At the end of the day, war crimes stuff with Russia is a theoretical exercise which is why they don't blush at committing crimes in the open. It might give someone at lower levels a hint of pause but they're probably more afraid of their leaders who are right in front of them than some theoretical consequences.
Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Wed Mar 16, 2022 10:21 am
Kremlin Says Neutral Ukraine With Army Could Be Compromise https://finance.yahoo.com/news/kremlin- ... 43248.html
(Bloomberg) -- A proposal for Ukraine to become a neutral country but retain its own armed forces “could be viewed as a certain kind of compromise,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday, hinting at possible progress in peace negotiations.
"We will stop if you agree not to join NATO"?
What game is this? Russia just wants time to do a do-over. Ukraine should be free to do whatever it can peacefully achieve for itself. Fuck Putin and his tyranny - this man needs to be put down, not given a cookie.
As I understand it, even if Ukraine agrees not to join NATO, there is nothing to stop it from purchasing military hardware from the West. For example, they could purchase Patriot anti-missile systems without being part of NATO, correct?
We give them Javelin missiles now , but Patriot missiles I’m not sure about the rules for. I don’t know where or how people draw lines with this arms dealing.
The issue with Patriots is that the Ukrainians would first have to be trained on them.
I saw this afternoon that former Warsaw Pact nations now in NATO are planning to ship in S-300s, a former USSR SAM system that the Ukrainians already use.
Daehawk wrote: ↑Wed Mar 16, 2022 2:23 pm
These are clearly war crime level atrocities. But is anyone really going to hold Putin to war crimes?
It's more of a question of 'can anyone.'
It's kind of an academic question at the end of the day. There can be no war crimes trial while Putin is in power obviously. But if he's overthrown, then he's first and foremost going to be worried about Russian justice essentially for failure to prevent a mutiny, not international justice.
Right the whole thing is highly theoretical. The people most at actual risk are at lower levels and they are probably way more concerned with their thuggish leadership or what'll happen to their families back home. In some ways it might long term be good that they're doing this stuff in the open again. They did this in Syria and we just stood around and watched. In the end, that was part of why I think the crackdown was so complete. It extinguished all the excuses that allowed the West to ignore that they are a brutal criminal regime.
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2022 5:08 pm
by Holman
El Guapo wrote:
Yeah, that's the whole issue with a no fly zone. It doesn't mean anything unless you are willing to shoot down Russian military jets. And obviously shooting down Russian jets is an act of war. So while declaring a no fly zone is not a declaration of war by itself, it would create 99.99% chance of war with Russia (unless Russia completely punks out and stops flying planes over Ukraine, which is not impossible but would be super unlikely).
Another issue with a no-fly zone is that we won't put our planes in the air without first eliminating Russian SAM assets. We'll be killing Russians on the ground before we ever shoot down a Russian plane, and we would probably spend a few days at that task before the NFZ operation even begins. It would be hard to pretend we haven't declared war on Russia.
If we somehow tried to enforce a NFZ using SAMs alone from outside Ukrainian borders, we're just declaring those SAM forces to be legitimate targets. There's no "No Backsies" rule in warfare.
The best "no-fly" solution is to get lots of SAMs (big and small) into Ukraine to be controlled by Ukrainian soldiers.
LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Wed Mar 16, 2022 9:23 am
The video montage he played is effective. And the English portion of his address is incredibly astute.
Here's that video:
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2022 6:38 pm
by Holman
Speaking of videos, someone uploaded a deepfake of Zelensky to a hacked Ukrainian news site. In it, he appears to appeal to Ukrainian soldiers to lay down their weapons (presumably because a peace treaty has been signed).
It was caught and rebutted very quickly, but we should certainly expect more and better versions of this kind of thing.
There are some reports <by probable Russian cut outs to be honest> that the Belarussian military is claiming it is an exercise. An exercise next door to a hot war in the middle of the night. Seems plausible...
There are some reports that the Belarussian military is claiming it is an exercise. An exercise next door to a hot war in the middle of the night. Seems plausible...
The Belarussian politician (Latushko) giving the speech about Belarus being occupied has nothing to do with any purported coup. He's not even on the ground in Belarus. He's in exile in Poland from what I could tell.
There are some reports that the Belarussian military is claiming it is an exercise. An exercise next door to a hot war in the middle of the night. Seems plausible...
The Belarussian politician (Latushko) giving the speech about Belarus being occupied has nothing to do with any purported coup. He's not even on the ground in Belarus. He's in exile in Poland from what I could tell.
Right - it is just speculation based on all the accounts by people hearing simultaneous explosions reported throughout the country. It could be a coup, it could be false flag, it could be sonic booms, heck it even might be an exercise but that seems pretty low on the list of probabilities.
Unfortunately, Putin has decades of experience when it comes to killing the innocent.
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2022 10:36 pm
by Daehawk
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2022 10:51 pm
by Holman
MTG: Putin invading Ukraine is Obama’s fault.
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2022 11:03 pm
by malchior
That is a new and hugely popular talking point on the right at the moment. There has been a lot of talks in my canary communities that the color revolutions were funded by the west to put pressure on Russia. It hits all the right conspiracy notes.
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2022 11:27 pm
by Daehawk
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2022 11:27 pm
by Zarathud
It’s Russian propaganda, too. There must be deep financial ties, because those conspiracy talking points are always projection of their own faults onto the liberals.
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2022 11:40 pm
by El Guapo
Zarathud wrote: ↑Wed Mar 16, 2022 11:27 pm
It’s Russian propaganda, too. There must be deep financial ties, because those conspiracy talking points are always projection of their own faults onto the liberals.
It's also the go to explanation of dictators for mass protests. There's no way that there was a genuine mass movement against the Russian-aligned leader of Ukraine, because Ukrainians are fellow Russians who are absolutely thrilled to be governed from Moscow. So by definition any apparent mass protests must be the result of hostile intelligence operations.
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2022 12:47 am
by Alefroth
Holman wrote: ↑Wed Mar 16, 2022 10:51 pm
MTG: Putin invading Ukraine is Obama’s fault.
She was actually doing well until she got to the sentence about Biden, Pelosi, and Romney.
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2022 7:50 am
by LordMortis
I thought she was doing well until "But" The she turned into the woman to let Trump shit on her so Putin could watch. I'm surprised she didn't call Putin smart.
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2022 7:51 am
by Daehawk
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2022 8:32 am
by Carpet_pissr
Daehawk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 17, 2022 7:51 am
amazing video
Holy shit, what a shot! Are those things laser guided or only by sight/scope? And it seems like the back was filled with Russian soldiers, so a troop transport?
Daehawk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 17, 2022 7:51 am
amazing video
Holy shit, what a shot! Are those things laser guided or only by sight/scope? And it seems like the back was filled with Russian soldiers, so a troop transport?
These are relatively cheap meant for shots under 300-400M. You can see the sight on the top. From what I read as long as you line it up properly on your shoulder, you aim for the front of the vehicle, and the munition is so fast that it is hard to miss.
Daehawk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 17, 2022 7:51 am
amazing video
Holy shit, what a shot! Are those things laser guided or only by sight/scope? And it seems like the back was filled with Russian soldiers, so a troop transport?
These are relatively cheap meant for shots under 300-400M. You can see the sight on the top. From what I read as long as you line it up properly on your shoulder, you aim for the front of the vehicle, and the munition is so fast that it is hard to miss.
But it looks like he's firing it holding it well above and to the right of his head! i.e. not using the sight at all.
Daehawk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 17, 2022 7:51 am
amazing video
Holy shit, what a shot! Are those things laser guided or only by sight/scope? And it seems like the back was filled with Russian soldiers, so a troop transport?
These are relatively cheap meant for shots under 300-400M. You can see the sight on the top. From what I read as long as you line it up properly on your shoulder, you aim for the front of the vehicle, and the munition is so fast that it is hard to miss.
But it looks like he's firing it holding it well above and to the right of his head! i.e. not using the sight at all.
I think that's an optical illusion. We are seeing a POV from chest level since this appears to be a body cam.
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2022 8:59 am
by Daehawk
After all this time if just dawned on me...why dont the Russians have drones? Or are we just not seeing them.
Also I wonder if there was a squad of soldiers with him to take out or capture the troops in back? The drone footage ended.
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2022 9:05 am
by malchior
Daehawk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 17, 2022 8:59 am
After all this time if just dawned on me...why dont the Russians have drones? Or are we just not seeing them.
I was just reading they've been using UAVs but are starting to use them a bit more. Still they are cut off from platforms to some degree which probably complicates sharing video.
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2022 9:35 am
by Unagi
That Russian vehicle seemed to survive that blast fairly well. I realize it seemed to do something that forced the driver off the road, but it appeared mostly intact and functional.
Kinda surprised that explosion didn’t push it more. (And do more damage).
Amazing capture.
Also, the beginning of the video seems to show the truck pass two large trucks that are almost blocking the road.
It looked almost like a check point , or perhaps they were just two older disabled vehicles that were pushed off the road.
On second look. I’m guessing they were unoccupied
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2022 9:40 am
by malchior
Unagi wrote: ↑Thu Mar 17, 2022 9:35 am
That Russian vehicle seemed to survive that blast fairly well. I realize it seemed to do something that forced the driver off the road, but it appeared mostly intact and functional.
Kinda surprised that explosion didn’t push it more. (And do more damage).
I think this is a function that they are designed to penetrate armor first most so the force of the blast is mostly forward. It probably did a lot more damage than it looks or caused an injury that ended up causing the truck to crash. The hatch in the compartment blew open so I'm thinking the driver was in a bad way since that didn't look controlled.
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2022 9:41 am
by $iljanus
malchior wrote: ↑Wed Mar 16, 2022 11:03 pm
That is a new and hugely popular talking point on the right at the moment. There has been a lot of talks in my canary communities that the color revolutions were funded by the west to put pressure on Russia. It hits all the right conspiracy notes.
Yeah there was a forum member who said that the Orange Revolution was a "coup funded by the US". I suggested that he do some research about how the Maidan Revolution came about. I'm sure he's on the case but since he has left the thread we will never know...
malchior wrote: ↑Wed Mar 16, 2022 11:03 pm
That is a new and hugely popular talking point on the right at the moment. There has been a lot of talks in my canary communities that the color revolutions were funded by the west to put pressure on Russia. It hits all the right conspiracy notes.
Yeah there was a forum member who said that the Orange Revolution was a "coup funded by the US". I suggested that he do some research about how the Maidan Revolution came about. I'm sure he's on the case but since he has left the thread we will never know...
Let's even go with the case that was true, we have to look at the situation still. *Wave hands at everything*. That would somehow justify all this mayhem?! It's just a thin excuse to hold to their shitty tribal views.
Daehawk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 17, 2022 8:59 am
After all this time if just dawned on me...why dont the Russians have drones? Or are we just not seeing them.
I was just reading they've been using UAVs but are starting to use them a bit more. Still they are cut off from platforms to some degree which probably complicates sharing video.
They also need secure locations for drone pilots and comms. I don't know what kind of drones they have available but there is a wide spectrum of operating distances. I'm guessing that their drone program isn't particularly robust.
This is a few years old but is in line with my understanding of their capabilities. They just haven't focused resources on advanced drones.
The Russian military operates a fleet of about 500 drones.6 Russian officials stress that short-range drones are the most needed in the armed forces.7 While the development of advanced drones obviously poses a significant technological challenge to the Russian defense industry, indigenous production has slowly progressed in the mini and tactical UAV categories (although in the latter category, Russian products lag behind the systems of leading competitors).
...
Recent Western military operations have made the Russians realize the force multiplier effect of UAVs. Although in recent years Russia has certainly achieved progress in UAV technologies, it still lags behind the West, except in the lower end of the spectrum (i.e., short-range and very-low-payload systems).
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2022 9:54 am
by Carpet_pissr
If the Russians are still behind in drone tech, they are about to have a rude awakening via Switchblades falling on their heads and armor. That will truly be a WTF?!? moment from their perspective. Flying bombs?!
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2022 9:55 am
by Zarathud
In Mother Russia, everyone is Drone.
Re: Ukraine
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2022 11:52 am
by Max Peck
Here's an example of a small Russian drone that came down in the area of Kyiv a few days ago. From the pictures, it appears to be a flying claymore mine with an explosive payload packed with steel ballbearings.
The first proof of loitering munitions combat use by the Russian army. ZALA KYB "kamikaze" UAV fell down in #Kyiv today.
The drone didn't explode, however it is unknown if it malfunctioned or it was downed using Ukrainian electronic warfare systems.
