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Megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - March 28-29
This thread is posted Monday/Wednesday/Friday - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.
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End of the line in Finland for last direct EU-Russia train link
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Euronews – 28th March 2022
Russia no longer demanding Ukraine be ‘denazified’ in ceasefire talks
A question for closer observers than I, would it not be a good idea for Ukraine to give Russia this one? There's already a significant Russian-speaking minority of Ukrainians in the country, such as in cities like Kharkiv, presumably many of them are not separatists. It's in line with what many other European countries do as well (admittedly I'm not very clear on how many Eastern European countries do this). It could be a sop to Russia that mollifies their demands for other things like demilitarisation, without actually hurting Ukraine much or at all. Or would it hurt them?
IANAL and not Ukranian... but as per usual with Russia's stated goals/demands, I suspect that one was also based on complete bullshit, and used as yet another flimsy justification for the war. Russian is already specifically mentioned in the Constitution of Ukraine, and AFAIK it already has full legal protection:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110521190059/http://www.rada.gov.ua/const/conengl.htm
And from Article 53:
Thanks for going straight to the source like I didn't! That is significant protection, and I think to go further than that (giving Russian equal status to Ukrainian, for example) would be somewhat of a cultural capitulation to Putin. Better than giving up land or people, though.
So they could sort of just say "Yes" to this demand if it eases negotiations, because they've already done it?
It seems like it depends how it's worded. The Ukrainian government going officially bilingual (like in Canada) would be a change.
I guess so? But I don't know if that would actually do much, since I suspect the reason Russia isn't even mentioning anything about Russian language protection in the formal negotiations is because they already know it's a completely made up issue, so not actually worth bringing up. IMO the "demand" to "protect" the Russian language in Ukraine was likely only really meant for internal consumption, so the Russian people could be lead to believe it was somehow under threat in Ukraine, in order to foment hatred for the Ukrainian people and further cement support for the "special military operation" against them.
Edit: @Skybrian has a good point though. The Ukranians could add it as an official language, like French is here in Canada. That might actually buy them some goodwill in the negotiations, since it would allow Putin to save a bit of face by claiming it as a victory.
Consider this my small share of a dollar:
Putin is trying to eliminate Ukraine: as a culture, as a nation, as a people, and as a country. Ukraine granting the language of the murderers is akin to capulating that much of their own self-identity. From what I understand, they self-identity did not preclude speaking Russian (Zelenskiy grew up speaking Russian, for example), but it sure seems like it might now.
Beyond all else, Russia does not give a fuck about the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine. The Russian-speaking East of the country has been bombed much too keenly for me to be wrong on this one. Putin can't begin to care about how much Russian is spoken in a neighboring country. I don't think he understands soft power in the same way the US does. (Think "RT spreading bullshit a lá Fox News" vs. "Hollywood blockbuster where an American military person is a hero".)
The demand for the "protection" of the Russian language in Ukraine is just another string in the leash Russia wants to hold Ukraine on. It is, without exaggeration, what a master wants to do to his pet. Putin thinks of Ukraine, as well as other countries that have been forcibly annexed into the USSR, as the ones that got away. He doesn't think of Ukraine as a "brotherly state" but an unfortunate geopolitical situation to be squashed. (He thought the same all the way back in 2000. Nobody picked up on that, I guess.)
Acceeding to this demand would just mean bending the knee further. There's no mollification. The only language Putin would understand, as evident by current events, is his military being utterly fucked.
Can someone explain to me why Ukraine continues to engage in these talks? Russia is the clear aggressor and has repeatedly demonstrated utter contempt for human lives and the laws of war. The idea that they want to discuss terms for ending the conflict should be universally mocked! You don't negotiate with terrorists. This is like the school bully punching a kid until he hands over his lunch money, then acting like this outcome was an agreement both parties arrived at amicably.
I'm not a geopolitics expert, I must be missing something here. Russia's ceasefire talks are a blatant bad-faith farce of diplomacy. So why does Ukraine continue to play along? Why does everyone act like this is normal?
A: Russia may be 99% bullshitting, but if that 1% is real and the talks can work, it seems worth the negotiators' time to have the talks, right? If it stops the war one day sooner, isn't it worth it even in the face of really unlikely odds? The cost of every day of the war is incredible as compared to the cost of even hundreds of people having meetings.
B: Even if it doesn't stop the war any sooner, having the channels set up already for the peace conference is its own value. The same people trying to hammer out an end to the war are likely also going to try to hammer out the peace afterward. Having the channels and negotiation teams already in place and familiar with each other is its own value.
Just in response to your first sentence, I think maybe I wasn’t being clear enough… My argument was not that Russia’s being duplicitous in the talks. They could be 100% earnest for all I care. My issue is that they dare even come to the table in the first place, acting as if this is even a real negotiation and not just a bully making demands. If the conflict weren’t so asymmetrical there might be room for negotiating a truce, but this is just — like I said earlier — negotiating with terrorists. Ukraine should not give these thugs the time of day. Russia needs to know that’s not how civilized people make decisions on the world stage.
What does the ideal end of the war look like for you?
Good question. I guess with Russia having a change of heart, immediately ceasing hostilities and returning home with their tail between their legs, issuing a formal apology to the sovereign nation of Ukraine, and paying out enormous restitution to atone for their sins.
In practice, I would hope that “change of heart” would come from within, whether it’s a military coup, an assassination, a groundswell of protests that can’t be quashed, something to that effect. Barring that, a humiliating military defeat or Russia surrendering under the devastating effects of the world’s sanctions and ostracism.
Either way, I think it would be shameful for Ukraine to have to make compromises to Russia as part of the resolution. Let history clearly show that a country absolutely cannot pull a stunt like what Russia has done and expect to win ANYTHING from it. No concessions. If some future dictator tries to emulate Putin, pulls some shit like this again, they are going to know full well going in that their result will be unequivocal loss in every possible way.
It's easy to suggest "NO CONCESSIONS!" from afar, but when it's your people doing the fighting and dying I imagine that's a bit harder to 100% support. And the Ukrainian people are currently dying en masse, with their cities and towns being leveled. Yes, that's entirely Russia's fault, but based on how the war is currently going, Ukraine is actually negotiating from a position of relative strength right now.
However, that advantage could easily evaporate if Russia manages to regroup, rally, and get a foothold in Kyiv, or some of their allies (Belarus, China, Syria) begin offering materiel support and manpower. So reaching a deal right now might be the best possible outcome in this war for Ukraine, since it could even potentially result in them getting their pre-2014 borders restored if they agree to a few things (like only joining the EU but not NATO, 100-year leasing Crimean ports to Russia, and/or making Russian an official language) so that Putin can still save some face by spinning that outcome to this disaster as a "victory" back home.
IMO that's unlikely to be the outcome, at least not any time soon, since even if the Russian negotiators are acting in good faith I think it's safe to say that Putin likely isn't. And Putin also probably isn't interested in peace just yet either, unless the political situation for him at home is more dire than we're being led to believe. However, on the slim change that Putin is willing to accept such a deal right now, which could potentially save thousands of lives that would otherwise be lost by fighting on... it's worth giving it a shot, is it not?
I have to say, that's a lot easier to say on on a forum on the internet, then if you were a Ukrainian waking up every morning to air raids, no idea whether your friends or family are alive or dead. The civilian death toll for Ukraine passes 1k, and civilian casualties pass 3k.
When Russia started indiscriminately bombing Chechnya in the Second Chechen War, civilian deaths totals topped 20k.
I would let Ukrainian leadership steer their country towards whatever peace they find acceptable, and not try to burden them with unreasonable expectations to "let history clearly show that a country absolutely cannot pull a stunt like what Russia has done and expect to win ANYTHING from it".
In fairness I was asked what my ideal outcome would be. I know full well reality is not likely to mirror that.
Beyond the likelihood of said situation, there's a lot of implication here that if Ukraine were to broker a peace wherein they conceded territory, that they were doing something shameful ("I think it would be shameful for Ukraine to have to make compromises to Russia") , or otherwise wrong, which I just find incredibly distasteful. They're in an existential David vs Goliath combat, and by objective measure doing well for themselves, but certainly does not indicates that they are in such a position where they can, or should think about trying to "punish" Russia.
The US does not negotiate with terrorist because terrorist are fundamentally incapable of being an existential threat to the unipolar hegemon of the 21st century. It's very different when the terrorists are a country multiple times your size, with an army (however evidently incompetent) several times your army's size, an economy several times your own (however hampered in the future by sanctions), taken considerable amounts of your territory, and are actively bombing civilians in all but one of your major cities.
Ongoing "peace" negotiations with strong evidence that Russia is willing to seriously consider real peace terms.
This can be interpreted one of two ways:
I have no opinion at this point.
Are you doing alright?
Thanks for asking. I'm okay. I took a highly needed 4-day holiday and just got back. I'm still as active in the war effort but I haven't been able to find time/energy to post about it lately, and I'm glad @ThatFanficGuy, @cfabbro and @skybrian are all helping surface the most interesting items.
The news and photos about the genocidal massacres have been … tough to deal with. I'm trying to focus on immigration efforts instead. There's a new Ukrainian school for refugees that is opening in Brussels and I'm going to be volunteering there. And I'm opening a physical business here so I can have an easier time giving work to local hands.
I will try to post in the next megathread.
I'm definitely not the first person on that list. @cfabbro and @skybrian did more posting on a more diverse number of subjects. I just talk out of my ass.
But having a different perspective means you have a story to tell, unlike us onlookers. I just post links. :-)
Source(s)?
They're starting to come out now. This is still ongoing.
Does this favor Russia more than Ukraine? In this scenario I’d expect Ukraine to re-establish its borders, NATO to stock them with hardware, and strategists to more carefully prepare for an invasion from an adversary with better known shortcomings.
I agree with you, I don't know who's more favored in that scenario.
Also gives us time to set them up with bigger hardware items in sufficient numbers and train crews. Think MBTs, fighter jets, Patriot missiles, anti-ship missiles. All the kind of stuff we're brushing aside these days as "that'd just take too long" suddenly becomes very feasible.
I mean, "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, you'll never fool me again" applies here I suppose, but I don't think once Ukraine is in a reasonably stable peace that the Russians will try again any time soon. One of Ukraine's demands seems to be that all their territory, presumably including Donetsk, Luhanks and Crimea, must be given back. If they get that, that'll put Ukraine in an incredibly advantageous position for any future war, as they can make sure they won't lose Crimea again. This way, they're beefing up their defensive position substantially.
I haven't seen anything about the Russians giving up ground willingly. There are reports that they're digging in.
Both sides can take advantage of time to rest and prepare. Or Ukraine could keep the counterattacks going.
On the other hand, this is vague, but it sounds like they might be giving up ground? I guess I'll wait to see what the next military status reports say.
US intel assess 'major' strategy shift by Russia as it moves some forces away from Kyiv
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Here's a Twitter thread where Bret Devereaux (a military historian and author of acoup.blog) speculates about what Russia will look like militarily after the war
Unrolled for easier reading:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1508644442323968006.html
Roman Abramovich and Ukrainian Peace Negotiators Suffer Symptoms of Suspected Poisoning
https://www.wsj.com/articles/roman-abramovich-and-ukrainian-peace-negotiators-suffer-symptoms-of-suspected-poisoning-11648480493
Proceed with caution. My German news source just said that Ukrainians are calling BS on this one. Maybe someone can find a source, but I gotta get going.
Good catch. I just found this:
Intelligence suggests 'environmental' factor sickened Abramovich, Ukrainian negotiators -U.S. official
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-abramovich-intelligenc-idCAKCN2LP1Y0
The Ukraine War - and Its Impact on the Tech Industry (The Pragmatic Engineer)
This is an older article (from March 1) but it has a few tidbits about how the tech industry responded to the war:
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Sarah Taber argues that worries about a global wheat shortage are exaggerated
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Well, all the people stockpiling over that hypothetical shortage sure has caused an actual shortage in my grocery store. Same for sunflower oil, and by association (or replacement) canola oil. I'm running low on both.
Heat still works though, I think that's gas-powered.
On the front-line north of Kyiv, Ukrainian forces claim to retake territory (Washington Post)
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Ukraine gives medal to soldier who told Russian officer to ‘go fuck yourself’
From @FortniteGame on Twitter: