Overall the situation is very dire in their village and seems to worsen day by day. The village they are in has been largely occupied by the Russians since day 1 of the war. There have been a bunch of videos filmed in the past few weeks showcasing how the Russians are "helping" the Ukrainians. Bringing food (at extremely over inflated prices), talks of opening a school, etc. The videos are then broadcast in Russia. Not only that, but they are saying they are filmed in Kherson and Mariupol to show how well the Russians are doing in those areas, which of course is complete nonsense. My wife watches these propaganda videos and recognizes so many of the people, who look completely disheveled as they are being filmed. Anyone with half a brain knows they are complete nonsense. But I guess people across the border are buying into it.
Because her family has access to a small basement, 5 other people have joined them recently, including 2 small children who cannot find their parents. Heartbreaking and infuriating. Today her step-father called and said the gas has been disconnected, so it is no longer possible to have heat or to cook with the stove. Already 14 residence dead the past few days, including my wife's good friend (mother of 3). One her friends was also "evacuated" (kidnapped) to Russia and the last message from her was this was likely her last message and then she hasn't been online since.
As reported in the news recently, the Ukrainians are trying to push the Russians out from North of Kharkiv and to close off access from Belgorod which has been one of the main supply routes towards Kharkiv. This means there is constant hellfire raining down on those villages sandwiched in the middle. To say this is stressful (especially her family) is an understatement. These are truly the worst days of the war for them. We always had an idea this kind of push to stop the flow of supplies from Belgorod would come during the Donbass phase. It is hell for them. We just hope this is all worth it.
My wife is also aware that her own situation has been posted on CP, and she asked me to post some of her words, from her perspective. Much of what is reported in this war in on a larger scale. Her village hasn't been reported in English news (which is probably a good thing, depending on your perspective) and she asked me to post her message here:
I am writing this post so that people know how people survive in small villages that are occupied by Russia. In one of them, my whole family lives. This village borders on Russia. For ~51 days they have no electricity, barely any communications, the shops are burnt out and empty. People are constantly living under bombardment Right now my family live in cellars with 10 people in cold and hunger.
Ukraine cannot deliver humanitarian aid. Russia delivers it very rarely, and all the people do not have enough food. They live like it is a prison. To go from one street to another you need to have special permission with you. You can’t move around the village by car. Russian soldiers prevent people from evacuating to Kharkiv. You can only go towards Russia. Some people, at their own peril and risk, tried to drive to Kharkiv through small roads through the fields, but there were mines and they died. Many men in this village have gone missing. They are preying on men who served in the Donbass.
What happened to them, unfortunately, we all understand. Russian soldiers go door to door to civilians, check documents, force them to "evacuate" to Russia. Those people who left their homes, Russian soldiers live there now. When they leave the village to be relieved by other soldiers, they take everything home with them in big trucks. Even houses for dogs are stolen. Cars of civilians are taken out from the yards. Communication is possible only in some places and people go outside to these places to call their families. Sometimes the soldiers take away the phones and do not allow talking on the phone. Because of the constant shelling, recently 14 people were injured. Some were buried today. For almost 2 months people live in fear. Pharmacies are burned down, there is no medicine. People in the occupied territories do not live, but survive! It’s scary when you don’t know whether your mother will call today or not, your whole is standing house or not, whether you will step on a mine today or not. And if you have enough food for tomorrow....
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Sounds like the Russian's are going hard after weapons depots and logistics centers where Western Weapons are coming in. They're also doubling down on the strategy of flattening cities and towns, instead of taking them.
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Russia has lost an insane amount of jets in the past 3 days alone, and mostly their best stuff, Su-34 and Su-35s raining down.
3 on 23, 3 on the 24th, looks like several more today. Their 'give Putin a victory at all costs for Victory Day' directive is going to send them back to their imperial days, quite litterally.
They are using an imperial era ship to salvage the Moskva.
We are getting near to a point where Russia won't be able to do any more offensive pushes and will be stuck trying to defend what they've gained so far.
Byraktar drones are great when the Russians were advancing stupidly way ahead of their AA cover, but now lines are pretty static the TB2s are more vulnerable with quite a few examples of them getting shot down. Other drones with longer ranges and higher payload weapons would be more effective in these scenarios. Luckily the US is training Ukrainians on larger RQ/Ghost drones as we speak.
Russia doesn't have anything to spare to attack Moldova, I really doubt they would stage anything right now.
Moldova on the other hand stated a little after the conflict started that it intends to take back Transnistria. With Russian forces extremely pre-occupied, this is the best chance they might ever have.
That said, randombly bombing a government building makes no sense for them. But I don't see it making any sense for Russia either.
Unless they have some really weird plan going on.
Last edited by Itse; 04-25-2022 at 01:17 PM.
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Byraktar drones are great when the Russians were advancing stupidly way ahead of their AA cover, but now lines are pretty static the TB2s are more vulnerable with quite a few examples of them getting shot down. Other drones with longer ranges and higher payload weapons would be more effective in these scenarios. Luckily the US is training Ukrainians on larger RQ/Ghost drones as we speak.
The only reason you don't hear more about TB2's of late is Turkey requested Ukraine to cool it with the videos. We stopped seeing any TB2 videos after about 10 days. They are still being used effectively, but not in every situation.
There's only been 4 visually confirmed TB2 drones destroyed.
The cost of a TB2 drone is around 6 million.
In the process they have been instrumental throughout the invasion, and they were also used in the sinking of the Moskva, was responsible for the command post in Kherson, and now seemingly the fuel depot and military building in Bryansk that is over 100km away in Russian territory.
If the Bryansk attacks were done by a TB2 drone and it was shot down, it was well worth the 6 million $ loss for the sheer chaos it caused and how much this hurt the Russian war efforts, and how deep they were able to attack.
And the TB2s likely also had an amazing view of the Neptunes hitting the Moskva that are kept private for now. Effectively, these drones have been involved either directly or indirectly in the biggest eye catching events in the past week.
I can admit that I am woefully unaware of the things of which I have no awareness.
Are you open to enlightening me and others like me on this particular viewpoint by your experience?
Maybe a topic for a new thread? I’m always looking to learn
I'm not entirely clear on what you're asking.
If you're asking why I think that's the case, it's basically because people in the Global South generally have been historically, and continue to be currently, more substantially impacted by the policies, politics, culture, and institutions of the Global North than the reverse has been.
If you're asking what people in the Global South think, well that's most of the world's population and pretty diverse. It's definitely relevant to the situation with Russia and Ukraine though. The narrative in the American and Canadian media is very often about the "international community" being united and the phrase "international rules-based world order" has been getting pushed really hard since Biden got into office, but the world outside the West isn't all aligned with the West on the relationship with Russia or the sanctions. To much of the world, the phrase "international rules-based world order" pretty much sounds like the world according to the West's rules, especially the US, and ordered such that the West is on top. It definitely isn't universally accepted as just, fair and benevolent in the way it is made out to be here.
I don't agree with everything Vijay Prashad has to say in this video, and he's speaking to climate issues here, but I think this is a short talk that captures a sentiment that resonates with a lot of the Global South.
If you were to watch Biden's speech in Poland again from the perspective of someone who has seen a history of interacting with the West from the other side and feels like Vijay Prashad, it would come across quite differently. Try to think how things like 'democracy vs. autocracy', using the financial systems as a weapon, uniting the NATO countries more closely than ever, removing Putin from power, and even Biden opening his talk with a quote from a Pope, may not come across as just, fair or benevolent to people who have interacted with centuries of colonial and imperial Western powers.
There's a lot more cynicism and skepticism in the Global South about the Western rhetoric and about why this war is being treated so differently than other wars and humanitarian crises around the world. Even if the world agrees that Putin's actions make him a war criminal, things like the US pushing to have Putin tried as a war criminal at the ICC when the US doesn't even recognize the validity of the ICC and claims immunity for itself from the ICC under normal circumstances seem like just more of that "rules based world order" where the rules are our rules as and when we feel like applying them.
Of course nearly all the countries around the world condemned Russia's actions in the war against Ukraine, but the united world against Russia that seems to be talked about a lot in politics and in media here, where Russia becomes a global pariah, doesn't seem as likely as it's made out to be imo. Most of the Global South won't be particularly optimistic about a situation with a united and more militarized West while the world is more divided either.
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If you're asking why I think that's the case, it's basically because people in the Global South generally have been historically, and continue to be currently, more substantially impacted by the policies, politics, culture, and institutions of the Global North than the reverse has been.
If you're asking what people in the Global South think, well that's most of the world's population and pretty diverse. It's definitely relevant to the situation with Russia and Ukraine though. The narrative in the American and Canadian media is very often about the "international community" being united and the phrase "international rules-based world order" has been getting pushed really hard since Biden got into office, but the world outside the West isn't all aligned with the West on the relationship with Russia or the sanctions. To much of the world, the phrase "international rules-based world order" pretty much sounds like the world according to the West's rules, especially the US, and ordered such that the West is on top. It definitely isn't universally accepted as just, fair and benevolent in the way it is made out to be here.
I don't agree with everything Vijay Prashad has to say in this video, and he's speaking to climate issues here, but I think this is a short talk that captures a sentiment that resonates with a lot of the Global South.
If you were to watch Biden's speech in Poland again from the perspective of someone who has seen a history of interacting with the West from the other side and feels like Vijay Prashad, it would come across quite differently. Try to think how things like 'democracy vs. autocracy', using the financial systems as a weapon, uniting the NATO countries more closely than ever, removing Putin from power, and even Biden opening his talk with a quote from a Pope, may not come across as just, fair or benevolent to people who have interacted with centuries of colonial and imperial Western powers.
There's a lot more cynicism and skepticism in the Global South about the Western rhetoric and about why this war is being treated so differently than other wars and humanitarian crises around the world. Even if the world agrees that Putin's actions make him a war criminal, things like the US pushing to have Putin tried as a war criminal at the ICC when the US doesn't even recognize the validity of the ICC and claims immunity for itself from the ICC under normal circumstances seem like just more of that "rules based world order" where the rules are our rules as and when we feel like applying them.
Of course nearly all the countries around the world condemned Russia's actions in the war against Ukraine, but the united world against Russia that seems to be talked about a lot in politics and in media here, where Russia becomes a global pariah, doesn't seem as likely as it's made out to be imo. Most of the Global South won't be particularly optimistic about a situation with a united and more militarized West while the world is more divided either.
I don't want to derail this thread and I don't even know who this guy is but what he said about lecturing and policy regarding climate change and everything is 100% accurate. This is a powerful statement and it goes to show you how far we really are in this issue.
He said it better than almost anybody else I ever heard on it. We love to lecture but the truth of the matter is, until your average, progressive leaning voter who counts climate change as their #1/2 issue legitimately makes due with a fraction of what they do, nobody else is going to step in line.
As for how this all relates to the war with Ukraine and Russia, I have had it with the lecturing from the elites when it comes to things like refugee's, pollution, famine, inflation, the poor etc when it's their policies that cause the same issues of war and it's associated destruction.
That would be a very hard war for them to fight. Transnistria is essentially isolated on all sides by either neutral powers with the shortest distance spanning an active war zone where they are losing.
Maybe its an impetus for incursions from Transnistrian separatists into western Ukraine? but there is honestly no way to supply them.
