My guess is the other people on the panel are listening to the guy saying 'we have to wipe out Ukraine!!' and thinking 'isnt that what we've been trying to do?'
Ukrainians are saying the captain of the Moskva went down with his ship while Russians maintain all 500 crew made it out alive. Russian maintains the ship just spontaneously exploded on its own for mysterious reasons, yet their own pundits are blaming Ukraine and threatening retaliation. Their story seems to change hourly, I doubt with all the moving goalposts Russia news puts out that anyone outside would believe them.
Speaking of unbelievable numbers, another one is Russia's published casualty reports and number of Ukrainians troops/equipment wiped out. If you believe the Russians, they've lost less troops than the Ukrainians, and destroyed more equipment in every category than the Ukrainians had before the invasion started. Meanwhile Ukrainians are using social media facial recognition databases to try to contact the next of kin for the ~9K dead/captured Russian soldiers that the Kremlin refuses to repatriate. https://twitter.com/user/status/1514941871830835200
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Ukrainians are saying the captain of the Moskva went down with his ship while Russians maintain all 500 crew made it out alive. Russian maintains the ship just spontaneously exploded on its own for mysterious reasons, yet their own pundits are blaming Ukraine and threatening retaliation. Their story seems to change hourly, I doubt with all the moving goalposts Russia news puts out that anyone outside would believe them.
Speaking of unbelievable numbers, another one is Russia's published casualty reports and number of Ukrainians troops/equipment wiped out. If you believe the Russians, they've lost less troops than the Ukrainians, and destroyed more equipment in every category than the Ukrainians had before the invasion started. Meanwhile Ukrainians are using social media facial recognition databases to try to contact the next of kin for the ~9K dead/captured Russian soldiers that the Kremlin refuses to repatriate. https://twitter.com/user/status/1514941871830835200
I don't watch Russian TV but I do read Russian news sites. They talk about "retaliation" with regards to Ukraine shelling a Russian village in Bryansk area and some other minor shelling which is occasionally reported here and there.
Yesterday Putin's spokesman said that the goal of "operation" is to destroy Nazi army units, by which they probably mean Azov. "Liberating" Donbass was never mentioned. Same guy said two weeks ago that "operation" might be over within days though...
Another high profile senator claimed that it will be over "fairly soon". Seems like Russian way is to regularly tell public that war is going to be over soon.
There have been no mention of bringing Donbass republics into Russia for some time. I wonder if Putin gave up on it.
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I have read a lot about Russia's demographic problems and this video summarizes a lot of that information:
There is obviously a lot of information that you have to take at face value to accept the premise... I don't think many people here have the time or resources to fact check it all. I suspect the facts are correct, but I guess you could argue the conclusions.
Anyway, it does explain the question of why Russia is making this move now. The person making the video said that this war will be the last major conventional war Russia can wage unless they somehow fix their demographic problems, which likely won't be for a few generations. Keep in mind this was posted during the military build up and not after the war began.
Edit: After re-watching, the later part of the video was from before the invasion, but the first part was obviously after.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
Last edited by FlamesAddiction; 04-16-2022 at 12:47 AM.
This Easter, decorated eggs called pysanky are holding extra meaning for Calgary artists of Ukrainian descent looking to assist those displaced by the ongoing conflict in Europe.
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I have read a lot about Russia's demographic problems and this video summarizes a lot of that information:
There is obviously a lot of information that you have to take at face value to accept the premise... I don't think many people here have the time or resources to fact check it all. I suspect the facts are correct, but I guess you could argue the conclusions.
Anyway, it does explain the question of why Russia is making this move now. The person making the video said that this war will be the last major conventional war Russia can wage unless they somehow fix their demographic problems, which likely won't be for a few generations. Keep in mind this was posted during the military build up and not after the war began.
Edit: After re-watching, the later part of the video was from before the invasion, but the first part was obviously after.
Russia does have huge demographic problems. To tackle those there have been many government programs to help young mothers, families with children and such. There's also a lot of promotion of family values. In a park where my family walks there are pictures of families with 3+ children. It goes to extent that my wife, as a mother of two, received roughly $5000 in government support even though both our kids have US citizenship along with Russian citizenship and their birth certificates are issued by USA in Houston, Texas
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MOD updates for the day. Russians appear to have pushed Ukrainians back a bit east of Izium eroding some of the Ukrainian gains in the region earlier in the week. No confirmed changes in control between the two sides today in Mariupol, or Izium/Severodonetsk today. Russians closing in on the last defenders in the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, and are continuing to send small piecemeal attacks in Severodonetsk/Donets river area.
Another concerning note is Ukrainians claim Russians are preparing to deport Mariupol residents to parts of Russia.
Russia kicking it old school on the master and commander/culture of fear organization structure. Aka “The boss gives orders” and “Do it or I will fire you” and “Your fired if you screw up”
It gives me joy to see this old school way of operating fail. A lot of companies still operate this way to similar underperforming results. Junior staff are demoralized, and take no initiative. All staff are so scared to screw ip there is a bias to inaction.
This senseless war is so negative, but I hope people are seeing how a smaller competent and clear in mission army is out performing a larger one.
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Russia does have huge demographic problems. To tackle those there have been many government programs to help young mothers, families with children and such. There's also a lot of promotion of family values. In a park where my family walks there are pictures of families with 3+ children. It goes to extent that my wife, as a mother of two, received roughly $5000 in government support even though both our kids have US citizenship along with Russian citizenship and their birth certificates are issued by USA in Houston, Texas
Anything about gay couples adopting an unwanted child into their loving home?
Previously unannounced Russian General KIA in Ukraine.
Tweet disappeared
Heres a report from the WSJ confirming the death of Major General Vladimir Frolov, deputy commander of the Russian 8th Army. He is to be buried in St Petersburg. Funny how these ships keep sinking and generals keep dying on their own when the Ukrainians are supposedly running out of equipment and ammo. One has to admire pro Russians mental gymnastics abilities
Quote:
Russian officials said Saturday that another of its generals, deputy commander of the 8th Army Maj. Gen. Vladimir Frolov, was killed in combat in Ukraine. They didn’t provide details, but#several other generals have already been killed#in the conflict, particularly in the early days in the campaign.
What she's saying: "The people of Finland, they seem to have already made up their mind," Tuppurainen told Sky News, noting that polls show overwhelming support for joining NATO.
"We need to discuss this issue thoroughly in our Parliament," she said. "At this point I would say it is highly likely, but a decision is not yet made."
"The brutal war in Ukraine, that is a wake-up call to us all," she added. "Not only to us Finns; it has to do with the whole security border in Europe."
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It's unbelievable Putin failed to foresee it. I can't even imagine what his plan was. My best guess is that expected swift and decisive Russian victory was supposed to scary Finns into never joining NATO out of fear of retaliation from Russia. And even that was weak plan.
Last edited by Pointman; 04-16-2022 at 12:41 PM.
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Finland has indeed all but decided they would like to join NATO, at least as far as public opinion goes.
However, that would require the approval of every current NATO country, which includes Hungary.
Hungary of course is currently ruled by Viktor Orbán, coming off a fresh election victory. Orbán is an ultra-conservative authoritarian who has been very friendly with Putin, and who was already throwing wrenches in Ukraine's plans to create ties to the EU and NATO, very likely for Putin's benefit.
There have been signs that Orbán might consider abandoning Putin as a weakening ally, but the problem for him is that his relationships with much of EU is already extremely bad due to the corruption and ultra-conservative politics of Hungary under his leadership. So there might not be much for him to gain in trying to appease west, and allowing Finland to join NATO could very well ruin his relationship with his former strongest ally.
I'm sure there's a ton of backroom diplomacy and armwrestling going on that's not public knowledge over this topic.
There's speculation that if Hungary declares (unofficially) that it won't let new countries join NATO, Finland and Sweden will hold back their applications so the infighting in NATO doesn't become public, as now is not a good time for that.
It's also worth noting that the current Finnish coalition government includes pretty much all the most NATO-sceptical parties, while the most pro-NATO major parties are in the opposition. The tradition of Finnish politics suggests that in a massive longterm decision like this, a lot of effort is put into trying to find a large consensus that surpasses current government-opposition lines though, and in general I think the public atmosphere is such that refusing to send in a NATO application might be political suicide.
(But there's also some big domestic issues that the government is occupied with.)
Last edited by Itse; 04-16-2022 at 12:40 PM.
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Heres a report from the WSJ confirming the death of Major General Vladimir Frolov, deputy commander of the Russian 8th Army. He is to be buried in St Petersburg. Funny how these ships keep sinking and generals keep dying on their own when the Ukrainians are supposedly running out of equipment and ammo. One has to admire pro Russians mental gymnastics abilities
