Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[delphonso]

If anarchists rally behind a cause, they have become organised and thus are no longer true anarchists.

Anarchy isn't chaos, it is anti-hierarchy. You can organize in ways where no one has power over others.

[JoshuaFH]

As much as I hate to say it, being a privileged American, I'm thinking Ukraine's goal should be to protract the conflict, to make it as painful and costly as humanly possible to the country of Russia, such that a future followup attack becomes literally impossible.

I apologize for any insensitivity on my part. It just seems unconscionable to allow a mad man like Putin any form of victory, no matter how small. If he wants to make a greedy grab at Ukraine,  then it seems logical that Ukraine make every effort to bite his hand off and make sure he regrets his actions.

[brewer bob]

Peace talks finally seem to be succeeding. Let's hope they can find some compromise and stop this horror.

Those peace talks are useless\harmful. Russian goal is the destruction of the Ukrainian nation and the only kind of agreement they may agree to is one that will allow them to regroup and start another stage of the war whenever it benefits them completely ignoring whatever piece of paper that may be signed.

The only one who should compromise is Putin (and that should be that he has got to go). I'm afraid Ukraine will be forced to accept a rotten deal, and then our Western governments can pat each other on the back for "helping out".

[martinuzz]

In a stunning display of speed, the European electricity network companies worked together and achieved in two weeks what would ordinarily have been a one year job:
Ukraine is now connected to the European electricity grid, to fall back upon if their own electricity network fails.

[Starver]

As long as Russia does not cut the connections, near the border. (Though it has to be careful with that. Like the way Loki gets out of his promised beheading by stating that he did not at all agree to parting with any of his neck, any overstepping of the mark will guarantee trouble, and it's almost certainly interlinked in breadth to defeat any trivial attack.)

[EuchreJack]

In this case they're not bomb throwing anarchist, they are bomb-throwing heroes.

I'm sure the Vietnamese said the same about many brave Americans during the US war in that country.  Sorta why I hate such labels.
Heroes, villains, mostly it depends on whether you like what they're doing.
If someone were to be found strangling and raping the young women relatives of the Russian soldiers, would they be a hero?
If a Russian solder single-handedly holds off a Ukrainian counter-offensive while his squad mates are evacuated to safety, is he a villain?

[EuchreJack]

Speaking of Russians bravely opposing the regime.

More context

"In Lukhovitsy near Moscow, a military registration and enlistment office was burned. An unknown guerrilla posted a video and a statement. The attack is directed against Putin's aggression in Ukraine. We welcome the sabotage of the war machine of the aggressors. We call on all awakened residents of Russia and Belarus to follow the example of a brave saboteur near Moscow."

Not sure about the validity of this but who doesn't enjoy a some good old-fashioned bomb throwing anarchists burning down government buildings.

IMO, a good number of people like this is the only thing that can save the world from a large scale nuclear war. Russia exploding from within seems like the only hope... very slim hope.

Peace talks finally seem to be succeeding. Let's hope they can find some compromise and stop this horror.

Those peace talks are useless\harmful. Russian goal is the destruction of the Ukrainian nation and the only kind of agreement they may agree to is one that will allow them to regroup and start another stage of the war whenever it benefits them completely ignoring whatever piece of paper that may be signed.

How else could this end, if not with a peace treaty? The only alternative I can see is escalation into an actual world war.

WW3 has already started. It is just a somewhat hybrid one

This war can end only with the collapse of Russia just like WW2 could end only with the collapse of the Third Reich. And no, I am not living in a fairytale in which Ukraine starts a great counteroffensive and... Ukraine will be slowly losing, transitioning from conventional war to something more simmilar to Syria with pockets of resistance all while Russia destabilized in a war it can't end...

Or Russia will defeat Ukraine relatively quickly and then try with some other country (baltic states, Poland, Kazakhstan, Finland, whatever), and then the cycle will repeat.

Russia will collapse as a result of this war. It is doomed. The question is how many people this monster will take with itself. Nuclear war is the worst possible scenario

I would agree this conflict counts as World War Three.  It is not like anyone called World War One by that name until World War Two.  And pretty sure the term World War Two took a while to catch on as well.

Consider the drones.  They are a loophole by which the Western Nations can provide soldier-equivalents without providing any manpower.  The anti-aircraft missiles will probably help also.  It is not like the Vietnamese had a no-fly zone or aerial superiority.

For those who don't know, I'll say what no American is supposed to say:
The United States, the Greatest Nation on Earth, LOST the Vietnam War.  It wasn't even close.  And the Vietnamese won because they were willing to fight harder and longer than the US.

[scriver]

Let's not have an anarschism over this

[JoshuaFH]

I don't think anyone'll contest that Euchre, we got our asses beat in Vietnam. Though I'll contest that it wasn't because Vietnam fought harder, it was because they won the Media-dimension to the war. People found out how horrific the war was, and that we weren't the righteous side of that war. Granted, Our (America's) decision-making from the very top to the very bottom was very misguided, from the very start to the very end, and so we were happy to throw away good lives, and good money, into a bad war with no clear objective; and we probably would have just kept on going, only until the bad publicity finally forced us to concede defeat.

[scriver]

To Americans, the war was a pointless effort started by the French for no real reason.

To the Vietnamese, it was a continuation of the same war they had been fighting for over three generations.

[Lord Shonus]

Between 1,000 and 1,200 people were sheltering at Mariupol theater when it was hit by airstrike, deputy mayor says; number of casualties unknown - BBC

I have no words anymore. Also, whoever made the decision to gather many civilians in one place to make Russia's job easier is... a criminal at this point.


And it wasn't just some random airstrike... They dropped a bunker buster demolishing the building, being in the basement means nothing

Where are you hearing the bunker buster part from? The imagery I've seen looks like an ordinary bomb exploding the upper stories. I'm only seeing Ukranian news in translation, but it isn't a claim I've seen yet.

[Strongpoint]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-russia-voznesensk-town-battle-11647444734

[Il Palazzo]

What is this, Strongpoint? Somebody asks you about your source for the very bogus-sounding claim of bunker buster bombs, and you respond with an article about a battle from two weeks ago?

[Quarque]

Not sure what to say to those claims "ww3 has started already". An actual WW3 means that a billion people or more die. What happened so far is a proxy war. Of course it's been horrible, perhaps worse than other proxy wars to date in some ways.

Putin has one goal above all. He wants to remain in power. And it is clear that he made a mistake. That is why I believe that if he can sign a treaty that lets him back off but save face somehow, he will. And he will think twice to try the same thing again, now that he has seen the consequences.

Putin set out to install a puppet regime in Ukraine and execute some horrible purge he called "denazification". Russia dropped that demand in their negotiations. If a peace treaty has otherwise acceptable conditions, this would be a huge victory, the best outcome that is realistically possible. Ukraine gets to keep their sovereignty, they remain a free country AND the world narrowly escaped a nuclear holocaust. Who thought this would be possible when the war started?

I understand the sentiment about regime change in Russia, but that is something that can only be done by the Russian people themselves. And it could still happen after a peace treaty has been signed. The West cannot force it to happen - at least not without starting an actual ww3.

[Il Palazzo]

The otherwise acceptable conditions might include ceding parts of Ukraine to Russia. That might not be the best case scenario victory for Putin, but it will be a victory nonetheless. Or at least easy to spin it as such at home.