Ukraine 11: Russian lies, guns, and money

[polishgenius]

7 minutes ago, SeanF said:

That does not justify everything that the Soviets and Western allies did in the conduct of that war. Conversely, atrocities against civilians don't render a cause unjust.

What you're studiously ignoring though is that while the Soviets had their Just Cause- beating the Nazis- they were also busily engaging in and expanding on the unjust cause they'd concocted with the Nazis in the first place, of expanding into Eastern and Central Europe, and did so by committing atrocity after atrocity on the people they were supposedly liberating in their just cause 

[RhaenysBee]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

Ukraine very clearly has ius ad bellum, even if civilians die at their hands.

So? When has public image and relations ever depended on whether you were legally in the right or not? Besides, legality and morality aren’t the same thing either. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

I'm distinguishing between just cause and right conduct.

the Soviets (and Western allies) plainly had just cause in the fight against the Nazis.  That does not justify everything that the Soviets and Western allies did in the conduct of that war. Conversely, atrocities against civilians don't render a cause unjust.

Even in terms of conduct, however, there was no Allied equivalent of the Holocaust or Generalplan Ost.

 

I see where you are headed.  Just recognize that it is a mighty fine hair to split.  The firebombing of Dresden, Soviet attrocities as they moved over Eastern Europe, the firebombing of Tokyo, the use of Nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  There is no such thing as a “good war”.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

25 minutes ago, 3CityApache said:

No one but a large part of their own, brainwashed population, sadly.

And QNuts… and Tankies.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

As for Dresden:

I ever so rarely get to sneak in football into politic threads.

@Ser Scot A Ellison

I'll provide a translation for the banner.

Your Grandparents already were fired up for Dresden. Against the German Victim Myth.

[editorial note, the banner literally read burnt for Dresden. But as that is the pun in German, I opted for fired up]

Displayed at a home game against Dresden 4-5 years ago.

 

But I was actually looking for an older one, which simply stated. That was at an away game at Dresden, uff, maybe 10 years ago.

Do it again Bomber Harris.

Probably some background is in order, as it is really just the far right, that often whines about bombing of Dresden.

[Werthead]

Quite a big prisoner swap today, with around 86 prisoners from both sides exchanged successfully.

Lots of diplomacy with India, which seems to have ended with India agreeing to stay neutral, apart from continuing to buy Russian oil (but noting the amount they buy is far less than European countries).

[Zorral]

Um, there is no doubt whatsoever in history that Stalin committed war crimes and slaughtered innocent populations before, during and after his pact with Hitler. The Soviet wasn't held accountable after the war, of course, because at the point of trials Stalin was an ally, with Europe and the US. Not long afterwards though, well it was too late, Soviet Russia was one of the Bigs of the UN, etc.  Thus the 'cold war.'

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Russia’s War Lacks a Battlefield Commander, U.S. Officials Say"

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/31/us/politics/russia-military-ukraine.html

Quote

 

WASHINGTON — Russia is running its military campaign against Ukraine out of Moscow, with no central war commander on the ground to call the shots, according to American officials who have studied the five-week-old war. ....

.... A senior American official said that NATO officials and the intelligence community had spent weeks waiting for a Russian war commander to emerge. No one has, leaving Western officials to conclude that the men making decisions are far from the fight, back in Moscow: Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu; Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian military; and even President Vladimir V. Putin.

On Wednesday, Biden administration officials, citing declassified U.S. intelligence, said that Mr. Putin had been misinformed by his advisers about the Russian military’s problems in Ukraine. The intelligence, American officials said, also showed what appeared to be growing tension between Mr. Putin and Mr. Shoigu, who was once among the most trusted members of the Kremlin’s inner circle.

Russian officials have disputed the American intelligence assertion, with the Kremlin on Thursday calling it a “complete misunderstanding” of the situation that could have “bad consequences.”

But it is hard to run a military campaign from 500 miles away, U.S. military officials said. The distance alone, they said, can lead to a disconnect between the troops who are doing the fighting and the war plans being drawn up in Moscow. Instead of streamlining the process, they said, Russia has created a military machine that is unable to adapt to a quick and nimble Ukrainian resistance.

A second senior American official said that Russian soldiers, who have been taught not to make a single move without explicit instructions from superiors, had been left frustrated on the battlefield, while Mr. Putin, Mr. Shoigu and General Gerasimov continued to plot increasingly out-of-touch strategy. ....

 

 

[Zorral]

Because it is behind subscriber paywall, another tranche from the NYT's peice on what US Intelligence is saying about the lack of central command for the Russian forces in Ukraine.  Fascinating stuff.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/31/us/politics/russia-military-ukraine.html

Quote

 

.... Mr. Putin’s own dishonest portrayal of the mission of the Russian military may have hurt its ability to prosecute the effort, which the Russian president initially presented publicly as a limited military operation.

General Clark recalled teaching a class of Ukrainian generals in 2016 in Kyiv and trying to explain what an American military “after-action review” was. He told them that after a battle involving American troops, “everybody got together and broke down what happened.”

“The colonel has to confess his mistakes in front of the captain,” General Clark said. “He says, ‘Maybe I took too long to give an order.’”

After hearing him out, the Ukrainians, General Clark said, told him that could not work. “They said, ‘We’ve been taught in the Soviet system that information has to be guarded and we lie to each other,’” he recalled.

Mr. Putin’s decision to send the Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov to the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol this week for a victory lap despite the fact that Mariupol has not fallen yet demonstrates the Russian president’s continued belief that the biggest battle is the information one, said Andrei Soldatov, a Russian security services expert.

The feared Chechen “is a general, not a real military commander,” he said, adding, “This shows that what Putin still believes is that propaganda is the most important thing here.”

Russian officials are now signaling that Mr. Putin might be lowering his war ambitions and focusing on the eastern Donbas region, though military analysts said it remained to be seen whether that would constitute a meaningful shift or a maneuver to distract attention ahead of another offensive.

The Russian army has already committed more than half of its total combat forces to the fight, including its most elite units. Moscow is now tapping reinforcements from outside Russia, including Georgia, as well as rushing mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a private military company, to eastern Ukraine.

Mr. Putin has also signed a decree calling up 134,000 conscripts.

“They seem to have no coherent concept of the amount of force it will take to defeat the Ukrainian regular and territorial forces in urban terrain, and to retain what they destroy or overrun,” said Jeffrey J. Schloesser, a retired two-star Army general who commanded U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan. “Hundreds of thousands of more Russian or allied troops will be necessary to do so.”

 

[JoannaL]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I see where you are headed.  Just recognize that it is a mighty fine hair to split.  The firebombing of Dresden, Soviet attrocities as they moved over Eastern Europe, the firebombing of Tokyo, the use of Nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  There is no such think as a “good war”.

Yes, but while the US and UK had their war crimes while there was an actual war - bad enough. The soviets also killed continue afterwards  to kill millions of people  by expulsion.

[KingintheNorth4]

13 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Because it is behind subscriber paywall, another tranche from the NYT's peice on what US Intelligence is saying about the lack of central command for the Russian forces in Ukraine.  Fascinating stuff.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/31/us/politics/russia-military-ukraine.html

 

Sounds like Putin is shooting himself in the foot. 

[SeanF]

43 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

Yes, but while the US and UK had their war crimes while there was an actual war - bad enough. The soviets also killed continue afterwards  to kill millions of people  by expulsion.

The expulsion of ethnic Germans was agreed upon by the British, Americans, and Czechs, as well as the Soviets.

[Werthead]

The Ukrainians confirming they have now retaken Bucha, a town on the outskirts of Kyiv between Irpin and Hostomel.

[Toth]

54 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The expulsion of ethnic Germans was agreed upon by the British, Americans, and Czechs, as well as the Soviets.

Yeah, sure... though I severely doubt Churchill and Roosevelt had in mind at Yalta a million German casualties, forced labor, the repurposing of Nazi concentration camps and the sending of hundreds of thousands of Polish to Siberia, as well as terrorizing the rest with the NKVD to hasten their leaving. Not to mention Stalin eagerly set these things in motion long before they were finalized in the Potsdam Agreement, starting with the ethnic cleansing east of the Curzon line as soon as he got his hands on the territory.

[Gorn]

57 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The Ukrainians confirming they have now retaken Bucha, a town on the outskirts of Kyiv between Irpin and Hostomel.

More importantly, they've also taken Ivankiv, an important communications center through which all roads north into Belarus lead. If any Russians remained south of Ivankiv, they will have to either surrender, or flee on foot through the woods while leaving any heavy equipment behind.

[Werthead]

Reportedly the attack on Belgorod is the first air strike on Russian soil since the Korean War, when the Americans accidentally bombed an airfield on the wrong side of the North Korean border. The Americans apologised and there was some horse-trading that stopped the situation escalating.

[JGP]

For fuck's sake, man. Anyone know how legit this is?

[Werthead]

11 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

For fuck's sake, man. Anyone know how legit this is?

The Times has good sources, but hardly flawless ones.

The story seems a bit strange on several levels. The first is that Russia has perfectly good cyberattack systems themselves, so why would they need China to carry out the attack for them? Unless China did it off its own back, but it's hard to see why. If China wanted to formalise some kind of crazy alliance with Russia and help them go all-in on Ukraine, they could have done that five weeks ago. Instead they seem to have been, at least somewhat, on the back foot over the invasion. I get the impression they thought Putin was bluffing and was trying to intimidate Ukraine, and was happy with that, but the actual invasion has them bemused (though not exactly rushing to condemn Russia, but not helping it as much as they could).

Also notably:

 

[JGP]

Keyword of the SBU therein might be 'official,' but fair enough.  

[RhaenysBee]

What is real anymore? Have we all taken the purple pill? 

This story makes no logical sense at all. Then again, what does? I guess this is just one of the million things we will never know. 

[JGP]

Not digging this post truth era at all.