Ukrainian Invasion Thread II: Sunrise on the Dnieper

[Port Caverton]

Still amazed how easily people are rooting for the impoverishment of Russians because their government does things we don't like.

Least imperialist tankie

[Bewaffnete Krafte]

To be fair, NATO's putting Russia's losses at 30-40k, Which I think we all know is... Unlikely? IDK how long it takes to lose 30k soldiers in war, but it seems longer than this.

I don't think it's unlikely at all. The estimate includes killed, wounded, missing or captured soldiers. Now, a quick and dirty conventional estimate of wounded is that it will be around a three-to-one ratio, meaning three wounded for every one soldier killed. That means that if we go roughly in the middle of the NATO estimate, which lines up with the numbers accidentally published by Russian government-friendly media, we have about 10,000 soldiers killed. Add a three-to-one ratio of wounded, which would be 30,000 wounded, and you end up with a total of 40,000 casualties.

Because the wounded-to-killed ratio leads to just a rough estimate, let's say that the number of missing and captured, which both includes deserted russian soldiers, are included in that number. Then you make the estimate a conservative one by opening up for the possibility that in this conflict there's a two-to-one ratio of wounded to killed soldiers, and you end up with the NATO estimate of 30,000–40,000 soldiers.

That number, then, does not seem so unlikely. But then again, you do have to remember that this invasion is an historic failure as well, and that other military actions which we're comparing it to has had better planning and preparation.

Your probably right. I honestly didn't know if it was unreasonably high or not. I mainly focus on Politics, not war.
Thanks for the info, though.

[Ifreann]

In many tapped phone calls between Russian soldiers and their relatives (Russians steal UKR mobile phones, use them, SBU taps) they tell same story: how rich Ukraine is, how much they have looted, and how cool ppl lived here. Some saw asphalt and street lights for the fist time.

Many Western experts and politicians loved to repeat the story of "rich Russia and poor Ukraine". The fact is, that except of extra rich Moscow and Petersburg, Russia is an underdeveloped country, and average Ukrainian province lives much better than average Russian province.

I don't even talk about political freedoms in Ukraine like election of mayors, free press, local self-governance etc. - soldiers do not see this. Ukrainians have better roads, better lights, more money, better food, better connection with neighbour countries. This shocks Russians

They were told all the times that Ukraine is a failed state with people who work like slaves in Europe and have nothing. Now they see the reality where every gasoline station has a computer-operated coffee machine with 30 types of teas, coffee and hot chocolate, and a whisky bar.

https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1508398726099914756

A tapped call btw a RU soldier in Ukraine and his wife. She instructs him: „loot everything, take all you can“ and extra asks to bring a notebook for their daughter. He says he has looted a flat of a „very sport-oriented family“ and took a lot of T-shirts and high-end vitamins“.

https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1509104034266947586

Every gas station in Ukraine has a whisky bar? Damn, I got to visit Ukraine when this is all over.

---

A new batch of 'Ukrainian refugees' arrives in Ireland.
At present, because there are many channels to obtain Ukrainian identity documents at a "moderate price", an industrial chain in which third-country citizens first obtain Ukrainian identity and then eventually enter EU countries as "Ukrainian refugees" has rapidly formed.

Sorry, what is it you're suggesting is happening?

[El Lazaro]

On average most of the Russians seem to think they are justified in conquering Ukraine, so I only sympathize with the Russians who oppose the war.

Or maybe, they tell so on different surveys, because anti-war position is not exactly approved by Russian government as far as I know. Or perhaps, surveys are conducted in such ways, that they handpick certain demographics, who are more likely to approve the war.

Imo there’s a fair chance most Russians support the war, but the polling center which released the number has been strong armed into inventing numbers that look better for Putin on other occasions. Also, even if the numbers weren’t from thin air, it’s literally illegal to actually describe what’s going on. “Do you approve of Russia’s special military operation to stop the Donbas genocide and liberate Nazi-occupied Little Russia” isn’t an ideal question for collecting accurate information.

[Latvijas Otra Republika]

Still amazed how easily people are rooting for the impoverishment of Russians because their government does things we don't like.

At least they don't have to witness their loved ones getting raped and their homes being looted. If they don't want to suffer the sanctions they can switch off the TV that spouts schitzo bullshit and march against local governors and officials. Simple.

[Maineiacs]

Has anyone seen this?

https://news.yahoo.com/russian-troops-suffer-acute-radiation-083839177.html


I'm at a loss for words. Chernobyl? What the hell were they doing there? Whose idea was this, and what was it supposed to accomplish? Are they insane?

[Ifreann]

Has anyone seen this?

https://news.yahoo.com/russian-troops-suffer-acute-radiation-083839177.html


I'm at a loss for words. Chernobyl? What the hell were they doing there?

Taking the place over. Apparently in a hugely incompetent fashion.

Whose idea was this, and what was it supposed to accomplish? Are they insane?

Chernobyl is on the direct route from Belarus to Kyiv. Russia kinda needed to take it. They didn't need to do dumb shit like dig trenches in the Red Forest, but to paraphrase another great world leader, Russia isn't sending their best.

[Picairn]

Has anyone seen this?

https://news.yahoo.com/russian-troops-suffer-acute-radiation-083839177.html


I'm at a loss for words. Chernobyl? What the hell were they doing there? Whose idea was this, and what was it supposed to accomplish? Are they insane?

NGL the story sounds like it was made up. I doubt radiation in the general vicinity of the plant would still be deadly and intense enough to cause ARS after 36 years.

https://twitter.com/jrmygrdn/status/150 ... 5p6Uw&s=19
https://twitter.com/CherylRofer/status/ ... jTU2Q&s=19

Edit: To explain why this is likely fake, the current levels of radiation in the forest are measured up to 10μSv/h (micro-Sieverts per hour), while it takes at least 5Sv worth of radiation to suffer poisoning and eventual death. That'll cost about 500,000 hours to reach, or 57 years.

[Picairn]

Putin threatens to stop all existing contracts if unfriendly countries do not pay in rubles for Russian gas from April 1st.

Edit: Reuters confirmed. He signed a decree saying so.

[Antipatros]

Putin threatens to stop all existing contracts if unfriendly countries do not pay in rubles for Russian gas from April 1st.

Edit: Reuters confirmed. He signed a decree saying so.

Ow, the whiplash.

There must have been a meeting with a lot of yelling between yesterday's announcement and today. Hopefully Europe holds firm.

[The North Polish Union]

The communist-type forced confessions, purges, and struggle sessions have made a comeback in Biełaruś to nobody's surprise. Probably they never went away, but now they're doing it openly.

The purge on the Belarusian railways is in full swing. Dozens of train drivers and technical staff have been arrested this week. Today [30 March - NPU] alone, pro-regime TG channels posted more than 30 videos in which arrested employees "confess" to sabotaging Russian echelons and other crimes.

The rules for maintaining safety in the Soviet empire - still applicable in Biełaruś

1. Do not think.
2. If you think, do not speak out.
3. If you speak out, do not confess.
4. If you confess, do not sign.
5. If you sign, do not be surprised.

[Risottia]

Still amazed how easily people are rooting for the impoverishment of Russians because their government does things we don't like.

Better the impoverishment of the Russians than the deaths of the Ukrainians.

Or the deaths of Russians in a war forced on them by the Russian leadership and propaganda system.

I don't think sanctions can ever be the alpha and omega of a response to a war of aggression, but if they do at least a part of the job, it's way better than escalating violence.

[Christian Confederation]

Putin threatens to stop all existing contracts if unfriendly countries do not pay in rubles for Russian gas from April 1st.

Edit: Reuters confirmed. He signed a decree saying so.

I thought they tied rubles to Gold?

[Picairn]

Ukraine's counterattacks as of March 31.

The most successful gains Ukraine has made in the past week are the relief of Kyiv and Sumy, as well as a large rollback in Russian territory on the Mykolaiv-Kherson axis.

Edit: Biden orders the release of 1 million barrels of oil per day for 6 months from the US strategic reserve to control gas prices.

[Risottia]

Every gas station in Ukraine has a whisky bar?

Basically every motorway petrol station I've visited throughout Europe has a bar serving at least a decent array of alcoholic beverages.

I don't know about Irish petrol stations, though. I've never driven a car there. I just remember boarding the Luas while heavily intoxicated with Jameson's proof at 11 am.

[Risottia]

Putin threatens to stop all existing contracts if unfriendly countries do not pay in rubles for Russian gas from April 1st.

Edit: Reuters confirmed. He signed a decree saying so.

I thought they tied rubles to Gold?

Black gold to be more accurate. Aka "petroleum and methane".

[Ifreann]

Every gas station in Ukraine has a whisky bar?

Basically every motorway petrol station I've visited throughout Europe has a bar serving at least a decent array of alcoholic beverages.

I don't know about Irish petrol stations, though. I've never driven a car there. I just remember boarding the Luas while heavily intoxicated with Jameson's proof at 11 am.

A lot of petrol stations here do sell alcohol, but not really a bar type situation.

[Novus America]

Finland and NATO discuss membership procedures.
Related polls now have Finnish support for NATO at over 60%.
https://yle.fi/news/3-12381821

Good job Russia. Ukraine was not going to join anytime soon.
But now Finland might.

Putin is not some 4D geopolitical chess master.
He is losing at checkers so flipped the board.

[The North Polish Union]

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek published a piece (paywalled link) yesterday on Putin's bioweapons claims.

Some commentators have already noted the strange homology between Russia’s evocation of “secret bioweapon labs” in Ukraine and the US evocation of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which in both cases were used to justify military attack.

It’s not that the US was unsure if Saddam had WMDs; they positively knew he did not have them, which is why they risked a ground offensive in Iraq, rather than sticking to air bombing.

The nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction perfectly fulfill the role of a “MacGuffin” in Alfred Hitchcock’s films. A MacGuffin is “an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance,” per Merriam-Webster.

Usually, the MacGuffin is revealed in the first act, and thereafter declines in importance. Incidentally, one of the most famous Hitchcockian MacGuffins is a potential weapon of mass destruction — bottles with “radioactive diamonds” in the film Notorious.

Iraq’s WMDs were an elusive entity. When UN inspectors were searching for them in Iraq, they expected to find them in the most disparate and improbable places, from the (rather logical) desert to the (slightly irrational) cellars of the presidential palaces. They were said to be present in large quantities, yet were mysteriously moved around constantly, and unable ever to be found, these WMDs became all the more dangerous.

In the Ukrainian war, Putin’s MacGuffin is the claim of secret bioweapon labs in Ukraine, allegedly organized and funded by the US to develop poisons that transmit human sicknesses. They are evoked as the reason Russia does not just plan to occupy the southeastern area of Ukraine where there is a strong Russian minority, but intends to seize all of Ukraine and destroy these labs.

Again, though, I claim Russia positively knows there are no such secret bioweapon labs in Ukraine full of dangerous poisons. If such labs were there, Russia would act in a different way, with much greater urgency, directly attacking these labs or trying to occupy them with elite parachute units.

To avoid a fatal misunderstanding, let me be clear that this does not mean there are no bioweapons being developed in secret labs. All big countries have them, of course, and our media are right in treating these Russian accusations as a dark hint or threat that they themselves may use bioweapons. The Ukrainian war can take many further turns for the worse, not just the recourse to nuclear weapons. To list some examples: use of bioweapons; use of gases that hinder brain function; a full digital attack on the cyberspace of the enemy.

We’ve recently seen evidence of a dimension of truth surviving in Russia, as police arrest demonstrators who protest the war in Ukraine. In one instance, which has gone viral on social media, a woman was arrested by Russian police for holding up a small piece of paper that reads “two words” (“два слова” in Russian) referring to the forbidden slogan “no to war” (“нет войне”). Here we see that even absence of expression has the power to refer to something specific.

Russian police also arrested demonstrators protesting with blank signs, a substitution that works because everybody knew at that point that publicly rejecting the war against Ukraine is prohibited in Russia.

Such scenes remind me of a similar censorship case from my youth in 1970s Communist Czechoslovakia. At that time Martina Navratilova was the world’s top tennis player. She emigrated to the West and became a non-person, even for the Czech sports media. When she reached the semi-final in a big international championship, a Czech sports daily reported on it with the title, “The four semi-finalists known,” followed by only three names. Navratilova was simply ignored, although the title implied four players. She was “present in the mode of absence” (to use the structuralist jargon).

Just as blank protest signs and an unnamed tennis star, though themselves irrelevant, served to set and keep their respective plots in motion, so too do claims of secret bioweapon labs work as a MacGuffin in Putin’s favor.

Putin’s court philosopher Aleksandr Dugin said in a recent lecture that the attack on Ukraine was Russia’s desperate attempt to make its message heard in the West: after twenty years of futile attempts to be heard and taken into account in a peaceful way, war was the only way left open to Russia.

War was inevitable for Putin, but he needed an excuse. Expect the secret bioweapon labs ruse to decline in importance as the war wages on.

[The Nihilistic view]

Putin will crash and burn Russia if he does this silly payment nonsense. About half the state budget is from Oil and Gas he can't afford not to get paid. And to be honest I'd like him to do it, fastest way to cripple Russia is let him turn off his own taps.

[El Lazaro]

US: Russians driven out of Hostomel airport

[Tarsonis]

Ukraine's counterattacks as of March 31.

The most successful gains Ukraine has made in the past week are the relief of Kyiv and Sumy, as well as a large rollback in Russian territory on the Mykolaiv-Kherson axis.

Edit: Biden orders the release of 1 million barrels of oil per day for 6 months from the US strategic reserve to control gas prices.

Russia has now fully lost the initiative, they've lost, it's only a matter of time before they realize it.

[Antipatros]

Putin threatens to stop all existing contracts if unfriendly countries do not pay in rubles for Russian gas from April 1st.

Edit: Reuters confirmed. He signed a decree saying so.

I thought they tied rubles to Gold?

They have a program where they buy gold from Russian banks for a fixed price per gram (5000 roubles per gram was the latest figure) over a given period.

If the strength of the rouble is such that there is a premium for gold is being paid, gold flows into the Russian central bank and roubles flow into Russian local banks.

To be fully tied to gold, they would also have to offer gold at a fixed price. AFAIK they're not doing that at this point.

They had this program before, but they temporarily stopped it when the private demand for gold was very strong (since Russians were buying gold in order to protect their savings).

[Alcala-Cordel]

So the Russian soldiers who got radiation poisoning at Chernobyl were digging and wandering around with no protective equipment

[Antipatros]

I thought they tied rubles to Gold?

They have a program where they buy gold from Russian banks for a fixed price per gram (5000 roubles per gram was the latest figure) over a given period.

If the strength of the rouble is such that there is a premium for gold is being paid, gold flows into the Russian central bank and roubles flow into Russian local banks.

To be fully tied to gold, they would also have to offer gold at a fixed price. AFAIK they're not doing that at this point.

They had this program before, but they temporarily stopped it when the private demand for gold was very strong (since Russians were buying gold in order to protect their savings).

I think that Putin's plan here is to use the European gas contract "renegotiation" to boost demand for the rouble. Once the rouble is strengthened, they'll buy up the domestic gold supply in Russia.

Those two policies (assuming the plan goes the way he wants it to) will help them stabilize the rouble and further build up the Russian Central Bank's gold reserves.

If the Europeans simply refuse to pay for gas in roubles, I'm not sure his hand is too strong. If he halts the flow of gas for any appreciable length of time, Russia's economy will be in a world of hurt.