Ukraine

[Gavster]

So Russia bombed a nuclear power plant last night, apparently the first nation to bomb a nuclear facility. They're fucking bonkers, this is very worrying. Can't we just send Bond in to kill Putin?

[Sundayjumper]

Can't we just send Bond in to kill Putin?

I initially misread that as “Boris” !!

I’m still sticking with my original outlook - this won’t get resolved by the fighting on the ground, it’ll get ended internally in Russia, one way or another.

[240PP]

Informative take on things

[nuttinnew]

So Russia bombed a nuclear power plant last night, apparently the first nation to bomb a nuclear facility. They're fucking bonkers, this is very worrying. Can't we just send Bond in to kill Putin?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60613438

[Beany]

I had an interesting chat with my swedish chum, who's husband had a pretty long term relationship with a russian lass, whos parents were middle class professionals.

Long story short, after years of carefully curated state media propaganda, they tend to go along with what we see as 'one off' blatant lies.

IE eight years of subtle messaging about nazis in ukraine, and no accessible independent media from within ukraine or the west denying it (again, half the populace don't get independent, non state media), protests about it suppressed, so when Putin goes "Fuck it, Russia has had enough, we're crushing these nazis" then they tend to go "yeah, I've heard about this for years, he's right, enough is enough"

Consider (as a bad, but more culturally understandable touchstone) The Troubles, but if anyone who pushed a pro-irish separatist movements position got imprisoned or flat out fucking disappeared, every time. Very limited dissent against the government.

When the NI police and UK Govt say they're carrying out an operation because of a recent bombing, you'd not know any different if it was a surgical strike or if it was state sponsored terrorism, functionally. And you'd never know because it would be presented to you, as the previous twenty years had been, as a struggle of good vs evil with no dissenting coverage.

Long story short, don't assume that Russians will see a tweet about a school being bombed, and believe it. Or dozens of them. They're not brainwashed per se, but they have very little reason to think that the state is flat out lying, this is just an extension of an operation that's been going on for near a decade.

The broader hope is that when Russians start seeing that they're being banned from everything to using Mastercard, through to being banned from international Fancy Cat Competitions, that reasonable, intelligent people will begin to question the government line.

...and once enough of them do, well, they can't arrest them all.

[RobYob]

My experience with Russians is a little different. So the guys I worked with were middle class fairly well educated and often well travelled as well. So not necessarily a huge demographic, but nevertheless.

Opinions on Putin varied from outspoken outright hatred, to "better devil you know" as they remembered Yeltsin failing to keep bread on the shelves, to "I don't care about politics, they're all pricks".

Was has been hurting them for a few years now is inflation and erosion of their comfortable lives. Not revolutionary but they certainly know who is to blame.

[Beany]

Perhaps we should massively increase our exports of pitchforks and torches to Russia.

[Sundayjumper]

Apple has stopped selling its products in Russia. If not being able to buy a new iPhone doesn’t prompt a rebellion, I don’t know what will.

[Mito Man]

The big one is Mercedes. If the gangsters can't get their G63 AMGs then hopefully they will start putting bullets in Putin's delegates.

[Gavster]

It's a bit like Brexit based on what my girlfriend has told me - she's Russian and her family live there still. There are some older Russians who are living in an ex-USSR mindset and still believe that Ukraine should be part of Russia, and therefore support Putin to some extent. However many of the younger generations are very anti-Putin.

While a lot of people do have access to alternative media in Russia, Putin has been shutting them all down over the last few days.

Also, a Russian billionaire has offered a $1m bounty to "arrest" Putin for war crimes. I'm hoping the Geroge Floyd cops decide to do the "arrest"

[Beany]

Yes, 'arrest'.

Oh no, he fell down that elevator shaft as part of the arrest process.

Five times. Then someone dropped a grenade down the shaft entirely by accident....

[Sundayjumper]

On one hand, good. It proves the sanctions work.

On the other hand, the billionaire(s) offering a LARGE CASH PRIZE are certainly not turkeys voting for Christmas. They might want Putin out but they'll be wanting a Putin-lite replacement to keep their lifestyle going. It wouldn't benefit the Russian people.

[Sundayjumper]

However many of the younger generations are very anti-Putin.

And that's an important factor, there's a short-sightedness to his regime, if a significant proportion of the younger generation decide they don't want to live in Russia any more it has a knock-on effect on the population demographic in the future.

[duncs500]

It's a brave oligarch who puts a bounty on Putin. This oligarch might struggle to find someone willing to give him life insurance!

[Gavster]

On one hand, good. It proves the sanctions work.

On the other hand, the billionaire(s) offering a LARGE CASH PRIZE are certainly not turkeys voting for Christmas. They might want Putin out but they'll be wanting a Putin-lite replacement to keep their lifestyle going. It wouldn't benefit the Russian people.

The replacement might be Putin-esque but as long as they keep their Putin-ism inside the country, rather than invading others and threatening to nuke everyone else then we're all good.

[Gavster]

[DaveE]

On one hand, good. It proves the sanctions work.

On the other hand, the billionaire(s) offering a LARGE CASH PRIZE are certainly not turkeys voting for Christmas. They might want Putin out but they'll be wanting a Putin-lite replacement to keep their lifestyle going. It wouldn't benefit the Russian people.

Exactly

If I'm spending that kind of money, I'll want something out of it

[Beany]

Cogent Networks (who are like a TATA and Airtel are in telecoms - you've never heard of them, but they're fucking huge) just cut off thier connectivity with Rostelecom, the BT of Russia.

Knowing how major telecoms networks are set up, this won't kill em, but will likely seriously impact thier capacity and backbone resilience and I reckon 50+ Russian telecoms engineers are having a very, very bad start to their weekend right now.

Gooooood.

There will be Russian sympathetic networks (IE Chinese backbone providers) who will likely step in, but that's a pretty major step geopolitically - fucking with another Nations telecoms had traditionally been a big deal, and especially these days, where for example, the stock markets run on the sort of links Cogent provides, and lacking low latency Comms to major US networks = not good for things like (as I recall) real time trading, where they spend big efforts to shave off thousandths of a second on transaction times.... This likely just added hundredths back.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... ium=social

[Beany]

Also, deeply unserious US politicians - so, republicans - are saying that Biden is fucking useless because he's not giving Ukraine fighter jets.

I'm guessing they expect him to magically create the literal months, if not years required to train the pilots in the avionics and handling differences, adjust the comms to work with Ukraine platforms, translate all the operation and maintenance guides to Ukrainian *and* Russian to prevent language issues with maintenance procedures, etc etc.

They seem to think that going from an sukhoi or a mig to an F14 is like getting out of a Crown Vic and getting into a a Mustang.

Jesus fuck I hope the American people vote these absolute fucking clowns out in the mid terms.

[Beany]

At this stage, I'd genuinely think it's worth calling Russia's bluff on the nukes because the command and control endpoints are probabky on a coin op meter for power to save electricity costs.

And no one's put a 1 ruble coin in there for twenty years...

"But think about it Ivan, if we don't put the coin in the meter, that's an extra ruble a day for us!"

The more I hear about Russian military tactics, response and operational performance (like demonstrably still not having air superiority, regardless of what they say), the more I think calling Russia's bluff is an effective strategy. Andy I'm far from a war hawk - I'm being realistic.

I'd bet that out of '6000' warheads, barely 10% of that is capable of surviving launch, never mind re-entry.

And I'd bet that even Russia don't know which 10% that is.

There is too much evidence of Russia being laughably corrupt And incompetent, militarily, to deny this now.

There's 4D chess, and there's losing - at an extremely conservative estimate - 5000+ troops, NATO ambivalence, EU instability, and the entire Western world being divided geopolitically, to own the libs. All of those things have turned out to be entirely untrue. Shock horror, relying on the republican party of the us and the conservative party in the UK was a mistake

I'm a cynical fucker, with over twenty years of clinical depression, extreme mistrust of authority, etc. And given all the evidence I've seen....

....I think Russia are truly, utterly fucked. Not even a gentle, loving fuck. The sort of butt fuckery that leaves you with rectal fissures, blood poisoning and a possible renal failure because you were to embarrassed to get it checked out.

It's just a matter of time, and if nothing else, the Ukrainians have proved that given the right kind of support, they can give the West that.

May your live in interesting times, and all that. This might be the greatest geopolitical shake up since... nah, not the fall of the Berlin wall (which yes, I witnessed as a youth) but since the Beer Hall Putsch.

All things considered, I don't think I'm exaggerating, either. The chances of this ending well for Russia look..... Incredibly bad, and that's being generous.