#russia's invasion of ukraine

[mewlabu]

A fascinating thread looking at recently released documents about what russia's plan was for Ukraine had their "special military operation" succeeded.

Anyone still claiming it was NATO or 8 years in donbass needs to have this shoved down their throats.

If you have issues viewing stuff on twitter, you can also find the thread here:

TLDR: the plan was to steal Ukranian industries and land lock Ukraine so it would lose all of its economic viability independent of Russia. To steal Ukrainian owned business and industries and leverage the coastal access to improve market access and trade costs.

[tomorrowusa]

«Suppose Russia – a nuclear power – is not punished for unleashing the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945. In that case, we will witness disastrous consequences for global security and the political-economic order for decades to come. The lessons China will learn from this conflict will encourage it to pursue its own revanchist ambitions. Global nuclear proliferation is likely to occur as the foundations of international law will be severely damaged for a long time.»

— Dr. Maria Domańska, senior fellow at the Warsaw-based Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), writing at the journal New Eastern Europe.

That paragraph in an extended essay on Russia's stability indirectly reminds us of a consequence of Russia getting its way in Ukraine.

In 1994 under terms of the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in return for security commitments by Russia, the US, and the UK.

Obviously Putin violated the Budapest Memorandum in addition to other treaties and agreements regarding Ukraine's security. That raises the question: Would Russia have invaded if Ukraine still had those nuclear weapons? Almost certainly not.

Other countries with the potential to go nuclear may be thinking that the only sure way to preserve their independence is to develop nuclear weapons. However, if the Russian invaders are driven out of Ukraine then these countries would take notice of how a nuclear power was pushed back by using only non-nuclear weapons.

So a Ukrainian victory is crucial to prevent future proliferation of nuclear weapons.

[raelis1]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MfX2KELLj48EG2yI9PAIig_3dCacJEm6Iuql0sXXaR0/edit…

[suratan-zir]

Today, Ukraine became the first. The first country in the world against which an intercontinental ballistic missile was used.

let's goooo незламний народе first in everything amirite -----------------------------------

no one cares

I don't care what you say. This is the harsh truth. No one gives a fuck if our nation lives or dies.

To use intercontinental missile to strike Dnipro. That's gotta be the most ridiculously expensive temper tantrum ever.

UPDATE: putin said that russia attacked Ukraine with the "newest" medium-range ballistic missile "Oreshnik"

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

[thyinum]

It's so wild to me to see under that Xiran Jay Zhao's post about the bombed ukrainian printing house comments like "I hope everyone is safe." And I get it, people are saying this out of kindness and pure consern, there's nothing wrong with it. It just shows how little coverage our war has abroad.

No, no one in Ukraine is safe. No one in that printing house was safe, in fact, 7 people died. No one in a huge hypermarket in Kharkiv on Saturday was safe, in fact, there were 18 killed and 48 injured. And all this happened in the span of only a few days.

No one is safe in territories occupied by russians because the whole family can get killed by refusing to give up their home to russian soldiers. And every time ukrainian army liberates some region, they find mass graves and torture chambers there.

No one is safe even far away from the front line and the border with russia, because missiles and drones fly all over Ukraine, and you never know when the next one will land on your house.

Hell, ukrainians aren't safe even abroad, because there's always a chance there will be some crazy russian or russian supporter who will decide to beat or kill us. And I'm not making this up.

I'm aware that I'm more safe than the people close to the front line and the border with russia or in occupied territories. I don't hear explosions every day, unlike my friend from Kharkiv. But that doesn't mean I'm completely safe. Missiles and drones fly by at least several times a week, especially at night, when I don't hear the sound of an air raid siren simply because I'm asleep. 

I am not safe.

My family is not safe.

My friends all over Ukraine are not safe.

We're not safe until russia is gone from our territories. That's why we need all that ammunition and aid. War won't magically stop if our allies stop sending us weapons; that's not how it works. We'll just be more unsafe, because russia won't stop unless it is forced to.

Here's ukrainian news sources you can follow that report daily:

United24: Instagram, YouTube, Twitter

Svidomi: Instagram, Twitter

WeAreUkraine: Instagram

[adskadrochilnya]

ukraine may be fighting the biggest modern empire in the world that wants to take its colony back to oppress and subjugate its people and culture as it has been for CENTURIES but that still not anti-imperialistic enough for some people

[justacynicalromantic]

Bahmut had 17 schools, 29 kindergartens, 5 colleges, 5 theaters, 12 libraries, a salt mine and the biggest underground concert hall in the world.

This city no longer exists

[alcandenocturno]

I want to thank the brave men and women of Ukranian and of course all volunteers as well.

You are all fighting for a brighter Ukrainian, a brighter Europa and perhaps a better place to live your life, to see your children growing up in a safer environment.

I Thank all of you.

Best regards from the Netherlands.

Є ГОННА ДЕЯКІ РЕЧІ, ЯКІ ВИ ГОННА БАЧИТЕ, ЦЕ ГОННА УСКЛАДНЮЄ ПОСМІШКУ В МАЙБУТНЬОМУ, АЛЕ ЧЕРЕЗ ВСЕ, ЩО ВИ БАЧИТЕ, ЧЕРЕЗ ВЕСЬ ДОЩ І ВЕСЬ БІЛЬ, ВИ ПОВИННІ ЗБЕРІГАТИ ПОЧУТ��Я ГУМОРУ, ВИ ПОВИННІ БУТИ В ЗМОЗІ ПОСМІХНУТИСЯ ЧЕРЕЗ ВСЮ ЦЮ ДУРНИЦЮ.

Slava Ukraine

THERE'S GONNA BE SOME STUFF YOU GONNA SEE THAT'S GONNA MAKE IT HARD TO SMILE IN FUTURE, BUT THROUGH WHATEVER YOU SEE, THROUGH ALL THE RAIN AND ALL THE PAIN, YOU GOTTA KEEP YOUR SENSE OF HUMOUR, YOU GOTTA BE ABLE TO SMILE THROUGH ALL THIS BULLSHIT

But for you Mr . Putin it's a lost cause.

⌛Time's up, now pay your dues.

[opensky-tom]

Based on the news I read today, I wished the report had had more specifics like what are wrong and what can be done, which is contrary to IPCC Chief's comment mentioned in the article though. If put cynically, is the report made for governments instead of people (do you want us to sprint really?)? 

Anyway, it seems in a nutshell, we need to rely on renewable energy, but my country, Japan is not progressing as well as hoped in this field. In my opinion, if warfare still continue on this earth, I wouldn't see the efforts to prevent severe Climate Crisis would become meaningful. So, Russian invasion into Ukraine, Civil War in Syria and so forth are the touchstone of world communities' ability to tackle with a very important global issue like Global Warming as well because for the world to unite, we need to trust each other. If hate overpowers trust, our efforts to unite and to achieve a global goal would come to nothing.

[loneranger0369]

Putin will not stop with Ukraine....

He is willing to screw Belarus over, to create a "glorious" USSR once again...

No Idea what will happen...

And America is pissing him further off, to a War

[tomorrowusa]

Even before Putin started his unprovoked war of aggression, Russia was not experiencing great population stability. But as many as 208,370 Russians have died and more have been wounded in the war. Additionally, hundreds of thousands more have fled the country since early 2022.

The Economist writes (archived)...

A DEMOGRAPHIC TRAGEDY is unfolding in Russia. Over the past three years the country has lost around 2m more people than it would ordinarily have done, as a result of war, disease and exodus. The life expectancy of Russian males aged 15 fell by almost five years, to the same level as in Haiti. The number of Russians born in April 2022 was no higher than it had been in the months of Hitler’s occupation. And because so many men of fighting age are dead or in exile, women now outnumber men by at least 10m.

It only gets worse.

According to Alexei Raksha, an independent demographer who used to work for the state statistics service, if you look just at peacetime years, the number of births registered in April 2022 was the lowest since the 18th century.

Putin has been trying to emulate Peter the Great. The only way he’s managed to do so is in lowering the number of births in Russia to what it was in Peter’s time.

Putin’s pandemic response was terrible.��

All this began before the war and reflects Russia’s appalling covid pandemic. The official death toll from the disease was 388,091, which would be relatively low; but The Economist estimates total excess deaths in 2020-23 at between 1.2m and 1.6m. That would be comparable to the number in China and the United States, which have much larger populations. Russia may have had the largest covid death toll in the world after India, and the highest mortality rate of all, with 850-1,100 deaths per 100,000 people.

Anybody who observed the way Putin handled COVID-19 could not have been surprised by his failure in Ukraine.

The bottom line...

The demographic doom loop has not, it appears, diminished Mr Putin’s craving for conquest. But it is rapidly making Russia a smaller, worse-educated and poorer country, from which young people flee and where men die in their 60s. The invasion has been a human catastrophe—and not only for Ukrainians.

You know, this “demographic doom loop“ may be one of the reasons Russia is abducting children in Ukraine and bringing them to Russia.

Ukraine war: The mothers going to get their children back from Russia

After the war, Ukraine will rebuild and will prosper. Ukrainians are among the most innovative, resourceful, and energetic people on the planet. The country has remained standing because of the strength of its people.

After the war, Russia will still be Russia – a kleptocracy run by oligarchs who keep the bulk of the declining population poor and ignorant. 

The difference between Russia and Ukraine will increasingly resemble the difference between North Korea and South Korea.

[raelis1]

Freedom Birds for Ukraine

[suratan-zir]

Russia's UN representative smiles and laughs as he listens to a story about how a russian missile killed Ukrainian family in Lviv - on September 4, a russian missile hit a residential building in Lviv and killed a mother and three of her daughters. Only their father survived.

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

I’ve recently been thinking about one of the times I was in russia—in Saint Petersburg—in April of 2007.

People think this evil from Putin is a new thing. It’s not.

2007 was before russia invaded Georgia, and before they invaded Ukraine.

It was about a month before “Victory Day”, and already the entire city was covered in the black and orange ribbons, and Nevsky Prospect—the most famous street in russia—had multi-storey banners of propaganda and Putin’s face all over the buildings.

Because of my (Northern Irish) surname, the woman my brother and I were meeting up with assumed I wasn’t Ukrainian. And so when I said I was, she BURST OUT LAUGHING. She said “Sorry, but I always laugh when I meet Ukrainians. They sound so stupid when they speak.”

She was then horrified that my Ukrainian family didn’t like the Soviet Union.

russians say one thing to Westerners and something else entirely to the people they invade and colonise over and over again. They hide their racism when they speak to people in the West.

That same trip to russia, the building we were staying in ON NEVSKY PROSPECT was raided by two truckloads of men with machine guns. Tour buses were driving past, and armed men were raiding our apartment!

A few days later we were in Tallinn in Estonia. Bronze Night had just happened, when russian thugs trashed the city because the Estonians moved a Soviet statue. Every single window in the city centre was held up with wooden boards.

This was nearly twenty years ago.

I look at all these idiotic tankies in the West (and on Tumblr). And I’m shocked by their wilful ignorance when it comes to russia.

[thyinum]

Good fucking morning from Ukraine after the massive shelling by russia with almost everything they've got. I personally heard pretty loud explosions over my head. Thanks to our air defence I am alive.

But still there are lots of injured people across all the country as well as some dead.

"Gentle" reminder that russia is a terrorist state

Upd: the numbers of injured and killed are growing