riptides

That's a very interesting way of looking at current events.
metadata don't lie.

🔬🔭 I found something 🔬🔭
Objective:
So, I was playing around with Google Trends to see if I could find a meaningful comparative statistic for Google searches from Russia using "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") and "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine"), and that didn't bring anything up. Instead, I stumbled upon this.
Methodology:
I looked up Google Trends data from Russia for Google searches for the last three months using "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") and "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine").
Findings:
Here are the top five subregions of Russia searching for "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") on Google for the last three months:
1. Chukotka Autonomous Okrug
2. Belgorod Oblast
3. Buryatia
4. Bryansk Oblast
5. Jewish Autonomous Oblast [It is Russian populated; Jews are only 1% of the population today.]
Here are the top five subregions of Russia searching for "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine") on Google for the last three months:
1. Chukotka Autonomous Okrug
2. Kostroma Oblast
3. Buryatia
4. Kamchatka Krai
5. Belgorod Oblast
Moreover, Moscow and St. Petersburg ranked 56th and 55th among Russia's 83 subregions searching for "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") [Since this is the politically correct form, this would include searches by liberals and dissidents.], and they ranked 58th and 75th among the 83 subregions searching for "на Украине" ("in the Ukraine").
Discussion:
Since Belgorod and Bryansk border Ukraine, heightened interest in the war is to be expected. Otherwise, we see that those most actively searching for information on events in Ukraine since the start of the war are far-flung regions where a large percentage of the population are professional military [Kostroma isn't far-flung, but it's piss-poor, and home to a VDV regiment that got wiped out early in the war.], and also the ethnic minority Buryatia and Chukotka, where at least the former are known to have taken very heavy losses in Ukraine. That these regions are actively searching for information on Google can be seen as an indication that they do not trust and/or are not satisfied with the information from the Russian press, and search results from Yandex.
Conversely, Moscow and St. Petersburg seem to have relatively little interest in the war beyond the official channels, in spite of their large populations.
Conclusion:
The war is having an unequal impact on Russian society and Russia's diverse regions, and this is already manifesting itself objectively via online data.
@LongLeftFlank

Newsweek is not the same information source it was 20 years ago. Take everything therein with a huge grain of salt.

Its really incredible what a common a$$hat enemy will do. My wifes Polish, her mum's Ukrainian from Lviv (now living in Przemysl) and ive heard very heavy stories of the border fighting during and after WW2.
Babca's dad saw, suffered and endured through things that were full-on Bucha-level atrocities - first the Ukrainians inflicting it on his Polish neighbors, then vice Versa. In the town over it was the other way, Polish attacking first. No good/bad side, just a horrible situation egged on and exacerbated by Russian meddling and influence ops.
When I met the wife's family in Poland, the dismissive and distrustful attitude to Ukrainians was extremely strong, esp in the older generations (naturally). Babca was clear the feeling was mutual (she herself is very even minded about the whole thing).
For Babca, this war's unification of the Polish and Ukrainian peoples is Putin's greatest failure. Reinvigorating NATO is just vomit-icing on the sh!t-sandwich cake that Herr Komrad Putler gets to gnaw on, like an incontinent beaver.
Poland will never be conquered ever again, and sure as **** not by the Ivan.
As long as Poland exists so will Ukraine - and vice versa.

The Poles made a massive difference in World War 2. Their skill, attitude and commitment made a difference and set an example in the Battle of Britain, and their contribution towards breaking Enigma is often overlooked.
Poland frequently gets ****ed but I'd always want the Poles on my side.

I bet Polish "parts" deliveries for MiG-29s worked the same way, I doubt we have many left at the moment.

The Poles are delighted not to be hosting a massive European land war just for once.
But yes, now that the Poles are rid of their apatrid feudal nobility, and with the Germans remaining good neighbours, Poland has a real chance to step up postwar as an Eastern European leader.
Poland + Ukraine + (in time) Belarus creates a potentially powerful economic zone of over 100 million people, well equipped with all resources (human and otherwise) save oil. The river basins also look like they will suffer less acutely from climate change than other areas of the planet. I am going out over my skis again here, but the basic 'carrying capacity' of the land seems very good.  And  that's going to matter over time.
And the peoples seem compatible: socially conservative, stubborn, hands-on and individualistic (forgive me for stereotyping).
Politically, a new 'Commonwealth' could form a potent counterweight, both to Moscow and to French-German 'hegemony' within the EU.

Too bad he got lost in time. It is a different world these past few decades and old Henry relies on a world view that is no longer applicable. Ukraine needs our support, certainly not the advice he shared.

Losses are still coming in.....
 
 

Losses are still coming in.....
 
 

Losses are still coming in.....
 
 

Too bad he got lost in time. It is a different world these past few decades and old Henry relies on a world view that is no longer applicable. Ukraine needs our support, certainly not the advice he shared.

Too bad he got lost in time. It is a different world these past few decades and old Henry relies on a world view that is no longer applicable. Ukraine needs our support, certainly not the advice he shared.

Too bad he got lost in time. It is a different world these past few decades and old Henry relies on a world view that is no longer applicable. Ukraine needs our support, certainly not the advice he shared.

The President of Poland visited the Ukrainian parliament in person.
Relations between Poland and Ukraine seem better than ever.

At the tactical level, some moves become strategic.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/5369483/putin-loses-legendary-sniper-colonel-botched-river-crossing/

Some serious flying.
 
 

You said "well on the way to be decided".
 
Nothing has been decided. The entire situation remains fluid and fraught with world wide influencing peril. On all fronts (social, economic and military).

Just going to leave this right here for people to muse on.  No political spin in it, just history:
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/marshall-plan-1#:~:text=The Marshall Plan%2C also known,Secretary of State George C.
So that is roughly $218B in todays money:
https://www.officialdata.org/1945-CAD-in-2018?amount=1#:~:text=Value of %241 from 1945,cumulative price increase of 1%2C357.74%.
Likely one of the biggest nation building/reconstruction efforts in modern history which led directly to this:
https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-relationships-country-and-region/countries-and-regions/united-states_en
But people gotta figure it out for themselves.
 

How does Russian arty find their targets? They look at the smoke from their burning AFV's and plot forward.
Chuckle....

"When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war"
- General Stanley McChrystal
 

"When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war"
- General Stanley McChrystal
 

Some of the conversation over the few pages have referenced the former Yugoslavia.  Which brings back... well, not so good memories.
I was a Canadian peacekeeper in Bosnia in latter half of '93.   During the Croatian offensive in the Medak in Sept of '93, I was with the 2 PPCLI when we went into the sh*tstorm to try to stop the ethnic cleansing going on.  The Croatian army attacked our unit during that operation, a thing that the Croatian government denies to this very day.  Despite us photographing the Croatian dead after the battle and collecting their ID, etc.    We had god damn evidence and to this day, the Croatian government position is that they never attacked us.
Part of our job, beside trying to keep the warring factions apart, was to document evidence of ethnic cleansing and I was in charge (I was an officer) of a evidence collection team.  So, literally thousands of photos, videos.  Transcripts of interviews with witnesses and victims.  Six months exposed to that living hell, day after f*n day....
So I had the evidence, because sometimes our official recording devices ran out film or tape and we used our personal recording devices to finish up at a site.
After I got out the military, I found myself sometimes on various military forms about games, such as this one.  Arma forums, military wargame forums... that sort of thing.  And as it happened, I ran into forum members from Croatia and Bosnia Serbs and we would get into it.
Universally, every Croatian or Bosnian Serb forum poster denied what happened there.  And I was called a liar on many occasions for telling them them the truth of that war as I was there and they weren't.  And I have evidence to back up my claims.  No one believed me and if I offered visual proof, they didn't want to see it or they disclaimed it as fake.
I remember a particular Bosnian Serb who was not in the war but we got deep into the weeds discussing what happened during that war.  Deny, deny, deny.  It never happened.  Until videos that the Bosnian Serbs took of them killing civilians and dumping them in mass graves what was recorded by the very soldiers who committed the atrocities surfaced and made it onto their local media and they couldn't deny it any longer.  Those videos were part of the process besides sanctions that resulted in some notable Bosnia Serb / Serbian leaders being turned over to the ICC for prosecution for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.  After the revelation came out, this individual on that forum who I had spent hours engaging with about the culpability of Serbs in the atrocities simply ignored me from that point onwards.  I will never know why.... was it that he discovered that I was right all a long and he was wrong and he was ashamed (as he would have been) or he simply wanted to hang onto his delusion of what narrative he wanted to believe was true and he knew that I would keep chipping away.   
Denial is a powerful thing.   I don't understand why it has such power but it does.  People can dismiss an outright objective reality because to accept the truth is to undermine what they think reality is or should be.   I don't get it and is beyond madding to see the denials in the face of objective reality happen over and over.
Sigh.   I don't know why the hell I rambled on with this.  Maybe it was a story I need to tell to remain sane in light of the same brutality I witnessed back in Bosnia happening in Ukraine now.  Or maybe I still am the greater fool for believing my experiences in Bosnia can be an object lesson to others about holding onto a narrative that is personally comfortable but runs counter to all the real evidence to the contrary.   DMS, I am looking at you....
The truth will come out after all this is over.  At least, I hope it does.  The truth of this war needs to be told and codified so generations that follow can know what really happend.
Now at the end of this and reviewing it, I feel that I should have deleted this or apologize for it.  
I am hitting post. It is my truth.  Let people accept it and learn something from it or ignore it.  I needed to say this for a long time.   
 
 

The Kremlin blinks first in the geo-economic war over Ukraine (msn.com)
On April 29, Russia’s finance ministry announced that it would pay some $650m to foreign creditors on two overdue Eurobonds. And by making the payments before the bonds’ grace period expired on May 4, the Kremlin has avoided falling into sovereign default.
On the surface, this may look like a win for Russia. But in reality, the move was an embarrassing one for Vladimir Putin.
Ahead of the bond’s formal maturity on April 4, the Kremlin announced that it would buy back the bonds in roubles – and pay those who refused to accept the rouble buy-back as well. Nearly 75 percent of bondholders (almost certainly all domestic) agreed to the new terms .
Emboldened, the Kremlin announced on April 6 that it was also depositing roubles into accounts set up for other bondholders. The Credit Derivatives Determinations Committees judged this to be a “potential-failure-to-pay” event, ruling that Russia would effectively be in default if it fails to correct the situation by the aforementioned May 4 deadline. In response, Russian officials accused the West of attempting to force Russia into a default by restricting its access to foreign currency reserves. The US Treasury, which oversees sanctions, however made clear that sanctions do not bar Russia from paying with funds it was earning from ongoing oil and gas sales.
Russia’s recent decision to pay the bonds in foreign currency enabled it to avoid the all-but-guaranteed acceleration of other debts and lawsuits that would have followed a default and further impoverished the Russian people.
However, the move also left the Kremlin in a position of extreme hypocrisy and embarrassment. In the end, what Putin did was to repay domestic bondholders with roubles, which they cannot convert freely into hard currency to spend abroad. And pay foreign holders in full, in dollars – hardly a feat worthy of praise.
To achieve this Putin likely tapped into the record levels of foreign currency Russia accumulated through oil and gas sales since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine.
And it seems, soon it may also lose that crucial income.
On May 4, the European Union proposed plans to phase out the purchase of Russian oil.
Between the launch of its invasion on February 24 and the time of writing, Russia has earned $21bn from oil sales to the EU according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CRE). This record income was partially due to high hydrocarbon prices resulting from the war itself. Russia’s foreign currency stockpile, however, will not keep growing forever as the costs of the war are borne and oil and gas markets readjust. And now, it is also on the verge of losing a key customer.
Furthermore the EU is going after Russia’s oil sales not just within the bloc but around the world.
The bloc’s package of sanctions measures also includes a ban on providing transportation to Russian oil, regardless of where it is destined. This is certainly a fallible measure, given shipping companies set up outside the bloc could avoid it. However, the package will also bar the provision of insurance services for such shipping. This is far more difficult to evade, given the shipping insurance market is so dominated by EU, Canadian and US firms.
In case there is any doubt just how exposed the shipping sector is to Western sanctions, one just needs to look to the actions of Russian state-owned shipping company Sovcomflot. On May 3 specialist maritime industry publication Lloyd’s List revealed that Sovcomflot was looking to sell at least 40 ships from its 121 ship fleet before wind-down authorisations expire and it becomes fully sanctioned on May 15.
If Sovcomflot fails to raise enough cash to honour its debts before then, it will fall into default and creditors will go after its ships. Just like the Russian state, Russian businesses are still fearful of defaulting on Western creditors – even amid a war.
These sanctions are unlikely to be lifted as long as Russian troops remain beyond the pre-February 24 lines of control. For example, none of the sanctions introduced after Russia’s annexation of Crimea have ever been lifted.
Despite these setbacks, there is clearly some fight left in Russia, which is using its gas sales to Europe to try and ensure that the rouble remains convertible even as sanctions are further tightened, and thus that it can at least buy foreign currency if and when needed.
The Kremlin is likely to cut off other EU countries and companies who refuse to comply with the gas-for-roubles demand, as it already has with Poland and Bulgaria. But gas sales to Europe are an even more important source of revenue for the Kremlin. Pipelines are expensive to replace, and the above mentioned shipping sanctions are applied to liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes as well. Europe should prepare to call Putin’s bluff.
The West is winning the geo-economic war. The Kremlin will blink again.
 

Middle income traps...western world, to your own house look.  I am not sure where this leaves the west.  We have definitely united but the divisions are still there, just watch the news. 
I am almost convinced we are already in a version of a Cold War, but nothing like the last one.  Maybe more like pre-WWI competition to be honest.  The lines are definitely drawn and I do not think we come out of this "normal".
I think China is paying very close attention to this war, but are going to take away different conclusions other than "fear us".  My bet is that they will note how "not to" take on the west but also "how to better".  I too, do not believe China is an unstoppable power that is simply going to roll us over; however, their trajectory is as impressive as the global rise of the US during the end of the 19th century.  
I disagree on Chinese global power.  Not militarily but economically they are stretching out very far, the evidence on this is significant.  Further, I am not at all convinced that China was surprised by this, we have no idea what their intelligence apparatus really looks like or what they knew or did not.  Considering the US was pushing out so much, I doubt they did not have internal intel validation as well. 
So what? Well to be honest the one area that concerns me the most with respect to China's rise and this emerging conflict/competition - "confletition?", is that if all war is: vision/certainty, communication, negotiation, and sacrifice, who has the sacrifice advantage?  Based on the state of the west right now, I am coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that it is not us.  We talk about the middle-class trap in China, our western societies are so entitled right now that we are seeing mass protests on public health mandates, all the while if anyone gets sick at these things they had better have free healthcare to take care of them.  The west is at least 2 generations from having to actually fight for itself on the scope and scale we are seeing in Ukraine, maybe 3 and we have become highly entitled.  We will not willingly sacrifice much, even in the face of a global pandemic, let alone a greyish global power competition.  China, I strongly suspect, is playing on a different field entirely when it comes to what they are willing to sacrifice to continue to expand, and that is something to be very concerned about.