How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[DesertFox]

 

 

[Letter from Prague]

I can't imagine being angry at Kraze. I have spend all my anger on the Russians after Bucha and Irpin and everything else they did. Just as I can't imagine being empathic with Russians suffering - I have spend all my empathy on the Ukrainians.

Everytime I see someone angry at a Ukrainian, I wonder, are they angry at Russians too, or are they ok with them? Every time I see someone empathizing with Russians, I wonder, are they not empathizing with the Ukrainians?

Why don't you guys set up some tribunal, where you can decide, in safety of thousand kilometers distant armchairs, whether a particular Ukrainian is noble enough in their suffering?

[JonS]

4 minutes ago, Huba said:

you could provide an example

I just did. Using posts that are less than a day old. You may not see it, but I do, and I am not alone there.

[Huba]

In other news, Lithuania puts part of the military on high alert. IMO one of the immediate reactions coming from NATO members bordering Russia should be doing the same. Increase air patrols and do more army exercises. Put pressure on them and have them station as much along these borders as possible.

 

[JonS]

15 minutes ago, Letter from Prague said:

I can't imagine being angry at Kraze.

I'm not angry with him. I think he's a foolish kid who knows he has nothing interesting to say, so is trying to get attention by saying outlandish stuff. In a way it's kinda cute.

But it's also wrong. All wars end. This war will end, and at the end of this war Ukraine and Russia will still be neighbours sharing about 2,000km of border. Think about what that means for a while. And as you're doing that consider similar examples like France and Germany, Poland and Germany, the Balkans generally, Israel and everybody, and which examples provide for actual long term peace and stability.

Edited September 21, 2022 by JonS

[chuckdyke]

In Australia we solved the problem by having six parliaments and discussing which is the better game Footy or Rugby. 

[The_MonkeyKing]

47 minutes ago, Huba said:

This seems very relevant to the discussion of "average russian" innocence, and how it is perceived in different countries. I absolutely second Latvian approach here. Yeah, it won't buy them much sympathy from RU public opinion, pro and anti-war alike, but in the long term forcing RU civilians to face the music is the only way forward.

 

Russian draw dodgers as refugees is a complicated subject.

• We do not want to give protection to the Russians powerful classes while main population suffers.
• If we "evacuate" the opposition from Russia who is left to drive change?
• We want to protect any possible Russian opposition if they face impossible odds.
• humanitarian reasons.
• pretty wanted migrants. Working age somewhat well off people.

[chuckdyke]

See the export of Japanese and Korean electronics and cars. It takes some time before we buy Russian merchandise. 

[kraze]

2 minutes ago, JonS said:

I'm not angry with him. I think he's a foolish kid who knows he has nothing interesting to say, so is trying to get attention by saying outlandish stuff. In a way it's kinda cute.

But it's also wrong. All wars end. This war will end. At the end of this war Ukraine and Russia will still be neighbours. Think about what that means for a while. And as you're doing that consider the examples of France and Germany, Poland and Germany, and Israel and everybody.

Ah I finally get it now. It has nothing to do with "calls to kill" since there are none.

I'm bad and evil because instead of pretending russians don't rape little children and cut off body parts of living human beings - I keep saying they should be held responsible, all of them must feel at least some consequences - because they support it. Whereas what I should really do is shut up and think about how after the war ends I will be holding hands with rapists and murderers and singing kumbaya and all will be well in the world. Everybody will be friends again and everybody will watch cute cat videos instead of mass exhumations.

Maybe we will even drink tea with russians on top of a Ukrainianmass grave and laugh and make funny jokes

[Huba]

Just now, JonS said:

But it's also wrong. All wars end. This war will end. At the end of this war Ukraine and Russia will still be neighbours. Think about what that means for a while. And as you're doing that consider the examples of France and Germany, Poland and Germany, and Israel and everybody.

No discussion here, they will have to manage that at some point. We know very well what it took to break the spiral of hate between DE and it's neihgbors, and in case of RU we are very, very far from it. IMO at this point all we could expect is that UA hate towards Russians is managed to a degree that they won't reciprocate with committing atrocities - and they are managing that pretty well IMO. Expecting anything more of them would be unfair. 
The way I see it, UA and RU will be having a kind of a Korean situation in the foreseeable future, complete with barbed wire and minefields. It is up to RU to try to change that, not on UA, and I just can't imagine them doing what it takes to normalize, not in a decade or two.

[chuckdyke]

26 minutes ago, Grigb said:

I would like to reminder Galeev threat about RU - It is all about procedurality .

Here you can talk whatever language you like. Hard to get employment if you can't speak English. 

[JonS]

1 minute ago, Huba said:

No discussion here, they will have to manage that at some point. We know very well what it took to break the spiral of hate between DE and it's neihgbors, and in case of RU we are very, very far from it. IMO at this point all we could expect is that UA hate towards Russians is managed to a degree that they won't reciprocate with committing atrocities - and they are managing that pretty well IMO. Expecting anything more of them would be unfair.

I agree, obviously.

"Some" posters here do not, and are pushing hard for collective guilt and collective punishment.

You see the issue now?

[Huba]

Just now, JonS said:

I agree, obviously.

"Some" posters here do not, and are pushing hard for collective guilt and collective punishment.

You see the issue now?

But we are punishing them collectively already, just not in an "eye for an eye" way.  Even though some posts are full of venom (to a point of tediousness sometimes), nobody called for atrocities against russians here, it is just your interpretation of "reap what they sow".

[TheVulture]

Can't imagine why...

[Grigb]

A sober advice

Quote

The third. The President said that [they] will train [you]. If the same instructors will train [you] as before SMO... you are screwed. I don't know what legal possibilities there will be to challenge the training course [in court]... It's one thing if you would be trained by an amputee like a Rumble or a String [nicknames of infamous front line RU regular officers who were wounded] - your chances of reaching the [end and being] winners would increase by a multiple. If [you will be sent to] the same training schools that prepared them, with the same mentors and the same practices, then...

 

[Huba]

3 minutes ago, TheVulture said:

Can't imagine why...

There's more. At this point I imagine interesting stuff must be happening on Finnish border near St. Petersburg, as it is basically the only way out. @The_MonkeyKing anything about it in local media?

 

[Harmon Rabb]

2 hours ago, TheVulture said:

Can't imagine why...

I heard the ski resorts in Azerbaijan have beautiful views of the mountains, and Istanbul has plenty of interesting historical sites to visit.

But I doubt these ticket sales have much to do with those reasons at this moment.

Edited September 21, 2022 by Harmon Rabb

[The_MonkeyKing]

16 minutes ago, Huba said:

There's more. At this point I imagine interesting stuff must be happening on Finnish border near St. Petersburg, as it is basically the only way out. @The_MonkeyKing anything about it in local media?

 

The mobilization doesn't threaten the Finnish border. This is because Russia is keeping a very close eye on the border (as always). There is absolutely no crossing the border for Russians without Russian governments consent. Russia is not letting people who are included in the mobilization across. (only thread in the future would be Russian mobilized refugee crisis like in Poland. These people would not overlap with draft dodgers)

But of course authorities are adjusting accordingly. In keeping with Finnish tradition details are not disclosed.

More generally the visa situation has not caused any noticeable changes on the border.

 

[JonS]

AFAICT (using Flight Radar) there's about 30 flights per day out of Moscow to anywhere that isn't Russia. At about 300 pax per flight, that's upto about 9,000 highly motivated people exiting stage left each day.

St Petersberg has about 20 international flights per day/6,000pax.

[Battlefront.com]

OK, just read through the 4 new pages since I went to sleep.  First, an announcement...

We have the single most important development in this war from the Russian side of the equation since the early days of the war.  Yet energy and attention is being sucked away from it to have a non-productive debate about an emotionally charged topic that has no immediate relevance to what is going on now.

Therefore, anybody continuing the discussion about what Ukraine should or should not do with Ukrainian citizens that have sided with Russia is to cease immediately.  I do not want to see this topic revived for quite a while at best.  Anybody who does not understand this will receive ABSOLUTELY NO WARNING except notification that they are temporarily unable to post to this this Forum.  You will instead be on a vacation for two weeks.

Have I made myself sufficiently clear?  This is a rhetorical question, do not post "I understand", just let this thread get back to something productive.

Steve

[Bannon]

1 minute ago, Battlefront.com said:

OK, just read through the 4 new pages since I went to sleep.  First, an announcement...

We have the single most important development in this war from the Russian side of the equation since the early days of the war.  Yet energy and attention is being sucked away from it to have a non-productive debate about an emotionally charged topic that has no immediate relevance to what is going on now.

Therefore, anybody continuing the discussion about what Ukraine should or should not do with Ukrainian citizens that have sided with Russia is to cease immediately.  I do not want to see this topic revived for quite a while at best.  Anybody who does not understand this will receive ABSOLUTELY NO WARNING except notification that they are temporarily unable to post to this this Forum.  You will instead be on a vacation for two weeks.

Have I made myself sufficiently clear?

Steve

Crystal clear and thanks.

[The_MonkeyKing]

There are protest being organized already for tonight. We are going to get a good "internal temperature measurement" of the Russian society in very near future.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CiwxoplrOcV/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D

 

[Maciej Zwolinski]

39 minutes ago, JonS said:

I agree, obviously.

"Some" posters here do not, and are pushing hard for collective guilt and collective punishment.

You see the issue now?

1 hour ago, Huba said:

But we are punishing them collectively already, just not in an "eye for an eye" way.  Even though some posts are full of venom (to a point of tediousness sometimes), nobody called for atrocities against russians here, it is just your interpretation of "reap what they sow".

Sure. Wars emphatically are about collective guilt and collective punishment, which is assumed to happen in war. If you are an enemy combatant, the other side is presumed to be trying to kill you with full intent and premeditation, yet legally . Solely because someone in your country told you (even forced you) to put on the uniform, without any relation to your individual actions. This is preciselys what differentiates war from law enforcement.

Murder of civilans during war is morally wrong an/or morally prohibited but not because of the "collective punishment" angle, which is a concept from a different order of affairs, but because it exceeds the level of violence culturally considered to be acceptable in order to resolve conflicts between groups, by targeting people who are generally considered to be ineffectual in that conflict.

[Battlefront.com]

I'm not going to be around much today as I'm in the middle of traveling.  In fact, I'm going to be an hour late for something because of our friends in Russia making things more interesting than what I need to do.

OK, so we have some of the information we've been waiting for:

1. Whatever hiccup happened yesterday it is resolved for now.  Whatever it was, it did not likely change the purpose of the announcement itself.  At most it might have created the need for Putin and/or Shoigu to voice some sort of position that a faction wanted to hear.
2. Russian leadership is showing no signs of trying to find a realistic way out of this war.  It is instead committed to national suicide for a cause that was lost long ago with zero hopes of reversals of fortune.
3. The chosen course is, as with everything out of the Kremlin, something that was inevitable given the utter lack of reason in the minds of Putin and those pushing for destroying Ukraine.
4. Russia will annex all territory under Russian control at a minimum.  It is probable that conscripts will be stationed there in some way.  As noted already, there's plenty of flexibility for such deployments to become combat roles, overtly or covertly.
5. Now we will see if Putin's fear of mobilization was justified.  And soon.  We might see massive protests starting tomorrow, for example.  However, I think it is more likely that reaction to this news will take a while to blossom into something large scale.
6. The men getting called back to service are as likely to be motivated to dodge as they are to proactively show up for service.  This is going to create quite a problem for quickly and efficiently getting more bodies to the front.
7. The shift of Navalny's organization to call upon Russian citizens to commit acts of violence is significant.  I expect we will see attacks on "low hanging fruit" such as recruitment offices, billboards, and other such things.  I do not think we'll see much more than that unless the general situation turns violent.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

14 minutes ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

Sure. Wars emphatically are about collective guilt and collective punishment, which is assumed to happen in war. If you are an enemy combatant, the other side is presumed to be trying to kill you with full intent and premeditation, yet legally . Solely because someone in your country told you (even forced you) to put on the uniform, without any relation to your individual actions. This is preciselys what differentiates war from law enforcement.

Murder of civilans during war is morally wrong an/or morally prohibited but not because of the "collective punishment" angle, which is a concept from a different order of affairs, but because it exceeds the level of violence culturally considered to be acceptable in order to resolve conflicts between groups, by targeting people who are generally considered to be ineffectual in that conflict.

I am going to assume you were typing this when I posted that this topic is no longer welcome here. 

Steve