Ukraine, Russia, and the West

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1501669227048095751

This gave me heart palpitations just watching.

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The chances of Russia invading were 1, regardless of what the US did.

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твари

Seems a bit victim blamey to say a population has to accept starvation or dresden-style levelling of cities for not getting rid of a dictator when they may not control (or at least force the indifference of) the military/police apparatus (which were required in any popular revolution I can think of).

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Russians are neither starved nor firebombed.

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well-connected people are discussing inside rumors that the head of russian central bank tried to resign twice and was twice denied by putin. also several oligarchs tried to talk to putin into deescalation in the first week of the invasion and he threatened them with charges of treason.

putin has made several miscalculations, and not the least is on the effects of the economy. now he is throwing every remaining method to holding up the door of the china cabinet, freezing bank deposits, stopping the stock exchange, and prohibiting trading of dollars. but the expensive china is still going to fall.

Your point came up in the context of a discussion of both. I understand there is a spectrum on the ‘not laser-focused’ approach but it’s a slippery slope to accept imho.

What if china invades Taiwan tomorrow because they are afraid the US will do all that.

Is that the US’ fault?

Businesses pulling out hurt the people who work there. Has to be a massive amount of job loss due to all these pull outs.

That hurts the common folk a lot.

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I’m not sure a video has ever mad me more angry than that one. its absolutely incredible there arent any dead bodies in that footage.

Bring the power of a thousand suns down upon Putin

The youth not supporting oil bans is deeply confusing to me

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It’s the fact that there is so much footage like this that makes me skeptical that the currently ongoing negotiations will work to restore anything close to the previous geopolitical situation. I mean is a Putin-led Russia going to be accepted back into the global economy at all even if Zelenskyy does give a lot of concessions (which I’d still be skeptical on him doing given the course of events so far)? Seems extremely unlikely.

Putin led Russia will never be accepted back in global economy.

Those sanctions are staying in place and there is no reason to remove them.

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capitalism is as capitalism does. If he has any way to make the rich richer, he will be welcomed back with open arms, and the world will continue to eat itself in a progressively faster pace.

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Yeah and this makes me feel so glib about any prospects of negotiations. Obviously UP isn’t attributing much hope but there are a lot of msm morans thinking there is hope given Zelenskyy’s comments in the last 24 hours.

You are MUCH more confident in that than I am

Pretty sure renormalizing trade relations will be part of the peace bargaining process.

USA kept embargo on Cuba / Vietnam / Venezuela / North Korea for decades and forgot about it (some of which I find excessively punitive like Cuba).

Out of sight, out of mind, unless there is something USA needs from Russia.

I would love to be wrong about this but the way the war is playing out I don’t see a peace bargaining process.

I’m really hoping for the war to end via negotiation, Ukraine loses Donbas and Crimea, Russia goes away, partial sanctions get lifted. We rebuild Ukraine with Marshal Plan money. Feels like its more hopium than potential reality.

more analysis coming out about dead and captured russians. bellingcat is using a statistical estimate of vetted videos of destroyed armored vehicles. they are conservatively estimating it’s 4-4.5k, by just multiplying by the number of people that tank/bmp is supposed to be carry inside. that’s not terribly out of line compared to other conflicts, but it misses several battles from the count, e.g. paratroopers trying to take hostgomel. by all accounts from ukraine they were destroyed, and it may have been upto a thousand of them, between attack helicopters and the downed IL-76s.

one of ukr assistant ministers in an interview says reiterated 12k “statistical” estimate of dead, which counts bodies left in the field of battle on the outskirts of kyiv.

his comment also mentions 400+ captured, vs earlier statements via the information campaign that claimed 2000. although i’m listening to it now, and it’s not clear if he means 400 total, or what ukraine is prepared to trade/transfer to russian forces right now as part of peace talks.

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