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

[bilby]

"Barbarian" is on the right:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE2zTEiKsGeAtWlA1jg-sZQ

The Nazi is on the right.
View attachment 39041

The far right.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yeah, defend. Because they aren't the attackers

True, they are no longer attackers. But before that they has been attackers for 8 years. Now they are getting what they deserved.

None of this would have happened had Russia not decided to invade twice.

None of this would have happened had USA not decided to conduct a nazi coup in Ukraine and use them as a Bullwark against Russia.

1) We didn't conduct any coup. Ukraine threw out a Russian puppet. Once Russia couldn't control them by covert means anymore they switched to overt.

2) It wasn't a Nazi coup in the first place. The rest of the world isn't falling for Putin's proclaiming Nazis everywhere. You'll find more in Russia than Ukraine, anyway.

 

[Copernicus]

The propaganda war being fought in social media is very much a part of this war, and I suppose that is why barbos keeps posting Russian propaganda here. Whether or not he is interested in it, there is usually a different truth behind many of these stories. The following is a propaganda story put out by Russia about this heroic "Babushka Z" ("Grandmother Z"), who approached a couple of Ukrainian soldiers with a Soviet flag. They took the flag from her, threw it on the ground, and stomped on it. They told her that they had come to give her a bag of food, but she returned it to them, saying "My parents died for that flag in World War Two". Russian propagandists loved it. They erected a statue of her in Mariupol and have painted images of her to support their "Z" invasion.

Here is the story behind that propaganda, which is totally different from the propaganda piece. For starters, she mistook the Ukrainian soldiers for Russian soldiers.

Babushka Z: The woman who became a Russian propaganda icon​

 

[Gun Nut]

Yeah, defend. Because they aren't the attackers

True, they are no longer attackers. But before that they has been attackers for 8 years. Now they are getting what they deserved.

None of this would have happened had Russia not decided to invade twice.

None of this would have happened had USA not decided to conduct a nazi coup in Ukraine and use them as a Bullwark against Russia.

1) We didn't conduct any coup. Ukraine threw out a Russian puppet. Once Russia couldn't control them by covert means anymore they switched to overt.

2) It wasn't a Nazi coup in the first place. The rest of the world isn't falling for Putin's proclaiming Nazis everywhere. You'll find more in Russia than Ukraine, anyway.

Brazil has the most people connected to WW2 Nazis than any other country... It was a common place that Nazis fled after the war. Amongst the Jewish community, the mention of someone having migrated to South America after the war raises immediate suspicion about their family... and a family with GErman heritage living is SA is automatically assumed to be from Nazi heritage.

 

[Jayjay]

Putin going back to Peter the Great is claiming Ukraine is Russia. Estonia is part of that. Lithuania's
independence like Ukraine is talked of being withdrawn. Russian politician making reference to Finland...

Technically, the claim goes back to the 15th century, after the fall of "Tsargrad" (Constantinople or "Caesar City") to the Ottoman Turks. Ivan IV became Tsar and began to expand Russian territory. The narrative then was that Moscow would be the "Third Rome" and that the Tsar was Tsar of "all the Russias", which included Orthodox areas of Ruthenia--Ukraine and Belarus, which had been part of the Kievan Rus'. Peter I was the tsar that fought expansionist wars to start gobbling up territory that was an integral part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Belarussian had even been the official court language for a time when the Commonwealth was first established and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania merged with Poland to form it. Russia and Sweden battled over that territory and completely devastated the Commonwealth, leaving it as easy pickings for a later Catherine the Great to gobble up the lion's share of the Commonwealth for the Russian Empire.

Putin's historical parallels to Peter the Great are appalling also because the "taking back" of the territories from Sweden included a terror, looting and torture campaign in Finland that was later called "The Great Wrath". Children tortured in front of their parents, and vice versa. Tens of thousands people sold to slavery. People being flogged, burned alive, hacked to pieces with axes, and their bodies being mutilated and put on display. Money, valuables, and food being looted. Vast tracts of land scorched to create a buffer zone against Sweden. Basically Game-of-Thrones level assholery... and it seems Russia hasn't made much progress in 300 years.

Gotta give Putin the credit for finding the vilest and most despicable role models from history.

 

[Copernicus]

...Putin's historical parallels to Peter the Great are appalling also because the "taking back" of the territories from Sweden included a terror, looting and torture campaign in Finland that was later called "The Great Wrath". Children tortured in front of their parents, and vice versa. Tens of thousands people sold to slavery. People being flogged, burned alive, hacked to pieces with axes, and their bodies being mutilated and put on display. Money, valuables, and food being looted. Vast tracts of land scorched to create a buffer zone against Sweden. Basically Game-of-Thrones level assholery... and it seems Russia hasn't made much progress in 300 years.

Gotta give Putin the credit for finding the vilest and most despicable role models from history.

I don't see that kind of behavior as limited to just Russia or Putin. The Russia that attacked Finland was ruled by a dictator whose brutality at least equaled or exceeded Hitler's. It shouldn't really surprise us that Putin, a throwback to the Cold War, would behave in such a ruthless manner. It isn't hard to find that same kind of behavior associated with authoritarian regimes everywhere in the world and in the history of civilization. Certainly, it was a common occurrence during the period of Mongol conquest and rule, which lasted almost a century longer in the area of what became Russia (Black Ruthenia), than it did in the areas of modern Belarus (White Ruthenia) and Ukraine (Red Ruthenia).

Frankly, the US has been guilty of behavior in some of its wars that isn't much different. When the  My Lai massacre occurred, it was American troops that carried it out. The massacre was stopped by an American helicopter crew who came upon it, but they were not universally praised for their actions. Today, if you visit the  War Remnants Museum in Saigon, you will see those men touted as heroes, but the displays of what happened at My Lai and subsequent whitewashing of the incident in America are quite depressing.

I don't say any of this to try to mitigate what Putin is doing, but I don't believe that Russians are predisposed to behave differently from Americans or Europeans. I believe that it is a matter of who controls the military, what they use it for, and the amount of restraint that is imposed on it in times of war. I think that Americans and Europeans generally may have restraints on committing atrocities where Russians may often have encouragement to do so, but those US soldiers that conducted the My Lai massacre were encouraged to commit the atrocities that they engaged in. So are Russian troops in Ukraine.

 

[Harry Bosch]

...Putin's historical parallels to Peter the Great are appalling also because the "taking back" of the territories from Sweden included a terror, looting and torture campaign in Finland that was later called "The Great Wrath". Children tortured in front of their parents, and vice versa. Tens of thousands people sold to slavery. People being flogged, burned alive, hacked to pieces with axes, and their bodies being mutilated and put on display. Money, valuables, and food being looted. Vast tracts of land scorched to create a buffer zone against Sweden. Basically Game-of-Thrones level assholery... and it seems Russia hasn't made much progress in 300 years.

Gotta give Putin the credit for finding the vilest and most despicable role models from history.

I don't see that kind of behavior as limited to just Russia or Putin. The Russia that attacked Finland was ruled by a dictator whose brutality at least equaled or exceeded Hitler's. It shouldn't really surprise us that Putin, a throwback to the Cold War, would behave in such a ruthless manner. It isn't hard to find that same kind of behavior associated with authoritarian regimes everywhere in the world and in the history of civilization. Certainly, it was a common occurrence during the period of Mongol conquest and rule, which lasted almost a century longer in the area of what became Russia (Black Ruthenia), than it did in the areas of modern Belarus (White Ruthenia) and Ukraine (Red Ruthenia).

Frankly, the US has been guilty of behavior in some of its wars that isn't much different. When the  My Lai massacre occurred, it was American troops that carried it out. The massacre was stopped by an American helicopter crew who came upon it, but they were not universally praised for their actions. Today, if you visit the  War Remnants Museum in Saigon, you will see those men touted as heroes, but the displays of what happened at My Lai and subsequent whitewashing of the incident in America are quite depressing.

I don't say any of this to try to mitigate what Putin is doing, but I don't believe that Russians are predisposed to behave differently from Americans or Europeans. I believe that it is a matter of who controls the military, what they use it for, and the amount of restraint that is imposed on it in times of war. I think that Americans and Europeans generally may have restraints on committing atrocities where Russians may often have encouragement to do so, but those US soldiers that conducted the My Lai massacre were encouraged to commit the atrocities that they engaged in. So are Russian troops in Ukraine.

Sure, there are always some troops that violate the rules and commit terrible atrocious and illegal acts. However, the key difference between western troops and Russian troops is that for US troops, brutality against civilians is prosecuted. In Russia it is not. I can't find a single legal case that the Russian military has taken against one of its troops. Not one. Think of all the atrocities that were committed in Chesheney, Syria, and now in Ukraine. No one punished. It's actually the opposite. Russian soldiers are encouraged to committed atrocities by the inaction of their superiors to punish them for the acts.

 

[Jayjay]

President of Kazakhstan disses Putin publicly in St. Petersburg Economic Forum:

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

After Putin argued he was protecting Russian-speakers in the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk peoples’ republics of eastern Ukraine, which Russia had recognized as independent days before the invasion, moderator Margarita Simonyan, head of the Kremlin-funded RT TV, pressed Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on whether he supported Russia’s view.

He didn’t.

Kazakhstan doesn’t recognize “quasi-state territories which, in our view, is what Luhansk and Donetsk are,” Tokayev said. There’d be “chaos” in the world if hundreds of new countries emerged, even as there is a conflict between the legal principles of territorial integrity of states and the right of people living in them to self-determination, he said.

This is interesting, because Russia came to Tokayev's rescue last year and dispelled the protests against his government. One might think he owes Putin, so it's a bit surprising to see him contradict him, and in Russia of all places. He also said in an interview on Russian television that Kazakhstan would not break western sanctions.

Could be just a ploy, so that Russia can use Kazakhstan as a trojan horse. And it helps to have a friendly nation through which to smuggle western electronics and other sanctioned items.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Putin going back to Peter the Great is claiming Ukraine is Russia. Estonia is part of that. Lithuania's
independence like Ukraine is talked of being withdrawn. Russian politician making reference to Finland...

Technically, the claim goes back to the 15th century, after the fall of "Tsargrad" (Constantinople or "Caesar City") to the Ottoman Turks. Ivan IV became Tsar and began to expand Russian territory. The narrative then was that Moscow would be the "Third Rome" and that the Tsar was Tsar of "all the Russias", which included Orthodox areas of Ruthenia--Ukraine and Belarus, which had been part of the Kievan Rus'. Peter I was the tsar that fought expansionist wars to start gobbling up territory that was an integral part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Belarussian had even been the official court language for a time when the Commonwealth was first established and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania merged with Poland to form it. Russia and Sweden battled over that territory and completely devastated the Commonwealth, leaving it as easy pickings for a later Catherine the Great to gobble up the lion's share of the Commonwealth for the Russian Empire.

Putin's historical parallels to Peter the Great are appalling also because the "taking back" of the territories from Sweden included a terror, looting and torture campaign in Finland that was later called "The Great Wrath". Children tortured in front of their parents, and vice versa. Tens of thousands people sold to slavery. People being flogged, burned alive, hacked to pieces with axes, and their bodies being mutilated and put on display. Money, valuables, and food being looted. Vast tracts of land scorched to create a buffer zone against Sweden. Basically Game-of-Thrones level assholery... and it seems Russia hasn't made much progress in 300 years.

Gotta give Putin the credit for finding the vilest and most despicable role models from history.

Agreed. I think that Putin is also signaling where he will attack next. Unless he is stopped in Ukraine.

 

[Copernicus]

...Sure, there are always some troops that violate the rules and commit terrible atrocious and illegal acts. However, the key difference between western troops and Russian troops is that for US troops, brutality against civilians is prosecuted. In Russia it is not. I can't find a single legal case that the Russian military has taken against one of its troops. Not one. Think of all the atrocities that were committed in Chesheney, Syria, and now in Ukraine. No one punished. It's actually the opposite. Russian soldiers are encouraged to committed atrocities by the inaction of their superiors to punish them for the acts.

Right. The perpetrators are brought up on charges when those very embarrassing events happen and the press gets wind of them. They represent a breakdown of discipline. But how often are the perpetrators charged or successfully prosecuted?  William Calley led the My Lai massacre and was arrested, court-martialed, and convicted. He spent three days in jail after his conviction before being released to house arrest by presidential order. He spent three years under house arrest. Many Americans treated him as an unfairly prosecuted hero. I don't know whether anyone above him in the chain of command ever received anything more than a slap on the wrist.

The pattern of exonerating military and security forces when they are caught committing atrocities is quite universal. Nations whitewash their own historical wrongdoing. I would say that it is harder to maintain that pattern in a society where there is freedom of the press, but it is still a pattern in those countries, too. People are naturally predisposed to think of themselves and their own social groups as good and those they fight with as bad, even when the opposite is true. It is much easier for Russian soldiers to commit atrocities, in part, because there is very little freedom of speech or the press in Putin's Russia. Restore that freedom, and things may change for the better, but it is gone for the foreseeable future. Whether or not barbos is sincere in his delusions here is quite irrelevant. There will be lots of Russians who believe their own propaganda and use western hypocrisy as a means of justifying their own behavior, even when they realize that their "side" is misbehaving. The difference between Russia and the West is perhaps only one of degree that has primarily to do with there being less pushback against bad behavior on the Russian side.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Gotta give Putin the credit for finding the vilest and most despicable role models from history.

Agreed. I think that Putin is also signaling where he will attack next. Unless he is stopped in Ukraine.

Which is why it is so important to stop him now. This is the same as Hitler and Austria and we have the appeasers that didn't learn their lesson from 1939.

 

[pood]

Yeah, defend. Because they aren't the attackers

True, they are no longer attackers. But before that they has been attackers for 8 years. Now they are getting what they deserved.

None of this would have happened had Russia not decided to invade twice.

None of this would have happened had USA not decided to conduct a nazi coup in Ukraine and use them as a Bullwark against Russia.

At first I felt sorry for the Russian soldiers thrown unawares into this despicable conflict initiated by your madman in the Kremlin, but now I must say I am very happy to see as many Russian Nazi soldiers killed as possible. I loved that video of the Russian Nazi giving the finger getting his sorry ass blown up by a drone. I hope vastly more numbers of your Nazi soldiers die and that your civilian population suffers intensely for decades. The Russian people are ultimately themselves to blame for allowing themselves to be led around by the nose for centuries by czars, Communists and now by Nazis. No more sympathy for Russians.

 

[pood]

What a bunch of pestilent, credulous gulls the majority of Russians must be. They have much in commnon with America’s vile MAGA Trumpanzees.

 

[pood]

I must admit it pains me to say what I said two posts up.

 

[TSwizzle]

What a grotesque spectacle;

Hollywood star Ben Stiller has said 'seeking safety is a right and it needs to be upheld for every person' during a visit to Ukraine where he met with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday. The actor, 56, arrived in Poland on Saturday and was pictured in the large south-eastern city of Rzeszow, close to the border, speaking to aid workers in a storage facility. On Monday morning, Stiller, who is a long-term Goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) – the UN refugee agency – visited Ukraine on World Refugee Day. The actor was seen walking among bombed out buildings in the city of Irpin where Russian forces have bombed residential buildings. In a video posted to his Instagram account, Stiller said: 'Hey, I'm Ben Stiller, and I'm here in Ukraine. I'm meeting people who've been impacted by the war and hearing how it's changed their lives. 'War and violence are devastating people all over the world. Nobody chooses to flee their home. Seeking safety is a right, and it needs to be upheld for every person.' He later met with President Zelensky where the pair discussed the importance of the world remembering the on-going conflict with Russia.

Daily Mail

I understand Stiller is a goodwill ambassador but who does he think he is, Sean Penn?

 

[zorq]

I wish posters would have the courage of their convictions to post complete thoughts and not vague innuendos referencing nothing in particular. I gather that ol' Swizzle has a problem with something or someone associated with the article he posted, but for some reason he couldn't articulate it or anything beyond his distaste. I feel like conservatives are so used to engaging in group think within their media bubbles that they forget that outsiders have no clue what they are talking about until they actually take the time to regurgitate it in the form of coherent sentences.

TLDR---> WTF?

 

[TV and credit cards]

What a grotesque spectacle;

Hollywood star Ben Stiller has said 'seeking safety is a right and it needs to be upheld for every person' during a visit to Ukraine where he met with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday. The actor, 56, arrived in Poland on Saturday and was pictured in the large south-eastern city of Rzeszow, close to the border, speaking to aid workers in a storage facility. On Monday morning, Stiller, who is a long-term Goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) – the UN refugee agency – visited Ukraine on World Refugee Day. The actor was seen walking among bombed out buildings in the city of Irpin where Russian forces have bombed residential buildings. In a video posted to his Instagram account, Stiller said: 'Hey, I'm Ben Stiller, and I'm here in Ukraine. I'm meeting people who've been impacted by the war and hearing how it's changed their lives. 'War and violence are devastating people all over the world. Nobody chooses to flee their home. Seeking safety is a right, and it needs to be upheld for every person.' He later met with President Zelensky where the pair discussed the importance of the world remembering the on-going conflict with Russia.

Daily Mail

I understand Stiller is a goodwill ambassador but who does he think he is, Sean Penn?

What’s your point? Zelensky needs to keep the focus on Ukraine. He’s going to meet with anyone and everyone who will keep this on the front page.
Grotesque is world leaders visiting as if they care and then doing nothing to help.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Germany has been slow to help Ukraine fight the Russian menace. Germany has always taken the view that Russia could be moderated via economic cooperation and dependence. Deciding to rely on Russian gas rather than nuclear power was an awful decision. But Germany is starting to see the light:

Germany Decries ‘Economic Attack’ By Putin As It Inches Towards Gas Rationing

www.msn.com

Hopefully they'll send more of the promised arms to Ukraine and help turn back the Russian advance.

 

[Jayjay]

Germany has been slow to help Ukraine fight the Russian menace. Germany has always taken the view that Russia could be moderated via economic cooperation and dependence. Deciding to rely on Russian gas rather than nuclear power was an awful decision. But Germany is starting to see the light:

Germany Decries ‘Economic Attack’ By Putin As It Inches Towards Gas Rationing

www.msn.com

Hopefully they'll send more of the promised arms to Ukraine and help turn back the Russian advance.

German PzH 2000 self-propelled howitzer sound like a decent addition to Ukrainian arsenal. Also probably prime targets for Russia. We'll see how long it takes before barbos is here gloating how they were all "shit" and that Russia has destroyed them all on Snake Island.

Russia can't be beat with quantity, but maybe higher range and accuracy could help blunt the Russian tactics.

 

[ZiprHead]

Yes, that Ukrainian artillery is useless.



Probably some not safe for work Russian words being spoken.