Ukraine reacts to fears of Russian invasion as troops build up at the border

[EnterpriseSovereign]

And besides, like Elfdart said, if the Russians wanted to invade, they would have had to move a lot more troops than they actually did to the border. That proves they have no intention of entering Ukraine. What it seems they are actually doing is war games in Belarus, plus putting, like, one artillery division on the border so they have the option of shelling Ukrainian forces without entering their territory if they feel like it. Which isn't the same thing as invasion. Yet that's the narrative the Biden administration keeps trying to forcefeed the American people, and even some journalists in the AP don't buy it this time, as its transparent that they're trying to do the same things Bush did to try selling us the invasion of Iraq. Only instead of lying about weapons of mass destruction, its lying about Russia's intent to invade. Don't ask us for proof, our saying it is proof enough! Dipshit.

Okay, to what end do you think Biden is doing this for then? Because he can't actually want to, say, invade Russia, right? Just to distract from other issues? I know BoJo must be loving the chance to play the statesman and talk about something other than Downing Street parties.

I admit to not having read enough about this but is there another purpose Russia could put the forces to if you think it's insufficient for a full on invasion? Like snap up another chunk of disputed regions.

So they have moved 100,000 soldiers and their equipment to a border of a neighbouring country that they are not friendly towards, and they did it for fun or a practical joke of some form. That must make it the most expensive joke of all time, as this must have cost several billion Rubles and counting.

[Col. Crackpot]

And besides, like Elfdart said, if the Russians wanted to invade, they would have had to move a lot more troops than they actually did to the border. That proves they have no intention of entering Ukraine. What it seems they are actually doing is war games in Belarus, plus putting, like, one artillery division on the border so they have the option of shelling Ukrainian forces without entering their territory if they feel like it. Which isn't the same thing as invasion. Yet that's the narrative the Biden administration keeps trying to forcefeed the American people, and even some journalists in the AP don't buy it this time, as its transparent that they're trying to do the same things Bush did to try selling us the invasion of Iraq. Only instead of lying about weapons of mass destruction, its lying about Russia's intent to invade. Don't ask us for proof, our saying it is proof enough! Dipshit.

Okay, to what end do you think Biden is doing this for then? Because he can't actually want to, say, invade Russia, right? Just to distract from other issues? I know BoJo must be loving the chance to play the statesman and talk about something other than Downing Street parties.

I admit to not having read enough about this but is there another purpose Russia could put the forces to if you think it's insufficient for a full on invasion? Like snap up another chunk of disputed regions.

So they have moved 100,000 soldiers and their equipment to a border of a neighbouring country that they are not friendly towards, and they did it for fun or a practical joke of some form. That must make it the most expensive joke of all time, as this must have cost several billion Rubles and counting.

This. 1000 times this. There is no non shitbag reason in deploying a hundred thousand troops against the border of your smaller, hostile neighbor that you recently “adjusted” your border with.

The “lolz fUkIN bIDEn anD teH ‘mUriCans R tRyiN 2 stArT a wAR!” Bullshit tankie narrative is earth shatteringly stupid.

[Col. Crackpot]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... apons.html

Lukasshenko is now making threats to use other people’s nuclear weapons. And also “super nuclear” weapons. Whatever the hell those are. Sounds like a super chill guy.

[Ralin]

So they have moved 100,000 soldiers and their equipment to a border of a neighbouring country that they are not friendly towards, and they did it for fun or a practical joke of some form. That must make it the most expensive joke of all time, as this must have cost several billion Rubles and counting.

Said country being unfriendly towards them and having a disputed border with them both seem like fairly self-explanatory reasons. Before getting into the whole thing where Russia has what I would say are understandable issues with the expansion of the fuck Russia alliance to their border.

The “lolz fUkIN bIDEn anD teH ‘mUriCans R tRyiN 2 stArT a wAR!” Bullshit tankie narrative is earth shatteringly stupid.

No it isn't because we've all lived through that sort of thing multiple times.

This. 1000 times this. There is no non shitbag reason in deploying a hundred thousand troops against the border of your smaller, hostile neighbor that you recently “adjusted” your border with.

Where the fuck else would they want to deploy a good chunk of their military if not the border with a hostile country they are in conflict with?

[Ralin]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... apons.html

Lukasshenko is now making threats to use other people’s nuclear weapons. And also “super nuclear” weapons. Whatever the hell those are. Sounds like a super chill guy.

So? How do you believe this UK tabloid article is relevant?

[Gandalf]

Also, the article says Lukashenko is ready to host weapons, not use them.

[Ralin]

Also, the article says Lukashenko is ready to host weapons, not use them.

Well Crackpot apparently can't conceive of any reason for Belarus hosting Russian troops that doesn't involve invading Ukraine, so I guess that's consistent.

[Elfdart]

He was often allowed into confidential meetings because he was assumed to be a diplomat or some other kind of bigshot.

I have no idea who that person is, but sounds like giving him such a generous expense account was a good idea?

That's why he got it and others didn't. He was a real character, a right-wing loon for most of his career but still fascinating.

[Elfdart]

So they have moved 100,000 soldiers and their equipment to a border of a neighbouring country that they are not friendly towards, and they did it for fun or a practical joke of some form. That must make it the most expensive joke of all time, as this must have cost several billion Rubles and counting.

They could be doing it to cause panic for outside investors in Ukraine, which would explain why the government there keeps trying to downplay the whole thing. If the western financial backers of Ukraine start bailing, the government there could fall without the Russians doing much of anything militarily.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

The West is fighting back in Russia's information war - but is it working?

The Russians have proved pretty adept at fighting the ‘information war’ in the past, creating (from a Western standpoint) confusion and false narratives. This time out, the West is meeting them head on.

There has been a huge effort in the UK and the US to push military intelligence about Russian troop movements into the media through on-the-record and background briefings. The idea appears to be to neutralise Russian plans by publicising them.

We can’t know for certain how well this is working. Did the Russians choose not to invade Ukraine on Wednesday because an American journalist was briefed that it could happen? Who knows. The inherent problem is obvious; when the invasion didn’t come on Wednesday, the Russians were able to ridicule the claim.

On Thursday the Ministry of Defence (MoD) published an eye-popping video on Twitter which included a map of where the MoD thought Russian forces might make their moves in the first and second phases of an invasion. Once again this is a very public ‘we see you’ message to the Russians.

But it's not easy pitching these things just right. The MoD video asks: “Why does President Putin want to go to war?”

That is a pretty strange way to put it when ministers have spent days and weeks saying they don’t actually know whether he wants to go to war or not. These are the kinds of errors we broadcasters spend a lot of effort trying to iron out (and we don’t always manage it).

But words matter even more when they come from official government channels.

The Foreign Office also published a pretty punchy video on Thursday using BBC footage (did they get permission?) - this time, the video listed types of false flag or staged provocation operations that the West believes the Russians might use as a pretext for invasion.

It is a very direct, public accusation of Russian duplicity from the FCDO and a departure from what we usually think of as ‘diplomacy.’

There are drawbacks to confronting the Russians this way, especially if Western nations are trying all the while to contend that they are trustworthy while the Russians are not.

But in Washington and London the clear calculation is that they must fight an information war even if, perhaps especially if, they won’t fight a real war.

[Coop D'etat]

The leaders of the Luhansk and Donetsk are ordering evacuations and there are claims that the government in Kyiv is going to attempt a genocide. There appears to have been a false flag bombing

Please tell me again how this is just putting troops on the border/having a military exercise?

[Formless]

How do you know its a false flag bombing? Again, there are known Nazi groups in the area who have declared their intent to do such actions. Again, given the recent history of the US military interventions being based on proven lies, you can't trust what our government says in the matter, and it would be hypocrisy for us to get involved based on such allegations anyway. We should stop pretending to be the world police, and understand that there are some conflicts that are not our problem. Or in this case, are only our problem insofar as our political leaders can't shake the Cold War mentality. Even though its lead to one country offering to host Russian nukes again.

[Coop D'etat]

Jesus, exercise a little common sense man.

[KraytKing]

Aside from the Ukrainian government itself blowing off US and UK media's hysterical coverage -coverage that reminds me of Peter Pan, where kids were told if they believe in fairies, they needed to clap their hands, so Tinkerbell would live ("Don't let Tinkerbell die!")- the biggest giveaway that the Russians had no intention of invading was that they used over 100,000 men to attack Georgia, who had maybe 10,000 soldiers plus 20,000 militia/police. Ukraine has over 200,000 men in their army -and they're much better equipped. So unless Putin more than quadruples his forces at the border, there's about as much chance of Russia invading Ukraine as there is of them invading Mars.

Don't know much about the whole situation, so anybody correct me if I'm wrong. But hasn't the Russian military improved a lot since 2008? Wouldn't need as much power disparity. And it's kind of a dumb argument regardless, because Russia doesn't really have that many more men without emptying all their territorial deployments. Even then, it wouldn't be the ten to one odds you seem to think are required. And if you're invading Georgia, it's not like Putin will go "oh there's only ten thousand good soldiers there, let's not overcommit--fifteen thousand of our boys ought to do it."

In the Gulf War, did America really need every single god damn tank we had? Probably not. Should the force ratio there be taken as a promise of what the American force ratio will be for every conflict we ever engage in? Probably not.

[Formless]

Jesus, exercise a little common sense man.

Be more specific please. And offer an argument for why I am wrong.

[Coop D'etat]

Jesus, exercise a little common sense man.

Be more specific please. And offer an argument for why I am wrong.

Are seriously positing that the Ukrainian neo-nazis (who are far, far more marginal a group than Western left wing folks like to imagine) can pull off multiple almost simultaneous explosive attacks in Russian occupied Donbass? And have never once demonstrated this kind of capability until deciding to use it at the moment where it would give the Kremlin maximum advantage?

Your position strains credulity that you even gave it a moment's serious consideration.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Jesus, exercise a little common sense man.

Be more specific please. And offer an argument for why I am wrong.

Are seriously positing that the Ukrainian neo-nazis (who are far, far more marginal a group than Western left wing folks like to imagine) can pull off multiple almost simultaneous explosive attacks in Russian occupied Donbass? And have never once demonstrated this kind of capability until deciding to use it at the moment where it would give the Kremlin maximum advantage?

Your position strains credulity that you even gave it a moment's serious consideration.

Will Putin will use that as an excuse (real or imaginary) to add Ukraine to one of his fiefdoms?

[Elfdart]

Don't know much about the whole situation, so anybody correct me if I'm wrong. But hasn't the Russian military improved a lot since 2008? Wouldn't need as much power disparity. And it's kind of a dumb argument regardless, because Russia doesn't really have that many more men without emptying all their territorial deployments. Even then, it wouldn't be the ten to one odds you seem to think are required. And if you're invading Georgia, it's not like Putin will go "oh there's only ten thousand good soldiers there, let's not overcommit--fifteen thousand of our boys ought to do it."

In the Gulf War, did America really need every single god damn tank we had? Probably not. Should the force ratio there be taken as a promise of what the American force ratio will be for every conflict we ever engage in? Probably not.

Even if you assume Ukraine's army is a bunch of jobbers, it's still a lot of men and the country still has a huge land area.

[Darth Yan]

Don't know much about the whole situation, so anybody correct me if I'm wrong. But hasn't the Russian military improved a lot since 2008? Wouldn't need as much power disparity. And it's kind of a dumb argument regardless, because Russia doesn't really have that many more men without emptying all their territorial deployments. Even then, it wouldn't be the ten to one odds you seem to think are required. And if you're invading Georgia, it's not like Putin will go "oh there's only ten thousand good soldiers there, let's not overcommit--fifteen thousand of our boys ought to do it."

In the Gulf War, did America really need every single god damn tank we had? Probably not. Should the force ratio there be taken as a promise of what the American force ratio will be for every conflict we ever engage in? Probably not.

Even if you assume Ukraine's army is a bunch of jobbers, it's still a lot of men and the country still has a huge land area.

Putin's made VERY clear he's an expansionist and this is probably his last chance since energy crisises are making European countries reluctant to intervene.

That the US is expansionist does NOT change that Russia is too

[Formless]

Are seriously positing that the Ukrainian neo-nazis (who are far, far more marginal a group than Western left wing folks like to imagine) can pull off multiple almost simultaneous explosive attacks in Russian occupied Donbass? And have never once demonstrated this kind of capability until deciding to use it at the moment where it would give the Kremlin maximum advantage?

Your position strains credulity that you even gave it a moment's serious consideration.

If I say yes, will you actually present the evidence you keep pretending to have that western leftists are wrong about the scale of the Ukranian Nazi movement?

Alternatively, are you willing to reconsider that statement if I point out that 9/11 was done with even fewer men than Azov Battalion alone has, let alone the other groups its allied to?

(consider for a moment that an invasion by the US might be precisely what these Nazi groups want. It doesn't take a genius to jump from "counter-invading the Ukraine" to "invading Russia", especially if you are as insane as a Nazi)

Are you willing to look into the things they have already done, in order that we might have a more intelligent conversation on the matter? Handicraft explosives have proven easy enough for most Middle Eastern terrorists to figure out in the middle of nowhere, after all.

And are you at least willing to consider alternative possibilities about Russia's game here, even assuming they have chosen to be our antagonists and not the other way around? (P.S. we've already talked about why its the other way around) Just because Biden's people say the end game is a Russian invasion doesn't mean it actually is, even if fucking with the Ukraine is the goal. Many possibilities have already been pointed out, but just to name another, we know they have artillery on the border and have had for months, which can lob shells quite far into Ukrainian territory (to say nothing of what missiles can do). They could be planning a mass bombardment, perhaps with the intent of getting the Ukrainian army to cross their border, where they can hand them their ass over it without enabling outsiders to justify intervening. There are many reasons you might move troops around your own borders, but invasion is the only one that anyone seems willing to consider. So here's the challenge: can you think like your enemy? Or do you let the White House do the thinking for you?

And finally, can you make a compelling argument that any of this is the business of the US, Britain, or NATO at large to intervene in? This is not a trivial matter when talking about nuclear powers like the US and Russia, and even more so when the US has a recent track record of invading other countries on false pretenses. Indeed, it makes me laugh every time the Biden administration talks about the possibility of the Russians invading on the pretense of a False Flag. They are only saying it because that is what the US itself would do. Which raises the specter of why we can't trust our own government anymore.

[Formless]

Even if you assume Ukraine's army is a bunch of jobbers, it's still a lot of men and the country still has a huge land area.

Putin's made VERY clear he's an expansionist and this is probably his last chance since energy crisises are making European countries reluctant to intervene.

That the US is expansionist does NOT change that Russia is too

Thing is, if you're going to invade a country, you have only a few choices of how to follow through. I don't think Russia would do Sherman's solution of just burning everything to the ground, there's too much valuable land and resources, and it would be a PR nightmare. The alternative is to go in and get out as quickly as you can get some objective done, but we don't know what objectives they have because no one wants to talk about the why questions right now. That just leaves occupation, the default end game of an invasion (and the one your expansionism claims would imply as well) and that takes a hell of a lot more soldiers than the other two to keep that territory under control. The US actually has an old equation for how many men you need for a given population that dates back to WWII, and it still holds up because no matter how much military technology changes, this is about basically policing the territory and enforcing whatever dictates your government has in the area. Part of the reason some military planners think Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were all clusterfucks was because this was ignored and the US didn't put enough troops on the ground to really enforce order. But it can also be observed that every occupation in the last 50 years was a clusterfuck, including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as well. If Putin is at all a historian, he damn well knows that invasion is a stupid idea.

[Ralin]

And finally, can you make a compelling argument that any of this is the business of the US, Britain, or NATO at large to intervene in?

Was reading a message board thread elsewhere and someone more familiar with the subject was saying that in Russian media and public opinion this is very much being seen (in continuation with how earlier things like the 2014 change of leadership in Ukraine were spun) as the US vs Russia with NATO as a fig leaf at best, and that diplomatically it would be a lot easier to diffuse that perception if the European members of NATO were taking the lead with the US as a silent partner. Which made a whole lot of sense to me.

This would of course require the US to treat other countries as equals

[Formless]

And finally, can you make a compelling argument that any of this is the business of the US, Britain, or NATO at large to intervene in?

Was reading a message board thread elsewhere and someone more familiar with the subject was saying that in Russian media and public opinion this is very much being seen (in continuation with how earlier things like the 2014 change of leadership in Ukraine were spun) as the US vs Russia with NATO as a fig leaf at best, and that diplomatically it would be a lot easier to diffuse that perception if the European members of NATO were taking the lead with the US as a silent partner. Which made a whole lot of sense to me.

This would of course require the US to treat other countries as equals

Ha! hahahahahahahaahaha. Oh man. Biden literally threatened to shut down Nord Stream 2 right in front of the German chancellor Olaf Scholz if Russia invades, and when the media called him out for having no authority to do so given its a Russian-German project, he said the US would do it anyway regardless. In previous centuries, that would be grounds for Germany to end its alliance with the US right there and Casus Belli if acted upon. Doing so would certainly hurt Germany more than Russia, and shows the sheer arrogance of the POTUS in 2022.

[Col. Crackpot]

And finally, can you make a compelling argument that any of this is the business of the US, Britain, or NATO at large to intervene in?

Was reading a message board thread elsewhere and someone more familiar with the subject was saying that in Russian media and public opinion this is very much being seen (in continuation with how earlier things like the 2014 change of leadership in Ukraine were spun) as the US vs Russia with NATO as a fig leaf at best, and that diplomatically it would be a lot easier to diffuse that perception if the European members of NATO were taking the lead with the US as a silent partner. Which made a whole lot of sense to me.

This would of course require the US to treat other countries as equals

Ha! hahahahahahahaahaha. Oh man. Biden literally threatened to shut down Nord Stream 2 right in front of the German chancellor Olaf Scholz if Russia invades, and when the media called him out for having no authority to do so given its a Russian-German project, he said the US would do it anyway regardless. In previous centuries, that would be grounds for Germany to end its alliance with the US right there and Casus Belli if acted upon. Doing so would certainly hurt Germany more than Russia, and shows the sheer arrogance of the POTUS in 2022.

Arrogance is running a massive nuclear weapons drill while deploying 60% of your military along the border of your neighbor that you have been actively destabilizing before invasion in order to restore your crumbling empire. But you go on being a caricature of a tankie with oppositional defiance disorder.

[Col. Crackpot]

https://twitter.com/noahbarkin/status/1 ... 2Fpage-373

Now this is very interesting indeed. China’s Foreign Minister making a statement about respecting the sovereignty of nations, specifically naming Ukraine. It would appear that Pooh Bear sees this potential war for the humanitarian disaster it would be. Or more likely, he sees the resulting massively high fuel prices as a threat to an already strained Chinese economy.