Kind politicians and religious people of Quarter to Three, thank you for letting me vent out my frustration with the current situation in Ukraine here. Since Thrag says it’s a place for humor, let me leave you with a joke.
A village somewhere in the Western Ukraine decides to get a monument to Stepan Bandera. In a town hall (village hall?) meeting residents discuss details. A grandfatherly figure rises and says “It would be nice if Stepan had a trident in his hand”. Everyone agrees (a trident is a symbol of Ukraine). The old guys continues “It would be great if Stepan had a Russian impaled on the trident”. Again, everyone agrees, and the grandfather says “It also would be great to put a new Russian every day”.
I heard this joke in Kyiv in 1984. I don’t think Russia is planning to occupy and hold Western Ukraine. I’m afraid the Iron Curtain will cut through Ukraine, separating families and friends.
KevinC
4960
His intent was to try to take the emotion out of it and be more easy for himself to bear. I don’t know if the above would help in that regard. :)
Jesus, if this is true, it’s amazing. How the hell is a supposedly-modern army this incompetent. I’m still in the “Putin is playing 9-dimensional chess” mode, and trying to figure out how he’s rope-a-doping the West.
True… perhaps i don’t understand why we should want it to be bearable.
As long as we are lightening things us, just an illustration of how things go in Russia, a joke":
Police interrogating old man: Where were you born?
OM: St. Petersburg
Where did you grow up?
OM: Leningrad.
Where were you employed?
OM: Petrograd.
Where do you live now?
OM: St. Petersburg.
vyshka
4964
I guess time to dust off the 98G RU skills. I’m sure there are a ton of active duty 98G grabbing all sorts of intercepts.
Heh. But honestly, I think that is probably the best case outcome at the current time.
I don’t think the Russian plan was to occupy and hold Ukraine at all - I think their plan was to overthrow the government and install a puppet - and they thought that the Ukrainian army would mostly not fight (much like in Crimea). Now that they are caught in a hot war, they really don’t have many alternatives than to try and force the Ukrainian government to the negotiation table by terror and destruction.
Having expended so much blood and material to take over the country, I think it’s optimistic that Putin is going to give it back any time soon - at least not without some significant pay off (e.g., lessening of sanctions). I don’t really see the US or EU going for that without a near-complete Russian withdrawal.
The point where Putin could pivot and make this a “war of liberation” for the separatists is several days ago, IMO. And even if he wanted to (which would probably be the smart move), the question at this point is whether the Russian army is even capable of such flexibility. All evidence suggests not.
I think he has made it clear he means to keep it all. He may keep the western part by installing a puppet government of some kind, rather than annexing it, but he isn’t giving it up. Assuming what seems inevitable, that he takes it, of course.
Timex
4969
I’m still going back and forth between not believing that Russia’s military logistics could be this bad, and thinking that it totally makes sense that their military logistics would be this bad.
Aceris
4970
Well, Russian imperialism and Turkish imperialism have historically been opposed.
Also Erdogan, for all his flaws, isn’t gratuitously evil, not does he try to challenge the Western order just to weaken it in the way Putin has done for the past 15 years.
Chemical weapons were used against civilian populations but France, Germany and the British mainstream left decided that nothing should be done about it and without allies Obama decided not to pay the price and take the risk of intervening.
The same French and German leaders who in the next year endorsed an agreement absolving people from prosecution for their crimes against humanity (Minsk I). When I said I blamed Merkel I’m not fucking kidding.
It’s funny how certain people seem more interested in group therapy for the Russians than the Ukrainians.
Optimistic yes, bit borne out of pessimism for the Russians.
Aceris
4974
He’s evil for power in Turkey, with a side order of Kurdish persecution and Islamic solidarity.
I guess what I’m saying is there’s no particular reason Erdogan should take Putin’s side if it’s going to cause him the slightest bit of grief. Unlike China who were clearly going to back him making the West look stupid again just because, until it turned into an almighty fuckup atrocity pileup.
Yes - I was just about to go back and add a caveat.
I think pretending that Putin is not engaged in the conquest of a sovereign country is giving him credit that isn’t warranted. Putin and his cabinet have repeatedly stated (unless someone wants to claim that this is a “misunderstanding”) that they intend to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine. Toppling a government and installing a puppet regime propped up by Russian military strength is not functionally different from conquest. I don’t see many people claiming that Germany’s WW2 conquest of Denmark and Norway in 1940 were not really conquests, just because they left puppet governments in place.
If the original plan was to overthrow the Ukrainian gouvernement in two days, it makes it hard to concede that “it didn’t work, sorry, let’s rewind to one week before” instead of escalating in order to avoid losing face.
But one potential similar situation was the sino Vietnamese war. I don’t remember how it played out exactly.
Timex
4977
It’s like the evil alignment in D&D… if you have multiple evil characters, they are all evil and will do bad things, but they aren’t necessarily going to be allies, because their evil precludes them really caring about each other at all.
Some (game related) levity. If I’ve learned anything from watching McMaster play Escape from Tarkov, is that a good portion of the Russian army is probably in the menu’s still fitting out equipment and waiting for more players.
They might as well. Even in the best case scenario, Nord Stream 2 probably isn’t going to be used for quite a long time, I suspect - if ever.
