War in Ukraine. Did the West handle the post Cold War era badly?

Exactly. I am thinking material damage. We don’t have to go after soldiers fleeing, but the equipment they use.

Also if lots of wounded soldiers return, Putin either has to put resources towards taking care of them, or let them die. In that case soldiers might not want to fight because they know there is no help when they get home again.

You guys hear about the sick Russian soldier going on trial for a video of him assaulting a baby. It was too sick even for Russia

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/russian-soldier-arrested-after-vile-26677703.amp

@Mercenary848: The Mirror is not the best of sources but, if true, at least shows that the Kremlin sees rapping babies as too much.

@ghost_of_phobos: I feel that. I just used an article, but everything points to him being publicly arrested and expected to be tried. Also the video of him doing it, which is beyond grotesque.

"This is evidenced by a telephone conversation intercepted by the SSU between a militant of the so-called DNR (whose unit is now stationed in Kherson region) and his relative who lives in Tarasivka villiage, Zaporizhia region. Influenced by Russian propaganda, the woman had a different image of ‘liberators’, but the reality is shocking."

Now the CCP are picking up Tucker Carlsson's story about US BioWeapons in Ukraine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/11/technology/china-russia-propaganda.html

Will they use it against Jens Stoltenberg?

At some point we do need to hold US media accountable for their flagrant lies.

@uninspiredcup: Holy F.

When does it fall under the definition of genocide?

Take it down, seems abit much for the board we are on. ^^

But yea. The older post as well (about the guy filming himself raping a child) has also been confirmed.

Also pictures popping up of Chechen posing with unwilling woman in their homes akin to images from Nanjing.

Be nice if Putin died.

Also a daily fail article if anyone wants to read it,

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10710541/Russia-moves-military-equipment-Finnish-border-warning-Finland-not-join-NATO.html

@Maroxad: If true Finland should be accepted ASAP.

There are allegations of chemical weapons having been used now,

https://www.newsweek.com/ukrainian-battalion-accuses-russia-using-chemical-weapons-civilians-1697052?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

If it comes down to invasion, Finland wont be alone. Sweden is bound to defend them, we take the security of the baltic region very seriously over here.

The guy is so out of touch

I have had a hunch for a while that this war will break russia and result in its dissolution. Due to the country being fiscially unstable and several parts already wanting to break out. I dunno if this will happen of course, but I do see heavy changes in russia following this war. Simply due to economic reasons. Perhaps even cultural ones, considering Putin's actions.

Probably when independent investigations gonna make a conclusion that there was a systematic destruction of one particular group for the purpose of either killing it off or forcing it to depart.

Ukranians?

@horgen: Nope, it should be law representatives from the UN from different nations.

@gns: I mean who goes through it atm.

According to the Government of Ukraine - Ukranians, mainly on what has happened in Bucha and other suburbs (civilians tied and shot, mass graves). According to Russians - no one is shooting at civilians, this is all bullocks.

I have no military notions but are tanks outdated war tech or are the Russians doing something wrong?

A cynic in me would say that they are using Stalin tactics: just throw in to the meat grinder bunch of people and tech, and see where it goes, eventually, when the enemy runs out of ammo, send in the real troops.

And this strategy will hurt them really badly too. Russia has one of the lowest birth rates in the world for a reason.

@Maroxad: Not just the birth rate.

@ghost_of_phobos: Yup. I said it before and I will say it again, Russia is causing its downwards spiral. Russia's biggest enemy is itself. And I can't wait for Russia to dissolve into smaller states, hopefully ones that are a lot less authoritarian.

Putin is a dictator at this point. Who's stopping him from mobilizing his entire country? People aren't protesting nearly enough and he thinks he can do whatever the hell he likes with Russia.

Russia is doing it wrong. There seems to be no scouts and no support for the tanks. Alone in a column like that, tanks are easy targets. Days when tanks led the charge are long past. Now tank is a support unit, which need infantry or air support to clear the way for it. On modern battlefield main purpose of a tank is to be a mobile fire support.

To be frank, the Cold War era is a very long period. So there were some miscalculations on the US side for sure. But ultimately it’s perceived by the early 90s that the US won the Cold War.

But connecting intro this war is rather problematic because too much time has passed. I think there are other factors like Putin considering NATO on his Western flank is one of the reasons is why he invaded.

@outworld222: The problem Putin has with NATO is that he knows he can't touch those countries.

Kremlin propaganda paints NATO as a threat but obviously NATO has no intentions to invade Russia. Particularly in the nuclear era, it makes no sense.

@ghost_of_phobos: ya but what he’s saying is that NATO is creeping up to his eastern border and that was never really expected when the Soviet’s dissolved.

So what? He does not get to tell other countries what they can or cannot do.

@LJS9502_basic: true but what he’s also saying is that there was an agreement with Gorbachev that if the Soviet’s dissolved, Germany would be United and that’s that, no further expansions.

Anywho I’m not trying to take sides, just playing devils advocate so bear with me and let’s see where the discussion takes us.

@outworld222: Ukraine was never part of NATO and NATO already had rejected that they'd joined.

Plus it was negotiated in the 90s that Russia could not interfere with Ukraine politically and that territorial integrity should be guaranteed in exchange for Ukraine's nuclear weapons and Russia has been violating that agreement for almost two decades. Russia annexed Ukrainian territory, finances a civil war in the eastern regions, owns politicians at several levels and now invaded Ukraine. Whatever was the agreement that they could not join NATO they violated it long time ago.

On top of that, Russia occupying Ukraine ends up with them having more NATO countries as neighbors.

I do get what you're saying but they're just false pretexts used by Kremlin's propaganda machine.

AFAIK, these were just talks. Nothing concrete (in form of treaties) was ever stated. Also, it was in regards AFAIR to Western Germany joining NATO and the possible war with East Germany (prior to dissolving of USSR).

This is entertainment to them.

Ukraine intercepted a phone call of a Russian soldier's wife granting him permission to rape Ukrainian women: 'Just wear protection.'

• Ukrainian security services intercepted a fone call between a Russian soldier and his wife.

• The woman can be heard in the call granting permission to her husband to rape Ukrainian women, RFE/RL reported.

• There are a growing number of allegations from Ukrainian women of rape by Russian soldiers.

Ukrainian security services intercepted a fone call between a Russian soldier and his wife in which she can be heard granting him permission to rape Ukrainian women, according to an investigation by RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty (RFE/RL).

The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) said they intercepted the call between the couple in their twenties earlier this month in the Kherson region of Ukraine, RFE/RL reported.

In an excerpt of the call, released by the SSU and analyzed by RFE/RL, a woman can be heard giving her husband the go-ahead to commit a war crime.

She can be heard saying: "You go there, rape Ukrainian women, and don't tell me anything. Understood?"

Later on in the conversation, she can then be heard laughing before the man — a Russian soldier — asks her for her explicit permission to rape women.

"Yes, I allow it," the woman replies, per the audio excerpt. "Just use contraception!" says the mother of one.

RFE/RL identified the participants in the call by linking social media accounts to telefone numbers provided by the SSU. The soldier denied he was the person on the call but according to RFE/RL, both his and his wife's voices matched those heard in the audio recordings, said RFE/RL.

The soldier has not been accused of rape, and no charges have been filed against the couple, RFE/RL said.

When the wife was contacted by an RFE/RL reporter, she said her husband had been wounded and was in a hospital in the Sevastopol, Crimea, the port home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet. She would not answer any other questions, RFE/RL said.

The media outlet noted that the couple, who moved to annexed Crimea in 2018, may have been joking during the call, but it comes amid a flurry of allegations by Ukrainian women that they have been raped.

About 25 girls and women aged 14 to 24 were systematically raped during the occupation in the basement of one house in Bucha, according to the Ukrainian ombudswoman for human rights, per BBC News.

A 31-year-old woman in Malaya Rohan, a village in the Kharkiv region, said she was raped at gunpoint multiple times by a soldier who entered the school where her family was sheltering, according to the international NGO Human Rights Watch.

Another woman, aged 33, told The Times that she was raped after Russian soldiers killed her husband.

Kira Rudyk, a Ukrainian MP, told CBS News that rape is "happening systematically" in areas being occupied by the Russian.

Read the original article on Business Insider

More in link - https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-rape-russian-soldier-wife-bykovsky/31805486.html

The identities of a Russian soldier and his wife who discussed the rape of Ukrainian women in a phone call have been revealed following an investigation by RFE/RL.

The investigation found that Roman Bykovsky, 27, and his wife, Olga Bykovskaya, whose maiden name is Pinyasovaya, were the couple behind the shocking call that has fed fears of mass rape of Ukrainian women by Russian soldiers.

During the call, which Ukrainian security services in the Kherson region in the country’s south said they intercepted before publishing it earlier this month, a woman can be heard giving permission to a man to rape Ukrainian women.

“Yes, I allow it. Just wear protection,” the woman says between laughs.

Reporters from RFE/RL's Russian Service and Schemes, a joint investigative project run by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, received the telefone numbers of the participants in the infamous call from sources in Ukraine’s security services and used the numbers to find the social media accounts of Bykovsky and his wife.

@uninspiredcup said:

I hope those funds are never released back to Russia and instead are used to reconstruct Ukraine.

It seems that the long waited huge Russian offensive has finally started. Reports from Ukraine have that Ukrainian forces had to retreat from Kreminna which was under heavy shelling before Russian tanks entered the city.

@ghost_of_phobos said:

@uninspiredcup said:

I hope those funds are never released back to Russia and instead are used to reconstruct Ukraine.

That's it? $392 billion frozen? Sure it seems like a lot if you don't relate it to anything. In US terms, 1.5x the annual budget would be closer to $1.5 trillion. It's a big number for sure, but we printed WAY more than that during Covid. They are also getting aid from several foreign countries to compensate. This isn't going to deter Russia. Not even a little.

@eoten said:

@ghost_of_phobos said:

@uninspiredcup said:

I hope those funds are never released back to Russia and instead are used to reconstruct Ukraine.

That's it? $392 billion frozen? Sure it seems like a lot if you don't relate it to anything. In US terms, 1.5x the annual budget would be closer to $1.5 trillion. It's a big number for sure, but we printed WAY more than that during Covid. They are also getting aid from several foreign countries to compensate. This isn't going to deter Russia. Not even a little.

That is roughly a 15% hit to their economy. It is not going to deter them, but it is going to hurt them. Especially when you consider the fact that russia is killing off their youth. Which will lead to even lower birth rates down the line, in a country that already has dismal birth rates.

@Maroxad said:

@eoten said:

That's it? $392 billion frozen? Sure it seems like a lot if you don't relate it to anything. In US terms, 1.5x the annual budget would be closer to $1.5 trillion. It's a big number for sure, but we printed WAY more than that during Covid. They are also getting aid from several foreign countries to compensate. This isn't going to deter Russia. Not even a little.

@eoten said:

@ghost_of_phobos said:

@uninspiredcup said:

I hope those funds are never released back to Russia and instead are used to reconstruct Ukraine.

That's it? $392 billion frozen? Sure it seems like a lot if you don't relate it to anything. In US terms, 1.5x the annual budget would be closer to $1.5 trillion. It's a big number for sure, but we printed WAY more than that during Covid. They are also getting aid from several foreign countries to compensate. This isn't going to deter Russia. Not even a little.

That is roughly a 15% hit to their economy. It is not going to deter them, but it is going to hurt them. Especially when you consider the fact that russia is killing off their youth. Which will lead to even lower birth rates down the line, in a country that already has dismal birth rates.

This isn't going to harm them as much as you're hoping it's going to. Europe has no more cards to play, this was it, this was their big push back and it has failed miserably. Now there's nothing more they can do to Russia without openly attacking them which they cannot do because Russia still controls the energy, and therefor much of the industry, manufacturing, and economy of Europe. Try to twist it any way that you want, but this was a big fail for Europe and there's nothing left to stop Russia outside of WWIII for a country none of you cared about in the past 8 years violence has been going on there.

It is working though. Russia's economy is hit hard. A quick "recovery" does not mean it is a sustained one. Especially since they are killing off their future labour force.

Russia, while the main exporter to europe is far from the only one. Several nations dont even import much from Russia anyways. My country has only a very small reliance on Russian Energy.

Even the situation in Ukraine is very bleak for Russia itself. They cannot take Ukraine, their leadership is sticking to outdated military tactics (using tanks as a main force, rather than a supporting one), and their tech is inaquadate compared to the weapons the EU supplies ukraine. Their invasion failed, and invasion is the easy part. How exactly do they think they will be able to hold the country when they can't even properly invade it?

Edit: I forgot to mention the horrible logistics of the russian military. The Ukrainians managed to intercept their supply lines again. Which seems to have slowed down the russian advances quite a bit.

The war is just a flu!

Interesting body language. Lip biting, finger fidgeting and foot tapping as well.

Not having a good time.

Holy shit, how tall is Putin? He looks so tiny in that chair. He isn't slouching that much either his ass is against the back of the chair.

Sorry I know that's an odd thing to focus on in the midst of all that's going on, but...Napoleon Complex, anyone?

Anyway, his body language has been like that for a while. The world has seen him for the conman, liar, and weak leader he is, and the weak person he is. This conflict has shown us that, while Russia is still a power in the world, they are nothing to fear.

I don't doubt that if Russia went whole-hog into Ukraine with everything they had it'd be a bloodbath but as it is now the Russian military can't back up what Putin has to say.

3 facilities inside Russia have gone up in flames. Information on as to the how and why is scarce, obv Russia will just talk bullshit.

Some are saying false flag, others Ukraine, or Russians turned against their own government. Inewesting.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/22/die-in-fire-at-russia-defence-institute

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10740579/Huge-blaze-sweeps-Russias-biggest-chemical-plant-hours-7-killed-weapon-centre-fire.html