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

[Politesse]

WTF is ukro-wehrmacht?

Really? you don't know? really?

LOL he really does think every Westerner is sitting over here supporting the "Ukrainian Nazi" Conspiracy, and we just lie snd say that we don't. Because that's what all conspiracy theorists believe. If anyone who doesn't agree with their cult leader, they must be "in on it".

 

[steve_bank]

There are probably Russian sites where he can go to pick up jargon and talking points.

We are full of those kinds of extremist states over here.

We see Trump spin continuously standardize words and cliches. Harris is a communist...

From an evangelical preacher, demons and evil spirits speak through democrats.

Barbos is the Russian-Putin flip side of the Trump - MAGA people.

 

[barbos]

WTF is ukro-wehrmacht?

Really? you don't know? really?

LOL he really does think every Westerner is sitting over here supporting the "Ukrainian Nazi" Conspiracy, and we just lie snd say that we don't. Because that's what all conspiracy theorists believe. If anyone who doesn't agree with their cult leader, they must be "in on it".

Anything but discussing how ukrainian mobilization is conducted.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

kravietz 🦇 (@kravietz@agora.echelon.pl)

#Ukraine incursion into #Kursk oblast’ had one interesting added benefit, which was obtaining access to secret FSB archives in Sudzha. FSB was evacuating in such haste that they did not manage to d...

agora.echelon.pl

#Ukraine incursion into #Kursk oblast’ had one interesting added benefit, which was obtaining access to secret FSB archives in Sudzha. FSB was evacuating in such haste that they did not manage to destroy their archives, which were acquired intact and now journalist Dmytro “Apostol” Karpenko is publishing some of them.

As Estonian analyst Artur Rehi wrote on Twitter, the most interesting thing about the documents is the unbelievable amount of bullshit produced from the very bottom to the very top of FSB. The service whose main purpose is to collect accurate, actionable intelligence internally and abroad is mass scale producing fantasies, certifying them as “reliable intelligence” and inventing whole massive plots, on a scale that would probably beat Hollywood screenplay writers union.

One of the cases is based on confidential reports from agent “Mizer” who, according to the FSB document is a 1973 born male, living in Mokrushino in Kursk oblast’ whose “operational value” is that he “can travel to subjects of Russian Federation, specifically Donetsk People’s Republic” due to the job he’s doing.

Attached is his hand-written report where he describes a rather delusional story of “youth camps” where ominous “Azov” soldiers train them into becoming assassins, all supervised by “instructors from France, UK, Belarus and Latvia” etc etc. The report is described as “reliable information”, whereas any sane person would ask themselves how this knowledge could be acquired by a person that is only allowed to travel to DPR… which is certainly quite far and isolated from all the places where the “camps” are described to be happening. At the same time, the report very much looks like it’s just rambling compiled from random stories taken from Russian TV, which were likely based on other such reports etc etc.

So maybe Barbos' ideas on NATO starting it are based in FSB garbage rather than Putin propaganda.

 

[Elixir]

We form an opinion of Russia partly by what you post.

Not I.
What babs “represents” is an artifice; Russia does not look like a bunch of freedom loving patriots trying to repel feared Nazis. That was 80 years ago.

 

[Henry-Finland]

National Security Adviser to government of India, Ajit Doval, is flitting between Kiev and Moscow to see if a solution to the war can be found.
India and China have resolved their differences about 4 points in Ladakh and the Chinese forces have retreated from their Galvan valley positions.
Patience always pays, rather than blundering into a war.

Tell that to Putin.

 

[Henry-Finland]

The trouble I see here is that Ukraine can quit this incursion easily if Russia just leaves. Russia, or I should say Putin, can't. Russia has invested too much into this illegal effort to step back. I doubt Putin would survive a withdrawal. Kind of depressing thought that people are being sent to their deaths by Putin because he fears for his own life, after fucking up so badly on Ukraine.

Despite all of the talk by barbos, Russia remains in a near WWI stalemate against an inferior (or what we thought was inferior, overjudging Russia's capabilities), and now they are ceding actual Russian territory to Ukraine because they have no capacity to defend itself. If Russia fought this as a manner of 'self defense against NATO', Russia has brutally demonstrated they are incapable of defending themselves (a theme of the nation for hundreds of years when excluding their only reliable defense mechanisms, cold and mud).

Worse, if Russia leaves Ukraine there are other provinces that would like to leave but are afraid to--and they'll probably leave if Russia loses. Putin has to maintain the aura of fear or his empire will fall apart.

Yeah, sure. But what is his empire actually good for? Why should be care if it falls apart?

How does it substantively change his life if his empire is a tenth of its current size? He would still be able to own as many palaces, yachts, cars, girls, chefs, bodyguards, etc., etc., as he could ever want.

I just don't undertand the desire for power, land, or wealth, beyond what one can concievably use for oneself, ones familiy, and ones friends (a cadre that can only ever contain a maximum of 150 or so individuals). A billionaire can live just as well as a multibillionaire, and far better than a king, emperor, or tsar - if only because "mere" billionaires are rarely assassinated.

It's shit to be king. The folks who do the job having been trained to it from birth likely don't realise how much better it would be to be "merely" hyperwealthy; But those who aspire to rule, from relatively humble beginnings, must be fucking idiots.

And you have to delegate anyway, because there aren't enough hours in the day; So why not rotate the top job, or better still, divvy it up into smaller ministries? Who the fuck is dimwitted enough to actually want to be in charge, for fucking decades? And particularly to want to be in charge of a basket case like Russia?

How small a dick must you be born with, to be so desperate for prestige that you want to not only be in charge, but also to send millions of young men to die in wars to further grow that needless empire?

Anyone who actively wants to rule any country for more than a few years needs secure psychiatric care. If they want to rule a shit hole like Russia, that goes double. And if they want their holdings to actually get bigger, that goes treble.

Can we not just give him a nice trophy, and a medal engraved with "Best Dictator Ever - Winner of Everything", and have an end to the pointless invasion? I am damn sure that most of the Russian troops in Ukraine would be very happy to fuck off home, if only Utin were to have his crazy egoism sufficiently sated. Shit, he can have a nice sash with "WINNER" on it in gold letters, and a golden crown too. Chuck in a huge gala presentation with a Cordon Bleu meal and celebrity speakers and all - it's still likely going to be cheaper than one day's supply of ammunition for the soldiers on the Ukrainian front, and nobody needs to get hurt.

In short, what the fuck is that guy's problem, anyway??

Good post, bilby!

The thing with Putin is, that he wanted to be something like Peter the Great.
He would have been very liked and famous if he had concentrated on his people and their well-being. Not killing the people as he does now.
Something like Augustus.

The sick logic goes like this:
- Ukrainians are not a people, they have always been Russians.
- Let's kill those Ukrainians, civilians or soldiers, old people or children - they are not worth a life if they do not want to be Russians.
- We kill them with the Russian army.
- So, Russians kill Russians and that is heroism, that is a deed for the motherland.

Kreml is very sick.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I know one guy who was a chauffeur for a firetruck

Point of information: In English, "chauffeur" is a very specific kind of "driver" - one who drives luxury passenger vehicles for wealthy people who don't want to drive themselves.

A person operating a firetruck would just be called a "driver"; "Chauffeur" sounds weird in this context.

Aaah, the beauty and joy of diversity.
I was enjoying my mental image of tuxedoed men opening doors for the firefighters and handing them champaigne after the fire.

I mean, when you think about it, there really SHOULD be chauffeurs for fire trucks.

Disagree.

Chauffeurs are skilled at smooth driving, not at the high performance driving of running code 3.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I know one guy who was a chauffeur for a firetruck

Point of information: In English, "chauffeur" is a very specific kind of "driver" - one who drives luxury passenger vehicles for wealthy people who don't want to drive themselves.

A person operating a firetruck would just be called a "driver"; "Chauffeur" sounds weird in this context.

The problem with bilingual dictionaries is that they give you synonyms for words that aren't synonyms in every context. Machine translation programs ran into this problem a long time ago and produced some hilarious translations of foreign texts. The more modern sophisticated programs are trained up on associating words with other words in the text that help resolve such ambiguities, but they still make some errors. For example, Russian шофёр [sho-FYOR] means "driver" or "chauffeur" and "chauffage" is French for 'heating'. So there is a path whereby a poorly trained AI-based machine translation might prefer to think of drivers of firetrucks as "chauffeurs".

The problem is deeper--there is not a one to one correspondence between the concepts of words between languages and those word concepts are a lot harder to learn new ones than simply the words.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What a load of BS. First of all, one has no relations to the other and second you are wrong on both counts. Time is not on the side of the the side with lower population in the attrition war. Third, it's Russia's back against the wall. It's the west who started this war in order to destroy Russia.

But it's not attrition of the army, but of the weapons.

I do agree Russia's back is against the wall but we didn't put it there, the wall is entirely of your own making. If you lose in Ukraine there is not going to be any invasion, but you're going to have a lot of other bits rebel.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Every totalitarian regime has this. The Stazi did it on a massive scale. When your job depends on "actionable intelligence" from dodgy informants, you make shit up wholesale. Nobody else has the resources or the ability to cross check anything, so why bust your chops getting real information, when you could just write up a month's worth of reports in an afternoon, and spend the next four weeks drinking vodka?

It's worse than that. Intelligence is a tricky field. You look hard enough for problems, you'll find them--whether they really exist or not.

And under totalitarian regimes you look good to your boss if you find problems. Whether you're accurate in doing so isn't noticed.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Ok I had to look this up. NOBODY would ever design something so ug, let alone buy it. Has to be AI.
View attachment 47668
NOPE! It’s for reelz. Looks like 10” wheels and 3” ground clearance. Apparently comes with a front that has been pre-collided into a downed tree. I bet a healthy babushka could push it over on its side.

Nobody would design something so ugly if there was competition on looks. But if there isn't a better looking car it's not out of the question.

It looks like what would happen if you slapped a big battery on the underside of a tiny car. It's a reasonably normal looking car with an extra layer underneath--this is pretty much a forced design if you want a tiny car with a big battery. The cosmetics could have been done a bit better but I think they were trying to maintain as much in common with some previous car.

 

[Copernicus]

I know one guy who was a chauffeur for a firetruck

Point of information: In English, "chauffeur" is a very specific kind of "driver" - one who drives luxury passenger vehicles for wealthy people who don't want to drive themselves.

A person operating a firetruck would just be called a "driver"; "Chauffeur" sounds weird in this context.

The problem with bilingual dictionaries is that they give you synonyms for words that aren't synonyms in every context. Machine translation programs ran into this problem a long time ago and produced some hilarious translations of foreign texts. The more modern sophisticated programs are trained up on associating words with other words in the text that help resolve such ambiguities, but they still make some errors. For example, Russian шофёр [sho-FYOR] means "driver" or "chauffeur" and "chauffage" is French for 'heating'. So there is a path whereby a poorly trained AI-based machine translation might prefer to think of drivers of firetrucks as "chauffeurs".

The problem is deeper--there is not a one to one correspondence between the concepts of words between languages and those word concepts are a lot harder to learn new ones than simply the words.

Actually, there are very few words that cannot be easily translated into any other language on the planet. If the concept represented by a word is alien to the speakers of a language, they can either adapt a loan word to their own language or make up a new word to express the concept. It is trivially true that there is no one-to-one correspondence for all words across languages, but the problem is not as deep as people like to think. Language is inherently capable of expressing any thoughts that people have.

 

[Elixir]

Language is inherently capable of expressing any thoughts that people have.

Well hell, it only has ONE job.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem is deeper--there is not a one to one correspondence between the concepts of words between languages and those word concepts are a lot harder to learn new ones than simply the words.

Actually, there are very few words that cannot be easily translated into any other language on the planet. If the concept represented by a word is alien to the speakers of a language, they can either adapt a loan word to their own language or make up a new word to express the concept. It is trivially true that there is no one-to-one correspondence for all words across languages, but the problem is not as deep as people like to think. Language is inherently capable of expressing any thoughts that people have.

I'm not saying that the concept is alien, but that it's hard for humans to translate when different languages have words that apply to different concepts. And machine translation seems to fall into the same problems as human translation.

 

[steve_bank]

India sits on the fence,

If China and Russia prevail India's leader will say 'Hey I was always with you guys we are friends right?'.

If the US ad the west prevails the Indian president will say 'Hey, I was never really with those guys, we are friends right America?'.

 

[steve_bank]

I think Trump/MAGA is a good comparison tor Putin and his propaganda.

Both are demagogues playing on cultural fears. Both have significant support from a segment of society.

Reporting from Russia early in the war showed wide support for Putin and the war. Russian patriotism is no different than any other.

I have not seen any recent reporting on how drones over Moscow are affecting support.

Putin suppresses opposition,so we don't know the extent of the opposition.

In Israel where there is free speech and free press Netanyahu has gone from wide support to demands he resign.

 

[bilby]

The problem is deeper--there is not a one to one correspondence between the concepts of words between languages and those word concepts are a lot harder to learn new ones than simply the words.

Actually, there are very few words that cannot be easily translated into any other language on the planet. If the concept represented by a word is alien to the speakers of a language, they can either adapt a loan word to their own language or make up a new word to express the concept. It is trivially true that there is no one-to-one correspondence for all words across languages, but the problem is not as deep as people like to think. Language is inherently capable of expressing any thoughts that people have.

I'm not saying that the concept is alien, but that it's hard for humans to translate when different languages have words that apply to different concepts. And machine translation seems to fall into the same problems as human translation.

I am just wondering why you, with little or no formal linguistics training, are trying to explain to a professional linguist how languages work.

Has it not occurred to you that you may not always be the best informed person in any and all discussions?

 

[steve_bank]

On this I agree with Loren, I don't think it is all that profound.

When you learn a second language you have to learn the context of the culture that uses it. If not you are limited to literal interpretation losing meaning and nuance.

In American colloquial English to say something is really bad can mean really bad, or mean really good or cool.

If Barbos is going through a translator we have no way of knowing how he is interpreting what we say in terms of nuance and meaning.

 

[ZiprHead]

kravietz 🦇 (@kravietz@agora.echelon.pl)

#Ukraine incursion into #Kursk oblast’ had one interesting added benefit, which was obtaining access to secret FSB archives in Sudzha. FSB was evacuating in such haste that they did not manage to d...

agora.echelon.pl

#Ukraine incursion into #Kursk oblast’ had one interesting added benefit, which was obtaining access to secret FSB archives in Sudzha. FSB was evacuating in such haste that they did not manage to destroy their archives, which were acquired intact and now journalist Dmytro “Apostol” Karpenko is publishing some of them.

As Estonian analyst Artur Rehi wrote on Twitter, the most interesting thing about the documents is the unbelievable amount of bullshit produced from the very bottom to the very top of FSB. The service whose main purpose is to collect accurate, actionable intelligence internally and abroad is mass scale producing fantasies, certifying them as “reliable intelligence” and inventing whole massive plots, on a scale that would probably beat Hollywood screenplay writers union.

One of the cases is based on confidential reports from agent “Mizer” who, according to the FSB document is a 1973 born male, living in Mokrushino in Kursk oblast’ whose “operational value” is that he “can travel to subjects of Russian Federation, specifically Donetsk People’s Republic” due to the job he’s doing.

Attached is his hand-written report where he describes a rather delusional story of “youth camps” where ominous “Azov” soldiers train them into becoming assassins, all supervised by “instructors from France, UK, Belarus and Latvia” etc etc. The report is described as “reliable information”, whereas any sane person would ask themselves how this knowledge could be acquired by a person that is only allowed to travel to DPR… which is certainly quite far and isolated from all the places where the “camps” are described to be happening. At the same time, the report very much looks like it’s just rambling compiled from random stories taken from Russian TV, which were likely based on other such reports etc etc.

So maybe Barbos' ideas on NATO starting it are based in FSB garbage rather than Putin propaganda.

WE knew that all along.