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[Starver]

(There's reports that Russian tactics have been getting smarter, evolving to be more clever, but pushing so many reservists in might not be conducive with smarter military thinking, except as pure distraction technique.)

I assume you mean strategy, referring to the host of essentially political decisions that made little military sense when Russia still believed that they can snatches victory from the jaws of defeat faint/repositioning/whatever, which put them at huge disadvantage.

Well, I was mostly talking tactics, as the most obvious visible difference (between zerg-rushing and actually doing something sensible and not self-defeating in an offensive action) in the way they are seen to be (re)acting. But you're right that it may represent actual shift in strategy at the practical level.

What overarching strategy changes have been made at higher levels (since the abandonment of the failed "decaptation" move in their "attack everywhere with troops who didn't even know there's a plan to invade" phase) I don't think I'm qualified to even guess at.


There's signs of getting smarter, though. I, for one, hope the smartness is diluted, one way or another. Unreasonable expectations from above or low average battle-smarts from below. It'd be nice if it was a morale failure, not just cannon-foddering, but that's just my preference as to how it falls apart.

[Il Palazzo]

Degrees in hell in the country that is the single foremost supporter of Putin in Europe, bar Serbia, maybe.

Why doesn't scriver-sempai notice Orban-kun?

[scriver]

Because even Hungary told Germany to knock it off with the Pro-Putinism back when the whole Nordstream thing was first planlaid, iirc.

But yeah, confession, it probably wasn't Orban back then so I shouldn't conflate governments and countries so much. So let's put them behind Orbangry too, that's a fair point.

[Red Diamond]

It is a blatant and outright lie. Some were even POWed  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28934213

(And if Crimea wasn't an invasion then... Or if Strelkov wasn't a Russian...)

Also, go there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ilovaisk and see "units involved", before you say BUT wikipedia... There are links in that article.

Not that I think that you have any interest in truth or don't know that you are lying

Oh wait... i misunderstood... in your bizzare world it is ok to violate internationally recognized borders if you call some random folks ( under your full control) a new country or new government

Everyone knows that there were Russians involved in fighting in Donbass, nobody denied it and the whole idea that there was any sort of denial is itself a lie invented in order to support the Western conspiracy theory of 'little green men'.  This is itself a form of Anti-Knowledge designed to plaster over the shattered state of Ukraine at the time, there is was no need for Russia to invade since there are numerous splinter states begging for Russian aid to not be reconquered by Ukraine.  The stupidity of Russia is that they chose to steal Crimea rather than group the three splinter states into an Anti-Ukraine, to create a civil war in which they could intervene with full force to crush the new Ukraine and bring back the old.

An important distinction here is whether they were forces that were merely Russian or whether they were forces that are operated as part of the Russian army.  It is quite normal for states to employ foreign nationals in their armies, as volunteers/merceneries.  In fact not only is it the case, but it is very much the norm in many historical eras.

The majority of the sailors aboard the Spanish Armada were if I recall correctly Italian.  We don't call it the Italian Armada as a result.

According to you every successful vote of no confidence means the new government is a rebel government and and is an invitation to invade. Do you hear yourself?

These guys who supposedly didn't "recognize the new government's authority" were Russian plants who ran in moments before to set up shop. DPR and LPR are transparent farces. They have no legitimacy from the people or anything else. They are completely full of nothing but Russian criminals. LPR's minister of culture is an actual fucking prostitute. It's a sick joke.

It is so abundantly not-a-secret that Russian government sent some cronies over the border to yak a little about some supposed new government (which just coincidentally wants to join Russia) to paint some shitty half-assed-as-always veneer of legitimacy over their expansionism and you just eat it up hook, line, and sinker.

A vote of no-confidence is not a rebellion.  It is a legal process to remove a leader from office, a rebellion is an illegal overthrow of a government, the key element here is LAW.  You can spout conspiracy theories about little green men sneaking into Ukraine and forcing the local Ukrainians to set up sham governments all you wish, they remain unproven claims and there is no point in debating with people guillable enough to simply state unproven claims as certain, unquestionable fact.

Georgian rule over Ossetia is a legal fiction,

...sounds very much like a "Soverign Citizen" line of argument; notoriously misguided, and "selectively editing out" of any established regulations deemed inconvenient to the current dissatisfaction du jour.

No Georgia does not control South Ossetia, there is nothing ambigious about the situation.  It is Georgia that claims, in true Sovereign Citizen fashion to rule over South Ossetia, in spite of the fact it does no such thing.  Since Russia (mostly) did not invade factual Georgia but instead stayed largely within South Ossetia territory, which factually speaking is not Georgian, so it is more correct to say that Russia chose not to invade Georgia despite being at war than that they chose to invade.

"Legal fictions" aren't imaginary/arbitrary, they are established to clarify potentially labyrinthine legal mish-mashes of competing legislation by cutting through to the chase and saying (for example) that the current balance of understanding is that <Foo> is effectively equivalent to <Bar>, and so all dependant legal issues should consider it so without painstakingly revisiting the question (and potentially dealing with an interim judgement at odds with all those judgements that already sided with the opposite version of interim judgement). A legal fiction can be revisited, should the need arise, but often that means a replacement with an alternate legal fiction to reflect modified circumstances/understanding.

Yes legal fictions are neccesery, but they are not the same thing as facts.  They are also the greatest enemy of peace ever invented (more about this later). 

A legal fiction is when the reality of a situation diverges from what is normally understood by the phrase.  South Ossetia is part of Georgia in the legally fictional sense, in that while we may hold that it is Georgian, nothing normally understood by the term 'Part of Georgia' applies.  The splinter provinces in the Donbass and Crimea had a similar relationship to Ukraine and Kosovo has a similar relationship to Serbia.

An excellent example of "legal fiction" is that of adoption. Having gone through the process of adopting a child, the legal fiction establishes that the adoptee is the child of the adopters, for all future legal purposes, and that the original parents now are no longer so (excepting where other adoption-aware legislation explicitly unpacks the various relationships as being meaningful in their original subtleties). This saves time in back-tracking the decision whenever future parentage issues, to be dealt with, are written without reason to distinguish or otherwise specifically mention adoptive statuses.

Should (for whatever reason, hopefully less common in this day and age) twins be separately adopted by separate families, this does not allow one family to then unilaterally tempt the other family's twin to run away and live with them, outwith any proper legal reassessment and rearrangement of the situation.

With countries/regions you get other complications (also easements) to the situation, plus no eventual assurance that (mortality allowing) the 'twins' will attain the age of majority. Our human twins are eventually (theoretically) able to make their own adult decisions as to what family (if any, if not all!) they each/both decide to socially accept and declare for themselves, on an ongoing basis from there on in, which is different from how territorial aspirations have all kinds of local legislatures ('adoptive family') and international courts (finding a family court, or higher, to appeal the prior decisions to) which should always be available to renegotiate through whilstsoever the (sub)national-zeitgeist is inclined to rebargain the unwanted situation. Glacial as such things are, the pop-up zeitgeist may not last long enough to see the result, but that is, if anything, even more reason to decry non-legal rearrangements of the issue.

No, the exact opposite is the case; legally fictional adoptions are pretty rare.  Neglected/abandoned biological children however are an excellent example of a legal fiction.  Legally speaking they are the children of so-and-so, but in fact their relationship in no way resembles what is normally understood by the term 'my child'. 

A home invasion and 'kidnap', by one family on the other, is rarely seen as justifiable. Especially if the kidnapping family has been taking every opportunity to groom the "willingly kidnapped" child with whispers and promises and even gaslighting the lawful family's rightful intentions.

In the case of a country, it is considered quite justified to invade regions of your legal country over whom your authority is legally fictional in order to render your authority actual. 

In fact it is the whole POV of Ukraine, that the Donbass and Crimea can be conquered by Ukraine and forced to live the factual reality of 'Ukrainianness' (including speaking the right language).  If countries cannot use force to make legal fictions reality, then the whole Ukrainian case falls apart utterly.

It was more an overthrown leadership. The government itself had voted for closer ties to the EU, the leadership had acted against it, the protests caused the change-over (after punctuated violence, much of that due to the leadership's responses to popular protest) and government reorganisation which led to the Yatsenyuk (whose coalition drew back from EU-tying), Groysman, [...], Honcharuk governments, with elections and/or coalition-rewranglings all along the way, and thus into Zelenskyy's current era that has had to morph into a War Cabinet form but is still a government within the obvious constraints.

(And yet the overthrown Crimean autonomy, being held at gunpoint in the Supreme Council of Crimea building to support the 'referendum', does invoke the wholesale parcelling up of the applicable territory? Choose what's valid and what isn't?!)

None of us know the exact details let's go with the consequences here.  The consequences are *not* that of a normal change of leadership and so it is rather unlikely that the Euromaiden situation *was* just a normal legal change of leadership.

If the consequences are those of a rebellion, that is the country shatters and it's authority collapses so they can't do basic stuff like keep Russians from moving heavy artillery pieces across the border into legal Ukrainian territory, it is a bit more than just 'we got rid of Liz Truss and got Rishi Sunak'. 

It’s just like the last guy who seems to be unable to consider how their arguments apply to their position. “Legal fictions” also apply to the authority of the “government of Donbas and Luhansk”, and quite frankly the logical conclusion of their arguments is that all authority everywhere in the world is a “legal fiction” and thus can be ignored by anyone. It would be interesting if the varied and sundry regional independence movements around the globe decided to take this position, but it’s unworkable in reality.

As Starver said, it’s basically the Sovereign Citizen nonsense writ large, and consequently as ridiculous as those positions.

But yeah, banning someone for idiocy is no bueno.

It is the exact opposite of the Sovereign Citizen nonsense.

No it doesn't apply.  Your actual relationship to your son, your daughter, your wife, your husband etc are not legal fictions and all have their special character.  They are however relationships with a legal existence and thus can become legal fictions, unlike other relationships like friendship that cannot ever become legal fictions because they are descriptions of an actual state that de-facto exists between two persons but not a formal, legal status.  Yet an unrecognised parental/spouse relationship is not the same as a friendship.

The exact same situation exists with your relationship to authorities over you.  You *are* ruled by your government, (or if you are in much of Ukraine somebody else's government) and whether this is legal or not is quite seperate from that fact.  You are ruled because you abide by it's authority and if you do not abide by it's authority they have the ability to punish you.  Both are facts and have nothing to with their legality.

Believing that you are only bound by authority *because* it is legal, that is Sovereign Citizen nonsense.  I hold that your relationship to authority is para-legal, that your authorities *are* your authorities regardless of legality, in much the same way that you would continue to love your wife just as much if the government decided that your marraige was invalid.  Rebellion is basically the reverse of this, you ignore the legality of your authorities and render them into a legal fiction. 

As a result of this fundermental reality, it can be expected that when countries have successful rebellions against their authorities (like Ukraine), what happens is we end up with a fractured country that de-facto is many states but legally speaking is just one state.  This is what Crimea, Dontesk and Luhansk all are, they are fragments of Ukraine created by the Ukrainians Euromaiden uprising to overthrow their democratically elected president.  The same thing happened in the past to innumerable countries, they shattered because their central authority was destroyed.

The question is whether such fragments have the sovereign rights to decide their own destiny.  The Ukrainian position is an unequivical no, the Russian position is (yes, when it suits us . 

There is no "mind to be made". There is no such thing as a Dombass republic, if we're talking about facts as you imply you want. There is a pseudo government ran by FSB agents without legitimacy nor international recognition, and a republic it does not make.

The only good thing about those bandit groups (which is a factual characterisation) is Strelkov's twitter warfare.

In general, reading your post, you seem to be confused about what makes legitimacy. Ukraine is a sovereign territory, its institutions are internationally recognized, so are its borders (which include Crimea by the way). The country is audited by its peers and recognized by the majority of the world's powers. And yes, even though the country had gone through the Orange revolution and the revolution of dignity (whose legitmacy are, again, internationally recognized).

Lugansk and Donetsk so-called republics however, have none of the sort. They are without legitimacy, and remain foreign occupied regions of Ukraine. It doesn't really matter what Russia say to its domestic population ; these are not countries, they are Russian occupied territories nothing more nothing less.

You seem rather knowledgable about supposadly secretive operations.  If they were all FSB agents, you wouldn't know it and it also makes no legal difference to anything.  If a foreign spy becomes the leader of a country, legally speaking the countries are still not the same thing.  Nowadays of course the Russians would claim that they are, but even I don't believe in the legality of the recent referendums to join Russia (they are idiotic).

You also seem to think that international recognition by your enemies means anything at all.  Nobody in Donbass or Crimea gives a damn that nobody recognises their Russianness, but they *would* give a damn if Russia stopped doing this.  Everyone in the world can agree that something is legally so, but all the authority in the world cannot make their legal judgements fact by simply pronouncing them so. 

That is where the war part comes in.  War is the means by which legal fictions get turned into facts.  What Ukraine is trying to do with Crimea and Donbass, so far with little success. 

[Starver]

Red D, your nonsense continues. I don't know if you're a Useful Idiot or a knowing troll, but you need a new patter and/or a new audience. Do yourself a favour...

[Loud Whispers]

Everyone knows that there were Russians involved in fighting in Donbass, nobody denied it and the whole idea that there was any sort of denial is itself a lie invented in order to support the Western conspiracy theory of 'little green men'.  This is itself a form of Anti-Knowledge designed to plaster over the shattered state of Ukraine at the time, there is was no need for Russia to invade since there are numerous splinter states begging for Russian aid to not be reconquered by Ukraine.  The stupidity of Russia is that they chose to steal Crimea rather than group the three splinter states into an Anti-Ukraine, to create a civil war in which they could intervene with full force to crush the new Ukraine and bring back the old.

Then, as now, Russia denied that it sent its military into Ukrainian territory.

In March, Russia annexed Crimea after a referendum vote conducted as armed men guarded the streets of the Crimea. Kiev and most of the international community has not recognized Russia’s annexation, but in April, Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly confirmed that the “green men” of Crimea were in fact Russian soldiers.

Putin denies Russian soldiers in Crimea. Annexes Crimea. Announces that the non-uniformed men were in fact, Russian soldiers.

And of course you're saying no one denied Russia sent its military into Ukrainian territory despite Putin denying Russian troops were in Ukrainian territory during the war in donbass. You're just intentionally spreading lies at this point

An important distinction here is whether they were forces that were merely Russian or whether they were forces that are operated as part of the Russian army.  It is quite normal for states to employ foreign nationals in their armies, as volunteers/merceneries.  In fact not only is it the case, but it is very much the norm in many historical eras.

Brigades of tanks and paratroopers are not "volunteers" and Wagner is an appendage of Russian foreign policy, not an independent entity

The majority of the sailors aboard the Spanish Armada were if I recall correctly Italian.  We don't call it the Italian Armada as a result.

???
They were recruited from Spanish Italy, led by the Spanish Duke of Parma, under Spanish organisation, colours and command, to fight in the Spanish navy

A vote of no-confidence is not a rebellion.  It is a legal process to remove a leader from office, a rebellion is an illegal overthrow of a government, the key element here is LAW.  You can spout conspiracy theories about little green men sneaking into Ukraine and forcing the local Ukrainians to set up sham governments all you wish, they remain unproven claims and there is no point in debating with people guillable enough to simply state unproven claims as certain, unquestionable fact.

Invades your country
"What? It's a conspiracy, no russians here,"
Russian troops with russian equipment and uniforms with insignias removed
"Where's the evidence? Where's the proof? I bet those locals just found some tanks from a Ukrainian pound shop,"
President of Russia says they are Russian troops
"The President of Russia is clearly a NATO shill,"

Yes legal fictions are neccesery, but they are not the same thing as facts.  They are also the greatest enemy of peace ever invented (more about this later). 

Waging war on people is the enemy of peace m8

That is where the war part comes in.  War is the means by which legal fictions get turned into facts.  What Ukraine is trying to do with Crimea and Donbass, so far with little success.

My guy you have gone off-rail drifting beyond the boundaries of reality

Russia just tried to wipe Ukraine off the map. Ukraine is not trying to do anything except repel an invader

[Ganondworf]

What Ukraine is trying to do with Crimea and Donbass, so far with little success.

This amount of victim blaming is mind boggling.

[Strongpoint]

  This is what Crimea, Dontesk and Luhansk all are, they are fragments of Ukraine created by the Ukrainians Euromaiden uprising to overthrow their democratically elected president.

Maidens, it is always because of young women, right?

Political crises are normal in democracies, in young democracies they can be rather messy. It doesn't mean that they stop being democracies or that country somehow loses its legitimacy.  Euromaydan crisis ended with democratically elected parliament removing president (who had single digits approval rating at this point. even pro-Russians hated) followed by democratic elections of new president.

Nothing, absolutely nothing would happen if not the invasion of Russia. Tell me why nothing happened in Central Ukraine in which Yanukovitch also won the election.  Why no "revolt" there? The answer is simple - Russian soldiers and mercenaries couldn't really reach there. Their resources were limited.

If this would be a reaction to "the unlawful removal of the president"... Ukraine would see a Civil War with guerillas everywhere. It never happened. Even in Odesa (after Russian agents, who mostly came from Transnistria, were put in their place by the resistance of citizens, local police didn't really function.) and Kharkiv (there police arrested a bunch of people) we had seen nothing resembling armed resistance.

Also, there are really few collaborators now. And no Pro-Russian partisan groups behind the lines. Some traitors provide intelligence to the Russians and that's all.

[nenjin]

I dunno, the whole Russian invasion looks like Maidenless behavior to me.....

[Random_Dragon]

When in doubt, after the third or so bad-faith pile of Putinist horseshit in a row, best to not bother feeding the troll.

[Thorfinn]

What kind of a "democrat" could reject the plebicite?

RD probably does not want my endorsement, but the fact is that he is right. Everyone, including the Ukrainian government, agreed that when the guy from our church was killed in Donetsk, it was the Azov battalion that was responsible. They promised to prosecute. And yet...

Yep, I get that most people, from any side, cannot help but base their opinions on confirmation bias. So mostly we are probably going to have to eventually accepting that reality displaces fantasy, no matter how many people have to die.

[jipehog]

Well, I was mostly talking tactics, as the most obvious visible difference (between zerg-rushing and actually doing something sensible and not self-defeating in an offensive action) in the way they are seen to be (re)acting. But you're right that it may represent actual shift in strategy at the practical level.

From what I understand, Russia have been desperately trying to seize Bahmut, fighting with limited means against well fortified positions with little success, and recently they have received reinforcements of capable units freed from Kehrson. I am warry of using term like Zerg rush, from what I hear Ukraine wasn't particularly effective against well prepared defenses in Kehrson either .

Insufficient manpower has been one of Russia's handicaps from the get go. In their attempt to salvage their campaign and unwillingness to mobilize, their units combat power has been greatly reduced and they were stretched thin over huge front (Effectively the secret of Ukraine success in Kharkiv was a small force that went for a joy ride avoiding engaging Russian troops posts) It didn't help that they lost a large portion of professional troops in its catastrophic "faint" on moscow, and poorly trained/equipped reservist were rushed to the front to fill the gaps. And I am afraid that with current mobilization of such a large quantity of troops that are at least partially trained, Russia will address this problems, and would gain much more freedom of action as oppose to reaction.

They also seem to addressing their logistics issues and adapting to challenges like anyone else. And their bombing campaign seem effective.

[hector13]

What kind of a "democrat" could reject the plebicite?

RD probably does not want my endorsement, but the fact is that he is right. Everyone, including the Ukrainian government, agreed that when the guy from our church was killed in Donetsk, it was the Azov battalion that was responsible. They promised to prosecute. And yet...

Yep, I get that most people, from any side, cannot help but base their opinions on confirmation bias. So mostly we are probably going to have to eventually accepting that reality displaces fantasy, no matter how many people have to die.

You were told to come back with interesting conspiracies, I rate this 2/10 trolling.

[EuchreJack]

(quote removed)

Please stop misappropriating this thread. The purpose of this thread is for people to give their personal thoughts, or emotional responses, to the War in Ukraine. I also note the phrase "Personal Diary & Mutual Support".
So far, you are stating your position in a downright mechanical way, with no emotion and no opinion.  This isn't Rational Debate over the War in Ukraine. If you want to debate the war, please make your own thread and get out of mine. This is "Russians, Americans, and Ukrainians bitch about the war" thread.

What kind of a "democrat" could reject the plebicite?

RD probably does not want my endorsement, but the fact is that he is right. Everyone, including the Ukrainian government, agreed that when the guy from our church was killed in Donetsk, it was the Azov battalion that was responsible. They promised to prosecute. And yet...

Yep, I get that most people, from any side, cannot help but base their opinions on confirmation bias. So mostly we are probably going to have to eventually accepting that reality displaces fantasy, no matter how many people have to die.

You got any details on that attack? Maybe a news story, or the date & location?
I can certainly see how that would piss anyone off.

EDIT: Removed the quote.

[nenjin]

Your quote formatting is invading my eyeballs.