Russian Invasion of Ukraine[In Progress]

[Ultegra134]

~snip~

On the subject of listening to Putin, there is a rule in war: Anything the enemy says is disinformation. You do not believe, nor not believe it , you simply ignore it completely insofar as that is humanly possible. Your decisions are based on facts, actions and your own intelligence.

This applies to anything they say, including "we want a diplomatic solution", "we are here to free you", etc... The enemy is not your friend and is not going to give you anything that can help your efforts.

On how Putin´s Russia is behaving, yes, I find quite a few similarities with the Nazis in WWII - the right to impose their views by force, despising minorities, blaming the foreign for your own weaknesses...

Of course, and it's not Russia bombing whole cities, neighborhoods and hospitals. These damned Ukrainians are rapidly building houses where the Russian army are launching missiles! (of course and I'm sarcastically speaking)

On top of that, their so-called diplomatic solution involves meeting all of Russia's demands, (which simply means surrendering their territories and becoming a Russian outpost, like Belarus). The war continues with an irreducible pace, I never expected such an outcome.

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[decodx]

Putin denies Russia bombing Ukrainian cities
https://insiderpaper.com/putin-denies-russia-bombing-ukrainian-cities/

So who carried out the Chernihiv bombing? Kharkiv? and some other places? was it a ghost that did it? I can't understand how it is possible for someone as shameless as Putin to issue a statement like this and moreover call it propaganda, when it is clear that they carried out the bombing. smh

The Kremlin has long been known to use propaganda and disinformation as a powerful weapon. In order to curb the spread of disinformation, many Canadian and European telecom providers are banning major Russian propaganda outlets. The majority here is undoubtedly against any form of censorship. But, in order to do their jobs, government agencies must ensure that they are effectively countering Russian propaganda while giving a platform to alternative viewpoints and truth.

[icopress]

Despite a lot of good news (good for Ukraine), this photo darkened my day more than the sirens that I currently hear.

[Etranger]

Are you pro Azov or pro BCУ (VSU )?

It`s ЗCУ. From the word "збpoйнi". Learn Ukrainian, you need to know the language to find out about our victory. Nobody will announce that on Russian television.

[DaRude]

Ukraine plans to evacuate over 200,000 people along the Mariupol - Mykilske - Rozivka - Bilmak - Polohe - Orikhiv - Zaporizhzhya route and over 15,000 people along the Volnovakha - Valeryanivka - Novoandriyivka - Kyrylivka - Vuhledar - Pokrovsk - Zaporizhzhya route, Vereshchuk said.

The ICRC is acting as a guarantor of the ceasefire during the evacuation, Vereshchuk said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said earlier, "Starting 10:00 a.m. Moscow Time today, March 5, the Russian side declares a ceasefire and opens humanitarian corridors for the exit of civilians from Mariupol and Volnovakha."

https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/75602/

Cool seems like an agreement by both sides to evacuate civilians with Red Cross as a guarantor.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) “understands” that civilian evacuations from Mariupol and Volnovakha will not go ahead on Saturday as planned, after operations were postponed by Ukrainian authorities citing continued Russian shelling in the area.

https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-putin-news-03-05-22/h_13a7c76619d2babd355c5cc72781c23b

WTF? As of March 5 UN estimates 351 civilians killed. Don't take pictures of people and then tell them that they cant leave with Red Cross! Trying to claim that its better for hundreds of thousands of civilians to stay in the besieged city without water or power is madness, or correct term would be hostages! The fuckery with Red Cross needs to be condemned as strongly as possible, and i don't care what side you're on.

[Tash]

Special Report From the Front Line in Ukraine
https://youtu.be/8dQQgv-nVUY
https://web.archive.org/web/20220305202437/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dQQgv-nVUY


The Thinking Man

I got more truth and facts from that one interview than i would get from 10 years of watching the nightly news

[suchmoon]

WTF? As of March 5 UN estimates 351 civilians killed. Don't take pictures of people and then tell them that they cant leave with Red Cross! Trying to claim that its better for hundreds of thousands of civilians to stay in the besieged city without water or power is madness, or correct term would be hostages! The fuckery with Red Cross needs to be condemned as strongly as possible, and i don't care what side you're on.

So what did you expect to happen? Tell civilians to leave bomb shelters / basements / etc despite ongoing shelling? I get that you dislike the number of casualties and prefer it to be much larger.

[DaRude]

WTF? As of March 5 UN estimates 351 civilians killed. Don't take pictures of people and then tell them that they cant leave with Red Cross! Trying to claim that its better for hundreds of thousands of civilians to stay in the besieged city without water or power is madness, or correct term would be hostages! The fuckery with Red Cross needs to be condemned as strongly as possible, and i don't care what side you're on.

So what did you expect to happen? Tell civilians to leave bomb shelters / basements / etc despite ongoing shelling? I get that you dislike the number of casualties and prefer it to be much larger.

Sad attempt to twist the logic, both sides should let Red Cross do their job. You're not going to get good guy points by interfering with Red Cross. Are you seriously trying to claim that there will be less casualties if hundreds of thousands of people are not allowed to leave with Red Cross and instead are forced to stay in the besieged city? Then care to give an example or your definition of a human shield during a war?

[suchmoon]

Sad attempt to twist the logic, both sides should let Red Cross do their job. You're not going to get good guy points by interfering with Red Cross. Are you seriously trying to claim that there will be less casualties if hundreds of thousands of people are not allowed to leave with Red Cross and instead are forced to stay in the besieged city? Then care to give an example or your definition of a human shield during a war?

LOL will you fucking stop with the "twist the logic" nonsense. Are you trying to blame Ukrainians for not allowing civilians to leave, yes or no? What were they supposed to do if there is shelling going on?

[decodx]

Sad attempt to twist the logic, both sides should let Red Cross do their job. You're not going to get good guy points by interfering with Red Cross. Are you seriously trying to claim that there will be less casualties if hundreds of thousands of people are not allowed to leave with Red Cross and instead are forced to stay in the besieged city? Then care to give an example or your definition of a human shield during a war?

Do you really believe Putin wants to get "good guy" points? Don't be so naive. If he was really worried about civilian casualties, he wouldn't be targeting them in the first place. Unless you imply that Ukrainians are killing their own people?

[Etranger]

Special Report From the Front Line in Ukraine
https://youtu.be/8dQQgv-nVUY
https://web.archive.org/web/20220305202437/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dQQgv-nVUY


The Thinking Man

I got more truth and facts from that one interview than i would get from 10 years of watching the nightly news

If you want to to get acquainted with reports from the front line, read the daily summary from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

[DaRude]

Sad attempt to twist the logic, both sides should let Red Cross do their job. You're not going to get good guy points by interfering with Red Cross. Are you seriously trying to claim that there will be less casualties if hundreds of thousands of people are not allowed to leave with Red Cross and instead are forced to stay in the besieged city? Then care to give an example or your definition of a human shield during a war?

LOL will you fucking stop with the "twist the logic" nonsense. Are you trying to blame Ukrainians for not allowing civilians to leave, yes or no? What were they supposed to do if there is shelling going on?

Notice how you're at that stage of the argument where you're just bombarding me with your questions without even attempting to address any of mine.

Yes. Red Cross didn't call off the evacuation due to safety concerns. And that's their responsibility because they're the once providing the guarantees.

Its a fact that both sides agreed on evacuation. Its also a fact that Red Cross decided that both sides were credible enough to warrant putting itself forward as a guarantor for said evacuation. How about just letting innocent people stuck in this war decide whether they wanted to go with Red Cross or take their chances by staying in the besieged city? If anything, pulling shit like this with Red Cross plays right into Putins hand and his propaganda machine.

[paxmao]

WTF? As of March 5 UN estimates 351 civilians killed. Don't take pictures of people and then tell them that they cant leave with Red Cross! Trying to claim that its better for hundreds of thousands of civilians to stay in the besieged city without water or power is madness, or correct term would be hostages! The fuckery with Red Cross needs to be condemned as strongly as possible, and i don't care what side you're on.

So what did you expect to happen? Tell civilians to leave bomb shelters / basements / etc despite ongoing shelling? I get that you dislike the number of casualties and prefer it to be much larger.

And speaks of above 1000 civilian casualties confirmed including wounded. This seems like a low figure, but the report in full clearly states that:

OHCHR believes that the real figures are considerably higher, especially in Government-controlled territory and especially in recent days, as the receipt of information from some locations where intensive hostilities have been going on was delayed and many reports were still pending corroboration. This concerns, for example, the town of Volnovakha where hundreds of civilian casualties have been alleged. These figures are being further corroborated and are not included in the above statistics.

on top of that, there is no way to effective account for the total number and the verification of the numbers is at least, weak:

Since 24 February 2022, in the context of the Russian Federation’s military action in Ukraine, HRMMU has been unable to visit places of incidents and interview victims and witnesses there.

Some of the wide area pictures show a large number of civilian buildings destroyed. It is impossible that has happened without significant casualties.

[DaRude]

Sad attempt to twist the logic, both sides should let Red Cross do their job. You're not going to get good guy points by interfering with Red Cross. Are you seriously trying to claim that there will be less casualties if hundreds of thousands of people are not allowed to leave with Red Cross and instead are forced to stay in the besieged city? Then care to give an example or your definition of a human shield during a war?

Do you really believe Putin wants to get "good guy" points? Don't be so naive. If he was really worried about civilian casualties, he wouldn't be targeting them in the first place. Unless you imply that Ukrainians are killing their own people?

I have enough critical thinking skills to not trust any side to the conflict, that's why i find Tashs and Etranger sources silly. But UN report showing that objectively so far civilian casualties are relatively low when comparing them to any other similar conflict. (But we really haven't entered urban warfare yet.) And now we just saw how one side refused to let civilians leave besieged city which is under shelling because it didn't trust Red Cross's guarantees. I don't know how anyone can spin that positively

[DaRude]

WTF? As of March 5 UN estimates 351 civilians killed. Don't take pictures of people and then tell them that they cant leave with Red Cross! Trying to claim that its better for hundreds of thousands of civilians to stay in the besieged city without water or power is madness, or correct term would be hostages! The fuckery with Red Cross needs to be condemned as strongly as possible, and i don't care what side you're on.

So what did you expect to happen? Tell civilians to leave bomb shelters / basements / etc despite ongoing shelling? I get that you dislike the number of casualties and prefer it to be much larger.

And speaks of above 1000 civilian casualties confirmed including wounded. This seems like a low figure, but the report in full clearly states that:

OHCHR believes that the real figures are considerably higher, especially in Government-controlled territory and especially in recent days, as the receipt of information from some locations where intensive hostilities have been going on was delayed and many reports were still pending corroboration. This concerns, for example, the town of Volnovakha where hundreds of civilian casualties have been alleged. These figures are being further corroborated and are not included in the above statistics.

on top of that, there is no way to effective account for the total number and the verification of the numbers is at least, weak:

Since 24 February 2022, in the context of the Russian Federation’s military action in Ukraine, HRMMU has been unable to visit places of incidents and interview victims and witnesses there.

Some of the wide area pictures show a large number of civilian buildings destroyed. It is impossible that has happened without significant casualties.

Maybe, but i just don't have a more reliable source to use. One side will always exaggerate and the other will always minimize their losses. Also, logically thinking the country has been flooded with weapons, 18yr olds are given out weapons after 3day training. They released some prisoners to fight and there are reports of saboteurs, marauders as expected in any conflict. In fact Security Service of Ukraine killed Denis Kireev, a member of the Ukrainian negotiating group, during his detention. He was suspected of treason. Ukraine even takes out its own negotiator for treason. So its safe to assume that some of the civilian casualties can be attributed to Ukrainian side too. Sure there are a ton of reports of friendly fires etc

Edit: No its not weak at all, and frankly absolutes don't matter as long as we compare apples to apples. Think its safe to assume that in all other conflicts Afghanistan, Kosovo, Syria, Iraq etc.. OHCHR had the same problems. And I cant imagine how this conflict is any different. If numbers are lower then they would be lower for all the other conflicts as well.

[tvbcof]

Special Report From the Front Line in Ukraine
https://youtu.be/8dQQgv-nVUY
https://web.archive.org/web/20220305202437/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dQQgv-nVUY

The Thinking Man

I got more truth and facts from that one interview than i would get from 10 years of watching the nightly news

Same dude in this RT report:

  https://www.bitchute.com/video/Rc42GWAySk9G/

I personally found the guy pretty credible and his narration aligns with what I have come to understand of the Donbas stuff over the years, and as I understand things, a lot of the other parts of the country are Donbas lite but just don't get the same kind of attention for whatever reason.  At the end of the day, the 2014 coup was pretty ugly on a lot of levels, and the following 8 years didn't put much lipstick on the pig.  It's pretty easy to understand how people from around the world could side with the non-Western-Favored element of the Ukrainian population without being particularly 'communist' or 'antifa' or whatever.  That said, a lot of them probably are and are shrewd enough to recognize Putin as a crypto-continuation of many of the Soviet project(s).

At the risk of seeming 'pro-Putin' (to idiots), I will say, again, that over the years I've found him much more credible than 'the West' which includes the ludicrous mainstream media.  Again, it's mostly a matter of there being some space in the 'basically say it like it is' zone of the psychological battlefield whereas the Western politicians and media seems to have a compulsion to lie even when it _doesn't_ help them in any tangible way.  It's weird, but there it is.  I can absolutely understand Russian national security needs and see the West as very much the aggressors who bend over backward to push the envelope seemingly with the fondest hopes of getting bad shit to happen.

My best guess is that Putin is smart and plans to simply pacify Ukraine to be a puppet state, buffer zone, and energy corridor.  Or parts of it at least.  Maybe some other minor targets of opportunity as well.  After that, just wait until Europe and the U.S. collapse, and it won't probably be a long wait.  I see a lot of people being sure that Putin is on the move to conquer the rest of Europe and the world.  What I don't see is any reasonable evidence for this, reasonable rationale for him to try it, or any reasonable hope of being able to do it.  Just a lot of hyperventilating.

The unfortunate element of this whole thing is that when all is said and done, Russia and it's leadership will be relatively stable and fairly well poised to capitalize on the implosion of the West, and the life he's made for the Russian people isn't a particularly great one.  I suspect that if Putin's real controllers let their true colors be shown, it will be even worse.

[suchmoon]

Notice how you're at that stage of the argument where you're just bombarding me with your questions without even attempting to address any of mine.

Bombarding LOL, nice choice of words here comrade. I'm getting back at your original post about the evacuations and trying to understand what you were trying to say there. It didn't have any questions (unless you count WTF as a question). It sounded like you were blaming solely the Ukrainian side. Now you've confirmed that that's indeed what you are doing. Still unclear what you wanted to happen if there was indeed shelling going on, or any proof that there wasn't any shelling, but I don't expect a direct answer given your fallacious "both sides" argument. Have fun playing with your straw people.

[af_newbie]

Putin denies Russia bombing Ukrainian cities
https://insiderpaper.com/putin-denies-russia-bombing-ukrainian-cities/

Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz denied that Russian troops were bombing Ukrainian cities, dismissing such information as fake, the Kremlin said Friday.

Putin said reports about “the alleged ongoing air strikes of Kyiv and other large cities are gross propaganda fakes,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

He added that dialogue on Ukraine would be possible only if Russian demands are met.

Putin “confirmed that Russia is open to dialogue with the Ukrainian side, as well as with everyone who wants peace in Ukraine. But under the condition that all Russian demands are met,” the Kremlin said.

These include the neutral and non-nuclear status of Ukraine, its “denazification”, recognition of Crimea as part of Russia and of the “sovereignty” of separatist territories in eastern Ukraine.

“Hope was expressed that during the planned third round of talks, the representatives of Kyiv will take a reasonable and constructive position,” the Kremlin added.

The next meeting of delegations from Russia and Ukraine is expected during the weekend, according to one of Kyiv’s negotiators.

At this point, it does not matter what Putin says or thinks.  I would completely ignore him.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1499806284081737730

You're conflicting your own writing, you clearly not completely ignore him.
Are you pro Azov or pro BCУ (VSU )?
https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Azov_Battalion

No, I am anti-Soviet. I despise them.  I know they are not humans.  
They don't abide by any human norms, moral or ethical standards.
They have no respect for human life, equality, or justice.  

They break all norms of the civilized world and lie about it to themselves and the rest of the world.

There is no difference between WWII German Nazis and the Russian Soviets of any era.

In my world view, Soviets and their sympathizers should be put down like the mad dogs they are.

They are pure evil on pretty much any level.

On the subject of listening to Putin, there is a rule in war: Anything the enemy says is disinformation. You do not believe, nor not believe it , you simply ignore it completely insofar as that is humanly possible. Your decisions are based on facts, actions and your own intelligence.

This applies to anything they say, including "we want a diplomatic solution", "we are here to free you", etc... The enemy is not your friend and is not going to give you anything that can help your efforts.

On how Putin´s Russia is behaving, yes, I find quite a few similarities with the Nazis in WWII - the right to impose their views by force, despising minorities, blaming the foreign for your own weaknesses...

So you claim the nazis fight the other nazis aka Azov Battalion

German ZDF television observed Azov battalion fighters wearing helmets with swastikas and "the 'SS runes' of Hitler's infamous black-uniformed elite corps"

Wearing a business suit does not make you a businessman.
Just like having a pickup truck does not make you a general contractor.

They should not appropriate Nazi symbols.  They are ultra-nationalists, I agree. 
But comparing them with Nazis is like comparing bumblebees to lions.

Whoever does such a comparison does not know what Nazis did in WWII.  Go visit concentration camp museums in Poland, then we'll talk.

[DaRude]

Notice how you're at that stage of the argument where you're just bombarding me with your questions without even attempting to address any of mine.

Bombarding LOL, nice choice of words here comrade. I'm getting back at your original post about the evacuations and trying to understand what you were trying to say there. It didn't have any questions (unless you count WTF as a question). It sounded like you were blaming solely the Ukrainian side. Now you've confirmed that that's indeed what you are doing. Still unclear what you wanted to happen if there was indeed shelling going on, or any proof that there wasn't any shelling, but I don't expect a direct answer given your fallacious "both sides" argument. Have fun playing with your straw people.

Jesus man!! Should innocent civilians (children, women, elderly etc) be allowed to leave an actively besieged city which is currently without power and water, with the guarantee from the Red Cross? Yes or No? If not, whos else guarantee do you want before letting those people go? Or are you saying no guarantee would be good enough for you and those people shouldn't be allowed to leave at all, as long as one side can claim that theres shelling going around?

[suchmoon]

Jesus man!! Should innocent civilians (children, women, elderly etc) be allowed to leave an actively besieged city which is currently without power and water, with the guarantee from the Red Cross? Yes or No? If not, whos else guarantee do you want before letting those people go? Or are you saying those people shouldn't be allowed to leave at all, as long as one side can claim that theres shelling going around?

Yes, they should be allowed to leave. However Red Cross can't guarantee protection against shelling. It relies on Russian compliance, which did not happen.

And people did try to leave:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60629851

"I'm right now in Mariupol, I'm on the street, I can hear shelling every three to five minutes," said Alexander, a 44-year-old engineer and resident of the city.

The green corridor set up to get people out was not working, he said.

"I can see cars of people who tried to flee and they are coming back. It is chaos."