Russia is now bombing Ukraine

[beerwolf]

Can someone explain to me once Putin puts his Russian flag in the centre of Kyiv how he then thinks he will control the population? Because they will never take orders from him. The Ukrainian population will mostly all become insurgents. Will his soldiers just point guns at as many as possible and order them to behave and do as they are told?
 

Edit, Oddly enough the BBC corespondent in Kyiv has just asked the same question as I’m watching it live and typing. As he just said it just doesn’t add up

Edited March 12, 2022 by beerwolf

[dcom]

10 minutes ago, beerwolf said:

Can someone explain to me once Putin puts his Russian flag in the centre of Kyiv how he then thinks he will control the population?

Appearance. It will be shown to the Russians as proof of victory, to bolster support in the lie that Putin is in control. It isn't meant for us who know that he's lying, it's meant for the sycophants and the Russian people supporting Putin.

Quote

The Russian language has three words for lying, two for truth. And one of those (pravda) is a kind of a half-truth used to keep moving from the current situation.

Russians know they are and have been lied to, but the culture is to keep going anyways, because that's how things have been done since forever.

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by dcom

[kausto]

11 minutes ago, beerwolf said:

Can someone explain to me once Putin puts his Russian flag in the centre of Kyiv how he then thinks he will control the population? Because they will never take orders from him. The Ukrainian population will mostly all become insurgents. Will his soldiers just point guns at as many as possible and order them to behave and do as they are told?
 

Edit, Oddly enough the BBC corespondent in Kyiv has just asked the same question as I’m watching it live and typing. As he just said it just doesn’t add up

I suspect he just wants to destroy everything in Ukraine to make this territory unusable.

Same tactic as in Syria. Destroy everything that is humanitarian.

Edited March 12, 2022 by kausto

[kausto]

I hope this mad old fart will fail soon

[may be rude]

22 minutes ago, beerwolf said:

Can someone explain to me once Putin puts his Russian flag in the centre of Kyiv how he then thinks he will control the population? Because they will never take orders from him. The Ukrainian population will mostly all become insurgents. Will his soldiers just point guns at as many as possible and order them to behave and do as they are told.
 

Edit, Oddly enough the BBC corespondent in Kyiv has just said the same thing as I’m watching it live and typing. As he just said it just doesn’t add up

 

i think the idea is regime change. take out the zelensky government and install a franchisee. but yes, it looks like putin and his military miscalculated the extent to which the ukrainians would fight. there was a dynamic whereby, because of the difference in numbers, there was a logistical calculation that more resistance would just mean more casualties on the ukranian side. so the russian hope was that there would not be much resistance because they wouldn't want to increase the casualties. but ukranians fucking hate putin. and they are not fucking russia, and don't want to be. 

 

so now the russian military is on plan b (at least). think syria. putin bombed in syria, with his own military. they carpet bombed civilian areas in aleppo. the reviled assad, who gased his own people, still holds this power by force. like kim jong un etc. that's now the plan. it may mean russia turns ukraine to rubble, if it's allowed to pass.

 

but yeah it's a bad plan. this whole thing was always a bad idea. i think putin is desperate.

Edited March 12, 2022 by trying to be less rude

[beerwolf]

Some intelligence source needs to find those 16,000 Syrian mercenaries and wipe them out before they get to their new playground. 

[zkom]

25 minutes ago, trying to be less rude said:

 

i think the idea is regime change. take out the zelensky government and install a franchisee. but yes, it looks like putin and his military miscalculated the extent to which the ukrainians would fight. there was a dynamic whereby, because of the difference in numbers, there was a logistical calculation that more resistance would just mean more casualties on the ukranian side. so the russian hope was that there would not be much resistance because they wouldn't want to increase the casualties. but ukranians fucking hate putin. and they are not fucking russia, and don't want to be. 

 

so now the russian military is on plan b (at least). think syria. putin bombed in syria, with his own military. they carpet bombed civilian areas in aleppo. the reviled assad, who gased his own people, still holds this power by force. like kim jong un etc. that's now the plan. it may mean russia turns ukraine to rubble, if it's allowed to pass.

 

but yeah it's a bad plan. this whole thing was always a bad idea. i think putin is desperate.

The (unverified?) intelligence is that Putin has put a bunch of FSB chiefs into house arrests and sacked generals for this complete failure of an operation which would suggest that there was no plan B that could be implemented at this point.

Also this is destroying the Russian economy completely. Even if the sanctions are lifted who is ever going to invest in Russia after they threatened to nationalize foreign assets? The brain drain has escalated to completely new levels. All the trains from St. Petersburg to Helsinki are filled with Russians with visas or double citizenships escaping the country. And who the fuck knows how long it will be until they can open the Moscow stock exchange again and when that happens people start panic selling their stocks in Russian companies to get at least some money back.

This is a major fuck up on the part of Putin and his gang.

[may be rude]

 

 

 

here's a twitter list of accounts reporting on the war. 

 

13 minutes ago, zkom said:

The (unverified?) intelligence is that Putin has put a bunch of FSB chiefs into house arrests and sacked generals for this complete failure of an operation which would suggest that there was no plan B that could be implemented at this point.

Also this is destroying the Russian economy completely. Even if the sanctions are lifted who is ever going to invest in Russia after they threatened to nationalize foreign assets? The brain drain has escalated to completely new levels. All the trains from St. Petersburg to Helsinki are filled with Russians with visas or double citizenships escaping the country. And who the fuck knows how long it will be until they can open the Moscow stock exchange again and when that happens people start panic selling their stocks in Russian companies to get at least some money back.

This is a major fuck up on the part of Putin and his gang.

 

i saw he sacked a chief general. you know he is paranoid about his own military. the military is the one player an authoritarian fears most.

 

regarding the russian economy - oh my god. i'm continually stunned. if putin remains in power then russia will be north korea. i really hope they find a way to get him out of there in a way that's not too risky with all those nukes...

[beerwolf]

The only ace up Putins sleeve is his nukes. Big ace though. Maybe he’s deliberately doing things that make NATO and the west question his mental stability because that combined with ICBMs he thinks everyone is wary of getting in his way and he can do exactly as he pleases. Maybe they’ll come a point when that situation will be tested. 
 

[ignatius]

breakdown of what's happening there from protests being shut down w/arrests to all the economic issues etc. pretty amazing. 

[ARPA]

http://newfascismsyllabus.com/contributions/into-the-irrational-core-of-pure-violence-on-the-convergence-of-neo-eurasianism-and-the-kremlins-war-in-ukraine/
 

[ignatius]

44 minutes ago, ARPA said:

http://newfascismsyllabus.com/contributions/into-the-irrational-core-of-pure-violence-on-the-convergence-of-neo-eurasianism-and-the-kremlins-war-in-ukraine/
 

Dugin really having his day in the spotlight isn't he?

Quote

 

Yet despite these similarities, for Dugin, Putin’s usage of “de-Nazification,” and especially antifascism, seems particularly awkward. One of Dugin’s most crucial influences, fascist geopolitician Jean-François Thiriart, supported Ukrainian ultranationalist Stepan Bandera in seeking to push the borders of the Soviet Union back to the boundary that existed prior to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (i.e., something like Dugin’s division between Greater Russia and a hypothetical Western Ukrainian Federation). Another of Dugin’s formative influences, Belgian Rexist Leon Degrelle, wrote an entire book lionizing his own experiences fighting the Soviets in Ukraine with the murderous Waffen SS—an undertaking collaborated with Bandera’s forces.

Neither Dugin nor the Kremlin demur from using the label of “Nazism” or “fascism” to pillory liberal opponents in prescriptive fashion. FSB head Sergey Naryshkin recently blasted sanctions visited on Russia by the West, insisting that they represent a manifestation of a “‘tolerant’ liberal-fascist environment.” The notion of sanctions as part of “cancel culture” within “liberal-fascism” deployed by Naryshkin points to former Fox News personality Jonah Goldberg, whose thesis that fascism’s roots lie in liberal ideology has been roundly rejected by experts on the subject. At the same time, it is difficult to imagine Dugin, far more immersed in the real fascist tradition than Goldberg, making such a definitional error. 

 

 

[zazen]

About 10 pages back I mentioned the leaked letter from an FSB analyst that the Bellingcat guy said seemed genuine. That letter got widely reported in the press.

Supposedly there are several more letters from the same guy, english translations here:

I havent been able to find anyone vouching for these in the same way as the first one, nor am I sure why they are being translated into english by an American racecar driver.  But they continue with the same themes - everything is fucked inside the FSB and in the Russian economy, every management layer lying to the layer above about how things are going, and even if they capture Kyiv or Zelensky there is not really any plan.

This part of the most recent (5th) letter is interesting:

 

So due to a sortof 'chinese whispers' process of everyone telling their boss how great things were, Putin really thought that there were people in Ukraine who would welcome Russain troops.

The second letter (see links above) is a sortof psychological analysis of Putin from the point of view of the FSB guy. He essentially says that Putin is stuck in a hall of mirrors with various groups of confidants feeding him fabrications in order to get the particular things they want to happen. Like Putin has all the levers of power but is in thrall to competing groups around him.

The third letter has some stark predictions about the likely collapse of the Russian government within the year.

As I said, havent been able to easily find anyone vouching for these subsequent letters but they mostly expand upon the themes of the first one anyway.

Edited March 12, 2022 by zazen

[may be rude]

uh iran just hit a us base in iraq with ballistic missiles or something like that

 

 

 

 

[zazen]

edit: no idea who this guy is but its something of an explanation

"Erbil has been hit before by Iran. In past they claimed that they targeted the Mossad. I suspect this is the same thing - US/Israel will know it. They hit late at night, probably no casualties signalling they don't want to escalate. Tit for tat revenge for Israeli Syria strikes"

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by zazen

[Rubin Farr]

8 hours ago, beerwolf said:

The only ace up Putins sleeve is his nukes. Big ace though. Maybe he’s deliberately doing things that make NATO and the west question his mental stability because that combined with ICBMs he thinks everyone is wary of getting in his way and he can do exactly as he pleases. Maybe they’ll come a point when that situation will be tested. 
 

If he fired a nuclear weapon, I don’t see how the world could accept that. This might be the event that breaks old coalitions and forms new ones in the fires of conflict.

[iococoi]

 

[ignatius]

listened to the 2 Paul manafort episodes of Behind the Bastards (what a huge asshole manafort is) and in part 2 it gets to his involvement with 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych

and how basically manafort was getting millions from him to be an advisor. he helped his campaign etc. but manafort was doing shady financial shit constantly. he had all these loans. he was fond of debt as a way to launder his money that he wasn't reporting in the USA and wasn't registered as a foreign agent etc.. and when Yanukovych was being ousted.. when all the protests etc were happening he was getting advice from manafort about what to do. because manafort didn't want to lose his income stream he told Yanukovych to ramp up the troops putting down the protests and they killed like a 100 people in one night. people started disappearing etc. the cops stripped protestors in mid winter and threw them into the snow. shit like that. 

the podcast host was actually in ukraine at the time as a reporter and was interviewing protestors and people supplying the protestors etc. he said it was crazy. nazis, communists and every day people were all on the same side fighting together because in western ukraine they all hated Yanukovych that much they overlooked how much they hated each other. 

it's a pretty interesting tie in to what's going on now in some way. the episodes are early on in the pdocast's history.. i think like episode 20 or something. there's a lot of detail about the financial stuff. it's all really shady. so shady. 

 

[dcom]

Unrolled thread.

Edited March 13, 2022 by dcom

[Rubin Farr]

Russian agents kidnapped Ukraine mayor and installed puppet leader

https://www.timesofisrael.com/russia-installs-new-mayor-in-ukrainian-city-after-allegedly-kidnapping-predecessor/amp/

[Satans Little Helper]

16 minutes ago, dcom said:

Unrolled thread.

Thanks. Good read.

Something that is not being mentioned, but has me puzzled is the Russian reliance on boots on the ground. I would have expected Russia to attack Ukraine with drones in this day and age.

Instead, we're seeing a classic boots on the ground warfare with the logistical nightmare that comes along with it. And worse - from the Russian perspective - if the West supports Ukraine with drones, the Russians have become sitting ducks. And the only thing the West needs to do, is put some Ukraine flags on them et voila. I might be completely off the mark, but this makes the Russian even more naive and misguided than they already looked, imo. We have been living in the age of drones for a while now. But somehow they missed the memo?

[may be rude]

11 minutes ago, Satans Little Helper said:

Thanks. Good read.

Something that is not being mentioned, but has me puzzled is the Russian reliance on boots on the ground. I would have expected Russia to attack Ukraine with drones in this day and age.

Instead, we're seeing a classic boots on the ground warfare with the logistical nightmare that comes along with it. And worse - from the Russian perspective - if the West supports Ukraine with drones, the Russians have become sitting ducks. And the only thing the West needs to do, is put some Ukraine flags on them et voila. I might be completely off the mark, but this makes the Russian even more naive and misguided than they already looked, imo. We have been living in the age of drones for a while now. But somehow they missed the memo?

 

it's a mafia government. this whole thing is a big experiment in how that's not a good model. they're bad at everything. they've been fleecing the defense budget all along. tell the troops to do pushups and give them some barracks. big strong putin. his nukes would probably fly into the indian ocean and poison half the world.

[dcom]

21 minutes ago, trying to be less rude said:

it's a mafia government.

It's definitely a kleptocracy with вор в зако́не.

[zkom]

24 minutes ago, Satans Little Helper said:

Thanks. Good read.

Something that is not being mentioned, but has me puzzled is the Russian reliance on boots on the ground. I would have expected Russia to attack Ukraine with drones in this day and age.

Instead, we're seeing a classic boots on the ground warfare with the logistical nightmare that comes along with it. And worse - from the Russian perspective - if the West supports Ukraine with drones, the Russians have become sitting ducks. And the only thing the West needs to do, is put some Ukraine flags on them et voila. I might be completely off the mark, but this makes the Russian even more naive and misguided than they already looked, imo. We have been living in the age of drones for a while now. But somehow they missed the memo?

Well, just my guesses:

1) You can't really do an occupation with just air strikes and drones, you need military on the ground to take over the cities

2) Drones cost a lot of money, conscripts and contract soldiers are cheap

3) Russia thought that there's not going to be a much of resistance, just show up with superior firepower and people will surrender

Even if Russia takes over Kyiv and installs a puppet government it takes a shit ton of troops to keep the occupation going. The historical data says you need 5-50 troops per 1,000 inhabitants. Ukraine has a population of 44 million. That would mean a Russian occupation would need somewhere between 220k to 2.2 million troops to keep the occupation going. Russian military has 1M active personnel and 2M reserves. This would seriously deplete the Russian military.

The cost of occupation AND the economic sanctions combined, that's going to be something.

[exitonly]

15 hours ago, zazen said:

About 10 pages back I mentioned the leaked letter from an FSB analyst that the Bellingcat guy said seemed genuine. That letter got widely reported in the press.

Supposedly there are several more letters from the same guy, english translations here:

I havent been able to find anyone vouching for these in the same way as the first one, nor am I sure why they are being translated into english by an American racecar driver.  But they continue with the same themes - everything is fucked inside the FSB and in the Russian economy, every management layer lying to the layer above about how things are going, and even if they capture Kyiv or Zelensky there is not really any plan.

This part of the most recent (5th) letter is interesting:

 

So due to a sortof 'chinese whispers' process of everyone telling their boss how great things were, Putin really thought that there were people in Ukraine who would welcome Russain troops.

The second letter (see links above) is a sortof psychological analysis of Putin from the point of view of the FSB guy. He essentially says that Putin is stuck in a hall of mirrors with various groups of confidants feeding him fabrications in order to get the particular things they want to happen. Like Putin has all the levers of power but is in thrall to competing groups around him.

The third letter has some stark predictions about the likely collapse of the Russian government within the year.

As I said, havent been able to easily find anyone vouching for these subsequent letters but they mostly expand upon the themes of the first one anyway.

i’d just be weary of this kind of stuff since during the Mueller investigation there weee are kinda of people on twitter claiming to have credible inside information that would somehow predict the future. it was all either complete bs or flat out wrong. false hope is a tempting thing in situations like this.