Russia-Ukraine War

[Vertigo 7]

Yes... the empty page... it's very convincing.

[notaterran]

Let's say that Putin takes the cities (and unfortunately it looks like the Ukrainians are about to get hit very hard), can Ukraine mount a successful guerrilla warfare? Can Ukraine at least make the war costly for Putin?

[Observe]

Let's say that Putin takes the cities (and unfortunately it looks like the Ukrainians are about to get hit very hard), can Ukraine mount a successful guerrilla warfare? Can Ukraine at least make the war costly for Putin?

I'm guessing nothing short of Ukraine agreeing to Putin's original demands will stop Russia. Either that means Ukraine surrenders, or if Ukraine receives enough foreign military assistance, there could be a protracted struggle. If Russia takes control of the big cities, he basically has the misery of millions of people as hostage. I wonder how much their plight will have to figure in on whether/when Ukraine surrenders.

[Vertigo 7]

Even if Russia manages to take all of the major cities in Ukraine, Ukraine won't surrender. Even if they did, I'd likely expect them to "surrender" like the French did to Germany. That being said, Russia is continuing to target civilians and sooner or later, NATO will be forced to enter the conflict as a result.

[Falcrack]

Some Russian people are reporting not being able to pay for services like spotify or netflix due to the banking restrictions.

Not really sure what steam will do. Steamdeck?

Russia will soon be requiring streaming services like netflix to host state tv channels and limit their non Russian content. So not being able to pay for netflix might not be an issue.

https://www.gizmochina.com/2022/01/04/r ... -channels/

has just announced that it will mandate foreign streaming services to also offer 20 local federal television channels to their userbase. This regulation was first introduced back in late 2020 and is set to take effect starting from March 2022. So now, out of the 20 Russian government run channels, Netflix and other streaming services will also broadcast the nation’s flagship “Channel One,” alongside the Orthodox church channel “Spas”, and more.

Furthermore, the government also seeks to have its streaming service providers abide by local regulations and laws. In other words, these companies are not allowed to showcase movies that promote “extremism” or even LGBTQIA+ related content. Roskomnadzor even added that the laws also apply to all of these streaming services that regularly bring in more than 100,000 users daily. So, we can expect the changes to impact the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video among others.

I would not be surprised if Russians soon find their access to any sort of internet severely curtailed/eliminated. Even websites such as this, or Steam, are places where Russians can go to learn the truth, which is a dangerous thing for Vladimir Putin.

[Vertigo 7]

I would not be surprised if Russians soon find their access to any sort of internet severely curtailed/eliminated. Even websites such as this, or Steam, are places where Russians can go to learn the truth, which is a dangerous thing for Vladimir Putin.

I don't see why we don't cut their hardlines and block or shoot down their satellites, shut them out of the web all together. It'd cut them off from access to crypto markets and keep the hackers in Russia at bay.

[Falcrack]

I would not be surprised if Russians soon find their access to any sort of internet severely curtailed/eliminated. Even websites such as this, or Steam, are places where Russians can go to learn the truth, which is a dangerous thing for Vladimir Putin.

I don't see why we don't cut their hardlines and block or shoot down their satellites, shut them out of the web all together. It'd cut them off from access to crypto markets and keep the hackers in Russia at bay.

I think it is a better idea to not wage all out cyber warfare. The internet seems to be the only avenue for Russians to be able to read, hear, and see the truth. Take out their internet, and they will have even less opportunity to see what is going on inside Ukraine.

[Vertigo 7]

I would not be surprised if Russians soon find their access to any sort of internet severely curtailed/eliminated. Even websites such as this, or Steam, are places where Russians can go to learn the truth, which is a dangerous thing for Vladimir Putin.

I don't see why we don't cut their hardlines and block or shoot down their satellites, shut them out of the web all together. It'd cut them off from access to crypto markets and keep the hackers in Russia at bay.

I think it is a better idea to not wage all out cyber warfare. The internet seems to be the only avenue for Russians to be able to read, hear, and see the truth. Take out their internet, and they will have even less opportunity to see what is going on inside Ukraine.

Putin's going full on China with their internet so that likely wouldn't change anything.

[Observe]

Isolating people and cutting off their ability to communicate, is even less effective than sanctions at changing your opponents mind.

[Vertigo 7]

But if Putin is already doing that to his people, then the only ones hurt by cutting off their web access is the Russian government - oh darn.

[Warenwolf]

Yes... the empty page... it's very convincing.

Hmm... strange.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/28/euro ... index.html

[mr.WHO]

Hmm... strange.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/28/euro ... index.html

According to Polish border guard, we are letting every one in, but there is a triage:
- EU citizens
- Ukrainian women and children
- Foreigners who live in Ukraine (e.g. studens)
- everyone else

The last category is because there is a legit possibility that Belarus is now pushing their "refugees tourist" into Ukraine to try to destabilize things further.
Many "refugees" who tried to pass the Polish-Belarus border were actually Russian citizens (agents? imagine the sh*tshow they would make if we would let them en masses in last several months - that was really a preparation for the invasion).

There are also first report, of what looks like Putin agents, trying to destabilize things in Poland.
What looks like a group of two-three dozen chooligans tried to nab refugees in Przemysl, but seems like police was informed and contained them rather fast.

There will be more and more provocations, but latest poll say that 99% of Poles want to help in one form or another, ~1% want to remain passive (do nothing) and below 0.1% say Russia is a good guy.

Good luck working with that, but Russian covert ops are really creative in evil ways.

[Warenwolf]

Hmm... strange.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/28/euro ... index.html

According to Polish border guard, we are letting every one in, but there is a triage:
- EU citizens
- Ukrainian women and children
- Foreigners who live in Ukraine (e.g. studens)
- everyone else

Yeah, I would have been buying that one if at same time people were not crossing the border without papers.*

Now, the issue here, which the article points out, is what happens before the border. The optics of this can be easily exploited by Putin.


*Somewhat off topic

Spoiler

Show

I had girlfriend twenty years back in time that was adopted as kid from Kenya and know perfectly well....the peculiarities of eastern europe (not gonna single out countries, just that that the most tolerant people were the ones you least expect - older people). I was always treated nicely despite being bum back then - she not so much.
But that is neither here or there.

[Chips]

Racism has been well reported in Ukraine way prior to the latest issues, and racism exists all over the place -- its easy to highlight Eastern Europe as it hits the news, but it's everywhere; including people "in power" (Police... especially USA, we're looking at you).

Just search for country + football + racism and you'll find tons of reports. Whether it's monkey chants and banana throwing at football matches in Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Hungary etc. It is neither surprising nor shocking to find elements of armed forces or police in Ukraine would be exhibiting racist behaviour (preferential treatment of Ukraine nationals). It's not acceptable, but it is predictable given history and well documented instances over the many years.

Cutting Russia off from the internet is not a great idea; it's the only source of news which (unless blocked) isn't going to be mandated by the Govt. Additionally, it may fit the narrative and play to the Govt claims (in the microcosm of reporting by Russian accepted media only) that the west is attacking and trying to destroy Russia. It may not necessarily fool the youth, but it'd sure as well hoodwink the middle aged and above who've lived with a lifetime of this and are not necessarily weighing it up with internet based experience/viewpoints over the last 15 years).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60571737

Russian morning news bulletins barely acknowledge its army's offensives in other parts of Ukraine. State TV correspondents are not reporting on the ground from places like Kyiv and Kharkiv, the two major cities that have seen shelling of people's homes. Instead, they are embedded with troops in Donbas.

But by the afternoon edition of the news, NTV finally mentions the news event that has dominated hours of coverage on the BBC by this stage - the shelling of the city of Kharkiv.

However, it debunks any reports that Russian forces are responsible, calling them "fake".

"Judging by the trajectory of the missile, the strike was delivered from the north-west where there are no Russian forces," the presenter says during the 16:00 Moscow time edition of the news. Four hours later, a bulletin by Rossiya 1 goes further, blaming Ukraine itself for the bombing.

"To strike Kharkiv and say that it was Russia. Ukraine is hitting its own and is lying to the West. But is it possible to deceive the people?" it asks.

During a 17:00 bulletin, the Rossiya 1 presenter outlines what she says is Russia's "main objective" in Ukraine: "The defence of Russia against the threat from the West, which is using the Ukrainian people in its stand-off with Moscow."

As said many many pages ago, attempting to control the media and narrative to build the view of "us vs them" creates the legitimacy of their hardship as a defensive outcome against an aggressive west. The media in Russia is portraying all this backwards basically...

The internet is possibly the only way to combat that, coupled with the fact cutting it off may create yet more legitimacy of the above narrative and alienate the youth who we wish to read/spread the actual ongoing scenarios. I mean during the Iraq war if the UK or USA had been disconnected from the internet, would you blame our countries actions or the ones imposing it if the only source of information left to you was non independent news channels claiming it was an attack on the country. I'd wager in the US it'd cause a certain segment to demand full scale war..
Instead of a generation of youth hopefully learning how bad their politicians are, we'd have a horde of *insert angry kid meme* aggressive teens feeling targeted by other nations. You don't want to try and alienate the only ones who may be sympathetic to the current issues.

[Alan Phipps]

@ Chips: To use a missile's end trajectory as an indicator of a land area where it was launched from shows perhaps intentional technical ignorance. Cruise missiles can be programmed to go via several way points and come in from any direction and can also be launched from a mobile air platform. Further, why would the Ukraine forces somehow misuse what the Russians assume as an unguided/ballistic missile when they are using pinpoint multiple drone launches against huge and relatively static targets like the Russian supply convoys? Of course, until weapon debris at the residential impact site can be positively identified, there will always be the opportunity to sow doubt.

The Russian news claim does not really hold much water at the moment.

[Chips]

We know the Russian news claim holds zero water The point being Russian media is the only way some Russian's are being informed about what's going on, and also the narrative they're being fed is entirely along this line; in other words, it's lies (check out the link) and complete omissions (no mention of armoured column approaching Kyiv). The hope sanctions cause the populace to rise up against Putin is fighting against the narrative the Russian govt is feeding it's population, that this is Western aggression, and it's a defensive war - therefore the hardships they're facing/going to face are legitimate, and therefore will endure without much of civil action against it.

There were agent based models of civil unrest -- which is a significant abstraction admittedly, but it did show that taking some basic assumptions and simplistic behaviours (for the model), the outcome would demonstrate it's possible to keep a population in check through the perception of legitimacy of hardships, and harsh policing (as in arrests before their opinion could influence others) against those who don't. Of course, those models are far too simplistic to be reliable or highly applicable -- but it is indeed matching what we're seeing so far... which would mean if they manage to continue successfully controlling the media narrative to maintain that perception of "it's all the west's fault, we're defensive" coupled with swift harsh action, they may endure and we're just going to have to hope the sanctions bite so heavily it forces Putin out of Ukraine lest Russia as a country collapses.

Lets hope internet reports start to cause ever greater portions of the Russian population to learn what they're actually dealing with.

[mr.WHO]

Some very interesting info from analysts:
- most of media footage is from Kiyv front and Russian really struggle there to advance.
- In the south there is more of a maneauver warfare and Russian have more success and discipline (trying to avoid cities and bypass them).
- Other than Kharkiv, there is very little info about combat in East (very strict info/media discipline on BOTH sides).

Ther are rumors are are actually quite significant open field tank battles in the East, but no footage due to military discipline and relatively scarce civilian coverage.

[greypanther]

[I don't see why we don't cut their hardlines and block or shoot down their satellites, shut them out of the web all together. It'd cut them off from access to crypto markets and keep the hackers in Russia at bay.

So basically declare war on Russia? World War Three? yes I can see that ending well, when Russia is led by a apparently suicidal, possibly psychotic man.
Forgive me, but living in a small country, with many targets for his ICBMs, also having our eldest just get his new son, I would rather give the few week old newborn, a reasonable chance at life.
I was seeing this on the BBC this morning, Victoria Derbyshire, as well as general mood music coming out of the Western media, almost like an armed confrontation between NATO and Russia is inevitable, wanted indeed, by some. Why?

Without a doubt, Putin needs to be opposed, but not sure how this can be done, without risking the end of Europe. ( Humanity totally perhaps. ) I also think he should be in the court at the Hague, after all this, because there is just no excuse for his actions, not even Iraq, even though the Russians seem to be using that as an excuse. Just for context, I have always though that Bush and Blair should be there too, just to find out how much they had to do with the lies, that were used as justification for the death of half a million plus in Iraq. It was all very suspect.

One thing came out of seeing Derbyshire interviewing a Russian in Moscow: As parallels could be drawn between the break up of Yugoslavia and what happened in Ukraine in 2014, why were no UN peacekeepers sent in to Ukraine to keep the warring parties apart? As happened in the Balkans? The Russian this morning claimed that Putin asked for just that, but was ignored.

[Vertigo 7]

Just cuz Putin has nukes, that doesn't mean he'll be effective at their deployment. There's a reason why there are SAM batteries lining the border to Russia and elsewhere and he knows this. Those missiles he keeps whining about that are pointed at Russia? That's what he's talking about only they're not really pointed at Russia insomuch as they're poised to knock his ICBMs out of the sky.

ICBMs sound super scary but they have one big flaw in that they're big and slow, which makes them super easy to target and destroy. And, really, there's another flaw in that they're super expensive to produce and difficult to replace. If he had a guarantee that he could succeed with a salvo, the nutter would have taken the shot all ready.

As it stands, the retaliation would be massive and overwhelming and would instead end up with Russia being wiped off the map. Their AA defenses are far less effective than NATOs and we can guarantee strikes. I know MAD was a thing back in the 60-70's (I think) but our defensive technology has come a long way since then. The "mutual" doesn't really apply any longer.

[mr.WHO]

Putin will not launch nukes, because world might figure out they are in a as bad performace as hit tanks.
NATO will not launch first either.

The only scenario left, if Russia would nuke a target in Ukraine, but this would be total nuts as well. Would make Russia a pariah for next 50 years.
It would also start a next arm race as most of the countries would say "f*ck it" and invest into developing nukes and missile defence, which would make isolated Russia even weaker (they would have no money to keep up).

This is only saber rattle and possibly a first sign of desperation (but not that kind of desperation that would trigger the nuclear war).
I'm saying sitting in the city that was priority 1 nuclear target of NATO during Warsaw Pact and I have no doubt, there is a Russian nuke with my city name on it as well.