Shards
5322
I’d guess that lots of those hearts and minds will be “encouraged” to take themselves elsewhere if/when Russia takes over.
Either to the west or to the far north…
Putin has the dumbest cops if they are trying to suppress dissent. They let them take VIDEO?
Arresting 90+ year olds is not a good look for any politician, especially a survivor of the great patriotic war. I wonder what the Russian people are seeing.
This Ukrainian minister has been remarkable, although I actually agree with Meta spokesperson, shutting down Facebook, twitter etc in Russia may not be the best strategy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/02/mykhailo-fedorov-ukraine-tech/
It definitely would be great if they shut Facebook off in the US.
I wonder about the volunteers who are heading south right now. I have a hard time getting a beat on how many they are, but the ones I’ve seen look very young, very idealistic and totally unprepared for war.
Isn’t the US having workforce issues right now? How about we say any Russian that doesn’t like Putin and wants to move to the US can get a work visa.
Same for any Ukrainian refugees.
I have been noticing that Facebook seems to be the Ukrainian govt’s and military’s main communications platform.
This is for another thread, but USCIS is completely broken right now. The immigration lawyer association has sued them because USCIS’s own system shows processing times of upwards of 9 months to two years to get a work permit through, when USCIS has stated that it only takes them about 12 minutes to process one. (You also have to pay them $410 to do so). Trump’s lackeys did their best to break the immigration system, even for legal immigrants, and for whatever reason Biden’s admin can’t get if fixed.
Russia has a 12 month conscription law as well, so not clear how many of those soldiers are volunteers vs an 18 or 19 year old who truly has no desire to be anywhere near a war.
It may be regular but the timing and optics are terrible.
About 30-40% of Russian troops are still conscripts. They have been moving to a totally professional (“contract”) force but they are not there yet.
This Kasparov guy seems good at thinking three moves ahead.
vyshka
5335
For the most part. He also has been promoting a no-fly zone which he is smart enough to know where that leads.
Shards
5336
Interesting Reality Check piece on what the UK gov has actually done:
Guap
5337
Kasparov is like that SPECTRE agent in From Russia With Love that gets pulled out of his chess game to plan against Bond.
I admit, I thought Russia had the 2nd best army in the world. They are really revealing how far they’ve fallen, this is just terrible. The convoy is stalled because it’s out of fuel and food? Are they going to just start abandoning vehicles by the hundreds and walk home?
Russia, aside from nukes, starting to look like a paper tiger.
What if the big secret is they barely have any functioning ICBMs because they ran out of money to maintain them?
That’s a good point. Although the Russians probably do have basic training. Not all of the volunteers do.
Then again, war is the great teacher. I just hope they survive long enough to git gud.
Right, but like I said above, it would be worse if they completely changed their patterns from what they have been in peacetime. I believe we scramble jets against the Russians at least once or twice a month on average.
I just felt like there was a bit of panic starting there. First: Breathe. Second: Verify.
The Guardian is reporting the rumors that Russia will declare martial law at the upcoming Russian Federation Council meeting.
KevinC
5340
Nothing shows confidence like the declaration of martial law.
The funny thing about Twitter is you can pick and choose certain tweets. The ones quoted above make it sound like he’s saying it’s our responsibility to solve the problem of Putin. But the first follow-up tweet acknowledges that he can’t ask us to go into direct conflict for Ukraine, and the Russian people will need to bear a lot of the heavy lifting too. I think that’s fair.
The no-fly zone feels like one of those dumb ideas that won’t stop because it’s so viral. You just have to let it run its course.
