I think it's more that they just don't give a shit. That's a load of people probably relatively low on the finer points of morality to begin with, brutalised by a training regime to encourage them to kill, indoctrinated into the idea their opponents are evil, and handed lethal power with few likely repercussions. That's not Russia specifically, but the military generally across the millennia. States that started wanting not to maltreat the locals wherever their army went put a lot of effort into training them not to, and even still produce the odd Mai Lai and Abu Ghraib - but it's not like Russia ever put that much effort in.
Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
- Start date
Someone who listened to Russian state media would instantly be confronted with the terribly inconvenient reality that Russia is an actual country that exists, and it's people are actual people who have their own opinions and political stances and other awkward things which only Americans are allowed to have. Someone who listened to Russian state media would have to confront the very obvious and embarrassing way Russian state media lies and, again, would need to do the work of slotting these lies into an understanding of an actual worldview and state ideology. They would need to develop an understanding that the Russian state and people are real actors pursuing their own goals external to some invisible war between the all-powerful global empire and some general principle of nebulous, vague resistance. They would need to face the ways in which the Russian state deeply, profoundly resembles the one in which they live in.
Russian state media is too much of a step up. The way you reach this position is to refuse to listen to any media at all, save for a very small echo chamber of exclusively English language twitter users. Because if you don't engage with the reality that Russians and Ukrainians are actual human beings, then these two groups can simply function as whatever vague ideological stand ins are needed. They're just action figures to be mashed together in a world where truth and falsehood don't actually matter because whatever happens to people outside "the West" is just stories.
This is what happens when you reject imperialism but not orientalism. It isn't a war between Russia and Ukraine, it's a war between western imperialism and westerners writing "anti-Imperialist" fanfiction on twitter. That war is simply too precious and important to allow the intrusion of a non-Western perspective.
Russia-Ukraine War: What Happened When Explosions Occurred Over the Kremlin (Published 2023)
Russia accused Ukraine of launching drones at the Kremlin aimed at killing President Vladimir V. Putin. The Ukrainian president denied the claim, and officials in Kyiv warned that Russia could use it to launch “a large-scale terrorist provocation.”
Also keep it mind that Russia was putting Anti-Air systems in Moscow a couple months back.
Defensive missile systems erected on Moscow rooftops
Kremlin appears to prepare for strikes on Russian capital by installing interception systems
www.theguardian.com
Unclear why these anti-air systems allowed an attack drone to get that close to the Kremlin, assuming it was a legit attack and not a false flag or some Russian drone operator fucking around or something.
So....Awkward.
Set off dueling accusations made it sound like people were dueling using explosives.
Anyhoo, a low flying drone might be able to go under the radar system, but that's just me speculating.
Anyhoo, a low flying drone might be able to go under the radar system, but that's just me speculating.
On one hand an Ukrainian drone attack on the Kremlin sounds pretty far fetched and like an artificial grievance.
On the other hand Putin has so many enemies that assassination attempts would not be completely surprising.
On the other hand Putin has so many enemies that assassination attempts would not be completely surprising.
It's extremely unlikely Ukraine would officially sanction an attack on the Kremlin of that sort. Why would they shake that hornet's nest for no advantage?
According to video analysts, the drones appeared to be the winged type (as opposed to the quad copter type). Winged ones have a much longer range, can stay in the air a lot longer, and are a good deal harder for amateurs to get hold of.
Not sure what to make of that. Could also be Russian partisans, using the war as a smokescreen.
Absent
And twice is the only way to live.
- Jan 25, 2023
- 1,594
- 1,557
- 118
- Country
- Switzerland
- Gender
- The boring one
Could be a lot of things, especially of Ockham's razor stays sheathed. But does it truly matter. Even if it was Ukraine, the Kremlin's outrage would be ridiculous. And there's so many good and bad reasons to wish Putin's death, who cares who would have done it before the others.
There's not much reason for Ukraine to attempt to assassinate Putin. Call me cynical, but it seems much more likely for the war to outlive Putin than for Putin to outlive the war.
I'm not sure if there's any truth to the persistent, but only anecdotally supported, rumors that Putin is in very poor health, but reading between the lines it's clear that he's only the tip of the iceberg. A sort of bureaucratic figurehead of a fanatical nationalist and imperialist cult that is in control of government and military.
The fact that Russia is rushing into this war now, rather than, say, during the Trump administration where they could have counted on the American governments approval, or to a later point when their army would actually be prepared for a war of conquest suggests two possibilities.
Either Putin is a true believer in Dugin's dream of a Eurasian Empire and sees that war as a a desperate attempt to secure his legacy as some great warlord before he dies, or that he's gotten to weak, politically or physically, to maintain the balancing act between appeasing the ultranationalist right in his own country and maintaining relations with Europe and its allies.
He was hardly ever a dove but for a while he pretty successfully projected an impression of power internally, while mainly pushing Russia's influence through trade, subversive propaganda and support of an emerging far right movement in most western countries.
I can't speak for western media as a whole, but until he broke off the ongoing war, Putin was an absolute darling of German media. He was treated as some sort of machiavellian puppetmaster, as the man whose firm guidance liberated Russia from the lingering spectre of communism and restoring it to its place as one of the most powerful nations on the planet, excusing his crimes against his own people as the Russian people simply being "not ready" for real democracy, or human rights or social justice. I'd be a rich man if I had a Euro for every time I had to read the sentence "Putin schafft Fakten" during the Syrian War or the invasion of Crimea. Which makes it all the more funny that now that they can't defend him anymore, they started implying he was a communist all along.
Either way, the fact that he's rushing headlong into a war he has yet to present any meaningful successes in suggests that he's either losing control of himself or of his government. Both would make it very likely that the war could and would continue without him.
I'm not sure actually. The war very much seems like Putin's personal pet project that he had to push his government to go along with. That's why he made a big spectacle of pushing everyone with power in Russia into a room and forcing them to voice their support for the war on live television. So they chained themselves to his project with no way of backing out.
Considering the FSB has attempted numerous assassinations against Ukrainian political figures, and has a long and well-documented history of murdering people in countries they aren't even at war with seemingly just to demonstrate that they can do so, it is admittedly difficult to feel much sympathy.
Although, to be fair, we also have to lay some blame on the US for having used drones to assassinate people to such a degree that any moral objection has become essentially naive.
I'm going to call it and say it was probably the Ukrainians. I'm also going to say that from the perspective of US foreign policy Putin's death would be (and will be) an absolute fucking nightmare. Up until this point Putin has been a moderating influence within the Russian government, and if he dies there is a very real chance some insane ultranationalist takes over and ends up in control of one of the world's largest nuclear arsenals.
Last edited:
Harder than just popping down to the local hobbyist shop and grabbing one but not out of reach of a determined amateur with a chunk of cash to build one.
If this is true and not some smoke and mirror bullshit then this is an interesting development.
Ukraine has not won this battle yet because they're going to be replaced with new soldiers, but this is a little bit embarrassing.
Prigozhin released a video of himself with a backdrop of dozens of corpses (Russian soldiers, apparently), directly accusing the Russian military (and Shoigu) of starving them of ammunition. The infighting really is quite incredible-- as is the fact that Bakhmut still hasn't fallen, after it seemed almost on the brink about a month ago.
In other news;
* Lavrov said that no "self respecting country" would talk to Zelensky, because of the drone attack on the Kremlin. So basically reiterating the Russian refusal to negotiate, on the basis that the Ukrainians might have done something that the Russians themselves have already done a thousand times this year (attack the seat of the head of state). Lavrov might be the most shameless hypocrite in the diplomatic scene, and that's saying a lot.
* Continued Russian targeted shelling of civilian areas for the fourth day running.
I doubt the drone attack was from Ukraine simply because it makes so little sense, it just showed up above the roof and blew up over nothing when Putin wasn't even in the building? How is that an an assassination attempt? As much I'd like it for Putin to go away and the war to disappear, him dying could have catastrophic consequence. It's really unknown who would replace him and some potential successor might very well escalate the war in dangerous direction in an attempt to stabilize their new rule using a war as distraction, possibly in an attempt to secure a big victory to establish themselves as a dominant leader. But the worse scenario would be if Russia were to fragment into a bunch of statelet led by local warlord, some of which would inherit nukes.
Didn't Wagner already threaten to pull out of Bakhmut? It seems like he's doing that to shift the blame from his own failure to the army, maybe a bluff to get more supply. Anyway, they're all doomed to senseless death, might as well threaten to pull out of Ukraine.
Didn't Wagner already threaten to pull out of Bakhmut? It seems like he's doing that to shift the blame from his own failure to the army, maybe a bluff to get more supply. Anyway, they're all doomed to senseless death, might as well threaten to pull out of Ukraine.
- May 6, 2020
- 1,133
- 1,213
- 118
- Country
- United States
- Gender
- White Male
I have thoughts about Lavrov.
However, the TOS of this website, which I respect, prevent me from speaking my mind.
I find it very doubtful that the Ukrainian government ordered it, because it was nowhere near large enough to be a properly funded, state-run effort. Just two poorly-equipped drones with very little chance of success, and a high risk of provoking Russia to take retaliatory action.
That said, I do expect it was from opponents of the Russian government, rather than a false flag. Because although the attack was unsuccessful, the simple fact that it bypassed most air defences and got so close to the Kremlin is highly embarrassing for the Russian security services.
Most likely scenario to me seems like an established partisan group (either Ukrainian or Russian), opposed to the Russian government and willing to take a pot shot.
If Putin were to die now, leadership would probably fall to Dmitri Medvedev, as the only other high ranking figure to hold the Russian Presidency. And the man who explicitly calls it a "holy war", and considers Ukrainians "Satanists".
Last edited:
Their primary targets that you will see mentioned in NATO-aligned news reports, you mean. By your description, Russia appears to be fighting Ukraine in the manner that the United States and its hapless allies regularly fight their targets.
... after those areas were attacked by their governments.
I don't think there is a nation-state on earth without that particular hypocrisy. Perhaps some in which it hasn't been tested.
Sure, who could possibly think of a single country on the globe that has offered an independence movement a free and fair election in the last ten years?