Russia and Ukraine

[Thumpalumpacus]

I think the Russian KIA count of 186k is sadly, laughably low. They rung that bell at least wo years ago if not more. Russia is shutting down Telegram for its reporting facts outside of government control.

[Belacqua]

Zelensky has committed an act of war against a NATO country.

Ukraine has bombed the main pipeline that supplies Hungary with most of its Russian oil. Apparently the goal is not simply to deprive Russia of the income this brings, but to put pressure on Orban, whom many perceive to be insufficiently anti-Russian. He wants to keep his cheap energy.

Orban has an election coming up, and energy disruption would make him less popular. But depriving another country of its energy supply is an act of war, and Hungary, unlike Ukraine, is a full member of NATO.

I expect that many people will be pleased if Orban is replaced by someone more anti-Russian. Probably some will argue that Orban has it coming, because he isn't on board with all the sanctions, etc.

It will be interesting to see how the other NATO countries react to this attack on one of their member states.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Zelensky has committed an act of war against a NATO country.

Ukraine has bombed the main pipeline that supplies Hungary with most of its Russian oil. Apparently the goal is not simply to deprive Russia of the income this brings, but to put pressure on Orban, whom many perceive to be insufficiently anti-Russian. He wants to keep his cheap energy.

Orban has an election coming up, and energy disruption would make him less popular. But depriving another country of its energy supply is an act of war, and Hungary, unlike Ukraine, is a full member of NATO.

I expect that many people will be pleased if Orban is replaced by someone more anti-Russian. Probably some will argue that Orban has it coming, because he isn't on board with all the sanctions, etc.

It will be interesting to see how the other NATO countries react to this attack on one of their member states.

The pipeline is Russian-owned, located in Russia, and pumping Russian oil. Russia, as you may or may not know, is not a member of NATO. Calling this an attack on a NATO member is simply further evidence of your Putin-worship and slavish adherence to Russian propaganda.

[Deesse23]

But depriving another country of its energy supply is an act of war

Who is doing that since February of 2022?

Zelensky has committed an act of war against a NATO country.

How can you commit an act of war against a NATO country, 1600km away from NATO territory?
When Gazprom, owned by the russian state, first reduced then completely stopped pumping gas to Europe/Germany in late 2022, was that an act of war against a NATO country? You do remember the headlines about people in Germany supposed to be freezing in winter, do you?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Belacqua

But depriving another country of its energy supply is an act of war…

This is only true if such deprivation is a deliberate attempt to cause widespread civilian suffering. That’s not clearly the case here.

And, as noted by others above, an attack on a Russian-owned pipeline inside Russia cannot in any sense be considered an attack on Hungary.  Your case is further weakened by the fact that the Adria pipeline is capable of meeting all of Hungary’s crude oil needs. The chief reason that Orban buys mostly Russian oil is that it’s considerably cheaper than Middle Eastern oil.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

Damned zelensky, going around committing acts of war on people. Wont anyone stop that madman!

[Leonardo17]

Zelensky’s popularity rate is rising despite the “Trump Element” and despite the cognitive war that Russia is leading.
 
Russia has it’s friends in Europe. Most ultra-nationalist / populist parties in Europe are being referred to as “Russian Proxies”. Victor Orban (sadly) is one of them. So Ukraine might have made the decision to stop the flow of cash coming from Hungary. The less money the kremlin gets, the less lives will be lost to this nonsense.
 
Also I want to open a small parenthesis on how a 20 years rather small-scale military conflict looks like in order for you to be able to imagine a conflict that claimed between 200,000 and 1,200,000 military losses (only on the Russian side):
 

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Here is the Wikipedia page on the Kurdish Insurgency:
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_...insurgency
 
It’s a conflict that kept growing in the 1980’s. Reached it’s height in the 1990’s and diminished greatly in the 00’s because the head of the insurgency was captured in Kenya in 1997.
 
Despite the “small” number of deaths the mood was extremely terrifying. South-Eastern Turkey is a very large and mountainous to which PKK militants could cross in from places like Syria, Iraq and Iran. The army was simply unable to control this guerilla-type warfare that was being waged against us.
 
People were terrified of being drafted into the army for their military service and being sent to a real war in that front (which was seen as a very distant area where people in the Western part of the country felt like they simply did not belong to).
 
Every week, if not every day there were these macabre new on TV. “2 dead 4 wounded there, 10 dead two wounded here. Helicopter fell there. Government friendly unit died in combat there”. It was very serious. I did my military service in the early 00’s. Some people were still scared to be sent to “The east” in that era.
 
In the 1990’s, your family would make phone calls for you if you had friends in the armed forces. But usually it didn’t work. The army had the habit of appointing westerners to the East (where the conflict was) while people from the east were usually appointed to positions in the west of the country.
 
All of this to say that fear was very real. Families were extremely worried for their kids. And at the height of the conflict, we had corpses being returned to their hometown (for instance in the city where I was born) almost every week or every few days.
 

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So that’s a distant conflict with some 6750 security forces who died over 20 years.
 
This is a 4 year conflict with at least 186,000 losses.
 
Russian demography is also not that high. Turkey’s population is around 90 million. Russian population is 146 million.
 
/So they are not a China or India like country who can replenish these losses within a decade or so. Russian population was already shrinking before this war.
 
Also: One good point I’ve heard today is this: Ukrainians are actually buying time for the rest of Europe. This means that Europeans, who were sort of left on their own by the Americans don’t have what it takes to protect their liberties and values on their own without the help from America. So as long as Russia is busy with Ukraine, it cannot create serious trouble for Europe. And in this time Europe is 1) freeing itself from its energy reliance on Russia 2) strengthening its military strength (with the help of England) in order to become a serious military power on its own, that can do stuff on its own, even without the US.

[The Grand Nudger]

Russia made the sorts of military investments that europe is supposed to need and very little else, hence their crumbling infrastructure and shit geysers and uncontrollable fires and apartment complexes freezing over to completely non war related reasons...how has it gone for them? They've got ivan over there fantasizing about marching on berlin when he can't make it through two ukranian chicken coops on a four way intersection with no stoplights.

As it turns out, not even ukraine was militarily deficient compared to russia and literally no one in europe is/was in a shittier spot than they were at the start of the war. That's why russia picked them.... I think the future there is going to turn more on your number 1 and less on no2. It was number 1 plus nukes and a certain doddering geriatric that created the permission structure for this to happen. Not a lack of adequate military preparation. That's a whole extra layer to the shit onion imo. Could europe have stopped this, could they stop it now? Yes. Will they? No. No matter how many tanks and jets they buy none of it will be to stop this, and none of it is needed to protect their liberties from what's left of russia. It's just what theyre going to do because they wont do the other thing and need a little theater to cover up the why. Obviously, I sound frustrated by europe here...but look..the us isn't even bothering with the theater. We're just trying to shake them down while russia kicks them in the head.

To drive this point fully home, the war is right now strengthening that permission structure. The three main contributors to this (as I see it) being the us, russia, and ukraine all used to be nuclear armed states. One of them unilaterally disarmed and became a transit station for cheap oil..and how are things going for them?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Obviously, I sound frustrated by europe here...but look..the us isn't even bothering with the theater.  We're just trying to shake them down while russia kicks them in the head.

What we're doing is the equivalent of the fire dept demanding your Visa # before they drop a single foot of hose -- while your wife and baby are trapped in your burning home.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm not finding it easy to be my usual rah rah rah self, that's for sure. One thing I used to like to pretend was that even our shittiest people still believed in the opposite of whatever the fuck we're doing right now. Gotta say I might have taken a different path in life had I known how wrong I was about that.