4718

I just always take “40” in it’s biblical meaning of “a lot”. The convoy stretches a lot of miles.

4719

Shrinkage!

4720

4 miles of tightly packed heavily armored Russian forces is still plenty terrifying and depressing. 40 was almost incomprehensible. Edit tweet deleted? Gosh hope 40 isn’t accurat…

4721

Some details on the aircraft transfer:

Bulgaria is transferring 16 MiG-29 fighters and 14 Su-25 attack aircraft to Ukraine, Poland - 28 MiG-29 aircraft, Slovakia - 12 MiG-29

I ran across this in tass so that’s what I’m linking but I’m sure there’s an English source.

4722

I’m having a hard time following why we’re so caught up in the exact size of a Russian column. A long tightly packed column shows that the Russians feel that have local air superiority over that area. OK, that’s new. We already knew that the Russian forces would greatly outnumber the Ukrainians once they could bring their numbers to bear. What is the exact size of the column going to tell us?

BTW - it’s perfectly normal for divisional sized units to stretch for miles on roadways. It was true in Operation Barbarossa 1941, just as it was true of some Allied columns in the 1991 Gulf War (IIRC).

4723

From my perspective it’s a simple heuristic, which may not be accurate, but I’ll explain anyway. Descriptions of earlier columns approaching cities were in the 1 to 3 miles size generally. These columns have been stopped, some have retreated and regrouped, and I think some were routed. If a new column is 40 miles – at least 10 times bigger than anything I had seen described – that seems a lot scarier.

I think that’s the logic the general public is using.

4724

4 vs. 40 isn’t arguing about the exact size, that’s a factor of 10! But I am not a general, maybe you’re right and enemy numbers are not worth caring about.

4725

Odd thing I noticed while looking up game companies in both Russia and Ukraine (I mean, this IS ostensibly a game forum); 1C (based in Moscow, and founded by this guy) was bought by Tencent, and the deal was finalized three days ago.

4726

Yugoslavia screwed itself up. NATO wasn’t involved for years, and when it did intervene, it was to prevent a massive and blatant attempt at ethnic cleansing.

4727

BTW re: some current NATO members, per my understanding there has definitely been some backsliding on the “democracy” part, particularly in Hungary and Poland. Can a country be kicked out of NATO for that? Probably not, or the organization would have kicked Turkey out way back when in the 1960/70s.

4728

Yeah, the democracy requirement has been a bit selective. Other examples are Portugal and Greece.

4729

There was an interesting interview with a Polish man on one of the OSINT Livestreams. He said he was shocked on how the Russian invasion united the political parties that were absolutely hostile to each other just one week earlier. Also shocked that Poland was incredibly warm to Germany, he said relations had been pretty cold, I forget the reasons. Even Ukraine, he said that Poland didn’t particularly like Ukraine or have a good relationship with them, or was warm to immigrants. But now when a Ukrainian refugee is in a store, the store owners are just just like, ‘Just take it, just take it, no charge, please, it’s the least I can do.’ and he was seeing this EVERYWHERE.

He did say that had a few Putin supporter holdouts in the government but it was less than he expected and those people seemed to be getting absolutely shunned. Wild times.

4730

I wonder how this would be different if Trump still had his Twitter account

4731

This was an illegal use of force, according to the UN Charter. Saying that is was done for a good cause doesn’t make it legal. Otherwise, “denazification of Ukraine” would be a perfectly good excuse, too.

NATO countries attempted to gain authorisation from the UN Security Council for military action, but were opposed by China and Russia, who indicated that they would veto such a measure. As a result, “NATO launched its campaign without the UN’s approval, stating that it was a humanitarian intervention. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force except in the case of a decision by the Security Council under Chapter VII, or self-defence against an armed attack – neither of which were present in this case.”

4732

Yes but NATO bombing didn’t turn Yugoslavia into a mess. NATO got involved due to the war and genocide taking place. The “mess” is what led to NATO involvement, not the other way around.

4733

They wouldn’t have kicked out Turkey in the Cold War. We had no problem with non-democratic governments as long as they were anti-communist.

4734

@valambrian I’m happy to have your participation in this discussion, anybody who is born in the area, and speaks Russian and/or Ukrainian provides an important perspective. That’s true for Alexander Vindman, Gary Kasparov, or you and Alex.

I’ve also opposed NATO expansion to Ukraine, on the grounds that it was unnecessarily provocative and Russia had a legitimate interest in a country with such strong cultural and historical ties. I suspect without the threat on NATO, there wouldn’t be a war.

I also would NOT recommend that country, elect a boxing champion to be the mayor of the capital and comedian as President. But, sadly the world doesn’t always listen to me. The situation would be a lot simpler if the Ukrainian people had been content to keep Poroshenko as president, sure he was corrupt, and perhaps not the most competent or charismatic person, but Putin approve of him, which is important for keeping the peace in that part of the world.

I just listened to an interview Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko. (Holy shit the guy is huge, and looks like he could eat Putin for a snack). He told us that Ukraine is a European freedom-loving country and wants to be part of Europe and not Russia. It seems to me that Ukrainian people should be the ones to decide if they want to join NATO, and NATO should be allowed to let in any country that they believe qualifies.

So my question to Valambrian is this. I have heard two different narratives, NATO has actively been encouraging UKraine to join the alliance OR That most Ukrainian are very eager to join the EU and NATO and have been pushing to make it happen. What is your view on what’s happened the last 20 years or so?

4735

No. Because the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo was real, and the claims that the Ukrainian government is a neo-Nazi regime imposed by America is hilariously false.

4736

I suspect you already know this, but the United States, the UK, France, Russia, and China all have vetos in the United Nations. So, if you use the UN as your moral compass, you’re going to get lost.

That being the case, it becomes more, not less, important to actually judge and evaluate moral arguments, instead of just being a useful idiot who accepts “Denazification” as the reason why a county with a historic antisemitism problem is invading a nation with a democratically elected Jewish President.

4737

Really odd flight on flightradar24: