Russia invades Ukraine

[bob-loblaw]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1497991881401192457

Spoiler!

https://twitter.com/user/status/1498001237983129605

https://twitter.com/user/status/1497983212051648521

https://twitter.com/user/status/1498004335464169473

Things are escalating quickly.

One of the things that I find funny is that Meta/Facebook announced they won't be allowing ads from Russian entities. It's of course easy to announce that when Visa and Mastercard can't deal with Russian banks because of the sanctions - they can't take payments from Russian entities.

[Southside]

nm

[blankall]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

Could the EU recommend that Ukraine be admitted to NATO? To me that's better than mailing Bob the Baker a rocket launcher.

Admitting Ukraine would force NATO to respond militarily immediately.

[FormerPresJamesTaylor]

Originally Posted by Pointman

Kyiv mayor just tweeted that Kyiv is surrounded. Ukrainians might eventually turn the tide, but it hasn't happened yet.

Which doesn't speak to what I posted

[Trojan97]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1497985066722631681

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by Southside

nm

Just grab the numbers at the end of the tweet (1497972204851634191 in that case) and wrap around it

[kn]

Originally Posted by Itse

There's already been stories that many Russians living abroad feel watched and intimidated by sudden change of behaviour in the people around them. In many countries there are demands for driving every Russian citizen out of the country, and that sort of thing can easily create generational animosity.

My wife is Russian and a Permanent Resident. She is in Russia right now with our daughter and trying to get out via Azerbaijan or Kazakstan. I wonder about potential backlash when she gets back when people find out she's originally from Russia.

[nfotiu]

What does a crazy Putin do when he's completely backed into a corner?

The less he has to lose, the more real the nuclear threat becomes it seems.

[burn_this_city]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1498010900846022660

https://twitter.com/user/status/1497928206489247744

[FormerPresJamesTaylor]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

What does a crazy Putin do when he's completely backed into a corner?

The less he has to lose, the more real the nuclear threat becomes it seems.

Same thing a crazy Putin does when he's not backed into a corner.

Madman or Madman Theory, we need to stop worrying about what he might do and focus on what he's done.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by kn

My wife is Russian and a Permanent Resident. She is in Russia right now with our daughter and trying to get out via Azerbaijan or Kazakstan. I wonder about potential backlash when she gets back when people find out she's originally from Russia.

I certainly hope everyone is able to separate the common Russian citizen from the actions of their country's dictator. Ordinary Russians -- even some of the soldiers currently fighting and dying in the invasion -- are just as much a victim of Putin as the people in Ukraine are. I'd like to think that the average Canadian/American/European/etc. isn't going to hold Russian immigrants accountable for a war they had absolutely no control over, but after seeing racist idiots direct hate towards Asian immigrants over COVID, I'm not so confident that will be the case.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

At last check, my understanding was that this whole operation was costing Russia about 20 billion per day. Is that still the case? And how long can they keep shelling out that much money with the current sanctions in place?

[RogerWilco]

Originally Posted by kn

My wife is Russian and a Permanent Resident. She is in Russia right now with our daughter and trying to get out via Azerbaijan or Kazakstan. I wonder about potential backlash when she gets back when people find out she's originally from Russia.

I cant imagine that people around here will have any problems with Russian's unless they are openly supportive of this invasion and of Putin.

[Huntingwhale]

Originally Posted by kn

My wife is Russian and a Permanent Resident. She is in Russia right now with our daughter and trying to get out via Azerbaijan or Kazakstan. I wonder about potential backlash when she gets back when people find out she's originally from Russia.

Hopefully anyone with 2 brain cells can put the power of those brain cells to use and understand that many Russian citizens are just as against this war as the rest of us, and the decision to attack was made by 1 man only.

Best of luck to her and your daughter.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

https://twitter.com/user/status/1498010900846022660

https://twitter.com/user/status/1497928206489247744

When was the last time Russian forces were hit with airstrikes? That has to be so demoralizing for troops on the ground. You're just walking around when out of the blue BOOM, your trucks/tanks are destroyed and some of your buddies are dead, and there's nothing for you to even shoot back at. Hopefully this causes some of the Russian forces to start deserting

[burn_this_city]

These weapons are terrifying, tanks reduced to a few wheels and an engine block. That @ArmedForcesUKr twitter feed has way more mayhem that I didn't want to post.

[PaperBagger'14]

God I hope this is true, peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have started

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/c...ve_begun_kyiv/

[MarchHare]

Real talk: is Ukraine actually winning this war, or is that just wishful thinking and we're only seeing social media posts and videos that show what we want to see? I think we can definitively say that the Russian offensive is meeting stronger resistance than anticipated and the invasion forces are not capturing their objectives as quickly as they planned, but that was also true for the Allies on D-Day (none of the five beaches achieved their D+0 objectives). It doesn't necessarily mean the defenders are repelling the invasion, they're just slowing it down.

So is there a credible source somewhere that has an accurate picture of what is really happening on the ground? Everything I'm reading paints this as a military disaster for Russia, but is that really true?

[Itse]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

At last check, my understanding was that this whole operation was costing Russia about 20 billion per day. Is that still the case? And how long can they keep shelling out that much money with the current sanctions in place?

Nobody knows.

They supposedly had built up a deep warchest of funds, but a large chunk of that was apparently just made unusable in practice through economic sanctions. Or not, who know if that's just western propaganda.

Early predictions said they could fight off the effects of sanctions for months at least, but I haven't seen anyone try to make recent estimates. Most likely nobody knows.

Supposedly Putin has worked hard to make the Russian economy less vulnerable to sanctions, but that hasn't been truly tested yet.

If the ruble has an exteme crash on monday, as many are expecting/hoping, and Putins turns out to be as bad in finance as he's as a general, Russia's economy could crash quickly and spectacularly.

We'll know a lot more in the next couple of days.

[chemgear]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1497895706568237056