Russia and Ukraine

[Belacqua]

US personnel participate in attacks.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/202...ry-russia/

Senior Pentagon officials:

"“We have long acknowledged that we share intelligence with Ukraine to assist them in defending their country against Russian aggression, and we have optimized over time how we share information to be able to support their requests and their targeting processes at improved speed and scale,” Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said in the statement. “The Ukrainians are responsible for finding targets, prioritizing them and then ultimately deciding which ones to engage. The U.S. does not approve targets, nor are we involved in the selection or engagement of targets.”

If we go by the standards the Pentagon uses, the locations from which the US assists with missile strikes have become legitimate military targets. Don't see how anything bad could come from that.

[Belacqua]

Excellent speech here by a historian who understands that the real import of the Ukraine war is economics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAUD1gxEWxE

[The Architect Of Fate]

If we go by the standards the Pentagon uses, the locations from which the US assists with missile strikes have become legitimate military targets. Don't see how anything bad could come from that.

And now you double down to conspiracies after having your ignorance exposed. It's also hilarious you criticize the Pentagon while Russia strikes hospitals and schools and acknowledges it on purpose.

[The Architect Of Fate]

A speech by a moron who honestly thinks ww3 is happening ... 

It's truly amazing to see all these terrible takes by supposed intellectuals. It's there can neither handle the simplicity of what's going on nor the idea that someone other than the united states can be the bad guy. The idea that Putin can't just be a power-hungry thug with a good PR team despite everything we know about him shows that to be the case and that Russia just has territorial ambitions and that instead there must be some deep philosophical interplay. It's very disturbing.

[Thumpalumpacus]

If we go by the standards the Pentagon uses, the locations from which the US assists with missile strikes have become legitimate military targets. Don't see how anything bad could come from that.

[The Grand Nudger]

That nutball I linked a video to said pretty much the same thing - while wondering why his beloved russia couldn't do a fucking thing about it, between casually suggested that russia should preemptively nuke london..or paris.

[Thumpalumpacus]

That nutball I linked a video to said pretty much the same thing - while wondering why his beloved russia couldn't do a fucking thing about it, between casually suggested that russia should preemptively nuke london..or paris.

What we say down here is "shit or get off'n the pot". I'm not sure why anyone is impressed by Russian nuclear threats, given that it's been nine months of talkin' and not one glowing bulb. Swingin' the threat is usually a good indication you don't won't to do it ... a guy able to kick your ass will kick your ass ass first and explain it later.

*Crickets*

[The Architect Of Fate]

And all this comes under the assumption of the condition of Russia's Nuclear Arsenal. Considering the condition of their conventional forces I kind of shudder to think of what a horror story that is.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think they might want to focus on their invasion in ukraine before they start a war with nato. It seems like it would be imprudent to launch the latter if you cant manage the former. Then again, it wouldn't be the first time vlad made a boo-boo. Handily exposing the batshit mental knots russian apologists tie themselves into.

"Russia is a rational actor pursuing it's legitimate interests in ukraine, and if people don't stop meddling they'll turn the earth to glass!"

[Fake Messiah]

What do you know, Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, who constantly demands men go to die in Ukraine and threatens NATO, has his son just signing with a modeling agency in London, and not with the Russian army to go to Ukraine.

https://www.perild.com/2023/02/12/nails-...-solovyov/

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Slavoj Žižek recently had an interesting opinion piece on what is going on in Russia.

The Russian state’s ideological madness and reversion to warlordism have been abetted by a religious fundamentalism that openly celebrates death in the name of achieving a god-like status. As Vladimir Putin’s propagandists are telling Russians, “Life is overrated.”

Rumors are flying about veiled jockeying within Russia over who will replace President Vladimir Putin, now that his war of aggression in Ukraine has gone so disastrously wrong. Such a struggle cannot fail to expose the morbid pathologies of Russian politics. The key players are not organized political parties but rather gangs of oligarchs who preside over various informal nodes of power.

This explains why Russia’s most effective military force on the front line in Ukraine, the mercenary Wagner Group, is not even a part of the Russian army. Russia is now a land of warlords, something one generally associates with rogue and failed states. Its current and aspiring leaders are trafficking in fever dreams of battlefield glory. Implicit in this martial culture is a Hobbesian view of life as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short – and increasingly cheap.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commen...ek-2023-02