Ukraine

[Eacaraxe]

It's funny, Death of Stalin did come to mind. The whole thing with the orchestra especially

Which also happened -- in 1944. Details varied, the oddest being the producers actually had to find three conductors because the first was too scared to perform and the second was drunk. Also, Stalin was a huge John Wayne fan (go figure).

Funniest thing about the movie to me is Ianucci et. al. played down Zhukov's decorations, because they thought audiences would reject the sheer number of them and/or believe Zhukov's decorations were political rather than earned. They weren't wrong per se, but on the other hand, it does speak to how greatly the quality of Zhukov's leadership in WWII beggars belief -- if any individual man could be credited with Allied victory in WWII over any other, it would be Zhukov, without question.

But on the flip side, they did understate how monstrous Lavrentiy Beria was in real life...and for good fucking reason. It wouldn't surprise me if the theory Zhukov and the Politburo executed him the day of the coup, then detained, tried, and executed a lookalike, was in fact true. They were, however, wise to not touch upon the (strong) possibility Stalin had been assassinated by one or more of the Politburo, most likely Beria.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Americans are really obsessed with this one specific scenario, huh. I know it originates in red scare propaganda films filtered through varying shades of sincerity and irony, but it still seems a bit weird to hang onto such a ludicrous premise.

Eh, isn't that them just recycling what worked for them in the War of Independence, but updating the badguys?

 

[Silvanus]

The Russian occupying forces are intending to hold a referendum on joining the Russian Federation in Kherson, and Dmitry Medvedev has stated referenda should also be held for Luhansk and Donetsk to join the Russian Federation (which would end the pretence of protecting their "independence", of course).

Meanwhile, Russia has apparently had to relocate its Black Sea submarines away from Sevastopol in Crimea, back towards Russia. This is owing to Ukrainian long-range artillery capabilities growing.

This means that the invasion has nullified one of the key aims of the 2014 Annexation of Crimea. Prior to 2014, Sevastopol was already one of Russia's largest Black Sea bases-- they rented the space from Ukraine. Then in 2014, the Annexation was justified partly by the supposed need to secure Russian access via that port. Unilateral control was deemed safer than a bilateral agreement.

So now, they're unable to even maintain the level of access they had pre-2014. And there's no way Ukraine would allow Sevastopol to be rented out to Russian forces in the future, now that those Russian forces have already betrayed the agreement twice.

 

[Dalisclock]

Eh, isn't that them just recycling what worked for them in the War of Independence, but updating the badguys?

Kinda, ignoring that the UK was fighting France and IIRC Spain by the end at which point the American Colonies were kind of small potatoes to the British at that point. The US was also receiving a fair amount of military aid and had beaten the British Army in a couple notable stand up fights as well such as Saratoga.

People like to write that off for some reason and pretend the British couldn't deal with harassment tactics. Don't get me wrong, the British made some stupid blunders at times, such as the Battle of Bunker Hill where they practically handed victory to the rebels through a baffling combination of confusion and incompetence("Hey, what if we keep charging the dug in rebels head on until they run out of ammo?"), but much of the time the rebels were mostly trying to avoid getting caught in a circumstances the british soldiers excelled at. Washington was strangely less good at winning, and more good not losing for big chunks of the war though he was often criticized for not "doing more to win" by other American leaders(despite not having much to work with).

The American Revolution was honestly kinda weird and it's kinda shocking the rebels managed to win(or at least hang on until France decided to join in the fun), which is probably why it gets so much attention. I can only imagine there's a bunch of other timelines it probably got squashed and thus nobody really cares about it.

On a side note, when the Napoleonic wars began, apparently France asked the US for help, citing them helping the US during the American Revolution. IIRC, the response was along the lines of"King Louis was the one who helped us. His head is currently sitting in a basket somewhere. Fuck off".

 

[bluegate]

So, apparently putin is going to address the nation tomorrow...

Any bets on an announcement of full mobilisation?

 

[Bedinsis]

So, apparently putin is going to address the nation tomorrow...

Any bets on an announcement of full mobilisation?

I read that Donbas is about to hold a referendum on joining Russia. I suspect that is what the address is about.

 

[Dalisclock]

So, apparently putin is going to address the nation tomorrow...

Any bets on an announcement of full mobilisation?

Either that or another "We're doing fine. People just aren't believing in the motherland hard enough" Bullshit speech. To be fair, Pretty much all politcian speeches are bullshit but some more than others.

 

[Hades]

I read that Donbas is about to hold a referendum on joining Russia. I suspect that is what the address is about.

Well, not as much a referendum as a farce.

So, apparently putin is going to address the nation tomorrow...

Any bets on an announcement of full mobilisation?

Apparently he was supposed to do it today but the state media sneakily removed the announcement. Maybe he chickened out because its such a dumb idea.

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

BREAKING NEWS: Russian stock market crash following referendum announcements

Twitter rapidly began to flood with reports of the Russian stock market crash after various referendums were announced: “The Russian stock market began to collapse after referendums were announced.”…

euroweeklynews.com

The Reformation and rumors of mobilization has completely fucked the Russian economy.

 

[Dalisclock]

BREAKING NEWS: Russian stock market crash following referendum announcements

Twitter rapidly began to flood with reports of the Russian stock market crash after various referendums were announced: “The Russian stock market began to collapse after referendums were announced.”…

euroweeklynews.com

The Reformation and rumors of mobilization has completely fucked the Russian economy.

I had an idiot co-worker who kept going on about investing in Rubles because he somehow thinks he can make a bunch of money on it when "invevitably" goes back up.
I wonder if he ever ended up throwing his savings into that but he no longer works there so I have no idea.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Any bets on an announcement of full mobilisation?

I would bet very strongly against that one, because I think it would be an incredibly foolish move.

Putin is a very popular figure in Russia and even polling carried out by foreign organizations tends to show high approval for him, and this probably translates into a kind of vague majority support for the special military operation.

However, just because the Russian population likes Putin doesn't mean they have a strong understanding of and agreement with his politics. In fact, Putin is (intentionally) vague and contradictory about what his politics actually are a lot of the time, other than clearly populist positions like Russian nationalism and gay people being bad. The average Russian is effectively depoliticized, they don't really care about politics because it doesn't have very much to do with them and because the people who were passionate and vocal about politics have been convinced by various means to keep quiet, leave or to be incorporated into the establishment.

The flipside to this depoliticization though is a lack of investment. Russian people who don't care about politics and don't want any part of it probably don't feel any great motivation to risk their own lives to advance the political cause their government represents, particularly since noone can really figure out what cause their government represents anyway other than the desire to stay in power and mysteriously being able to afford very expensive watches.

That, I think, is why full mobilization isn't going to happen. It would break the implicit contract between Russia's government and its people to effectively stay out of each other's business.

What I think you will see in the next few months is some attempts to push a "soft" mobilization. In particular, I think you'll see some move to ban the people who signed those emergency volunteer contracts from leaving the army once their contract is up, I think you'll see increasing amounts of pressure (i.e. coercion) being used to get people to "volunteer". I also think you'll see a lot of national guardsmen being sent to Ukraine to suppress civilian unrest in the occupied regions and somehow ending up on the frontlines due to circumstances that are totally beyond anyone's control.

 

[Terminal Blue]

On a side note, when the Napoleonic wars began, apparently France asked the US for help, citing them helping the US during the American Revolution. IIRC, the response was along the lines of"King Louis was the one who helped us. His head is currently sitting in a basket somewhere. Fuck off".

A pretty uncharitable answer given that a major reason why Louis XVI ended up in a basket was that his country essentially went bankrupt, and a major reason why it went bankrupt was massive financial support given to the American revolution and the complete absence of any of the trade benefits the French government assumed they would receive in return for said support.

But to be fair Louis XVI was also kind of an idiot who had many, many chances to save himself and, if not to avert the revolution, then certainly to take oxygen away from the more radical elements of it and thus retain his position as monarch. But such is the way of monarchy. Sometimes you get a 6/6/6 chad like Louis XIV, but most of the time the results are very mediocre.

 

[Dalisclock]

A pretty uncharitable answer given that a major reason why Louis XVI ended up in a basket was that his country essentially went bankrupt, and a major reason why it went bankrupt was massive financial support given to the American revolution and the complete absence of any of the trade benefits the French government assumed they would receive in return for said support.

It was and to be fair, there were a lot of Americans(Thomas Jefferson in particular) who wanted to give official support to France but there was also the realization that the US wasn't in a position to give any significant support to France, at least militarily. The Reign of Terror also eroded a lot of support of the French that otherwise would have been much stronger. It is interesting that the Early US had distinct pro-british and pro-french political parties, with pro british leaders being tarred as "Secret monarchists" wanted to turn the US back over to the Crown(This included George Washington, apparently, which makes no fucking sense). IIRC Washington was constantly dealing with the pro-british and pro-french members of his cabinet who very much did not get along and I can only imagine he felt like a dad to a bunch of quarreling children.

US neutrality probably stems from not wanting to get tangled up in France vs. Britain like that, especially when the French started getting hostile in the 1790's and raiding US ships in the quasi-war but a lot people still remembered the Revolution and had no love for the british either. If you've never heard of the Quasi-War, don't feel bad, even most Americans don't know about it. I'm being really light on this because it's a bunch of complicated shit that happened 200+ years ago and not super relevant to this thread.

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

Well then...

 

[bluegate]

Throwing more bodies into the meat grinder.

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

Throwing more bodies into the meat grinder.

There's this russian guy I follow on twitter who said if they mobilization he would flee the country.

https://twitter.com/lxglb

his last twit was about 2 hour before the speech. I wish him luck

edit: oh he is back not sure if he is still going to run away tho

 

[Silvanus]

Sunk cost fallacy guiding International politics again I see.

 

[Silvanus]

Nuclear blackmail has also been used. We are talking not only about the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant – encouraged by the west – which threatens to cause a nuclear catastrophe, but also about statements from senior representatives of Nato countries about the possibility and permissibility of using weapons of mass destruction against Russia: nuclear weapons.

I would like to remind those who make such statements about Russia that our country also possesses various means of destruction, and in some cases they are more modern than those of Nato countries. When the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we, of course, will use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people.

This is not a bluff. And those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them.

Well. Lot to unpack there.

To start with, the way he ostensibly sets this out is all reactive. As though the use of nuclear weaponry would only be a retaliation against equivalent actions from NATO.

And he's right in one respect: politicians from NATO countries have discussed the use of nuclear weaponry against Russia. Though they have also only discussed it in the context of Russia striking first.

The notable snippet here is: "when the territorial integrity of our country is threatened". Its hardly a coincidence that this statement comes on the same day as the Russian government endorsing the sham referenda in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk about joining the Russian Federation. The fear is that he will declare those areas part of Russia, and then extrapolate that if Ukraine doesn't just allow Russia to keep the territory it has annexed from Ukraine, it constitutes "threatening Russian integrity" and justifies a nuclear response.

In essence: that they will just declare the Russian border to be somewhere else, and then use self-defence as a pretence for actions taken in another country altogether.

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

From a russian on the matter

 

[Thaluikhain]

The notable snippet here is: "when the territorial integrity of our country is threatened". Its hardly a coincidence that this statement comes on the same day as the Russian government endorsing the sham referenda in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk about joining the Russian Federation. The fear is that he will declare those areas part of Russia, and then extrapolate that if Ukraine doesn't just allow Russia to keep the territory it has annexed from Ukraine, it constitutes "threatening Russian integrity" and justifies a nuclear response.

In essence: that they will just declare the Russian border to be somewhere else, and then use self-defence as a pretence for actions taken in another country altogether.

Well, yes, but then Russia can use nuclear weapons if it wants, and whatever justification it comes up with would be irrelevant in the aftermath.

OTOH, as a threat of escalation, as a warning and a reminder, this is par for the course (Chian gave Australia a similar one a little while ago and it wasn't a huge deal) and much more useful to them.