Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[Chindie]

Brave of Elon to call out Putin, especially when you know Vlad would walk into the ring with novochok gloves filled with ricin needles.

[Wainy316]

Arrange the fight then replace Musk with one of the Kitschko's.

[bickster]

12 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

It's the general message of unity among Civilians I was referring to, to be fair.

Yeah the keeping politics out of sport part doesn't make any sense in the context.

Basically, I wish I saw more of this sort of thing in general.

For example, I saw a feature yesterday, where there is a little bar called " Russia Brewers " or something like that ( Think its in the States but can't quite remember )

Them and their employees have been getting abuse on the phone, online , and their premises vandalised etc.

Irony being, something like 75 percent of their staff are Ukrainian and they have a support system for those affected by the war.

The sort of brainless behaviour, which is encouraged by some of the rhetoric imo.

As in many other things in life we know, these things often give idiots and excuse to come out the woodwork and behave badly.

Also saw a headline the other day, claiming that Facebook will " allow " " calls for violence and threats against Russians ".

You get warnings and bans for misgendering or using the wrong pronouns over there, for example, so it's all very ironic. Bizarre.

Is it possible that the American bar is located in the Russian River valley in California? Second largest wine producing valley in California after Napa iirc But yes, people can be dicks, they'll do that with or without the media firing them up but yes the media make it worse

That isn't what Facebook said either. Facebook iirc said they were going to allow posts wanting invading Russian Forces to die given the circumstances but not death to Russians in general. They made this decision because Ukrainians were being handed bans for expressing opinions about the invading forces (understandable in the circumstances) which then was hindering them getting access to other potentially lifesaving information.

[snowychap]

43 minutes ago, Genie said:

Cheap oil via the back door?

Slick.

[sidcow]

4 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Slick.

You lot are a barrel of laughs today. 

Edited March 14, 2022 by sidcow

[bickster]

BMW is the new Toyata Pickup

[Chindie]

3 minutes ago, Wainy316 said:

Arrange the fight then replace Musk with one of the Kitschko's.

The problem is Putin would turn up looking like this.

[Panto_Villan]

12 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

It's the general message of unity among Civilians I was referring to, to be fair.

Yeah the keeping politics out of sport part doesn't make any sense in the context.

Basically, I wish I saw more of this sort of thing in general.

For example, I saw a feature yesterday, where there is a little bar called " Russia Brewers " or something like that ( Think its in the States but can't quite remember )

Them and their employees have been getting abuse on the phone, online , and their premises vandalised etc.

Irony being, something like 75 percent of their staff are Ukrainian and they have a support system for those affected by the war.

The sort of brainless behaviour, which is encouraged by some of the rhetoric imo.

As in many other things in life we know, these things often give idiots and excuse to come out the woodwork and behave badly.

Also saw a headline the other day, claiming that Facebook will " allow " " calls for violence and threats against Russians ".

You get warnings and bans for misgendering or using the wrong pronouns over there, for example, so it's all very ironic. Bizarre.

To be fair, Facebook temporarily lifted restrictions on calls for violence against the Russian government and Putin specifically, and only in Ukraine and the areas immediately around it. They're not allowing calls for violence against average Russian citizens, just the Russian state. Which is perfectly reasonable imo given the Russian state is inflicting rather a lot of violence itself right now.

I don't think many peope support the idea of random Russian citizens in the West getting abuse for the crimes of their home government (unless of course they're making statements in support of the invasion). But I do think you're giving the Russians a bit of a free pass here if you're claiming the "us and them" narrative is a creation of the media rather than the fact Russia has 200,000 troops on the wrong side of their border.

I think the banner is also a bit insensitive if I'm honest. Saying "why can't we all just get along?" while a neighbouring country is flattening all your major cities with artillery and cruise missiles is probably going to provoke anger, because there's nothing they can do to get along with the Russians and asking them to stop complaining about it so we can enjoy our football comes across as a bit self-centred. If the Ukranian player wants to take that stance then that's his choice and good for him, but I don't think its the job of the football fans to tell him that.

[bickster]

21 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

I think the banner is also a bit insensitive if I'm honest. Saying "why can't we all just get along?" while a neighbouring country is flattening all your major cities with artillery and cruise missiles is probably going to provoke anger, because there's nothing they can do to get along with the Russians and asking them to stop complaining about it so we can enjoy our football comes across as a bit self-centred. If the Ukranian player wants to take that stance then that's his choice and good for him, but I don't think its the job of the football fans to tell him that.

That isn't what the banner is saying. It's appealing to two specific Atalanta players to get on for the sake of the team. Atalanta have a Russian and a Ukrainian in the team

[bickster]

 

[Panto_Villan]

13 minutes ago, bickster said:

That isn't what the banner is saying. It's appealing to two specific Atalanta players to get on for the sake of the team. Atalanta have a Russian and a Ukrainian in the team

Yup. My comment was meant to refer to the Ukrainian player specifically - like, what if he currently has family sheltering a basement in Mauripol with no food and water? What if the Russian player thinks the invasion was justified, etc?

Personally I think how the Ukrainian player feels is up to him. Hopefully both players think the invasion is wrong and there’s no ill feeling between them, but we don’t know the circumstances and nor do the fans holding up the banner. I don’t think they should be telling the Ukrainian player how to feel when presumably their main motivation is just to try to minimise any disruption to Atalanta’s season. As I said, that feels a bit self-centred to me.

Edited March 14, 2022 by Panto_Villan

[Genie]

14 minutes ago, bickster said:

 

Translation: China said no?

[bickster]

1 minute ago, Panto_Villan said:

Yup. My comment was meant to refer to the Ukrainian player specifically - like, what if he currently has family sheltering a basement in Mauripol with no food and water? What if the Russian player thinks the invasion was justified, etc?

Personally I think how the Ukrainian player feels is up to him. Hopefully both players think the invasion is wrong and there’s no ill feeling between them, but we don’t know the circumstances and nor do the fans holding up the banner. I don’t think they should be telling the Ukrainian player how to feel when presumably their main motivation is just to try to minimise any disruption to Atalanta’s season. As I said, that feels a bit self-centred to me.

Yep, agree with that

[magnkarl]

2 hours ago, Panto_Villan said:

I'm aiming at you, because you accuse me of pessimism because I point out the factual inaccuracies in what you post - the most recent two being unverified claims of shooting down loads of aircraft and the one before that being that the M-72 was some kind of super-Javelin. And there's been plenty more I just can't be arsed to correct you on. I can't see anyone in this thread "bragging about Russia", just people trying to temper their (and your) optimism with reality.

Since day 1 of this crisis you've argued that the Russian army is weak and lacking in effective hardware compared to NATO despite the money spent on modernisation. You're right about that. In fact, I'm happy to admit that your assessment of the hardware limitations of the Russian military was closer to reality than mine. But you probably think our views were worlds apart on that front, but we're not - I never thought the Ukrainians would be a pushover, I just thought the modernised Russian tanks would be more resistant to anti-tank weapons, etc. Nothing that changes the fundamentals of the war. 

What was different between you and most other people on these forums is that you looked at that shortcoming and thought NATO should just start a war with Putin over it, whereas everyone else is understandably a bit concerned about the chances of nuclear war or substantial NATO troop losses in a confrontation with Russia. You've been saying stuff like "I don't get why we're scared of the Russian army, we shouldn't make concessions to Putin" as if nobody else thinks we could win a war with Russia. Actually people are just worried about the cost of doing so. And they're right to be worried - you might not think Putin is going to start firing nukes around but the costs if you're wrong are absolutely enormous.

The same principle applies to evaluating the competence of hostile military forces. The Russians have just shown you exactly how badly things can go wrong if you underestimate an opponent, yet you're still deriding people who made the entirely reasonable assumption prior to the war that the Russians would be able to use their military forces competently. In this war Putin spent months telling the Ukranians he was going to invade them, giving them time to prepare and recieve significant amounts of Western anti-tank equipment, and then lied to his own forces about whether the invasion would happen which prevented them from planning effectively, and then sent them in with suicidal orders to try and blitz Kiev and other major cities, causing them to take heavy losses and give the Ukranian forces the opportunity to rally even more international support behind them. Now the Russians are in a quagmire they can't get out of.

The fact Russian forces are now in a quagmire does not mean that they weren't superior to the Ukranian forces on paper, and that people shouldn't be trying to avoid a conflict with them. Even the best army can be hobbled by political factors; if the Russians had attacked sooner and conducted a competent operation from start to finish then I suspect things would be very different. Instead Putin did literally everything wrong and the Ukranians and the West did pretty much everything right. This is basically the dream scenario for the West. And yet the Russians are still fighting and killing hundreds of Ukranian civilians and causing billions of dollars of damage to Ukraine every day. I'm sure all their lives and livelihoods are a sacrifice you're willing to make, but not everyone is so blase about that sort of thing.

At the end of the day sensible people plan for the worst and hope for the best, whereas you just seem to plan for the best and imply anyone who has reservations is a cheerleader for Russia.

Do go ahead and show me where I've said that I think NATO should start a war with Putin. I never have.

All I've tried to communicate to you and others is that you are overestimating a severely crippled Russian army. I have colleagues in academia in Russia who have told me for years that Putin has strangled everything effective about the Russian army, yet you and several others couldn't wait to jump on the bandwagon about Russia's amazing weapons and army. Russia's army is and has been bad since Afghanistan, that doesn't mean that I want to start a war with them. That said, being needlessly scared of a guy that utilises fear as a weapon is about as smart as appeasing Hitler.

You're also welcome to withdraw your emotionally driven comments above that imply that I want to sacrifice the Ukranian population, which I've never once said and frankly find way over the line. This war is bad, and I am glad that Ukraine is defending itself. That is a far cry away from what you describe above, and nothing close to me wanting to get Ukranian civilians or army personnel killed.

If you want to talk about unverified sources you could start with having your accusations about my views (NATO starting a war with Putin, wanting to sacrifice UA civilians) rooted in reality. Otherwise it's clear that you're just arguing with your own thoughts about what you think I've written and mean. Scoring cheap points by putting words in people's mouths on a forum may make one feel good about oneself, but it doesn't make one's point any more valid.

Edited March 14, 2022 by magnkarl

[bickster]

1 minute ago, Genie said:

Translation: China said no?

Various theories floating about, there's some Australian Academic quoted on the Guardian's Live page that has a theory that it actually was misinformation by the US and was something to do with their talks being held today. So who knows

[ender4]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60734706

Quote

A pregnant woman wounded in the Russian bombing of a Ukrainian maternity hospital has died along with her baby, reports say.

 

Images showed her on a stretcher following the air strike in Mariupol last Wednesday, in which at least three other people were killed.

After the place where she was meant to give birth was attacked, she was taken to another hospital.

Her baby was born by Caesarean section, but showed no signs of life.

 

The surgeon, Timur Marin, told the Associated Press news agency that the woman's pelvis had been crushed and her hip detached.

Medics said that as they were trying to save her life, she realised she was losing her baby and shouted, "Kill me now!"

When it became clear to them that the child was stillborn, they tried to resuscitate the mother, but realised after 30 minutes that it was hopeless.

 

Doctors said they did not have time to take the woman's name before her husband and father came to retrieve her body.

That meant she did not end up in one of the mass graves being dug for victims of the Russian shelling of the city, they added.

[Xann]

From a Slavic social media group. Tagline - On the way to Ukraine.

[ml1dch]

Pretty heartwarming.  Italian kids welcoming Ukranian refugee children on their first day of school.

 

 

[Panto_Villan]

2 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

Do please do go ahead and show me where I've said that I think NATO should start a war with Putin. I never have.

All I've tried to communicate to you and others is that you are overestimating a severely crippled Russian army. I have colleagues in academia in Russia who have told me for years that Putin has strangled everything effective about the Russian army, yet you and several others couldn't wait to jump on the bandwagon about Russia's amazing weapons and army. Russia's army is and has been bad since Afghanistan, that doesn't mean that I want to start a war with them. That said, being needlessly scared of a guy that utilises fear as a weapon is about as smart as appeasing Hitler.

Yes, I get that. But again this is the problem - NATO and Ukraine refusing to give into Russian demands has just led to a war starting. I’m not saying that we should have conceded to this specific set of demands, but clearly if Putin cannot achieve his goals via diplomacy then he’s willing to do so via outright warfare (at least in certain instances).

In that case you’re putting an awful lot of faith in the word of a few mates you have in Russia that the Russian army won’t perform as expected, especially when a lot of paid military analysts had different opinions. The costs of getting that call wrong are potentially enormous.

So when you advocate for standing up to Russia you’re doing so on the assumption that the worst-case consequences for doing so would be minor, because you’re confident that if it comes to outright war then the Russian military is a paper tiger. But no sane military planner or politician can afford to take that risk. They have to ask if they’re willing to fight a competent Russian army.

But you’re accusing people who point this out of being in love with Russia. When you couple that with you posting misinformation about the capabilities of the Ukrainian forces it just seems like your evaluation of facts vs risks is way off.

[KentVillan]

 

What a monumental **** dickhead Elon Musk is