Russian invasion of Ukraine

[Raptor]

I just need to get this off of my chest.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a complete and utter waste of lives, driven by Putin’s rampant paranoia and sense of lost prestige and pride. He and the Kremlin will justify this by blaming NATO and the US, but listening to Putin’s addresses before the invasion, it’s clear that his primary motivation is the subjugation Ukraine and stopping its drift away from Russian influence. Actual concerns about NATO/US are a distant second. Rather than diversifying his economy and political reforms to try to strengthen ties, he chose military aggression. It’s a blatant attack on a sovereign nation, and a sizable part of the Russian troops probably don’t even buy into the Kremlin’s arguments.

Russia is a country of enormous potential. They produced some of the finest scientists, engineers, composers, artists, etc. And Putin is squandering all of that and engages in a pointless exercise of human cruelty. He is a fascist dictator content with reducing towns and cities to rubble and killing indiscriminately, as long as he can claim to rule over that rubble and look “strong”.

Now, I'm currently a US Marine. I'm watching these indiscriminate attacks unfold in front of my eyes with utter disgust. If it weren't for Putin's nuclear weapons, I'd want to go in, crush his army, and put an end to this atrocity. All the unnecessary bloodshed, all the innocent lives lost. The scientists, mathematicians, artists, and everyday people who must side aside their craft and lives to defend their homeland, many dying in the process.

Frankly, I feel emotionally exhausted; to see a modern fascist dictator waging a war of aggression in the 21st century. Even though this is occurring thousands of miles away, it pains me that there isn't more that we can do, because of Putin's nuclear threats. On a slightly more personal side, while I was at TBS, two international student officers were from the Ukrainian Armed Forces and were just a few classes behind mine.

To be clear, I'm not going to excuse the foreign policy blunders of the US in the Middle East; certainly we invaded Iraq for spurious reasons, and our occupation was riddled with errors. But Putin's war to impose his authoritarian will on a democratic neighbor is evil. Now, "evil" is somewhat of a simplistic word, but I struggle to find a more nuanced alternative. And it pains me that defending Ukraine is a fight that's worth fighting for, and yet for all of our unparalleled military might, we're unable to do more due to Putin's nuclear weapons.

There's a monologue by astronomer and physicist Carl Sagan touches me deeply. It's called the Pale Blue Dot, and it's a reference to a picture that the Voyager 1 probe took of our Earth as it speed past Saturn.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

 

[Ja'k Dawsiin]

i support Ukraine

 

[Raptor]

https://youtu.be/fyOpp-rVv6A

Kenya’s ambassador to the UN summarizes how we as humanity should move forward.

This situation echoes our history. Kenya and almost every African country was birthed by the ending of empire. Our borders were not of our own drawing. They were drawn in the distant colonial metropoles of London, Paris and Lisbon, with no regard for the ancient nations that they cleaved apart.

Today, across the border of every single African country, live our countrymen with whom we share deep historical, cultural and linguistic bonds.

At independence, had we chosen to pursue states on the basis of ethnic, racial or religious homogeneity, we would still be waging bloody wars these many decades later.

Instead, we agreed that we would settle for the borders that we inherited, but we would still pursue continental political, economic and legal integration. Rather than form nations that looked ever backward into history with a dangerous nostalgia, we chose to look forward to a greatness none of our many nations and peoples had ever known.

We chose to follow the rules of the Organisation of African Unity and the United Nations charter, not because our borders satisfied us, but because we wanted something greater, forged in peace.

We believe that all states formed from empires that have collapsed or retreated have many peoples in them yearning for integration with peoples in neighboring states. This is normal and understandable. After all, who does not want to be joined to their brethren and to make common purpose with them?

However, Kenya rejects such a yearning from being pursued by force. We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression.

We rejected irredentism and expansionism on any basis, including racial, ethnic, religious or cultural factors. We reject it again today.

Kenya registers its strong concern and opposition to the recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states. We further strongly condemn the trend in the last few decades of powerful states, including members of this Security Council, breaching international law with little regard.

Multilateralism lies on its deathbed tonight. It has been assaulted today as it as it has been by other powerful states in the recent past.

We call on all members to rally behind the Secretary-General in asking him to rally us all to the standard that defends multilateralism. We also call on him to bring his good offices to bear to help the concerned parties resolve this situation by peaceful means.

Let me conclude, Mr. President, by reaffirming Kenya's respect for the territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.

 

[Ja'k Dawsiin]

the evil empire continues to lose vehicles in Ukraine. at last count through open source information (OSI) the soviets russians have lost over 4,300 vehicles of all types in 60 days of war, tanks, apc, artillery, supply trucks, bridge equipment, command vehicles, radar/EW equipment, planes, helicopters, drones, and various other gear. Ukraine is a literal graveyard of russian warsaw pact garbage and roughly 20,000 russian casualties. sheer madness, stupidity, and the barbarians deserve to all burn in hades for the war crimes they have committed, and which are very documented in this unprovoked war.

 

[Raptor]

Sadly, I think this war has dark implications of the future of nuclear deterrence. Unless you're in an organization like NATO, many regimes may see this as proof that nuclear weapons are key to their survival, and we may see a proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Furthermore, this is the first time in history where the threat of nuclear weapons has been used to support an outright war of conquest; Putin blatantly wants to deny Ukrainian sovereignty. I don't know what the likelihood is, but it's possible that as the Russian conventional forces continue to perform poorly and suffer from attrition, Putin may be desperate enough to employ tactical "battlefield" nuclear weapons. This will be an especially difficult situation because in terms of escalation of force, I don't think we can really respond to a tactical nuclear weapon with strategic ones. As much as I hate to say it, I think the current situation lends credence to the concept of "flexible deterrence", and our own low-yield tactical weapons, i.e. B61-12 (something I had been lukewarm about). In fact, I've always had a disdain for nuclear weapons in principle, but I think the reality of the current situation is impossible to ignore.

Moreover, while Putin's military has shown some rather dismal performance, he has actually managed to largely consolidate public support for the war in Russia. It's likely that Russia's offensive potential will be exhausted once the Donbas offensive concludes, and if Putin doesn't achieve whatever strategic goals he has in mind, he could declare a general state of war and a national mobilization. One thing he has consistently shown is his penchant for doubling down, and given the multitude of humiliations that his military has faced, from defeat of his forces around Kiev/Kyiv, to the loss of the missile cruiser Moskva, it's hard to see him simply accepting this kind of loss. This can make the war extremely ugly, and the potential consequences rather terrifying.

This then presents a rather difficult dilemma; how can we provide Russia with enough of a diplomatic off-ramp, while also minimizing what he can achieve militarily? It's difficult to read what Putin's conditions for "victory" are, but we have to prepare for the possibility of confronting a ultra-nationalistic and reckless Russia in the near future.

This is not the future I want to live in, but I think we have to confront the reality of the situation and carefully navigate how we want to survive in a much more dangerous world.

When I first watched Avatar, the message of environmentalism and the long term sustainability of our planet resonated with me; for me, it was one of the great challenges of the world that humanity must tackle. Today, that is still very much the case, but now there is the threat of nuclear war by an imperialist aggressor in the form of Putin (and Xi) that we must also contend with. These are dark times that we must navigate ahead.

 

[Ja'k Dawsiin]

i find it amusing that UA Foreign Legion volunteer fighters are writing 'Wolverines' on wrecked russian vehicles, and finishing the letter Z with Zelensky was here. lol

 

[Raptor]

I also saw Ukrainian forces painted "Fury" on the gun barrel of a captured T-80BVM. Rather amusing that they're taking American cinema culture to heart.

 

[Ja'k Dawsiin]