Russian invasion of Ukraine

Very nice explanation given!

Some interesting thoughts from an article in local news about the worldview of Russians.
The guy interviewed is Viktor Andrusiv, Adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.

Another thing is that the Russians had a very sad history of uprisings
against the government. Most of the uprisings - Pugachev, Razin,
decabrists - ended in defeat. Therefore, rebellion and uprisings began
to be perceived by Russian society as leading to defeat.

Russian citizens are not usually asked whether they support the
government. The government is like the Church to them. If you are a
religious person, you do not ask yourself if God exists. It does
not matter what kind of government it is: Stalin, Lenin, Mikhail
Gorbachev or Boris Yeltsin. The latter even lost the Chechen war, but
the Russians still supported him. They will always support their
government, otherwise their worldview will fail. Therefore, those 60%
who support Putin are not surprised. The same number of people will
support another government tomorrow, even if Alexei Navalny is at the
helm of the state. For Russians, government is a matter of faith.

Was a good listen, like you say, does a good job of covering the bits our media choose to neglect mentioning

Is there a transcript of this? Especially with complex subjects like international relations I'm always amazed that people absorb the material only by listening. I have to read it, otherwise unless I take notes (if only it was already written down!) it falls out of my head really quickly and then instead of actually learning something I've only convinced myself I have.

Not that I’m aware of. Could be a system for such things, like auto captions on YouTube. Scoble might know

Can you summarise the ideas that media chose to neglect mentioning?

I'm unable to listen to podcasts (my ears are okay I just can't do anything else if I'm listening to podcasts and if I do something else while listening, it's just some voice in the back of my head I can't comprehend)

Yeah, goes some way to explaining (but not excusing) Putins actions. He didn’t really connect it but it makes Putins claims of fighting neo nazis a bit less insane.

Haha! Please summarise an hour and a half of dense geopolitical analysis. I don’t want spend the time listening to it.

None of it is anything that isn't widely documented or reported but just pulls it all together. None of it justifies Putin's current actions. It just explains how Russia would view the last 70 years of western policy as anti-russian. Currently anyone who expresses that view gets jumped on as a Putin apologist. Like most things in life it is complicated but none of it justifies war and killing civilians.

About half way through this thread he gets to how Putin now views anything anti-Russian as nazism

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1503085486604275717

I did the most paltry of googling and have DIY'd it.

It is so-so

About half way through this thread he gets to how Putin now views anything anti-Russian as nazism

It's enormously worse than that - any disagreement with Putin is anti-Russian. Consider the consequences.

Seemingly odd things going on in the skies over Russia today:

https://twitter.com/OAlexanderDK

although no one seems to know what it might mean

From Twitter POV: OMG oligaRcHs/rOgUe GeNeraLs fLeeiNg fRoM pUrGes/to NucuLar bunka!
From Russia POV: All 6M Routine Tests Completed Satisfactorily

The tweets about the two Il-76 flights to Kaliningrad being full of Tsar Bombas, though. No time for that kind of rubbish. (I am paraphrasing here... I know there's no actual Tsar Bombas. Unless)

although no one seems to know what it might mean

in itself, its pretty typical for a plane to drop off from ADSB coverage when flying over remote areas. ADBS is only good for about ~200mi line of sight at absolute tops and receiver coverage tends to be heavily concentrated in urban areas.

Edit: Also worth pointing out that military planes only fly with ADSB beacons on if they want to be trackable by civilians.

After reading Kamil Galeev's thoughts https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1504103947421708290 I reckon the only way to deal with Putin is to mirror his tactics. I would start by cratering the runways at his air force bases, to stop him using air launched cruise missiles. Then I would bomb his artillery in Ukraine. I'd ratchet things up until he withdrew from Ukraine or his forces refused to fight. I don't think he'd use nukes. He's not suicidal.

Problem is, these are the kind of movements you might expect to see* if things were indeed about to kick off.

(*or not see. The fact that it was all trackable on FR24 suggests that a message was being sent)

edit: what @Stonehedge said

Are they? I dunno. I think two of the SFS 'planes effectively did touch-and-go landings. What kind of message is that supposed to be sending (apart from pilot skillz)?

The suggestion I’ve seen is that it’s an annual check of the ability to disperse the Russian government during a nuclear crisis, so once the aircraft arrive at destination, job done, back to Moscow. If so, the timing of such an exercise would be the message.

What kind of message is that supposed to be sending (apart from pilot skillz)?

"we're practising getting ready to nuke you"

I mean, training runs like that was basically 95% of the Cold War.

Where do you get your military info? Are you ex forces? Or is there a military site I can geek out on ?

It's radio nerd info really tbh. Just stuff I've picked up in 25 years of nerding out on radio comms. So much of the field is or was pioneered by the military.

@rodan has much more professional knowledge than I do.

Yeah, testing dispersal makes sense.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/team-biden-runs-syria-playbook-ukraine