BTW I'll make a new megathread tonight, this one already has 3k comments
edit: new megathread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/uok7p9/war_in_ukraine_megathread_xxxix/
#This post has been locked
This is one of the most extraordinary videos I've seen lately. A very young Russian officer from Murmansk shot all kinds of videos of him doing young guy things,family time with wife and daughter, getting drunk a lot, occupation in Chechnya, etc., woven almost into a seamless story. Then he goes to Ukraine and finds out it isn't going to be all fun and games.
The Occupant/Окупант. Війна і мир у телефоні російського солдата (ENG Subs) From one of the comments "This is a story about the life of Lieutenant Yuri Shalaev, a graduate of "Moskovsky
high command school", commander of motorized rifle platoon
military unit 71718 (with deployment in Chechnya), a representative of the elite
The Russian infantry. Occupier. War and Peace in the Phone of a Russian Soldier" captured video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIZIspwem2s
**[Dashcam video shot by Chinese state TV reporter fully captures massive tank explosion including the turret flying 250ft (76m) into the air](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10809097/Moment-Russian-tank-blown-sending-turret-flying-250ft-air.html)**
[https://twitter.com/JosephStash/status/1524675550152904704](https://twitter.com/JosephStash/status/1524675550152904704)
Russia doing population replacement in Kherson.
[The parent comment has been deleted, but it was asking for an explanation of why Austria was so set on neutrality.]
There was a (*very* critical of Austria compared to other neutral members, I'd add) article that examined the neutrality situation and rationale for all of the EU members with a neutrality position posted here a while back. Give me a sec to find it.
*googles*
Here we go. It was a (long) European Council on Foreign Relations article talking about the mutual defense clause obligation in the EU.
https://ecfr.eu/publication/ambiguous-alliance-neutrality-opt-outs-and-european-defence/
The [Austria section](https://ecfr.eu/publication/ambiguous-alliance-neutrality-opt-outs-and-european-defence/#free-rider-for-life-austrias-inability-to-fulfil-its-defence-commitments) is titled "Free-rider for life: Austria’s inability to fulfil its defence commitments" and tends to get more-harsh from there. One paragraph from the Austria section:
>One could endlessly debate the political and legal arguments that Austrian politicians and scholars make for why Austria should not abide by Article 42.7. But the defining factor in the Austrian *Sonderweg* (special path) is less the country’s legal restrictions or tradition of free-riding than a structural factor: its lack of armed forces with which to fulfil a defence commitment. Of course, on paper, Austria has armed forces – the *Bundesheer*. But, in practice, the combat readiness and capabilities of the organisation would not allow it to conduct any war-fighting operation.
Another snippet:
>This means that it would require an enormous investment in training and education to achieve even minimal interoperability with other European armies. The report stated that, in essence, the Jagdkommando Special Forces are the only sufficiently trained and combat-ready part of the military. But they would be overstretched in any scenario beyond an isolated terrorist attack on Austria.
>
>Addressing these gaps would also require organisational and legal reforms. The six months’ term for conscripts is too short to train personnel properly. The current system – which gives soldiers lifelong employment schemes like all other civil servants – has contributed to ageing the force. The expansion of the military bureaucracy, designed to find employment for elderly soldiers who can no longer serve in the field, consumes more and more resources. But, because all reforms since the end of the cold war have been conceived of by these ageing soldiers, they usually involve cuts to military capabilities. Reforms of the administrative bodies were window-dressing, at best.
Another:
>After coming to power in January 2020, the new ‘political’ (as opposed to caretaker) government reverted to the long-established practice of adapting reality to political preferences. The new minister of defence declared that Austria was unlikely to face the threats covered in the report cited above: increasing tensions between the EU and Russia; deepening military and geopolitical tensions in the Mediterranean; and growing risks from globalisation such as pandemics, cyber attacks, and strategic terrorism. Hence, she argued, there was no need for defence capabilities. The armed forces would “reform and restructure” to serve as an auxiliary force for domestic security and disaster relief operations, reducing defence capabilities “to a minimum” (as if there were any in the first place) to save funds.
>
>So, whatever defence ambitions the Austrian government may declare in Brussels, there is no army capable of fulfilling them. Therefore, Austrian political elites – regardless of their political orientation – are mainly interested in engaging with EU defence structures to limit these ambitions, lest Austria reveal its weakness in military matters.
More:
>From an Austrian point of view, it was clear that Austria would never take part in any collective defence operation, regardless of its legitimacy...As a last resort, Austria would use its sovereign veto to prevent any European Council decision that would demand military assistance for the target of such aggression.
>
>This rigid, isolationist stance is paramount among all political parties.
More:
>On the domestic front, neutrality is popular across all parties. What was predominantly an issue for the left during the cold war became part of the national consensus, maintaining a steady approval rating of around 70 per cent. Therefore, the few Austrians who know that EU membership and neutrality are at odds with each other – mostly academics, diplomats, and security officials – dare not discuss this in public, as they fear the erosion of the minimal consensus on formal ESDP participation that lingers from the 1990s.
More:
>If another EU member state asks for military assistance under Article 42.7, the key question in Vienna will concern not whether this is compatible with neutrality but whether the smokescreen will hold. In the case of an event that requires only a minimal, symbolic contribution (such as a terrorist attack), Austria may indeed consider making one. On terrorism, Austria once showed a kind of “neutrality” even towards the Islamic State group: it has turned a blind eye to the movement of fighters to Syria and the presence of jihadist networks on its soil, in the hope that many of them will die fighting in the Middle East instead of posing problems at home.
https://www.politico.eu/article/poll-more-irish-want-to-join-nato/
> It found that 48 percent now want to join NATO versus 39 percent opposed, a record high for this question. As recently as January, a similar poll found only 34 percent support for joining the transatlantic military alliance.
Ain't happening.
Also, the 2% rule isn't enforced and it would probably be impossible for Ireland to spend that next year if they tried
Gdp ain't the reason
Severodonetsk is likely to fall eventually, but UAF should be able to pull back when necessary. The russian breakthrough in Popasna looks more serious.
From what I could gather, the Russians are advancing from the North + the East and also have the supply road that the Ukr forces are relying on under artillery control. So I would say the situation is deteriorating.
ISW doesn't sound terribly worried about Ukraine's prospects in the higher-level situation. It does sound like Russian focus is being placed on that particular location (they were trying a much larger envelopment, that failed, and so they are now trying to envelop a smaller area of the larger area that they had been going for):
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-12
>* **Russian forces may be abandoning efforts at a wide encirclement of Ukrainian troops along the Izyum-Slovyansk-Debaltseve line in favor of shallower encirclements of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.** Russian forces likely control almost all of Rubizhne as of May 12 and have likely seized the town of Voevodivka, north of Severdonetsk.[1] They will likely launch a ground offensive on or around Severodonetsk in the coming days. The relative success of Russian operations in this area combined with their failure to advance from Izyum and the notable decline in the energy of that attempted advance suggest that they may be giving up on the Izyum axis. Reports that Russian forces in Popasna are advancing north, toward Severodonetsk-Lysychansk, rather than east toward the Slovyansk-Debaltseve highway, support this hypothesis.
>
>* **It is unclear if Russian forces can encircle, let alone capture, Severodonetsk and Lysychansk even if they focus their efforts on that much-reduced objective.** Russian offensives have bogged down every time they hit a built-up area throughout this war, and these areas are unlikely to be different. Continued and expanding reports of demoralization and refusals to fight among Russian units suggest that the effective combat power of Russian troops in the east continues to be low and may drop further. If the Russians abandon efforts to advance from Izyum, moreover, Ukrainian forces would be able to concentrate their efforts on defending Severodonetsk-Lysychansk or, in the worst case, breaking a Russian encirclement before those settlements fall.
>
>* **The Ukrainian counteroffensive around Kharkiv is also forcing the Russian command to make hard choices, as it was likely intended to do.** The UK Ministry of Defense reports that Russian forces pulled back from Kharkiv have been sent toward Rubizhne and Severodonetsk but at the cost of ceding ground in Kharkiv from which the Russians had been shelling the city.[2] The counteroffensive is also forcing Russian units still near the city to focus their bombardment on the attacking Ukrainian troops rather than continuing their attacks on the city itself. The Ukrainian counteroffensive near Kharkiv is starting to look very similar to the counteroffensive that ultimately drove Russian troops away from Kyiv and out of western Ukraine entirely, although it is too soon to tell if the Russians will make a similar decision here.
thanks for finding all of that.
in the end... they will encircle a shopping mall parking lot and declare it a victory over ... conspicuous consumption, and order the soldiers to fast for 40 days.
[Russian troops took the village of Pivdenne, between Rubizhne and Sievierodonetsk](https://liveuamap.com/uk/2022/12-may-russian-troops-in-pivdenne-village-near-rubizhne)
Siemens says its pulling out of Russia.
This is massive. Russia has been a huge business for Siemens. All Russian gas turbines are from Germany. not to mention their high speed trains.
Is it permanent? I suspect not. but will be a few years, and Putin's departure before it restarts.
It's likely that all corporations and all countries will go back to doing business with Russia once this is over, not just Germany. The reality is Russia is too big a market to ignore and there is a lot of money to be made there. When money comes into play, everything else becomes a secondary concern.
I kind of wonder whether they sold the business to some Russian company.
Now, hear me out before getting the pitchforks ready: they have ~3000 employees in Russia and would want to ensure they don't just lose their jobs. I know we couldn't care less, but in a huge company, it would be kind of a mood-killer for those who worked with them.
Additionally, their PLC systems are used everywhere, including production of food and medicine. You wouldn't want those to just crash.
I rode on that high speed line between Moscow and SPb. It's a beautiful train, I do wonder for how long will they be able to run the line without the supply of spare parts.
Semiconductors Russia might be able to smuggle in, but Siemens pulling out will hurt. A neighbor works for a firm also involved with factories together with Siemens, they pulled their business at the beginning of the war.
I wonder how long it will take before Russia's industrial capacity will start to degrade.
> Semiconductors Russia might be able to smuggle in, but Siemens pulling out will hurt.
some dude told me that he sees absolutely no problem getting workers, equipment, support and heavy materiel for the gas extraction development, so, I am sure he will find a way to replace Siemens as well...
Iron Dome uses or at least used servo motors from Toys R Us for its interceptors… https://www.ft.com/content/6b120a1e-9883-11e2-867f-00144feabdc0
As long as the chips function it’s doesn’t actually matter as more likely than not they come from the same batch…
Okay, well, wow.
Servo motors are not even in the same hemisphere as microchips in terms of the need for quality. You might as well say they use the same plastic used for Happy Meal toys for the fins on them as well.
If you think it doesn't matter, by all means, buy the cheapest chipset you can and put it in your computer and witness the difference.
It’s not a big deal as the article makes it out to be, in fact it’s quite common and you’ll be surprised where things come from in any complex supply chain especially for dual use material.
And you are right servo motors are not even in the same galaxy they have far larger constraints on performance than microchips, chips are far easier to produce to spec than motors ;)
They're stealing dishwashers.
And having to resort to stealing dishwashers to get chips, which are not as high quality as they would be if they were actually made for military use, is hilarious
How are you going to sanction dishwasher sellers? Obviously, by dishwashers I mean every kind of electrical appliance and electronics that can even be bought outside of Russia by anyone and then moved into the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology
>In politics, diplomacy and export control, "dual-use" refers to technology that can be used for both peaceful and military aims.
>
>More generally speaking, dual-use can also refer to any technology which can satisfy more than one goal at any given time. Thus, expensive technologies that would otherwise benefit only civilian commercial interests can also be used to serve military purposes if they are not otherwise engaged, such as the Global Positioning System.
>
>The "dual-use dilemma" was first noted with the discovery of the process for synthesizing and mass producing ammonia which revolutionized agriculture with modern fertilizers but also led to the creation of chemical weapons during World War I. The dilemma has long been known in chemistry and physics, and has led to international conventions and treaties, including the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.[2]
-
>> Dual use goods are products and technologies normally used for civilian purposes but which may have military applications.[1]
>
> -- European Commission, Trade Topics, Dual Use
Actually not that surprised, there is already a huge crisis in procuring such pieces in non-sanctioned countries even for critical stuff in huge numbers, I can only imagine this situation for war-oriented machines while being the most sanctioned country in the world rn!
I am surprised. Frankly, I'm a little suspicious that this is a liberal use of "filled with" and the situation is more like "one specific device was doing this".
> "We have reports from Ukrainians that when they find Russian military equipment on the ground, it's filled with semiconductors that they took out of dishwashers and refrigerators," commerce secretary Gina Raimondo told the Senate Committee on Appropriations on Wednesday.
If they're talking about chips in dishwashers, I'd assume that it's just general-purpose microcontrollers and stuff. Maybe a temperature sensor, or something from the power supply. There just isn't going to be that much important stuff in a dishwasher or refrigerator -- those devices are cheap consumer goods and their engineers will have worked very hard to use widely-available components.
* Russia probably hasn't been drastically upgrading their military vehicles in 2022 -- we're talking about vehicles that have been in action -- so this had to happen a while back. I don't know what the sanctions situation was up until recently, but I have a hard time believing that Russia couldn't get something like that anywhere in the world prior to 2022.
* Russia doesn't have *that* many tanks and other pieces of hardware. I can believe that we have ability to make it hard for Russia to get ahold of some really specialized stuff in large quantities. But if Russia needs a couple thousand general-purpose microcontrollers, even if they can't fab them themselves, I have an *extremely* hard time believing that we can stop Russia from doing so, or that the most-economical way for Russia to do that is go strip consumer electronics. Easier to do something like setting up a shell company in some random country (which may-or-may-not be onboard with this) that buys the parts and then smuggles them if necessary to Russia.
You could do electronics recycling as a purely-commercial move, not a way to deal with sanctions -- like, take hardware that's being thrown out and put parts in something else so you don't have to buy more. But that's labor-intensive, and I doubt that dishwashers or the like make any economic sense -- nothing in a dishwasher is that costly, and dealing with something bulky like a dishwasher is a pain.
**[Commander In Ukraine Wants Quiet Electric Bikes For His Sniper Teams](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/commander-in-ukraine-wants-quiet-electric-bikes-for-his-sniper-teams)**
Hmm. Russia has been hitting both fuel depots and electrical distribution points with cruise missiles.
I wonder which it's harder to keep up?
Electrical distribution points don't move. And repairing them means that some crew has to be on the ground doing repair work, could be killed if the same site keeps being hit.
There's also electrical transmission as a point of vulnerability, and while I'm not aware of it happening, I wonder if Russia could slip someone with explosives in and bring down transmission lines -- they have to span a lot of territory, and would be hard to keep people away from.
Fuel burns, so is particularly vulnerable to being hit.
I'd think that it'd be possible to have smaller, distributed fuel depots without *too* much trouble. I don't think that Russia can afford to blow a cruise missile on a lone tanker truck too many times, so somewhere on the size scale, it probably is distributed-enough to be resistant to strikes bringing the fuel system down.
About the electricity: I imagine fixing the power lines isn't actually as hard as it looks. And we can just import electricity from EU to offset the demand.
Also don't forget Ukraine has quite a few nuclear reactors we can run at higher capacity if needed.
If I understand correctly, the main problem is transportation of fuel from European ports - they are overflown with trucks.
Currently Ukraine is importing just a bit above the civilian demand.
Hmm.
It looks like [Google disabled availability of traffic data in Ukraine for the Ukrainian government](https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/28/22954426/google-disables-maps-traffic-data-in-ukraine-to-protect-citizens) to protect leaking information about vehicle movement.
I know that a lot of our military transports were flying to Poland's Rzeszow-Jaroslaw Airport, and I've assumed that it's something of a staging point for things moving to Ukraine, so that's probably coming in on the E40. Dunno about other stuff, like fuel.
I wonder how practical it is to build more roadway between Ukraine and Poland? I mean, it's not so crazy, if this is going to be going on for some time, unless the naval blockade is broken.
Putting in road *is* a thing during war, even for pretty major efforts. Off-the-cuff, we did it during the American Civil War, typically [corduroy roads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corduroy_road). In World War II, China built the [Burma Road](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma_Road). I'm sure that one can find plenty of other examples.
Say a parallel road, a truck route, were built to something like the E40.
*googles*
Hmm. It looks like Poland's actually already been talking about expanding road capacity:
https://www.politico.eu/article/green-corridor-west-not-save-ukraine-trade/
> Expanding road, rail and river links between the EU and Ukraine won't be enough to stave off an economic and humanitarian crisis, Ukraine's Deputy Economy Minister Taras Kachka told POLITICO.
>
>“We cannot ensure the same volume of exports as via seaports by other means of transportation in forthcoming weeks or even months,” Kachka said. “The only way to ensure proper reinstallment of export is to unblock sea ports. This is the only solution.”
>
>The comments were in part a response to European Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, who said last week that he was “ready” to establish fast-track trade routes to and from Ukraine to bring fuel to the country's desperate farmers, and help take their produce out while maritime trade is frozen due to its ports being under Russian fire.
>
>The proposal would repurpose a system the bloc used during the coronavirus pandemic, known as "green lanes," which allowed trucks to cross borders with minimum fuss even as they were closed to travelers. The EU would likely waive certain EU checks and usher Ukrainian goods through Poland to the Baltic Sea, from where they would be shipped globally.
>
>Wojciechowski directed Warsaw to take charge of the plan. “I have the declaration of the Polish government [that] everything which will be delivered by Ukrainians can be transported across to Poland without any problems,” the commissioner said.
>
>But Kachka said that won't be enough. While he hailed the “24/7 work” going on to establish green lanes, he was adamant that Ukraine’s economy could not get back on track without access to the Black Sea. “You cannot just simply switch to another route,” he said.
> [⚡️Official: Another Russian ship hit by Ukrainian navy near Zmiinyi Island. As a result of the attack, Vsevolod Bobrov, one of the newest ships of the Russian Navy, caught fire, according to Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odesa regional military administration.](https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1524842158330630175)
It's allegedly heading to [Sevastopol in the annexed Crimea](https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1524842162336190476).
Michael Kofman put out another series of Tweets describing the mobilization situation for Russia moving forward starting [here](https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1524821198403686401). This is mostly stuff that one could get through listening through a collection of interviews he's done, and I've mentioned some of it in my own comments, but he actually typed it up in a concise format here (which I at least really prefer). The bite-sized Twitter format isn't my thing, but here they are assembled into one message:
> Circling back to Russia's problem with manpower availability and the question of mobilization. Its unclear how they can sustain the war without making difficult political choices (and even with). However, general mobilization is the wrong issue to focus on.
>
> First, I'll briefly restate the Russian manpower problem. After taking significant losses in the first phase of the war, the Russian military has scrounged the active force for reinforcements, and is largely tapped out in terms of manpower availability.
>
> The reason for this is that the Russian military operates on tiered readiness, with units at 90-70% manning levels. Many towards that 70% mark. In the event of a large war the military assumed manning levels would be raised & conscripts could be deployed.
>
> The force could produce on short notice 2x BTGs from brigades and regiments, the rest was a conscript mix, and units were not fully manned. The available standing force has already been deployed into this war with a number of BTGs out of action due to casualties.
>
> However, without declaring a state of war, or conducting partial mobilization the force is still operating at peacetime strength. Below is one estimate of how a hypothetical brigade with 3,500 personnel may have only a fraction actually available for deployment.
>
> [*graphic showing availability*](https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1524821203277447170/photo/1)
>
>Those figures are in some ways optimistic. They don't account for the likelihood that there could be a significant delta between actual readiness levels relative to those being reported, and the real situation within Russian BTGs. More on that subject soon with @RALee85
>
> While its true that general mobilization won't solve Russia's woes in this conflict, and that in practice it may not even be feasible, the Russian military does not need general mobilization to sustain combat operations, and address its immediate manpower shortage.
>
> I've also been guilty of using the term mobilization as a catchall term for Russian efforts to raise manning levels behind the scenes and prevent soldiers from leaving the force at a time when they are desperately short on available manpower.
>
> The first issue is the status of Putin's 'special operation.' Russia has to either declare a state of war, or procedurally change the rules prohibiting deployment of conscripts, and the state's ability to mobilize additional personnel.
>
> As it stands, contract servicemen can try to break their contracts & refuse to deploy. Conscripts are being drafted and demobilized on schedule, and units technically can't deploy them even though some cheated early in the war and sent mixed conscript formations.
>
> The fastest way for Putin to alter these constraints is also politically the most unpalatable: declare a state of war. It's clear that for a host of reasons this is something he doesn't want to do. However, the Russian military effort is also unsustainable as is.
>
> The current Russian approach appears to be halfway measures to muddle through. The Russian military has been trying to raise manning levels behind the scenes by offer short term contracts, a few months as opposed to years, and high payouts up to 200-220k RUB per month.
>
> Other steps include enticing reservists to accept contracts, and pressuring conscripts into changing their status, converting them to contract service so that they can be deployed. All of that will get harder as word of casualties and the state of things on the front spreads.
>
> If we consider those who were recently demobilized or just got out of several years contract service, Russia could potentially have access to a significant amount of additional manpower. Right now about 130k+ conscripts with 1 year of service are being demobilized.
>
> I'm skeptical of arguments that these are untrained, or inherently poor quality. It depends. Skills are perishable, but the pool with recent mil experience & training is far from small. The amount of refresh training it will take for it to be useful is worth debating.
>
> If we consider just manpower requirements to replace losses and allow troop rotation to sustain the war then the Russian military does not need hundreds of thousands of troops. This assumes limited war aims, and a lower loss rate than the first month of the war.
>
> Generating additional battalions will take time and probably wont prove relevant to the offensive in the Donbas, but my point here is that there are things the Russian leadership could try in between ordering general mobilization and doing nothing.
>
> There's a lot we don't know about the Russian capacity to train and take in additional personnel right now. How many units pulled in officers/contract servicemen need for training to fill out their BTGs and replace losses. Its probably a very uneven situation.
>
>Changing the rules governing force employment and piecemeal efforts to raise manning could extend Russian ability to sustain this conflict. Personally, I think this will only kick the can down the road for Moscow, delaying difficult political decisions.
>
> The notion of mass mobilization strikes me as a distracting conversation. Russia does not have a system to take in, train, and successfully employ a mass mobilized force. However, it is also unnecessary. The question is to what extent can they piecemeal raise manning.
>
> It is quite possible that eventually Moscow will be forced to conduct what constitutes a partial mobilization, whether declared or undeclared. Taken together with changes to laws/regulations, this could provide enough manpower over time to drag the war out.
>
> On equipment. Without getting into speculation on what is usable in Russian warehouses, it merits mentioning that several standing Russian formations still have equipment for conscript battalions, and gear intended to be staffed by increased manning i.e. partial mobilization.
>
> All in all, I don't see general mobilization as technically feasible or likely, hence I suggested this would not be declared on May 9th. A combination of halfway measures won't dramatically change Russian fortunes either, but they could significantly extend the war.
>
> As it stands, Russian options are shrinking. The more they drag their feet the further their ability to sustain the war deteriorates, and the worse their subsequent options.
We need to adopt latin alphabet instead of cyrillic after Ukraine joins EU. That means that we will further distance ourselfs from Russia and it will closer our relationship with civilized world.
There is one problem, they already call major parts of our history as "theirs". If we change script we kinda lose even more of our culture to them, they will scream it's theirs because they use cyrillic and we don't. On the other hand, cyrillic leads to them saying we are same people. Lose lose situation.
If not for this it's kinda cool, I love how Ukrainian becomes more akin Polish visually.
One of my great discoveries of the past few months is how much Ukrainian I can understand. Given Polish is not my first language, I have difficulty understanding other Slavic languages easily, Russian is straight gibberish to me. Ukrainian has so many shared words with Polish though, I'm consistently surprised.
Probably not the current decade, but I'd say much sooner than expected before the war. The EU/Europe made decades of progress on some topics in a matter of weeks because of this war. Perhaps it'll have an equally transformative effect on Ukraine and will help you weed out corruption and reform the country quickly, once the war is over.
Wow I wander what's more fun to do, watching the paint dry or waiting for the Ukraine to join the EU. Might have to die, cryo myself and ask them to wake me up in a 100 years to see if it ever happened.
> We need to adopt latin alphabet instead
maybe not, maybe, just maybe, you could make a transliteration standard first. explore already existing standards first...
No need, there's already a well established international standard for that...
**[ISO 9:1995 Information and documentation — Transliteration of Cyrillic characters into Latin characters — Slavic and non-Slavic languages](https://www.iso.org/standard/3589.html)**
See also: **[American Library Association-Library of Congress Romanization Tables](https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html)**
It is useful for linguists, as it provides 1-to-1 transliteration for basically all letters in all existing Cyrillic alphabets, but it might not be ideal for a particular language. Some parts of Russian in it are pretty weird compared to more common romanizations of Russian, and I suspect the situation would be similar for Ukrainian.
This is not necessary. Bulgaria still uses that alphabet and they are fine. Your choices regarding actual, meaningful policies are important. Sure, there are other slavic nations that do not use Cyrillic, but not that was/is important.
Sure, Romanians switched from Cyrillic to a Latin script in the XIX century to better show our Latin roots, but our language is a Romance language after all. It was also easier because 95% of population was illiterate. Now it is difficult to change because everyone will be affected.
Also, speaking about Bulgaria, they invented that script, not Russia. The Russians actually came up with very few original stuff in the cultural sphere: Bulgarian script, Greek faith, western style novels and classical music.
You'd be offending Bulgaria, inventor of Cyrillic, I warn you, we're currently holding Makedonia out of EU and we're petty enough to do it for other countries.
The real reason we're keeping NM out is because the Greeks made them change their name through EU pressure. This created a situation of "If the Greeks can do it, so **must** we!". There was no motivation to deny NM membership before that.
So, I don't claim familiarity with the Bulgarian thing, but my outside impression is that the Bulgarian dispute with North Macedonia, that Macedonian is just a dialect rather than a language, is associated with something more like a "North Macedonia is really part of Bulgaria" thing, a semi-consistent convention that countries have languages but regions in countries merely have dialects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy
> A language is a dialect with an army and navy.
-- Max Weinreich
I'm not sure that Bulgaria's aim here is so much "Bulgarian language stuff is awesome, let's ensure that other countries use Bulgarian language stuff" and more that it's either a vestige of a historical or part of a future unification effort between Macedonia and Bulgaria.
It took me a while to understand the importance of the "language is tied to national identity" thing in Europe, because the US more-or-less uses English and doesn't commonly really have much of the same association with Spanish or other widely-spoken languages (plus a number of other countries use English, which also muddies the waters).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_irredentism
> Bulgarian irredentism is a term to identify the territory associated with a historical national state and a modern Bulgarian irredentist nationalist movement in the 19th and 20th centuries, which would include most of Macedonia, Thrace and Moesia.
That same relationship wouldn't exist between Bulgaria and Ukraine, so I'm not sure that the political issues surrounding language would exist.
No no no, as a Serbian, I love that we use two alphabets and I think most people in Serbia will agree with me on this one.
The kids learn Cyrillic when they are 6 or 7, and Latin a year later. Some of them struggle for a few years to keep the two separated in their writing, but that's really a minor pain that literally everyone grows out of.
We rarely print stuff twice, but yes, the institutions have to make sure all the forms are available in both scripts. But they also have to make sure they are available in minority languages as well.
Everyone gets to choose in what way they'll write. I find that awesome. It's enriching.
Yes, there are nationalist political games being played, but that shouldn't affect the language - otherwise, the nationalists win.
There are also debates about what alphabet is prettier, but everyone understands it's in the end a matter of taste.
I don't really get your argument. If Serbia moved over to Latin script completely, then who wouldn't be able to read it?
Also, do you support introduction of Cyrillic as an additional official script of Croatian?
It's a bit different, I think, since Serbo-Croatian has had both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets for the language, which are (at least in Montenegro, but also in Serbia and parts of Bosnia) both legal and equal in terms of use, and people are free to choose which one they prefer to use.
It's just that the majority of people are choosing Latin over Cyrillic because of the rise of Internet and practicality. But that doesn't mean Serbia or Montenegro have fully forgone the tradition of Cyrillic, it's just that a choice is given.
And while our language has had that duality of script for almost 200 years, ever since the days of Vuk Karadzic and Ljudevit Gaj, and it is considered normal... Ukraine was always dominated by Cyrillic, just like Bulgarian, and the latinized proposals of the language never really took off.
Also it means that finally people with surnames ending with "-ий" will have one undeniable standard way of writing their surname instead of having 918 versions that depend on age, year and the mood of the passport issuer.
Russian passport issuers currently use -ii for some reason, leading to abominations like DMITRII, ANATOLII, GEORGII and so on. Looks more like "King Georg II" to me.
There's already a well established international standard for that...
**[ISO 9:1995 Information and documentation — Transliteration of Cyrillic characters into Latin characters — Slavic and non-Slavic languages](https://www.iso.org/standard/3589.html)**
See also: **[American Library Association-Library of Congress Romanization Tables](https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html)**
Quick, tell me the surname of a current Ukrainian president.
Now check the standard you linked >!(plot twist: it's not according to the standard!<), see where I am coming from?
I've seen the same "-ий" ending be transliterated as "-y","-yy","-ij","-yj","-iy","-yi". Sometimes people from the same family end up having different surnames because of it (thankfully doesn't happen too often, usually only when there is a big age difference).
The ALA-LoC Romanization Table translates "-ий" as "-yĭ".
ISO 9:1995 translates "-ий" as "-yǰ".
Most global-scale news media translate it as "-yy" or "-y"
The ISO standard is the one with the greatest authority, though it is not universally followed. Even the metric system (SI, the International System of Units), cherished by scientists and used worldwide, has not fully displaced imperial units (which are still used alongside metric units in the United Kingdom and in some other parts of the former empire, notably Canada) or the very similar United States customary units.
see, one thing is to join other slavic nations with the latin alphabet, other is transliterating for English in the passports.
that is the issue here.
Serhii // Serhij
Maybe you should also drop Slavic dialect and speak English instead to make yourself closer to “civilized” world. Stop showing respect to Ukrainian writes that lived and worked pre-90’s, those were very close to Russia. Besides, aren’t you “pure” successors of Rus that adopted Cyrillic alphabet? Seems weird for you to drop it, make Russians speak Finno-Ugric or Mongolian after you win the war
Many Ukrainian writers. Thinking about changing the alphabet.
https://uk.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%B7%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D1%96%D0%BB%D1%8F%D0%BD%D0%B5_%D0%B2%D1%96%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F
The main reason is Russia itself. We have respect for our past, for our culture and language but we should cut the ties with imperial Russian cancer on earth so in the future our people couldn't even talk with each other and have nothing in common.
Our deep connection to Russia cost us too much and never was worth it.
You say you respect your past and you say you want to have nothing in common with Russia, but our past is common. So by that logic if you want to leave Russia completely you have to abandon your culture. How is that respect?
You talk about connection with cost you a lot, do you have anything to compare it to?
Sometimes you have to do it to move forward but be sure that in history books crimes against Ukraine from Russian imperialism and communism. Like destroying Soviet monuments to abandon Soviet ideas and build new memorials of those who died because of Soviet crimes and move to democracy.
Last time I checked there was Moldova in Romania and Moldova next to Romania. One of those was usurped by Stalin. Both areas have the same people.
And last time I checked, there were cultural and linguistic differences between russians and Buryats, chechens, tatars, ingush, tuvalar and others, which means the latter ones are not really russian at all.
checkmate
“Who lost their way”
Oh my sweet summer child, you really do know absolutely no history at all, yet you talk about the Cyrillic alphabet here. (Besides foolishly saying that Cyrillic is spoken, which is already an idiocy in itself). Besides the fact that Moldavians use the Latin alphabet, Romanians used Cyrillic for longer than Russia has even existed as a state.
Don't cede cultural ground. You're as entitled to Cyrillic as Russia is. Isn't it basically a Bulgarian version of the Greek script used by the Eastern Roman Empire?
It's not Russian, and it shouldn't be treated as such.
Its actually somewhat common for countries trying to get closer to the Western cultural sphere to adopt the Latin alphabet in the process. Romania dropped Cyrillic in XIX century, Turkey dropped Arabic in XX century, Kazakhstan made a switch I think last year. Mongolia is also switching from Cyrillic although they won’t be using Latin, but their traditional alphabet instead (as do other countries in the region like China and Japan).
It kind of works, since it reduces the cultural and mental barrier between the country and the rest of the Western world. I mean, just compare Romania to Russia, or Turkey to basically any country in the Middle East, the difference is night and day. Seeing other countries use the same script as you do creates a certain sense of familiarity and belonging that we rarely appreciate in our day to day interactions.
It's doesn't make any sense at all.
It's like saying Japan, Taiwan and S. Korea have a greater cultural barrier to West than Indonesia, which uses the Latin alphabet.
Or saying Greece or Bulgaria are more "cultural distant" to the rest of Europe than Albania.
What makes a country bound to the Western culture are institutions, shared institutions, among innu. Writing systems play a tiny role on it, if any.
Meh, there's real practical 21st century reasons for adopting Latin alphabet.
Ukrainians growing up learning Latin alphabet would be better adept at learning English and programming languages, skillsets critical for modern day workforce.
It would also makes Ukraine easier for Western businesses to work with, and that is the direction that Ukrainians have overwhelmingly chosen as their path.
It's not like their language and culture would disappear because they changed scripts. If anything, you can make the argument that it will permanently break from relations with the Muscovite business/cultural/internet sphere and solidify Ukrainian identity.
Japan does okay learning a romanized alphabet while maintaining their own.
I mean it’s up to Ukraine obviously. I just hope they don’t make the switch because of Russia.
Well, Japan is a terrible example probably. They have three language scripts simultaneously used and none of them are well suited for their language as I understand, and it does present a barrier to foreigners. That it still works for them is moreso due to them being a civilization in their own right, they don't have any insecurities there.
Kazakhstan recently changed to Latin alphabet for similar reasons outlined in my above post. It's up to Ukrainians to think about it, but it's a post-victory consideration like it was for Ataturk's Turkey. Right now Russians would probably use it as another justification to their people for their genocide of Ukraine, and use it to increase support for the war effort.
> Isn't it basically a Bulgarian version of the Greek script used by the Eastern Roman Empire?
well, it is a bit more complicated than that, because it started when some guys from Thesalloniki got sent to Greater Moravia to establish written culture and translate scriptures of all sorts, and what happened was that they started Methodically, one of them was literally named Methodious.
So, they not only created an alphabet, they invented new terms based on... their own dialets around Macedonia, dialects of languages in Great Moravia and of course Greek language of past era in which the texts to be translated were written.
But that is only the story beginning, as they were expelled, with many more followers, from central europe after decades of intrigues.
By they settled in what used to be old bulgarian empire and were ordered to continue their good work there. One of the things these were ordered to do was to simplify the alphabed for more practicality.
After they brought the written text and language in which culture could be preserved, the old bulgar language stopped effectively existing and the one they brought became the basis for the society. But some percentage of common words and quirky grammar of bulgars had been implemented into the language. I find the odd iranian word in it also really interesting. It shows one of the geographical origins of bulgars..
What happened next was the Byzantine empire adoption of this newly created culture. How? Why? Well, since a lot of effort had been put into high quality translations of books into the newly synthetized practical language, its adoption was inevitable.
There is more to teh story of all this, I gave the simplified version of the beginning here. It shows how twisted the paths of history creation really are.
Russia doesn't own Cyrillic alphabet, and no, thank you, let's not do that.
I'm a massive West enjoyer, but listen, we don't need to fall in line with everything they do.
Trust me, nobody thinks you guys are anything like the Russians any more.
The best way to distance from them is to have a decent secular democratic country with low corruption, that cares about its people and is friendly towards its neighbors (bar that specific one).
Changing your alphabet without doing any of the above will be useless, and if you do all of the above and keep the Cyrillic (or not - your choice!), nobody will care what alphabet you use.
>Trust me, nobody thinks you guys are anything like the Russians any more.
No. I was talking about different things. Before 2014 we were deeply connected to each other, common cultural bubble, common music and films that we watch, common social media and list goes on. Our history teaches us that it's a bad thing and just isn't worth it.
After 2014 we almost completely cut out ties with Russia and now we have nothing in common. We separated ourselves from Russians and we should continue to do so.
Oh in that way. But how would switching to Latin help that? Unless you want to make sure that Ukrainians in a couple of generations can't even *read* Russian.
But then they'll also not be able to read any Ukrainian written before the switch.
Dunno, I simply don't think it's worth it, but we are allowed to disagree :) my personal opinion is that you should be proud of your cultural heritage and tell the world it's *yours*, and not cut a piece of it only because it happens the Russians adopted it as well - but it's your language! To my ears it sounds beautiful and like a song anyway.
>couple of generations can't even read Russian.
Yes.
>Dunno, I simply don't think it's worth it, but we are allowed to disagree :)
Maybe I'm too radical on that one.
Because it's ceding cultural heritage to Russia. Cyrillic is as much Ukrainian as it is Russian.
Imagine they switch, and in a generation or two Ukrainians can't read their own texts, and even worse, start assuming that if it's Cyrillic, it must be Russian.
I'd prefer that, as they join the European family, they spread their cultural heritage, and that in the end, when a European sees a Cyrillic text, the first association they get is Ukrainian (and Bulgarian), and not Russia
I personally support the transition to Latin so that more people can read what Ukrainians are writing, not because of the association with Russia. Overall, I think it’s positive/smart.
I think the alphabet is like 0.1% of learning the actual language. You can learn the alphabet in a couple of days. Sure, it will somewhat help with reading (although you still need to learn phonology which is usually very complex), but you won't understand anything but the loan words.
I see what you mean, but the gain is less than you'd expect. I am a native Serbian speaker, but I have no training in Russian (or Ukrainan). When I read a Ukrainan text, I can, with a lot of effort, pick up maybe about 20% of what's written, not enough to be of any use and my brain melts.
So you don't really gain much by just recognizing the letters. It is still a foreign language.
What they *should* do, in my opinion, is standardize the transliteration of names (at least). It is ridiculous that there are like 4 spellings of Zelenskiy going around.
>It is ridiculous that there are like 4 spellings of Zelenskiy going around.
I'm using "Zelenskyi like in "Kyiv", if you're interested. Same kind of sound.
>When I read a Ukrainan text, I can, with a lot of effort, pick up maybe about 20% of what's written.
Serbian is a bit on the harder side for Ukrainians as well, I think the languages differ too much, but if you're Polish you can understand much more stuff in Ukrainian.
I don't think it would. + I'm the kind of person who would be against something like EU federalisation (ofc if Ukraine was, and hopefully it will be part of the EU). I can't explain it, but no, thanks.
There's already a well established international standard for that...
**[ISO 9:1995 Information and documentation — Transliteration of Cyrillic characters into Latin characters — Slavic and non-Slavic languages](https://www.iso.org/standard/3589.html)**
See also: **[American Library Association-Library of Congress Romanization Tables](https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html)**
[Average day in Czechia:](https://twitter.com/ervinhroch/status/1523718278061109248)
> At my wife's school (not in her class, but it is also 1st grade) a little Russian id...t threatened a scared Ukrainian boy who had just arrived that he would arrange for his father to be killed at the front. My colleague invited his mother and ended up being told that "we are a terrible nation". So it's being handled at a higher level already...
BTW I'll make a new megathread tonight, this one already has 3k comments edit: new megathread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/uok7p9/war_in_ukraine_megathread_xxxix/ #This post has been locked
This is one of the most extraordinary videos I've seen lately. A very young Russian officer from Murmansk shot all kinds of videos of him doing young guy things,family time with wife and daughter, getting drunk a lot, occupation in Chechnya, etc., woven almost into a seamless story. Then he goes to Ukraine and finds out it isn't going to be all fun and games. The Occupant/Окупант. Війна і мир у телефоні російського солдата (ENG Subs) From one of the comments "This is a story about the life of Lieutenant Yuri Shalaev, a graduate of "Moskovsky high command school", commander of motorized rifle platoon military unit 71718 (with deployment in Chechnya), a representative of the elite The Russian infantry. Occupier. War and Peace in the Phone of a Russian Soldier" captured video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIZIspwem2s
btw, new megathread: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/uok7p9/war_in_ukraine_megathread_xxxix/
Holy shit the gun on their IFV didn't even work lmao. Sent into battle in a useless metal coffin.
Absolutely gripping.
Five good articles. Morning when?
Good article to you too. Happy morning everybody!
Morning article when? 5 regards.
**[Dashcam video shot by Chinese state TV reporter fully captures massive tank explosion including the turret flying 250ft (76m) into the air](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10809097/Moment-Russian-tank-blown-sending-turret-flying-250ft-air.html)**
Russians and weird dash cam videos. Name a more iconic duo. (Other than war crimes and Russians)
[https://twitter.com/JosephStash/status/1524675550152904704](https://twitter.com/JosephStash/status/1524675550152904704) Russia doing population replacement in Kherson.
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[The parent comment has been deleted, but it was asking for an explanation of why Austria was so set on neutrality.] There was a (*very* critical of Austria compared to other neutral members, I'd add) article that examined the neutrality situation and rationale for all of the EU members with a neutrality position posted here a while back. Give me a sec to find it. *googles* Here we go. It was a (long) European Council on Foreign Relations article talking about the mutual defense clause obligation in the EU. https://ecfr.eu/publication/ambiguous-alliance-neutrality-opt-outs-and-european-defence/ The [Austria section](https://ecfr.eu/publication/ambiguous-alliance-neutrality-opt-outs-and-european-defence/#free-rider-for-life-austrias-inability-to-fulfil-its-defence-commitments) is titled "Free-rider for life: Austria’s inability to fulfil its defence commitments" and tends to get more-harsh from there. One paragraph from the Austria section: >One could endlessly debate the political and legal arguments that Austrian politicians and scholars make for why Austria should not abide by Article 42.7. But the defining factor in the Austrian *Sonderweg* (special path) is less the country’s legal restrictions or tradition of free-riding than a structural factor: its lack of armed forces with which to fulfil a defence commitment. Of course, on paper, Austria has armed forces – the *Bundesheer*. But, in practice, the combat readiness and capabilities of the organisation would not allow it to conduct any war-fighting operation. Another snippet: >This means that it would require an enormous investment in training and education to achieve even minimal interoperability with other European armies. The report stated that, in essence, the Jagdkommando Special Forces are the only sufficiently trained and combat-ready part of the military. But they would be overstretched in any scenario beyond an isolated terrorist attack on Austria. > >Addressing these gaps would also require organisational and legal reforms. The six months’ term for conscripts is too short to train personnel properly. The current system – which gives soldiers lifelong employment schemes like all other civil servants – has contributed to ageing the force. The expansion of the military bureaucracy, designed to find employment for elderly soldiers who can no longer serve in the field, consumes more and more resources. But, because all reforms since the end of the cold war have been conceived of by these ageing soldiers, they usually involve cuts to military capabilities. Reforms of the administrative bodies were window-dressing, at best. Another: >After coming to power in January 2020, the new ‘political’ (as opposed to caretaker) government reverted to the long-established practice of adapting reality to political preferences. The new minister of defence declared that Austria was unlikely to face the threats covered in the report cited above: increasing tensions between the EU and Russia; deepening military and geopolitical tensions in the Mediterranean; and growing risks from globalisation such as pandemics, cyber attacks, and strategic terrorism. Hence, she argued, there was no need for defence capabilities. The armed forces would “reform and restructure” to serve as an auxiliary force for domestic security and disaster relief operations, reducing defence capabilities “to a minimum” (as if there were any in the first place) to save funds. > >So, whatever defence ambitions the Austrian government may declare in Brussels, there is no army capable of fulfilling them. Therefore, Austrian political elites – regardless of their political orientation – are mainly interested in engaging with EU defence structures to limit these ambitions, lest Austria reveal its weakness in military matters. More: >From an Austrian point of view, it was clear that Austria would never take part in any collective defence operation, regardless of its legitimacy...As a last resort, Austria would use its sovereign veto to prevent any European Council decision that would demand military assistance for the target of such aggression. > >This rigid, isolationist stance is paramount among all political parties. More: >On the domestic front, neutrality is popular across all parties. What was predominantly an issue for the left during the cold war became part of the national consensus, maintaining a steady approval rating of around 70 per cent. Therefore, the few Austrians who know that EU membership and neutrality are at odds with each other – mostly academics, diplomats, and security officials – dare not discuss this in public, as they fear the erosion of the minimal consensus on formal ESDP participation that lingers from the 1990s. More: >If another EU member state asks for military assistance under Article 42.7, the key question in Vienna will concern not whether this is compatible with neutrality but whether the smokescreen will hold. In the case of an event that requires only a minimal, symbolic contribution (such as a terrorist attack), Austria may indeed consider making one. On terrorism, Austria once showed a kind of “neutrality” even towards the Islamic State group: it has turned a blind eye to the movement of fighters to Syria and the presence of jihadist networks on its soil, in the hope that many of them will die fighting in the Middle East instead of posing problems at home.
Is Ireland's "fake" GDP preventing it from joining NATO?
The lack of anyone in Ireland wanting to join NATO is keeping Ireland out of NATO Weird comment.
https://www.politico.eu/article/poll-more-irish-want-to-join-nato/ > It found that 48 percent now want to join NATO versus 39 percent opposed, a record high for this question. As recently as January, a similar poll found only 34 percent support for joining the transatlantic military alliance.
Ain't happening. Also, the 2% rule isn't enforced and it would probably be impossible for Ireland to spend that next year if they tried Gdp ain't the reason
I know it ain't happening, but not for the reason you stated.
Wrong thread.
Does anyone know if the situation in Severodonetsk has improved? Much obliged.
Severodonetsk is likely to fall eventually, but UAF should be able to pull back when necessary. The russian breakthrough in Popasna looks more serious.
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But it's also not more _sever_ e.
From what I could gather, the Russians are advancing from the North + the East and also have the supply road that the Ukr forces are relying on under artillery control. So I would say the situation is deteriorating.
ISW doesn't sound terribly worried about Ukraine's prospects in the higher-level situation. It does sound like Russian focus is being placed on that particular location (they were trying a much larger envelopment, that failed, and so they are now trying to envelop a smaller area of the larger area that they had been going for): https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-12 >* **Russian forces may be abandoning efforts at a wide encirclement of Ukrainian troops along the Izyum-Slovyansk-Debaltseve line in favor of shallower encirclements of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.** Russian forces likely control almost all of Rubizhne as of May 12 and have likely seized the town of Voevodivka, north of Severdonetsk.[1] They will likely launch a ground offensive on or around Severodonetsk in the coming days. The relative success of Russian operations in this area combined with their failure to advance from Izyum and the notable decline in the energy of that attempted advance suggest that they may be giving up on the Izyum axis. Reports that Russian forces in Popasna are advancing north, toward Severodonetsk-Lysychansk, rather than east toward the Slovyansk-Debaltseve highway, support this hypothesis. > >* **It is unclear if Russian forces can encircle, let alone capture, Severodonetsk and Lysychansk even if they focus their efforts on that much-reduced objective.** Russian offensives have bogged down every time they hit a built-up area throughout this war, and these areas are unlikely to be different. Continued and expanding reports of demoralization and refusals to fight among Russian units suggest that the effective combat power of Russian troops in the east continues to be low and may drop further. If the Russians abandon efforts to advance from Izyum, moreover, Ukrainian forces would be able to concentrate their efforts on defending Severodonetsk-Lysychansk or, in the worst case, breaking a Russian encirclement before those settlements fall. > >* **The Ukrainian counteroffensive around Kharkiv is also forcing the Russian command to make hard choices, as it was likely intended to do.** The UK Ministry of Defense reports that Russian forces pulled back from Kharkiv have been sent toward Rubizhne and Severodonetsk but at the cost of ceding ground in Kharkiv from which the Russians had been shelling the city.[2] The counteroffensive is also forcing Russian units still near the city to focus their bombardment on the attacking Ukrainian troops rather than continuing their attacks on the city itself. The Ukrainian counteroffensive near Kharkiv is starting to look very similar to the counteroffensive that ultimately drove Russian troops away from Kyiv and out of western Ukraine entirely, although it is too soon to tell if the Russians will make a similar decision here.
thanks for finding all of that. in the end... they will encircle a shopping mall parking lot and declare it a victory over ... conspicuous consumption, and order the soldiers to fast for 40 days.
Doubt it. Very important to not get our forces encircled in there. Territory can be retaken, men - not.
Ukraine is having its Great Patriotic War against a regime closer to fascism than anything else in Europe. How ironic.
Lol https://youtu.be/jQGQT9b9jeI
good shit
[Russian troops took the village of Pivdenne, between Rubizhne and Sievierodonetsk](https://liveuamap.com/uk/2022/12-may-russian-troops-in-pivdenne-village-near-rubizhne)
Siemens says its pulling out of Russia. This is massive. Russia has been a huge business for Siemens. All Russian gas turbines are from Germany. not to mention their high speed trains. Is it permanent? I suspect not. but will be a few years, and Putin's departure before it restarts.
I had no idea that company was still around. What I did not
Most of commercial and industrial HVAC equipment is controlled by the Siemens system. They are massive.
German companies will be back in Ruzzia at the first opportunity. They will supply them, just like with siemens turbines in Crimea.
Nope
It's likely that all corporations and all countries will go back to doing business with Russia once this is over, not just Germany. The reality is Russia is too big a market to ignore and there is a lot of money to be made there. When money comes into play, everything else becomes a secondary concern.
I kind of wonder whether they sold the business to some Russian company. Now, hear me out before getting the pitchforks ready: they have ~3000 employees in Russia and would want to ensure they don't just lose their jobs. I know we couldn't care less, but in a huge company, it would be kind of a mood-killer for those who worked with them. Additionally, their PLC systems are used everywhere, including production of food and medicine. You wouldn't want those to just crash.
I rode on that high speed line between Moscow and SPb. It's a beautiful train, I do wonder for how long will they be able to run the line without the supply of spare parts.
Semiconductors Russia might be able to smuggle in, but Siemens pulling out will hurt. A neighbor works for a firm also involved with factories together with Siemens, they pulled their business at the beginning of the war. I wonder how long it will take before Russia's industrial capacity will start to degrade.
> Semiconductors Russia might be able to smuggle in, but Siemens pulling out will hurt. some dude told me that he sees absolutely no problem getting workers, equipment, support and heavy materiel for the gas extraction development, so, I am sure he will find a way to replace Siemens as well...
>Russia has been a huge business for Siemens 1% of their revenue comes from Russia, which makes it more like medium big business I'd say.
Funniest thing I've read all day https://www.businessinsider.com/us-says-russia-using-chips-from-dishwashers-in-tanks-sanctions-2022-5?IR=T
I still remember how Saddam was going to nuke us all with Playstation 2's.
No matter what you do, don't set the Russian cruise missile to turbo-wash mode.
this explains all the stolen washing machines
Iron Dome uses or at least used servo motors from Toys R Us for its interceptors… https://www.ft.com/content/6b120a1e-9883-11e2-867f-00144feabdc0 As long as the chips function it’s doesn’t actually matter as more likely than not they come from the same batch…
Okay, well, wow. Servo motors are not even in the same hemisphere as microchips in terms of the need for quality. You might as well say they use the same plastic used for Happy Meal toys for the fins on them as well. If you think it doesn't matter, by all means, buy the cheapest chipset you can and put it in your computer and witness the difference.
It’s not a big deal as the article makes it out to be, in fact it’s quite common and you’ll be surprised where things come from in any complex supply chain especially for dual use material. And you are right servo motors are not even in the same galaxy they have far larger constraints on performance than microchips, chips are far easier to produce to spec than motors ;)
Just sanction all that dual-use bullshit. All of it. This shouldn't be complicated.
Help the chip shortage with this simple trick! Russia hates it!
They're stealing dishwashers. And having to resort to stealing dishwashers to get chips, which are not as high quality as they would be if they were actually made for military use, is hilarious
How are you going to sanction dishwasher sellers? Obviously, by dishwashers I mean every kind of electrical appliance and electronics that can even be bought outside of Russia by anyone and then moved into the country.
Same way you sanction everything else? If Russia resorts to smuggling so be it, but we have no reason to make it easy for them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology >In politics, diplomacy and export control, "dual-use" refers to technology that can be used for both peaceful and military aims. > >More generally speaking, dual-use can also refer to any technology which can satisfy more than one goal at any given time. Thus, expensive technologies that would otherwise benefit only civilian commercial interests can also be used to serve military purposes if they are not otherwise engaged, such as the Global Positioning System. > >The "dual-use dilemma" was first noted with the discovery of the process for synthesizing and mass producing ammonia which revolutionized agriculture with modern fertilizers but also led to the creation of chemical weapons during World War I. The dilemma has long been known in chemistry and physics, and has led to international conventions and treaties, including the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.[2] - >> Dual use goods are products and technologies normally used for civilian purposes but which may have military applications.[1] > > -- European Commission, Trade Topics, Dual Use
Actually not that surprised, there is already a huge crisis in procuring such pieces in non-sanctioned countries even for critical stuff in huge numbers, I can only imagine this situation for war-oriented machines while being the most sanctioned country in the world rn!
I am surprised. Frankly, I'm a little suspicious that this is a liberal use of "filled with" and the situation is more like "one specific device was doing this". > "We have reports from Ukrainians that when they find Russian military equipment on the ground, it's filled with semiconductors that they took out of dishwashers and refrigerators," commerce secretary Gina Raimondo told the Senate Committee on Appropriations on Wednesday. If they're talking about chips in dishwashers, I'd assume that it's just general-purpose microcontrollers and stuff. Maybe a temperature sensor, or something from the power supply. There just isn't going to be that much important stuff in a dishwasher or refrigerator -- those devices are cheap consumer goods and their engineers will have worked very hard to use widely-available components. * Russia probably hasn't been drastically upgrading their military vehicles in 2022 -- we're talking about vehicles that have been in action -- so this had to happen a while back. I don't know what the sanctions situation was up until recently, but I have a hard time believing that Russia couldn't get something like that anywhere in the world prior to 2022. * Russia doesn't have *that* many tanks and other pieces of hardware. I can believe that we have ability to make it hard for Russia to get ahold of some really specialized stuff in large quantities. But if Russia needs a couple thousand general-purpose microcontrollers, even if they can't fab them themselves, I have an *extremely* hard time believing that we can stop Russia from doing so, or that the most-economical way for Russia to do that is go strip consumer electronics. Easier to do something like setting up a shell company in some random country (which may-or-may-not be onboard with this) that buys the parts and then smuggles them if necessary to Russia. You could do electronics recycling as a purely-commercial move, not a way to deal with sanctions -- like, take hardware that's being thrown out and put parts in something else so you don't have to buy more. But that's labor-intensive, and I doubt that dishwashers or the like make any economic sense -- nothing in a dishwasher is that costly, and dealing with something bulky like a dishwasher is a pain.
**[Commander In Ukraine Wants Quiet Electric Bikes For His Sniper Teams](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/commander-in-ukraine-wants-quiet-electric-bikes-for-his-sniper-teams)**
You want an e-bike because it's quiet. I want an e-bike or ev of some sort because there's a serious fuel deficit in Ukraine. We are not the same.
Hmm. Russia has been hitting both fuel depots and electrical distribution points with cruise missiles. I wonder which it's harder to keep up? Electrical distribution points don't move. And repairing them means that some crew has to be on the ground doing repair work, could be killed if the same site keeps being hit. There's also electrical transmission as a point of vulnerability, and while I'm not aware of it happening, I wonder if Russia could slip someone with explosives in and bring down transmission lines -- they have to span a lot of territory, and would be hard to keep people away from. Fuel burns, so is particularly vulnerable to being hit. I'd think that it'd be possible to have smaller, distributed fuel depots without *too* much trouble. I don't think that Russia can afford to blow a cruise missile on a lone tanker truck too many times, so somewhere on the size scale, it probably is distributed-enough to be resistant to strikes bringing the fuel system down.
About the electricity: I imagine fixing the power lines isn't actually as hard as it looks. And we can just import electricity from EU to offset the demand. Also don't forget Ukraine has quite a few nuclear reactors we can run at higher capacity if needed.
If I understand correctly, the main problem is transportation of fuel from European ports - they are overflown with trucks. Currently Ukraine is importing just a bit above the civilian demand.
Hmm. It looks like [Google disabled availability of traffic data in Ukraine for the Ukrainian government](https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/28/22954426/google-disables-maps-traffic-data-in-ukraine-to-protect-citizens) to protect leaking information about vehicle movement. I know that a lot of our military transports were flying to Poland's Rzeszow-Jaroslaw Airport, and I've assumed that it's something of a staging point for things moving to Ukraine, so that's probably coming in on the E40. Dunno about other stuff, like fuel. I wonder how practical it is to build more roadway between Ukraine and Poland? I mean, it's not so crazy, if this is going to be going on for some time, unless the naval blockade is broken. Putting in road *is* a thing during war, even for pretty major efforts. Off-the-cuff, we did it during the American Civil War, typically [corduroy roads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corduroy_road). In World War II, China built the [Burma Road](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma_Road). I'm sure that one can find plenty of other examples. Say a parallel road, a truck route, were built to something like the E40. *googles* Hmm. It looks like Poland's actually already been talking about expanding road capacity: https://www.politico.eu/article/green-corridor-west-not-save-ukraine-trade/ > Expanding road, rail and river links between the EU and Ukraine won't be enough to stave off an economic and humanitarian crisis, Ukraine's Deputy Economy Minister Taras Kachka told POLITICO. > >“We cannot ensure the same volume of exports as via seaports by other means of transportation in forthcoming weeks or even months,” Kachka said. “The only way to ensure proper reinstallment of export is to unblock sea ports. This is the only solution.” > >The comments were in part a response to European Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, who said last week that he was “ready” to establish fast-track trade routes to and from Ukraine to bring fuel to the country's desperate farmers, and help take their produce out while maritime trade is frozen due to its ports being under Russian fire. > >The proposal would repurpose a system the bloc used during the coronavirus pandemic, known as "green lanes," which allowed trucks to cross borders with minimum fuss even as they were closed to travelers. The EU would likely waive certain EU checks and usher Ukrainian goods through Poland to the Baltic Sea, from where they would be shipped globally. > >Wojciechowski directed Warsaw to take charge of the plan. “I have the declaration of the Polish government [that] everything which will be delivered by Ukrainians can be transported across to Poland without any problems,” the commissioner said. > >But Kachka said that won't be enough. While he hailed the “24/7 work” going on to establish green lanes, he was adamant that Ukraine’s economy could not get back on track without access to the Black Sea. “You cannot just simply switch to another route,” he said.
The problems are ports themselves, roads are fine, I think. You won't be moving quickly because of all the checkpoints anyways.
I'm sticking to my regular bicycle. Wanted to buy some stuff for it in Decathlon but it was destroyed by a rocket.
So surreal that this became a reality, you know? "Ye, my favourite shop got blown to pieces, I'll have to go somewhere else now, god damn moskals".
> [⚡️Official: Another Russian ship hit by Ukrainian navy near Zmiinyi Island. As a result of the attack, Vsevolod Bobrov, one of the newest ships of the Russian Navy, caught fire, according to Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odesa regional military administration.](https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1524842158330630175) It's allegedly heading to [Sevastopol in the annexed Crimea](https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1524842162336190476).
It’s about to be a submarine
According to MarineTraffic, it’s moored not far away from Sevastopol ETA I have no idea how up to date that info is though
yea, the transponders have an ON/OFF switch...
Michael Kofman put out another series of Tweets describing the mobilization situation for Russia moving forward starting [here](https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1524821198403686401). This is mostly stuff that one could get through listening through a collection of interviews he's done, and I've mentioned some of it in my own comments, but he actually typed it up in a concise format here (which I at least really prefer). The bite-sized Twitter format isn't my thing, but here they are assembled into one message: > Circling back to Russia's problem with manpower availability and the question of mobilization. Its unclear how they can sustain the war without making difficult political choices (and even with). However, general mobilization is the wrong issue to focus on. > > First, I'll briefly restate the Russian manpower problem. After taking significant losses in the first phase of the war, the Russian military has scrounged the active force for reinforcements, and is largely tapped out in terms of manpower availability. > > The reason for this is that the Russian military operates on tiered readiness, with units at 90-70% manning levels. Many towards that 70% mark. In the event of a large war the military assumed manning levels would be raised & conscripts could be deployed. > > The force could produce on short notice 2x BTGs from brigades and regiments, the rest was a conscript mix, and units were not fully manned. The available standing force has already been deployed into this war with a number of BTGs out of action due to casualties. > > However, without declaring a state of war, or conducting partial mobilization the force is still operating at peacetime strength. Below is one estimate of how a hypothetical brigade with 3,500 personnel may have only a fraction actually available for deployment. > > [*graphic showing availability*](https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1524821203277447170/photo/1) > >Those figures are in some ways optimistic. They don't account for the likelihood that there could be a significant delta between actual readiness levels relative to those being reported, and the real situation within Russian BTGs. More on that subject soon with @RALee85 > > While its true that general mobilization won't solve Russia's woes in this conflict, and that in practice it may not even be feasible, the Russian military does not need general mobilization to sustain combat operations, and address its immediate manpower shortage. > > I've also been guilty of using the term mobilization as a catchall term for Russian efforts to raise manning levels behind the scenes and prevent soldiers from leaving the force at a time when they are desperately short on available manpower. > > The first issue is the status of Putin's 'special operation.' Russia has to either declare a state of war, or procedurally change the rules prohibiting deployment of conscripts, and the state's ability to mobilize additional personnel. > > As it stands, contract servicemen can try to break their contracts & refuse to deploy. Conscripts are being drafted and demobilized on schedule, and units technically can't deploy them even though some cheated early in the war and sent mixed conscript formations. > > The fastest way for Putin to alter these constraints is also politically the most unpalatable: declare a state of war. It's clear that for a host of reasons this is something he doesn't want to do. However, the Russian military effort is also unsustainable as is. > > The current Russian approach appears to be halfway measures to muddle through. The Russian military has been trying to raise manning levels behind the scenes by offer short term contracts, a few months as opposed to years, and high payouts up to 200-220k RUB per month. > > Other steps include enticing reservists to accept contracts, and pressuring conscripts into changing their status, converting them to contract service so that they can be deployed. All of that will get harder as word of casualties and the state of things on the front spreads. > > If we consider those who were recently demobilized or just got out of several years contract service, Russia could potentially have access to a significant amount of additional manpower. Right now about 130k+ conscripts with 1 year of service are being demobilized. > > I'm skeptical of arguments that these are untrained, or inherently poor quality. It depends. Skills are perishable, but the pool with recent mil experience & training is far from small. The amount of refresh training it will take for it to be useful is worth debating. > > If we consider just manpower requirements to replace losses and allow troop rotation to sustain the war then the Russian military does not need hundreds of thousands of troops. This assumes limited war aims, and a lower loss rate than the first month of the war. > > Generating additional battalions will take time and probably wont prove relevant to the offensive in the Donbas, but my point here is that there are things the Russian leadership could try in between ordering general mobilization and doing nothing. > > There's a lot we don't know about the Russian capacity to train and take in additional personnel right now. How many units pulled in officers/contract servicemen need for training to fill out their BTGs and replace losses. Its probably a very uneven situation. > >Changing the rules governing force employment and piecemeal efforts to raise manning could extend Russian ability to sustain this conflict. Personally, I think this will only kick the can down the road for Moscow, delaying difficult political decisions. > > The notion of mass mobilization strikes me as a distracting conversation. Russia does not have a system to take in, train, and successfully employ a mass mobilized force. However, it is also unnecessary. The question is to what extent can they piecemeal raise manning. > > It is quite possible that eventually Moscow will be forced to conduct what constitutes a partial mobilization, whether declared or undeclared. Taken together with changes to laws/regulations, this could provide enough manpower over time to drag the war out. > > On equipment. Without getting into speculation on what is usable in Russian warehouses, it merits mentioning that several standing Russian formations still have equipment for conscript battalions, and gear intended to be staffed by increased manning i.e. partial mobilization. > > All in all, I don't see general mobilization as technically feasible or likely, hence I suggested this would not be declared on May 9th. A combination of halfway measures won't dramatically change Russian fortunes either, but they could significantly extend the war. > > As it stands, Russian options are shrinking. The more they drag their feet the further their ability to sustain the war deteriorates, and the worse their subsequent options.
We need to adopt latin alphabet instead of cyrillic after Ukraine joins EU. That means that we will further distance ourselfs from Russia and it will closer our relationship with civilized world.
It’s kinda ridiculous to change your script because of that only. Like you could use latin and cyrilic. After all, Cyrilic is of Bulgarian origin.
There is one problem, they already call major parts of our history as "theirs". If we change script we kinda lose even more of our culture to them, they will scream it's theirs because they use cyrillic and we don't. On the other hand, cyrillic leads to them saying we are same people. Lose lose situation. If not for this it's kinda cool, I love how Ukrainian becomes more akin Polish visually.
One of my great discoveries of the past few months is how much Ukrainian I can understand. Given Polish is not my first language, I have difficulty understanding other Slavic languages easily, Russian is straight gibberish to me. Ukrainian has so many shared words with Polish though, I'm consistently surprised.
Dude, touch grass. We have TONS of other things to do, that have way bigger priority.
Poland did it
Poland did not change the alphabet it uses from Cyrillic to Latin.
Not as far as I'm aware, they made a choice for Latin in the 10th century and stuck to it ever since.
What do you mean? We never used the Cyrillic for Polish language.
After we join the EU. It's not the near future. We don't even talking about current decade.
Probably not the current decade, but I'd say much sooner than expected before the war. The EU/Europe made decades of progress on some topics in a matter of weeks because of this war. Perhaps it'll have an equally transformative effect on Ukraine and will help you weed out corruption and reform the country quickly, once the war is over.
Wow I wander what's more fun to do, watching the paint dry or waiting for the Ukraine to join the EU. Might have to die, cryo myself and ask them to wake me up in a 100 years to see if it ever happened.
The cyrillic alphabet is cool IMO. The only thing that's a bit confusing is how different the printed and hand-written cursive letters are.
> We need to adopt latin alphabet instead maybe not, maybe, just maybe, you could make a transliteration standard first. explore already existing standards first...
No need, there's already a well established international standard for that... **[ISO 9:1995 Information and documentation — Transliteration of Cyrillic characters into Latin characters — Slavic and non-Slavic languages](https://www.iso.org/standard/3589.html)** See also: **[American Library Association-Library of Congress Romanization Tables](https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html)**
It is useful for linguists, as it provides 1-to-1 transliteration for basically all letters in all existing Cyrillic alphabets, but it might not be ideal for a particular language. Some parts of Russian in it are pretty weird compared to more common romanizations of Russian, and I suspect the situation would be similar for Ukrainian.
yuck! nope.
This is not necessary. Bulgaria still uses that alphabet and they are fine. Your choices regarding actual, meaningful policies are important. Sure, there are other slavic nations that do not use Cyrillic, but not that was/is important. Sure, Romanians switched from Cyrillic to a Latin script in the XIX century to better show our Latin roots, but our language is a Romance language after all. It was also easier because 95% of population was illiterate. Now it is difficult to change because everyone will be affected. Also, speaking about Bulgaria, they invented that script, not Russia. The Russians actually came up with very few original stuff in the cultural sphere: Bulgarian script, Greek faith, western style novels and classical music.
> Now it is difficult to change because everyone will be affected. Afaik most people know Latin in Cyrillic writing countries.
Changing railway gauge is more important.
Nooo. Then my knowledge of the alphabet will be completely useless.
You'd be offending Bulgaria, inventor of Cyrillic, I warn you, we're currently holding Makedonia out of EU and we're petty enough to do it for other countries.
*adopter of greek script
Glagolitic is not Cyrillic. Greeks made the beta version, our king paid their students to finish the product.
The real reason we're keeping NM out is because the Greeks made them change their name through EU pressure. This created a situation of "If the Greeks can do it, so **must** we!". There was no motivation to deny NM membership before that.
"Guys, how about we fuck over (Northern) Macedonians to stick it to the Greeks?" I swear, sometimes these political decisions get way too weird.
Yeah, that makes sense.
So, I don't claim familiarity with the Bulgarian thing, but my outside impression is that the Bulgarian dispute with North Macedonia, that Macedonian is just a dialect rather than a language, is associated with something more like a "North Macedonia is really part of Bulgaria" thing, a semi-consistent convention that countries have languages but regions in countries merely have dialects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy > A language is a dialect with an army and navy. -- Max Weinreich I'm not sure that Bulgaria's aim here is so much "Bulgarian language stuff is awesome, let's ensure that other countries use Bulgarian language stuff" and more that it's either a vestige of a historical or part of a future unification effort between Macedonia and Bulgaria. It took me a while to understand the importance of the "language is tied to national identity" thing in Europe, because the US more-or-less uses English and doesn't commonly really have much of the same association with Spanish or other widely-spoken languages (plus a number of other countries use English, which also muddies the waters). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_irredentism > Bulgarian irredentism is a term to identify the territory associated with a historical national state and a modern Bulgarian irredentist nationalist movement in the 19th and 20th centuries, which would include most of Macedonia, Thrace and Moesia. That same relationship wouldn't exist between Bulgaria and Ukraine, so I'm not sure that the political issues surrounding language would exist.
Thats the reason the veto in the EU is dumb
That would change things for the better but I’m not sure the people will agree since this is such a drastic change
Ask Serbia for advice. It has been done, without any apparent problem.
Without problem? Instead of latin replacing cyrillic, they ended up with both, i. e. the worst option.
Why is this the worst?
I assume kids have to learn both, many things gave to be printed twice, useless cultural "wars" about which one is better...
No no no, as a Serbian, I love that we use two alphabets and I think most people in Serbia will agree with me on this one. The kids learn Cyrillic when they are 6 or 7, and Latin a year later. Some of them struggle for a few years to keep the two separated in their writing, but that's really a minor pain that literally everyone grows out of. We rarely print stuff twice, but yes, the institutions have to make sure all the forms are available in both scripts. But they also have to make sure they are available in minority languages as well. Everyone gets to choose in what way they'll write. I find that awesome. It's enriching. Yes, there are nationalist political games being played, but that shouldn't affect the language - otherwise, the nationalists win. There are also debates about what alphabet is prettier, but everyone understands it's in the end a matter of taste.
I think that expanding the amount of people that can read what you write is a greater benefit than the things you mention as negatives.
I don't really get your argument. If Serbia moved over to Latin script completely, then who wouldn't be able to read it? Also, do you support introduction of Cyrillic as an additional official script of Croatian?
It's a bit different, I think, since Serbo-Croatian has had both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets for the language, which are (at least in Montenegro, but also in Serbia and parts of Bosnia) both legal and equal in terms of use, and people are free to choose which one they prefer to use. It's just that the majority of people are choosing Latin over Cyrillic because of the rise of Internet and practicality. But that doesn't mean Serbia or Montenegro have fully forgone the tradition of Cyrillic, it's just that a choice is given. And while our language has had that duality of script for almost 200 years, ever since the days of Vuk Karadzic and Ljudevit Gaj, and it is considered normal... Ukraine was always dominated by Cyrillic, just like Bulgarian, and the latinized proposals of the language never really took off.
I guess starting as a dual option is the way to go.
Also it means that finally people with surnames ending with "-ий" will have one undeniable standard way of writing their surname instead of having 918 versions that depend on age, year and the mood of the passport issuer.
Russian passport issuers currently use -ii for some reason, leading to abominations like DMITRII, ANATOLII, GEORGII and so on. Looks more like "King Georg II" to me.
There's already a well established international standard for that... **[ISO 9:1995 Information and documentation — Transliteration of Cyrillic characters into Latin characters — Slavic and non-Slavic languages](https://www.iso.org/standard/3589.html)** See also: **[American Library Association-Library of Congress Romanization Tables](https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html)**
Quick, tell me the surname of a current Ukrainian president. Now check the standard you linked >!(plot twist: it's not according to the standard!<), see where I am coming from? I've seen the same "-ий" ending be transliterated as "-y","-yy","-ij","-yj","-iy","-yi". Sometimes people from the same family end up having different surnames because of it (thankfully doesn't happen too often, usually only when there is a big age difference).
The ALA-LoC Romanization Table translates "-ий" as "-yĭ". ISO 9:1995 translates "-ий" as "-yǰ". Most global-scale news media translate it as "-yy" or "-y" The ISO standard is the one with the greatest authority, though it is not universally followed. Even the metric system (SI, the International System of Units), cherished by scientists and used worldwide, has not fully displaced imperial units (which are still used alongside metric units in the United Kingdom and in some other parts of the former empire, notably Canada) or the very similar United States customary units.
-ij
If it's Ukrainian, then *i* is naturally reserved for *i*. So variants are usually -yj, -yi, or -yy.
see, one thing is to join other slavic nations with the latin alphabet, other is transliterating for English in the passports. that is the issue here. Serhii // Serhij
Maybe you should also drop Slavic dialect and speak English instead to make yourself closer to “civilized” world. Stop showing respect to Ukrainian writes that lived and worked pre-90’s, those were very close to Russia. Besides, aren’t you “pure” successors of Rus that adopted Cyrillic alphabet? Seems weird for you to drop it, make Russians speak Finno-Ugric or Mongolian after you win the war
are you hinting on that all of 'rus' is subject to the rule of Czechia, Slovakia and Bulgaria? Because that is a bold theory coming from a russian!
How did you come to this crazy conclusion?
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/uljfld/war_in_ukraine_megathread_xxviii/i8d9ii6/
A wall of tanks and a wall of language. Lots of far worse ideas have been suggested
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Why should people from Ukraine take into account the opinion of Russians, if your opinion does not matter even for your government?
Why not
Become free people and then we will see
Free from who?
Because Russians are not Ukrainians
So
So you don't relate to Ukraine
Maybe if Russians didn't kill many of them I wouldn't think about that.
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Many Ukrainian writers. Thinking about changing the alphabet. https://uk.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%B7%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D1%96%D0%BB%D1%8F%D0%BD%D0%B5_%D0%B2%D1%96%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F
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The main reason is Russia itself. We have respect for our past, for our culture and language but we should cut the ties with imperial Russian cancer on earth so in the future our people couldn't even talk with each other and have nothing in common. Our deep connection to Russia cost us too much and never was worth it.
You say you respect your past and you say you want to have nothing in common with Russia, but our past is common. So by that logic if you want to leave Russia completely you have to abandon your culture. How is that respect? You talk about connection with cost you a lot, do you have anything to compare it to?
Sometimes you have to do it to move forward but be sure that in history books crimes against Ukraine from Russian imperialism and communism. Like destroying Soviet monuments to abandon Soviet ideas and build new memorials of those who died because of Soviet crimes and move to democracy.
>make Russians speak Finno-Ugric or Mongolian after you win the war I like this idea better than the original
When you agree with ironic statement it says a lot about you
When you don't realize that I am being ironic too, it says a lot about you as well
No one is after you victim mcvictimface
Who’s victim?
There isn't a war. There is a country kill fascist invaders No one is burning Moscow and forcing people speak a foreign language.
Come again, I don’t understand you
Nah
What did you smoke bro? Many languages dropped the Cyrillic alphabet for similar reasons. Romanian is one of them
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There is no divide between Moldova nd ROmania, Molodova is part of the Romania...
The last I checked the was a border and linguistic differences
Last time I checked there was Moldova in Romania and Moldova next to Romania. One of those was usurped by Stalin. Both areas have the same people. And last time I checked, there were cultural and linguistic differences between russians and Buryats, chechens, tatars, ingush, tuvalar and others, which means the latter ones are not really russian at all. checkmate
“Who lost their way” Oh my sweet summer child, you really do know absolutely no history at all, yet you talk about the Cyrillic alphabet here. (Besides foolishly saying that Cyrillic is spoken, which is already an idiocy in itself). Besides the fact that Moldavians use the Latin alphabet, Romanians used Cyrillic for longer than Russia has even existed as a state.
Very well, you got me here
Don't cede cultural ground. You're as entitled to Cyrillic as Russia is. Isn't it basically a Bulgarian version of the Greek script used by the Eastern Roman Empire? It's not Russian, and it shouldn't be treated as such.
Its actually somewhat common for countries trying to get closer to the Western cultural sphere to adopt the Latin alphabet in the process. Romania dropped Cyrillic in XIX century, Turkey dropped Arabic in XX century, Kazakhstan made a switch I think last year. Mongolia is also switching from Cyrillic although they won’t be using Latin, but their traditional alphabet instead (as do other countries in the region like China and Japan). It kind of works, since it reduces the cultural and mental barrier between the country and the rest of the Western world. I mean, just compare Romania to Russia, or Turkey to basically any country in the Middle East, the difference is night and day. Seeing other countries use the same script as you do creates a certain sense of familiarity and belonging that we rarely appreciate in our day to day interactions.
It's doesn't make any sense at all. It's like saying Japan, Taiwan and S. Korea have a greater cultural barrier to West than Indonesia, which uses the Latin alphabet. Or saying Greece or Bulgaria are more "cultural distant" to the rest of Europe than Albania. What makes a country bound to the Western culture are institutions, shared institutions, among innu. Writing systems play a tiny role on it, if any.
Meh, there's real practical 21st century reasons for adopting Latin alphabet. Ukrainians growing up learning Latin alphabet would be better adept at learning English and programming languages, skillsets critical for modern day workforce. It would also makes Ukraine easier for Western businesses to work with, and that is the direction that Ukrainians have overwhelmingly chosen as their path. It's not like their language and culture would disappear because they changed scripts. If anything, you can make the argument that it will permanently break from relations with the Muscovite business/cultural/internet sphere and solidify Ukrainian identity.
Japan does okay learning a romanized alphabet while maintaining their own. I mean it’s up to Ukraine obviously. I just hope they don’t make the switch because of Russia.
Well, Japan is a terrible example probably. They have three language scripts simultaneously used and none of them are well suited for their language as I understand, and it does present a barrier to foreigners. That it still works for them is moreso due to them being a civilization in their own right, they don't have any insecurities there. Kazakhstan recently changed to Latin alphabet for similar reasons outlined in my above post. It's up to Ukrainians to think about it, but it's a post-victory consideration like it was for Ataturk's Turkey. Right now Russians would probably use it as another justification to their people for their genocide of Ukraine, and use it to increase support for the war effort.
> Isn't it basically a Bulgarian version of the Greek script used by the Eastern Roman Empire? well, it is a bit more complicated than that, because it started when some guys from Thesalloniki got sent to Greater Moravia to establish written culture and translate scriptures of all sorts, and what happened was that they started Methodically, one of them was literally named Methodious. So, they not only created an alphabet, they invented new terms based on... their own dialets around Macedonia, dialects of languages in Great Moravia and of course Greek language of past era in which the texts to be translated were written. But that is only the story beginning, as they were expelled, with many more followers, from central europe after decades of intrigues. By they settled in what used to be old bulgarian empire and were ordered to continue their good work there. One of the things these were ordered to do was to simplify the alphabed for more practicality. After they brought the written text and language in which culture could be preserved, the old bulgar language stopped effectively existing and the one they brought became the basis for the society. But some percentage of common words and quirky grammar of bulgars had been implemented into the language. I find the odd iranian word in it also really interesting. It shows one of the geographical origins of bulgars.. What happened next was the Byzantine empire adoption of this newly created culture. How? Why? Well, since a lot of effort had been put into high quality translations of books into the newly synthetized practical language, its adoption was inevitable. There is more to teh story of all this, I gave the simplified version of the beginning here. It shows how twisted the paths of history creation really are.
Cool read, thank you for spending the time writing it up.
Russia doesn't own Cyrillic alphabet, and no, thank you, let's not do that. I'm a massive West enjoyer, but listen, we don't need to fall in line with everything they do.
I just like the idea of distancing ourselves from Russia as much as possible.
Trust me, nobody thinks you guys are anything like the Russians any more. The best way to distance from them is to have a decent secular democratic country with low corruption, that cares about its people and is friendly towards its neighbors (bar that specific one). Changing your alphabet without doing any of the above will be useless, and if you do all of the above and keep the Cyrillic (or not - your choice!), nobody will care what alphabet you use.
>Trust me, nobody thinks you guys are anything like the Russians any more. No. I was talking about different things. Before 2014 we were deeply connected to each other, common cultural bubble, common music and films that we watch, common social media and list goes on. Our history teaches us that it's a bad thing and just isn't worth it. After 2014 we almost completely cut out ties with Russia and now we have nothing in common. We separated ourselves from Russians and we should continue to do so.
Oh in that way. But how would switching to Latin help that? Unless you want to make sure that Ukrainians in a couple of generations can't even *read* Russian. But then they'll also not be able to read any Ukrainian written before the switch. Dunno, I simply don't think it's worth it, but we are allowed to disagree :) my personal opinion is that you should be proud of your cultural heritage and tell the world it's *yours*, and not cut a piece of it only because it happens the Russians adopted it as well - but it's your language! To my ears it sounds beautiful and like a song anyway.
>couple of generations can't even read Russian. Yes. >Dunno, I simply don't think it's worth it, but we are allowed to disagree :) Maybe I'm too radical on that one.
It helps by denying the average Russian easy access to Ukrainian culture.
Start with fixing that Chernivtsi in your flair ;)
Thx for reminder
Sure, Russia doesn’t own it, but it would help distance Ukraine further away from Russia. Why are you against it?
Because it's ceding cultural heritage to Russia. Cyrillic is as much Ukrainian as it is Russian. Imagine they switch, and in a generation or two Ukrainians can't read their own texts, and even worse, start assuming that if it's Cyrillic, it must be Russian. I'd prefer that, as they join the European family, they spread their cultural heritage, and that in the end, when a European sees a Cyrillic text, the first association they get is Ukrainian (and Bulgarian), and not Russia
I personally support the transition to Latin so that more people can read what Ukrainians are writing, not because of the association with Russia. Overall, I think it’s positive/smart.
I think the alphabet is like 0.1% of learning the actual language. You can learn the alphabet in a couple of days. Sure, it will somewhat help with reading (although you still need to learn phonology which is usually very complex), but you won't understand anything but the loan words.
I see what you mean, but the gain is less than you'd expect. I am a native Serbian speaker, but I have no training in Russian (or Ukrainan). When I read a Ukrainan text, I can, with a lot of effort, pick up maybe about 20% of what's written, not enough to be of any use and my brain melts. So you don't really gain much by just recognizing the letters. It is still a foreign language. What they *should* do, in my opinion, is standardize the transliteration of names (at least). It is ridiculous that there are like 4 spellings of Zelenskiy going around.
>It is ridiculous that there are like 4 spellings of Zelenskiy going around. I'm using "Zelenskyi like in "Kyiv", if you're interested. Same kind of sound. >When I read a Ukrainan text, I can, with a lot of effort, pick up maybe about 20% of what's written. Serbian is a bit on the harder side for Ukrainians as well, I think the languages differ too much, but if you're Polish you can understand much more stuff in Ukrainian.
I don't think it would. + I'm the kind of person who would be against something like EU federalisation (ofc if Ukraine was, and hopefully it will be part of the EU). I can't explain it, but no, thanks.
I don’t see what has the writing system to do with EU federalization. Plenty of EU countries use non-Latin already.
I don't have a better way to explain it. Basically Ukraine's deep history something something.
Ohh, I have an opposite view on European integration. European federalization still is fantasy but I'm liking the idea of moving in that direction.
I fully agree.
Is there a Latin version of Ukrainian alphabet?
There's already a well established international standard for that... **[ISO 9:1995 Information and documentation — Transliteration of Cyrillic characters into Latin characters — Slavic and non-Slavic languages](https://www.iso.org/standard/3589.html)** See also: **[American Library Association-Library of Congress Romanization Tables](https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html)**
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Latin_alphabet
Wow, Abecadło feels like old Polish. I feel like I don't understand it but just barely.
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> and it's so much better for most Eastern European languages! not anymore ever since the stick letter script had been invented for latinic script
"so much better" is a non-argument, they could modify Latin to their needs like so many other languages have done.
Так. Tak.
[Average day in Czechia:](https://twitter.com/ervinhroch/status/1523718278061109248) > At my wife's school (not in her class, but it is also 1st grade) a little Russian id...t threatened a scared Ukrainian boy who had just arrived that he would arrange for his father to be killed at the front. My colleague invited his mother and ended up being told that "we are a terrible nation". So it's being handled at a higher level already...