Europe War in Ukraine - Thread 2

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This is a sensitive area for some. With that in mind, I'm going to remind a few posters a few things:
  • personal attacks are against forum rules. From this point, any attacks that are directed at another poster will be treated with a warning, then infractions and threadbans if it continues.
  • the spread of misinformation is also against the rules. This is taken very seriously by moderation, and you will be asked to support your opinion from time to time. If you cannot satisfy this, you will be provided an opportunity to retract your post; if you do not, you will receive an infraction and a threadban on that basis.
This is a forum for adults, and I'd appreciate you all treating each other appropriately.
 
Aurora Shopping Centre in Zaphorizhe hit by shelling. [link] & [link] [link].



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I dunno if this is verified or even verifiable. But I always like to see a bit of Strayan sneak into the speech of other countries.



The Armed Forces of Ukraine crushed the Kadyrovites near Severodonetsk. Police captain Asvad Idrisov, warrant officer Gapur Dakalov and deputy commander of the 4th platoon of the Kadyrov regiment senior sergeant Ali Betishev were liquidated.
There will be no more tik toks, Don, they gave us campaigners, Don.
 

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(no link or even location tho, can't verify)

Everything goes according to plan. Russia removes T-62 tanks from mothballing for transfer to Ukraine. T-62s were produced in the period 1962-1975.



More footage of T-62s, I guess if there's two different footages of it, then it might be real. But again, no location given.
From the comments: No auto-load (one extra crew required), even shitter armour than T-72, among other things.
 
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Ukrainian soldiers are treated satisfactorily at this point. Red Cross and UN are present.

Azov Regiment commander Denis Prokopenko was able to briefly call his wife Yekaterina and say that the Ukrainian soldiers captured at Azovstal are being held in "satisfactory" conditions and are not subjected to violence - The Guardian.

"They are fed and watered. The conditions meet the requirements and in this short period they have not been subjected to violence. Of course, we do not know what will happen next, but at the moment there are third parties - the UN and the Red Cross - who control the situation," she said. Ekaterina Prokopenko.

Most of the wounded fighters of "Azov" are kept in the prison in Yelenovka, and a small group of seriously wounded fighters is in a hospital in the city of Novoazovsk. Prokopenko also said that, as far as she knows, none of the Ukrainian military was taken to Russia.

 
Then there's this :
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And:
 
Apparently there's a mountain in Kyrgyrzstan called Vladimir Putin Peak.

Anyhoo, his mountain supports Ukraine now. Ukraine has more than just the moral high ground.



 
I dunno if this is verified or even verifiable. But I always like to see a bit of Strayan sneak into the speech of other countries.



The Armed Forces of Ukraine crushed the Kadyrovites near Severodonetsk. Police captain Asvad Idrisov, warrant officer Gapur Dakalov and deputy commander of the 4th platoon of the Kadyrov regiment senior sergeant Ali Betishev were liquidated.
There will be no more tik toks, Don, they gave us campaigners, Don.

Oh l would so love for this to be true. They are the scum of the earth.
 
The Russian military took the bodies of the dead and secret documents from the cruiser Moskva – Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine


The Russian military took away from the cruiser Moskva, which sank after a fire while being towed to Sevastopol, the bodies of the dead sailors and secret documents. This was reported to Krym.Realii by the representative of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Vadym Skibitsky.

According to Skibitsky, Russia involved five to seven ships to carry out a rescue operation on the cruiser, which lasted at least two weeks. The Russian Defense Ministry did not report on the operation on the cruiser Moskva.

“These were mainly rescue ships, boats, tugboats that took out the bodies, removed all the equipment that was classified there, and carried out a cleaning of this cruiser - they got out what was left there and what should not fall into the hands of a third country,” the representative explained GUR.

After the news of the sinking of the cruiser, the parents of the conscripts began to look for information about the survivors and the dead. So, on April 17, Dmitry Shkrebets on his VKontakte page said that his son was declared missing. The sailor's father accused the Russian Defense Ministry of lying because of what happened to the ship, and his wife told The Insider that she and him visited the hospital in Rocky Bay, where the wounded were brought from the cruiser. There, according to her, there were about 200 injured sailors. In total, according to the mother of the missing sailor, there were more than 500 people on the ship. At the same time, mothers of conscripts who served on the cruiser Moskva are offered to sign documents stating that their sons died "as a result of the disaster."

On the evening of April 13, the Ukrainian authorities announced that the Russian cruiser Moskva had been hit with Neptune missiles. A fire broke out on a ship in the Black Sea south of Odessa. On the evening of April 14, the Ministry of Defense announced that the cruiser sank while being towed to the port "due to damage to the hull received during the fire from the detonation of ammunition." It was reported that the crew was evacuated to the ships of the Black Sea Fleet in the area. On April 16, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation showed a video of the meeting of the crew of the sunken cruiser Moskva with the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral Nikolai Evmenov. The video shows about 100 sailors.
 
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To be fair, he's right. We don't know s**t about the special military operation.

But the invasion though ... we have a *tonne of a concept about the invasion.

"The Western media continue to lack objective information about Russia's special operation" - Dmitry Peskov

Image is from SOTA [link]
 
And Serhiy Gerday makes it clear that reports of Lysychansk/Severodonetsk exit routes being cut off, are untrue.


Also repeated by Severodonetsk / East TG (same text).

Luhansk region is NOT cut off! The Lysychansk-Bakhmut route is NOT blocked. Access to Lysychansk and Severodonetsk is available.

In the afternoon, the media began to spread the news that the occupiers had allegedly cut off the "road of life." This is not true. The road is being shot, but today we were able to deliver rubber trucks. As of 13 hours, travel is possible.

Some headlines are outrageous. Write “Russians cut off the Lysychansk-Bakhmut route. Luhansk region in the boiler? ” irresponsibly and manipulatively. Keep your assumptions to yourself. Have you thought about what will happen to the relatives of the defenders who are defending Luhansk region and the relatives of those who remained in the region when they read it? What boiler?
Think about people.

Trust only official sources.
 
Extended analysis of Putin's Russia and the propaganda wheel of nazi accusations, via DOXA Journal.


“Russian propaganda nullifies the historical experience of overcoming Nazism”
Philosopher Ilya Budraitskis on Putin's historical policy and attempts to justify the present in the past.

The Russian authorities love to appeal to history , justifying the aggression against Ukraine. Announcing the recognition of the "DPR" and "LPR", Vladimir Putin delivered a real lecture to the Russians about the history of the Ukrainian state, created, in his opinion, by the Bolsheviks and personally by Lenin. One of the goals of the military invasion of Ukraine was declared the "denazification" of the country - supposedly Russia continues the work of the Soviet Union, which fought against Nazism and fascism in the 1940s.

DOXA decided to delve into the intricacies of Russian historical politics and spoke with Shaninka's political philosopher and teacher Ilya Budraitskis. At the same time, we asked Ilya about rethinking the Soviet experience, returning to the ideas of internationalism, and found out how correct it is to compare modern Russia with Nazi Germany.


On the Peculiarities of Putin's Historical Policy

Now we can retrospectively consider the historical policy pursued by the Russian state in the last decade as preparation for a war with Ukraine. This policy has several key features. First, it is characterized by a tendency common to our time to lose the image of the future and the desire to find justification for the present in the past.

Secondly, the history of Russia is considered exclusively as the history of the Russian state, which in various forms (be it the Russian Empire or the USSR) and at different stages of its existence reproduces its unchanging essence. In this perspective, Russia is equal to its territory, biologically understood people and essentialist culture. Russian propaganda constantly speaks of a "civilizational code" - this clearly indicates that culture is seen as something innate, assimilated at the genetic level. In such a paradigm, the cultural code is equal to the genetic code - therefore, it cannot be changed.

Finally, the history of Russia is reduced to the history of the struggle of the state with external enemies and the development of new territories. Domestic political processes, the development of society and culture in such a model play a subordinate role and fade into the background.


On the cyclical vision of history and neoliberalism

Russian historical politics offers not a linear, but a cyclical model of the historical process. Linear narrative—characteristic, for example, of the Soviet historical concept—suggests that every moment in the past or present is part of a process of becoming that unfolds over time and has some purpose in the future. There is no idea of formation in Putin's historical model.

The axis or core of this model is the confrontation between Russia and the West. From antiquity to the present day, the collective West, under various guises, has tried to deprive Russia of its identity and sovereignty, and Russia has successfully resisted these attempts. Such an approach deprives each historical event of its uniqueness and specificity.

There can be nothing new in Putin's version of history: the Battle of the Neva, the Battle of the Ice, the invasion of Napoleon, the Second World War, the confrontation with Ukraine - all this is seen as a reproduction of the same pattern.

Another important feature follows from this - the idea that Russia must inevitably succeed. Vladimir Medinsky, while still holding the post of Minister of Culture, constantly spoke about the high competitiveness of Russian culture. The entire history of Russia is a story of success based on our values, culture and religion.

Orthodoxy is also recognized functionally, as the choice most conducive to achieving success. In the mid-2010s, Patriarch Kirill stated that Saint Vladimir's choice of Christianity was a rational decision that helped him achieve foreign policy success. The conservative cyclical vision of history connects surprisingly with the neoliberal idea of efficiency.

All crises and revolutions in Russian history are seen as the result of external interference, because the very concept of the Russian state excludes the possibility of any failure. When analyzing the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, attention is focused on the fact that in reality these revolutions were inspired from outside and had no real social, political or economic foundations.

At one time, I was greatly impressed by the exhibition "Russia - My History", which presented the modern Russian historical concept in the most expanded form. I expected the exhibitors to call Lenin a German spy, but it turned out that, in their opinion, the uprisings of the Decembrists, Emelyan Pugachev, and Stepan Razin were also caused by foreign interference.


About liquidation of "Memorial"
{ Memorial is was an international human rights organisation, founded in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union to study and examine the human rights violations and other crimes committed under Joseph Stalin's reign - Wikipedia [Wikipedia] [Memorial website] }

During the trial of "Memorial", the prosecutor's office directly stated that the reason for the liquidation of the society is that it allegedly denigrates the history of Russia. This thesis is very important. "Memorial" presented the history of Russia not from the point of view of the state, but from the point of view of those who suffered from the actions of this state. It was fundamentally important for Memorial to give people the opportunity to hear the voices of the victims, regardless of who the victims were. Therefore, it seems to me incorrect to assert that Memorial defended a liberal vision of history. We know that there were many communists among the victims of Stalin's repressions - Memorial never concealed this, but, on the contrary, emphasized this fact in every possible way.

The understanding of history advocated by Memorial can be characterized as genealogical - it is the history of losers, not winners. The memory of the losers and the opportunity to stand in solidarity with them makes us people and citizens, constantly pointing to the boundaries that the state should not cross in its self-justification. From this point of view, Memorial was an important symbolic opponent of the dominant Russian ideology, and its liquidation was one of the steps towards what happened on February 24th.


On rethinking the Soviet experience and Putin's anti-communism

Nostalgia for the Soviet Union has played an important role in shaping Russian ideology and historical politics, primarily because the Putin regime perceives the USSR as another reincarnation of “historical Russia.” However, the attitude towards the USSR is somewhat more complicated. At one time, Putin called the collapse of the USSR the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. If we compare this statement with his speechtwo days before the invasion of Ukraine, in which he declared that the modern problems with Ukraine were generated by the national politics of the Bolsheviks, it can be said that over time Putin came to the conclusion that the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century was not the collapse of the USSR, but its creation. The USSR was based on the principles of self-determination of nations, anti-imperialism and a fundamental revision of the foundations on which the Russian Empire existed. It is assumed that it is these ideas that should be revised as a result of the invasion of Ukraine. In this sense, Putin is a deeply anti-Soviet and anti-communist politician.

What Putin's Russia is doing in Ukraine today can be seen as an attempt to definitively draw a line under the Soviet experience. The idea of Russian-Ukrainian friendship and brotherhood was possible only if the equality of peoples and their legitimate right to possess national culture, language and identity was recognized. Therefore, in light of today's discussions about whether normal relations between Russians and Ukrainians are possible in the future, a rethinking of the Soviet experience is necessary. At the same time, of course, one should not forget about the numerous imperial relapses of Stalinism and such terrible events as the Holodomor.

A reassessment of the Soviet experience must be based on an understanding of its contradictions and inhomogeneities - for example, an understanding of the gulf between the positions of Lenin and Stalin on the issue of national self-determination. The Soviet cannot be "get rid of" as something whole by renaming streets or destroying monuments - it must be accepted as a part of history, in which there were undoubtedly both extremely reactionary moments and progressive, liberating features that can become the foundation for democratic development in the future.


On Internationalism and the Fallacies of the Western Left

When I spoke about the need for a return to internationalism in a recent interview with Specter, I was referring primarily to the Western left, which for the most part in recent decades has underestimated the possibility of an aggressive imperialist policy on the part of Russia. The idea that imperialism can only be American dominated, and all those who resisted this imperialism were automatically listed as historically progressive forces.

This view is fundamentally wrong. Many leftists in the West now understand this and are trying to develop a different point of view, but so far they have not been very successful. The idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend has penetrated so deeply into the consciousness of the Western left that it is very difficult for them to return to the ideas of internationalism - solidarity with the oppressed, including the oppressed nations that are faced with colonial aggression. Internationalism, which goes beyond national borders, divides the existing capitalist states into more progressive and less progressive, considers imperialism not as a property of any one country, but as a potentially dangerous state of the world, pregnant with military conflicts. This kind of internationalism was demonstrated by the European left during the First World War,

On how Russian propaganda is redefining the concept of Nazism

I have already said that Russian historical politics offers a cyclical model of Russian history. In this regard, the history and lessons of the Second World War are also undergoing a fundamental reassessment. Since there was nothing unique in World War II and the victory over Nazism - after all, this is just another victory of Russian civilization over Western civilization - then there is nothing unique in Nazism itself. If you are against Russia, then you are a Nazi, and if you are for, you are an anti-fascist.

When the Russian Ministry of Defense speaks of its intention to hold an "international anti-fascist congress," it means a gathering of all the forces that stand in solidarity with Russian foreign policy in its current form. Serious difference between this initiative and the "Congresses for Peace" that the Stalinist Comintern carried out in Europe in the 1930s is that the USSR represented an alternative to Nazism, at least on the level of values. The USSR spoke about the protection of democratic rights, the equality of peoples, internationalism, the value of human life, irreducible to race or nationality. Even in Stalin's time, the USSR spoke the language of universalism, which opposed the fundamentally anti-universalist language of Nazism.

The understanding of Nazism that Russian propaganda offers today is in itself anti-universalist. It proceeds from the fact that Nazism, as well as anti-fascism, are certain entities. Recently, a number of propaganda materials have been published in which denazification was equated with de-Ukrainization.

"It turns out that every person who considers himself a Ukrainian and believes that the Ukrainian state has the right to exist is a Nazi."

Russian propaganda completely nullifies the historical experience of overcoming Nazism in the second half of the 20th century. The ethical lessons of the Second World War were forgotten - several generations changed, and the concept of Nazism became the subject of free interpretations by the state, pursuing its own political interests.


On comparing Putin's Russia with Hitler's Germany

Any historical analogies are dubious enough because they take us away from understanding the specifics of a particular moment and try to re-describe it in terms of what happened in the past. In this sense, comparing today's Russia with Germany in 1933 or 1939 does not quite work. When Germany started World War II, Hitler's regime was not in decline. Today we are witnessing the fascist degeneration of the Russian regime in a situation of its extreme degradation. Those, to put it mildly, the failures of the Russian army, which we saw at the first stage of the invasion of Ukraine, clearly indicate this.

However, the study of the Nazi dictatorship allows us to understand some very important mechanisms, which, unfortunately, also work in modern Russian society. Claudia Kunz in The Conscience of the Nazissuggests that at the time of Hitler's rise to power, most of German society was not imbued with Nazi ideas. The Nazis, although they enjoyed some electoral support, were politically a minority. However, thanks to mass propaganda and the introduction of certain social practices, they managed to achieve the fascistization of German society. The changes Kunz describes — conformism, the atomization of society, the spread of mass fear — are somewhat similar to those that began to occur in Putin's Russia after the attack on Ukraine.


On the Lessons of Philosophy of the 20th Century

Now, for all of us, a large corpus of texts written at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s has been opened up from a new side - in a critical period, when social and political philosophers realized their limitations and inability to change the world according to their own ideas, but at the same time realized that they had a powerful tool for studying the causes of what happened. In this regard, all the major authors of this period who analyzed the nature of Nazism and the causes of the outbreak of World War II are of great interest. In addition to the works of Walter Benjamin, which are now much talked about, it is worth recalling the "Great Transformation" by Carl Polanyi, who tried to reconstruct how humanity ended up in such a tragic situation.

At the basis of all approaches to the study of Nazism lay the bitter realization that what happened was not a deviation from the plan and a retreat from the main road leading to prosperity, democracy and liberal freedoms, but, on the contrary, became a logical consequence of the development of capitalist society. Today, we must also understand that what seemed to us normal, objective and inevitable, in fact, carried a destructive potential. This concerns not only the development of Russia over the past decades, but also the state of the world as a whole. Putin's Russia is not a unique society. It may radicalize certain tendencies, but these tendencies are global in nature, we see them in various authoritarian and right-wing populist movements, the anti-humanist market idea of constant competition and struggle of people among themselves, which in its political version can lead to a new fascism-ization.
 

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(no link or even location tho, can't verify)

Everything goes according to plan. Russia removes T-62 tanks from mothballing for transfer to Ukraine. T-62s were produced in the period 1962-1975.



More footage of T-62s, I guess if there's two different footages of it, then it might be real. But again, no location given.
From the comments: No auto-load (one extra crew required), even shitter armour than T-72, among other things.



 

Oh cool, thanks. I just came to say similar! According to this TG they've been spotted coming from Crimea and the expectation is that they are being deployed in the Kherson / Nikolaev regions.

Edit: Another sighting, near Melitopol.
 
It's official. Russia is about to unleash Dad's Army on the frontlines. They can couple up with ancient T-62 tanks they have pulled out of mothballs as shown above (will be interesting to see how many of them even run and not breakdown). Surely this cannot end well?

You can't tell me that this is not a desperate move on Russia's part, and think that they are in a position of strength?

 
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It's official. Russia is about to unleash Dad's Army on the frontlines. They can couple up with ancient T-62 tanks they have pulled out of mothballs as shown above (will be interesting to see how many of them even run and not breakdown). Surely this cannot end well?

You can't tell me that this is not a desperate move on Russia's part, and think that they are in a position of strength?



I'm not sure if it is weakness or because they are more willing to use cannon fodder as a way of exhausting enemy ammunition.

Some military experts were saying they were facing upcoming personnel shortages, and that they would have to go on defence soon until they could send in more soldiers for a new offensive. .
 
I'm not sure if it is weakness or because they are more willing to use cannon fodder as a way of exhausting enemy ammunition.

Some military experts were saying they were facing upcoming personnel shortages, and that they would have to go on defence soon until they could send in more soldiers for a new offensive. .

But where are these highly trained soldiers for the new offensive coming from? I can't see Russia holding back crack units in the hope that some older cannon fodder holds the line? They're already throwing everything they can at it in the east.

They definitely have a personnel shortage. It seems that they don't want to announce a mobilisation so have scrapped the age limit instead. However how many people aged over 40+ with minimal or no training will even volunteer?
 

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But where are these highly trained soldiers for the new offensive coming from? I can't see Russia holding back crack units in the hope that some older cannon fodder holds the line? They're already throwing everything they can at it in the east.

They definitely have a personnel shortage. It seems that they don't want to announce a mobilisation so have scrapped the age limit instead. However how many people aged over 40+ with minimal or no training will even volunteer?
Training doesn't matter, older folks burn even better than conscripts and they don't usually have mothers still around to complain.
 

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Oh l would so love for this to be true. They are the scum of the earth.
Bit harsh.

All they did was sell out their own people after Putin had levelled Grozny killing tens of thousands. Then they took money to build themselves a golden palace and arm themselves to fight on behalf of Putin while their people continue to starve to death.
 
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