Ukraine protests: Thousands march through capital
- over 100,000 by some counts
Ukrainian protesters besiege government building
Clashes amid huge Ukraine protest against U-turn on EU
Over 300,000 defy protest ban in Ukraine- "Fierce clashes erupt after protesters take to streets again, chanting "revolution" as anger against government grows."
What started as a protest against the decision not to sign an agreement with the EU seems to have escalated into a "Color Revolution" or "Arab Spring" style movement to force the government to resign. By some reports, the police are using violent tactics to suppress the street protests.
The Western half of the Ukraine has historically felt closer to Europe , and wants to move Ukrainian society in that direction. Eastern Ukraine feels culturally closer to Russia, and favors closer relations with that country. The current regime of President Viktor Yanukovich is part of that camp. The current confrontations can be seen as a clash between these two halves of Ukrainian society.
EDIT (2/24/2022)
This thread was originally opened in 2013 during the beginning of the revolt in Ukraine that eventually over-threw the dictatorship of the Yanukovyich regime and instituted democratic elections soon afterward. As of this writing, in the aftermath of the Russian invasion that began on 2/23, it is not clear whether or for how long Ukraine will continue to exist as an independent country.
Statements made nine years ago still seem relevant: "The Western half of the Ukraine has historically felt closer to Europe , and wants to move Ukrainian society in that direction. Eastern Ukraine feels culturally closer to Russia, and favors closer relations with that country... The current confrontations can be seen as a clash between these two halves of Ukrainian society." Some people have expressed the view that the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, beginning in 2014, never really ended.
The invasion is also a result of certain grievances proclaimed by Vladimir Putin, the current President of Russia, and used by him as justification for armed attack and occupation. Western governments, and others around the world, have joined together in condemnation of this attack.
While we do not know what the ultimate outcome of these events will be, this thread will continue to be made available as a place to record news, ask questions and express opinions about the "Crisis in Ukraine."
This map will help track the latest developments.
Do not post anything about the Ukrainian military movement and strategy. This could actually result in casualties.
No discussion regarding nuclear war. As nuclear weapons are not being used by either side, nuclear war is off-topic.
When posting social media links, please (1) state the source [e.g. Reuters reporter? State-sponsored Facebook account? Civilian Twitter?] (2) clarify if it is fact or opinion and (3) summarize the information being presented.
Edited by Tabs on Mar 20th 2022 at 4:26:26 AM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I only used Mc Donalds as an example. My opiniom stands - we need to have a method of turning this war into completely unprofitable thing for Russians.
Oh, bother.
Yeah, it's not a great look that the Polish government is the most sensible one of the lot in this situation.
Edited by M84 on May 25th 2022 at 9:33:35 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
It was unprofitable from the very start. Putin simply does not care about any long-term, or even mid-term economical consequences.
Edited by RSunny on May 25th 2022 at 6:33:48 AM
Aye, this is something that bothers me too. There is such a thing as an overly aggressive anti-Russia stance, and while Putin has essentially proven all critics right with his invasion I worry that such a stance will propagate even to times when it's not the best idea. OTOH, it's only validating Poland, not both Poland and Hungary which would be even more worrisome.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
And I should clarify that I am not opposed to the idea of this war being the point where Central and Eastern Europe begin to actually be taken seriously in the European Union. I think that's about time, and the further participation of more countries while theoretically making the Union more "unwieldy" is also going to result in a greater number of people in Europe being taken seriously, and CEE has had concerns over being treated as an albatross around the neck of the Western European countries.
But if that's the direction Europe is heading, I would rather its ambassador be Prague than Warsaw.
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
The Czechs are going to hand over Mil Mi-24 Hinds to the Ukrainian military.
I am from Poland, but I agee with you. Let’s say I have plenty of reasons to dislike my country’s government. Hard to disagree. But, Putin effectively burned a lot of bridges. It’s gonna take a long time before Russia can regain credibility and trust.
And I should hasten to add that the Polish people I know are generally good human beings - my problem is not with the people of Poland, it's with that old chestnut of repressive far right governments. note
Russia offers unblocking Ukrainian ports in exchange for lifting Western sanctions. Russian Deputy FM Andrey Rudenko said Moscow wants the removal of sanctions on Russian exports and financial transactions in exchange for a corridor for Ukraine to be able to export grains. I am guessing this is just a cynical PR move, myself, but it needs to be handled.
To emphasize the importance of adding to Ukraine's firepower: The spokesman of @ZelenskyyUa, Serhiy Nikiforov tells @ABC that Russian forces are outnumbering Ukrainian troops by 7 to 1 in parts of eastern Ukraine right now.
South Korea is providing military assistance.
Translation is provided by someone in Reddit.
Republic of Korea Armed Forces decided to provide additional military supplies to ukraine, which is under invasion of russia.
Millitary supplies will be provided such as Helmets, and bulletproof vests without lethal weapons,considering special situation of korean peninsula.
In this video conference, which NATO Members, south korea, japan, new Zealand Attended, korean government promised additional provision(of millitary supplies).
Shin beom-cheol, the assistant secretary of ministry of defence, notified the list of millitary supplies which korean government provided to ukraine.
At the same time, it said "considering our responsibility and role in world, we will consider more way to support ukraine."
Accordingly, government started preparations to send millitary supplies to ukraine as soon as possible.
Additional aid likely to be consisted of non-combat supplies such as helmet, bulletproof vests, medicines, combat rations, like provided at previous aid, Since yoon seok-yeol administration expressed that it will be difficult to provide lethal weapons.
<Moon heung-sik, vice spokesman of ministry of defense>"Like we always say, providing lethal weapons to ukraine needs careful consideration...."
A Self-inflicted Disaster
The article is dated yesterday, so I guess these are more supplies.
If I may cite Michael Kofman's most recent comments, thread here:
- The initial Russian offensive sought to press Slovyansk/Kramatorsk from Izyum, and to envelop Severodonetsk at the same time, severing the two sectors from each other. This was not an attempt at a big operational envelopment in the Donbas, but nonetheless ambitious.
- Having been blocked south of Izyum, the thrust of the offensive shifted to Severodonetsk, where Russian forces hoped to achieve an encirclement. Izyum now seems to be a fixing action, designed to prevent UKR from moving substantial forces towards Severodonetsk.
- UKR successfully pushed Russian artillery away from Kharkiv, but Russian forces still hold a narrow strip of territory north of the city. That said, it is not clear that the UKR offensive in the north has the forces or momentum to threaten flow of Russian supplies to Izyum.
- Russian forces have broken through further south at Popasna. This now threatens to sever Sevorodonetsk/Lysychansk and create a pocket. UKR forces also conducted tactical retreats further south at Svitlodarsk. The Russian mil seems to be pushing towards Soledar.
- The extent to which this breakthrough at Popasna threatens Ukraine's overall position depends on whether or not Russian forces gain momentum. That in turn hinges on force availability, reserves, and logistics to support this advance.
- Russian forces have also begun encircling Lyman, and supposedly entered the city, which suggests they will probably consolidate control of terrain north of the Donets river. Meanwhile UKR forces will move to secondary defensive lines.
- @Jomini W has good details on the recent movements, I will instead focus on the broader picture. I don't think the Russian offensive looks stalled, and while sluggish, there is no good way to predict when it will culminate. This is why I often say that outcomes are contingent.
- Recent Russian gains in the Donbas, despite a relatively weak military advantage, suggest that UKR forces have suffered significant attrition. Zelensky mentioned a range of 50-100 KIA per day. This is a high casualty rate.
- The overall military balance in this war still trends in Ukraine's favor, given manpower availability and access to extensive Western military support. That will show itself more over time. But the local balance in the Donbas during this phase is a different story
- There are rumors that UKR is bringing in reinforcements to prevent a larger Russian breakout. Either way, the fight in the Donbas is much less significant for UKR than it is for Russia. If it must, Ukraine can trade territory for attrition, then hope to retake it later.
- Despite high Russian losses (I previously suggested 10-12k KIA), and issues with morale, the Russian military appears unlikely to easily give up terrain. Russian mil is also using fires more effectively, and to an extent has adapted, despite observable tactical failures.
- I think we shouldn't overstate the significance of the Russian breakthrough at Popasna, but also consider the implications. Are UKR forces going to be in position to conduct a major counteroffensive in the near term, or will both sides face a degree of exhaustion?
- Russian forces west of Kherson have also used the past few weeks to dig in and fortify their positions. They're not going to give up territory easily even in areas where they're at a relative disadvantage.
- Russian forces may not be prosecuting offensives with much enthusiasm, but it is equally difficult to expect them to rout or melt away. Similarly, the situation within Ukraine's army remains a major unknown, but it is clear the war is taking its toll.
- The battlefield is likely to stay dynamic, with territory changing control via advances and counter attacks. I doubt we will see a stalemate emerge, but rather operational pauses that folks will be tempted to declare a stalemate.
- In my view it is too early to make predictions on how the battle for the Donbas will go. Ukraine may lose territory in the short term, but Russia faces major problems with sustaining its military effort in the long term, or holding on to gains. The war could become protracted.
- Will add, this is why I often refrain that it is difficult to tell where you are in a war. Big turning points are easiest to discern in hindsight. In the present many tactical events seem to take on outsized significance.
Well, I just read on the news that Khadyrov is threatening my country, Poland, for siding with USA and Ukraine, as well as that incident where Russian ambassador (a huge piece of crap, I might add) got doused with red paint. Here’s my source (in Polish): https://www.onet.pl/informacje/onetwiadomosci/kadyrow-grozi-polsce-nie-zostawimy-tego-tak-po-prostu/5b7gjsp,79cfc278
If you ask me, I think his threats are empty. If he or any if his men were to do something and try to follow through with those threats, he would only cause himself and Russia more problems.
Edited by ArcticDog18 on May 25th 2022 at 9:03:08 PM
I will become a great writer one day! Hopefully...
Seems that Ken Rhee’s doing okay. Next step I heard is early rehab, although all news from Korea indicates that he’s flying back to Seoul.
Oh, bother.
In which we see a vid of DPR troops who came back from Mariupol getting fed up being Russia's cannon fodder.
Disgusted, but not surprised
https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1529479186720628736
T-62M already in Melitopol. Heard that they had to look into bases in order to get them from Russia.
Oh, bother.
The best part about the DPR troops shown refusing to fight is that they're Bothering by the Book. They're arguing that them being sent to Luhansk is outright illegal.
Edited by M84 on May 25th 2022 at 11:54:34 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
Cringe but free
Washington Post, from March: Instead of consumer software, Ukraine’s tech workers build apps of war.
The head of a Ukrainian app developer, Stepan Tanasiychuk, had friends who’d struggled to hear the haunting alarms triggered by civil-defense workers anytime the military radioed in missile strikes. The Cold War relics weren’t audible in bomb shelters or outside cities — a critical flaw for Ukrainians desperate to evade surprise attacks.
But Hrytsenko’s company, Ajax Systems, had for years built apps that could alert a person’s smartphone even in sleep or silent mode. Tanasiychuk knew it, because he owned one of their home-security systems himself.
Working from homes and shelters, a hastily assembled team of programmers from both companies built the siren app “Air Alert” in a single sleepless day. And every day since, they have rolled out updates to what has become the most downloaded app in all of Ukraine. More than 4 million people use it today.
“Yesterday, some soldiers … told us this app had saved their lives,” Hrytsenko said. “We feel very proud … to help the country to fight.”
In peacetime, the programmers of Ukraine’s tech scene crafted the consumer software that powered homegrown start-ups and some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names.
Now, they build apps of war — an unprecedented digital infrastructure designed for both front-line combat and the realities of life under siege.
There are glossy online tools for rallying anti-Kremlin protests and documenting war crimes. There are apps for coordinating supply deliveries, finding evacuation routes and contributing to cyberattacks against Russian military websites.
There’s even an app people can use to report the movements of Russian troops, sending location-tagged videos directly to Ukrainian intelligence. The country’s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, told The Washington Post they’re getting tens of thousands of reports a day.
Ukrainians have skillfully used social media to neutralize propaganda in Russia, rally spirits at home and mobilize antiwar sentiment around the world.
But the apps show how the invaded country has weaponized the Internet’s power in a subtler way, expanding the reach of strained civilian resources and crowdsourcing the nation’s urban defense.
The displaced Ukrainians who built the apps said they’re realistic about the impact they’ll have in a devastating war. But they said they are pouring their lives into the tools on the chance they could help stop the carnage, working even as they stock up on body armor, uproot their families and dig in for the battles ahead.
The developers say Ukraine was primed for this kind of resistance. Boosted by project-outsourcing budgets from the West, the country’s tech sector has become a digital juggernaut, with thousands working for homegrown start-ups and American tech giants including Google, Oracle, Snap and Amazon’s Ring.
Many of the software designers, engineers and hackers who called Ukraine home have seen their traditional work disrupted and been thrown into lives of uncertainty, fear and national pride. Nearly all of them still have functioning Internet.
In Russia, independent media has been squashed, dissenting voices arrested and the nation’s Internet clogged with propaganda and conspiracy theories about a war the Kremlin won’t let people call a war.
But the Ukrainian government has welcomed this freewheeling style of technical innovation at its highest levels. In early 2020, its Ministry of Digital Transformation launched an app, “Diia” or “Action,” that worked like a digital driver’s license and included links to public services, from coronavirus-vaccination certificates to construction permits.
Its leader, the 31-year-old Fedorov, had previously launched an online marketing agency that ran Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s winning “e-Zelensky” election campaign. Since the war began, Fedorov has used his visibly brash social media persona to pressure tech companies in the West to defy the Russian state.
The ministry’s app has evolved, too, from a stodgy public-service network into a full-scale companion for Ukrainians at war. The app now includes remote-job listings for Ukrainians out of work; a portal of cash payouts for citizens fleeing from combat; and even a set of video-learning lessons and math classes for children stranded away from school.
The app has become a lifeline — and a popular one, ranking within the top three most downloaded apps in Ukraine all month, data from the analytics firm Sensor Tower show.
But some of its most prominent features are unmistakably militaristic. The app’s developers have started allowing ordinary Ukrainians to submit location-tagged photos and videos of Russian military sightings — as well as tips on “suspicious” people who might be invaders or saboteurs. The data, Fedorov told The Post in an interview, are aggregated onto a map visible to Ukrainian intelligence officials working on defense and counterstrikes.
Ministry officials have also begun pushing the app’s capabilities into controversial frontiers. Fedorov said on social media this week that his team, which once used facial recognition scans to verify Ukrainians’ identities for government services, has started adapting the face-scanning technology to identify the faces of dead Russian soldiers.
A ministry official told The Post last week that the project is “in very early development” and would likely rely on software offered by the facial recognition firm Clearview AI, which has been criticized by international governments for fueling its database with billions of people’s face photos taken from social media and other websites.
Ukrainian officials say the technology would help refute the Kremlin’s claims that only a small number of soldiers have been killed during what it has called a limited military operation. Fedorov told Reuters that Ukrainian authorities had already used the dead soldiers’ identifications to contact their relatives back in Russia. Those claims could not be independently confirmed.
Officials in Fedorov’s agency are also working on systems to mass-dial Russian phone numbers to share the grisly truth about the war in hopes of spurring antiwar dissent. “We have all changed. We started doing things we couldn’t even imagine a month ago,” Fedorov said in a roughly translated Instagram post Wednesday. “Thank you to everyone for the fight.”
For people wanting to report Russian military locations and behaviors without the Diia app, they can send information to eVorog, a ministry chatbot on the messaging service Telegram. After verifying that the sender is not Russian, the chatbot asks for the exact location of the military “equipment or occupiers” alongside a photo or video of the scene. That information, the ministry said, is then sent to the Ukrainian military to “quickly repel the enemy.”
Ukraine’s Security Service, its top law-enforcement agency, runs a separate Telegram bot, @stop_russian_war_bot, that allows people to submit sightings of “suspicious” people or vehicles. Images promoting the tool on Facebook, Instagram and Telegram show a Russian tank in the crosshairs, a QR code for easy downloading and a question in Ukrainian: “Did you see the enemy?”
Many other Ukrainian agencies have rolled out their own online tools. The country’s Office of the Attorney General has created a website for reporting war crimes that allows anyone to submit photos, videos and geolocation data for further investigation of a long list of potential horrors.
The office uses the data and other reports to offer daily estimates of possible war crimes. A checkbox on the reporting site lists “torture (beatings, rape, mutilation),” “murders, injuries to medical personnel” and “use by the occupier of civilian clothes.”
The Ukrainian Information Ministry’s Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security has used Google forms to organize antiwar protests in 18 cities around the world, with questions like “How many people could you theoretically bring to a rally?”
And Ukraine’s International Legion of Territorial Defense, a foreign legion founded last month to recruit volunteer fighters from around the world, created a glossy website with tips for traveling to the battlefield: “It is recommended, if available, to bring your military kit … [including] helmet [and] body armor.”
An interactive map on the site allows visitors to see how many volunteers traveled from each country. Russia, in red, is shown as “negative 14,000” — Ukraine’s unconfirmed assessment of the number of Russian soldiers killed in action.
Official government accounts have shared such numbers constantly on social media. On Instagram, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs posts daily tallies of what the Russian military has lost, including 1,578 armored vehicles, 517 tanks and 42 military drones.
The country has also used Telegram to give directions to hundreds of thousands of “IT Army” volunteers on which Russian websites to overload. Ukrainian fighters have also used social apps to exact more direct punishment; a Wall Street Journal journalist said Ukrainian soldiers and Territorial Defense volunteers have used the messaging app Viber to direct artillery fire at Russian troops.
Beyond the government-led efforts, Ukrainian tech companies have unveiled a number of their own wartime tools. There’s Prykhystok, a site for coordinating room-sharing arrangements to house Ukrainian refugees escaping active war zones.
There’s an evacuation site from the nonprofit UkraineNow that connects volunteer drivers with people looking to hitch a ride. Another site, Pomich, made by the Ukrainian freight-tech start-up Cargofy, helps link up truck owners with people seeking to move food and humanitarian supplies.
There’s a wartime job board for online-work requests: Web developers, graphic designers, language translators and online anti-propaganda volunteers. And then there are apps like Play for Ukraine, an online puzzle game that, in the background, uses the player’s Internet connection to blast thousands of online requests at Russian websites in hopes of helping take them down.
Most of the efforts are untested, and each carries its own risks in a war zone where thousands have already been killed. One refugee-housing site, for instance, faced criticism that a lack of security checks for hosts could mean people might end up staying somewhere dangerous. (The site has since relaunched with a more aggressive process for verifying hosts’ identities.)
But the Russian invasion has clearly given Ukrainian tech workers a new calling, and several said they were emboldened by the idea that they were building tools for the public good.
Tanasiychuk, founder of the development firm Stfalcon that helped with Air Alert, had previously led a team doing outsourced app projects for Western companies looking to plan bus routes and sell concert tickets. The closest they’d come to the military action was a cheeky smartphone game released shortly after Russia invaded Crimea, Last Outpost, centered on a soldier defending his homeland against waves of invaders in Russian hats.
Developing and updating Air Alert, he said, often felt like a chaotic jumble of late-night calls and Telegram chats. To get it to work, the private-industry coders had to work with federal authorities and local units for emergency services and civil defense. They also had to design a digital system so the operators of the old-school analog sirens could easily ping millions of phones; now, when a possible airstrike is reported, they hit two buttons instead of one.
The coders weren’t sure how it’d be received, writing in an announcement: “The app was developed in an emergency during one day, so there may be some minor problems.” But within a day of its debut on the app stores, it was downloaded more than 100,000 times. Google has since made the alert notifications available for all users in Ukraine.
The air-raid warnings have become a powerful symbol of a nation on edge: In one of his daily video reports this week posted to Telegram, President Zelensky held up his phone while a siren played, saying, “We hear this for hours, days, weeks.”
But the app’s developers also feel it is a symbol of what a driven team can accomplish. Even as they scramble to keep their day jobs running, they have continued to roll out free, once-a-day updates fixing bugs and adding new monitored regions. Upcoming versions will include new types of alarms for shelling, street fighting and chemical-weapons attacks.
“It’s the best thing me and my team did in our lives,” Tanasiychuk said. “Each team member, they worked also for their parents, their neighbors, their relatives. They were worried for them … and if you have this feeling, you can break mountains.”
https://twitter.com/Jake_Hanrahan/status/1526491421242494978?cxt=HHwWhMC4vYT3l68qAAAA
Ukrainian Romas joining in the Ukrainian military.
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 25
The incident highlights a continuing shift in the Russian-language milblogger information space regardless of the video’s authenticity. Milbloggers would likely have either attacked or dismissed such a video loudly and in near-unison earlier in the war, when they all generally focused on presenting optimistic pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian narratives. The response to this video in the Russian-language milblogger space demonstrates the strong resonance anti-Kremlin narratives can now have. It is impossible to know what effect this change in this information space might have on general perceptions of the war in Russia, but it is one of the most visible and noteworthy inflections in the attitudes of previously strongly pro-Kremlin ostensibly independent Russian voices speaking to Russians that we have yet seen.
Today’s statement by DNR Militia Head Eduard Basurin explaining that Russian forces would focus on creating “smaller cauldrons” rather than on a single large encirclement is likely in part a response to a critique that surfaced both in the milblogger space and in the Russian Duma that Russian forces had failed to form and reduce “cauldrons” of the sort they used in 2014.[3] Basurin’s statement, along with other changes in the ways in which Russian officials have spoken about cauldrons and Russian operations in the east following those critiques suggest that the Russian and proxy leadership is sensitive to shifts in this information space.[4]
Russian forces are increasingly facing a deficiency in high-precision weaponry. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that due to an increasing lack of high-precision weapons Russian forces are seeking other methods of striking critical infrastructure and have intensified the use of aircraft to support offensives.[5] The Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) noted that up to 60% of Russia’s high-precision stockpile has already been exhausted, which is consistent with previous reports by Western defense officials that Russian forces have been increasingly relying on “dumb bombs” because they are facing challenges replenishing their supplies of precision munitions in part due to sanctions targeting Russia’s defense-industrial production.[6] A lack of high-precision weapons will likely result in an increase in indiscriminate attacks on critical and civilian infrastructure.
The Kremlin is attempting to expand the pool of Russian passport-holders in occupied areas. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on May 25 that will simplify the procedure for obtaining a Russian passport within Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts.[7] This renewed campaign of so-called ”mass passportization” is occurring in occupied territories and likely represents an effort to set conditions for some sort of post-conflict political arrangement (the precise form of which Putin prefers remains unclear) through manipulating access to Russian citizenship.[8] Occupation authorities may additionally attempt to exploit this new decree to carry out covert mobilization in occupied areas, as having a Russian passport would make conscription-eligible residents of occupied territories subject to forced military service.
The Kremlin and Russian military commanders are introducing new regulations aimed at addressing the diminishing level of combat-ready reserves. The Russian State Duma and the Russian Federation Council passed a bill raising the maximum age for voluntary enlistment into the Russian military from 40 to 50.[9] Russian Telegram channels also reported that Russian leadership forced operational officers and commanders of the Russian Border Guards of southern Russian regions including Rostov Oblast and occupied Crimea to indefinitely cancel all summer vacations—a rather unsurprising step in light of the military situation in principle, but an indication of the next source of manpower to which Putin will apparently turn.[10] Russian Border Guards will reportedly deploy to training grounds for unspecified exercises in late May. The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces are forming new reserve units within the Southern Military District.[11]
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces prioritized advances east and west of Popasna in order to cut Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLO Cs) southwest of Severodonetsk and complete encirclement efforts in Luhansk Oblast.
- Russian forces have likely entered Lyman and may use this foothold to coordinate with advances southeast of Izyum to launch an offensive on Siversk.
- Russian forces may start the Battle of Severodonetsk prior to completely cutting off Ukrainian GLO Cs southwest and northwest of Severodonetsk.
- Russian forces struck Zaporizhzhia City in an attempt to disrupt a key logistics hub for Ukrainian forces operating in the east.
Looks like CBS' FBI Most Wanted's season finale is now poking at the Russo-Ukrainian War and the oligarchs.
I hope this trend of Russian milbloggers dunking on Russian government continues. The first step towards Putin’s downfall has to be people’s disillusionment with the guy.
I will become a great writer one day! Hopefully...
Finnish PM arrived in Irpin to inspect what happened there.
A tweet thread analyzing German approaches to the conflict/recent Scholz statements on the matter.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it's dire - Scholz is taking half-measures, neither putting the squeeze on the Russian Federation nor committing fully to the supply of arms to Ukraine out of fear of "becoming another Kaiser Wilhelm" and somehow getting Germany caught up in a larger war.
This ties into more disagreement in the EU over the question of Ukrainian membership. Ursula von der Leyen has set a timetable for accepting Ukraine as an official membership candidate as early as June
, which is meeting fierce opposition both in Paris and Berlin. The Commission is in Ukraine's corner, but the two countries at the heart of the European Union are pumping the brakes. We've talked a lot before about how the current situation in Russia is one of strategic procrastination - delaying tough choices about mobilization or awkward questions about their capacity to continue the war because neither are palatable to the regime. This seems to not be unique to the Russians - the same procrastination seems to be setting in closer to home.
It seems as though there is a serious rift growing between the members of the EU who have realized that this constitutes a direct threat to the security architecture of Europe and the ones who are still trying to toe a line with Moscow that no longer exists. One can't help but wonder if Berlin forgot that the point of the Ostpolitik was not just to placate Russia, but just as much about rapproachment with the countries that had suffered terribly in the conflagrations between Germany and Russia in the 20th century. If Berlin and Paris can't get with the program, Central and Eastern Europe will, and the more Warsaw gets to keep shouting and leading the way, the more tone-deaf attempts to rein in the worst excesses of its semi-authoritarian government will look. If literally nothing else, they should be listening to the people who spent five decades with a Russian boot on their face when they're ringing every possible alarm bell.
You cannot treat a war like it's business as usual, and leadership isn't guaranteed just because of your checkbook - we might very well see the center of gravity in Europe move eastward.
Edited by math792d on May 25th 2022 at 3:14:37 PM
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.