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[Starver]

Er, no.  Russia INVADING Ukraine means starvation in Africa.  If Russia LEAVES, the starvation ends.  And letting the Russians HAVE Ukraine doesn't guarantee food exports will increase.  In fact, it's likely to go the other way.

...exactly my thoughts, when I read the arguments.

There will be (at least) a year's blip as infrastructure and agriculture has to recover, but the chances that "Ok, Ukraine is Russian now" leads to any better outcome for Africa (slower recovery, worse restoration, grain will doubtless get funelled through Russia's hands to prioritise their conceptual needs above Africa, what does go out there will be tied to 'goodwill' agreements of the Kremlin's choosing of both open and back-door nature, etc...) is fantasy.

The chain of "help Ukraine => harm Africans => who will pester us" smells of hedging the racism card. "I'm not racist, I just don't want brown people coming here."  I don't know much about the political tendencies of these Italian opposition guys (I bet it's more complicated than my mind is painting them) but if I'm summarising the summary of their arguments at least half-way fairly then I'd be looking at where strings are being pulled, or even let run free a little.

Charitably "opposition for opposition's sake" might be the only thing (taking a contrarian stance), but it's a bad counterargument to push when there's always plenty of other levers to operate to put internal pressure upon pretty much any government, and Italy is one of those that always seems to be on the edge, or jumping from one edge to another.  They could afford a (pretended) solidarity on the Ukraine issue.

The worse position is that there's a populist pro-Russia groundswell (or even more vehement core base) such that they can't claim the same moral position on this issue, or lose their lifeblood perhaps to more marginally-inclined coalitions of political movements. I've really not heard much about that. I've no doubt there's such pockets silently fuming in all 'western alliance of support" nations, with their own 'reasoning' behind their stance. And no doubt there's been a concerted effort by Russia's usual assets to find and then stir such pots as exist that are already simmering with the right sort of recipe for their purpose. Enough for a civil war? (Within Italy, or within/across the EU in general, ignoring Erdogan for the moment.) Worth a nudge, though, I'm sure is their attitude...

[Lord Shonus]

I also should probably actually read the damn document before commenting.
The devil is in the details.

Pro: "a ceasefire in Ukraine and the demilitarization of the front line under UN supervision"
Harder to commit genocide with UN observers.  Ideally, UN forces would take over the front lines entirely.

Con: "The plan stipulates that Russian troops are then withdrawn from Ukraine."
This is at the end, implying that removal of Russia Troops isn't a priority Day 1.  Hence Strongpoint's concerns.

And I'll repeat: Review of the ACTUAL DOCUMENT submitted to the UN is required.  I hardly trust any news media outlet to correctly distill any official document.
The only thing I could find relevant was this document, which didn't come from Italy alone.

As I mentioned in the news thread, Italy is under pressure to end the war by any means necessary.

I'm irritated that Italy's opposition party, and frankly others in the World, even the US, are choosing to frame the issue as "Funding Ukraine means starvation in Africa".
Er, no.  Russia INVADING Ukraine means starvation in Africa.  If Russia LEAVES, the starvation ends.  And letting the Russians HAVE Ukraine doesn't guarantee food exports will increase.  In fact, it's likely to go the other way.

Also, here is a dirty little secret about the United States: We have enough food to fully feed Africa.  We refuse to do it because it is not profitable for US.

The Italian party in question is borderline neo-fascist, and most of Europe's neofascists are directly backed by Russia. Having them acting as a mouthpiece for Russia is hardly surprising. They're also very nationalist and openly anti-immigrant, and are one of the parties that have been spouting horrific anti-refugee starements for years.

As for the other, even if the US government bought all the surplus food in the country to send to Africa, it wouldn't easily solve the issue. You can't just show up on a dock with a truckooad of food and call it done - there's immense logistical issues tnat arise when you're shipping from an entirely different source. The local infrastructure is set up to distribute food from Ukraine, not the US (which would be less of a problem if you coukd use the same ports, but there's a very real risk that Russia will shoot at any ship trying to make that transit.

[Il Palazzo]

but there's a very real risk that Russia will shoot at any ship trying to make that transit.

What? Shoot at whom? From where?

[EuchreJack]

I don't get the comparison. They would then expect their troops to be eaten by 27 metre tall squid analogues?

While I know you're being funny,
The point I was making is that if the Russian High Command had played a decent military war sim, they would have understood the logistical issues of their invasion, and maybe avoided/lessened some of the problems that have bogged down their campaign.  I mean, I'm sure they have little choice in the matter of actually going through with the invasion and avenues of attack, but they could have done better from Day 1-30.

EDIT: To "finish the joke", I'm essentially saying a bunch of civilian war gamers could have done better than the Russian Military Leaders.

[Loud Whispers]

EDIT: To "finish the joke", I'm essentially saying a bunch of civilian war gamers could have done better than the Russian Military Leaders.

One of the main problems seems to have been that there was no executive Russian military leadership; the invasion was planned by security officials whose main experience is murdering journalists, not planning wars. No one general was put in overall command, there was no unified air command let alone a unified ground-sea-air command, so the whole thing was just grasping at straws and necessitated generals coming to the front line just to figure out what their own forces were doing (and promptly dying as a result)

[Strongpoint]

This is absolutely horrifying. Lyudmyla Denisova (Ombudsman for Human Rights in Ukraine) writes on Facebook about Russian atrocities.

Spoiler: Content warning: sexual assault, child abuse (click to show/hide)

Every day the Ombudsman's Psychological Assistance line receives reports of sexual crimes that make the blood run cold. The atrocities of Russian soldiers know no bounds.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces are liberating towns and villages in the Kharkiv region, and over the past week, most of the calls have come from there. From the victims themselves and their relatives.

Yesterday, in just one hour, 10 people applied for sexual violence, 8 of them were raped minors, including two 10-year-old boys.

In the last 24 hours, we received 56 calls.

Triplets 9 years old, girls who were raped by racists with severe genital injuries. All this in full view of the mother, she's in shock. Izium.

A mother turned, her nine-month-old daughter was raped with a candle in front of her eyes.

A one-year-old boy was raped by two, he died.

Two-year-old girl raped by two, survived.

Men raped were 67 and 78 years old.

Horror and rage is overwhelming!

This is the genocide of the Ukrainian people with special cruelty!  This is a violation not only of the rules of international humanitarian law, but also of its very essence, the morals of the civilized world!

I appeal to the UN Commission for Investigation Human Rights Violations during the Russian military invasion of Ukraine to take into account these facts of genocide of the Ukrainian people.

I call on our partners around the world to increase sanctions pressure on russia, to provide Ukraine with offensive weapons, to join the investigation of rashist crimes in our country!

The enemy must be stopped and all those involved in the atrocities in Ukraine must be brought to justice!

I am confident that many of them WILL be brought to justice. It will be one of the focuses of the Ukrainian nation. Not via useless international courts of course, those will stay as useless (look at how "effective" they are with capturing Serbs) as they are now. In the Israeli way. With random explosions and other accidents happening all over the Russia

We already doing work on finding their faces, names, home addresses, and passport data (the Internet era is wonderful). In some cases, their relatives from the middle of Russian nowhere are already enjoying some serious fame on social networks and many phone calls full of... colorful promises

I can already see future "liberal" media condemning Ukrainian methods of justice.

[Madman198237]

The local infrastructure is set up to distribute food from Ukraine, not the US (which would be less of a problem if you coukd use the same ports, but there's a very real risk that Russia will shoot at any ship trying to make that transit.

If a ship from the US shows up with grain in a port in Africa set up to distribute Ukrainian grain, it wouldn't be any different than a ship from Ukraine showing up.

And like hell is Russia going to shoot at any ship flying a NATO-aligned flag no matter where it chooses to go. Africa, the Black Sea, right off the coast of the Crimea. There is pretty much no risk, particularly a cargo ship that would be travelling in international waters.

[brewer bob]

I can already see future "liberal" media condemning Ukrainian methods of justice.

I honestly won't start blaming Ukrainians if they take extreme and harsh measures to deliver justice against the perpetrators.

[Strongpoint]

I can already see future "liberal" media condemning Ukrainian methods of justice.

I honestly won't start blaming Ukrainians if they take extreme and harsh measures to deliver justice against the perpetrators.

I am actually worried that it will go too far and will be done not only by specially trained operatives and will hit random people...

But all "after the war" worries are so far away... I can't stop thinking about Azovstal's prisoners and some worrying news from the Popasna-Severedonetsk front. This will be a looong war, victory is not near.

[MaxTheFox]

I can already see future "liberal" media condemning Ukrainian methods of justice.

I honestly won't start blaming Ukrainians if they take extreme and harsh measures to deliver justice against the perpetrators.

Same.

[nenjin]

I've always found it strange that reports of sexual violence during the war single out boys.

Like, they're all minors. Shouldn't really matter what gender they are, sexual assault is sexual assault.

Or is it more subtle than that. Given the Russian government's attitude toward homosexuality, are boys specifically singled out during reporting to highlight that contradiction or....?

The less charitable read on it is "Well you expected girls to be sexually assaulted during war time, but boys? Now that's something."

I've seen it multiple times in reporting and it makes me scratch my head every time I see it.

[Loud Whispers]

I've always found it strange that reports of sexual violence during the war single out boys.

Like, they're all minors. Shouldn't really matter what gender they are, sexual assault is sexual assault.

It's to ensure that typically overlooked demographics don't suffer erasure, in the past it had been fairly standard to act on the assumption that male war rape victims didn't exist

This problem also applies to many other aspects of many other social ills. I remember one fairly obscure one for example being gay rights activism in Jamaica ignoring the problems faced by poor gay and trans Jamaicans to focus on the problems faced by highly educated Jamaicans. In all such cases it should be ideally a one-size-fits-all approach, but a one-size-fits-all-approach doesn't always address the same problem for all, because not all experience the same problem the same way

It is also useful for determining the extent and scale of its existence, as there is not a wealth of history on the unfortunate subject due to lack of records

[King Zultan]

I just realized that Putin sounds like a fart themed villain that a little kid would make up.


Also all the soldiers that rape people should be shot and killed.

[Ziusudra]

I just realized that Putin sounds like a fart themed villain that a little kid would make up.

The political officer who "slips on tea" and breaks his neck near the beginning of The Hunt for Red October is named Ivan Putin.

[Grim Portent]

Also all the soldiers that rape people should be shot and killed.

I think the traditional method of killing war criminals is to hang them.

For various reasons I'd say it's preferable to put any of the soldiers caught on trial and then execute or incarcerate them through civilian procedures, which would generally mean hanging, lethal injection or electric chair, though I think Ukraine doesn't have the death penalty anyway*, than to have them hunted down and assassinated by revenge squads.

Though the odds of any such war criminals surviving a period of incarceration in a Ukrainian jail would be slim to none, so just shooting dead them might actually be the kinder punishment.


Sadly I expect that a lot of war criminals are going to go unpunished. Rapists, murderers and looters are going to be plentiful enough that tracking them all down isn't going to be practical, even if post-war Russia decides to be fully cooperative. This isn't really a WW2 situation with well documented death camps and experiment logs and muster rolls and so on to use to identify the people involved, it's more of an out of control mob shitshow. Apart from the odd morons who got their faces caught on cameras and so forth I imagine definitively proving that a given soldier, or even a given squad or detachment was involved in an atrocity is going to be difficult, especially if Russia decides to destroy their paper trail.


*Given the circumstances, temporarily reinstating the death penalty wouldn't seem unreasonable to me despite being highly opposed to it on general principle.