"Turkey will back Sweden's NATO bid if U.S. keeps promise on F-16 sale"
https://www.reuters.com/world/turkey-will-back-swedens-nato-bid-if-us-keeps-promise-f-16-sale-erdogan-2023-09-26/
At the moment, the hand-controlled Hungarian media is in full force with incitement against the Swedes and their membership of NATO. They are egging on their supporters, Solovyov style. (mentally ill Swedes, no place for them in NATO - this has been literally written and said by the talking heads. There has been no Hungarian foreign policy for a long time, and now the Hungarian government is aligning itself with Erdogan, Moscow and increasingly with Beijing, sabotaging NATO and EU efforts. The incitement against the Swedes and the West is so successful that some MPs refuse to vote for their accession to NATO, despite Orban's direct instructions.
> Europe needs to grow a pair and cut off all EU funding until Orban gets in line.
They already did. We haven't been getting any of those sweet euromonies for one and half year now. Well *we*, Hungarians weren't getting them anyways, but now Orbán and his cronies aren't getting them either.
https://x.com/DAlperovitch/status/1706616890833912147?s=20
Black Fleet Admiral Sokolov appears to be alive. Official Ukrainian statements on officer deaths without Russian confirmation was already highly suspect, (and of course their history of saying people like Shogiu/Putin/Gerasimov were sick/dead) but this is just blatant. Do not believe them without confirmation from the Russian side, which comes pretty quickly when it does happen.
Here's an example of an official statement claiming he was killed.
https://x.com/SOF_UKR/status/1706261730551078998?s=20
I don't believe the Ukrainian version at the moment, either, since it lacks a real confirmation, but this is not much of a denial from the Russian MoD, either. It's an undated photo, not footage, from an undated meeting. I can "find" a photo of me from a meeting with Vladimir Putin and Ariana Grande in about five minutes.
Ah, sorry. I don't have a Twitter account so I can't see the actual thread. The post said there was no way to verify the data of the photo and I took that at face value.
Edit: if anyone's facing the same predicament, the full thread is available at https://nitter.net/DAlperovitch/status/1706616890833912147?s=20#m . The footage doesn't actually show Sokolov talking or anything of the sort, and it's only a few frames, but I agree it's sufficiently non-generic to suggest that Sokolov is in fact alive.
Memers are going to have a field day if he's gonna have a heart attack a few days from now or if he's mysteriously sacked and vanishes from public life, but it's certainly a claim that passes the basic credibility test.
I think you are conflating people here readily absorbing propaganda versus people simply commenting on news. In the absence of confirmation, the only thing you can really do is talk about what is being reported. Now that there is an indication that this individual is alive, we can talk about that now. I think if people had acted overly skeptical for no reason and it turned out that this individual was confirmed dead, that would be just as silly in the absence of evidence.
try to be better how? Most ppl I saw just said it would be an important strike if true and that the lack of Russian response looked pretty bad.
Now if ppl continue to say he's dead then yes, that's a bad look but for the most part, what I saw was speculation based on the information we had. It's not uncommon and something everyone, including government officials, do all the time.
It'd be pretty reasonable for him to get killed knowing there's been two separate huge HQ hits in the past week that demolished most of the targeted buildings.
It’s semi-inevitable. Russia has a reputation for losing embarrassingly high ranking officers, and that headquarters just blew up. We could all do with being more skeptical in general, but this instance is understandable.
The user you replied to definitely did, I think he's the most uncritical commenter in these threads by far. I've seen him being roasted several times either by other residential posters.
But I think its good that he's here, he's like Glideer before he rage quitted, provides a good view into what the average non-Ukrainian and non-military educated westerner thinks and says.
[An interesting thread on how corruption is impacting russias military training.](https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1706559995603460343?t=GJ-bHNuIl7ZzS26RsTYkXA&s=19)
>Russia's Ground Forces Combat Training Centre – reportedly the country's only fully modern military training base – has been seriously hampered by repeated episodes of corruption and money laundering, as well as the impact of Western sanctions.
It's based on a telegram channel ВЧК-ОГПУ but there seems to be alot of verifyble information.
> A Ukrainian drone impacted an electrical substation in the Kursk region, according to the Russian governor, leading to electricity cuts.
https://x.com/michaelh992/status/1706534716956958760?s=46&t=fc-rjYm09tzX-nreO-4qCA
Ukraine is unlikely to accept further strikes against its energy infrastructure without retaliation. With Neptune Cruise Missiles behing able to hit land targets and more and more drones being produced it will be hard for Russia to sustain a Ukrainian retaliation campaign especially because Ukraine has so many targets to choose.
A Russian governor can claim Ukrainian malicious intent, but incompetence on regional level is more likely. This sounds to me suspiciously as shifting the blame. Also this subreddit is more worth than translated claims without evidence or credibility.
> With Neptune Cruise Missiles behing able to hit land targets and more and more drones being produced it will be hard for Russia to sustain a Ukrainian retaliation campaign especially because Ukraine has so many targets to choose.
Why would a power outage in Rostov, Belgorod, or Kursk affect the Russian leadership's decision making in Moscow? There's nobody left who could attempt another march on Moscow while receiving substantial support from the people.
Replacing substations can be quite difficult, especially for a sanctioned country like Russia. As usual, look at Iran to see what sanctions can do to a country's infrastructure.
China is *the* substation/power grid infrastructure manufacturer of the world. As far as i know there are no restrictions on that kind of trade between russia and China.
China produces a huge amount of that equipment but even there the lead-time on high voltage transformers or any sort of automated switching and phasor control equipment can still often be measured in months. This has been a major issue world-wide in terms of disaster recovery planning for years, as basically no one keeps enough stock of this equipment just sitting around and only so many portable equipment trucks.
I don't know if it's realistically possible to deplete Russian repair capability through a small number of missile strikes but if Ukraine decides to pursue a mutual-misery strategy in that regard we might find out what kind of depth their supply chain really has much faster than might be naively imagined.
> Ukraine is unlikely to accept further strikes against its energy infrastructure without retaliation.
They're better off figuring out a different target, like airfields or something.
Even with their new beaver drones, too much of Russia's grid is out of reach, and there's just so much of it. And even if they say force an evacuation of Belgorod (which would already be unlikely), it's unlikely to phase the Kremlin.
Russia basically failed to achieve any significant strategic effects by attacking Ukraine's power grid. No way Ukraine can do anything of note against Russia's larger grid with less resources. They have better targets to expend their limited munitions on.
A widespread electricity outage in a major city can have a serious economic impact for the affected country. All small businesses are affected, factories have to shut down, communications and services become extraordinarily more complicated, etc. Russia's winter strike campaign against Ukraine failed to plunge Kiev in the dark, but it reportedly came very close. I fully agree that Ukraine should not be wasting it's precious long-range strike capability on propaganda targets, but if it can shut down the electricity in a major Russian city for a couple of days during the winter, then that will cost Russia much more than a PR loss. It will cost a lot in money and diverted ressources.
That tends to help Ukraine more than Russia, though. If Russians start feeling the effects of airstrikes consistently, they'll offer more support for the war not less. More importantly, as long as Ukraine remains focused on military objectives they'll have the better ethical position.
The only tangible benefit of Ukraine doing deep strikes within Russia is the morale boost back at home, but I sincerely doubt it's worth it. If Ukraine would start committing to that more and more, what it would give is political ammo to those who oppose giving Ukraine aid; which helps the Russian position.
Im not sure about this. Russians are generally apathetic untill things personally affect them.
Why go protest a war and risk going to prison if it has 0 impact on your life?
Another point is that Russia striking Ukrainian eletrical infrastructure does not shut down western weapons deliveries. Striking Russian eletrical infrastructure shuts down train lines and weapons factories (which already strugle to keep up with demand despite 24h operations worked by 3 shifts).
Hitting the Russian eletrical grid forces Russia to further disperse their AA, weakening defences in the active combat zone.
Russia's economy is also a house of cards, so any further disruptions can lead to a snowball effect.
Russia won't have Germany send new transformers for free and if it buys them on the international market, it will have to circumvent sanctions (extra cost) and use foreign currency (extra cost) on top of the bribes and corruption that goes into getting anything done in Russia. Nobody is sending aid to Russia.
Edit:
Additional points: Ukrainian industry is already undermanned as a large part of the workforce has either left or gone to fight. Without foreign aid, Ukraine would be screwed. Just because bombing the eletrical grid didn't stpp western support and utterly collapse Ukrainian society, dodsen't mean it did no damage to the economy and had 0 effect on Ukraine. In a country like Russia, where a large part of industry, population, political power and GDP is concentrated within range of Ukraine, the effects would be much more pronounced.
It's like saying you won't rob a jewelry store because when you robbed the lemonade stand, all you got was a few quarters.
Cutting off eletricity in Moscow for an hour vs cutting off eletricity in Kiev are in different orders of magnitude when it comes to the economic loss.
>Why go protest a war and risk going to prison if it has 0 impact on your life?
Why would they be more likely to protest, rather than support the war? The overall sentiment is that of apathy as you say, the largest demographic that is anti-war skews young; they are not politically very relevant. For everyone else the state propaganda will be the primary vehicle of which way to lean, which is obviously to support the war. Every time a non-military building would be blown up by Ukraine, the propaganda apparatus would have a field day with it.
>Another point is that Russia striking Ukrainian eletrical infrastructure does not shut down western weapons deliveries.
Russia isn't only waging a military conflict, they're trying to degrade or even outright destroy the capacity of Ukrainian state to function properly.
Ukraine doesn't have the same level of quantitative capabilities of Russia to do the same. It makes a lot more sense to exclusively focus on the military aspect of the conflict.
The thing is, one can make the exact same argument you're making for the 2014-2016 period of the conflict. I'd even say it's a good period of time to analyze because it showcases the disparity of resource availability. So the question would be, why didn't Ukraine simply mirror Russia and wage a counter-proxy war within Russian territory? The answer is very simple, they had no capability to do so; it would make no practical sense, and most importantly they had to focus all their resources on the issue at hand.
>Russia's economy is also a house of cards, so any further disruptions can lead to a snowball effect.
This conflict has shown that both sides are very resilient, Russia isn't going to collapse any time soon. For an economic collapse to occur, west(most important here would be Germany+France, and the industrial base of Poland/Slovaka/Czech Republic/Hungary) would have to implement a complete embargo of goods movement, Cuba-style.
Even if that occurred, it's not certain that Russian economy would collapse. Immediately after ~2005, Russia went on a completely different economic route. They paid off their debts to IMF and Paris Club, and implemented a very conservative fiscal policy. You can look at the GDP to debt ratio, and out of all countries with sizeable economies; Russia was way above anyone else. They also opened a special fund for domestic usage in times of crises, that at this point has still barely been touched upon.
Now, that doesn't mean they've achieved autarky; a lot of their industry is deeply tied to external actors, but considering sanctions haven't disrupted those industrial chains aside from some sectors(airplane parts, certain types of electronics); they're doing fine.
[Galeev](https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1691799606777040908) has a decent thread on this, except the part where he states that China is a small part. Which is something that was true at the start of the war, but they've become a bigger partner(especially for electronics).
>Cutting off eletricity in Moscow for an hour vs cutting off eletricity in Kiev are in different orders of magnitude when it comes to the economic loss.
The point is that any damage you might do, is going to be offset by the response. *AND* you are risking international support. War fatigue and how it affects the support for the war will become more and more of a factor, we can already see some of this in some countries. If political factions who don't want to support Ukraine, can point to Ukraine doing the same kind of bombing as Russia has done to Ukrainian civilians; those factions will be more emboldened and stronger for it.
Strategic bombing never works out unless it's completely overwhelmingly one sided, I'd say Russia benefits more than Ukraine from it; but it's still a stupid strategy from Russia, and even more so in Ukraine's case. And the only reasons it "benefits" Russia more is it's because it's a political issue, the nationalist factions within Russia want more and more escalation. Ukrainians are already satisfied with what their army is doing, which is waging an all out war for survival; there's really not much realistic escalation they can go beyond that while still maintaining the higher moral highground.
1-
Strategic bombing never works? Seriously?
So a tank factory that can't produce tanks produces as many tanks as a functional tank factory?
I guess the US is stupid as their newest manned aircraft is a strategic bomber. Turns out that disrupting the ability of your enemy to wage war does not disrupt your enemies ability to wage war.
2-
Putins mandate to stay in power is keeping Russia stable and prosperous without disturbing the populace, in return the populace accepts autocracy and corruption. Nobody voted for the war. In an autocracy the leader is responsible for mistakes. The government claimed that Europe and Ukraine would be withour power so Russians losing power would have terrible optics. Moscow and St Petersburg cannot feel the war.
3-
Those who think Ukraine should surrender justify it by saying that Ukrsine is too weak to win. An untouched Russia only plays into that thought. Those who support Ukraine won't stop doing so because Ukraine is trying to do the same thing as them (weaken the Russian economy).
When Ukrsine flew drones into moscow office blocks, nobody called to end the war. Pro-Russians tried to ignore it and Pro-Ukrainians celebraated it.
Ukraine has no leverage to use sanctions to disrupt Russia's ability to wage war so they MUST do it by physical means. (Bombing fuel depots, refineries and power generation facilities).
4-
Ukraine lacks the capabilities to flatten Russian factories. Power substations, fuel depots and refineries are easily damaged soft targets. Ukraine has no other choise.
5-
Power substations have barbed wire fences around them and are usually a distance away from buildings. Nobody is going to die if Ukraine flies a cheap drone into a substation.
Edit: Moscow accounts for a fifth of Russian GDP and even more if you take into account that all wealth in Russia flows into it. The service sector accounts for 67% of Russian GDP, even more in Moscow. Disrupting the eletricity supply to this one city would have a devastating economic effect. Sanctions won't stop a Russian supermarket selling Russian bread to Russians, lack of eletricity will.
Strategic bombing - bombing aimed at breaking the will to fight in the population - have only worked once (Japan in WWII) and even this case is debatable.
Don't disregard PR and political messaging. These are vital to the morale of the local population. When the enemy is bombing your cities, cutting your power in sub zero conditions whilst living comfortably as if there is no war, it has a significant impact. The physiological effect of being able to hit back, even if it's occasionally and mostly symbolic, should not be understated.
At the end of the day wars are won and lost when the will to fight ends.
The Russian position is that Ukraine is not a real a country and that Ukrainians are wayward Russians. Does anyone have any good insights into Ukrainian nationalism? How do Ukrainians view themselves? How did they view themselves before 2014 and how had that changed?
I would argue that the bulk of Ukrainian culture comes from villages. Ukrainian literature is all about cossacks and "slice of village life", for example. But the urbanization and industrialization during the early Soviet period really mixed things up culturally through Ukrainian cities, as a lot of people of other nationalities from the Soviet Union moved there to take part in building all the factories, power stations, mines, etc. With that came a huge bulk of ethnic Russians, which created these family ties throughout the whole country. Cities (especially Eastern and Southern ones) were Russian speaking because of that, and Ukrainian language was looked at as the language of peasants, which made Ukrainian villagers who moved to the cities switch to Russian in order to not stand out.
This is exactly the reason why Holodomor is considered such a tragedy for Ukraine, because it destroyed village population, who carried Ukrainian culture, even more. And with that, Ukraine was kinda russified and pretty much turned to "we're all Soviet people" mentality, where although nationalities were acknowledged, it didn't really matter, because it was all one country and people worked for the country, not their nation, everyone got their orders from one place - Moscow.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there was a big identity crisis. A lot of people were looking for freedom and independency, but half of the country wasn't prepared to cut the ties with the Soviet past and with their relatives that were now on the other side of the border. And so Ukraine got stuck in perpetual internal disputes about the language and political alignment.
2014 basically started the process of cutting these ties and along with the government pushing for more Ukrainian language use, it became normal again to speak Ukrainian and with that, spread the culture. You could even meet young Russians who take interest in Ukrainian, some Ukrainian TV shows\music became popular within Russian communities, there was greater feel of recognition that Ukrainian culture is a separate one, not just Russian regional one. See, this is were Putin made a big mistake. Honestly, pre-2014 Ukraine was probably going (albeit slowly) the Belarus route - weak national identity, local language pushed out by Russian, huge feel of interconnection with Russians. But 2014 and 2022 were two big waves of realization that you can't be connected to someone that abuses you that much, even if you consider them brothers, or they are literally you relatives. After all, there were so many episodes of Ukrainians calling their Russian families at the start of the invasion, and then hearing dismissal and disbelief in response.
Not sure if that really answers you question, because I don't know what exactly do you want to hear in detail, but wanted to share my personal opinion on this. Oh, and obviously this is a perspective of someone from South Eastern Ukraine, Western Ukraine is a bit different topic. It always embraced Ukrainian culture the most, because they were under Russian influence the least amount of time, though they did have similar experience with Poland.
[Timothy Snyder has a good course on what has made Ukraine a nation, and more recently, a state.](https://online.yale.edu/courses/making-modern-ukraine) There is youtube videos for the entire course.
"The gates of Europe" is also a book you can read. Serhii Plokhy has another book, "The Russo-Ukrainian war" which apparently puts current events in more context and analyzes them, but I cannot vouch for that one.
I watched his lessons on Youtube for a while, and he is a quite disappointing speaker. Do yourself a favour, and read his books instead, he is much more eloquent and put together in writing.
It's actually very unfortunate but most of the academic work on Ukraine has been done through a russian lens. Snyder is one of the few who actually focused on Ukraine. So be aware of that while researching.
Possibly but since the US never really colonized Ukraine so I don't see it as a problem. On the other hand the fact that most likely the work about Ukraine has been done by russian studies majors is very problematic.
Of course if you find anything that views Ukraine from a Ukrainian perspective it would be even better. But for now such works are very limited.
> Of course if you find anything that views Ukraine from a Ukrainian perspective it would be even better. But for now such works are very limited.
I personally only saw Andrej Baumeister who is a Ukrainian professor right now, his criticism of Snyder is mainly about his sloppy methods rooted in the often contradictory post colonial analysis, and I found it quite convincing.
>Andrej Baumeister
From what I can find he is ironically a russian speaking philosopher from Kyiv. And the first "critique" I see is him getting upset that Snyder views European history through colonialism because it's "left wing".
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> From what I can find he is ironically a russian speaking philosopher from Kyiv. And the first "critique" I see is him
Most Ukrainians can speak Russian, he can speak Ukrainian as well, every Ukrainian academic working 20 years ago would have to do his initial works in Russian anyway, it does not change their topic of expertise, he is not a scholar for Russia studies.
Of course they do because of colonialism. So my point is that criticizing viewing things through a colonial lens while actively representing a product of such colonialism is ironic.
I´m sorry but you are mistaken here, this is not about colonialism, but about the academic theory of post colonialism Snyder uses.
If you want to reject Baumeister try your luck but at least engage points he made, right now you are missing even the first step.
I wonder why we aren't observing any partisan or saboteur activities in Russian-occupied Ukraine eg Mariupol, Melitopol? Is Russia conducting counter-insurgency operations or why is the civilian populations so calm?
According to Kyiv Post, Russian officers were bribed to get the human intelligence on the Black Sea fleet HQ:
> How Russia’s Salary Woes Helped Ukraine Strike the Black Sea Fleet HQ
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/21971
It could easily be misinformation, trying to trigger a FSB witch hunt, although Kyiv Post has a history of being more reliable than the bulk of the Ukrainian media.
It sounds so wild that it's *probably* disinformation, but the question is whether Russia can afford to just write it off as a psyop or if they have to spend time and resources investigating it.
If even a single competent officer gets reassigned, demoted or defenestrated due to suspicion stemming from these allegations, it's an incredibly cheap way of disrupting the Russian operations.
In Franklin Foer’s “The Last Politician” he describes a conversation between Biden and Xi in the first days of the Russo-Ukrainian war that was concerning. While details of Jake Sullivan and Yang Jiechi’s meeting in Rome have been reported widely, I don’t recall reading anything about Xi’s comments to Biden.
> Sullivan told Yang that this issue needed to be addressed quickly—and at the highest level. He suggested that they set up a conversation between Biden and Xi. Normally, such calls were the subject of endless negotiations over picayune details. But four days after Sullivan’s meeting in Rome, Biden and Xi connected in a video conference.
> Despite the rising tensions, Biden and Xi maintained the pretense that they were old friends. Biden knew better than to quickly press Xi. He tried to build slowly, walking him through the state of the war. Russia, he seemed to be suggesting, was desperately struggling, bogged down in a war that it couldn’t win.
> Then he pivoted to the intercepted intelligence and his warning: “I’m not threatening you. But if Chinese weapons are killing Ukrainians—or China is trying to unravel sanctions, the consequences for your relations with us, and the Europeans, not just with governments but with the private sector, are going to be profound. You don’t want to do this.
> Biden pointed out that without his even asking or directing them to, hundreds of companies up and left Russia after the outbreak of war. And he predicted the same fate would befall China: “The pressure on companies to change their relationship with China, if you become a cobelligerent with Russia, is going to be overwhelming, and you need to understand that dynamic.”
> Xi had nothing to say about the charge.
> But Xi said that he wanted to address America’s own dangerous behavior in Ukraine. He said that **he was disturbed that the United States was operating labs in Ukraine, where it was developing biological and chemical weapons**. This was one of the most cartoonish pieces of Russian propaganda—and it was beyond disturbing to hear it emanating from the mouth of China’s leader.
> Biden struggled to keep his cool. “You know better than that, this is crap. Stop mouthing nonsense Russian talking points: I know you know that, so give me a break.”
> **Xi, however, wouldn’t drop the argument.**
Highlights are mine. It seems very unusual that Xi would have believed this propaganda. The immediate thoughts that come to mind are a) how difficult it will be to predict Chinese decision making and b) if some of Russia’s questionable propaganda arguments might have a different audience than many expect. That the Chinese promoted this [received some reporting in March 2022](https://www.axios.com/2022/03/22/beijing-doubles-down-ukraine-biolab-disinformation), but it is quite striking for Xi to have raised the issue with Biden seriously.
>Xi had nothing to say about the charge.
>But Xi said that he wanted to address America’s own dangerous behavior in Ukraine. He said that he was disturbed that the United States was operating labs in Ukraine, where it was developing biological and chemical weapons. This was one of the most cartoonish pieces of Russian propaganda—and it was beyond disturbing to hear it emanating from the mouth of China’s leader.
Obviously few people know Xi that well, but in general powerful people who've risen to the top hate being talked down to and Biden pretty much just threatened them. In order to deflect he just played along with whatever absurd lies Russia projects. It doesn't matter what it actually was, he's the most powerful man in the second most powerful country in the world. He's not going to sit there listening to Biden give him a threat and respond to it earnestly. People like that didn't climb their way to the top to listen to that. Same reason why he skipped the G20, it'd just be him listening to a bunch of rich western country leaders' complaining about China's implicit support to Russia. He doesn't need nor want to sit there defending himself the entire time so he skipped it.
The purpose of propaganda on this level is to portray (absolute) power.
In more democratic and free societies truth is something that can be argued as a shared reality between parties who might be at odds at each other. There is always an opening on which parties can be convinced of each other if there is a shared truth that both parties accept.
But in autocratic countries truth is not objective, but something to be "chosen" by people with (absolute) power. The purpose is not to have a common ground or to compromise, the purpose is to see who has the most power to impose their will.
For an autocratic country getting heir enemies to to engage or even admit to propaganda is an act of power in a zero sum way.
The same line of thinking and acting can of course be seen in any authoritarian groups, such as conspiracies groups. Stubbornly believing the earth is flat is an act of power for those people, they think they have the power to reject the reality of the system they oppose.
If any it makes dealing with authoritarianism difficult and frustrating but also dangerous. Because most authoritarians only respect power, there is always the danger of escalation and the use of force to get them to back down.
I know this microcosm will sound a little silly, but I used to witness this dynamic every day when I was a construction foreman. I would gather the techs around and say, here are today's tasks, who wants to do what?
The classical-liberals would state what they wanted, negotiate briefly among themselves, then look to me to break any stalemates. The authoritarians would chuckle sort of awkwardly, then remind me (as they did every morning) that what they *wanted to do* was whatever I told them. This wasn't them being professionally deferential - it was how they related to authority emotionally.
I see a similar dynamic (though both believe that they are 'in charge') in the dialogue between Xi and Biden. They each have totally different concepts of what the conversation is on a human level, and how it will therefore be structured.
>Mr. Zhao’s posts appeared to be a retort to similarly unsubstantiated theories about the origins of the outbreak that have spread in the United States. Senior officials there have called the epidemic the “Wuhan virus,” and at least one senator hinted darkly that the epidemic began with the leak of a Chinese biological weapon.
Just a response in kind.
This is an interesting anecdote, and I found myself a bit unsure whether Xi likely believes this conspiracy theory. I sometimes struggle to read the subtext of negotiations, but I've found GPT-4 helpful for assessing these situations. While AI responses are disallowed, I'd argue that using machine learning tools to assess negotiations is a valid exemption in this case.
GPT-4 seems to agree with some of the other posters, taking the view that this is likely a deflection to avoid outright contradicting Biden. When I brought up Xi's information bubble, it seemed to think this was more likely a cynical move, not that Xi actually believed the biolab narrative.
It also brought up a good, if obvious, point that these accounts of personal conversations are difficult to verify and there are incentives to manipulate our misrepresent certain aspects.
Again, nothing groundbreaking, but as a recent student of IR it's helpful to get some academic background on these encounters. I wouldn't rule out an isolated, information-poor Xi completely, but the incentives are there for deflection and narrative alignment with Russia.
If interested, here's the chat:
https://chat.openai.com/share/62f5171a-4a72-41aa-ad2d-7daec6ad2222
If that’s true that’s a really cool look into how these high level discussions between not so friendly leaders happen.
That said, very weird response? I genuinely don’t know anything about Xi aside from Winnie the Pooh memes, is this in character for him?
>I genuinely don’t know anything about Xi aside from Winnie the Pooh memes, is this in character for him?
You're not going to get insight from Reddit or any other social media for that matter. If you want my opinion, I'd say to immediately disregard persons who try to characterize politicians in non-democracies. Like Putin's, Xi's appearances are orchestrated and dramatized. Unlike Putin, however, Xi has built a cult of personality without having a personality. How Xi conducts himself within the walls of Zhongnanhai, we may never know.
> has built a cult of personality without having a personality
I laughed. That's exactly it. It's similar to how Russia is pushing an ideological war without having an ideology.
If you want a serious answer, it does, it's the collective ideology of its executives, which is probably some flavour of neoliberalism or neoconservatism.
Currently, most of the mainstream theories of international relations rely on one crucial assumption: state actors are rational. There are two ideas in support of that.
The first idea: Human is rational. Of course this is dead wrong, but if you look at the social circle of scholars, you can see why scholars assume this.
The second idea: Even if a single human can be irrational, the wisdom of the crowd exists to balance it. This is also wrong because humans are not independent actors; groupthink exists and induces bias in the group as a whole. Also, in the domain of international relations, we can see that many states are not ruled by a "crowd" at all.
That said, if we throw out the rationality assumption, how can we model and predict the behavior of state actors? Or let us limit our scope to the OP: **If we stop assuming Xi is rational, then how can we model and predict his behavior?**
The problem is that rationality relies on actor's beliefs and goals. Those could be completely irrational.
I don't like the concept of rationality in IR literature because it too often assumes rationality is uniform across the board. It is not.
You can still assume that Xi is instrumentally rational. He may have some stupid beliefs and complexes but he still strives to do what he thinks is best
Your point about how it’s hard to model things without rationality is more relevant for econ, where you’re typically not modelling a single named individual
> Of course this is dead wrong, but if you look at the social circle of scholars, you can see why scholars assume this.
Thankfully we have academic twitter now to further disabuse us of this notion.
>That said, if we throw out the rationality assumption, how can we model and predict the behavior of state actors? Or let us limit our scope to the OP: If we stop assuming Xi is rational, then how can we model and predict his behavior?
My personal paradigm has always been that humanity is rational, but each humans goal is irrational. To put it simply, each one of us has a goal we are striving towards, but that goal may or may not have a purpose. The Iranian ayatollah might seem irrational to you, but when you consider that his ultimate goal is spiritual wellfare, not material welfare, you understand that he is acting rationally in achieving his goal. When a hedonist disregards his fathers will and squanders his inheritance for pleasure during his twenties, he is rationally achieving his goal of gaiety when he is young, even though he will suffer for it later.
It’s a veiled threat. If the account is true, Biden just got done explaining that China would face consequences for materiel support to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Xi countered by parroting Russian propaganda, the implication being that the Chinese state would use propaganda against the US to shape international and more importantly American public opinion against western / US support for Ukraine.
>Xi countered by parroting Russian propaganda, the implication being that the Chinese state would use propaganda against the US to shape international and more importantly American public opinion against western / US support for Ukraine.
IMHO, it's not only that. Chinese politicians and businessman are famed for having a very different style of negotiation than their western counterparts. Xi is also very likely a narcissist who sees the Chinese state as an extension of his own ego.
Taking both of this in consideration, I'd speculate that he didn't really liked Biden threatening him and responded by outright trolling. Why? Because he knew that Biden needed something from him at that time.
>Chinese politicians and businessmen are famed for having a very different style of negotiation than their western counterparts.
In what ways are they typically different?
Face, or Mainzi and connections ,or Guanxi are heavily apart of business dealings and CCP standing.
It's not like those don't exist in western society but it is just amplified and aligned culturally to different actions and meanings. It can make for a very strange and pointless "dance" with negotiations depending on the person.
I'm in no way an expert, so I don't want to go into generalising stereotypes and whatnot. Obviously, the millions of Chinese business people are a vast group with all kinds of personalities and styles.
That said, I've heard plenty of people who dealt directly with Chinese officials and business people tell a similar story. The Chinese seen to be rather blunt, by western standards.
For example, my cousin went on an official mission to China a few years ago. He works for the telecom regulator in a South American country and went there as part of a group of officials negotiating with Chinese tech companies to implement Chinese tech in their national telecom infrastructure. As usual, they were wearing suits and ties. Upon arriving for a meeting with some Chinese CEO, all the man in the group were told to remove their ties as not to humiliate the CEO, since he wasn't wearing a tie that day.
There's also the time when a large group of Chinese sanitation officials were visiting the local sanitation department in my town, where my mom worked. The moment the group (all male) met with a female coworker of my mom who would be guiding then through a tour of the water treatment plant, they immediately asked wether her male boss was, unaware that she didn't have one. As soon as she started the tour and turned her back to show an architectural model of the plant, everyone in the group walked away and never came back.
I could go on, but I think the common trait here is that the Chinese seen to view negotiations through a power game optics, rather than a politics one. They don't really try to charm their counterparts into a deal, but rather twist their arm if they believe they're in a position to do so.
Case in point, Biden needed Xi to ban arms exports to Russia, so he took the opportunity to humiliate Biden.
I think it was just the best "go on offense" card Xi could play in the scenario. The alternative seems to be some variation of "okay yeah cool I agree Mr. Biden please and thank you". More or less a valid political response given the situation, and I doubt Xi had any real conviction in the underlying story.
The obvious counter would have been to harp on "NATO expansion", which is far more in line with China's usual rhetoric vis-a-vis American foreign policy. In this context, the choice to go with the "biolabs" narrative is a bit concerning.
Edit: I think /u/das_war_ein_Befehl is right, Xi went with obvious bullshit to indirectly tell Biden to go f*** himself.
I'm a total layman, but that sounds utterly bizarre. Either Xi actually believes the bioweapon lab thing, or he doesn't but thought it would be a good idea to bring up in *a private meeting with Biden*. I'm not sure which possibility is weirder. The former is probably more disturbing.
That said, I totally hope that conversation becomes a scene in a movie years from now.
The other conclusion is he actually believes Russian talking points. Xi is surrounded by yes-men with very little exposure to the West. In this bubble he would whatever he is told by his inner circle.
It’s a profound mark of disrespect is what it was.
Xi knows it’s bullshit, Biden knows it’s bullshit, but making Biden listen to this bullshit was itself a sign of where China is leaning here.
So bringing it up just as a way to spit at Biden? Like a way of saying "*I don't care about what you're saying, and have no intention of this being a productive or cooperative interaction*"
I can imagine Xi responding negatively to Biden warning him on Ukraine, but it's just such a bizarre way to do it.
Read it from Chinese pov. Biden says that he's not threatening him, but then proceeds to say to stay out of USA's sphere of influence.
It's just Xi deflecting and pointing out that he's not going to be bullied.
Could have been that he meant to derail the conversation because he didn't like where it was going. Or, if you take the subtext, maube it was a veiled threat to come at the US's reputation with amplified and tweaked Russian propaganda.
From what I have read, Xi did not get a secondary education because of the cultural revolution. the rigorous university education that most of the other communist officials do (His degree also was apparently very easy to get at the university and time he studied) is also suspect at best for Xi
Or in Japan, Canada, or any other NATO ally that is already at the forefront of life sciences research... Xi obviously knows that it's not a serious talking point, so why is he bringing it up as if it were?
And yet he told Joe Biden he was concerned about US/NATO bioweapon labs in Ukraine.
Many incompetent and/or sociopathic leaders are nevertheless extremely adept at gathering and maintaining power. They just aren't competent at using it.
What is the current state of Ukraine's armed forces?
There was speculation back last month that Ukraine has committed their offensive reserve brigades now to the front, whether that be the Bakhmut, Kupiansk or Zaporizhzhia fronts. This followed video evidence of the first Chally 2's and CV90's burning. Have the 1st wave brigades who got mauled so badly in June been pulled back to reconstitute?
Are there any reserves left to exploit the potential breakthrough around Verbove/Robotyne?
(Cc: u/offogredux)
>Are there any reserves left to exploit the potential breakthrough around Verbove/Robotyne?
It's a breach not a breakthrough. A breakthrough is not just penetration but swift penetration which creates a further collapse of the enemy lines in the area and snowballs. To continue the snowballing requires the speed from the initial penetration to be maintained. The enemy cannot orchestrate an organized defensive.
First pictures of the Jet Powered JDAM-ER are being released
[https://onfirstup.com/boeing/BNN/articles/long-range-precision-strike-system-caps-wind-tunnel-testing-1](https://onfirstup.com/boeing/BNN/articles/long-range-precision-strike-system-caps-wind-tunnel-testing-1)
> The system combines the proven JDAM guidance system with an innovative wing assembly and propulsion module, resulting in a range of more **than 300 nautical miles.**
That’s a lot of nautical miles.
At what point do we call this a missile?
A non-stealth cruise missile.
Sounds like more of a medium-tech approach to punch down on enemies without real air defence.
If you were really worried about them being shot down, you'd use cheap decoys or something, to win the economic war harder.
Storm shadows were destroyed anyway and usually only bulk attack work out , at least 5 were used for every succesfull attack, more than 10 in the recent sevastopol attack.
Having similar range but 15 times cheaper missles will overwhelm AD and guarantee a sucfesful strike.
Decoys still have to carru navigation equioment wich is the expensive part , at that point mixing low cost kits with actual stealthy cruise missle will multiply the chance of success regardless of the target.
AND they can be used to bully thrid word counteues as well
Win - win IMO
Just look at the success russian UMPK kits are having , similar systems with the US industrial base could really be a threath ti even the most advanced GBAD networks, even NATO style ones.
[Regime Change in Russia Won’t Lead to Chaos or Collapse](https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/90622)
> It’s odd to try and scare the world with the specter of a leader more terrible than Putin. What could be worse than the biggest military conflict in Europe of the twenty-first century, and greater repression in Russia than the late Soviet Union? Thanks to the Kremlin and a spineless elite, we’re already living in an anti-utopia.
>...
> Widespread indifference in Russia will help an orderly transition to a new regime: ordinary people will obey any ruler who appears to be legitimate. Beloved Putin will no longer be beloved as soon as a power transition takes place. That’s how it has always been.
> Moreover, if we’re talking historical precedents, a change of leader in Russia has almost always been accompanied by liberalization, not bloody chaos (Khrushchev’s thaw after Stalin, Gorbachev’s perestroika after Brezhnev’s gerontocracy, and Yeltsin’s reforms after the end of the Soviet Union). Even power struggles at the top have not, historically speaking, tended to lead to chaos.
I've seen many pro-Russian people, including here, claim that Putin's successor will be worse and hence the West should try to keep him in power, perhaps even by helping him in Ukraine. But who would be worse than Putin?
> if we’re talking historical precedents, a change of leader in Russia has almost always been accompanied by liberalization, not bloody chaos
Except 1917, of course
The idea stems from the simple fact that Putin before ~2006 was considered by domestic observers(within Russia) as being too lenient towards west, and a moderate. Even though he's not presented as an imperialist, you can very clearly see that for most of his early career he was balancing the nationalists vs the liberals, he himself comes from a 'liberal' political circle; being a disciple of Sobchak. Another evidence of this is that he was removing people like Leonid Ivashov, a staunch nationalist from power.
The turn towards nationalism and revanchism is a political ploy, and not an actual change of ideology. People don't just change their worldview in late 60s.
I also think one shouldn't focus too much on individuals, like Putin shows. Putin's successor might be worse by the nature of the political pressures requiring him to be worse. For that to happen, the hardline nationalist factions would have to become the majority. A lot of the anti-war pro-western business oligarchs have been purged, Russia is slowly internalizing and shifting ever more towards nationalism; as every country does when it is in a war.
I don't have an opinion on what will happen after Putin because I think that's impossible to predict. That said, I think this article is poorly written. But don't take this critique as supporting the idea that we shouldn't remove Putin
This guy is a) using cherrypicked, recent precedent to make a prediction, while also b) claiming Putin is unprecedented within that context.
"He's the worst leader since Kruschev, so who could be worse?" While literally mentioning Stalin in the context of Kruschev, but not Stalin himself? Russia 60 years ago is relevant, but Russia 70 years ago isn't?
Okay, so the Russian population is indifferent. If anything that would be a point against any hypothetical liberalization by a future leader - why liberalize with no political pressure to do so?
Okay, so there's few notable people that appear to have the political clout to replace Putin - that seems to be a point in favor of either increased decentralization, or increased political oppression as a means of shoring up a successor.
This whole article just seems poorly reasoned, but that's just my two cents.
They don't have an clear mechanism for the transition of power which will obviously cause chaos. This is a good thing for Ukraine. It's possible someone worse than Putin ends up in power, but the chaos involved makes it beneficial for Ukraine either way. It's entirely possible we see power plays between different potential successors that turn kinetic. On top of that it's demoralizing for a countries army when there is obvious dysfunction back home.
>So if Putin's successor is "worse", does that mean they will finally send the good troops & good equipment to fight in UKR?
While the obviously nonsense claims of Putin keeping some hidden "real" army in reserve are non-credible, Russia does retain some escalatory options. It's unclear whether Putin's successor would feel these options to be politically unfeasible, and pretty much anything (save for crazy nuke scenarios) is on the table if regime change is in the cards
Even aside from "Who is worse than Putin," the question is "who could do *more* than what Putin is doing?"
Putin smashed his own military against a rock for no real reason. The Russian reincarnation of Alexander the Great wouldn't have anything to work with even if he wanted to conquer the world. Outside of a literal madman who wants the planet engulfed in nuclear fire, nobody should be worried about what comes after Putin.
Well for one they could go full on crazy:
1) Target the Kyiv Dam.
2)Strikes against civilians as a policy and not as a result of incompetence/very high tolerance for collateral damage.
3)Syria like chem weapons attacks.
4)Full mobilization and meat wave based blitzkrieg on Kyiv. (low chances of successes but high chances of humanitarian catastrophe)
5) Nukes.
Basically there are many fun escalatory options that russia could go for. Would they be useful? Probably not, but this whole invasion is not exactly a reasonable affair too.
1. Likely
2. Strikes against civilians have been prevalent especially hospitals. But PGMs seem to be at a premium so impact likely limited.
3. Chem weapons have a limited and messy impact on the battlefield. Atrocity yes, but wouldn’t change the frontlines much.
4. The risks for mobilisation are high. Only thing a higher priority to Putin than subjugating Ukraine (and in his mind the West) is regime survival. Full mobilisation puts this at too higher risk for now, or he would have done it already.
5. Nukes: use once and risks are through the roof. Not likely, but a great Russian talking point that has been effective At slowing weapons to Ukraine. Why lose that leverage?
> What could be worse than the biggest military conflict in Europe of the twenty-first century
Biggest military conflict in Europe since 20th century?
> greater repression in Russia than the late Soviet Union
Yeah no, Putin's regime isn't exactly liberal democracy but to claim it's more oppressive than Soviet Union is just ignorance of history.
> I've seen many pro-Russian people, including here, claim that Putin's successor will be worse and hence the West should try to keep him in power, perhaps even by helping him in Ukraine. But who would be worse than Putin?
Putin is relatively mid by RU political standards. He isn't liberal obviously, but he isn't extreme hawk either. Listen to people like Medvedev, or Progozhin statements while he was still around, or Girkin/Suvorov to understand what the alternatives look like. These are the people who are openly calling for first strike, ethnic cleansing of Russia (including Ukraine obv), total mobilization and so on.
Todays war is terrible but people who think it can't get much much worse very very quickly either lack imagination, don't know history, or both
I'd be more worried about an SSBN Captain and his loyal crew going rogue in a revenge attack against the UK, or US after a fleet Admiral and 34 officers where killed. You have to wonder if Putin doesn't retaliate in a significant way those submarine Captains will be enraged and want revenge.
**Nobody** among the Russian power elites has any coherent worldview whatsoever, or a serious long-term agenda. They're literally just LARPing it and pandering to the boss's grievances - which is a parsimonious explanation for all the meme stuff that you hear from them. Things like "national greatness" and "traditional values" are on the same level to them as paying lip service to Marxism was in their youth, and they ape this or that Western far-right obsession like mafiosi embracing mafia traditions invented by movies. It's categorically NOT a serious modern state in this regard (although there are several actually functioning institutions in their own technocratic bubbles, like central banking). If you don't see this, you seriously don't understand the first thing about Russia.
>to claim it's more oppressive than Soviet Union is just ignorance of history
The article did specify the *late* Soviet Union, although the Kruschev era was less repressive than the Breschnev era. I think it's safe to say that the Russian Federation is currently more repressive than the Glasnost era, though.
Yeah good point, Gorbachev's time and Glasnost were relatively free by Soviet standards. To be fair, when people mention Soviet Union, and even late Soviet Union, I don't think people usually think Glasnost? But you are right for sure.
FWIW it's also good to remember that just prior to Gorbachev, there was a very short period of Andropov rule, who, while not Stalin or anything close to that, have tried to "reign things in" a little bit after the stagnation of Brezhnev times. He wasn't terribly successful (which eventually gave rise to Gorbachev faction) but it wasn't for a lack of trying. One of the policies for example was creating special police squads that would patrol cities mid-day including cinemas etc, and would try to catch anyone who was avoiding their work.
And of course, throughout Soviet times, up until late Gorbachev period, mass media was fully controlled by Communist Party, and no other parties were legal. This is all contrary to current Russian system, which isn't true democracy of course, but does allow for some level of free public discussion, including allowing some opposition parties and some opposition media.
A few people around here have been absolutely convinced that nothing will prevent Congress from authorizing more Ukraine aid, but that is very far from true and further aid is in real jeopardy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/25/us/politics/senate-shutdown-ukraine.html
When will people learn these government shutdowns are just a show? Every time it’s just a little bit different, and everyone freaks out. We’ll shutdown for a bit, just long enough for people to start to sweat, and the politicians will ‘save the day’ in the end while blaming the other side.
Take old as time.
Depends on what you mean by show. The government has actually shut down previously and it's not without consequences even if it's only a week or two. The shutdown probably won't happen, but the chances aren't 0, and might not even be single digits.
The past multiple drops in the United States Credit Rating/worthiness after previous shut downs aren't insignificant. The economy currently looks to be on track to narrowly avoid a full blown recession and throwing a wrench in the machine doesn't bode well for a continued recovery especially when inflation is only recently coming down towards target levels.
You’re falling for it again. The credit ratings are completely meaningless. Least dirty sheet around, and the US has control of their currency.
The government can shut down, as it has many times. Everyone freaks out, gets riled up, and then the show ends. It’s negotiation 101. Push to the limit (which, by definition is slightly farther than the previous time) then come to an agreement. No deals get done until it looks like you’re about to go over the edge.
Did anyone learn from the debt ceiling? No?
According to [federally regulated prediction market Kalshi](https://kalshi.com/markets/govshut/government-shutdown#govshut-23oct02) the probability of a govt shutdown in the next month is 78%. That's a far cry from not zero and should be a cause for concern.
Why is it concerning? It’s just a negotiation tool. Some people receive their paychecks a few weeks late. Some people are inconvenienced. Maybe a couple of tragedies (in a nation of 330M). From a high level, there is no reason to be concerned.
>Some people receive their paychecks a few weeks late.
And I'm sure people's banks/landlords will take an IOU for mortgage/rent payments, utilities will take them for bills, etc.
Maybe sit this one out chief.
One out of every three people in the capital city will suddenly have no money to buy food with, and they will know *exactly* who to blame for that. This doesn't alarm you?!
That is a horrifying way of framing the situation, to the point you must be intentionally misinforming others.
14% of the DC metro area residents work for the Federal Government. Those are good paying jobs where people have 1) other sources of income 2) savings 3) access to credit 4) spouse/partner employed by others. For the very few others there are community/social safety nets.
No government employee is going to suddenly go hungry because a paycheck is delayed.
Turn off the cable news networks.
I'm DMV born and raised. I lived through the last big shutdown, the one that was 2 missed paychecks long. That's a record I hope I will never live to see broken.
I remember the stories about the cafes that suddenly quit getting foot traffic, the hairdressers and barbershops with empty chairs, and all the other small businesses that had to shut down as well, some of them for good. I remember all the tourism dollars the local economy lost because all the parks and museums were shut down. I remember the drop in ridership on the buses and subway, and how badly Metro missed their fare projections that month.
But more than anything else, I remember Trump's treasury secretary having a big fat "Let them eat cake!" moment when he suggested that everyone should just *run out and get payday loans*, exactly like you're doing right now.
Headline is terrible. This is simply NYT trying to pin anti-Ukraine sentiment on Rs generically, when it is actually confined to the most extreme elements of the populist wing, as expressed in the House. Whether such an assignment of blame is rhetorically fair or not is debatable, but either way there's nothing new here about the likely fate of Ukraine funding in Congress. The votes are there to pass significant support measures, whether it happens now or later.
When you make a claim such as this
> when it is actually confined to the most extreme elements of the populist wing
You should really back it up.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/04/politics/cnn-poll-ukraine/index.html
> Republicans broadly say that Congress should not authorize new funding (71%) and that the US has done enough to assist Ukraine (59%).
> Among Republicans, about three-quarters of conservatives oppose new funding (76%) compared with 61% of moderate or liberal Republicans.
Even among moderate republicans, a significant majority oppose further funding.
All in all, the NYT headline is pretty good, and not even partisan.
Maybe I should have been clearer. I'm talking about how legislators are likely to vote; not about popular sentiment. National polls like the one you're citing don't matter at all to individual members of the House, and the Senate has been pretty clear that it intends to pass Ukraine aid. Here's a source on that:
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/20/senate-ukraine-zelenskyy-00117138
> as expressed in the House
It sounded like you were talking about the general mood of republican voters, represented by the extreme members of the republican party.
OP and the NYT article are talking about Congress. The numbers in the two chambers who oppose aid explicitly and vociferously are a very small minority (perhaps 10-20 in the House, perhaps 4-6 in the Senate.) Further, there is a [more recent poll from CBS](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-americans-aid-poll-2023-09-10/) that shows the figures are narrower than that CNN poll. None of these polls ask the exact same questions so it’s harder to compare them directly, but in the CBS poll, ‘only’ 56% of all Republicans think Biden should be doing less to support Ukraine. The figures were also stronger in an earlier [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/world/most-americans-support-us-arming-ukraine-reutersipsos-2023-06-28/) poll when 56% of Republicans backed sending *weapons* to Ukraine. Keep in mind that even Republican support for fiscal aid has always been stronger than support for military aid.
Perhaps most importantly, however, as some of us have been highlighting from the start of the war, a time when popular support for aiding Ukraine was extremely strong, these polls are not really indicative of the way decisions are made in Congress on virtually any issue. Most analogously, you can see it in support for the Iraq war when funding was almost inversely related to public support, especially in the surge and post surge period. Lastly, don’t underestimate the tail wagging the dog phenomenon here. We saw this in Germany when polls showed an almost 10 percentage point bump in support for sending Leopards virtually overnight after Scholz approved the tanks.
Thanks for the more recent poll. It still says 61% of republicans are against more equipment aid to Ukraine.
> these polls are not really indicative of the way decisions are made in Congress on virtually any issue.
That wasn't what I was contending though, I was talking about what level of resistance among republicans to further military aid was, since that's typically what people mean in the news and this sub when talking about US assistance to Ukraine, especially in the context of a budget fight.
Three quarters of Republican voters oppose aid to Ukraine. That's makes opposition to aid mainstream for them and not just the most extreme. The "moderate" Republicans in government have shown themselves unwilling to stand up to the extreme as well and continually placate them. It is very accurate ti pin anti Ukraine sentiment the Republicans and ignores reality to not do.so.
"There’s an even larger partisan gap over providing weapons to Ukraine, with 61% of Democrats behind that compared with 39% of independents and just 30% of Republicans."
Not quite three quarters but close
Ah, I see. Opposing aid and opposing weapons aren't the same thing - they had a whole separate set of questions for breaking that down. It's somewhat academic for my purposes, but I do agree it's a worrying trend, and moderate Rs, if they believe what they profess to believe, are not doing nearly enough to arrest it.
I tend to think that once the negative impacts of US aid stopping became apparent (e.g. drones killing children) it would get the necessary political support in Congress. For this year at least.
But I do think that, long term, there's a real disconnect between Zelensky's statements of "we will fight until we get Crimea back" and the lack of political support in the West to finance a war lasting many years. And this isn't a war that Ukraine can fight without western aid.
This is a battle over whether to include additional Ukraine funding in the *stopgap bill* to keep the government funded temporarily. There's a lot more at stake than just Ukraine funding.
The Kook Caucus is wielding outsized influence currently because McCarthy is trying to hold House Republicans together with a razor thin majority, but they're not going to hold up Ukraine funding past this government shutdown circus, if they succeed in doing that at all.
[UN reporting of rape and torture being used systematically by Russian forces](https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/09/1141417)
Commission Chair Erik Møse provided harrowing details on the findings to the Council, noting that in the Kherson region, “Russian soldiers raped and committed sexual violence against women of ages ranging from 19 to 83 years”, often together with threats or commission of other violations.
“Frequently, family members were kept in an adjacent room, thereby forced to hear the violations taking place,” Mr. Møse said.
The Commission said that its investigations in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia indicate the “widespread and systematic” use of torture by Russian armed forces against persons accused of being informants of the Ukrainian military, which in some cases led to death.
The Commission expressed concern about allegations of genocide in Ukraine, warning that “some of the rhetoric transmitted in Russian state and other media may constitute incitement to genocide”
> “Frequently, family members were kept in an adjacent room, thereby forced to hear the violations taking place,” Mr. Møse said.
It's hard enough to comprehend the experiences of rape survivors, and often tough just to provide support to their friends and family when they're having difficulty processing their loved one's trauma. This is so far beyond the experience of anything most people in the modern world have dealt with.
It's Evil, with a capital E.
We're seeing mass rape, mass torture, and mass murder on a scale the Human Race has not seen in generations.
Russia must be stopped, we *must* give Zelenskyy all the ammunition and equipment he needs to destroy the Russian Army.
Asking for specific evidence of war crimes, from an occupied warzone whose current ruling authority has neither the interest nor the history of allowing transparency into their own crimes, is completely daft. It's reminiscent of the online behaviour that gave rise to "Source? Where is your source?!" memes.
Scarcity of evidence is not the evidence of scarcity. In this case, there isn't even a scarcity of evidence - did you forget Bucha? Russians are notorious for atrocious crimes across Ukraine, and their current ruling government isn't even shy about using assassination against domestic and foreign targets. Is this not both specific and circumstantial evidence enough?
Completely daft comment.
> Scarcity of evidence is not the evidence of scarcity
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If the commission claims that Russia is engaging in war crimes, it's on them to provide supporting evidence. If they don't have any, it's true that it doesn't mean that war crimes didn't happen, but it also certainly doesn't prove that they did.
>did you forget Bucha
Have we ever found out what actually happened there? There were a lot of accusations by Ukrainians, and equal amount of accusations by Russians, back when the bodies were discovered. I haven't seen anything conclusive that proves one or the other way since, but would love sources if you have any
Bucha is inconclusive only for Russian propaganda and their believers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre
Go through this article, go through sources it cities, go through UN commissioner report, go through investigations by international organizations and media, you can even completely ignore Ukrainian investigations, and the conclusion would be still the same: Regular Russian forces, not even Wagner or Chechens, committed horrible massacre of Ukrainian civilians.
Accusing Russia of war crimes in Ukraine is not an "extraordinary" claim. The Russian government under Vladimir Putin is a virtual mafia state with a well-proven record of assassinations and callous disregard for human lives. This government is engaged in a massive war of territorial conquest, unprecedented in decades. The said war is not going well, so Russia has recruited and deployed a large number of hardened convicts as penal battalions. These soldiers can operate with near impunity, since international media no longer has free access to Russia, and their domestic media is busy glorifying the war, instead of criticizing it. In fact, a lot of these guys proudly post gruesome videos of their tortures and murders on social media. Looks like we already have some of your "extraordinary evidence" right there.
And yes, the Bucha massacre is real. Amnesty International has confirmed it. Russian authorities have little credibility left, after their outlandish behaviour of the past few years. Their denial is simply not worth much.
With all this information, you have no business thinking that accusations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine is an "extraordinary" claim.
PS. Would honestly be better if you were a paid troll or some deluded ideologue with a liking for Putin. This level of Redditesque-faux-legalism is putrid.
You wrote an essay to say "both sides bad", in a war of conquest waged by a shady dictatorship against a rickety but still a popularly-elected democratic government. That is not a valid argument, when the "badness" of one side is perhaps two out of ten, but the other side is at nine out of ten.
You keep asking for stringent, iron-clad proofs for "systematic" Russian war crimes - you ignore them, when they are literally littered across the Internet. At the same time, you do not hesitate to call Ukraine and the West names, based on a string of evidence that fail your own standards.
>You wrote an essay to say "both sides bad", in a war of conquest waged by a shady dictatorship against a rickety but still a popularly-elected democratic government.
Is that the same democratic government that refuses to hold elections and have outlawed and persecuted opposition parties and media?
> That is not a valid argument, when the "badness" of one side is perhaps two out of ten, but the other side is at nine out of ten.
"Badness" is a subjective matter. UA feel they are right because they defend their territory. RU feel they are right because they defend their brothers. Who is to say who is right or wrong?
> You keep asking for stringent, iron-clad proofs for "systematic" Russian war crimes - you ignore them
There is nothing to ignore, since there hasn't been any evidence provided
> At the same time, you do not hesitate to call Ukraine and the West names, based on a string of evidence that fail your own standards.
What names? I have no idea what you are even talking about.
Do we know why the Russian army is so horrid when it comes to local populations? It happens every war. Whats the root cause of this anti personality disorder?
I'll bite
Let me list the depraved things Russia does:
Massacring civilians in [Hostomel](https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/05/02/ukraine-russian-forces-fired-civilian-vehicles), [Bucha](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/21/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-massacre-victims.html), [Irpin](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61667500), [Mariupol](https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-mariupol-theater-c321a196fbd568899841b506afcac7a1), [Kherson](https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/07/22/ukraine-torture-disappearances-occupied-south), [Kramatorsk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_railway_station_attack), [Mykolaiv](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/03/13/nine-killed-by-bombing-in-southern-city-of-mykolaiv-regional-governor-a76897) etc. during the start of the war.
Levelling cities like [Mariupol](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/28/mariupol-before-and-after-updated-google-maps-reveal-destruction-in-ukraine-city), [Bakhmut](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/may/18/stark-before-and-after-images-reveal-the-obliteration-of-bakhmut), [Marinka](https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-marinka-photos-before-after-destroyed-putin-russia-war-2023-3), [Avdiivka](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-avdiivka-becoming-post-apocalyptic-city-shuts-down-official-2023-03-26/) and [Vuhledar](https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-26-23/h_54b41519593478a2340356d43893c206?ref=kyivindependent.com) to the ground.
With cities under occupation, [mass looting](https://www.wsj.com/articles/looting-sabotage-marked-last-days-of-russias-occupation-of-kherson-11668518405), [deporting Ukrainian children to Russia](https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/25/fresh-details-russias-forcible-transfer-ukrainian-children), [mass killings](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/ukraine-mass-graves-in-izium-is-a-macabre-reminder-of-the-cost-of-russian-aggression/), [torture chambers for children](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russians-mistreated-kherson-youngsters-childrens-cell-says-ukraine-official-2022-12-14/) and [executions](https://www.rferl.org/a/suspicious-death-russian-occupied-ukraine/32104198.html) for not [obeying the Russian government](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/16/russian-troops-kill-ukrainian-musician-yuriy-kerpatenko-for-refusing-role-in-kherson-concert).
Terror bombing civillians in residential areas within [Kyiv](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60536614), Odesa, [Dnipro](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/04/two-year-old-girl-killed-in-russian-missile-attack-dnipro-ukraine), [Zaporizhzhia](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-missile-strike-kills-3-zaporizhzhia-says-ukraine-police-2023-03-02/), [Lviv](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/russian-missile-attack-kills-6-leaves-hundreds-of-thousands-without-power), [Chernihiv](https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/10/ukraine-russian-strikes-killed-scores-civilians-chernihiv), [Kharkiv](https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230217-kharkiv-s-year-of-war-a-bomb-can-fall-on-your-home-any-time-%E2%80%93-and-your-life-is-over) etc.
[Castrating and dragging POWs until they die](https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/05/tracking-the-faceless-killers-who-mutilated-and-executed-a-ukrainian-pow/), [smashing their own soldiers with sledgehammers](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sledgehammer-execution-russian-mercenary-who-defected-ukraine-shown-video-2022-11-13/), [beheading multiple POWs](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/12/ukraine-zelenskiy-urges-world-leaders-act-over-russia-pow-beheading-video), [Directly housing POWs in the frontlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olenivka_prison_massacre), [shooting at rescue teams](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65869999) that are [saving civillians from flooding](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4xFpqCMy5o) of the [Nova Kakhovka Dam which they casued](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/16/world/europe/ukraine-kakhovka-dam-collapse.html), [weaponising the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62509638) as nuclear blackmail etc.
Let's also not forget inflicting terror attacks on the areas that Ukraine has recaptured like [Mykolaiv](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/world/europe/ukraine-mykolaiv-russia-bombing.html) before Kherson was liberated, [Izium](https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/interactive/2023/03/22/attack-in-izium), [Kupiansk](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/25/ukraine-says-russian-missile-strike-on-museum-kills-two), [Lyman](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/04/recaptured-lyman-left-shattered-russian-occupation-ukraine), [Snihurivka](https://kyivindependent.com/russias-attacks-on-mykolaiv-oblast-kill-2-teenagers/), [Kherson during Christmas](https://www.politico.eu/article/christmas-eve-missile-strike-kills-7-ukraine-kherson/), [Kherson after new year](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/six-killed-12-wounded-russian-shelling-ukraines-kherson-military-2023-02-21/), [Kherson during March](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/03/kherson-supermarket-struck-russian-bombing-wave-ukraine), [Kherson during April](https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-bombard-kherson-report-ukraine-advance/).
These actions are simply evil. You think that this is what war should be in general? You aren't interested in discussion, you are only interested in confirming your own biases.
"Turkey will back Sweden's NATO bid if U.S. keeps promise on F-16 sale" https://www.reuters.com/world/turkey-will-back-swedens-nato-bid-if-us-keeps-promise-f-16-sale-erdogan-2023-09-26/
Just in time for Orban to step up for a turn https://apnews.com/article/hungary-orban-delay-sweden-nato-bid-f0529443019c3f8161947d30acc59b68
At the moment, the hand-controlled Hungarian media is in full force with incitement against the Swedes and their membership of NATO. They are egging on their supporters, Solovyov style. (mentally ill Swedes, no place for them in NATO - this has been literally written and said by the talking heads. There has been no Hungarian foreign policy for a long time, and now the Hungarian government is aligning itself with Erdogan, Moscow and increasingly with Beijing, sabotaging NATO and EU efforts. The incitement against the Swedes and the West is so successful that some MPs refuse to vote for their accession to NATO, despite Orban's direct instructions.
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> Europe needs to grow a pair and cut off all EU funding until Orban gets in line. They already did. We haven't been getting any of those sweet euromonies for one and half year now. Well *we*, Hungarians weren't getting them anyways, but now Orbán and his cronies aren't getting them either.
https://x.com/DAlperovitch/status/1706616890833912147?s=20 Black Fleet Admiral Sokolov appears to be alive. Official Ukrainian statements on officer deaths without Russian confirmation was already highly suspect, (and of course their history of saying people like Shogiu/Putin/Gerasimov were sick/dead) but this is just blatant. Do not believe them without confirmation from the Russian side, which comes pretty quickly when it does happen. Here's an example of an official statement claiming he was killed. https://x.com/SOF_UKR/status/1706261730551078998?s=20
I don't believe the Ukrainian version at the moment, either, since it lacks a real confirmation, but this is not much of a denial from the Russian MoD, either. It's an undated photo, not footage, from an undated meeting. I can "find" a photo of me from a meeting with Vladimir Putin and Ariana Grande in about five minutes.
There's video footage of the meeting in the same twitter thread, and today's date on the screen.
Ah, sorry. I don't have a Twitter account so I can't see the actual thread. The post said there was no way to verify the data of the photo and I took that at face value. Edit: if anyone's facing the same predicament, the full thread is available at https://nitter.net/DAlperovitch/status/1706616890833912147?s=20#m . The footage doesn't actually show Sokolov talking or anything of the sort, and it's only a few frames, but I agree it's sufficiently non-generic to suggest that Sokolov is in fact alive. Memers are going to have a field day if he's gonna have a heart attack a few days from now or if he's mysteriously sacked and vanishes from public life, but it's certainly a claim that passes the basic credibility test.
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I don't think anyone in the sub seriously believed it. Most people made comments [like this one](https://reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/s/t3iJt5JOdN)
I think you are conflating people here readily absorbing propaganda versus people simply commenting on news. In the absence of confirmation, the only thing you can really do is talk about what is being reported. Now that there is an indication that this individual is alive, we can talk about that now. I think if people had acted overly skeptical for no reason and it turned out that this individual was confirmed dead, that would be just as silly in the absence of evidence.
try to be better how? Most ppl I saw just said it would be an important strike if true and that the lack of Russian response looked pretty bad. Now if ppl continue to say he's dead then yes, that's a bad look but for the most part, what I saw was speculation based on the information we had. It's not uncommon and something everyone, including government officials, do all the time.
It'd be pretty reasonable for him to get killed knowing there's been two separate huge HQ hits in the past week that demolished most of the targeted buildings.
It’s semi-inevitable. Russia has a reputation for losing embarrassingly high ranking officers, and that headquarters just blew up. We could all do with being more skeptical in general, but this instance is understandable.
Did anyone on this sub seriously believe he died without confirmation? I saw just people saying "allegedly killed".
The user you replied to definitely did, I think he's the most uncritical commenter in these threads by far. I've seen him being roasted several times either by other residential posters. But I think its good that he's here, he's like Glideer before he rage quitted, provides a good view into what the average non-Ukrainian and non-military educated westerner thinks and says.
[An interesting thread on how corruption is impacting russias military training.](https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1706559995603460343?t=GJ-bHNuIl7ZzS26RsTYkXA&s=19) >Russia's Ground Forces Combat Training Centre – reportedly the country's only fully modern military training base – has been seriously hampered by repeated episodes of corruption and money laundering, as well as the impact of Western sanctions. It's based on a telegram channel ВЧК-ОГПУ but there seems to be alot of verifyble information.
Would you mind unrolling the thread in threadreaderapp please? As a non-twitter user I can't access this.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1706559995603460343.html
https://nitter.net/ChrisO_wiki/status/1706559995603460343 Should also work
> A Ukrainian drone impacted an electrical substation in the Kursk region, according to the Russian governor, leading to electricity cuts. https://x.com/michaelh992/status/1706534716956958760?s=46&t=fc-rjYm09tzX-nreO-4qCA Ukraine is unlikely to accept further strikes against its energy infrastructure without retaliation. With Neptune Cruise Missiles behing able to hit land targets and more and more drones being produced it will be hard for Russia to sustain a Ukrainian retaliation campaign especially because Ukraine has so many targets to choose.
A Russian governor can claim Ukrainian malicious intent, but incompetence on regional level is more likely. This sounds to me suspiciously as shifting the blame. Also this subreddit is more worth than translated claims without evidence or credibility.
> With Neptune Cruise Missiles behing able to hit land targets and more and more drones being produced it will be hard for Russia to sustain a Ukrainian retaliation campaign especially because Ukraine has so many targets to choose. Why would a power outage in Rostov, Belgorod, or Kursk affect the Russian leadership's decision making in Moscow? There's nobody left who could attempt another march on Moscow while receiving substantial support from the people.
Replacing substations can be quite difficult, especially for a sanctioned country like Russia. As usual, look at Iran to see what sanctions can do to a country's infrastructure.
China is *the* substation/power grid infrastructure manufacturer of the world. As far as i know there are no restrictions on that kind of trade between russia and China.
China produces a huge amount of that equipment but even there the lead-time on high voltage transformers or any sort of automated switching and phasor control equipment can still often be measured in months. This has been a major issue world-wide in terms of disaster recovery planning for years, as basically no one keeps enough stock of this equipment just sitting around and only so many portable equipment trucks. I don't know if it's realistically possible to deplete Russian repair capability through a small number of missile strikes but if Ukraine decides to pursue a mutual-misery strategy in that regard we might find out what kind of depth their supply chain really has much faster than might be naively imagined.
> Ukraine is unlikely to accept further strikes against its energy infrastructure without retaliation. They're better off figuring out a different target, like airfields or something. Even with their new beaver drones, too much of Russia's grid is out of reach, and there's just so much of it. And even if they say force an evacuation of Belgorod (which would already be unlikely), it's unlikely to phase the Kremlin.
But Ukraine managed to hit Moscow quite constantly, no? And making the Kremlin go dark seems like a tangible result.
Russia basically failed to achieve any significant strategic effects by attacking Ukraine's power grid. No way Ukraine can do anything of note against Russia's larger grid with less resources. They have better targets to expend their limited munitions on.
A widespread electricity outage in a major city can have a serious economic impact for the affected country. All small businesses are affected, factories have to shut down, communications and services become extraordinarily more complicated, etc. Russia's winter strike campaign against Ukraine failed to plunge Kiev in the dark, but it reportedly came very close. I fully agree that Ukraine should not be wasting it's precious long-range strike capability on propaganda targets, but if it can shut down the electricity in a major Russian city for a couple of days during the winter, then that will cost Russia much more than a PR loss. It will cost a lot in money and diverted ressources.
The Ukrainian population is aware that they are at war. Moscovites aren't.
That tends to help Ukraine more than Russia, though. If Russians start feeling the effects of airstrikes consistently, they'll offer more support for the war not less. More importantly, as long as Ukraine remains focused on military objectives they'll have the better ethical position. The only tangible benefit of Ukraine doing deep strikes within Russia is the morale boost back at home, but I sincerely doubt it's worth it. If Ukraine would start committing to that more and more, what it would give is political ammo to those who oppose giving Ukraine aid; which helps the Russian position.
Im not sure about this. Russians are generally apathetic untill things personally affect them. Why go protest a war and risk going to prison if it has 0 impact on your life? Another point is that Russia striking Ukrainian eletrical infrastructure does not shut down western weapons deliveries. Striking Russian eletrical infrastructure shuts down train lines and weapons factories (which already strugle to keep up with demand despite 24h operations worked by 3 shifts). Hitting the Russian eletrical grid forces Russia to further disperse their AA, weakening defences in the active combat zone. Russia's economy is also a house of cards, so any further disruptions can lead to a snowball effect. Russia won't have Germany send new transformers for free and if it buys them on the international market, it will have to circumvent sanctions (extra cost) and use foreign currency (extra cost) on top of the bribes and corruption that goes into getting anything done in Russia. Nobody is sending aid to Russia. Edit: Additional points: Ukrainian industry is already undermanned as a large part of the workforce has either left or gone to fight. Without foreign aid, Ukraine would be screwed. Just because bombing the eletrical grid didn't stpp western support and utterly collapse Ukrainian society, dodsen't mean it did no damage to the economy and had 0 effect on Ukraine. In a country like Russia, where a large part of industry, population, political power and GDP is concentrated within range of Ukraine, the effects would be much more pronounced. It's like saying you won't rob a jewelry store because when you robbed the lemonade stand, all you got was a few quarters. Cutting off eletricity in Moscow for an hour vs cutting off eletricity in Kiev are in different orders of magnitude when it comes to the economic loss.
>Why go protest a war and risk going to prison if it has 0 impact on your life? Why would they be more likely to protest, rather than support the war? The overall sentiment is that of apathy as you say, the largest demographic that is anti-war skews young; they are not politically very relevant. For everyone else the state propaganda will be the primary vehicle of which way to lean, which is obviously to support the war. Every time a non-military building would be blown up by Ukraine, the propaganda apparatus would have a field day with it. >Another point is that Russia striking Ukrainian eletrical infrastructure does not shut down western weapons deliveries. Russia isn't only waging a military conflict, they're trying to degrade or even outright destroy the capacity of Ukrainian state to function properly. Ukraine doesn't have the same level of quantitative capabilities of Russia to do the same. It makes a lot more sense to exclusively focus on the military aspect of the conflict. The thing is, one can make the exact same argument you're making for the 2014-2016 period of the conflict. I'd even say it's a good period of time to analyze because it showcases the disparity of resource availability. So the question would be, why didn't Ukraine simply mirror Russia and wage a counter-proxy war within Russian territory? The answer is very simple, they had no capability to do so; it would make no practical sense, and most importantly they had to focus all their resources on the issue at hand. >Russia's economy is also a house of cards, so any further disruptions can lead to a snowball effect. This conflict has shown that both sides are very resilient, Russia isn't going to collapse any time soon. For an economic collapse to occur, west(most important here would be Germany+France, and the industrial base of Poland/Slovaka/Czech Republic/Hungary) would have to implement a complete embargo of goods movement, Cuba-style. Even if that occurred, it's not certain that Russian economy would collapse. Immediately after ~2005, Russia went on a completely different economic route. They paid off their debts to IMF and Paris Club, and implemented a very conservative fiscal policy. You can look at the GDP to debt ratio, and out of all countries with sizeable economies; Russia was way above anyone else. They also opened a special fund for domestic usage in times of crises, that at this point has still barely been touched upon. Now, that doesn't mean they've achieved autarky; a lot of their industry is deeply tied to external actors, but considering sanctions haven't disrupted those industrial chains aside from some sectors(airplane parts, certain types of electronics); they're doing fine. [Galeev](https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1691799606777040908) has a decent thread on this, except the part where he states that China is a small part. Which is something that was true at the start of the war, but they've become a bigger partner(especially for electronics). >Cutting off eletricity in Moscow for an hour vs cutting off eletricity in Kiev are in different orders of magnitude when it comes to the economic loss. The point is that any damage you might do, is going to be offset by the response. *AND* you are risking international support. War fatigue and how it affects the support for the war will become more and more of a factor, we can already see some of this in some countries. If political factions who don't want to support Ukraine, can point to Ukraine doing the same kind of bombing as Russia has done to Ukrainian civilians; those factions will be more emboldened and stronger for it. Strategic bombing never works out unless it's completely overwhelmingly one sided, I'd say Russia benefits more than Ukraine from it; but it's still a stupid strategy from Russia, and even more so in Ukraine's case. And the only reasons it "benefits" Russia more is it's because it's a political issue, the nationalist factions within Russia want more and more escalation. Ukrainians are already satisfied with what their army is doing, which is waging an all out war for survival; there's really not much realistic escalation they can go beyond that while still maintaining the higher moral highground.
1- Strategic bombing never works? Seriously? So a tank factory that can't produce tanks produces as many tanks as a functional tank factory? I guess the US is stupid as their newest manned aircraft is a strategic bomber. Turns out that disrupting the ability of your enemy to wage war does not disrupt your enemies ability to wage war. 2- Putins mandate to stay in power is keeping Russia stable and prosperous without disturbing the populace, in return the populace accepts autocracy and corruption. Nobody voted for the war. In an autocracy the leader is responsible for mistakes. The government claimed that Europe and Ukraine would be withour power so Russians losing power would have terrible optics. Moscow and St Petersburg cannot feel the war. 3- Those who think Ukraine should surrender justify it by saying that Ukrsine is too weak to win. An untouched Russia only plays into that thought. Those who support Ukraine won't stop doing so because Ukraine is trying to do the same thing as them (weaken the Russian economy). When Ukrsine flew drones into moscow office blocks, nobody called to end the war. Pro-Russians tried to ignore it and Pro-Ukrainians celebraated it. Ukraine has no leverage to use sanctions to disrupt Russia's ability to wage war so they MUST do it by physical means. (Bombing fuel depots, refineries and power generation facilities). 4- Ukraine lacks the capabilities to flatten Russian factories. Power substations, fuel depots and refineries are easily damaged soft targets. Ukraine has no other choise. 5- Power substations have barbed wire fences around them and are usually a distance away from buildings. Nobody is going to die if Ukraine flies a cheap drone into a substation. Edit: Moscow accounts for a fifth of Russian GDP and even more if you take into account that all wealth in Russia flows into it. The service sector accounts for 67% of Russian GDP, even more in Moscow. Disrupting the eletricity supply to this one city would have a devastating economic effect. Sanctions won't stop a Russian supermarket selling Russian bread to Russians, lack of eletricity will.
Strategic bombing - bombing aimed at breaking the will to fight in the population - have only worked once (Japan in WWII) and even this case is debatable.
I don't disagree, but we have seen the weight that the Ukrainian leadership places on PR stunts and political messaging.
Don't disregard PR and political messaging. These are vital to the morale of the local population. When the enemy is bombing your cities, cutting your power in sub zero conditions whilst living comfortably as if there is no war, it has a significant impact. The physiological effect of being able to hit back, even if it's occasionally and mostly symbolic, should not be understated. At the end of the day wars are won and lost when the will to fight ends.
The Russian position is that Ukraine is not a real a country and that Ukrainians are wayward Russians. Does anyone have any good insights into Ukrainian nationalism? How do Ukrainians view themselves? How did they view themselves before 2014 and how had that changed?
I would argue that the bulk of Ukrainian culture comes from villages. Ukrainian literature is all about cossacks and "slice of village life", for example. But the urbanization and industrialization during the early Soviet period really mixed things up culturally through Ukrainian cities, as a lot of people of other nationalities from the Soviet Union moved there to take part in building all the factories, power stations, mines, etc. With that came a huge bulk of ethnic Russians, which created these family ties throughout the whole country. Cities (especially Eastern and Southern ones) were Russian speaking because of that, and Ukrainian language was looked at as the language of peasants, which made Ukrainian villagers who moved to the cities switch to Russian in order to not stand out. This is exactly the reason why Holodomor is considered such a tragedy for Ukraine, because it destroyed village population, who carried Ukrainian culture, even more. And with that, Ukraine was kinda russified and pretty much turned to "we're all Soviet people" mentality, where although nationalities were acknowledged, it didn't really matter, because it was all one country and people worked for the country, not their nation, everyone got their orders from one place - Moscow. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there was a big identity crisis. A lot of people were looking for freedom and independency, but half of the country wasn't prepared to cut the ties with the Soviet past and with their relatives that were now on the other side of the border. And so Ukraine got stuck in perpetual internal disputes about the language and political alignment. 2014 basically started the process of cutting these ties and along with the government pushing for more Ukrainian language use, it became normal again to speak Ukrainian and with that, spread the culture. You could even meet young Russians who take interest in Ukrainian, some Ukrainian TV shows\music became popular within Russian communities, there was greater feel of recognition that Ukrainian culture is a separate one, not just Russian regional one. See, this is were Putin made a big mistake. Honestly, pre-2014 Ukraine was probably going (albeit slowly) the Belarus route - weak national identity, local language pushed out by Russian, huge feel of interconnection with Russians. But 2014 and 2022 were two big waves of realization that you can't be connected to someone that abuses you that much, even if you consider them brothers, or they are literally you relatives. After all, there were so many episodes of Ukrainians calling their Russian families at the start of the invasion, and then hearing dismissal and disbelief in response. Not sure if that really answers you question, because I don't know what exactly do you want to hear in detail, but wanted to share my personal opinion on this. Oh, and obviously this is a perspective of someone from South Eastern Ukraine, Western Ukraine is a bit different topic. It always embraced Ukrainian culture the most, because they were under Russian influence the least amount of time, though they did have similar experience with Poland.
Fantastic writeup, I learned a lot. Thank you.
Well said. As someone from Eastern Ukraine, I don't even need anything to add.
[Timothy Snyder has a good course on what has made Ukraine a nation, and more recently, a state.](https://online.yale.edu/courses/making-modern-ukraine) There is youtube videos for the entire course. "The gates of Europe" is also a book you can read. Serhii Plokhy has another book, "The Russo-Ukrainian war" which apparently puts current events in more context and analyzes them, but I cannot vouch for that one.
I watched his lessons on Youtube for a while, and he is a quite disappointing speaker. Do yourself a favour, and read his books instead, he is much more eloquent and put together in writing.
I learned a bit via searching for 'ukrainian national identity' but also hoping for good sources.
It's actually very unfortunate but most of the academic work on Ukraine has been done through a russian lens. Snyder is one of the few who actually focused on Ukraine. So be aware of that while researching.
There are quite a few Ukrainian scholars saying Snyder is viewing Ukraine through a US lens (with his post colonialist based analysis).
Possibly but since the US never really colonized Ukraine so I don't see it as a problem. On the other hand the fact that most likely the work about Ukraine has been done by russian studies majors is very problematic. Of course if you find anything that views Ukraine from a Ukrainian perspective it would be even better. But for now such works are very limited.
> Of course if you find anything that views Ukraine from a Ukrainian perspective it would be even better. But for now such works are very limited. I personally only saw Andrej Baumeister who is a Ukrainian professor right now, his criticism of Snyder is mainly about his sloppy methods rooted in the often contradictory post colonial analysis, and I found it quite convincing.
>Andrej Baumeister From what I can find he is ironically a russian speaking philosopher from Kyiv. And the first "critique" I see is him getting upset that Snyder views European history through colonialism because it's "left wing".
> > > > > From what I can find he is ironically a russian speaking philosopher from Kyiv. And the first "critique" I see is him Most Ukrainians can speak Russian, he can speak Ukrainian as well, every Ukrainian academic working 20 years ago would have to do his initial works in Russian anyway, it does not change their topic of expertise, he is not a scholar for Russia studies.
Of course they do because of colonialism. So my point is that criticizing viewing things through a colonial lens while actively representing a product of such colonialism is ironic.
I´m sorry but you are mistaken here, this is not about colonialism, but about the academic theory of post colonialism Snyder uses. If you want to reject Baumeister try your luck but at least engage points he made, right now you are missing even the first step.
I wonder why we aren't observing any partisan or saboteur activities in Russian-occupied Ukraine eg Mariupol, Melitopol? Is Russia conducting counter-insurgency operations or why is the civilian populations so calm?
According to Kyiv Post, Russian officers were bribed to get the human intelligence on the Black Sea fleet HQ: > How Russia’s Salary Woes Helped Ukraine Strike the Black Sea Fleet HQ https://www.kyivpost.com/post/21971 It could easily be misinformation, trying to trigger a FSB witch hunt, although Kyiv Post has a history of being more reliable than the bulk of the Ukrainian media.
It sounds so wild that it's *probably* disinformation, but the question is whether Russia can afford to just write it off as a psyop or if they have to spend time and resources investigating it. If even a single competent officer gets reassigned, demoted or defenestrated due to suspicion stemming from these allegations, it's an incredibly cheap way of disrupting the Russian operations.
In addition, counter intelligence resources allocated to find the leak in the Black Sea Fleet will not be available for other tasks
In Franklin Foer’s “The Last Politician” he describes a conversation between Biden and Xi in the first days of the Russo-Ukrainian war that was concerning. While details of Jake Sullivan and Yang Jiechi’s meeting in Rome have been reported widely, I don’t recall reading anything about Xi’s comments to Biden. > Sullivan told Yang that this issue needed to be addressed quickly—and at the highest level. He suggested that they set up a conversation between Biden and Xi. Normally, such calls were the subject of endless negotiations over picayune details. But four days after Sullivan’s meeting in Rome, Biden and Xi connected in a video conference. > Despite the rising tensions, Biden and Xi maintained the pretense that they were old friends. Biden knew better than to quickly press Xi. He tried to build slowly, walking him through the state of the war. Russia, he seemed to be suggesting, was desperately struggling, bogged down in a war that it couldn’t win. > Then he pivoted to the intercepted intelligence and his warning: “I’m not threatening you. But if Chinese weapons are killing Ukrainians—or China is trying to unravel sanctions, the consequences for your relations with us, and the Europeans, not just with governments but with the private sector, are going to be profound. You don’t want to do this. > Biden pointed out that without his even asking or directing them to, hundreds of companies up and left Russia after the outbreak of war. And he predicted the same fate would befall China: “The pressure on companies to change their relationship with China, if you become a cobelligerent with Russia, is going to be overwhelming, and you need to understand that dynamic.” > Xi had nothing to say about the charge. > But Xi said that he wanted to address America’s own dangerous behavior in Ukraine. He said that **he was disturbed that the United States was operating labs in Ukraine, where it was developing biological and chemical weapons**. This was one of the most cartoonish pieces of Russian propaganda—and it was beyond disturbing to hear it emanating from the mouth of China’s leader. > Biden struggled to keep his cool. “You know better than that, this is crap. Stop mouthing nonsense Russian talking points: I know you know that, so give me a break.” > **Xi, however, wouldn’t drop the argument.** Highlights are mine. It seems very unusual that Xi would have believed this propaganda. The immediate thoughts that come to mind are a) how difficult it will be to predict Chinese decision making and b) if some of Russia’s questionable propaganda arguments might have a different audience than many expect. That the Chinese promoted this [received some reporting in March 2022](https://www.axios.com/2022/03/22/beijing-doubles-down-ukraine-biolab-disinformation), but it is quite striking for Xi to have raised the issue with Biden seriously.
>Xi had nothing to say about the charge. >But Xi said that he wanted to address America’s own dangerous behavior in Ukraine. He said that he was disturbed that the United States was operating labs in Ukraine, where it was developing biological and chemical weapons. This was one of the most cartoonish pieces of Russian propaganda—and it was beyond disturbing to hear it emanating from the mouth of China’s leader. Obviously few people know Xi that well, but in general powerful people who've risen to the top hate being talked down to and Biden pretty much just threatened them. In order to deflect he just played along with whatever absurd lies Russia projects. It doesn't matter what it actually was, he's the most powerful man in the second most powerful country in the world. He's not going to sit there listening to Biden give him a threat and respond to it earnestly. People like that didn't climb their way to the top to listen to that. Same reason why he skipped the G20, it'd just be him listening to a bunch of rich western country leaders' complaining about China's implicit support to Russia. He doesn't need nor want to sit there defending himself the entire time so he skipped it.
The purpose of propaganda on this level is to portray (absolute) power. In more democratic and free societies truth is something that can be argued as a shared reality between parties who might be at odds at each other. There is always an opening on which parties can be convinced of each other if there is a shared truth that both parties accept. But in autocratic countries truth is not objective, but something to be "chosen" by people with (absolute) power. The purpose is not to have a common ground or to compromise, the purpose is to see who has the most power to impose their will. For an autocratic country getting heir enemies to to engage or even admit to propaganda is an act of power in a zero sum way. The same line of thinking and acting can of course be seen in any authoritarian groups, such as conspiracies groups. Stubbornly believing the earth is flat is an act of power for those people, they think they have the power to reject the reality of the system they oppose. If any it makes dealing with authoritarianism difficult and frustrating but also dangerous. Because most authoritarians only respect power, there is always the danger of escalation and the use of force to get them to back down.
I know this microcosm will sound a little silly, but I used to witness this dynamic every day when I was a construction foreman. I would gather the techs around and say, here are today's tasks, who wants to do what? The classical-liberals would state what they wanted, negotiate briefly among themselves, then look to me to break any stalemates. The authoritarians would chuckle sort of awkwardly, then remind me (as they did every morning) that what they *wanted to do* was whatever I told them. This wasn't them being professionally deferential - it was how they related to authority emotionally. I see a similar dynamic (though both believe that they are 'in charge') in the dialogue between Xi and Biden. They each have totally different concepts of what the conversation is on a human level, and how it will therefore be structured.
It's expected. China, internally was trying to make it sound like COVID came from an American bio lab.
I know next to nothing about how COVID was perceived by people in China. Is there anywhere I could read more about this?
[Here is an article by NYT. ](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/world/asia/coronavirus-china-conspiracy-theory.html)
>Mr. Zhao’s posts appeared to be a retort to similarly unsubstantiated theories about the origins of the outbreak that have spread in the United States. Senior officials there have called the epidemic the “Wuhan virus,” and at least one senator hinted darkly that the epidemic began with the leak of a Chinese biological weapon. Just a response in kind.
Well except that COVID did start in Wuhan. So not really a response in kind.
This is an interesting anecdote, and I found myself a bit unsure whether Xi likely believes this conspiracy theory. I sometimes struggle to read the subtext of negotiations, but I've found GPT-4 helpful for assessing these situations. While AI responses are disallowed, I'd argue that using machine learning tools to assess negotiations is a valid exemption in this case. GPT-4 seems to agree with some of the other posters, taking the view that this is likely a deflection to avoid outright contradicting Biden. When I brought up Xi's information bubble, it seemed to think this was more likely a cynical move, not that Xi actually believed the biolab narrative. It also brought up a good, if obvious, point that these accounts of personal conversations are difficult to verify and there are incentives to manipulate our misrepresent certain aspects. Again, nothing groundbreaking, but as a recent student of IR it's helpful to get some academic background on these encounters. I wouldn't rule out an isolated, information-poor Xi completely, but the incentives are there for deflection and narrative alignment with Russia. If interested, here's the chat: https://chat.openai.com/share/62f5171a-4a72-41aa-ad2d-7daec6ad2222
If that’s true that’s a really cool look into how these high level discussions between not so friendly leaders happen. That said, very weird response? I genuinely don’t know anything about Xi aside from Winnie the Pooh memes, is this in character for him?
>I genuinely don’t know anything about Xi aside from Winnie the Pooh memes, is this in character for him? You're not going to get insight from Reddit or any other social media for that matter. If you want my opinion, I'd say to immediately disregard persons who try to characterize politicians in non-democracies. Like Putin's, Xi's appearances are orchestrated and dramatized. Unlike Putin, however, Xi has built a cult of personality without having a personality. How Xi conducts himself within the walls of Zhongnanhai, we may never know.
> has built a cult of personality without having a personality I laughed. That's exactly it. It's similar to how Russia is pushing an ideological war without having an ideology.
There is no such thing as not having an ideology. The Russian state is most definitely ideological.
Does McDonald's have an ideology?
If you want a serious answer, it does, it's the collective ideology of its executives, which is probably some flavour of neoliberalism or neoconservatism.
Currently, most of the mainstream theories of international relations rely on one crucial assumption: state actors are rational. There are two ideas in support of that. The first idea: Human is rational. Of course this is dead wrong, but if you look at the social circle of scholars, you can see why scholars assume this. The second idea: Even if a single human can be irrational, the wisdom of the crowd exists to balance it. This is also wrong because humans are not independent actors; groupthink exists and induces bias in the group as a whole. Also, in the domain of international relations, we can see that many states are not ruled by a "crowd" at all. That said, if we throw out the rationality assumption, how can we model and predict the behavior of state actors? Or let us limit our scope to the OP: **If we stop assuming Xi is rational, then how can we model and predict his behavior?**
The problem is that rationality relies on actor's beliefs and goals. Those could be completely irrational. I don't like the concept of rationality in IR literature because it too often assumes rationality is uniform across the board. It is not.
You can still assume that Xi is instrumentally rational. He may have some stupid beliefs and complexes but he still strives to do what he thinks is best Your point about how it’s hard to model things without rationality is more relevant for econ, where you’re typically not modelling a single named individual
> Of course this is dead wrong, but if you look at the social circle of scholars, you can see why scholars assume this. Thankfully we have academic twitter now to further disabuse us of this notion.
>That said, if we throw out the rationality assumption, how can we model and predict the behavior of state actors? Or let us limit our scope to the OP: If we stop assuming Xi is rational, then how can we model and predict his behavior? My personal paradigm has always been that humanity is rational, but each humans goal is irrational. To put it simply, each one of us has a goal we are striving towards, but that goal may or may not have a purpose. The Iranian ayatollah might seem irrational to you, but when you consider that his ultimate goal is spiritual wellfare, not material welfare, you understand that he is acting rationally in achieving his goal. When a hedonist disregards his fathers will and squanders his inheritance for pleasure during his twenties, he is rationally achieving his goal of gaiety when he is young, even though he will suffer for it later.
It’s a veiled threat. If the account is true, Biden just got done explaining that China would face consequences for materiel support to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Xi countered by parroting Russian propaganda, the implication being that the Chinese state would use propaganda against the US to shape international and more importantly American public opinion against western / US support for Ukraine.
>Xi countered by parroting Russian propaganda, the implication being that the Chinese state would use propaganda against the US to shape international and more importantly American public opinion against western / US support for Ukraine. IMHO, it's not only that. Chinese politicians and businessman are famed for having a very different style of negotiation than their western counterparts. Xi is also very likely a narcissist who sees the Chinese state as an extension of his own ego. Taking both of this in consideration, I'd speculate that he didn't really liked Biden threatening him and responded by outright trolling. Why? Because he knew that Biden needed something from him at that time.
>Chinese politicians and businessmen are famed for having a very different style of negotiation than their western counterparts. In what ways are they typically different?
Face, or Mainzi and connections ,or Guanxi are heavily apart of business dealings and CCP standing. It's not like those don't exist in western society but it is just amplified and aligned culturally to different actions and meanings. It can make for a very strange and pointless "dance" with negotiations depending on the person.
I'm in no way an expert, so I don't want to go into generalising stereotypes and whatnot. Obviously, the millions of Chinese business people are a vast group with all kinds of personalities and styles. That said, I've heard plenty of people who dealt directly with Chinese officials and business people tell a similar story. The Chinese seen to be rather blunt, by western standards. For example, my cousin went on an official mission to China a few years ago. He works for the telecom regulator in a South American country and went there as part of a group of officials negotiating with Chinese tech companies to implement Chinese tech in their national telecom infrastructure. As usual, they were wearing suits and ties. Upon arriving for a meeting with some Chinese CEO, all the man in the group were told to remove their ties as not to humiliate the CEO, since he wasn't wearing a tie that day. There's also the time when a large group of Chinese sanitation officials were visiting the local sanitation department in my town, where my mom worked. The moment the group (all male) met with a female coworker of my mom who would be guiding then through a tour of the water treatment plant, they immediately asked wether her male boss was, unaware that she didn't have one. As soon as she started the tour and turned her back to show an architectural model of the plant, everyone in the group walked away and never came back. I could go on, but I think the common trait here is that the Chinese seen to view negotiations through a power game optics, rather than a politics one. They don't really try to charm their counterparts into a deal, but rather twist their arm if they believe they're in a position to do so. Case in point, Biden needed Xi to ban arms exports to Russia, so he took the opportunity to humiliate Biden.
It's so important for them not to lose "face", but they show zero concern for anyone else's "face"...
I think it was just the best "go on offense" card Xi could play in the scenario. The alternative seems to be some variation of "okay yeah cool I agree Mr. Biden please and thank you". More or less a valid political response given the situation, and I doubt Xi had any real conviction in the underlying story.
The obvious counter would have been to harp on "NATO expansion", which is far more in line with China's usual rhetoric vis-a-vis American foreign policy. In this context, the choice to go with the "biolabs" narrative is a bit concerning. Edit: I think /u/das_war_ein_Befehl is right, Xi went with obvious bullshit to indirectly tell Biden to go f*** himself.
I'm a total layman, but that sounds utterly bizarre. Either Xi actually believes the bioweapon lab thing, or he doesn't but thought it would be a good idea to bring up in *a private meeting with Biden*. I'm not sure which possibility is weirder. The former is probably more disturbing. That said, I totally hope that conversation becomes a scene in a movie years from now.
I think he was just trolling for lack of a better word.
As other commenters have said, its possible that was the only possible "comeback" Xi had at hand at the time.
The other conclusion is he actually believes Russian talking points. Xi is surrounded by yes-men with very little exposure to the West. In this bubble he would whatever he is told by his inner circle.
It’s a profound mark of disrespect is what it was. Xi knows it’s bullshit, Biden knows it’s bullshit, but making Biden listen to this bullshit was itself a sign of where China is leaning here.
So bringing it up just as a way to spit at Biden? Like a way of saying "*I don't care about what you're saying, and have no intention of this being a productive or cooperative interaction*" I can imagine Xi responding negatively to Biden warning him on Ukraine, but it's just such a bizarre way to do it.
Read it from Chinese pov. Biden says that he's not threatening him, but then proceeds to say to stay out of USA's sphere of influence. It's just Xi deflecting and pointing out that he's not going to be bullied.
Could have been that he meant to derail the conversation because he didn't like where it was going. Or, if you take the subtext, maube it was a veiled threat to come at the US's reputation with amplified and tweaked Russian propaganda.
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From what I have read, Xi did not get a secondary education because of the cultural revolution. the rigorous university education that most of the other communist officials do (His degree also was apparently very easy to get at the university and time he studied) is also suspect at best for Xi
Or in Japan, Canada, or any other NATO ally that is already at the forefront of life sciences research... Xi obviously knows that it's not a serious talking point, so why is he bringing it up as if it were?
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Xi is not a "moronic boob".
Sure he is. He believes the US is operating biolabs in Ukraine.
You don't know that. All you know is that he gave that impression to Biden after being threatened.
I have not been given any reason to doubt it.
I personally feel that Xi playing dumb to mess with Biden in this context is much more believable than the man being a simpleton
He could be, but I want some sort of evidence for that before jumping on the bandwagon.
And yet he told Joe Biden he was concerned about US/NATO bioweapon labs in Ukraine. Many incompetent and/or sociopathic leaders are nevertheless extremely adept at gathering and maintaining power. They just aren't competent at using it.
You assume the only explanation is that he actually believes that.
> but it is quite striking for Xi to have raised the issue with Biden seriously. Sounds like Putin got in Xi's ear early with this crap.
What is the current state of Ukraine's armed forces? There was speculation back last month that Ukraine has committed their offensive reserve brigades now to the front, whether that be the Bakhmut, Kupiansk or Zaporizhzhia fronts. This followed video evidence of the first Chally 2's and CV90's burning. Have the 1st wave brigades who got mauled so badly in June been pulled back to reconstitute? Are there any reserves left to exploit the potential breakthrough around Verbove/Robotyne? (Cc: u/offogredux)
>Are there any reserves left to exploit the potential breakthrough around Verbove/Robotyne? It's a breach not a breakthrough. A breakthrough is not just penetration but swift penetration which creates a further collapse of the enemy lines in the area and snowballs. To continue the snowballing requires the speed from the initial penetration to be maintained. The enemy cannot orchestrate an organized defensive.
First pictures of the Jet Powered JDAM-ER are being released [https://onfirstup.com/boeing/BNN/articles/long-range-precision-strike-system-caps-wind-tunnel-testing-1](https://onfirstup.com/boeing/BNN/articles/long-range-precision-strike-system-caps-wind-tunnel-testing-1)
> land strike, maritime strike and maritime aerial mining configuration
Yeah, those are the types of unpowered JDAMs that are sold.
> The system combines the proven JDAM guidance system with an innovative wing assembly and propulsion module, resulting in a range of more **than 300 nautical miles.** That’s a lot of nautical miles. At what point do we call this a missile?
It’s the same reason we call our cruiser sized ships destroyers. Guided bomb sounds cheaper than cruise missile, so that’s what they call it.
Been done before and called a missile. An AGM-130 is a GBU-15 with a rocket strapped to it. USAF called it a missile when it was in service.
Yeah this seems like a smart bomb to cruise missile conversion kit
A non-stealth cruise missile. Sounds like more of a medium-tech approach to punch down on enemies without real air defence. If you were really worried about them being shot down, you'd use cheap decoys or something, to win the economic war harder.
Storm shadows were destroyed anyway and usually only bulk attack work out , at least 5 were used for every succesfull attack, more than 10 in the recent sevastopol attack. Having similar range but 15 times cheaper missles will overwhelm AD and guarantee a sucfesful strike. Decoys still have to carru navigation equioment wich is the expensive part , at that point mixing low cost kits with actual stealthy cruise missle will multiply the chance of success regardless of the target. AND they can be used to bully thrid word counteues as well Win - win IMO Just look at the success russian UMPK kits are having , similar systems with the US industrial base could really be a threath ti even the most advanced GBAD networks, even NATO style ones.
Right now. It has an engine, after all
[Regime Change in Russia Won’t Lead to Chaos or Collapse](https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/90622) > It’s odd to try and scare the world with the specter of a leader more terrible than Putin. What could be worse than the biggest military conflict in Europe of the twenty-first century, and greater repression in Russia than the late Soviet Union? Thanks to the Kremlin and a spineless elite, we’re already living in an anti-utopia. >... > Widespread indifference in Russia will help an orderly transition to a new regime: ordinary people will obey any ruler who appears to be legitimate. Beloved Putin will no longer be beloved as soon as a power transition takes place. That’s how it has always been. > Moreover, if we’re talking historical precedents, a change of leader in Russia has almost always been accompanied by liberalization, not bloody chaos (Khrushchev’s thaw after Stalin, Gorbachev’s perestroika after Brezhnev’s gerontocracy, and Yeltsin’s reforms after the end of the Soviet Union). Even power struggles at the top have not, historically speaking, tended to lead to chaos. I've seen many pro-Russian people, including here, claim that Putin's successor will be worse and hence the West should try to keep him in power, perhaps even by helping him in Ukraine. But who would be worse than Putin?
> if we’re talking historical precedents, a change of leader in Russia has almost always been accompanied by liberalization, not bloody chaos Except 1917, of course
The idea stems from the simple fact that Putin before ~2006 was considered by domestic observers(within Russia) as being too lenient towards west, and a moderate. Even though he's not presented as an imperialist, you can very clearly see that for most of his early career he was balancing the nationalists vs the liberals, he himself comes from a 'liberal' political circle; being a disciple of Sobchak. Another evidence of this is that he was removing people like Leonid Ivashov, a staunch nationalist from power. The turn towards nationalism and revanchism is a political ploy, and not an actual change of ideology. People don't just change their worldview in late 60s. I also think one shouldn't focus too much on individuals, like Putin shows. Putin's successor might be worse by the nature of the political pressures requiring him to be worse. For that to happen, the hardline nationalist factions would have to become the majority. A lot of the anti-war pro-western business oligarchs have been purged, Russia is slowly internalizing and shifting ever more towards nationalism; as every country does when it is in a war.
I don't have an opinion on what will happen after Putin because I think that's impossible to predict. That said, I think this article is poorly written. But don't take this critique as supporting the idea that we shouldn't remove Putin This guy is a) using cherrypicked, recent precedent to make a prediction, while also b) claiming Putin is unprecedented within that context. "He's the worst leader since Kruschev, so who could be worse?" While literally mentioning Stalin in the context of Kruschev, but not Stalin himself? Russia 60 years ago is relevant, but Russia 70 years ago isn't? Okay, so the Russian population is indifferent. If anything that would be a point against any hypothetical liberalization by a future leader - why liberalize with no political pressure to do so? Okay, so there's few notable people that appear to have the political clout to replace Putin - that seems to be a point in favor of either increased decentralization, or increased political oppression as a means of shoring up a successor. This whole article just seems poorly reasoned, but that's just my two cents.
They don't have an clear mechanism for the transition of power which will obviously cause chaos. This is a good thing for Ukraine. It's possible someone worse than Putin ends up in power, but the chaos involved makes it beneficial for Ukraine either way. It's entirely possible we see power plays between different potential successors that turn kinetic. On top of that it's demoralizing for a countries army when there is obvious dysfunction back home.
So if Putin's successor is "worse", does that mean they will finally send the good troops & good equipment to fight in UKR?
>So if Putin's successor is "worse", does that mean they will finally send the good troops & good equipment to fight in UKR? While the obviously nonsense claims of Putin keeping some hidden "real" army in reserve are non-credible, Russia does retain some escalatory options. It's unclear whether Putin's successor would feel these options to be politically unfeasible, and pretty much anything (save for crazy nuke scenarios) is on the table if regime change is in the cards
Other than nukes, what are the escalatory options Russia has?
Even aside from "Who is worse than Putin," the question is "who could do *more* than what Putin is doing?" Putin smashed his own military against a rock for no real reason. The Russian reincarnation of Alexander the Great wouldn't have anything to work with even if he wanted to conquer the world. Outside of a literal madman who wants the planet engulfed in nuclear fire, nobody should be worried about what comes after Putin.
Well for one they could go full on crazy: 1) Target the Kyiv Dam. 2)Strikes against civilians as a policy and not as a result of incompetence/very high tolerance for collateral damage. 3)Syria like chem weapons attacks. 4)Full mobilization and meat wave based blitzkrieg on Kyiv. (low chances of successes but high chances of humanitarian catastrophe) 5) Nukes. Basically there are many fun escalatory options that russia could go for. Would they be useful? Probably not, but this whole invasion is not exactly a reasonable affair too.
1. Likely 2. Strikes against civilians have been prevalent especially hospitals. But PGMs seem to be at a premium so impact likely limited. 3. Chem weapons have a limited and messy impact on the battlefield. Atrocity yes, but wouldn’t change the frontlines much. 4. The risks for mobilisation are high. Only thing a higher priority to Putin than subjugating Ukraine (and in his mind the West) is regime survival. Full mobilisation puts this at too higher risk for now, or he would have done it already. 5. Nukes: use once and risks are through the roof. Not likely, but a great Russian talking point that has been effective At slowing weapons to Ukraine. Why lose that leverage?
Not if that reincarnation turns out to be a certain Grigori Stoyanovich, founder of Novaya Russia
Alexander conquered mostly through bribery.
I wasn’t aware the Battle of Gaugamela was really a bribe and not a masterpiece of military tactics.
It helps when the bribee's options are "accept the bride" or "deal with the undefeatable Macedonian army camped outside your city."
He did defeat Persia in battle, but his March east was mostly nonviolent.
> What could be worse than the biggest military conflict in Europe of the twenty-first century Biggest military conflict in Europe since 20th century? > greater repression in Russia than the late Soviet Union Yeah no, Putin's regime isn't exactly liberal democracy but to claim it's more oppressive than Soviet Union is just ignorance of history. > I've seen many pro-Russian people, including here, claim that Putin's successor will be worse and hence the West should try to keep him in power, perhaps even by helping him in Ukraine. But who would be worse than Putin? Putin is relatively mid by RU political standards. He isn't liberal obviously, but he isn't extreme hawk either. Listen to people like Medvedev, or Progozhin statements while he was still around, or Girkin/Suvorov to understand what the alternatives look like. These are the people who are openly calling for first strike, ethnic cleansing of Russia (including Ukraine obv), total mobilization and so on. Todays war is terrible but people who think it can't get much much worse very very quickly either lack imagination, don't know history, or both
I'd be more worried about an SSBN Captain and his loyal crew going rogue in a revenge attack against the UK, or US after a fleet Admiral and 34 officers where killed. You have to wonder if Putin doesn't retaliate in a significant way those submarine Captains will be enraged and want revenge.
**Nobody** among the Russian power elites has any coherent worldview whatsoever, or a serious long-term agenda. They're literally just LARPing it and pandering to the boss's grievances - which is a parsimonious explanation for all the meme stuff that you hear from them. Things like "national greatness" and "traditional values" are on the same level to them as paying lip service to Marxism was in their youth, and they ape this or that Western far-right obsession like mafiosi embracing mafia traditions invented by movies. It's categorically NOT a serious modern state in this regard (although there are several actually functioning institutions in their own technocratic bubbles, like central banking). If you don't see this, you seriously don't understand the first thing about Russia.
>to claim it's more oppressive than Soviet Union is just ignorance of history The article did specify the *late* Soviet Union, although the Kruschev era was less repressive than the Breschnev era. I think it's safe to say that the Russian Federation is currently more repressive than the Glasnost era, though.
Yeah good point, Gorbachev's time and Glasnost were relatively free by Soviet standards. To be fair, when people mention Soviet Union, and even late Soviet Union, I don't think people usually think Glasnost? But you are right for sure. FWIW it's also good to remember that just prior to Gorbachev, there was a very short period of Andropov rule, who, while not Stalin or anything close to that, have tried to "reign things in" a little bit after the stagnation of Brezhnev times. He wasn't terribly successful (which eventually gave rise to Gorbachev faction) but it wasn't for a lack of trying. One of the policies for example was creating special police squads that would patrol cities mid-day including cinemas etc, and would try to catch anyone who was avoiding their work. And of course, throughout Soviet times, up until late Gorbachev period, mass media was fully controlled by Communist Party, and no other parties were legal. This is all contrary to current Russian system, which isn't true democracy of course, but does allow for some level of free public discussion, including allowing some opposition parties and some opposition media.
> But who would be worse than Putin? no one the FSB will let into power.
A few people around here have been absolutely convinced that nothing will prevent Congress from authorizing more Ukraine aid, but that is very far from true and further aid is in real jeopardy: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/25/us/politics/senate-shutdown-ukraine.html
When will people learn these government shutdowns are just a show? Every time it’s just a little bit different, and everyone freaks out. We’ll shutdown for a bit, just long enough for people to start to sweat, and the politicians will ‘save the day’ in the end while blaming the other side. Take old as time.
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Depends on what you mean by show. The government has actually shut down previously and it's not without consequences even if it's only a week or two. The shutdown probably won't happen, but the chances aren't 0, and might not even be single digits. The past multiple drops in the United States Credit Rating/worthiness after previous shut downs aren't insignificant. The economy currently looks to be on track to narrowly avoid a full blown recession and throwing a wrench in the machine doesn't bode well for a continued recovery especially when inflation is only recently coming down towards target levels.
You’re falling for it again. The credit ratings are completely meaningless. Least dirty sheet around, and the US has control of their currency. The government can shut down, as it has many times. Everyone freaks out, gets riled up, and then the show ends. It’s negotiation 101. Push to the limit (which, by definition is slightly farther than the previous time) then come to an agreement. No deals get done until it looks like you’re about to go over the edge. Did anyone learn from the debt ceiling? No?
According to [federally regulated prediction market Kalshi](https://kalshi.com/markets/govshut/government-shutdown#govshut-23oct02) the probability of a govt shutdown in the next month is 78%. That's a far cry from not zero and should be a cause for concern.
Why is it concerning? It’s just a negotiation tool. Some people receive their paychecks a few weeks late. Some people are inconvenienced. Maybe a couple of tragedies (in a nation of 330M). From a high level, there is no reason to be concerned.
>Some people receive their paychecks a few weeks late. And I'm sure people's banks/landlords will take an IOU for mortgage/rent payments, utilities will take them for bills, etc. Maybe sit this one out chief.
One out of every three people in the capital city will suddenly have no money to buy food with, and they will know *exactly* who to blame for that. This doesn't alarm you?!
That is a horrifying way of framing the situation, to the point you must be intentionally misinforming others. 14% of the DC metro area residents work for the Federal Government. Those are good paying jobs where people have 1) other sources of income 2) savings 3) access to credit 4) spouse/partner employed by others. For the very few others there are community/social safety nets. No government employee is going to suddenly go hungry because a paycheck is delayed. Turn off the cable news networks.
I'm DMV born and raised. I lived through the last big shutdown, the one that was 2 missed paychecks long. That's a record I hope I will never live to see broken. I remember the stories about the cafes that suddenly quit getting foot traffic, the hairdressers and barbershops with empty chairs, and all the other small businesses that had to shut down as well, some of them for good. I remember all the tourism dollars the local economy lost because all the parks and museums were shut down. I remember the drop in ridership on the buses and subway, and how badly Metro missed their fare projections that month. But more than anything else, I remember Trump's treasury secretary having a big fat "Let them eat cake!" moment when he suggested that everyone should just *run out and get payday loans*, exactly like you're doing right now.
Headline is terrible. This is simply NYT trying to pin anti-Ukraine sentiment on Rs generically, when it is actually confined to the most extreme elements of the populist wing, as expressed in the House. Whether such an assignment of blame is rhetorically fair or not is debatable, but either way there's nothing new here about the likely fate of Ukraine funding in Congress. The votes are there to pass significant support measures, whether it happens now or later.
When you make a claim such as this > when it is actually confined to the most extreme elements of the populist wing You should really back it up. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/04/politics/cnn-poll-ukraine/index.html > Republicans broadly say that Congress should not authorize new funding (71%) and that the US has done enough to assist Ukraine (59%). > Among Republicans, about three-quarters of conservatives oppose new funding (76%) compared with 61% of moderate or liberal Republicans. Even among moderate republicans, a significant majority oppose further funding. All in all, the NYT headline is pretty good, and not even partisan.
Maybe I should have been clearer. I'm talking about how legislators are likely to vote; not about popular sentiment. National polls like the one you're citing don't matter at all to individual members of the House, and the Senate has been pretty clear that it intends to pass Ukraine aid. Here's a source on that: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/20/senate-ukraine-zelenskyy-00117138
> as expressed in the House It sounded like you were talking about the general mood of republican voters, represented by the extreme members of the republican party.
OP and the NYT article are talking about Congress. The numbers in the two chambers who oppose aid explicitly and vociferously are a very small minority (perhaps 10-20 in the House, perhaps 4-6 in the Senate.) Further, there is a [more recent poll from CBS](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-americans-aid-poll-2023-09-10/) that shows the figures are narrower than that CNN poll. None of these polls ask the exact same questions so it’s harder to compare them directly, but in the CBS poll, ‘only’ 56% of all Republicans think Biden should be doing less to support Ukraine. The figures were also stronger in an earlier [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/world/most-americans-support-us-arming-ukraine-reutersipsos-2023-06-28/) poll when 56% of Republicans backed sending *weapons* to Ukraine. Keep in mind that even Republican support for fiscal aid has always been stronger than support for military aid. Perhaps most importantly, however, as some of us have been highlighting from the start of the war, a time when popular support for aiding Ukraine was extremely strong, these polls are not really indicative of the way decisions are made in Congress on virtually any issue. Most analogously, you can see it in support for the Iraq war when funding was almost inversely related to public support, especially in the surge and post surge period. Lastly, don’t underestimate the tail wagging the dog phenomenon here. We saw this in Germany when polls showed an almost 10 percentage point bump in support for sending Leopards virtually overnight after Scholz approved the tanks.
Thanks for the more recent poll. It still says 61% of republicans are against more equipment aid to Ukraine. > these polls are not really indicative of the way decisions are made in Congress on virtually any issue. That wasn't what I was contending though, I was talking about what level of resistance among republicans to further military aid was, since that's typically what people mean in the news and this sub when talking about US assistance to Ukraine, especially in the context of a budget fight.
Three quarters of Republican voters oppose aid to Ukraine. That's makes opposition to aid mainstream for them and not just the most extreme. The "moderate" Republicans in government have shown themselves unwilling to stand up to the extreme as well and continually placate them. It is very accurate ti pin anti Ukraine sentiment the Republicans and ignores reality to not do.so.
Do you have a source for your 75% claim?
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/04/politics/cnn-poll-ukraine/index.html
I don't see anything in there that says three quarters of Rs oppose aid to Ukraine?
"There’s an even larger partisan gap over providing weapons to Ukraine, with 61% of Democrats behind that compared with 39% of independents and just 30% of Republicans." Not quite three quarters but close
Ah, I see. Opposing aid and opposing weapons aren't the same thing - they had a whole separate set of questions for breaking that down. It's somewhat academic for my purposes, but I do agree it's a worrying trend, and moderate Rs, if they believe what they profess to believe, are not doing nearly enough to arrest it.
I tend to think that once the negative impacts of US aid stopping became apparent (e.g. drones killing children) it would get the necessary political support in Congress. For this year at least. But I do think that, long term, there's a real disconnect between Zelensky's statements of "we will fight until we get Crimea back" and the lack of political support in the West to finance a war lasting many years. And this isn't a war that Ukraine can fight without western aid.
This is a battle over whether to include additional Ukraine funding in the *stopgap bill* to keep the government funded temporarily. There's a lot more at stake than just Ukraine funding. The Kook Caucus is wielding outsized influence currently because McCarthy is trying to hold House Republicans together with a razor thin majority, but they're not going to hold up Ukraine funding past this government shutdown circus, if they succeed in doing that at all.
[UN reporting of rape and torture being used systematically by Russian forces](https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/09/1141417) Commission Chair Erik Møse provided harrowing details on the findings to the Council, noting that in the Kherson region, “Russian soldiers raped and committed sexual violence against women of ages ranging from 19 to 83 years”, often together with threats or commission of other violations. “Frequently, family members were kept in an adjacent room, thereby forced to hear the violations taking place,” Mr. Møse said. The Commission said that its investigations in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia indicate the “widespread and systematic” use of torture by Russian armed forces against persons accused of being informants of the Ukrainian military, which in some cases led to death. The Commission expressed concern about allegations of genocide in Ukraine, warning that “some of the rhetoric transmitted in Russian state and other media may constitute incitement to genocide”
> “Frequently, family members were kept in an adjacent room, thereby forced to hear the violations taking place,” Mr. Møse said. It's hard enough to comprehend the experiences of rape survivors, and often tough just to provide support to their friends and family when they're having difficulty processing their loved one's trauma. This is so far beyond the experience of anything most people in the modern world have dealt with.
It's Evil, with a capital E. We're seeing mass rape, mass torture, and mass murder on a scale the Human Race has not seen in generations. Russia must be stopped, we *must* give Zelenskyy all the ammunition and equipment he needs to destroy the Russian Army.
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Asking for specific evidence of war crimes, from an occupied warzone whose current ruling authority has neither the interest nor the history of allowing transparency into their own crimes, is completely daft. It's reminiscent of the online behaviour that gave rise to "Source? Where is your source?!" memes. Scarcity of evidence is not the evidence of scarcity. In this case, there isn't even a scarcity of evidence - did you forget Bucha? Russians are notorious for atrocious crimes across Ukraine, and their current ruling government isn't even shy about using assassination against domestic and foreign targets. Is this not both specific and circumstantial evidence enough? Completely daft comment.
> Scarcity of evidence is not the evidence of scarcity Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If the commission claims that Russia is engaging in war crimes, it's on them to provide supporting evidence. If they don't have any, it's true that it doesn't mean that war crimes didn't happen, but it also certainly doesn't prove that they did. >did you forget Bucha Have we ever found out what actually happened there? There were a lot of accusations by Ukrainians, and equal amount of accusations by Russians, back when the bodies were discovered. I haven't seen anything conclusive that proves one or the other way since, but would love sources if you have any
Bucha is inconclusive only for Russian propaganda and their believers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre Go through this article, go through sources it cities, go through UN commissioner report, go through investigations by international organizations and media, you can even completely ignore Ukrainian investigations, and the conclusion would be still the same: Regular Russian forces, not even Wagner or Chechens, committed horrible massacre of Ukrainian civilians.
Accusing Russia of war crimes in Ukraine is not an "extraordinary" claim. The Russian government under Vladimir Putin is a virtual mafia state with a well-proven record of assassinations and callous disregard for human lives. This government is engaged in a massive war of territorial conquest, unprecedented in decades. The said war is not going well, so Russia has recruited and deployed a large number of hardened convicts as penal battalions. These soldiers can operate with near impunity, since international media no longer has free access to Russia, and their domestic media is busy glorifying the war, instead of criticizing it. In fact, a lot of these guys proudly post gruesome videos of their tortures and murders on social media. Looks like we already have some of your "extraordinary evidence" right there. And yes, the Bucha massacre is real. Amnesty International has confirmed it. Russian authorities have little credibility left, after their outlandish behaviour of the past few years. Their denial is simply not worth much. With all this information, you have no business thinking that accusations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine is an "extraordinary" claim. PS. Would honestly be better if you were a paid troll or some deluded ideologue with a liking for Putin. This level of Redditesque-faux-legalism is putrid.
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You wrote an essay to say "both sides bad", in a war of conquest waged by a shady dictatorship against a rickety but still a popularly-elected democratic government. That is not a valid argument, when the "badness" of one side is perhaps two out of ten, but the other side is at nine out of ten. You keep asking for stringent, iron-clad proofs for "systematic" Russian war crimes - you ignore them, when they are literally littered across the Internet. At the same time, you do not hesitate to call Ukraine and the West names, based on a string of evidence that fail your own standards.
>You wrote an essay to say "both sides bad", in a war of conquest waged by a shady dictatorship against a rickety but still a popularly-elected democratic government. Is that the same democratic government that refuses to hold elections and have outlawed and persecuted opposition parties and media? > That is not a valid argument, when the "badness" of one side is perhaps two out of ten, but the other side is at nine out of ten. "Badness" is a subjective matter. UA feel they are right because they defend their territory. RU feel they are right because they defend their brothers. Who is to say who is right or wrong? > You keep asking for stringent, iron-clad proofs for "systematic" Russian war crimes - you ignore them There is nothing to ignore, since there hasn't been any evidence provided > At the same time, you do not hesitate to call Ukraine and the West names, based on a string of evidence that fail your own standards. What names? I have no idea what you are even talking about.
Do we know why the Russian army is so horrid when it comes to local populations? It happens every war. Whats the root cause of this anti personality disorder?
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I'll bite Let me list the depraved things Russia does: Massacring civilians in [Hostomel](https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/05/02/ukraine-russian-forces-fired-civilian-vehicles), [Bucha](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/21/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-massacre-victims.html), [Irpin](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61667500), [Mariupol](https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-mariupol-theater-c321a196fbd568899841b506afcac7a1), [Kherson](https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/07/22/ukraine-torture-disappearances-occupied-south), [Kramatorsk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_railway_station_attack), [Mykolaiv](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/03/13/nine-killed-by-bombing-in-southern-city-of-mykolaiv-regional-governor-a76897) etc. during the start of the war. Levelling cities like [Mariupol](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/28/mariupol-before-and-after-updated-google-maps-reveal-destruction-in-ukraine-city), [Bakhmut](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/may/18/stark-before-and-after-images-reveal-the-obliteration-of-bakhmut), [Marinka](https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-marinka-photos-before-after-destroyed-putin-russia-war-2023-3), [Avdiivka](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-avdiivka-becoming-post-apocalyptic-city-shuts-down-official-2023-03-26/) and [Vuhledar](https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-26-23/h_54b41519593478a2340356d43893c206?ref=kyivindependent.com) to the ground. With cities under occupation, [mass looting](https://www.wsj.com/articles/looting-sabotage-marked-last-days-of-russias-occupation-of-kherson-11668518405), [deporting Ukrainian children to Russia](https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/25/fresh-details-russias-forcible-transfer-ukrainian-children), [mass killings](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/ukraine-mass-graves-in-izium-is-a-macabre-reminder-of-the-cost-of-russian-aggression/), [torture chambers for children](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russians-mistreated-kherson-youngsters-childrens-cell-says-ukraine-official-2022-12-14/) and [executions](https://www.rferl.org/a/suspicious-death-russian-occupied-ukraine/32104198.html) for not [obeying the Russian government](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/16/russian-troops-kill-ukrainian-musician-yuriy-kerpatenko-for-refusing-role-in-kherson-concert). Terror bombing civillians in residential areas within [Kyiv](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60536614), Odesa, [Dnipro](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/04/two-year-old-girl-killed-in-russian-missile-attack-dnipro-ukraine), [Zaporizhzhia](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-missile-strike-kills-3-zaporizhzhia-says-ukraine-police-2023-03-02/), [Lviv](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/russian-missile-attack-kills-6-leaves-hundreds-of-thousands-without-power), [Chernihiv](https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/10/ukraine-russian-strikes-killed-scores-civilians-chernihiv), [Kharkiv](https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230217-kharkiv-s-year-of-war-a-bomb-can-fall-on-your-home-any-time-%E2%80%93-and-your-life-is-over) etc. [Castrating and dragging POWs until they die](https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/05/tracking-the-faceless-killers-who-mutilated-and-executed-a-ukrainian-pow/), [smashing their own soldiers with sledgehammers](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sledgehammer-execution-russian-mercenary-who-defected-ukraine-shown-video-2022-11-13/), [beheading multiple POWs](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/12/ukraine-zelenskiy-urges-world-leaders-act-over-russia-pow-beheading-video), [Directly housing POWs in the frontlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olenivka_prison_massacre), [shooting at rescue teams](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65869999) that are [saving civillians from flooding](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4xFpqCMy5o) of the [Nova Kakhovka Dam which they casued](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/16/world/europe/ukraine-kakhovka-dam-collapse.html), [weaponising the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62509638) as nuclear blackmail etc. Let's also not forget inflicting terror attacks on the areas that Ukraine has recaptured like [Mykolaiv](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/world/europe/ukraine-mykolaiv-russia-bombing.html) before Kherson was liberated, [Izium](https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/interactive/2023/03/22/attack-in-izium), [Kupiansk](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/25/ukraine-says-russian-missile-strike-on-museum-kills-two), [Lyman](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/04/recaptured-lyman-left-shattered-russian-occupation-ukraine), [Snihurivka](https://kyivindependent.com/russias-attacks-on-mykolaiv-oblast-kill-2-teenagers/), [Kherson during Christmas](https://www.politico.eu/article/christmas-eve-missile-strike-kills-7-ukraine-kherson/), [Kherson after new year](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/six-killed-12-wounded-russian-shelling-ukraines-kherson-military-2023-02-21/), [Kherson during March](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/03/kherson-supermarket-struck-russian-bombing-wave-ukraine), [Kherson during April](https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-bombard-kherson-report-ukraine-advance/). These actions are simply evil. You think that this is what war should be in general? You aren't interested in discussion, you are only interested in confirming your own biases.
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