I hope any TC bros in the area are safe.

https://twitter.com/ASLuhn/status/1496734064593674240

Shit's getting real.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t0cmak/president_zelenskyys_heartbreaking_defiant_speech/

Is this gonna be the next, "news everybody must pay attention to, so we're gonna shove it in their face constantly"?

>>39262
It's one of the biggest countries in the world invading one of it's neighbors. I think that warrants some attention?

>>39262
Yup, but at least we have anime.

Yesterday was really cool. There was a helicopter attack with 34 helicopters that that took an airbase right next to Kiev but then the Ukrainians took it back, there was fighting IN CHERNOBYL!!! There was a tank column of 15 tanks that got taken out with Javelins, the Russians fought from the Crimean isthmus to the Dnieper and took a bridge over it only for the Ukrainians to counter attack and take it back(I was worried for a bit there, I don't know why they got that far in the first place). I hope more fun things happen today.

>>39262
Was just thinking the same thing. How convenient that just on the tail-end of the whole covid situation, when the media has squeezed all the blood they can out of the covid-19 scare that ultimately turned out to be an overreaction of several orders of magnitude, that we now have a new story to take up the headlines. What's a better distraction than a plague? A war. Nothing better to keep the masses diverted. And also a great excuse to crash the economy. A crash following the fed-induced inflation is inevitable, they just need a good event to pin it on, and this it.

Now that said I don't deny the basic fact that one country invading another and creating instability in the region is unpleasant for the citizens of that region. However, I don't trust the media on this issue one bit, and the fact that the media wants to hype up Putin as some big bad irrational boogeyman immediately makes me suspicious – they did the same trick with Trump, and he didn't even _do_ anything.

But at the same time I don't care enough about geopolitics or international relations to bother researching this in more detail, and since this pragmatically doesn't affect me I can't really have a strong opinion on this one way or the other. There's undoubtedly something more at play that's not being talked about in the open, but I'd have wade through a bunch of noise in order to find some kernel of signal. Maybe someone here who's done all that (or e.g. found someon on /pol/ who _has_) can share their insights?

The only thing I could find on short notice was this analysis in 2014 from Prof. Mearsheimer [1] which basically states that Putin here is acting rationally here to pre-emptively avoid a situation where Ukraine would have joined NATO. The US absolutely hated when Cuba fell under Soviet influence, so why is it surprising that Putin would hate Ukraine falling under Western influence? Whatever the situation, the medias portrayal of anyone as "irrational" here is absurd.

[1] https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1496788626658807814

“Glory to Japan! Glory to Ukraine!"

>>39270
It's fake... I don't even have to open the link to know what it is and I keep seeing this everywhere and it really annoys me.

The man pictured is the Uranian ambassador to Japan, he was just dressing up as a samurai to appeal to the Japanese, he is not the Japanese ambassador to Ukraine and the picture was taken a week before the war.

I have just heard a huge development Kizunai Ai has been defeated! This is a heavy blow against the V tuber menace, the war isn't over yet but this brings fresh hope.

>>39288
>The man pictured is the Uranian ambassador to Japan
amazing, the Japanese are so advanced that they have diplomatic ties to aliens from Uranus

>>39262
with any luck it'll lead to western governments dropping the whole coronavirus bullshit.
But yeah it's kinda significant. Obviously for Ukrainians, but also because the sanctions will do massive damage to the economy on both sides.

Post edited on 28th Feb 2022, 5:46pm

A friend of mine works for Porsche. They couldn't build any cars for months because of the chip shortage. Now they finally have all the chips but they still can't produce any new cars until they find new suppliers for various things because they had close ties to some Russian companies.

It's hilarious to me that Russia rolled in thinking they could fire off a few guns, toss a couple missiles around, and Ukraine would just fold and surrender right away. It's like the last thing they expected was for the country to actually fight back, and the result his a spectacular logistics mess on Russia's side.

>>39349
They might just be testing the waters, seeing international reaction, etc. They're not gonna send their best troops for that.

>>39349
I honestly have no idea how the war is going. I'm not going to trust anything the western media says, but at the same time sources like RT probably aren't all that accurate either. In fact I doubt it's possible (unless you're one of the glowies at the CIA or russian intelligence) that anyone actually knows the state of the war on a big-picture scale.

>>39351
I'm in the same boat. It'll be some months (or even years) after war's end until something that resembles the truth appears. In the interim, it's just a bunch of governments being pricks to each other while their respective subjects get the shaft.

>>39352
And so history repeats itself.

>>39350
They could have used more force, sure, but I think what happened was a clear example of underestimating the smaller country. What they sent in and established was perfectly sufficient for a conflict lasting only a few days. But things went past that, and before you know it you have Russian soldiers looting shops for food and ditching vehicles that they can't refuel.

>>39351
The lead up to the war was actually really well documented by tons of sources. To anyone paying attention, none of this would have come as a surprise. Because Russia used their rail network to transport and position the majority of their troops, there's a lot public videos out there showing exactly what went where and when. Combining that with satellite photos paints an even clearer image. You have to remember, we're living in an age now where billions of people are caring around recording devices that instantly send information to countless other people at a moment's notice.

>>39349
German invasion of Poland took 5 weeks. This is about 2.5 weeks in.

>>39368
It did but it was mostly decided by the second week. However, this war is quite different.

They did certainly act like they were trying to win the war with a rapid coup and hoped that the Ukrainians would not fight back, this explains the baffling actions in the early days with things like armoured cars and trucks driving unsupported into urban areas only to be taken out by BTRs. But even then, that does not mean they actually expected this to work just that they thought there was a chance that it might, and if you could win a war in such a quick and bloodless manner why not at least attempt it?

But now they have changed tack but even so, this is still going to be a much longer war. The Russians are not using anywhere near the force that they could be, they are an artillery based army yet their use of artillery has been minimal given that, their use of air power has also been minimal. They are also more than likely outnumbered in this war, they do have a larger professional army in the area but the Ukrainians have large numbers of reservists and such being called to action. The Russians have 190,000 or so and with that they are trying to invade the second largest nation in Europe, they are stretched fairly thin and so a slow methodical approach does make sense. But we just don't know, maybe everything is going according to plan or maybe the invasion is a debacle. We probably won't know the answer to that until after the war and maybe even a long time after it at that.

Let's remind ourselves that the ones at fault for this war are not ordinary Russian or Ukrainian citizens.
At fault are mainly a handful of politically well-connected and very wealthy individuals who care very little about the well-being of either country's population, are for the most part not even ethnically Russian or Ukrainian, and have largely already fled both countries on their private jets.

>>39396
Yeah no, Putin had nothing to do with it("mainly"). It was some shadowy group of evil people and not the guy who's been in power for decades.

Post edited on 24th Mar 2022, 8:59am

>>39396
Do you mean the oligarchs? I can understand why that might be the case on the Ukrainian side, if Ukraine did join the EU it would open up huge markets and opportunities for them. But I don't see that as being the case for Russia, this war is terrible for Russian oligarchs, not only are they getting heavily sanctioned(and often personally sanctioned as well) but the businesses they have interests in are being run into the ground by all of this. The Russia that we are going to see after the war is going to be far different than what we saw before it as well, it's likely many of these oligarchs will be purged(as well as anybody else that shows any inkling of rebellion).

>>39397
It was all Putin, well him and his fellow KGB/Military circle. He has been working on securing Russia's borders for a long time.

>>39400
From what I can tell by browsing /pol/ and reading whatever few contrarian opinions there exist, I get the impression that while this war was indeed instigated by Putin, it's not necessarily irrational since there had supposedly been talks of Ukraine joining NATO. So I suppose in a game-theoretic type of view if he had ever planned to strike, now was the best time (and conversely if there had been reassurance that Ukraine would never be part of nato, then the incentive would have been diminished). The real winner here is China though since they now become the dominant power in that region, and can basically do business with everyone (and gets especially favorable terms for trade with Russia) while the rest of the world is busy implemtning useless sanctions. So even though Putin's move might have been rational in short-term from a "secure the borders" perspective, it doesn't seem like he played the long-game here. Conversely China seems to excel at playing the long-game, and knows precisely when not to strike and to instead sit back and let time play out (e.g. Hong Kong), esp. given how the west is basically making a fool out of themselves.

>>39405
Yes, it's not irrational. Russia does not want to share such a large border with a NATO country and wants them as a buffer state instead, that is why he took parts of the Donbas and also why he did the same thing beforehand in Georgia(because there was talk of Georgia joining Nato as well). Ukraine can't join Nato while it has territory occupied by Russia and is fighting a proxy war with her, to do so would mean that Article 5 would instantly be triggered and there would be WW3.

That situation had been left as it was since they took Crimean and parts of the Donbas, however, ever since then Ukraine had been arming and preparing for war and the west had been aiding her in that while at the same time Russia had been building a war chest and preparing to whether any sanctions that further action would bring. Putin is also getting old and may feel that a successor would be unable or unwilling to finish this. So that brings us to the present, Russia felt that they had to strike now before Ukraine became too strong.

China is both a winner and a loser, yes this benefits her strategically, it turns US attention to Russia and ties Russia to her economically. Yet at the same time, she is the largest importer of Energy in the world, economically this will hit her hard. China can get a discount from Russia but a discount on astronomical energy prices will still be expensive and she can't get all her energy from Russia. Other commodities are being hit by this as well and China is a major importer of pretty much every commodity. This has also shown to China just what the US is willing to do in order to punish a threat to the current global order, any idea that they could just walk into Taiwan and the west would do nothing is a fantasy now.

In some ways China plays the long game well, in others she is terrible at it. Just look at the mess she is in now with her economy and demographics. Not only that but politically she has ruined her relations with the west when she did not have to, 10 years ago the world was more than happy to work with her and more than happy to ignore anything that she did internally, now she is a pariah on the global stage and western companies only want to get out.

Problem is that dictators like Putin & Xi think that a centralised authority (aka dictatorship) is best. It isn't.

>>40460
China would not be where it is today under a democracy. Democracy has flaws as well and it's a much more complex than most people make it out to be.
But this war would happen under a democracy as well anyway(well technically it did).

>>40460
>centralized authority
It's the most efficient for implementing sweeping changes, but the issue is often that the function the person in power is optimizing for often isn't the function that the constituents want. And even if the person in power was completely selfless and benevolent, half the people would still blame him because it's impossible to get consensus on anything.

(Direct) democracy suffers from the opposite problem where it's impossible to have meaningful wide-sweeping changes because, and you still have the consensus problem so nothing meaningful gets done anyway.

One benefit of centralized authority is that since only few people have direct influencing power, there's a higher chance that they will all be smart and actually understand the second order consequences of what they're implementing. In practice this doesn't work since "power corrupts" and all that, so even if the current person in charge is sufficiently altruistic it only takes one ruthless opportunist to outmaneuver him and rise to power.

>>40464
>the issue is often that the function the person in power is optimizing for often isn't the function that the constituents want. And even if the person in power was completely selfless and benevolent, half the people would still blame him because it's impossible to get consensus on anything.
The people don't know what's good for them. I'm not even trying to justify centralized authority, it's not my preferred form of governance, but it's just true. People would complain about a military being built up to defend them against an enemy that was approaching their shores. They're idiots, they have no real understanding of the practical concerns that go into keeping a civilization alive, they think ideals like social freedom and comfort are the most important things to protect. My family and my ancestors have lived under every type of government imaginable in the last 2000 years. Yet, they still exist as a living organism, because I live. That is what ultimately matters. I genuinely believe people who place ideals or religion over basic animalistic survival should not be allowed to make decisions in politics or any important sphere. It's just as simple as that.

It's very, very hard for me to understand the perspective of most pacifists or anti-nuclear advocates, I imagine they must just have a very unrealistic or immature view on defense, war, warfare, and the nature of conflict. Wars have been happening ever since humans figured out how to make a structured settlement that could out-produce another. Ever since the first farmers, we have had warfare, and we have had conflict going back over a billion years to when our ancestors were single-celled organisms. I won't say that there's a very low chance that wars will end one day, I say there's a zero percent chance that wars will end someday.

Now I'm not arguing that a centralized authority is the best way to run a country, and obviously many times in the past a system of individuals ruling a country, or even just counties within a kingdom, has failed spectacularly. But I think if you give the people "what they want", like children they will run into the street and get hit by a car, metaphorically speaking. If I was heavily invested in the survival of my bloodline or whatnot, I would not want it's future in the hands of people who worry more about whether or not they have the freedom to do X trivial thing than whether or not their military and agricultural infrastructure can be maintained for the foreseeable future. These aren't people who should be making important decisions.

>>40464
>In practice this doesn't work
Singapore is an example that it could work, they are highly centralized and possibly the only government in the world that is the closest to a technocracy.

Russia just announced partial mobilization. Looks like the conflict is gonna go on a lot longer, and may escalate further.

>>40506
Probably going to end up being a war of attrition. The main factor is how motivated each side is. I.e. are the Russian troops actually excited to go to war, or are they being forced to do so. Same for Ukraine. All I can say is that it seems the person defending has more at stake than the person aggressing, and so will be more committed to the effort.

Or put another way, my intuition is that it's only at the start of the war the aggressor has the advantage since they have the element of surprise and readiness on their side. But as time progresses this advantage begins to decline (defender has time to mobilize forces, can find alternative supply lines, etc.).

Post edited on 21st Sep 2022, 1:13pm

>>40506
Well I think the idea behind a partial mobilisation like this would be to end the war sooner.

Though, Shoigu said that conscripts will not be sent to the front. Which would mean that this 300,000 being mobilised is being used as a pool for volunteers, to free up other contract soldiers to sent to Ukraine or as part of a stare down with the west. Or all three.
But either way, these people have to be re-trained first so it will take months for this to affect the war.

Additionally, it's important to add that this mobilisation was announced the day after referendums on joining Russia were announced in the DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaphozhia.

>>40509
It's already a war of attrition, that's why it is going so slow.

I keep hearing people make that argument about the defender having the advantage because of that. But really, historically that is not the case. So long as an army is cohesive and disciplined enough, then morale will not matter that much until the soldier is in a situation that's really bad. Though even then the defender can take off his uniform and run away, the attacker can't.

Finally something interesting, all three of the russia -> europe gas pipelines have been blown up (presumably an intentional act). The most likely culprit here is US since they benefit both monetarily (as they are now the only viable supplier) as well as politically (ensuring that Germany cannot involve themselves with Russia no matter how bad the situation gets).

>>40562
That is pretty interesting. It just sets Germany's current natural gas situation in stone, right? I'd consider that a pretty aggressive action to take, though there doesn't seem to be any repercussions for now. Depends on how the situation develops.

>>40565
From what I understand (which could well be wrong since I don't read much news) the pipelines weren't currently being used anyway (they were either not fully operational or under maintenance). But this effectively removes any possible leverage Russia had over Germany (because even if they wanted to completely acquiesce, there's no physical infrastructure anymore).

The only situation in which I can see this being done by Russia is if Putin wanted to "salt the earth" so to speak. I.e. he knows that he's not going to survive to see the end of the war, so he just wants to inflict maximum damage and ensure Russia won't be having any economic ties with Europe for the future.

>>40566
I wonder what will happen with Russia once this is all over. I think it'll be more of the same for most people.

Well, I'm of the opinion that the US did it. The incentives are there
Regardless, I don't want to get nuked, anons: I haven't read enough manga; watched enough anime; read enough visual novels.

>>40568
>I don't want to get nuked, anons
Unless you're in the ukraine or russia, I don't think there's any risk of this. Directly attacking any of the NATO countries would be a complete suicide mission, and despite media portrayal no world leader is genuinely irrational.

>>40567
I wouldn't expect things to be completely a noop for the average citizen in russia. Given that US has signaled its intention to ensure russia will not intertwine with Europe, I can't really see any situation in which this ends favorably for Russia. At most they could cut their losses, but maybe they think they've already sunk so much resources into this and want to continue to some endgoal.

>>40568
>I don't want to get nuked
I'm always hiding behind no less than 12 proxies. In order for someone to nuke me they would have make a lucky guess.
You should do the same, to protect yourself from any sort of targetted attack, nuclear or otherwise.

>>40570
Someone should tell Cirno she has skin cancer.