Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine
Jaytee said:
So China is putting forward a plan to end the war. Should Zelensky trust the Chinese? If they are silently supporting Russia, why should the Ukrainian people trust them? China has stated that the west provoked this war, that alone makes me distrust them. Going on this concept that Russia was provoked only gives credence to Putin. Zelensky is being calm and waiting to see what the details will be. He’s right not to trust any of them.
Anyone knows what the Chinese proposal is? I haven’t seen it.
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/202302/t20230224_11030713.html
Honestly, there's not much there. I don't think it's intended as any kind of serious plan, but more as a bit of diplomatic PR to position China as neutral. I doubt China intends Ukraine, Russia, or anyone else to take it seriously as an actual proposal.
PVW said:
Jaytee said:
So China is putting forward a plan to end the war. Should Zelensky trust the Chinese? If they are silently supporting Russia, why should the Ukrainian people trust them? China has stated that the west provoked this war, that alone makes me distrust them. Going on this concept that Russia was provoked only gives credence to Putin. Zelensky is being calm and waiting to see what the details will be. He’s right not to trust any of them.
Anyone knows what the Chinese proposal is? I haven’t seen it.
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/202302/t20230224_11030713.html
Honestly, there's not much there. I don't think it's intended as any kind of serious plan, but more as a bit of diplomatic PR to position China as neutral. I doubt China intends Ukraine, Russia, or anyone else to take it seriously as an actual proposal.
China Reprises Old Themes in Ukraine Plan, Casting Itself as Neutral
PVW said:
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/202302/t20230224_11030713.html
Honestly, there's not much there. I don't think it's intended as any kind of serious plan, but more as a bit of diplomatic PR to position China as neutral. I doubt China intends Ukraine, Russia, or anyone else to take it seriously as an actual proposal.
Stopping unilateral sanctions….probably the only thing Putin likes about this Chinese proposal.
Jaytee said:
PVW said:
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/202302/t20230224_11030713.html
Honestly, there's not much there. I don't think it's intended as any kind of serious plan, but more as a bit of diplomatic PR to position China as neutral. I doubt China intends Ukraine, Russia, or anyone else to take it seriously as an actual proposal.
Stopping unilateral sanctions….probably the only thing Putin likes about this Chinese proposal.
He likes China's proposal for a ceasefire which would benefit Russia because it would freeze Russian troops in place in Ukraine. This is anathema to the government in Kiev while Russia holds Ukrainian lands.
cramer said:
He likes China's proposal for a ceasefire which would benefit Russia because it would freeze Russian troops in place in Ukraine. This is anathema to the government in Kiev while Russia holds Ukrainian lands.
This, for me, is one of the biggest pieces of evidence that Putin is not interested in negotiations. As you note, nearly all the calls for negotiation at this time -- including this one by China -- are inherently favorable toward Russia. Were Putin to seize the initiative here, I think he would have a very good chance of fatally fracturing European/NATO support for Ukraine, and forcing through a settlement that left Russia in possession of a great deal of Ukrainian territory.
However, Putin has not done this. He'll offer vague remarks to the effect of being interested in talks from time to time, but never any concrete action. Perhaps the most notable example of this was early on in the war, when he allowed Russian negotiators to string Ukrainian negotiators along following Russia's failure to take Kyiv, while never offering any concrete promises in return, and all the while simply preparing for the renewed offensive in the Donbas (claims that Boris Johnson derailed an agreement rely on ignoring the clear Russian preparation for the Donbas offensive, ignoring the fact that Russia at no point never offered anything in return during these talks, ignoring the fact that Putin never committed to anything, ignoring the fact that high level officials in Russia actively dismissed the talks, etc).
Russia still thinks it can win, and as long as that's true, it won't be interested in any negotiations, even those that are tipped in its favor.
This man has become the face of Ukraine’s fight against Putin. Hero, martyr, Slava Ukraini…
https://apple.news/A527MCakRRv-RhUrw4HaIqg
Mercenary force boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said his Wagner private army has opened recruitment centres in 42 Russian cities as he seeks to replenish the army’s ranks after heavy losses in fighting for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
In an upbeat audio message on Friday, Prigozhin said new fighters were coming forward but gave no indication of the numbers involved. He also said ammunition supplies from the Russian army had improved but remained a concern.
What really is this guy’s aim in fighting so hard to defeat Ukraine? Is he somehow maneuvering himself into taking control of the salt mines? The agriculture? The resources of Ukrainians? It looks as if he’s struck some kind of deal with Putin that the Russian military is not privy to. This whole special operation has been about stealing, probably the biggest mobster heist in the history of Europe. What they can’t grasp is that the Ukrainian people are not going to give up.
Well I think Paul gave up on us. Russia's negotiation tactics will never change
jamie said:
Well I think Paul gave up on us. Russia's negotiation tactics will never change
I think he gave up on us because he'd rather repeat claims on the Twitter, which were already debunked here. He's also descended into some Bucha "thrutherism", questioning whether Russia was actually responsible for the atrocities (as Sbenois would put it, WWJS).
Speaking of Paul, it's looking like he will be on the "DeSantis 2024" bandwagon. Not only is Ron one of the most strident "anti-woke" politicians expected to run, but he's also signed on to the Tucker Carlson line about the Russian invasion of Ukraine - which DeSantis calls a "territorial dispute".
Florida Governor @RonDeSantisFL answers our Ukraine questionnaire:
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) March 14, 2023
“While the U.S. has many vital national interests – securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural,… https://t.co/1I2elVi6hI
He finally took Nan’s advice and gave up…propaganda dressed up as opinion don’t fly around here…we have librarians and gumshoes on the job around the clock. He will descend further into that Black Russian hole…
Once in awhile he acknowledges that Russia's invasion was bad. The other 99% is pinning the aggression on the US. And NEVER acknowledges Putin's actual rhetoric. Here's a clue - he's fighting the same nazism Russia was fighting during WWII. His troops were actually storming into town asking where the nazis were.
When you control the media and army and are able to block dissenters and protesters with zero repercussion - you have no worries.
Sanctions updates? This is easy - they have oil, they may be fine for now. Who knows? But do you want to force the world to bow down to vlad because he has oil and nukes? I guess some peace activists are saying Ukraine should surrender to stop the decimation of their homeland and cede the territories to Vlad the Great because there's no other option.
And of course they will show how full their supermarkets are and the economy is fine. Tell that to the new conscript who was just sent to die.
These Russians don’t think Russia is “winning”. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/13/world/europe/russia-dubai-ukraine-war.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Every time I read something about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the word “nazi” is in the text, I remember Jamie asking Pablo about the level of de-nazification being carried out… because I recently read a news report that said local people in Ukraine were looking at the Russian soldiers in disbelief when they would ask them if they were hiding any nazis in their homes… this is after kicking down their doors… basically thinking theses Russians are batshitcrazy.
That’s how effective the Putin propaganda machine is. These poor peasants are being sent to war believing that it’s a just and noble cause. And we have people in this country with access to all kinds of information, who choose to act like a peasant from Siberia who’s flip phone has no internet connectivity…
Maria Lvova-Belova is the next Russian government official who will be charged with war crimes. Children’s rights ombudsman….jail them all.
They look like zombies climbing over the rotting corpses of their comrades, until they are killed also. Looks like Putin is drugging his soldiers.
https://www.insider.com/ukrainian-soldiers-russia-bakhmut-frontline-drugs-2023-3
The Same Russian Agents Who Meddled In US Politics set the stage for Ukraine invasion. Many of those who worked to interfere in American politics also played key roles in Russia’s assault on Ukraine, a fact that is becoming increasingly clear as the war moves into its second year and new intelligence becomes public.
Taken from the link below…
“Known loosely as the Mariupol plan, after the strategically vital port city, it called for the creation of an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving Putin effective control of the country’s industrial heartland, where Kremlin-armed, -funded and -directed “separatists” were waging a two-year-old shadow war that had left nearly 10,000 dead. The new republic’s leader would be none other than Yanukovych. The trade-off: “peace” for a broken and subservient Ukraine.
The scheme cut against decades of American policy promoting a free and united Ukraine, and a President Clinton would no doubt maintain, or perhaps even harden, that stance. But Trump was already suggesting that he would upend the diplomatic status quo; if elected, Kilimnik believed, Trump could help make the Mariupol plan a reality. First, though, he would have to win, an unlikely proposition at best. Which brought the men to the second prong of their agenda that evening — internal campaign polling data tracing a path through battleground states to victory. Manafort’s sharing of that information — the “eyes only” code guiding Trump’s strategy — would have been unremarkable if not for one important piece of Kilimnik’s biography: He was not simply a colleague; he was, U.S. officials would later assert, a Russian agent.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/magazine/russiagate-paul-manafort-ukraine-war.html
Here’s more for those who can not open the link.
On the night of July 28, 2016, as Hillary Clinton was accepting the Democratic presidential nomination in Philadelphia, Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, received an urgent email from Moscow. The sender was a friend and business associate named Konstantin Kilimnik. A Russian citizen born in Soviet Ukraine, Kilimnik ran the Kyiv office of Manafort’s international consulting firm, known for bringing cutting-edge American campaign techniques to clients seeking to have their way with fragile democracies around the world.
Kilimnik didn’t say much, only that he needed to talk, in person, as soon as possible. Exactly what he wanted to talk about was apparently too sensitive even for the tradecraft the men so fastidiously deployed — encrypted apps, the drafts folder of a shared email account and, when necessary, dedicated “bat phones.” But he had made coded reference — “caviar” — to an important former client, the deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who had fled to Russia in 2014 after presiding over the massacre of scores of pro-democracy protesters. Manafort responded within minutes, and the plan was set for five days later.
Kilimnik cleared customs at Kennedy Airport at 7:43 p.m., only 77 minutes before the scheduled rendezvous at the Grand Havana Room, a Trump-world hangout atop 666 Fifth Avenue, the Manhattan office tower owned by the family of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Shortly after the appointed hour, Kilimnik walked onto a perfectly put-up stage set for a caricature drama of furtive figures hatching covert schemes with questionable intent — a dark-lit cigar bar with mahogany-paneled walls and floor-to-ceiling windows columned in thick velvet drapes, its leather club chairs typically filled by large men with open collars sipping Scotch and drawing on parejos and figurados. Men, that is, like Paul Manafort, with his dyed-black pompadour and penchant for pinstripes. There, with the skyline shimmering through the cigar-smoke haze, Kilimnik shared a secret plan whose significance would only become clear six years later, as Vladimir V. Putin’s invading Russian Army pushed into Ukraine.
Their business concluded, the men left by separate routes to avoid detection, though they continued to text deep into the night, according to federal investigators. In the weeks that followed, operatives in Moscow and St. Petersburg would intensify their hacking and disinformation campaign to damage Clinton and help turn the election toward Trump, which would form the core of the scandal known as Russiagate. The Mariupol plan would become a footnote, all but forgotten. But what the plan offered on paper is essentially what Putin — on the dangerous defensive after a raft of strategic miscalculations and mounting battlefield losses — is now trying to seize through sham referendums and illegal annexation. And Mariupol is shorthand for the horrors of his war, an occupied city in ruins after months of siege, its hulking steelworks spectral and silenced, countless citizens buried in mass graves.
Putin’s assault on Ukraine and his attack on American democracy have until now been treated largely as two distinct story lines. Across the intervening years, Russia’s election meddling has been viewed essentially as a closed chapter in America’s political history — a perilous moment in which a foreign leader sought to set the United States against itself by exploiting and exacerbating its political divides.
Yet those two narratives came together that summer night at the Grand Havana Room. And the lesson of that meeting is that Putin’s American adventure might be best understood as advance payment for a geopolitical grail closer to home: a vassal Ukrainian state. Thrumming beneath the whole election saga was another story — about Ukraine’s efforts to establish a modern democracy and, as a result, its position as a hot zone of the new Cold War between Russia and the West, autocracy and democracy. To a remarkable degree, the long struggle for Ukraine was a bass note to the upheavals and scandals of the Trump years, from the earliest days of the 2016 campaign and then the presidential transition, through Trump’s first impeachment and into the final days of the 2020 election. Even now, some influential voices in American politics, mostly but not entirely on the right, are suggesting that Ukraine make concessions of sovereignty similar to those contained in Kilimnik’s plan, which the nation’s leaders categorically reject.
This second draft of history emerges from a review of the hundreds of pages of documents produced by investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and for the Republican-led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; from impeachment-hearing transcripts and the recent crop of Russiagate memoirs; and from interviews with nearly 50 people in the United States and Ukraine, including four hourlong conversations with Manafort himself.
For Trump — who today is facing legal challenges involving the cache of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, his finances and his role in efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat — the Russia investigation was the original sin, the first of many politically motivated “witch hunts,” since repurposed into weapons in his expansive arsenal of grievance. The Russia investigation and its offshoots never did prove coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow, though they did document numerous connections. But to view the record left behind through the blood-filtered lens of Putin’s war, now in its ninth month, is to discover a trail of underappreciated signals telegraphing the depth of his Ukrainian obsession — and the life-or-death stakes that America’s domestic travails would have for some 45 million people nearly 5,000 miles away.
Among the episodes that emerge is the Grand Havana Room meeting, along with the persistent, surreptitious effort to bring the Mariupol plan to life. The plan was hardly the only effort to trade peace in Ukraine for concessions to Putin;many obstacles stood in its way. And its provenance remains unclear: Was it part of a Putin long game or an attempt by his ally, Yanukovych, to claw back power? Either way, the prosecutors who uncovered the plan would come to view it as potential payoff for the Russian president’s election meddling.
The examination also brings into sharper relief the tricks of Putin’s trade as he pressed his revanchist mission to cement his power by restoring the Russian empire and weakening democracy globally. He pursued that goal through the cunning co-optation of oligarchs and power brokers in the countries in his sights, while applying ever-evolving disinformation techniques to play to the fears and hatreds of their people.
No figure in the Trump era moved more adroitly through that world than Manafort, a political operative known for treating democracy as a tool as much as an idea. Though he insists that he was trying to stanch Russian influence in Ukraine, not enable it, he had achieved great riches by putting his political acumen to work for the country’s Kremlin-aligned oligarchs, helping install a government that would prove pliant in the face of Putin’s demands. Then he helped elect an American president whose open admiration of the Russian strongman muddied more than a half-century of policy promoting democracy.
In the end, Putin would not get out of a Trump presidency what he thought he had paid for, and democracy would bend but not yet break in both the United States and Ukraine. But that, as much as anything, would set the Russian leader on his march to war.
By 2005, Manafort had emerged as a central figure in Ukraine’s often-snakebit experiment in democracy. He was introduced to the country’s politics by one of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs, the aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska. Oligarchs don’t survive in Putin’s Russiawithout continually proving themselves useful to the motherland. And when Putin had an urgent problem in Ukraine, Deripaska, who had various holdings there, stepped in to help: He brought in Manafort’s firm, which he had hired earlier to assist in overcoming a block on his U.S. visa, based on allegations that he had gained his position through ties to organized crime (which he denies).
What had Putin in a lather was a pro-Western and youth-led democracy movement that had caught fire just as Ukraine’s second post-Soviet leader, the dictatorial and Kremlin-aligned Leonid Kuchma, prepared to step down. To succeed him, the reformists had lined up behind a politician named Viktor Yushchenko. Pro-American and married to a former State Department official, Yushchenko vowed to join NATO and the European Union. To the Kremlin, as one influential Russian defense analyst put it at the time, a Yushchenko victory would represent “a catastrophic loss of Russian influence throughout the former Soviet Union, leading ultimately to Russia’s geopolitical isolation.”
Putin had gone all in for Kuchma’s handpicked successor, Yanukovych, who had risen to power in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and had the backing of the country’s leading oligarchs. But working with some of Putin’s top political operatives, the Yanukovych campaign had gone horribly awry. First, an assassination attempt had left Yushchenko permanently scarred but very much alive. (A culprit was never identified; Yushchenko suspected the Kremlin.) Then the Yanukovych team resorted to an election heist worthy of Trump’s 2020 voter-fraud fantasia, with reports of ballot stuffing, disappearing ink and bused-in voters. With thousands protesting in Kyiv’s central Maidan square, Ukraine’s high court declared Yanukovych’s “victory” marred by “systemic and massive” election violations. Yushchenko then won in a new vote, a triumph of democracy known as the Orange Revolution.
There’s going to be more of this happening inside Russia. Civil war is inevitable.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-explosion-military-blogger-killed-ea2b036718512a1e93bab8f7f91e0d9f
With his air force planes stuck on the tarmac and the cannibalism of their war ships to mount gun turrets on old tanks, Putin’s regime is in its death throes. His “special military operation”, far from disarming Ukraine, has only succeeded in disarming Russia. Moscow has lost over 220,000 soldiers to death or injury alongside 1,900 tanks. So desperate is Putin for manpower that the Kremlin has identified around 4 million people across the country that it believes could be forced into the army.
Picking up the homeless bums, alcoholics, drug users, often crazy people….basically the dregs of Russian society who won’t be missed by anyone….throw them into the meat grinder…that’s a winner for you!
This barbarian doesn’t even care about his own people like his stooges around the world on social media do.
Jaytee said:
Picking up the homeless bums, alcoholics, drug users, often crazy people….basically the dregs of Russian society who won’t be missed by anyone….throw them into the meat grinder…that’s a winner for you!
It's like an internal genocide. He's genociding on both sides.
jamie said:
Jaytee said:
Picking up the homeless bums, alcoholics, drug users, often crazy people….basically the dregs of Russian society who won’t be missed by anyone….throw them into the meat grinder…that’s a winner for you!
It's like an internal genocide. He's genociding on both sides.
He's just "sweeping the forest floor" of the undesirables.
Possibly the start of another Russian retreat?
Ukraine Says Russian Troops Are Evacuating Civilians From Occupied Areas of South (NYT)
Ukraine’s military is not saying much about the Russian retreat, I don’t blame them. Too many pro Russian bloggers out there creating misinformation. But Ukrainian forces have crossed over the Dnipro River and established a bridge head already. With so many Russian soldiers surrendering their weapons and fighting equipment, Ukraine’s position has become increasingly stronger. Of course the propaganda will be forthcoming….reminding me of that general in Iraq ‘s military who came on TV to say…”we are winning”…. Then went into hiding, leaving his army to surrender.
I'll be surprised if Ukraine's coming offensive accomplishes much. On the other hand, I think this war will be decided based on political developments so who knows.
Great news, Wagner will cease to exist. Evil bastards.
https://news.yahoo.com/prigozhin-says-wagner-group-may-203800054.html
China says it wants a strategic relationship with Ukraine…using the exact words when Xi visited his buddy pal in Russia recently. Who do these people think they’re talking to?
If the Ukrainian army takes Melitopol with their planned counteroffensive, that will most likely be the beginning of the end of the Russian invasion. Then take Crimea. I think Ukraine is going to surprise the entire world with their heroic efforts. I bet you no other country would even contemplate messing with Ukraine’s sovereignty again. The Russian empire is crumbling, and those people who have been predicting the fall of the American empire for years will have to rethink their decision.
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So China is putting forward a plan to end the war. Should Zelensky trust the Chinese? If they are silently supporting Russia, why should the Ukrainian people trust them? China has stated that the west provoked this war, that alone makes me distrust them. Going on this concept that Russia was provoked only gives credence to Putin. Zelensky is being calm and waiting to see what the details will be. He’s right not to trust any of them.
Anyone knows what the Chinese proposal is? I haven’t seen it.