that's pretty much the whole point of a dictatorship.

This train of argument reminds me of the debates in the press about whether Charles should succeed to the throne on the death of Lizzy II. It makes the unspoken but completely false assumption that public opinion has any influence whatsoever on a monarchy. That's not how it works, by definition. If it did, then it wouldn't be a monarchy. The same applies to dictatorships.

 

[pood]

It might seem a little harsh, but if individual Russians don't feel some of the pain that their government is causing, Putin will never stop.

Thats how things work in democracies.

Russia isn't a democracy.

The opinions of individual Russians are of no interest to Putin, except in the trivial sense that if they are dumb enough to express them publicly when they don't agree with Putin's, they will be arrested.

A top adviswer to the Kremlin has turned on Mad Vlad, and so far they haven’t arrested him.

What you are saying is only partly true. Plenty of dictators have overstepped and suddenly the smoke and mirrors of their powers vanish. See: Libya, Romania, the Phillipines, the USSR itself in 1991.

 

[bilby]

What confuses me is that I haven't seen (doesn't mean it doesn't exist) video of guns firing... the type of warfare that'd lead to deaths. Where are Russians dying (I'm assuming the Ukrainians are responsible, not Russians dying from starvation, their guns exploding in their faces, and exposure)?

Modern infantry warfare doesn't look like anything.

Empty countryside, with very occasional mortar or artillery shell explosions.

You can hear it, but you can't see it - any combatant who is visible for any significant amount of time rapidly becomes a corpse. Infantry are widely separated, because clumping together is an invitation to being shelled or bombed.

It's a phenomenon called "The empty battlefield". It makes awful TV, and Hollywood has never to my knowledge made any effort to depict it, because it's really boring to observe (if you're not about to be killed by it).

 

[Copernicus]

Thats how things work in democracies.

Russia isn't a democracy.

The opinions of individual Russians are of no interest to Putin, except in the trivial sense that if they are dumb enough to express them publicly when they don't agree with Putin's, they will be arrested.

I wouldn't go quite that far. Putin does very much care about the opinions of individual Russians, or he wouldn't try so hard to suppress those that he doesn't like. That huge propaganda machine exists because he cares, and that is why there are still a lot of Russians who end up spouting his ultranationalist crap that Ukraine is full of Russia-hating Nazis.

 

[bilby]

Cuba, Venezuela, and China abstain, don't vote no. China is walking a tightrope. Want the ability to do this with Taiwan, but would want to do it with a bit more class success.

FTFY

 

[Keith&Co.]

I've been told by a few people, including that Orange buffoon, that Putin invaded BECAUSE Biden is president. That everyone who voted for Biden is responsible for the Ukraine invasion.


Okay.

“To all you Democrat voters, this blood is on you.”

I’ll take it. So, because _I_ voted for ANYONEBUTTRUMP, Putin went one country too far in his empire building. His smash-and-grab tactics failed. I’ll take credit for that.

The Big Russian Threat i’ve been facing since boot camp is proving to be a largely exaggerated threat. The equipment being captured in Ukraine is poorly maintained and out of date. Put that on my tab.

I voted Biden, so Putin has pissed off most of the world, and ended Swedish neutrality. Germany is shipping weapons. Switzerland is freezing assets. Belarus was violating the sanctions and now they’re getting sanctioned as well. Mighty few are standing with Putin. I’ll pick up that check if you want.

Putin’s failure to swiftly conquer Ukraine probably (hopefully) put the kibosh on China’s invasion of Taiwan. China does not even pretend to have a fortress economy and will not risk offending all their markets. I’ll give Biden a victory parade (like Trump had a hard-on for) for that.

Ukraine’s going to be fast-tracked into the EU, probably into NATO, if ONLY to piss off Putin, and/or humiliate him. Where do you want my signature on that?

Yep.

Blame ME. Putin saw the biggest turnout of voters support any single president in history and decided he was well positioned to attack Ukraine. And, by the way, he KNOWS exactly how much vote shenanigans there were in the election, because he knows how much of the accusations are from his troll farms.

All while Trump's debts come closer and closer to due, while his source of laundered money is barred from transactions.... Yeah. i want Bonespurs to know it was me.

 

[Politesse]

2,000 people is a lot of casualties. But, when you've sent 150,000, not anything like enough to declare the campaign a loss.

Tactically true.
But politically, it could be a loss, depending on the expectations and the promises made. It was supposed to be a walk in the park. Death tolls SHOULD have been parrallel to those encountered on a military exercise in their own country.

That's what we found in Desert Storm. Casualties most resembled a desert training exercise.

Finding the enemy armed and dangerous? What's up with THAT?!!?

To me, if you are fighting a limited front war, out of the blue... and you are the aggressor, 2,000 is a lot!

It is.

But it won't save Kyiv.

And it probably won't save President Zelenskyy.

Russia is creating an apocalyptic disaster for Ukraine, and a pretty serious crisis for themselves as well.

This is a crime against humanity.

 

[Copernicus]

This is a crime against humanity.

It certainly resembles genocide, although I don't think it started out that way. Putin seems to have thought that Russian troops would be welcomed at least by the Russian-speaking population in Luhansk and Donetsk outside of the two occupied areas. Instead, he has his military now demolishing the largest Russian-speaking city in that area--Kharkiv. One man helping to carry a dead body from Freedom Square was asked what was going on and reportedly replied "the Russian liberators are here".

 

[lpetrich]

Another claimant:  Greek colonisation and possibly also  Phoenicia (what's now Lebanon) over the 8th - 6th centuries BCE.

Greek colonizers spread to the shores of the Black Sea, the E Aegean Sea (W Turkey), S Turkey, N Cyprus, N Egypt, NE Libya, E Spain, S France, S Italy, and E Adriatic. Marseille, France (Massalia), Nice, France (Nicaea), Palermo, Sicily, Italy (Panormos), Naples, Italy (Neapolis), Split, Croatia (Asphalatos), and Benghazi, Libya (Euesperides) were originally Greek colonies.

The biggest Phoenician colony was Carthage, near present-day Tunis.

Let's now turn to Ukrainian Black-Sea cities.

Odessa was earlier named Khazhibei, but in 1795, some Russian renamed it after the Black Sea Greek colony of Odessus, because that Russian mistakenly believed it to be there. Odessus is, instead, Varna, Bulgaria.

The Ukrainian spelling of its name is "Odesa", with only one s.

Sevastopol was founded in the late 18th cy. under the name Akhtiar, but it was soon renamed with a Greek-style name: sebastos "venerable" + polis "city".

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

State Controlled Putin News in Russia

Events in Ukraine are not referred to as war. Instead, the offensive is described as a demilitarisation operation targeting military infrastructure or a "special [military] operation to defend the people's republics".
Across state-controlled TV, presenters and correspondents use emotive language and images to draw "historical parallels" between Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine and the Soviet Union's fight against Nazi Germany.

This is the tripe barbos keeps posting. I suppose if I was a brainwashed Putin diehard relying on Putin's state controlled broadcasting for my information I would be equally misinformed.

 

[Tigers!]

Kharkiv City Hall Bombing

Yep! That's what I was talking about earlier, I am glad you posted it.
now find 10 things which are not right with that video

I'll start the list.

10 things which are not right with that video

1. Russia blows things up in Ukraine
2. Russian military shouldn't even be in Ukraine

Try again.

That's unnecessary. I got the first two items exactly right. Others can add the other eight.

Building mysteriously catches fire