Apparently Russian news wrote a gloating victory article celebrating their victory within 4 days and their installation of a puppet government bringing Ukraine and Belarus into greater Russian control It apparently dispenses with the rationale they provided for being their and mocks the west for being weak and unable to stop them
Reports on BBC Radio 5Live that the column of Russian vehicles has stopped (has been stopped) outside Kviv. This is unconfirmed, and may be only a temporary block, but the Kviv defenders may well be putting up strong resistance.
Also reports that they've struggled as a load of them have broken down. They've not moved too much in the past 24 hours, and seem to be mainly logistical vehicles (according to the BBC reports).
Putin has no shame. Babyn Yar is the Holocaust memorial site outside Kyiv where the Nazis murdered over 33,000 Jews in 2 days in September 1941.
Radio 4 interviewed two Russian women who lived in the UK this evening and they agreed that the Russian media is broadcasting a totally different version of events . There seems to be a generational difference in the support Putin's operation is getting insofar that the older generation believe that he is being vindicated. Many Russians simply refuse to believe what is going on in Ukraine and the rhetoric against Putin only appears to be present amongst those people who get their news feed from sources other than the TV which is so dominant in the country. It does make you fear that any retaliation from the West will cement Putin's reputation amongst more Russians that the coverage we are getting in the west would suggest. I am surprised that we have not tried to shut off their TV stations or hacked their media companies. Is this possible on a national scale?
Starlink really, really shouldn't be used for any sort of official communications, though, nor does it have any great capacity (each one of those little dishes has the throughput of a normal in-house internet connection). The problem with satellite uplinks is that the signal can be really easily triangulated, so if the Ukrainian government used Starlink, all they'd effectively be doing is providing Russia's artillery spotting for them:
This is one of the profound effects of every person becoming their own media outlet: in another era, they would have been handled roughly. Possibly brutally. And the knowledge of that would be recorded for posterity only via word of mouth, if at all, and long after the fact. But if you're Russia, unless you're committing to a scorched-earth campaign (and to their minimal credit, Russia's military has not done that to date), that's not an option...it would reach a million eyeballs before the hour is out.
Watching Isaac Chotiner (who is one of the best interviewers on the planet) turn John Mearsheimer into a pretzel warms my cold, dead, IR nerd heart: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine
Apparently Abramovich is quickly trying to sell his property in the U.K. and wants to offload Chelsea It would seem like the government are giving him time to do this when surely they real solution is to block it all with sanctions which might pressure him and other oligarchs to do something about this (if they even can)
Yep, I’m in total agreement with him. Very naive of “us” to think it wouldn’t turn at some point. The argument of “allowing people to decide” should be tempered with how it effects the aggressor. Water under bridge now unfortunately:-(
I fundamentally disagree. At its core, that (and Mearsheimer's whole philosophy of offensive realism) boils down to a world in which only a couple states actually have self-determination. The rest are either preyed upon by the great powers or supplicate themselves to them, in the hopes of one day becoming them. That's the incoherence at the hears of Mearsheimer's argument there. He says that it's NATO's fault that Russia had to invade Ukraine, largely because if not for NATO, Russia could simply politically dominate Ukraine. His argument is that NATO simply should not give a damn about Ukraine's self-determination, and that if Russia wishes to dictate its internal affairs, it should be allowed to do so, as it is the regional hegemon. His conception of peace is one in which Ukraine has peace so long as it obeys. Which is why it's been a bit wild to see people on the left effectively parroting him. Mearsheimer isn't just a realist: he's the extreme outer bound of realism. He is the Llap Goch Art of Self-Defense of realism.
This is from the town My GF's family are in so have it confirmed this is true. 19-20 year old Russian conscripts captured. They weren't even told where they were going...
One of those debates that could go on forever. I read your first paragraph a few times & to me there’s a lot truth in that. Everywhere you look, there’s overlaps, influences & agitation (for centuries). I’m not expert on politics but I’ve traveled a lot in work, worldwide & for a long time (Eastern Europe, China, India early 80’s), feel I’m quite level headed & have an ability to see both sides. In the playground, we have a choice with the bully. Submit, join, fight & numerous inbetweenies. Poke him with a stick is risky. Maybe not wrong but risky. Life isn’t much different.
