7 votes

Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - December 29

This thread is posted weekly on Thursday - 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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10 comments

  1. [2]
    skybrian
    Link
    Anger in Russia as scores of troops killed in one of Ukraine war's deadliest strikes [...] [...] [...]

    Anger in Russia as scores of troops killed in one of Ukraine war's deadliest strikes

    Russia's defence ministry said 63 soldiers had died in the fiery blast which destroyed a temporary barracks in a former vocational college in Makiivka, twin city of the Russian-occupied regional capital of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

    [...]

    Unverified footage posted online of the aftermath of the strike on the Russian barracks in Makiivka showed a huge building reduced to smoking rubble.

    Igor Girkin, a former commander of pro-Russian troops in eastern Ukraine who is now one of the highest profile Russian nationalist military bloggers, said hundreds and been killed or wounded in the blast. Ammunition had been stored at the site and military equipment there was uncamouflaged, he said.

    Another nationalist blogger, Rybar, said around 70 soldiers were confirmed dead and more than 100 wounded.

    "What happened in Makiivka is horrible," wrote Archangel Spetznaz Z, another Russian military blogger with more than 700,000 followers on Telegram.

    "Who came up with the idea to place personnel in large numbers in one building, where even a fool understands that even if they hit with artillery, there will be many wounded or dead?" he wrote. Commanders "couldn't care less" about ammunition stored in disarray on the battlefield, he said.

    [...]

    Sergei Mironov, a legislator and former chairman of the Senate, Russia's upper house, demanded criminal liability for the officials who had "allowed the concentration of military personnel in an unprotected building" and "all the higher authorities who did not provide the proper level of security".

    [...]

    After firing dozens of missiles on Dec. 31, Russia launched dozens of Iranian-made Shahed drones on Jan. 1 and Jan. 2. But Kyiv said on Monday it had shot down all 39 drones in the latest wave, including 22 downed over the capital.

    2 votes
    1. unknown user
      Link Parent
      Just so y'all know: this means nothing. Mironov is only an opposition politician on paper, much like most people in the leading structures of the government. He wants to sound like things are...

      Sergei Mironov <...> demanded criminal liability for the officials who had "allowed the concentration of military personnel in an unprotected building" and "all the higher authorities who did not provide the proper level of security".

      Just so y'all know: this means nothing. Mironov is only an opposition politician on paper, much like most people in the leading structures of the government. He wants to sound like things are under control, like this would cause an uproar in the government.

      It won't, because it was the government that put the mobiks there. Nobody up or down the chain of command gives a damn if a couple hundred untrained meatsacks die: it was, after all, their purpose from the start.

      Mironov's goal is to placate the people by making it seem like there will be an investigation. Much like after the murder of Boris Nemtsov, there won't be one.

      6 votes
  2. [8]
    NoblePath
    Link
    Anybody watching the latest season of Jack Ryan? Entertaining but not mind blowing. I bring it up her because the plot involves Russia, amd the bad guys are an internal rogue group trying to start...

    Anybody watching the latest season of Jack Ryan? Entertaining but not mind blowing. I bring it up her because the plot involves Russia, amd the bad guys are an internal rogue group trying to start world war iii (i think this plot was also a call of duty entry?). The president of russia, who does not resemble putin, is played as a straight edge executive.

    I bring it up because it is coincident with a mildly paranoid musing i had recently. What if Putin is actually trying his best to do the right thing in containing a nationalistic internal uprising? Maybe he really, reasonably, thought Ukraine would be relatively painless for both sides, and that it would pacify the internal group.

    Don’t get me wrong, the public evidence strongly points a different direction. But what if? I’m certain at this point the messaging from all sides is heavily biased at this point. And, clearly, real death and suffering of many innocents from both Ukraine and Russia is happening for real. But there is certainly more going on than obviously meets the eye.

    Side note, by most accounts, Ukraine is a stunning example of healthy national unity. I wonder what we in the US can learn from that?

    1 vote
    1. [2]
      cfabbro
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      "What if Hitler was actually a really good dude, and secretly trying to prevent WW2 and the holocaust!?" Come on, man. Posing hypotheticals about horrible people and the events they caused may be...

      "What if Hitler was actually a really good dude, and secretly trying to prevent WW2 and the holocaust!?"

      Come on, man. Posing hypotheticals about horrible people and the events they caused may be fun for some, but it can also be incredibly offensive, disheartening, or even downright infuriating for others (especially those directly effected by said person and events). So, can we please not go down that road here on Tildes? We want to be welcoming here, not drive people away with insensitive and baseless speculation like that.

      6 votes
      1. NoblePath
        Link Parent
        I’m not sure how to respond to this. I would hope it would be safe to explore counterfactuals with an eye to discerning actual truth. This feels much the same orthodox resistance to the notion...

        I’m not sure how to respond to this. I would hope it would be safe to explore counterfactuals with an eye to discerning actual truth. This feels much the same orthodox resistance to the notion that covid might have been a lab leak. There are important differences with hitler.

        In my mind at least, this kind of thought experiment is along the lines if pondering whether we might be in a simulation. Or whether Clinton might not be as awesome a president as we first thought.

        There is no condoning the actions that have occurred in Ukraine. But I for one will not be hasty to presume all the currents that led us here are known.

        3 votes
    2. [3]
      unknown user
      Link Parent
      Nope. The man has publicly spoken of his tsar-like ambitions. This is hardly his first outing as an emperor wannabe: all the way back in 2005, he publicly lamented the Soviet Union's collapse as...

      What if Putin is actually trying his best to do the right thing in containing a nationalistic internal uprising?

      Nope.

      I’m certain at this point the messaging from all sides is heavily biased at this point.

      The man has publicly spoken of his tsar-like ambitions. This is hardly his first outing as an emperor wannabe: all the way back in 2005, he publicly lamented the Soviet Union's collapse as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century".

      He's been like that all the way, we just couldn't tell so clearly.

      5 votes
      1. [2]
        NoblePath
        Link Parent
        I’m forced to conclude my speculation is baseless. But this leads me to the question, why would the jack ryan show portray the president in so obviously wrong a way?

        I’m forced to conclude my speculation is baseless. But this leads me to the question, why would the jack ryan show portray the president in so obviously wrong a way?

        1. unknown user
          Link Parent
          I think the default policy by the US has always been not to actively antagonize the USSR/Russia, out of fear of retaliation (even if the Russian army is shit, you wouldn't want to give a life of...
          • Exemplary

          I think the default policy by the US has always been not to actively antagonize the USSR/Russia, out of fear of retaliation (even if the Russian army is shit, you wouldn't want to give a life of your own soldiers in exchange if that's at all avoidable). The idea has probably trickled down to military writers like Tom Clancy, who'd want to write a "realistic" story.

          Something tells me there's also the trope of a villian necessarily having some "right" motivations, for fear of said villian being unrelatable for most of the audience. (You'd want them to relate on some level, as otherwise they might be seen as boring and unappealing.)

          I wouldn't think about this too much if I were you. Russia is an appealing antagonist in the US media – has been for decades. How its leaders are portrayed is often up to the writer, though no doubt shaped by the political atmosphere they find themselves in. A nationalist uprising in Russia is a solid real-life hook that might've worked were it not for the war in Ukraine and Putin's own ambitions getting a better of him.

          5 votes
    3. [2]
      psi
      Link Parent
      Even if he assume this were his motivation (which it almost certainly is not, as /u/ThatFanficGuy explained), the evidence suggests he's doing a truly terrible job containing jingoist rhetoric....

      What if Putin is actually trying his best to do the right thing in containing a nationalistic internal uprising?

      Even if he assume this were his motivation (which it almost certainly is not, as /u/ThatFanficGuy explained), the evidence suggests he's doing a truly terrible job containing jingoist rhetoric. For example, why do only critics suffer from Sudden Russian Death Syndrome but not war hawks, who would ostensibly be the problem in this hypothetical?

      3 votes
      1. unknown user
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        To be fair, "war correspondents" (pro-Russian Z-channels) got some flak from the Kremlin after they'd been lamenting the loss of Kherson too loudly. Some of them were put on lists (oooh, spooky)...

        To be fair, "war correspondents" (pro-Russian Z-channels) got some flak from the Kremlin after they'd been lamenting the loss of Kherson too loudly. Some of them were put on lists (oooh, spooky) or outright investigated by the police state.

        One of the particularly-loud critics, Igor Girkin (goes by nom de guerre "Igor Strelkov") – one of the four men accused (and one of the three indicted) of shooting down MH17 over Donbass – was even apparently sent to Ukraine as a soldier, though after seen him in military uniform somewhere around Rostov oblast – a region bordering Ukraine, used to "train" mobiks and such – I haven't heard a pip about him.

        Former rich friends of Putin are the ones to keep dying, though, not the war hawks and nationalists/neo-Nazis.

        EDIT: I accidentally a letter.

        3 votes