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Megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - May 13-15
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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Day 80 of the war.
I felt bad waking up this morning after saying I don't write here anymore, so I wanted to say something. But not a link dump; there's more than enough of those going around. Instead, I wanted to write a bit of a general update about how things have been going, from my perspective.
I actually get a lot less news directly from the two sisters than before. They have fully turned the page and are trying to disconnect as much as possible from the war, and on that I say good for them. I have been trying to continue following the situation from a variety of Ukrainian sources, a couple of Russian sources, and in general thanks to contacts through volunteering groups here in Belgium.
I'm also really trying to keep in mind that... what I see is still going to be warped. There is a very active fog of war right now, and it's under all circumstances going to make things look more favourable to Ukrainians.
But what I see is that the past few days, things have kind of been turning. Ukrainians seem to be much more actively on the offensive than before. And as Russia has "given up" (for now) on most of Ukraine, something I thought would actually be bad for Ukraine in the medium term, well it turns out that between supplies and morale running low on RU side and more of the EU help starting to pay off on the UA side, things are looking better and better. Russians are now defending their current positions, and what desperate positions they are. In hindsight, this was obvious, but I guess it was not a bad idea to be wary of ulterior motives in Russia's backpedaling.
I'm not a war analyst. Don't listen to me. I'm probably overly optimistic. But from what I'm seeing, as time passes, things are becoming better for Ukraine. Russia's aggression, which greatly amped up for a while, seems to have diminished. May 9 went by uneventfully.
So with extreme caution, and a few tears in my eyes, I write for the first time:
I think Ukraine is winning.
Siemens - Statement on the war in Ukraine and on the situation in Russia
Siemens is the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe, so this is kind of a big deal.
Finally got to watch this video from Anton Ptushkin, a popular Ukrainian travel blogger. The video is called (in the English translation) "Thoughts on the war in Ukraine by a guy from Donbas", but it is essentially an appeal to the (mostly Russian-speaking, like Anton himself) subscriber base: "Look at how your country is lying to you".
You can watch it with English captions if you don't speak Russian.
At the end, Anton says (in text) this might be the last video of his on this channel. However, he's also maintained an English-language channel for a while. That's where he posts videos now, his latest one being about meeting Patron, the bomb-sniffing dog.
The latest five videos on that channel are him documenting what's happening in Ukraine through his own eyes. Like someone said, "all journalists have to become war journalists by necessity". Anton says he's put a halt on travel videos until the war is over; documenting life in Kyiv (where he resides) and in Ukraine in general is his full-time occupation now.
Instead of asking viewers to donate to him, his video descriptions now link to charities in support of Ukraine.
EDIT:
Thinking about it after posting this comment reminded me of my sister.
I'd stay in her apartment for a night before catching flight to Belarus the next morning. At one point we got to talk about the war.
She told me she thought Putin did the right thing: she was afraid Ukraine (guided by the US) would attack Russia first were it not for a preemptive Russian strike. She abhorred the war, but she clearly believed the bullshit broadcasts. I wasn't trying to dissuade her: one, it would make no difference, and two, I wasn't about to risk the hospitality she and her husband were providing me.
Among other things she told me was that she stopped following Anton Ptushkin after his latest video (first link in this comment). The way she described its content, though, now strikes me as a typical Russian mental defense. Her description boiled down to, basically, "Russia bad and Russians are assholes". If you watch the video, you can see how far that is from Anton's calm and thoughtful delivery.
This mis-take (if you pardon the pun) is what makes me confident it's not just my sister's personal and informed opinion: it's the result of skewed, deeply-biased broadcasts of the state propaganda machine. It's clear she hasn't done her research or thought critically about the internal Russian history of this war. (Anton brings up a few poignant points worth the merit of consideration if you're Russian.)
This scares me a bit 'cause she's usually that much more liberal, or at least freedom-loving, than the rest of the conservative family who eat state TV bullshit for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But then, I guess having to worry about a small child does that to a mother.
I love her dearly all the same. She's been there for me when no one in my family wanted to. I wish her the best all the same.
But also... Jesus, wake the fuck up, woman.
I remember you sharing Anton's Russian language (with Eng subtitles) travel videos ages ago on Discord, and they were wonderful. And I have since watched many of the more recent ones he has released too. I had no idea he was from Luhansk though, or that he had taken a stand in the war. And I also didn't realize he had an English language channel now where he covers the war! So thanks for the heads up on that. Subscribed.
p.s. Sorry to hear that about your sister. I don't have any advice about that, but I know how tough it can be when your own family has drank the Kool-Aid, so to speak. E.g. Certain Conservative Catholic members of my own family/extended family can't stop talking about our PM, Justin Trudeau, and acting as if he is Satan incarnate. I personally don't like the guy either, since I lean even further left than him and hate that he broke his FPTP election promise, but he's nowhere close to as bad as some of my family accuse him of being. :(
He's been banned from entering Russia for 50 years, so apparently his stand impressed a few people across the border.
Maybe she'll see it for what it is, eventually. Many Russians (at least according to Greg Yudin) find themselves having to root for Putin as a psychological defense mechanism. Baseless beliefs hold because of the emotional investment into the solace they provide, so no amount of arguments and retrospective would help here.
That twitter thread gives me hope and yet depresses me in equal measures. :(
Welcome to Russia. /s
Although I do wish to say that someday without the acerbic hint. Russia has good people, good places, and a hint of something that a lot of tourists find attractive.
Ukraine announces first war crimes trial of Russian soldier in custody (Washington Post)
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How it started:
"Kiev will fall in three days. Now it's a matter of hurting Russia enough to sting for a while as Ukraine falls."
How it's going:
"Kyiv is pushing the aggressor the fuck out of its country, inch by inch, and mounting war crime cases while the war is still going on."
fucking hell ukrainians are fucking heroes
Well, they're pushing them out around Kharkov, anyway. Elsewhere it's more like holding the line and falling back a bit sometimes.
For a nation that's been doomed to fall in days? I'd say they're doing pretty fucking well.
As far "falling back": the reason they do, from what I've read, is that this is one of the responses to the artillery fire Russia's been dishing out. You either counter-artillery using radars, or you leave.
Ukrainians didn't have a lot of mortar radars to hone in on the Russian artillery spots before. The US has recently supplied Ukraine with quite a few, in addition to the very-long-range artillery. This should mean the UAF are going to gain further ground against Russia in the coming weeks.
Here's Twitter thread (unrolled)
by a retired Australian general giving context and implications of that failed river crossing over the Severskyi Donets.
Related:
Counterintel efforts by a Russian commentator to make it seem as though the river crossing was Ukrainians firing at Ukrainians. Obviously bullshit, but it's worth highlighting as one of the ways Russia (or at least pro-Russian observers) would try and skew the events.
Tweet #3 in the thread confirms my suspicions further, as a Russian. The tone this commentator takes on is intended to belittle anyone who'd dare to think the initial claim to be bullshit, by undermining one's faith in what's ostensibly widely accepted source information. This is a common tactic the Russian bullshit machine uses: painting anyone exerting effort to think critically an idiot for even daring to strand the desired line of think. It's common on all levels of Russian society, unfortunately, and it's quite easy to weaponize against audiences with no defense mechanisms against that kind of verbal abuse.
Russian energy supplier cuts off electricity to Finland amid NATO bid
Slava (aka Sviatoslav) Vakarchuk, the lead of the Ukrainian band Okean Elzi, is seen here performing what may be the first ever song in the Chornobyl / Chernobyl NPP.
Slava is also currently a member of Ukraine's Territorial Defense in Lviv.
Slava is awesome. Okean Elzi is awesome. Do give it a shot.
This is unverified, but here's a Twitter thread (unrolled) translating an interesting account on Reddit by a Finnish volunteer in Ukraine.
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Because that was a strange spot to cut the quote off.
Yeah, I wanted to leave something for people who read the whole thing :-)
Ah, lol. Didn’t realize it was intentional. Oops. :P
Well it’s rather arbitrary. I could have gone the other way. I think I quote too much sometimes and I’m trying to be more selective.
Yeah, I have a bad habit of quoting basically the entire article too. It's often tough to narrow it down though, especially when each paragraph has something "important" in it. But I also think a lot of it comes down to laziness for me too... it takes a lot more effort than I'm willing to put in to considerably narrow things down. ;)
McDonald's to leave Russia for good after 30 years
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61463876.amp
Non-AMP link.
What I'm wondering is:
It's no small feat to withdraw an entire large company out of a large country. I imagine it would take time, effort, and many, many negotiations (including hostile). In short, it's going to take resources.
At some point Russia would have to stabilize into something. Maybe not as a single huge country, but instead a set of enclaves. Maybe not even as a "Russia". But ultimately, it's going to come down to something. So I'm wondering open-endedly about this whole thing, from a limited perspective but with great interest.
Yep. We should never forget that these corporations leaving Russia aren’t doing so out of the goodness of their “hearts”. These are calculated business decisions, and they’ll all return the second their calculus tells them it will be profitable to do so.
Given that the entire kit and caboodle is being sold to a single local buyer, and them trying to make sure the staff is being kept on by the new owner, it's likely they can just repurchase the whole thing and put the arches back up if/when the time is right.
Oh fuck, I think I know who that is.
Long story short, the Russian Duma (the equivalent of the House of Representatives in the US) suggested that instead of the Western McDonald's, what Russia should be seeing are local, Russian venues such as "Uncle Vanya's" ("У дяди Вани").
("Uncle Vanya" is seen as a typical – almost stereotypical, internally – character in the Russian zeitgeist: a wholesome old man, living on the farm or the dacha, in a pastoral setting, tending to crops or raising animals. A solid representation of Russia's conservative, regressive politics of the last 20 years.)
I thought it was a joke when I first heard it. Duma senators talk a lot of nonsense that ends up in the news. But nope, apparently it is to some degree real: Yakutia.Info (a Russian regional newspaper), when reporting about McD's exodus, brings up the proposed design of the new fast food venue (seen in the hero image).
Imagine McD's famous golden arches, turned on their right side, with a golden line finishing the arches into what resembles a Latin capital B. In the Cyrillic alphabet, that same letter makes the sound of [v], which is the first consonant of the name "Vanya". Same colors, same red background, except it's underscribed with (in Russian) "Uncle Vanya".
The newspaper also reports that the locations and the menu will stay the same, which shouldn't be a problem since 90% of the suppliers are local.
The Turkish Drone that Changed the Nature of Warfare (The New Yorker)
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Ukraine praises ‘liberation’ in the Battle of Kharkiv (Al Jazeera)
Similar articles from other sources:
Ukraine has won the battle of Kharkiv, analysts say, as Kyiv warns of ‘long phase of war’ (The Guardian)
Ukraine: Russians withdraw from around Kharkiv, batter east (AP)
Ukraine says Russia has withdrawn from Kharkiv, but continues offensive in the east (CBC)
Personal note: IMO Russian defeat/retreat/withdrawal from the area has clearly been happening for several weeks now, as evidenced by the battles occurring further and further away from Kharkiv with each passing day. However, this is the first time the situation there has been acknowledged by credible Western media sources, which is why I am sharing it now.
p.s. https://liveuamap.com/ is surprisingly useful for keeping track of the war.
I'm going to go on a limb and assume that, like many war-related sites, the live map is not accessible from Russia. (Opposition newspapers aren't, as are some Western sources, like BBC. Also some non-news, anti-war sites.)
Which makes me wonder if the Russian soldiers deployed in Ukraine have access to it. Like, they'd still have to be serviced by the Russian ISPs (or at least cell Internet providers), which are bound by the Russian law. The consequences of "reporting fake information about the war" (i.e. telling the truth) are severe, and no federal-level ISP would want to contest this.
So... is this a perfectly safe source of intel that the enemy certainly has no access to?
If so, it would be a fair bit of cruel irony in which I'd relish eagerly.
I don't think anything reported to liveuamap would really be that useful to anyone on the ground, Russian or Ukranian. It's not real-time intel, since what's reported there is often hours or even days behind, and it's also sporadic and far from exact. Whereas Militaries have recon teams, drones, spy planes, satellites, and other far more effective means of gathering pertinent intel. But the site does still serve as a decent way for those of us on the sidelines to keep track of major movements along the front, which is how/why I knew this news about Kharkiv was likely coming soon.
Do remember that it's Russian forces you're talking about here. By the time they're able to disperse the intel among their troops, it's barely of any use anymore.
I dunno. I'm catching a giggle thinking about Russian forces potentially using that map because it's quicker than their own conventional intel delivery.
After Kharkiv, the next region to keep an eye on:
Ukraine update: Something big is happening, as the Battle of the Izyum Salient begins (Daily Kos)
Related article:
Ukraine presses counteroffensive on key Russian line of assault, governor says (Reuters)
I guess the Russians know already, but I kind of don’t want to know about this sort of thing in advance. We are just observers, so speculating about future attacks as Kos is doing is unnecessary for us. We will find out the results soon enough.
One thing I find interesting, though, is looking up local place names in Wikipedia, so you find out what’s there and what the geography is like. For example, after reading about the Donets, some of the other local names make more sense.
To each their own. I personally enjoy reading the day to day assessments, and even predictions like this, since I find the OSINT process fascinating.
Belarus dictator: Putin’s Ukraine invasion is not going according to plan