Please use this thread to continue discussing the war in Ukraine.
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Original thread:
Ha, a higher calibre of Putinbot turning up there. (By that I mean volume of content smeared onto the thread, not nessisarily quality). Given the pro-China stance seen in post history, I guess we're looking at a commited anti-West "tankie" as opposed to an actual Russian asset.
I guess it's worth reflecting on why even after 2 years of a war that is clearly about conquest (which Russia don't even keep secret in their propiganda) that you'll have people in western democracies willfully ignore the actions of a clearly facist state, simply because they are opponents to the Hated West™.
Full disclousure, I think I remember being like this myself in my teenage years. Very much anti-US. But even then, I don't think I remember gleefully cheerleading the attempted destruction of a demrocatic state or the innocent civilians therein.
As I aged, and studied the history of facism through my interest in WWII, I began to gain perspective on my dislike of the US & her allies. As much as I disliked their foriegn policy, these countries had at least in principle the notion of being able to publically disagree with the sitting government, and to vote out its members if they failed to do their jobs. Without this, the whims and egos of a small group of people can impact the lives of countless ordinary people.
The Russians represent something that the Nazies very nearly brought back to the world had they succeeded during WWII. They represent the removal of the idea of personal agency and protection of personal freedoms under the law. In both cases you live for the pleasure of The Party or The Leader and if they deem that you are to be enslaved for their enrichment, then that is what they'll make happen.
Russian control of Europe pretty much means a return of Serfdom for those they would choose to spare. As we have seen with the Nazies, (and possibly also with the Russians in some cases with the Ukrainians they have taken under their control) that once the freedoms we take for granted are gone, then slavery comes soon after. They might call it something else, but that's what it usually amounts to.
Defeating Russia is also about defending the lawful freedoms we now take for granted. The same applies to defending Taiwan from Chinese invasion or the potential take over of America by MAGA christian nationalist fasists.
I'm not sure how to get though to a commited Tankie who has willfully ignored what a Russian success would potentially mean to their own freedom. Even in a facist state…the facists themselves are only safe while those in charge find them useful enough to keep around. Very quickly, that safefy may be gone, and they will find that they had gleefully helped remove the safeguards that would have protected them, from the ire of one man's ego.
If Putin had the intention of protecting ethnic Russians in the Donbass, the 2022 invasion would have been concentrated squarely on that region instead of the three pronged mode of attack they went with.
We may say it's 500,000 casualties for Russia, but Putin probably doesn't see it that way. All the convicts who got enlisted and died don't really count as actual people in Putin's world. To him, the best case would be that those dead prisoners paid their debt to Russian society through their blood sacrifice and can essentially be scrubbed from the ledger. With those from the Republics, they don't really have the political capital to start a movement that would topple Putin. So long as Putin can keep the majority of the particularly bad casualties to prisoners, ethniks and possibly even foreign mercs, he'll try to see the conflict out.
Ah, the infamous Azov Battalion,foundation of so many Ruzzian fantasy narratives. From scrutinising Kremlin propaganda over the last couple of years, a number of facts become clear. The Azov ''battalion''is much more like a division than a mere battalion, or even an army, such are it's numbers and it's astonishing capacity for regeneration. It was supposedly destroyed, most of its members killed or captured at Mariupol, yet it reconstituted itself, doubtless in some amoeba-like manner, or like zombies to fight again. It also had enough spare manpower to murder the slain civilians at Bucha, whilst blaming the Ruzzian army for this heinous act and to maintain a permanent corps of fiendish nazis, whose main function is to both protect, yet threaten and intimidate Zelensky and force him to do their bidding. They are the real power behind the Zelensky administration, the Ukrainian government only puppets dangling from their strings, rather like a terrifying mixture of the Praetorian Guard, the SS and the Janissaries. They are yet nebulous yet ubiquitous, dreaded yet invisible and like Xerxes' 'immortals' no matter how many of these bogeymen are killed, their nefarious power and influence remains.
It was the evil F-UK-USers that fooled the weak minded Russians (who are superior in every other respect) into attacking. Or something.
This is great. Around 18:30 there's a question posed that is relevant to Ireland. Unfortunately we don't have leaders, or a public I suppose, who get it.
My point about the 50k v 500k Russian/Ukrainian dead was not that the true figure was 500k/50k but that is was closer to the truth than the original absurd assertion.
Or why it's leaders liked to decorate themselves in such a manner as this…..
To reconcile some of the above posts - it could well be 250,000 Russian casualties and another 250,000 casualties from the annexed regions, Wagner etc etc who have been used as cannon fodder. The way those from the annexed regions were used puts the lie to Putin's claims to be doing this to protect those so-called ethnic Russians or merely to annex those regions.
UK Defence intelligence put it at half a million casualties last week
French also had similar numbers recently and these intelligence guys did correctly call the impending invasion at start of war
BBC also had a piece a year ago from what I remember where Ukrainians have multiple teams whose job is nothing more than collecting DNA samples from dead and captured, bbc also keeping a count and of obituaries but in a country where no one cares about people (and there is a window shaped incentive to not count the dead) that’s the absolute minimum point
I would not be surprised that at end of war they release a number backed by DNA which will shock everyone, keep in mind judging by videos they can’t get to everyone especially when in retreat or deaths are result of long range strike or submarine conversion
The Ukrainians have been very methodical in measuring everything about this war as data is important for good decision making
Tbh I don't buy either the Russian or Ukrainian numbers. I personally don't believe anything like half a million Russian dead. Imho you'd have to be smoking the funny ciggies to buy into that. Of course I don't believe the Kremlin numbers either, of what is it now; 6000 dead? That's funny ciggies with a blotter acid chaser.
I read an article a few weeks ago(I'll try to find it again) where different researchers tried to get a handle on the real numbers involved. It was easier for Ukraine it being far more open than Russia to do such research, but they got clever with trying to peek behind the Russian curtain. Iirc they looked at things like Russian probate applications, names added to town memorials etc.
Anyhoo, the gist was that these different researchers reckoned they could comfortably speculate a "low end" figure for Ukraine of around 50-60k dead, for Russia around 80-90k dead. They saw spikes in deaths around campaigns like Bakhmut and such spikes were much more biased towards Russian deaths. Interestingly they noted Ukrainian deaths were higher and Russian lower in the early days of the invasion than supposed or spun, but spikes in Russian deaths increased over time and mass deaths have steadily increased. So it seems Russia's "throw meat at the problem" tactics are having the obvious results.
Again personally and very speculatively of course I'd reckon the truer figures of combatants taken out of the equation, dead and injured, would be more like 150,000 Ukrainian and 250,000 Russian.
You might want to read this
I know it’s off topic but it’s important today
There are also multiple debates in politics forum
“ You don’t have to do this and can stop at whatever point you want and your vote will still be valid but to have maximum impact it is best to use all your preferences.”
The penny seems to have dropped around air support.
Ukraine cannot realistically reclaim territories back to even the pre-2022 borders without air support.
And if they do not reclaim at least those territories, Putin will have "won" and it only encourages further land grabs and genocides.
This is a great post.
I know it already got plenty of thanks, but bravo !
This is the point a lot of pro Russians often overlook. Even if their crazy theories about US backed coups, bioweapons etc etc were true, which theyre not, but even if they were, Russias response in annexing Crimea and supporting proxy insurgencies in Donbas has meant that such portion of Russia that was formerly pro Russian or Russian leaning is either:
A) dead;
B) in Russian occupied territory; or
C) has fled the war.
The rest of Ukraine, which had a lot of neutral, weakly anti Russian and a small amount of strongly anti Russian sentiment will now be a majority strongly anti Russian for at least a generation, and possibly several generations.
Whatever the truth of the nonsense reasons for the invasion, it is undoubtedly one of the finest examples of how not to Geopolitics the world has ever seen.
I was being sarcastic, clearly nobody is getting a look in at Russian POW camps when they're returning people in that state.
The far right candidates in the 2014 Ukrainian election got less than 2% of the vote between them, lower than most European countries. I wouldn't use the word "plenty" but I know where it comes from.
Might come as a surprise to you Cornelious, but in the Russian Republics, and of course the Ex Russian republics, ethnic Russians are not popular….far from it!!! Why did so many leave Mother Russia when they got the chance in 1991? Don't ever make the mistake of calling a non-ethnic Russian a "Russian" by mistake. You might get away with it once, being a foreigner, but not a 2nd time. The Republics all have their own separate cultural identities, in many cases different languages etc. And also, you will not find inter-marriage between two neighbouring republics being very common. In some cases, it's downright forbidden. The much-hyped up Ukronazis is exactly that, hyped up Kremlin Propaganda. The Azov battalion had a very tiny % which hold far right views but deny adhering to Nazi beliefs as a whole. Unlike Putin's Nazi's, who are followers of the real thing…Putin's war in Ukraine is fought on the same principles he copied from his hero, Adolf Hitler, and his propaganda, is page by page, taken from Goebbels hand book
@Lucien_Sarti: You seem to think that 50,000 Russian dead and 500,000 Ukrainian dead is somehow credible. 50,000 Ukrainian and 500,000 Russian deaths is nearer the truth.
As usual the Russian story is the exact opposite of the truth.
Grand so should be easy to find those posts where people said that. Where are they? Or are you just making stuff up?
You would probably have come out with similar about several countries who are now in the EU.
The violations by Russia of the Budapest peace agreement with Ukraine started when Ukraine was considering signing a formal political and economic agreement with the EU as part of starting the accession process. That was back in 2012 - 2013. No doubt you were aware of all that?
Commentary online suggests that France will be providing the Mirage 2000-5 model to Ukraine. Based on the context provided by the links below, I presume that this designation refers to the Mirage 2000-5F, which is still in service in France. This is an older model that the Armee de l’Air is currently phasing out in favour of the Rafale, but unlike the base model, the -5F is fully multi-role capable. This makes sense, France would want to keep the more advanced models for themselves.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/06/06/ukraine-will-get-ex-french-mirage-2000-5-fighters/?sh=12f2bdcdb332
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240606-%F0%9F%94%B4-macron-to-supply-ukraine-with-mirage-2000-5-warplanes-and-train-fighter-pilots-in-france
I haven’t found anything definitive with regards to numbers, but according to Forbes, a total of 37 Mirage 2000-5 were built. Apparently, 26 of these are still in service in France, though I don’t know if the other 11 have been lost, sold, scrapped or mothballed. It’s not a large reservoir of air frames, but France has a fully fledged training pipeline and operational conversion unit available for the type and should be able to integrate Ukrainian pilot trainees pretty quickly once the go-ahead is given.
One of the main reasons for the conflict was Ukraine moving away from russian influences. putin has well and truly burned that bridge now.
Plenty of neonazis in both countries. The way people talk about Ukraine on this thread you’d swear they may as well be Irish. They have far more in common with Russia culturally than they have with ‘the west’. No doubt their ‘westernisation’ will be fast- tracked due to invasion and who can blame them.
From any credible non UK/US DOD neutral sources the figure around Feb 2024 converged on 500,000 Ukraine deaths to 50,000 Russian. I’m sure you’ve seen these.
Nope. In the 2+ years of the current phase of this conflict, the only time I've ever seen these figures has been when they're posted by people who seem to have an amazing ability to ferret out contradictory "neutral" information that the rest of us never come across, and yet they're equally amazingly incapable of ever providing a link to the source. Can we count you to finally open for us that trove of True and Unbiased Factual Information?
The Dublin Russian embassy troll was fast off the blocks replying to your link posted.
edit. Meant to quote.
Utkin, founder of Wagner, was a neo nazi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Utkin
Summary of news today.
There was pressure on Sweden not to supply Gripens so Ukraine only has to worry about one western fighter to maintain and train.
But there was also some report that Ukraine were frustrated with only 12 spots available in the US for F16 training. They may end up with more F16's than pilots.
Just train them on what ever airframe could be given to Ukraine. Better to have a pilot trained and no aircraft yet, than an aircraft waiting and no pilot.
Even Progozin admitted that all the Donbass stuff mentioned was lies😀
What are these credible 'neutral' sources? 50,000 Russian to 500,000 Ukrainian deaths! hardly credible the attacking side always has the most casualties.
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