Russian invasion of Ukraine

Two members of the Duma have come right out and said "we didn't vote to bomb Kyiv".

People have been finding abandoned Russian tanks out of fuel in the middle of the countryside and civilians have been capturing engineer convoys with no armed support. No bridges for you if you can't keep supply lines open.

I know this probably makes me an “idiotic” “putin apologist” “traitor” but (fully recognising that (1) putin is to blame for this unlawful and immoral invasion and (2) now may not the time to engage in solipsistic soul searching - though if not now, when…)… the west will have to have an honest reckoning with the strategic errors that contributed to us reaching this point. this has a good overview of that context (and other aspects) https://prospect.org/world/worse-than-a-crime-its-a-blunder-russia-ukraine-lieven-interview/

edit: I think it’s kinda gross to view and reflect on this conflict through the prism of our own internal UK politics - this is mostly why I’ve been trying (trying!) to keep out of this thread and others… but I will say that some of the commentary I’ve seen this week from UK politicians and commentators has been, putting it politely, quite frankly deranged. and dangerous !

I thought owen hatherley’s piece in tribune was good too

A good thread that speculates he thought they would stroll in like the Taliban back into Afghanistan, and completely missed the significance of Zelenskiy.

https://twitter.com/zoyashef/status/1497378894529589250?t=IdyS4i0L4QAcImfhsOfSNA&s=19

I saw that go by and thought it looked liked wishful thinking. Doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong - some guesses are right - but it's being much quoted by people who just want it to be right.

late to the party here but I agree with this.

over 15 years or more, Putin has repeatedly tested the appetite of the west to take meaningful action against Russia and found it to be extremely limited.

In fact, as has been pointed out extensively elsewhere, Russian money and energy and oligarchs and who knows what else have been welcomed pretty much all over. So you could argue that

a) we could have anticipated this;
b) Putin thinks the international reaction will be short lived and things will return to the previous status in which Russia is largely accommodated in the world order.

100% with you on this.

good piece. everyone predicting ww3 should read it

Interesting read, thanks for posting.

Reports of Russian troops near Lviv.
During the pandemic, when I have been limited to imaginary travelling, I have been following this Instagram account from Lviv:
https://www.instagram.com/tylko_we_lwowi/
A truly beautiful place.

Penny for Gorbachev's thoughts.

https://youtu.be/fgm14D1jHUw

Got £3m? Come right in!

Got £3m?

The remarkable thing about the £3m golden visa is how cheap it is compared to some other countries in Europe.

This misses the part where Russia detects the launches and returns fire, wiping us (and at this point probably humanity) out in turn.

You've got the order wrong

Trident fires after Russia.

just out for a training ride

Just got back from the protest near German embassy here in Vilnius, Lithuania.
We had a talk with an ambassador to act swift (pun intended) and in general to act instead of talk.

Least we can do is push our governments to act so thank you guys who wrote their representatives in the government!

Slava Ukraini!

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After the first or last launch?

It doesn't seem to be going well for them. At the very least Putin's rep as a three-dimensional chess genius is in tatters.

Is it naive to think that the uk and other european nations could have secreted a few special forces in to Ukraine before this came to a head?
Pretty short sighted of them if not ..?

There are volunteers with British accents fighting in videos I have seen, but they aren't special forces.

What would SF do with just personal weapons and no resupply? They might be able to interfere with the Russian rear areas or attack a few headquarters but it would be far less risky to train Ukrainians to do it.

There will be embassy officials on the ground gathering intelligence, standard stuff, which units are where and their effectiveness, no James Bond stuff though.

Not sure about SF but apparently the Ukrainian forces are getting good real-time intelligence from somewhere as they were able to deploy forces just in time to meet and defeat the Russians at Vasylkiv

Re: British accents…

One might argue that acting in a ‘Humanitarian’ capacity (as in promote human welfare, or limit human suffering) can be everything up to the actual firing of a bullet.

I do not condone violence, but if preservation of life would mean some strategically placed and incredibly talented personnel? Go for it.

The Ukrainian MoD has been tweeting to encourage civilians to switch road signs around to confuse the invasion. Awesome.

Some people claiming that Facebook has been blocked in Russia. Don't know if true though.