Ukraine: Slava Ukraini!!!

[Werthead]

Russia denies that China proposed any kind of peace plan, which is interesting because France and Germany confirmed their FMs had discussed the plan with the Chinese last week. Reading between the lines, the Chinese either decided proposing the plan was a waste of time or they did in private and Russia rejected it, so now they're pretending it was never proposed to help China save face.

Britain's military production is apparently now starting to approach something near the levels needed to match Ukraine's usage of stocks. This is only in a few areas, but it raises hopes that Ukraine can look forwards to better resupply at a moment when Russia's appears to have badly stalled. Several other countries are looking to switch to 24/7, three-shift production of ammunition, NATO-standard tank shells and older Soviet calibre ammunition, with Czech and Slovak factories particularly churning out a lot of stuff, although they alone can't fulfil demand.

I'm getting a very strong feeling from the last few days that Poland and the Baltic States are now 100% convinced that if Russia succeeds in Ukraine, they will be on the firing line themselves. There seems to have been a shift not only upwards in rhetoric on helping Ukraine defeat Russia, but also increasing NATO troop deployments in all four countries and rapidly enhancing their own defensive capabilities. And, maybe surprisingly, Hungary seems to be more on board with NATO commitments in the last few days. Not for the first time, I think Orban is mixing a viewpoint of finding Putin a useful ally/partner but also having absolutely zero interest in having Hungary annexed to Russia and turned back into a satellite state again, so he's playing the angles there.

[polishgenius]

35 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Not for the first time, I think Orban is mixing a viewpoint of finding Putin a useful ally/partner but also having absolutely zero interest in having Hungary annexed to Russia and turned back into a satellite state again, so he's playing the angles there.

I reckon it's a combination of this and as long as PiS are in charge of Poland, Orban needs them as an ally within the EU. 

[Zorral]

You can’t understand the war in Ukraine without knowing history
By Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder is the Levin professor of history at Yale University and the author of “The Road to Unfreedom” and “Bloodlands.” His updated audio edition of “On Tyranny” includes 20 new lessons about Ukraine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/22/timothy-snyder-ukraine-russia-war-history/

Quote

 

Teaching a lecture class on Ukrainian history last fall, I felt a touch of the surreal. The war in Ukraine had been going on for half a year when I began. A nuclear power had attacked a state that had given up its nuclear weapons. An empire was trying to halt European integration. A tyranny was attempting to crush a neighboring democracy. On occupied territories, Russia perpetrated genocidal atrocities with clear expressions of genocidal intent.

And yet, Ukraine was fighting back. Ukrainians resisted the nuclear blackmail, scorned the vaunted empire and took risks for their democracy. At Kyiv, Kharkiv and, later, Kherson, they beat back the Russians, halting the torture, the murder and the deportation.

We were at a historical turning point. But where was the history? The television screens were full of Ukraine day in and day out, and the one thing any viewer could say with confidence was that the commentators had never studied Ukraine. I heard from my former students, now in government or in journalism, that they were glad to have taken Eastern European history. They said that they were a little less surprised than others by the war; that they had more reference points.

The contrast between the historical importance of this war and the lack of coursework in history reveals a larger problem. We know too little history. We have designed education to be about technical questions: the how of the world. And solving everyday problems is very important. ....

 

 

[Jace, Extat]

4 minutes ago, Zorral said:

You can’t understand the war in Ukraine without knowing history
By Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder is the Levin professor of history at Yale University and the author of “The Road to Unfreedom” and “Bloodlands.” His updated audio edition of “On Tyranny” includes 20 new lessons about Ukraine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/22/timothy-snyder-ukraine-russia-war-history/

 

Chapter 3 of my in-progress fantasy Opus (it's kinda the pre-Opus, rather than the Magnum Opus, proper, for... reasons that have to do with my radical despite towards gatekeepers) 

Anyway, Chapter 3 opens with the epigraph  "Repeating is not knowing." 

 

It's obviously like complicated, right? Like weaving shit into the... ahem... fabric...? the fabric??  of a story and stuff right. But you don't pick rando words to start your fucking chapters unless you work suckle for Disney. 

What's this motherfucker trying to tell you with that line? It's a well-known thing that repetition is how people learn. That's true. 

[Zorral]

Probably, this informed fellow is saying you need to read, often you need to read entire texts, in order to know what is what. Or/and go there, be there, speak and read languages. Right?

As Snyder says, further down in the piece:

Quote

.... It was surreal in a different way when millions of people joined my class online. Americans had recognized that something was wrong with the Russian myth but did not know how to fill the gap. It was heartening to hear, in the thousands of emails I received, that the gap could be filled by history. It was a lively semester; history was getting the students thinking. When we think historically, we recognize that political communities rise and fall, and that human choice — including the perverse choices of militarist tyrants — is always part of the story. We get better at taking in events as they come. We are awakened to the experience of others. For me personally, it was touching to hear from Ukrainians, including soldiers on the front line, who were listening to the class online. ...

.

Snyder is one of the good guys, who has been there all along, long before most people in this nation probably ever hear of Ukraine or could point it out on a world map.  He's been invoked in this space often, particularly in the first months of the war.

[Jace, Extat]

47 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Probably, this informed fellow is saying you need to read, often you need to read entire texts, in order to know what is what. Or/and go there, be there, speak and read languages. Right?

As Snyder says, further down in the piece:

.

Snyder is one of the good guys, who has been there all along, long before most people in this nation probably ever hear of Ukraine or could point it out on a world map.  He's been invoked in this space often, particularly in the first months of the war.

In an unintentional enactment of the "hyperacute" : 

I noticed as a child. As a child

That History Class was being taught wrong. Most things were, in fact. It was all just short-term repetition tricks that were, like, literally specifically designed to help you remember the buzzword or buzzphrase just long enough to fill out the quiz 5-to-7 days later. 

Then immediately forget everything, except cram cram cram a few months later to briefly re-learn buzzword or buzzphrase just long enough to fill out Midterm/Finals

In history class it was this pattern, repeated every year and then the periods of study were repeated every 2 years. 

No depth

No nuance 

No LESSON NO FUCKING LESSON

Just crossword skill recall training! What!?! I didn't even like the Oliver Stone Alexander movie when I was a kid but I still noticed that Christopher Plummer was, like, TEACHING THE CHILDREN THINGS 

They were a little racist, sure... But it was a different time!  

 

 

My thinking, specific/"triggered" to the teaching of history and the failures therein of the past however-long

ETA:

..."in a way that could be exhausting." 

[Jace, Extat]

Also, I can't access that link

[SpaceChampion]

On 2/21/2023 at 6:33 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Has his defenestration been scheduled?

Depends if they can find a window open in his itinerary.

[A True Kaniggit]

24 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Depends if they can find a window open in his itinerary.

In Putin’s Russia, window find you!

[Gorn]

Joking aside, Prigozhin has a literal private army that can match a medium-size country's military. When they ask him "you and what army", he can point to one. I don't think he's in any danger of defenestration.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I love the symbolic burns but I’d rather see Ukraine properly armed to push back the Russians:

 

[Maithanet]

In the latest Perun video, he has two valuable points. 

Strategically, Russia has already lost.  Imagine a Russian best-case scenario for the war going forward where Western support fades over 2023 and Russia is able to achieve significant battlefield victories in 2023 and 2024, such that Ukraine is forced to negotiate a peace ceding all 5 of the annexed oblasts to Russia.  Even then, it doesn't counterbalance the losses of:

 - Europe rearming itself to face the Russian threat. 

 - Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

 - Losing Europe as a market for Russian energy and goods, and the significant soft power that came with it.  Russia's economy in 2021 was forecast to grow 5-8% annually throughout the decade, now it is looking at long term stagnation. 

 - The Ukrainian national identity being forged in opposition to Russia, with a continuing will to resist.

 - The prestige of the Russian military being ruined, such that countries like India and Indonesia are looking elsewhere for arms deals because Russian gear sucks. 

 - The Russian military is utterly wrecked, the stockpile of Soviet arms and ammo is exhausted, and it is unlikely its conventional military will ever match the power or prestige it had 2021. 

 

The second point is that for Putin and other leaders (Shoigu/Prigozhin, etc) the war puts them in an uncomfortable paradox.  As long as the war is going on, they can continue to ask huge sacrifices of the Russian people in the name of victory.  But if the war ever ends, people will expect for things to get better domestically.  This will almost assuredly not happen, because Russia's economy is contracting, its most skilled workers have left, the horrific Russian demographics have been rapidly accelerated by the war, and corruption is only getting worse over time. 

Winning the war in Ukraine is looking increasingly difficult for Russia/Putin.  But (for Putin) winning the peace afterwards might be even more challenging.  He has a strong incentive to keep this war going as long as possible.  Putin is unlikely to ever be in a position to cut his losses and negotiate.  As long as the war is ongoing, his regime seems relatively stable, but if it ends...that isn't so certain. 

[A wilding]

2 hours ago, Gorn said:

Joking aside, Prigozhin has a literal private army that can match a medium-size country's military. When they ask him "you and what army", he can point to one. I don't think he's in any danger of defenestration.

I can think of a few historical examples where that sort of approach did not go well. Wallenstein or Sejanus for example.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Maithanet said:

The second point is that for Putin and other leaders (Shoigu/Prigozhin, etc) the war puts them in an uncomfortable paradox.  As long as the war is going on, they can continue to ask huge sacrifices of the Russian people in the name of victory.  But if the war ever ends, people will expect for things to get better domestically.  This will almost assuredly not happen, because Russia's economy is contracting, its most skilled workers have left, the horrific Russian demographics have been rapidly accelerated by the war, and corruption is only getting worse over time. 

Winning the war in Ukraine is looking increasingly difficult for Russia/Putin.  But (for Putin) winning the peace afterwards might be even more challenging.  He has a strong incentive to keep this war going as long as possible.  Putin is unlikely to ever be in a position to cut his losses and negotiate.  As long as the war is ongoing, his regime seems relatively stable, but if it ends...that isn't so certain. 

Yup, one of the issues is that if the war ends, Ukraine will be armed absolutely to the teeth by the west, it will have modern jet aircraft, it will have heavy artillery, it will have large amounts of tanks. Russia will also rearm, but it will be slower going. They only way to break out of that trap is to end the war, and then buy tons of new gear from China as a way to replace the losses (I do wonder now if the worries over China rearming Russia were from some leak of the peace plan, with China maybe using the rearming and restocking as an incentive for Putin to end the war altogether). But even if they heavily restocked, the going against Ukraine would still be much harder next time. And the sheer volume of stuff they'd need might make China, which at the very least considers a war against the United States possible in the next 5-10 years, think twice about how much stuff they can afford to sell rather than keep for their own use.

So this is very much a "use it or lose it" moment for Russia.

[Kalbear]

Interesting to me is that while Ukraine will have a lot of more modern weaponry from NATO they do not have the capacity or technology to actually continue to create most of the munitions they'll need. If for some reason NATO decided to not support Ukraine they'd be in a very big pickle. 

I think also going against Ukraine next time is a nongo - I can't see Ukraine being less prepared for at least a generation. The Bucharest 9 are going to be gearing up for decades. Russia has effectively already lost in that respect. The only way Russia can continue those kinds of aims for conquest is to figure out a way to get even better military tech, training and logistics. That's certainly possible, mind you, but it's quite a ways away from where Russia is now.

[Maithanet]

Russia as a conventional military power is dropping like a stone.  In 2021, they were considered the second or third most powerful military in the world.  But this war has demonstrated that a lot of their advanced tech is either vaporware (Armata tanks), available only in tiny quantities (SU-35), or largely ineffective (swaths of electronic warfare gear).  Russia had the largest inventory of tanks, artillery and shells in the world, but most of that is used up or will be scrap by the end of this war. 

Throughout history, Russia had many natural advantages that allowed it to rebound from military disasters and poor leadership.  Russia had the largest population in Europe, immense natural resources and huge swathes of land for an invader to cross.  But Russia's population is no longer noteworthy (9th largest in the world), its economy is in shambles (11th in the world, and likely to fall much further this decade), and its ability to produce first rate military technology is fading.  Yes, it could theoretically ally itself closely with China and get Chinese military tech in exchange for oil and gas, but that is the path of being a second tier power (at best).  

Russia's military was at a particularly low point in the 90s, with soldiers starving in their units and thieves selling anything that wasn't nailed down.  By the end of this war, they might be back to that pitiful state - a nation totally reliant on nukes for defense. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

The worldwide trolling of Russian embassies continues

The Latvians have a T-72 tank destroyed by Ukraine parked as an exhibition outside the Russian embassy in Riga

And outside the Russian embassy in Berlin!

 

[Maithanet]

Wagner continues to complain about being starved for shells, but Ukrainian sources indicate that shelling in the Wagner areas of the front is typical.  Instead, it is only that Wagner is receiving the normal amount of shells, which is not enough for them to continue their offensive.  Because Russia doesn't have enough shells.  There is a lot of speculation that Russia is basically exhausting itself with this February "offensive", which had captured virtually nothing and wasted huge amounts of troops and ammunition. 

It actually reminds me of a smaller scale, less successful version of the Soviet Winter Offensive of 1941-42.  The Russian generals wanted a big attack on army group center, but Stalin insisted on a series of attacks across the entire front.  This spread out the Russian strength, and while they captured some ground, it accomplished little and mostly destroyed whatever Russian reserves had been built up.  See Battle of Lyuban for one example. 

Obviously the area of the front, the number of men and the casualties are much smaller in this war.  But the main principles seem very similar.

[Zorral]

Russian propagandists are buying Twitter blue-check verifications
The verification means their tweets, mostly opposing U.S. aid to Ukraine, are given added prominence

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/22/russian-propagandists-said-buy-twitter-blue-check-verifications/

And --

Putin and the Right’s Tough-Guy Problem by Paul Krugman

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/opinion/putin-ukraine-toughness.html

Quote

 

A democracy — imperfect, as all nations are, but aspiring to be part of the free world — is invaded by its much larger neighbor, a vicious dictatorship that commits mass atrocities. Defying the odds, the democracy beats back an attack most people expected to succeed in a matter of days, then holds the line and even regains ground over the months of brutal fighting that follow.

How can any American, a citizen of a nation that holds itself up as a beacon of freedom, not be rooting for Ukraine in this war?

Yet there are significant factions in U.S. politics — a small group on the left, a much more significant bloc on the right — that not only oppose Western support for Ukraine but also clearly want to see Russia win. And my question, on the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion, is what lies behind right-wing support for Vladimir Putin?

Now, Putin isn’t the only foreign autocrat America’s right likes. Viktor Orban of Hungary has become a conservative icon, a featured speaker at meetings of the Conservative Political Action Committee, which even held one of its conferences in Budapest.

But conservative admiration for Orban, I’m sorry to say, makes rational sense, given the right’s goals. If you want your nation to become a bastion of white nationalism and social illiberalism, a democracy on paper but a one-party state in practice, Orban’s transformation of Hungary offers a road map. And that is, of course, what much of the modern Republican Party wants.

Yet Orban is not, as far as I can tell, the subject of a right-wing cult of personality; how many American conservatives even know what he looks like?

Putin, by contrast, very much is the subject of a personality cult not just in Russia but also on the American right and has been for years. And it’s a fairly creepy cult at that. For example, back in 2014 a National Review columnist contrasted Putin’s bare-chested horseback riding with President Barack Obama’s “metrosexual golf get-ups.”

Until the invasion of Ukraine, Putinphilia also went hand in hand with extravagant praise for Russia’s supposed military effectiveness. Most famously, in 2021 Ted Cruz circulated a video contrasting a Russian military recruitment ad featuring a muscular man doing manly stuff with a U.S. ad highlighting the diversity of Army recruits. “Perhaps a woke, emasculated military isn’t the best idea,” Cruz declared.

What was the basis for this worship of Putinism? I’d argue that many people on the right equate being powerful with being a swaggering tough guy and sneer at anything — like intellectual openness and respect for diversity — that might interfere with the swagger. Putin was their idea of what a powerful man should look like, and Russia, with its muscleman military vision, their idea of a powerful country. ....

 

 

[maarsen]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Russian propagandists are buying Twitter blue-check verifications
The verification means their tweets, mostly opposing U.S. aid to Ukraine, are given added prominence

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/22/russian-propagandists-said-buy-twitter-blue-check-verifications/

And --

Putin and the Right’s Tough-Guy Problem by Paul Krugman

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/opinion/putin-ukraine-toughness.html

 

This reminds me of a phrase I heard as a child. "Strong like bull. Smart like streetcar. "