Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Cancer]

Hazards with the nuclear plant the Russians have captured

(from Nature)

[Old Man]

A long post on the invasion from the standpoint of a Russian "special services" analyst.  Facebook, Russia, internet, translation--take this with a grain of salt.  Translation spoilered for length:

 

Spoiler

18+ One of the insiders from the special services of the Russian Federation, I will publish without edits and censorship, because this is hell: “I’ll be honest right away: I have hardly slept all these days, almost all the time at work, my head is a little floating, like in a fog. And from overwork, sometimes I already fall into a kind of a fugue state, as if all this is not real.
To be honest, the Pandora's box is open - a real global horror will begin by the summer - global famine is inevitable (Russia and Ukraine were the main suppliers of grain in the world, this year's harvest will be smaller, and logistical problems will bring the catastrophe to a peak point).

I can't tell you what guided those at the top when deciding on the operation, but now they are methodically blaming everything on us (the Service). We are scolded for analytics - this is very much my profile, so I will explain what is wrong.

 

Recently, we have been increasingly pressed to customize reports to the requirements of management - I once touched on this topic. All these political consultants, politicians and their retinue, influence teams - all this created chaos. Intense chaos.

 

Most importantly, no one knew that there would be such a war, they hid it from everyone. And here's an example for you: you are asked (conditionally) to calculate the possibility of human rights protection in different conditions, including a strike on prisons by meteorites. You inquire about meteorites, they tell you - this is just an edge case for calculations, nothing like this will happen. You understand that the report will be just for show, but you need to write in a victorious style so that there are no questions, they say, why do you have so many problems, did you really work badly. In general, a report is being written that when a meteorite falls, we have everything to eliminate the consequences, we are great, everything is fine. And you concentrate on tasks that are real - we don’t have enough strength anyway. And then suddenly they really throw meteorites and expect that everything will be according to your analytics, which were written in a completely perfunctory fashion.

 

That is why we have such a colossal fuckup - I don’t even want to pick another word. There is no protection from sanctions for the same reason: well, it’s quite possible that Nabiullina will be blamed for negligence (or rather, the switchmen from her team), but what are they to blame for? No one knew that there would be such a war, so no one prepared for such sanctions. This is the reverse side of secrecy: since no one was told, then who could calculate what no one told about?

 

Kadyrov is going crazy. A conflict even almost erupted with us: perhaps even the Ukrainians threw in misinformation that it was we who handed over the routes of Kadyrov's special forces in the first days of the operation. They were covered there on the march in a terrible way, they had not yet begun to fight, but they were simply torn to pieces in some places. And off we go: it was the FSB that leaked the routes to the Ukrainians. I do not have such information, I will leave 1-2% for reliability (it cannot be completely ruled out either).
Blitzkrieg failed. It is simply impossible to complete the task now: if Zelensky and the authorities were captured in the first 1-3 days, they seized all the key buildings in Kyiv, they gave them the order to surrender - yes, the resistance would subside to the minimum values. In theory. But what's next? Even with this ideal variant, there was an unsolvable problem: with whom to negotiate? If we topple Zelensky, well, with whom should we sign agreements? If with Zelensky, then after we topple him, these papers are worth nothing. Opposition Platform for Life refused to cooperate: Medvedchuk is a coward, he fled. There is a second leader there - Boyko, but he refuses to work with us - even his own people will not understand him. They wanted to return Tsarev, so even our pro-Russians turned against him. Return Yanukovych? But how? If we say that it is impossible to occupy, then any of our authorities will be killed there in 10 minutes, as we leave. Occupy? Where are we going to get so many people? Commandant's offices, military police, counterintelligence, security - even with minimal resistance from the locals, we need 500 thousand or more people. Not counting the supply system. And there is a rule that by covering the poor quality of management with quantity, you only spoil everything. And this, I repeat, would be with the ideal option, which does not exist.

 

What now? We cannot announce mobilization for two reasons:
1) Large-scale mobilization will undermine the situation inside the country: political, economic, social.
2) Our logistics are already overstretched today. We will drive a many times larger contingent, and what will we get? Ukraine is a hefty country in terms of territory. And now the level of hatred towards us is going through the roof. Our roads simply won't be able to handle such supply convoys - everything will come to a standstill. And management-wise, we won’t be able to pull it off - because chaos.
And these two reasons fall out at the same time, although even one is enough to break everything off.

 

Losses: I don't know how many there are. Nobody knows. The first two days there was still control, now no one knows what is going on there. You can lose large units in communication. They can be found, or they can dissolve due to being attacked. And there, even the commanders may not know how many of them are running around somewhere nearby, how many died, how many are in captivity. The number of deaths is definitely in the thousands. Maybe 10 thousand, maybe 5, or maybe only 2. Even at the headquarters they don’t know for sure. But it should be closer to 10. And now we don’t count the LDNR corps - they have their own accounting.

 

Now, even if Zelensky is killed, captured, nothing will change. This is like Chechnya in terms of hatred towards us. And now even those who were loyal to us are against us now. Because it was planned from above, because we were told that there would be no such option, unless we were attacked. Because they explained that it was necessary to create the most credible threat in order to peacefully agree on the right conditions. Because we were initially preparing protests within Ukraine against Zelensky. Excluding our direct entry. Intrusions, to put it simply.

 

Further civilian losses will go exponentially - and resistance to us will also only increase. They already tried to enter the cities with infantry - out of twenty assault groups, only one had a conditional success. Remember the assault on Mosul - after all, this is the rule, it was the same for all countries, nothing new.

 

Keep under siege? According to the experience of military conflicts in the same Europe in recent decades (Serbia is the largest testing ground here), cities can be under siege for years, and even function. Humanitarian convoys from Europe there are a matter of time.

 

We have a conditional deadline of June. Conditional - because in June we have no economy left, nothing remains. By and large, next week there will be a turning point in one of the sides, simply because the situation cannot be in such an overstrain. There are no analytics - it is impossible to calculate the chaos, here no one can say anything for sure. Act intuitively, and even on emotions - but this is not poker for you. Rates will rise, in the hope that suddenly some option will shoot through. The trouble is that we, too, can now miscalculate and lose everything in one move.

 

By and large, the country has no way out. It’s just that there is no option for a possible victory, and defeat means total catastrophe. They 100% repeated the beginning of the last century, when they decided to kick weak Japan and get a quick victory, then it turned out that the army was in trouble. then they started the war to the bitter end, then they began to take the Bolsheviks for "re-education" into the army - after all, they were outcasts, uninteresting to anyone in the masses. And then, the Bolsheviks, who were not really known to anyone, picked up anti-war slogans and it started like this ...

 

On the upside: we did everything so that even a hint of the mass sending of "penal batallions" to the front line did not pass. Send convicts and "socially unreliable" political prisoners there (so that they don't mess with the water inside the country) - the morale of the army will simply go into the negative. And the enemy is motivated, terribly motivated. He knows how to fight, there are enough middle-level commanders there. There are weapons. They have support. We will simply set a precedent for human loss in the world. And that's it.
What we are most afraid of: at the top, they act according to the rule of overlapping the old problem with a new problem. Largely for this reason, the Donbass of 2014 began - it was necessary to divert the attention of Westerners from the topic of the Russian spring in Crimea, so the Donbass crisis, it seems, should have drawn all the attention to itself and become the subject of bargaining. But there were even bigger problems. Then they decided to push Erdogan into 4 pipes of the South Stream and entered Syria - this is after Soleimani gave deliberately false inputs in order to solve his problems. As a result, it was not possible to close the issue with Crimea, there are also problems with the Donbass, the South Stream has shrunk to 2 pipes, and Syria has hung with another headache (if we go out, they will demolish Assad, which will make us look like idiots, but it’s also difficult and useless to sit).

 

I don't know who came up with the "Ukrainian Blitzkrieg". If we were given real introductory information, we would at least indicate that the original plan is controversial, that we need to double-check a lot. A lot of things. Now we got into shit somewhere up to the neck. And it is not clear what to do. "Denazification" and "demilitarization" are not analytical categories, because they do not have clearly defined parameters by which one can determine the level of accomplishment or non-completion of the task.

 

Now it remains to be seen that some fucking adviser will convince the top to start a conflict with Europe demanding to reduce some sanctions. Or reduce, or war. What if they refuse?

 

Now I do not rule out that then we will be drawn into a real international conflict, like Hitler in 1939. And then our Z will become the equivalent of a swastika.

 

Is there a possibility of a local nuclear strike? Yes. Not for military purposes (it will not give anything - this is a defense breakthrough weapon), but with the aim of intimidating others. At the same time, the soil is being prepared to blame everything on Ukraine - Naryshkin and his SVR are now digging the earth to prove that they secretly created nuclear weapons there. Damn, they are now hammering on what we have long studied and dismantled: you can’t draw evidence here on your knee, and the presence of specialists and uranium (Ukraine has a lot of depleted isotope 238) is nothing. There the production cycle is such that you can’t do it imperceptibly. You can’t even make a “dirty” bomb imperceptibly, but the fact that their old nuclear power plants can produce weapons-grade plutonium (plants like REB-1000 produce it in minimal quantities as a “by-product” of the reaction) - so the Americans introduced such control there with the involvement of the IAEA, that sucking on the topic is stupid.

 

Do you know what will happen in a week? Well, even after two. Now we will be so fucked that we will start to miss the hungry 90s. While the trading was suspended, Nabiullina seemed to be taking normal steps - but this is all like plugging a hole in a dam with a finger. It will still break through, and even stronger. Nothing will be decided in 3, 5, or 10 days.
Kadyrov beats his hoof for a reason - they have their own adventures there. He created for himself the image of the most influential and invincible. And if it falls once, it will be taken down by its own people. He will no longer be the owner of the winning teip.

 

We go further. Syria. "The guys will hold out, everything will end in Ukraine - and there in Syria we will again strengthen everything in positions." And now, at any moment, they can wait there for the contingent to run out of resources - and such a heat will set in ... Turkey blocks the straits - to transport supplies there by planes, it's like heating an oven with money.

 

Notice that all this is happening at the same time, we don’t even have time to bring everything into one heap. We have a situation, like in Germany in the 43-44th. At the start right away. Sometimes I am already lost from this overwork, sometimes it seems that everything was a dream and it was a dream, that everything is as before.
In prisons, by the way, it will be worse. Now the nuts will begin to tighten so that to the bloody ichor. Everywhere. To be honest, purely technically, this remains the only chance to keep the situation - we are already in the mode of total mobilization. But you can’t stay in such a regime for a long time, and we have ambiguity with the timing and it will only get worse for now. From mobilization, management always goes astray. Yes, and imagine: you can run a hundred meters in a sprint, but it’s bad to go to a marathon distance and give a jerk with all your might. Here we rushed with the Ukrainian question, as if we were running a hundred meters, and fit into a cross-country marathon.

 

And that's what I said very, very briefly about what's going on.

 

From the cynical, I will only add that I do not believe that VV Putin will press the red button to destroy the whole world.

 

Firstly, there is more than one person making a decision, at least someone will jump off. And there are a lot of people there - there is no "one-man red button".
Secondly, there are some doubts that everything is functioning successfully there. Experience shows that the greater the transparency and control, the easier it is to identify shortcomings. And where it is not clear who controls and how, but always bravura reports - everything is always wrong there. I'm not sure if the red button system works as advertised. In addition, the plutonium charge must be changed every 10 years.

 

Thirdly, and this is the most vile and sad thing, I personally do not believe in the readiness to sacrifice oneself of a person who does not let the members of the Federation Council, but his closest representatives and ministers, come close to him. For fear of the coronavirus or an attack, it doesn't matter. If you are afraid to let the most trusted people near you, then how will you dare to destroy yourself and your loved ones, inclusive?

 

If anything - ask, but I can not answer for several days. We are in a rush mode, and there are more and more tasks.
In general, our reports are peppy, but everything is going to shit.
Never before has this Gulagu.net source swearing, writing short and to the point. But even now he...

 

[archer]

Russian stock market closed for 5th day in a row.

 

MSCI and FTSE plan to remove Russian stocks from their indexes and reclassify them "at a price that is effectively zero." (Those are basically the international versions of the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the S&P...which have also removed Russian stocks from their indexes.)

 

All Russian stocks are suspended from trading on the London stock exchange because the values are still dropping so rapidly or have already reached effectively zero.

 

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/russia-war-markets-stocks-central-bank-sanctions-ukraine-invasion-ruble-2022-3?op=1

 

edit:

 

The Moscow stock market will remain shut at least until Tuesday, Russian state news agencies reported on Friday.

[archer]

Trump and Putin are invading Ukraine together in order to stop bioweapons from being constructed by Dr. Anthony Fauci. - latest QAnon conspiracy drivel

 

====

 

Former Vice President Mike Pence will tell Republican donors Friday that there "is no room in this party for apologists for Putin," according to speech excerpts shared with NBC News.

The remarks from Pence, who is scheduled to address a Republican National Committee retreat in New Orleans

 

====

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he discussed Belarus’ interest in having access to the Baltic Sea in a phone call with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko.

“Just today we talked with the President of Belarus on this matter. Our Belarusian friends are interested in being present in the Baltic, interested in developing their own port facilities. You know that I also support it,” Putin said during a ceremony for a new Russian ferry, which he attended virtually. - CNN

 

The only way to give landlocked Belarus access to the Baltic Sea is to cut a 400-500 mile long path through a NATO country, either Poland, Lithuania, or Latvia.

 

Maybe not the best time to double down on announcing your territorial ambitions.

 

====

 

Russian forces have seized control of that nuclear power plant and are allowing the Ukrainian workers continue to operate it at the moment. We'll see what happens after the blizzard hits in a couple of days. The live feed of the plant which was running yesterday is no longer functional.

 

Some sources claim a number of the workers have been killed but no major media outlets seem to have confirmed that as of yet. 

 

====

 

 

From a partial second-hand translation: "As a result, thanks to "friendly fire", 9 tanks and 4 armored personnel carriers were destroyed. Accordingly, it saved us 13 Јavelin."

 

Some grimly amusing comments about the incident:

 

Good to see Russians fighting the real enemy.

 

Probably figured if they were (fellow) Russians, they'd be out of gas or stuck in convoy/mud.

"They're moving, shoot it!".

 

Any time I get shot at I consider it unfriendly fire.

 

Just throwing out an idea. Put up a toll booth. Then they will have to go back and get a crapload of rubles.

 

====

 

Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova have in the last two days submitted formal applications to join the European Union.

 

https://www.commonspace.eu/news/amid-fog-war-ukraine-georgia-and-moldova-submit-formal-application-eu-membership?PageSpeed=noscript

 

I'd heard this of Ukraine and Georgia but this is the first I remember hearing it of Moldova.

 

====

 

US official states Ukraine still has "significant majority" of its aircraft - Reuters

 

92% of assembled Russian forces are now inside Ukraine.

 

I'm not a military expert, but the general rule of thumb is that you retain at least 10% of your forces to be a reserve so you can respond to large enemy counterattacks and such. If Russia's digging into that margin while there's no large-scale enemy counterattack, that's either bad planning or things are going much worse on the ground for Russia than we're being told (even as being told by Ukrainian forces).

 

====

 

Canada promises another 4500 M72 anti-tank weapons and up to 7500 hand grenades out of their existing military stock.

 

====

 

 

[TrickstaPriest]

 

[Old Man]

Suddenly I find myself consulting the annual reports on world nuclear forces at FAS.org again.

[archer]

Bloomberg News, BBC, and  Canadian Broadcasting Corp have stopped news-gathering operations inside Russia due to a new law which makes such activity about the ongoing war into a crime punishable by up to 15 years in jail.

 

"The bill, which was adopted by lawmakers earlier on Friday, sets out jail terms of varying lengths and fines against people who publish “knowingly false information” about the military, with harsher penalties to hit when dissemination is deemed to have serious consequences." - Agence France-Presse

 

CNN announced it is stopping broadcasts inside Russia.

 

The BBC news website is still available inside Russia over the dark web via Tor.

 

====

 

Russia is not cooperating on the humanitarian corridors in southern Ukraine which they agreed to yesterday, particularly around Kherson. (Yesterday it was reported there that Russians weren't allowing civilians to evacuate, weren't allowing food or medicine into the city, and were bombarding the city with artillery.) - Washington Post

 

The Ukrainian city of Mariupol has no water, heat or electricity and is running out of food after coming under attack by Russian forces for the past five days, its mayor said in a televised appeal. He called for a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians from the south-eastern port city. (A humanitarian corridor which should already exist according to yesterday's agreement.)

 

====

 

Facebook and Twitter are blocked inside by Russian state media regulator Roskomnadzor.

 

YouTube appears to be unavailable though I'm not sure there's been any official announcement about it being blocked.

 

 

[unclevlad]

Just HOW STUPID was Graham?

 

Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized him.  Quite harshly.  As did Ted Cruz.  

 

And this is one of the top 5 Trump bootlickers, I'd say.

 

OTOH, Fox News just...pretty much glossed over it.  It's there, yeah, but as mildly reported as they could.  

[Lord Liaden]

Graham was a colonel in JAG. It's impossible for him not to understand the legal and diplomatic implications of a sitting American senator publicly encouraging the assassination of a foreign head of state. Particularly during such an explosive confrontation as we're going through now.

 

There's only one reason I can think of for his remark. He thinks it will make him sound tough to his supporters and garner him more votes.

[csyphrett]

20 hours ago, archer said:

Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova have in the last two days submitted formal applications to join the European Union.

 

https://www.commonspace.eu/news/amid-fog-war-ukraine-georgia-and-moldova-submit-formal-application-eu-membership?PageSpeed=noscript

 

I'd heard this of Ukraine and Georgia but this is the first I remember hearing it of Moldova.

Moldova is on the inner coast. If the Ukraine had fallen, it was on the target list after I want to say Belarus

CES 

[Cygnia]

Badass of the Week: Volodymyr Zelensky

[Ternaugh]

18 minutes ago, Cygnia said:

Badass of the Week: Volodymyr Zelensky

 

From the link:

Quote

And what better indicator of how weird the world is right now that the dude who voiced the Ukrainian dub of Paddington Bear is out there threatening Vladimir Putin, the only G8 world leader who has probably actually killed another human with his bare hands?

 

[Cygnia]

[wcw43921]

Anyone here thinking of joining up?

[archer]

13 minutes ago, wcw43921 said:

Anyone here thinking of joining up?

 

No.

 

Even if I were young or healthy, I have too many people here who depend on me to take care of them day-to-day.

 

The Ukrainian embassy in Canada has been fielding a lot of requests though. I don't know how many of those are Canadians of Ukrainian descent vs other outraged Canadians. There's more people of Ukrainian descent in Canada than in any other non-European country, many of them in the western parts of Canada which has a similar climate to Ukraine. 

[pinecone]

17 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Graham was a colonel in JAG. It's impossible for him not to understand the legal and diplomatic implications of a sitting American senator publicly encouraging the assassination of a foreign head of state. Particularly during such an explosive confrontation as we're going through now.

 

There's only one reason I can think of for his remark. He thinks it will make him sound tough to his supporters and garner him more votes.

Wants to look better than "Moscow Mitch"?

49 minutes ago, wcw43921 said:

Anyone here thinking of joining up?

I'm too old, and medically not usable...I am sad.

[Cygnia]

Marco Rubio, Steve Daines Ripped for Sharing Pics of Zelensky Meeting After Being Told Not To

[Chris Goodwin]

1 hour ago, wcw43921 said:

Anyone here thinking of joining up?

 

My wife says no.  

 

I'm getting older, like others here, and I'm starting to get some of the medical issues that come from that... but I also have prior service (USAF, 1988-1992).  But the real reason I'm not is because my wife said no.

[Cancer]

I'm not a veteran (I had to register for the old draft, but they didn't draft anyone that year), and at age 65 they wouldn't want me anyway.

[Duke Bushido]

I'm in the same boat as Chris:

 

Wife says no.  I have no military experience, but I have done a lot of shooting, and (owing to a career as a repo man), I have been shot three times and I'm still going.    Health is terrible, sure, but not having as much time ahead of me as I have to look back on, I really want to do something worthwhile with it, you know?

 

 

[Pariah]

Even if I were so inclined (and if Lady P would consider letting me for even the briefest fraction of a second), the military would take one look at my ankles and 4F me right the heck out of there.

[archer]

The Washington Post says the paper will no longer include staff names on stories produced by reporters in Russia, to protect them from being imprisoned.

 

====

 

Russian forces have fired into two different humanitarian corridors in southern Ukraine, killing at least six civilians.

 

====

 

Putin said western sanctions on Russia were akin to a declaration of war, reports Reuters.

 

The US State Department has warned American citizens living or travelling in Russia to “depart immediately”.

 

 

 

[Old Man]

3 hours ago, wcw43921 said:

Anyone here thinking of joining up?

 

I've dreamt of it but I'd probably just be a hindrance.  As I understand it, though, sixty thousand Ukrainian expats have already streamed into Ukraine to fight the Russians.  That's... a lot.

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

4 hours ago, Cygnia said:

 

I look at these accusations of Nazism directed at a country which democratically elected a Jew as their president, and just shake my head.

[Old Man]

26 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

I look at these accusations of Nazism directed at a country which democratically elected a Jew as their president, and just shake my head.

 

There's been speculation that Biden's prewar strategy of publicizing everything we knew about Putin's plans prevented Putin from executing the false flag incident he intended to use as a pretext for the invasion.  That left ridiculous claims like the Nazi thing or the idea that Ukraine isn't a real country.