Ukraine Invaded by the Russians - April to August 2022

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I guess there’s not much hope for damage control with a missile hit on those exposed launchers.

Reposting:

any port in a storm - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

As much as some posters would like to make this thread all about the US, let’s remember that Russia is the one that has agency in this situation.

Russia has always had a strong empire building cultural sub-text. There is a strong belief in some circles that the dismantling of the USSR was a self-inflicted mistake. Putin imagines himself the leader to rectify that mistake and restore some form of the Russian empire. Two years of relative isolation due to Covid has exacerbated the perception of the need to right those wrongs.

The nations bordering Russia have always understood this and decided the only way to protect themselves and prevent being taken over by Russia eventually was to join NATO.

Edit:
The Russians started their attack of eastern Ukraine

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Interview with captured Brit who fought against the Russians:

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No it wasn’t aimed at you. Not sure how that happened. :+1:

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My apologies. I’ll strive to be less America-centric, beginning now:

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“As much as some posters would like to make this thread all about the US, let’s remember that Russia is the one that has agency in this situation.”

I think this is a good point. Imperialism, purely Russian imperialism. Nothing new in history, this is the same logic why the first world war started, then the second. It is all about Russia now, the only nation in Europe with the pre-first world war mentality. One idiot here continuously writes about “Nazis”, “Azov batallion thugs”, you need to have some noble casus belli…

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Great stuff. It’s interesting that these territories still exist.

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Because Ukraine was just sitting around minding it’s own business when for no reason whatsoever the Russians decided to invade?

Is that the version of events and how it went down in your mind?

Now you’re making me read the whole thing. :slight_smile:

Now I feel a story coming on, and you should read it because it could save your life! (Just kidding; a now-deceased acquaintance of mine once said that before telling one of his yarns, which was sort of interesting, but had no life-saving features).

I used to have a sort of interest in Ceuta, because they had a prison there (I don’t know whether it’s still there and still functioning), and some people were sent there in 1851 after a failed attempt to take over Cuba from the Spanish Government.

After that failed filibustering expedition, apparently the Spanish-language newspapers in New Orleans printed accounts of acts done to some of the unsuccessful soldiers of fortune (and maybe to some of their bodies?), and New Orleanians got wind of the Spanish newspaper accounts and rioted in the Spanish sector of the town.

(I remember reading that the duellist Pepe Llulla, with a sword in each hand, accompanied the Spanish consul to safety.)

The Spanish government demanded six million dollars in damages to those Spanish nationals, and in exchange the Queen of Spain pardoned the American filibusteros (soldiers of fortune, whatever term you want to apply) when they reached Vigo, Spain. But those who weren’t Americans had to go to prison in Ceuta.

One of the non-Americans, a guy named Schlesinger, somehow escaped from Ceuta. I think a woman helped him escape (perhaps through bribery?), because I think she later made some claim along those lines in a suit against Schlesinger for breach of promise.

Later on, Schlesinger helped the other filibusters escape from Ceuta.

I noticed it on the map once, or I wouldn’t have heard of it. That sounds like quite a tale, I’ll have to look it up.

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I think that place was founded by the Phoenicians. Later the Romans took it over, then I guess the Muslims, then the Spanish.

It’s got a history, but I think it might take some rooting around to get the whole thing out.

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"Because Ukraine was just sitting around minding it’s own business when for no reason whatsoever the Russians decided to invade?

Is that the version of events and how it went down in your mind?"

Jesus, no! Nothing is so simple… I have no time now, but just the key words: cold war, collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine drifting to the west, geopolitics, “collective west is the enemy”, irredentism, feeling of the lost empire, inefficient autocratic regime, “little victorious war”. The most important word is “history”. Nothing new in this world, all the processes already happened and happening again… I hinted to the 1st world war for example. Interesting history to read and dig to…

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I think @Mick was being ironic.

Oh, wait, I think you caught the irony. :oops: What’s the Brit saying? I’ll get my coat. . . .

I think @Mick was being ironic.

Oh, wait, I think you caught the irony. :oops: What’s the Brit saying? I’ll get my coat. . . .

Suka blyat! :grinning: :grinning: :grinning:

Because Russia was just sitting around minding it’s own business when for no reason whatsoever the all former Soviet block nations wish to join NATO?

Is that the version of events and how it went down in your mind?

What happened is instead of improving the lives of average Russians, realizing democracy, and distributing Russia’s prosperity to its citizens, making neighboring countries wishing to have closer relations with Russia, Putin instead robbed the nation’s resources and enriching him and oligarchs who fall in line.

Putin then uses those money to interfere with the internal affairs of its neighbors. Either by drumming up ethnocentric separatism, or when that fails, Putin falls back on threats, intimidation, assassination and direct use of force.

All that just pushes Russia’s neighbors away from it, and instead of examining his own faults, Putin points at NATO.

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On that cue, I will indeed get my coat.

NATO was a factor, an important one, but not the only one, there were a few.

On a mobile right now, will reply properly later.

Edit/ Back on a computer, in addition to just wanting to grab Ukrainian resources and expanding the Russian sphere of influence. There were a few problems.

One, despite being involved in peace talks with Ukraine for 8 years (along with other countries) Zelensky had no desire to negotiate directly with those in the Donbas region.

A dispute emerged over the role of the Russian Federation, with the parties understanding Minsk as an agreement between Ukraine and Russia,[94][95][96][97] but Russian officials claiming the role of mediator, insisted that Ukraine negotiate directly with representatives of the self-proclaimed separatist republics in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk.[98] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he has “no intention of talking to terrorists”.[99]

Another was Ukraine had little interest in negotiating Minsk like agreements with some saying they saw that type of agreement as the dissolution of Ukraine and they would not be wrong, at least for the foreseeable future anyway.

In January 2022, Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said that “The fulfillment of the Minsk agreement means the country’s destruction. When they were signed under the Russian gun barrel — and the German and the French watched — it was already clear for all rational people that it’s impossible to implement those documents.”[106]

Lastly there was advanced weaponry pouring in and increasingly being touted on the battle field,

In December 2021, Chief of General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov said that “Kyiv is not fulfilling the Minsk Agreements. The Ukrainian armed forces are touting that they have started to employ US-supplied Javelin anti-tank missile systems in Donbas and are also using Turkish reconnaissance/strike drones. As a result, the already tense situation in the east of that country is further deteriorating.”[105]

So no negotiation, no ceasefire under some Minsk type of agreement, continued
(and likely increasing in intensity) offensive against the Donbas region and constant flow of advanced arms from the West.

What happens next? The people in the Donbas lose, eventually, after which point they take back Crimea, which they will get that too, eventually. With the country back in Ukrainian hands, they move eventually for NATO inclusion. Might all be very bloody too.

So that’s a pretty objective take I think on what the situation was leading into the Russian invasion and you might say, Ukraine has every right to do all those things, I wouldn’t say they don’t. You might also say Russia had no right to invade and again I wouldn’t argue they did.

You might then ask, what’s my point, to which I would say, as @yanganlun pointed out, and I agree.

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This is the point! Autocracy, cleptocracy of Putin’s regime, Russia is f…cked from the inside from the beginning. Plus the imperialistic ideology, the war inevitable to happen…