If there’s any evidence of death camps then my stance will shift quickly from it’s current “yeah let’s arm Ukraine” to “We should be thinking about invading Russia.”
KevinC
19419
Maybe not in the ground directly, they have to make a stop at the gulag first. I mean, someone has to provide the labor now that Russian men have been mobilized and sent to the grinder.
KevinC
19420
No wonder Russian soldiers are constantly stealing home appliances.
Timex
19421
Maybe… we already know that the Russians put these people into concentration camps before shipping them off, where they had tortured, raped, and murdered Ukrainians.
Grifman
19422
Puts n between a rock and a hard place:
jsnell
19423
Is that number at all credible? The pre-war population of the occupied areas looks to be about 9M, and a lot of them would have fled before the occupation. Wikipedia claims 5M refugees in Europe, 8M displaced internally, and those numbers should be skewed toward areas near the fronts. If 5M is true, there can’t be basically anyone left in those areas.
On one hand, it’s Russian officials so the default assumption should be that it’s not credible. Also, do they really have the competence to organize this? On the other hand, why would they exaggerate the magnitude of their war crimes?
Quaro
19424
It does seem too high. However, he groups are not mutually exclusive. I know of people on other forums who fled Kherson months ago, but the only way they could get out was to go through Russia, and then make their way to Europe, and are now a refugee there.
This was long before Russia locked down there borders to stop people leaving their country though.
In a macro sense, I would, yes. It was a waste of resources, a diversion from more important goals, and it made the Brits really really mad.
During the Battle of Britain, Germany initially focused on British air fields and infrastructure. Britain was (as far as I can tell) on the losing end of this exchange - until a bunch of British bombers hit some civilian targets by mistake(??) in Germany. This seemed to provoke a change of strategy to retaliation, which took a great deal of pressure off the beleaguered British air force and infrastructure.
The general historical consensus nowadays is that the Germans could never have won the Battle of Britain (ie knock the RAF out of the sky). Don’t necessarily buy the “the few” myth much as we Brits like to cling onto it (along with our “Blitz spirit” myth). The RAF had several options to maintain a presence over Southern England that were not required simply because they weren’t sustaining enough damage to need them. The number of airfields in Southern England permanently knocked out for any length of time over a day I believe stood at precisely 1.
Interesting! It has been quite a few years since I last read a book on this (though I did check Wikipedia before posting, with suggested it wasn’t completely out).
Grifman
19429
Total Ukrainian population, not just the occupied areas.
jsnell
19430
Yes, I am doubting the 5M number, not questioning basic maths.
My understanding was that Berlin was deliberatly bombed to provoke Hitler, amd that it worked.
That would mean Churchill etc deliberately chose tondorect bombs onto the cities instead of the military infrastructure.
Not as crazy as it sounds when you consider Coventry.
Canuck
19432
I think the conventional thinking is always leave your enemy an escape route; the idea being that you’d rather they ran away than actually have to fight them.
KevinC
19433
Especially when it’s your own city in question, I would imagine.
spiffy
19434
Except in this case, you’ve cut them off, and they’re more likely to surrender than die to the last man, if past experience is comparable, especially in a hostile city where partisans can communicate positions etc.
I was surprised today to learn Russia’s population was 140 million… much greater than I had thought, for some reason I imagined something more along the lines of Germany or France, given it has so few major cities and such vast hinterlands. Which is depressing, given it allows them a much bigger pool of draftees than I had thought possible.
The Germans dropped a few bombs on London; as it turned out later, by accident. Churchill immediately ordered a raid on Berlin in retaliation. And the escalation continued. AFAIK - and I haven’t read anything super-current - there’s no evidence that this was deliberate policy, or that Churchill or the military wanted London to be bombed.
There’s a lot of hindsight embedded in theories like this. Now we know that the Blitz had minimal effects on British morale or the war economy, it’s easy to imagine some cunning plan to divert the Luftwaffe. But that wasn’t the information that Churchill was working from. Contemporary estimates of the effects of a full-scale bombing campaign on London included 100,000 deaths in a few days, and the complete inability for any government body to operate from inside the city. In fact, there were 40,000 deaths, nationwide, during the entire war, and the government never left London (apart from some early precautions that were quickly abandoned).
Ukraine has a cunning plan. They’re going to nuke themselves, and blame poor Russia. The device is already in place.
Yep, the Russian audience is being prepared for defeat. As well as the usual bullshit, there’s a straightforward description of Kherson’s logistical problems, and a warning of “severe territorial losses over the next two months.”
