The Russian invasion of Ukraine (6 Viewers)

[Unicron]

Maybe he's like the new Rasputin, and he needed to really kill himself TO THE MAX in order to kill himself.

 

[Lili Marlene]

I kinda periodically try and find some non-Russian, non-Western reports on the news, which is where I came across this report of “credible allegations” of summary executions of the 175 Russian prisoners held by Kyiv’s forces, among other abuses. and of course similar credible allegations against Russia, although I knew about them

Russia and Ukraine have tortured prisoners of war: UN

Investigation by UN human rights office reveals abuses by both warring sides in nearly nine-month-long conflict.

www.aljazeera.com

don't love a war, anyone got any updates on an end to it?

 

[flashback]

Well get this, i hear that local news reported that the Ghost of Kyiv managed to fly into his office and shoot him a number of times. Officials have confirmed this!

I'm sure he was killed but by whom? And why? It's all just innuendo and it bugs me.

I know there's the subplot of Putin running around and offing generals that are annoying him, but I don't get it. If you're in a war, killing your own generals seems like a weird move.

I'd suspect it's something like the following:
Russia's military are stretched and making mistakes.
US intel is focused like an absolute MF on that region, and is doing a decent job.
US intel is handing over info to Ukraine, and Ukraine are sending guys after valuable targets, like generals.
Russia can't really say "yeah, fair, we're getting hockeyed out of it on the battlefield, and incidentally it turns out we can't even keep our own top brass safe", so the weak "suicide" stories get spun. The idea that Putin might be lurking in the shadow ready to off an under-performing general is left float about just because.

Every now and again you hear some mention of the degree to which US is helping Ukraine along with Intel, followed by frantic STFUs. Here's a story US intelligence helping Ukraine kill Russian generals, report says directly addressing this even, from the Granuaile, sorry.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Works for me.

The wider story I've been looking at lately combines this NYTimes piece about using Ukraine as a testing ground for weapons

For Western Weapons, the Ukraine War Is a Beta Test

With this New Left Review piece from a month or two back about how the whole thing is just a preparation for a fucking future war of total annihilation between US/NATO and China being shepherded in by bloody Peter Thiel

Lily Lynch, Looking East — Sidecar

I feel super conspiratorial about it all but it scans??

Not to mention that our good friend Anne Applebaum is, uh, calling for interesting methods of diplomacy in the Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/12/putin-russia-must-lose-ukraine-war-imperial-future/671891/.

 

[flashback]

Yeah, I don't think there's any question the war is all the weapons industry's Christmases and birthdays all at the same time.

It's unreal seeing a superpower getting wrecked by a load of Ukrainian lads, but from the perspective of a weapons manufacturer you're never going to have a chance like this again. Constant live tests, in the field, with zero repercussions if things don't work.

Not sure I'm buying the Thiel End Of Times story. I'll have to read that I suppose. The lad's worse than Musk, but if there's a war with China or whatever we're pretty much all fucked. And if everyone's fucked the proles can't keep the water and electricity running, which inconveniences even the billionaires. I dunno, it doesn't benefit anyone.

Having constant low key wars like this are perfect though, why spoil the buzz.

 

[Lili Marlene]

You don't need to read beyond the title of the Applebaum piece but the New Left Review one is worth your time. I mean, whatever, Putin still has all those nukes so I'm not too concerned about China in the short term but it's a bit of a shame we have to move towards a world of total war as the climate is also doing its thing.

The piece could also be taking a lot of Silicon Valley press releases at face value, always a terrible idea. Palintir is pretty rock solid as far as I know though.

 

[JohnnyRaz]

Grim Russians accused of burning bodies at Kherson landfill

 

[magicbastarder]

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[Deadmanposting]

Utterly fascinating (to me anyways) reporting from the NY Times on the Russian failures in Ukraine

Putin’s War: The Inside Story of a Catastrophe (Published 2022)

Secret battle plans, intercepted communications and Russian soldiers explain how a “walk in the park” became a catastrophe for Russia.

www.nytimes.com

If you roll your eyes at the mention of "NY Times" maybe not for you, but they have interviews with most everyone
Current and former Russian officials, oligarchs.
Leaked verified mails from FSB to Russian media on how the war is showcased.
Interviews with Wagner guys and higher ups - and gruesome detail on the treatment of prisoner volunteers who desert Wagner
Ukraine and NATO people and their interactions with the Russians before the invasion

The hubris of men and how blinding to facts that it can be is always compelling stuff, to me anyways

Answered questions I wanted to know
Why was America so sure Russia would invade when no one else thought so?
What are the systemic and operational failures behind Russia's abysmal failure in Ukraine?

Anyways, it's there if you are interested

 

[JohnnyRaz]

Utterly fascinating (to me anyways) reporting from the NY Times on the Russian failures in Ukraine

Putin’s War: The Inside Story of a Catastrophe (Published 2022)

Secret battle plans, intercepted communications and Russian soldiers explain how a “walk in the park” became a catastrophe for Russia.

www.nytimes.com

If you roll your eyes at the mention of "NY Times" maybe not for you, but they have interviews with most everyone
Current and former Russian officials, oligarchs.
Leaked verified mails from FSB to Russian media on how the war is showcased.
Interviews with Wagner guys and higher ups - and gruesome detail on the treatment of prisoner volunteers who desert Wagner
Ukraine and NATO people and their interactions with the Russians before the invasion

The hubris of men and how blinding to facts that it can be is always compelling stuff, to me anyways

Answered questions I wanted to know
Why was America so sure Russia would invade when no one else thought so?
What are the systemic and operational failures behind Russia's abysmal failure in Ukraine?

Anyways, it's there if you are interested

good read. thanks. I hadn't read that stuff about how the air war part played out in the early months.

and there's no such thing as an unbiased source of news or opinion,

 

[magicbastarder]

every time i try to read an NYT piece, it tells me i've reached my limit of free articles.

does it explain what the allegiances are of all these wealthy russians who are falling down stairs, or out windows; or who or why they're being targetted?

 

[Deadmanposting]

every time i try to read an NYT piece, it tells me i've reached my limit of free articles.

does it explain what the allegiances are of all these wealthy russians who are falling down stairs, or out windows; or who or why they're being targetted?

I think you can get through on Chrome Incognito

No stair tossees, but a few oligarchs who piped up and we're shut down

 

[magicbastarder]

doesn't work on private mode in firefox, i suspect they track IPs too to prevent that.

 

[Deadmanposting]

doesn't work on private mode in firefox, i suspect they track IPs too to prevent that.

Gonna see if this works? Attaching a pdf.


ETA - It does not!

 

[Space]

12ft – Hop any paywall is yer only man. I think Pete shared it with us before.

 

[Space]

12ft – Hop any paywall is yer only man. I think Pete shared it with us before.

doesn't work for NYT any more

 

[pete]

Ukrainian army issues instructional video telling Russians how to surrender to a drone

A step-by-step instruction video demonstrates how Russian soldiers can arrange to surrender to Ukraine via drone.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[Deadmanposting]

Another decent read about how Putin receives information and who has access to him

Putin, Isolated and Distrustful, Leans on Handful of Hard-Line Advisers

Russia’s president built a power structure designed to deliver him the information he wants to hear, feeding into his miscalculations on the Ukraine war.

www.wsj.com

MOSCOW—Russian troops were losing the battle for Lyman, a small city in eastern Ukraine, in late September when a call came in for the commanding officer on the front line, over an encrypted line from Moscow.

It was Vladimir Putin, ordering them not to retreat.

The president seemed to have limited understanding of the reality of the situation, according to current and former U.S. and European officials and a former senior Russian intelligence officer briefed on the exchange. His poorly equipped front-line troops were being encircled by a Ukrainian advance backed by artillery provided by the West. Mr. Putin rebuffed his own generals’ commands and told the troops to hold firm, they said.
The Ukrainian ambushes continued, and on Oct. 1, Russian soldiers hastily withdrew, leaving behind dozens of dead bodies and supplies of artillery to restock Ukraine’s weapons caches.
Mr. Putin expected the war in Ukraine to be swift, popular and triumphant. For months, he struggled to come to terms with what instead became a costly quagmire, and found himself isolated and distrustful at the pinnacle of a power structure designed to reinforce his belligerent worldview and shelter him from discouraging news.

Also makes the point that all his advisors told him not to go into Crimea, but he Leeroy Jenkins'd it anyway and it was a cakewalk. So now he thinks he knows better than anyone.
BUT this was the point where Ukraine started to de-Russify itself and lean harder in on the West.
So it was a different Ukraine from 8 years earlier, one he was partly responsible for creating.

I do not know if these pdf attachments work, but I'm gonna try anyways.

Takeaways
Ukraine's battlefield victories are only gonna go so far in shortening the war - VVP doesn't have a clear picture of how bad it is for Russia

For months, a trickle of Russian officials, pro-government journalists and analysts tried to bring word in person to their president about how his invasion was floundering, according to people familiar with the matter.

When one longtime pollster reached out to Mr. Putin’s office about a survey showing lower-than-expected public support soon after the invasion, his office responded, using Mr. Putin’s first name and his patronymic middle name, “Vladimir Vladimirovich doesn’t need to be upset right now,” according to a person familiar with the exchange.

In July, as American-supplied, satellite-guided Himars rockets began to strike Russian army logistics depots, Mr. Putin summoned about 30 business leaders from defense companies to his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, according to people familiar with the meeting. After three days of quarantine and three PCR tests, the executives sat at the end of a long wooden table, listening as Mr. Putin described a war effort he considered a success. Ukrainians were only motivated to fight, he told them, because their army was shooting deserters, according to the people.

Then Mr. Putin turned to Chief of General Staff for the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, who said Russian weapons were successfully hitting their targets and the invasion was going according to plan. The arms makers left the meeting with a sense that Mr. Putin lacked a clear picture of the conflict, the people said.

The defense ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In September, a coterie of Russian military journalists and bloggers—all stalwart backers of the war—met with the president for more than two hours and came away with the same impression, according to people familiar with the matter.

That month, Mr. Putin met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Uzbekistan, and speaking softly, assured him Russia had the war under control, people familiar with the meeting said. Russian troops abandoned hundreds of square miles of territory that same week.

If he doesn't know how bad it's going, he's not gonna change tack.
ALSO, he thinks (not without reason) that Western resolve can be worn down with energy prices and weapons costs, and Ukrainian morale can be hammered away at with rockets on civilian housing and infrastructure.
And he doesn't care how many of his troops die or how much it costs.

We are in for the long haul it seems.



This is from the WSJ. I do read other publications apart from NYT and WSj, I just have access to these for work and through friends.
They are not big Russia lovers, but they do their homework.

 

[nuke terrorist]

so Vlad's heading into the Death of Stalin / Hitler in the bunker phase of delusion.

 

[Deadmanposting]

so Vlad's heading into the Death of Stalin / Hitler in the bunker phase of delusion.

Very much seems so
We gotta be careful not to gather all these bits of information and accumulate them with confirmation bias

But there are a LOT of these bits of information about how he's insulated himself from teh facts on the ground and other macro realities, and he's off on his own messianic narrative.
If we were hearing this from his enemies, it's one thing. But there seems to be rakes of attribution to people who are ostensibly on his side, or at east very pro-Russia.


It's not that unusual a situation. Stalin, Hitler and so on.
BUt look at the Bush govt before Iraq - only one narrative was allowed around Bush by Cheney, everything else was fucked out.
Look at all those bankers who almost torpedoed the world economy in 2008. I mean there are probably countless examples I'm too tired to think of.

Almost everyone with great power is susceptible to this, until eventually you hit an iceberg and you're scrambling for lifeboats.

Sorry, that was a very long 'yes'