I watched this last night. Very difficult to see what these people are going through. Very well done, but incredibly difficult.
VICE did one on Kharkiv recently too. I could barely watch it, as I have way too many good memories of visiting there over the past years. After watching it I looked at some photos I had on my phone from there and it just made me so sad and angry.
Because the Americans are feeding specific location information to the Ukrainians. It will be an amazing story when it comes out years down the road but there is no way the Ukrainians are having this degree of success against high-value targets without major assistance.
That is not how they are dying. US intelligence is providing lots of intel but this is not what is going on.
They are dying, because they have to be on the front lines due to poor communication on the front. Several of them were located due to using unencrypted phone communications that are easily intercepted and their location identified through their phone call. Higher military leaders did have a supposedly advanced encrypted phone system called Era, problem is that it relies on 3G communication and all most cell towers were bombed early in the war, making it completely unusable. Yes seriously, Russia build an encrypted phone system that relied on stable infrastructure.
Heck, one of the first generals killed by a sniper on the Kyiv front, Andrey Sukhovetsky, was killed because he apparently moved in front of the 40km long convoy waving his hands in anger like Skeletor for not moving.
Needless to say he was an extremely easy identifiable target and killed there.
Russia is playing a game of battleship while their board is fully visible to Ukraine.
Last edited by Firebot; 03-28-2022 at 12:42 PM.
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Russia is no longer requesting Ukraine be “denazified” and is prepared to let Kyiv join the European Union if it remains military non-aligned as part of ongoing ceasefire negotiations, according to four people briefed on the discussions.
Moscow and Kyiv are discussing a pause in hostilities as part of a possible deal that would involve Ukraine abandoning its drive for Nato membership in exchange for security guarantees and the prospect to join the EU, the people said under the condition of anonymity because the matter is not yet finalised. The draft ceasefire document does not contain any discussion of three of Russia’s initial core demands — “denazification”, “demilitarisation”, and legal protection for the Russian language in Ukraine — the people added.
Quote:
As part of the agreement under consideration, Ukraine would also refrain from developing nuclear weapons, or hosting foreign military bases in addition to abandoning its pursuit of Nato membership.
In exchange, Ukraine would get what Arakhamia called “wording close to Nato’s Article 5” — whereby the alliances’ members must come to each others’ aid if one is attacked — for security guarantees from countries including Russia, the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, China, Italy, Poland, Israel, and Turkey.
Any prospective agreement, however, would have to be agreed with the guarantors and ratified by their parliaments, Zelensky said on Sunday.
Seems to be a big walk back from Russia - although they get Ukraine to not join Nato - Ukraine essentially gets the same protections if these countries agree to it.
Ukraine agreeing to "de-nazify" seems like the easiest give ever in any agreement.
1) make arbitrary commitments to flesh out growing nazism sympathies in the country is a win to western powers and saves Putin some face;
2) since it's probably insanely overblown as an issue since Russia lies about literally everything, it's likely not a real thing to worry about thus easy to commit to resolving for Russia's "concern";
3) Ukraine should want to flush out and destroy nazi sympathetic groups anyway.
Ukraine agreeing to "de-nazify" seems like the easiest give ever in any agreement.
1) make arbitrary commitments to flesh out growing nazism sympathies in the country is a win to western powers and saves Putin some face;
2) since it's probably insanely overblown as an issue since Russia lies about literally everything, it's likely not a real thing to worry about thus easy to commit to resolving for Russia's "concern";
3) Ukraine should want to flush out and destroy nazi sympathetic groups anyway.
I suppose the real objection would be it justifies the invasion if the Ukraine essentially admits it is over run with Nazi's
Ukraine agreeing to "de-nazify" seems like the easiest give ever in any agreement.
1) make arbitrary commitments to flesh out growing nazism sympathies in the country is a win to western powers and saves Putin some face;
2) since it's probably insanely overblown as an issue since Russia lies about literally everything, it's likely not a real thing to worry about thus easy to commit to resolving for Russia's "concern";
3) Ukraine should want to flush out and destroy nazi sympathetic groups anyway.
Can also toss in protecting the Russian language, whatever that means. More than half the population is already bilingual with Russian and Ukrainian. Heck, most of the signage is in Russian the more east you go.
Last edited by Huntingwhale; 03-28-2022 at 01:38 PM.
The Nazis thing was always bogus, their far right party had like 10% of the vote in 2010, 5% in 2014, and 1.6% in 2019. There's less Nazis in Ukraine than France, if we're considering how much support Marine Le Pen gets.
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The Nazis thing was always bogus, their far right party had like 10% of the vote in 2010, 5% in 2014, and 1.6% in 2019. There's less Nazis in Ukraine than France, if we're considering how much support Marine Le Pen gets.
The irony is that invading a country and killing their people only helps extremist elements to grow. If this war goes on for a few years, we will almost certainly see retaliatory attacks on Russian communities by Ukrainians. You can't take these types of assaults and not expect the other side to come down to the same level eventually. It happens almost everywhere there is a prolonged war with high civilian death tolls. Then Russians and their supporters will point and go "see!".
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“Tell him that I'll destroy them all.” - Putin angrily replied, appealing to Abramovich, after russian oligarch Roman Abramovich handed Putin a note written by President Zelensky himself - The Times.
I don't see how this doesn't continue with hostilities later on? Ukraine will continue to want to secure it's borders and it's people, mostly with NATO supplied weapons and equipment. I can see them really moving away from the Soviet era stuff that was in their fleet and almost completely move towards western weapons.
With the fact that NATO and other countries supplied and trained a lot of forces, how is that remaining neutral in the eyes of Russia?
Russia may not want NATO next to it in Ukraine but in some ways, NATO will be there in spirit?
Who even knows anymore? Hopefully the fighting and the bombing stops very quick and some aid can make it's way in fast! The rebuilding efforts will be long and expensive.
I don't see how this doesn't continue with hostilities later on? Ukraine will continue to want to secure it's borders and it's people, mostly with NATO supplied weapons and equipment. I can see them really moving away from the Soviet era stuff that was in their fleet and almost completely move towards western weapons.
With the fact that NATO and other countries supplied and trained a lot of forces, how is that remaining neutral in the eyes of Russia?
Russia may not want NATO next to it in Ukraine but in some ways, NATO will be there in spirit?
Who even knows anymore? Hopefully the fighting and the bombing stops very quick and some aid can make it's way in fast! The rebuilding efforts will be long and expensive.
There's been an ongoing war along the border for a decade, with more or less total Russian control of the Eastern provinces. It's basically back to square one, once the Russians find a way to recover their pride.
The cold war's concept of neutrality allows for unlimited training/supplying of weapons, as long as no actual forces engage each other. This has been the way the cold war has operated since the end of WWII.
This whole thing will end up being a massive waste of lives, so that Putin can feel like a big man.
I don't see how this doesn't continue with hostilities later on? Ukraine will continue to want to secure it's borders and it's people, mostly with NATO supplied weapons and equipment. I can see them really moving away from the Soviet era stuff that was in their fleet and almost completely move towards western weapons.
With the fact that NATO and other countries supplied and trained a lot of forces, how is that remaining neutral in the eyes of Russia?
Russia may not want NATO next to it in Ukraine but in some ways, NATO will be there in spirit?
Who even knows anymore? Hopefully the fighting and the bombing stops very quick and some aid can make it's way in fast! The rebuilding efforts will be long and expensive.
The preferred settlement for Ukraine includes security guarantees not unlike NATO article 5. If Russia attacks then the US and whoever else signs up is obligated to defend, and probably vice versa. Then any incursion from either side starts WW3 which nobody wants.
There was a previous agreement that was more of a non-aggression pact that Russia ignored this time around because it didn't include the security guarantee.
