Ukraine 10: Lviv free

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Old thread past page 20. As you were.

[DMC]

Like the title but think it should be extended to "Lviv free or Donetsk."

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

Like the title but think it should be extended to "Lviv free or Donetsk."

“Lviv free or Donetsk gone”.

[Prince of the North]

"Lviv free or Dnieper"?

[Red Tiger]

Please stop.

[Winterfell is Burning]

16 minutes ago, Prince of the North said:

"Lviv free or Dnieper"?

Lviv free or Dnieper hard!

[Which Tyler]

7 minutes ago, Red Tiger said:

Please stop.

That's a terrible title suggestion, at least "Putin - please stop now"

[Gorn]

To go back to a post from a previous thread:

Quote

Chechnya is a terrible example because of the moral ambiguity (assuming you are talking about the 2nd war). They actually, declared a holy war, invaded Russia first, conducted a mass number of terrorist attacks within Russia, and even captured villages. Obviously Grozny was terrible but the roots and morality of the war has nothing in common with the Ukraine.

I assume this is referring to the apartment building bombings, since those are the attacks that happened before the 2nd war.

It is almost certain that those bombings were done by the FSB to provide a casus belli for the war, definitely with Putin's knowledge, and probably on his orders. Litvinenko was served polonium tea because he blew the whistle on that particular false flag operation, and several other Russian journalists and politicians who were digging too deeply about that subject were murdered (unsolved, of course) in the early 2000s.

Reading about those bombings made me realize for the first time how evil Putin is, and I don't use that word lightly.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Regarding the title, had this title on my mind for the past two or three or Ukraine threads - Lviv and let live was an alternative. 

Feel free to Putin the effort for better/more fitting titles next week(s), as I fear we will be talking about Russia's war of aggression for a bit longer.

[Fez]

This is something I've wondered about:

Granted, there is a lot of Western aid already authorized to Ukraine that hasn't shown up yet (at the current rate of burn, the US alone probably has around 10 more months of military supplies to provide. And that's just what Congress has authorized, as CiC, Biden has a lot of flexibility in giving more stuff). So a drop off in public interest shouldn't have an immediate impact on Ukraine. But I don't know the status of other countries' aid. And also, there have been a lot of private humanitarian donations up until now that would presumably start dropping off if people are getting bored.

[kiko]

Quote

I also think that it really doesn't matter if the country is democratic or west-leaning, or at least it shouldn't matter when it comes to stopping wars of aggression. The best example of this I can think of is what Iraq did with Kuwait. It ain't like Kuwait is democratic. But they did have oil, and that was pretty important. Hopefully Kazakhstan has some natural deposits that the west gives a shit about. 

 

Of course, @Kalibusteris showing his modesty here. As he seems to know everything he of course is well aware that Kazakhstan is one of the biggest oil producer in the world and the world's number one ressource of uranium. He wouldn't dismiss it as just one of the stans that nobody really cares about.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Most of the nations being talked about - Azerbaijan, Kazhakhstan, Uzbekistan etc. have their own regional organization (the so-called 'Turkic states'), and since Turkey is part of that, hopefully at least have a champion there. That may not mean much when it comes to military might compared to say Russia, but it is still good to have a vocal advocate on your side.

I also read on these very forums that Ergodan was slowly trying to disentangle these Central Asian nations from Russian influence while maintaining his tenuous relationship with Putin. He's made a few tentative moves in that regard.

[SpaceChampion]

Might as well use variations on Bond movie films for thread titles.  Some of them don't even have to be altered:

• Lviv Another Day
• Lviv And Let Die
• You Only Kyiv Twice
• A View To A Kyiv
• The World Is Not Enough
• Never Say Never Again ()

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Might as well use variations on Bond movie films for thread titles.  Some of them don't even have to be altered:

• Lviv Another Day
• Lviv And Let Die
• You Only Kyiv Twice
• A View To A Kyiv
• The World Is Not Enough
• Never Say Never Again ()

Safe to say Bond fighting the Russians is back in the plot cards.

[Padraig]

28 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

I think that a good example of this is Georgia, where almost all the things were true that you say above and the West didn't do shit. Do you think that because Georgia is southwest of Russia instead of south that the western countries were right to basically ignore the atrocities? Was it okay that Russia wasn't sanctioned for obliterating Grozny?

Sorry.  No.  Georgia is more complicated than that also.  There are different versions of what happened but the most pro-Georgian spin is that they were lured into a war by Russia.  Seperatists had started bombing Georgia first but when Georgia responded by invading those Russian backed seperatist regions, Russia was almost inevitably going to respond.  It made it  more difficult to take the high moral ground here.  Who was the aggressor?

This was also not a war of conquest.  Borders pretty much returned to the pre-war status after the conflict.  Although somebody can correct me if i'm wrong on this. 

As for Western involvement, the French President was famously very active in arranging the ceasefire.

Looking back at it, Georgia is a good example of Western appeasement towards Russia (rather than anything else).  We let them do their thing because we didn't want to upset them.  And they had somewhat arguable reasons for the invasion (although this ignores the fact that they grabbed Georgian territory initially in the early 90s, which was the seed of this conflict.  As I said, appeasement).

Chechnya is a good example of a very brutal war.  But breakaway regions are very difficult to get involved in (above and beyond war between two sovereign nations).  Looking back at it, people will say that by letting letting Russia get away with such brutality that they were inevitably going to push the envelope further in future years.  But at the time I can see why people stayed well away from a "Russian sovereignty issue".

Quote

No languages in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are even remotely related to the Russian language. 

I don't believe that is true.  Estonian isn't remotely related but Latvian and Lithuanian are distant cousins, as far as I know.   So Russian is related to Ukrainian, less related to Polish and even less related to Lithuanian/Latvian but still related.

44 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

I also read on these very forums that Ergodan was slowly trying to disentangle these Central Asian nations from Russian influence while maintaining his tenuous relationship with Putin

Right.  Erdogan could be the bigger winner in this if Russia ends up weaker.  It has already been involving itself very actively in Azerbaijan.

And just because I think people here are too hopeful about Ukraine.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/ominous-signs-for-ukraine-as-russia-slowly-but-steadily-turns-the-screw-1.4831645

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Padraig said:

This was also not a war of conquest.  Borders pretty much returned to the pre-war status after the conflict.  Although somebody can correct me if i'm wrong on this. 

You're totally wrong on this; Georgia claims two territories are occupied. Russia claims both of those territories are independent states. This is almost precisely the same situation as Ukraine, with a very similar playbook. 

1 hour ago, Padraig said:

As for Western involvement, the French President was famously very active in arranging the ceasefire. 

I guess that's good. How many sanctions did the US apply?

1 hour ago, Padraig said:

Chechnya is a good example of a very brutal war.  But breakaway regions are very difficult to get involved in (above and beyond war between two sovereign nations).  Looking back at it, people will say that by letting letting Russia get away with such brutality that they were inevitably going to push the envelope further in future years.  But at the time I can see why people stayed well away from a "Russian sovereignty issue".

I think we've seen exactly how much those sovereignty issues matter when it's Chechens or Syrians or Yemens, and how much they matter when it's Ukrainians. 

I don't know that the west needed to arm people, but economic sanctions and whatnot should have been on the table for a lot of those things. And hell, with Yemen the US could, ya know, stop giving arms to Saudi Arabia. 

1 hour ago, Padraig said:

I don't believe that is true.  Estonian isn't remotely related but Latvian and Lithuanian are distant cousins, as far as I know.   So Russian is related to Ukrainian, less related to Polish and even less related to Lithuanian/Latvian but still related. 

Well, if you go back far enough almost all of them are related. Lithuanian and Polish are close enough in several places that my wife (who speaks neither) can figure out some of the Lithuanian names of Polish people, which has been useful for doing my genealogy. My point is that there aren't a lot of, say, Lithuanian communities in Germany or Lithuanian immigrants. It's not nearly as familiar to the west as, say, Polish is. This is of course by design - Lithuania was absolutely repressed for years and no one could get out - but it also means that the Baltics are probably most familiar to people because they produce good basketball players, and not because of an area of town with immigrants or a famous deli or something like that. 

 

[Maithanet]

3 hours ago, Fez said:

And also, there have been a lot of private humanitarian donations up until now that would presumably start dropping off if people are getting bored.

It would be difficult for the Ukraine War to continue to dominate headlines the way it has in the past month.  There is very little movement, a fair amount of fog of war and the battles are mostly for tiny villages.  Yes people are still suffering and dying, but there just isn't much for most people to latch on to right now.  Like what key things have occurred in the past week that an average American or Brazilian or Japanese person would care about?  You can report on the barbaric targeting of the civilians like the theater bombing that killed over a thousand people in Mariupol.  But that kind of story is pretty rough to report day after day. 

[ThinkerX]

lost track of the article, but supposedly Russia managed to blow up one of their own oil refineries

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 minute ago, ThinkerX said:

lost track of the article, but supposedly Russia managed to blow up one of their own oil refineries

Hoist by their own petrol, as the bard said

 

[DMC]

While widespread interest in Ukraine is surely to wane, I'm not sure it matters much outside of popular attentiveness to providing charitable aid.  From an American perspective, appropriators will certainly stay on top of funding levels and be ready to politicize the issue if/when further funding is needed.  I think it's fair to assume that will be the case for most of Europe as well, if not even more so.