A place for aggregated discussions of a possible conflict, it’s implications and effects, news updates and personal accounts if any. If the expected conflict kicks off, I will change the title but the function will stay the same.
Some plausible info on the Russian nuclear forces' status here:
https://twitter.com/russianforces/st...In short, it connects the 'circuits', normally disabled, that an order to use the weapons would go over. This includes some automatic responses to a decapitation strike but only if actual nuclear detonations on Russian territory are detected. So this lowers their vulnerability to a first strike without necessarily raising their own ability to launch one. If this guy's to be believed, then, it doesn't sound like a significant worry beyond the concern inherent in any nuclear saber-rattling.
From that twitter thread. Looks like this has never been done before... Again, if this person is to be believed. I truly hope it's just Putin swinging his dick around...
An interesting question is whether this has ever been done before. Not to my knowledge, although I cannot rule out the early days, 70s and the early 80s. I am certain that it was NOT done in January 1995 in the Norwegian rocket incident. So, it's probably the first
So, Nuketown.exe runs when "the system" detects a nuclear blast on Russian territory?
Jesus f*cking Christ.
We got an amber alert on my wife's phone at about 2-3am.
For a minute or so it didn't sound like it was coming from her phone.
If I wasn't still a little groggy, the panic that I was feeling, that Russia had launched nukes, would have been much more realized.
Seemingly a good follow on military developments in the war. The account does a daily map update on the frontlines. Also post likely authentic videos from the war, including of two (probably) Russian jets being shot down over Kharkiv. Another video making the rounds is some random Ukrainain guy just casually moving a mine out of a road out into a forest.
As for the impending nuclear armageddon, I'd rather it not happen of course, but as a kid of the 70s and 80s, I long ago made the mental shift to not worry about such an outcome.
Ukraine to hold talks with Russia near Belarus. Well, at least if you're meeting near Chernobyl, you've taken care of the radiation part.
Ukraine to hold talks with Russia near Belarus. Well, at least if you're meeting near Chernobyl, you've taken care of the radiation part.
At this point, I wouldn't put it past Putin to try and have a nuke on the ground to go off, like in Octop*ssy or that Pierce Brosnan movie where he assembles a nuke by the US base in Germany.
I imagine China is examining maps of Siberia right now and marking the resources like a kid with a toy catalog at Christmas. Who needs Taiwan when you can have all those juicy, juicy riches and Russia obviously can't defend them.
Yeah, the US and Europe are most likely getting a wealth of information on Russian military capabilities. They are probably quoting Archer "How are you a superpower?"
Putin is the only one left who thinks Russia is, or can be, a superpower.
Russia has become North Korea with better real estate.
Report: Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov has been fired.
Seems there is no confirmation of this from Russia.
I can't find it now, but I saw a tweet before the shooting started that went something like this:
You know that old, angry, neighbor that drinks and smokes to much; who maybe thought of himself as a ladies man when he was young but was probably always just a predator? Now you just try and avoid this neighbor and hope you don't get stuck in the elevator with him. Then you go a few weeks without seeing him, and you hope maybe this time he died, but then he wakes up the whole building in the middle of the night, banging on the wrong door again.
Russia is that neighbor.
The general analysis is that the sanctions announced this weekend will cripple the Russian economy; can't really sustain a month of war if your reserves cannot be liquidated and used by your banking system yet it's costing $20bn / invasion day.
So that has hopefully brought the Russians to negotiate swiftly but not before trying one last push to capture a few cities for more bargaining power. If the Ukrainian folks can hold them off for the next 24 hours it's possible the maps might be redrawn re the two separatist regions and Crimea plus a pledge not to join NATO. I don't think they'd abandon EU membership though.
Rat Boy wrote:Video showing Poland refusing to allow in Africans trying to leave Ukraine. Lest we forget that Poland's under the control of a white nationalist government.
I'm mostly finding stories saying that it's the Ukrainian police that are supposed to be helping with the evacuation that are causing most of the problems, giving preference to white Ukrainians over Africans. Looking at Nze's other tweets, it looks like that particular video was of Ukranian police & soldiers trying to stop them so that the white Ukranians they were taking to border could cross first. The group Nze was with did push forward and the soldiers gave up. His latest tweet has him waiting at the Poland border as of 3 hours ago. There are stories of Nigerian students being turned away from crossing into Poland, but a lot of them were from earlier in the week and seemed to be due to a lack of communication between Nigeria and Poland. They're now supposed to be given safe passage into Poland though.
This has likely evolved into a Russian disinformation campaign. There was a Twitter Spaces organized yesterday claiming to exist to help Nigerians get out of Ukraine. The organizers were very light on specifics about who needed to be helped, but were very focused on having participants share a 'media kit' consisting of unverified rumors of black people in Ukraine being discriminated against in various ways.
Two thing to consider are that in 2018 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that Russia waged dedicated misinformation campaigns against Black Americans during the 2016 election and did so to purposefully exploit social and racial issues.
And these efforts were continued in 2020 during the BLM protests and run up to the election.
The other thing is that there have been rumors that Russia is looking to gin up a 'humanitarian' excuse for their invasion and 'Ukraine is super racist' is as good as any excuse they've offered up so far.
Fair, but we all knew that before, and thus far, as far as "anti-racist" actions go, this whole "invading and bombing another country" thing probably wouldn't be in Ibram X. Kendi's most coked-up wild ideas.
Stengah wrote:Rat Boy wrote:Video showing Poland refusing to allow in Africans trying to leave Ukraine. Lest we forget that Poland's under the control of a white nationalist government.
I'm mostly finding stories saying that it's the Ukrainian police that are supposed to be helping with the evacuation that are causing most of the problems, giving preference to white Ukrainians over Africans. Looking at Nze's other tweets, it looks like that particular video was of Ukranian police & soldiers trying to stop them so that the white Ukranians they were taking to border could cross first. The group Nze was with did push forward and the soldiers gave up. His latest tweet has him waiting at the Poland border as of 3 hours ago. There are stories of Nigerian students being turned away from crossing into Poland, but a lot of them were from earlier in the week and seemed to be due to a lack of communication between Nigeria and Poland. They're now supposed to be given safe passage into Poland though.
This has likely evolved into a Russian disinformation campaign. There was a Twitter Spaces organized yesterday claiming to exist to help Nigerians get out of Ukraine. The organizers were very light on specifics about who needed to be helped, but were very focused on having participants share a 'media kit' consisting of unverified rumors of black people in Ukraine being discriminated against in various ways.
Two thing to consider are that in 2018 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that Russia waged dedicated misinformation campaigns against Black Americans during the 2016 election and did so to purposefully exploit social and racial issues.
And these efforts were continued in 2020 during the BLM protests and run up to the election.
The other thing is that there have been rumors that Russia is looking to gin up a 'humanitarian' excuse for their invasion and 'Ukraine is super racist' is as good as any excuse they've offered up so far.
Oh I'm sure the Russian disinfo groups are taking full advantage of it, but I don't think Nze's or Dr. Ayoade Alakija tweets aren't genuine. A lot of the stories of problems at the border places most of the blame on the Nigerian government and embassy for its poor response to getting their people out.
Wow, EU is going to give combat aircraft to Ukraine. Which EU countries fly Russian made aircraft? Seems like Ukrainian pilots wouldn't have time to train up on NATO planes.
It is incredible to me that the Russians don't have air superiority, and with the influx of SAMs and now this?
Without knowing anything about Ukraine's air-force, I assume they have an airbase or two tucked up near Poland and Hungary/Romania, which likely means there are F-35s within very easy range of those bases, basically a shadow no-fly zone for Ukrainian pilots to return to, and now with a fresh resupply or even upgrades of their combat aircraft.
Forget the very real moral and economic reasons for a coup. If I were an oligarch/general/intelligence type with the ability to take Putin out, it would really seem like the clock was ticking before irreversible harm has been done to the military apparatus needed to keep both the internal population and satellite nations in check.
Frankly I'd be surprised if the Kazakhstan popular uprising from just a month ago doesn't feel emboldened by this. Belarus, Georgia, the list is obvious and long.
Once people learn that the bully is a weakling....
I am, honestly, constantly surprised by our capacity to be surprised by how incompetently the militaries of corrupt despots tend to perform. We were astonished by how quickly Saddam Hussein's military evaporated. We stood by in wonder as the Afghan national army disappeared into dust. And now we are somehow taken aback by how poorly conscripts serving a kleptocratic mafia state are doing.
Think about how much it takes to run a 2000 person private company without f*cking it up. Imagine how f*cked it would be if you had a paranoid CEO who would punish independent decision making. Now multiply that by 1000 and you are starting to get the picture of the Russian military.
Which EU countries fly Russian made aircraft?
I know for sure Germany has MiG-29s left over from the East German Air Force.
Also, FedEx and UPS suspending shipments to Russia. If Prime follows suit, that's it for Putin.
Once people learn that the bully is a weakling....
I am, honestly, constantly surprised by our capacity to be surprised by how incompetently the militaries of corrupt despots tend to perform. We were astonished by how quickly Saddam Hussein's military evaporated. We stood by in wonder as the Afghan national army disappeared into dust. And now we are somehow taken aback by how poorly conscripts serving a kleptocratic mafia state are doing.
Think about how much it takes to run a 2000 person private company without f*cking it up. Imagine how f*cked it would be if you had a paranoid CEO who would punish independent decision making. Now multiply that by 1000 and you are starting to get the picture of the Russian military.
Certainly not surprised by a lot of the ground forces. We even got a hint of that from the Tank Porn subreddit before the war with all the tank geeks asking why all they were seeing being shipped to the theater were older Russian tanks (30-40 year old tanks) and not their new modern variants, the ones that were supposedly designed to better withstand shoulder fired missiles and have drone defenses. Turns out the new vehciles were probably largely a paper product, or so few in numbers that they can't make a significant difference.
But, I did assume, and clearly incorrectly, that their air-force was at least large enough for the Russians to win the skies.
Up until Mar 2 all profits from This War of Mine will go to Ukraine Red Cross. This is for all platforms.
Fair, but we all knew that before, and thus far, as far as "anti-racist" actions go, this whole "invading and bombing another country" thing probably wouldn't be in Ibram X. Kendi's most coked-up wild ideas.
Putin's already tried to justify his invasion by claiming it would 'denazify' Ukraine, which is quite the claim considering Zelenskyy is a Jew and he won his election by a large margin over a non-Jewish candidate.
Putin's just throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks at and which audience he might peel off from supporting Ukraine.
Which EU countries fly Russian made aircraft? Seems like Ukrainian pilots wouldn't have time to train up on NATO planes.
Update maybe: Apparently from Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Poland. Another Twitter thread that I lost in the mess said these were on the verge of being retired, anyway.
Looks like the sort of thing you would hit with Turkish drones.
I am, honestly, constantly surprised by our capacity to be surprised by how incompetently the militaries of corrupt despots tend to perform. We were astonished by how quickly Saddam Hussein's military evaporated. We stood by in wonder as the Afghan national army disappeared into dust. And now we are somehow taken aback by how poorly conscripts serving a kleptocratic mafia state are doing.
Think about how much it takes to run a 2000 person private company without f*cking it up. Imagine how f*cked it would be if you had a paranoid CEO who would punish independent decision making. Now multiply that by 1000 and you are starting to get the picture of the Russian military.
No argument on despot-controlled armies.
However, the Afghan army was trained by the U.S. for 20 years. That we were surprised by their failure is because we trusted the lies told by our own military leaders about their competence.
Badferret wrote:Which EU countries fly Russian made aircraft?
I know for sure Germany has MiG-29s left over from the East German Air Force.
Germany sold all of them except for one at 1€ a piece to Poland. The last one is in a museum. Poland and Bulgaria still use them. Romania and Hungary might have some decomissioned ones left.
Edit: Rat Boy-hausered.
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