Russian lawmakers authorize Putin to use military force outside the country

[Labster]

I have the feeling that an actual genocide comes too close to everyone's red lines for comfort.  This is more like: the killings will continue until morale improves.  Russian leaders don't know what to do when people hate them more than they fear them, so they are just trying more violence because that always worked before.

I mean, Russians and Ukranians are almost the same people.  That would be like, say, the English genociding the Irish.  Okay, bad example.  More like the Germans and the Poles... not them either.  Okay, Ukranian and Russian are almost the same language, so like say from the same language group like Jews and Arabs.  Okay, you know what?  Never mind.  The Ukranians are screwed.

Oh, and speaking of red lines, I'm just going to say it: I don't feel like Hungary should be in NATO.  I wouldn't be willing to send anyone else to defend their country, and I certainly wouldn't be willing to start nuclear war over an attack on Hungary.  They don't want to be part of Europe or the West in general, so maybe they should find some other friends.

[Dartz]

Irish Government arranged a self-congratulatory video call with Zalensky earlier last month. It's supposed to happen tomorrow.


Those suit-wearers think it's going to go well, don't they? Well, they'll be in for a fucking surprise. I doubt they actually give many shits about suffering in general - they sure don't here.

[Dartz]

There really is no pithy one liner for this. Russia is basically starting it's own holocaust

I mean, yeah - those mobile Crematoria that short up a few weeks back which were actually supposed to be for Rubbish disposal and not incinerating the dead? Mariupol city council have said they're being used for exactly what people feared they would be.

Russia basically spat this out as a manifesto through RIA - something that is so detached from reality that it can be summarised as 'They're all Nazis and need to be punished and only we can do it'. I can't even tell if it's because of a skewed translation or what, but it physcially hurts to read in a way that even Mein Kampf doesn't.

From a a sublte and inexorable subversion of the state, through short victorious war, to mass slaughter and genocide when that ran into the buzz-saw of reality.

Well...uh....guess it happened again I guess.

----

To my eternal dissapointment the suit-wearers in government got their expected head-pats. Fuck's sake.

That said Clare Daly and Mick Wallace once again have made complete fools of us in front of real countries.

[Labster]

That thing in the RIA seems to be either a bad translation, or something written with a whole lot of excessive jargon to make your mind shut down.  I can't tell you which without knowing Russian.  They include fact check statements in there but honestly every paragraph should just have "(Fact check: this is completely wrong and the author should feel bad for writing it.)".

A particular feature of Nazified Ukraine is its amorphousness and ambivalentness, which allows for the masking of Nazism as a desire to move towards an “independent” and “European” (Western and pro-American) path of development, (in reality - towards degradation), while insisting that Ukraine “doesn’t have any Nazism, only private and singular excesses.”

Ah, sentence structure.  Also, fascism is apparently amorphous and ambivalent?  If you read that essay on Ur-Fascism I posted earlier you'll note that fascism is somewhat amorphic because every society implements it different -- certainly the Italian fascists relation to the monarchy is an example -- but the blackshirts were hardly amorphous.  Also: ambivalent Nazis, lol.  "Jews, meh, whatever."  Meanwhile Russia is finding Jews Nazis behind every corner seems pretty fascist.

I'm not sure if this represents the actual Kremlin position or they're just letting propagandists have a field day here.  But it calls for the "liquidation" of the Ukrainian political class, and after that mass murder is done, also enslave the collaborators (oh sorry they say "engaging them in forced labor to repair destroyed infrastructure as part of their punishment for Nazi activities (for those that wouldn’t be sentenced to death or imprisonment)").  And of course have 25 years of purges.  And integrate Ukraine (which has only ever been a fascist identity) back into Russia, except for the Catholic part in the west which obviously could never be part of Russia and must be continually watched for danger.  Honestly there's a whole lot crazier stuff in there, but there's also big words to make them seem smart.

It also seems to answer the question of will the refugees taken east be allowed to leave Russia.  The answer seems to be "they are all Russian citizens and they can return to their homes in Little Russia when we remove all the Nazis."

There was also the moment yesterday where Zelensky addressed the UN Security Council, and asked where the security was.  His suggestions -- either give Russia the boot, or just dissolve the council.  I mean, sure, why not?  But really, no.  The criticism is valid.  The UN can create security sometimes, usually too late.  But a great power can just do whatever the fuck it wants and veto anything against it.  We have all of the international laws that simply do not apply to five countries.  Maybe we need veto reform.  It worked cool in SMAC when a veto required a second no vote, maybe we can do that?  I realize that the vetoes are just a legal representation of nuclear weapons, but can we really pretend there is such a thing as international law if that's the case?

Anyway, people are slowly starving to death in Mariupol.  Humanitarian corridors turned out to be an April Fools joke.  I'd not be surprised to see 100k civilians killed there in the next few weeks.  Those crematory vans will be awfully busy.

[Bob Schroeck]

- Russia suspended from UN Human Rights Council
- Pink Floyd re-forms to support Ukraine, samples Ukrainian musician for their new single
- Russia finally admits it's actually taken "significant losses"

[Dartz]

From the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Files

"In a particularly ill-advised action, a Russian soldier from a chemical, biological and nuclear protection unit picked up a source of cobalt-60 at one waste storage site with his bare hands, exposing himself to so much radiation in a few seconds that it went off the scales of a Geiger counter, Mr. Simyonov said. It was not clear what happened to the man, he said."

These things normally have 'Drop and Run' printed on the side of them. This shit is the doomsday bomb shit. Clad a nuclear weapon in cobalt and end all life on earth shit.

He's fucked. Along with anyone who was within a fart's stink of him. If he's not dead already, he will be very, very soon.

[hazard]

Maybe, maybe not.

The hand's most likely a write off though, and I'm not so sure about the rest of him being in any decent state.

[Bob Schroeck]

Russia has defaulted on its foreign debt, according to Standard & Poor's.

[Labster]

48 days into a 48 hour war:

-- People in Mariupol given option to evacuate into Russia
-- No other options are given
-- Technically still a choice: one that Russia made
-- Evacuation process in Russia basically goes like this:
---- Russian soldiers tell you that you are leaving, you walk to a bus
---- When you arrive, you get the full interrogation process
------ Take photos, fingerprints, and palm prints to identify people
------ Take off all your clothes
------ No gas chambers, we just want to check you for pro-Ukranian tattoos (theoretically Azov Battalion)
------ Unlock your cell phone, we need a copy of your contact list and social media friends.
---- Did you bring documentation?  If so, you can move more freely into Russia.  If not, you get sent East to camps.  Hope you bring documentation for your children, otherwise you're getting separated.
---- Do you have friends or family in Russia?  Cool!  Here's (roughly) a hundred bucks to get there.  Good luck!  (You can also buy train tickets to Finland and the Baltics.)
---- Otherwise you'll get bussed to a random destination.
-- One thing that strikes me about it is that once you get past the initial military screening, people seem to treat refugees pretty well.  Presumably, they buy into the propaganda that these are fellow Russians escaping a brutal regime.  We're not really sure how many people are being detained in that screening process.
-- The Russian military treats people atrociously
-- Lots of atrocities
-- Russia has abandoned the siege of Kiev; all forces seem to have left the area (except mines, of course)
-- Mines are every where.  Mines in cars, mines on doors, mines in bars, mines on floors, mines in fields, mines on roads, mines with yields, mines on toads.
-- Mass graves found in several villages and smaller cities surrounding Kiev: Buzova, Bucha, Irpin, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk and probably tons of other places I've never heard of
-- In Mariupol, 21000 civilians dead so far.  Lots more to go.
-- Were there chemical weapons in Mariupol?  Magic 8-ball: Reply hazy, but will dissipate soon.
-- Fighting intensifies in the Donbas, Mariupol, Kharkiv -- all in the East.  Russia can only manage one front.
-- Quick, Japan, take back the Kurils while they're distracted!
-- Russia names new top general, Alexander Dvornikov, six weeks in.  This guy has lots of experience killing civilians in Syria, and will presumably use it to kill civilians in Ukraine.
-- About 60 people killed in a train station bombing.  I mean, you could bomb the tracks and also achieve the objective, but why not kill a bunch of civilians why you're at it?
-- Losses of 20000 to the Russian Army, more than in Afghanistan and Chechnya.
-- Russian Army trying to recall people to service discharged up to a decade ago
-- Russia attempting to recruit Transnistrians to their army.
-- Anyone willing to die for the cause?  We already had a lot of people die for the cause, so we need more.
-- If you don't know anything about Transnistria, it's basically the Ukraine situation as of January, reproduced in miniature in Moldova.  There are Russian brigades inside of Moldova on Ukraine's west flank, probably trying not to draw attention to themselves so Ukraine doesn't have an excuse to wipe them out.
-- Heavy rain is in the forecast, will likely force Russians out of the mud.  Bayraktar looking forward to seeing you on the roads, Russians.
-- Russian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk captured attempting to escape from Ukraine in a Ukrainian army uniform, after weeks in hiding.  He is the head of Ukraine's largest opposition party, which was suspended a couple weeks back.  Putin is his daughter's godfather.
-- Dutch seize 20 yachts in drydock, 14 of which are still under construction.  Why so many yachts?  Are they how Russians measure dick size?
-- Biden makes analogy which indirectly calls this a genocide.
-- Government spokesmen immediately clarify he didn't mean it and it's not a change in US policy
-- Biden clarifies that yes, it does appear to be a genocide, but he'll let the lawyers decide for sure
-- Facepalming at the State Department
-- @ZelenskyyUa - "True words of a true leader @POTUS. Calling things by their names is essential to stand up to evil." (P.S. send more weapons)
-- There are two types of genocide: the first is the kill 'em all form the Nazis used, and the second is the use of violence to compel people to join the your culture and renounce a previous culture.  It's obviously the second kind, just like the US and Canada's genocide of the natives.
-- Peace talks going nowhere fast, literally no one surprised
-- German President Steinmeier declared persona non grata by Ukraine
-- Europeans stop buying coal from Russia (really? this should have happened 20 years ago)
-- Europeans still filling their cars with Treblinker fluid
-- Russian gas still flowing to Europe faster than gas through an Auschwitz shower head
-- Basically Europeans are bankrolling atrocities because of the economy
-- A dozen cars drive down the M50 in Ireland with big Z's on the side, and Russian flags flying.  Sunday drivers!
-- Finland looks likely to join NATO in the next couple of months.  Welcome, friends!

[Norgarth]

Beau of the 5th Column - Let's Talk about questions on Russia's failure...

[robkelk]

Interview with Alexander Rodnyansky, economic adviser to Ukrainian President Zelensky

In which he answers various questions, including "As I understand it, there are four major pipelines that deliver Russian gas to other parts of Europe, one of which passes through Ukraine. Why doesn't Ukraine simply shut it down?"

[Dartz]

Remember the whole 'Russian Warship, Go Fuck yourself!' episode.

It's been sunk



There was a momentary edit-war on wikipedia, flicking between 'Sunk', 'On Fire' or 'In operation'

Russian news has now confirmed it. Crew evacuated. Ammunition exploded due to fire onboard.

Possible got a little too close to the coast, and got plinked by a Neptune missile or two.

[Labster]

I like how the news basically turned into a game of Battleship with a sore loser kid.

"B6."

"Nothing there."

"No, it has to be there! There's nowhere else it can be."

"Nuh-uh"

Looks behind screen, "See, we hit your battleship."

"No, that ship was already on fire. See that white peg in it? It's ours."

"So I didn't sink it, because your own people sunk it?"

"Yeah, you're terrible at this game!"

"So basically the Russian warship decided to go fuck itself like we asked."

"No, wait!"

[Dartz]

Tass link

The Ministry of Defense reported that the cruiser "Moskva" sank while towing Its crew was evacuated to the ships of the Black Sea Fleet in the area.

I'm reminded of the reaction in the Soviet Union to the unusual admissions around the Chernobyl disaster.

How much worse is it, if this is what they're admitting?


Just when we wonder how deep the failure can get. How deep is the Black Sea?

[hazard]

Just when we wonder how deep the failure can get. How deep is the Black Sea?

Depends on where it sank. It can get a couple of kilometers deep.

[Labster]

They probably had coronavirus on the ship, and are now in Davy Jones' lockdown.

-- Russian economy more under water than warship
-- Sweden will reveal new defense plan in May, unless Finland does it first and then they'll release it early.
-- Sweden's PM suggests they will likely join NATO by June, a day after Finland said something similar
-- Russian reaction predictably belligerent
-- Dmitry Medvedev says, ominously: "There can be no more talk of any nuclear-free status for the Baltic — the balance must be restored!"
-- Lithuania PM: "Nothing new."  Kalininigrad already full of nukes
-- Belarus to join Ukraine war any day now
-- International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan declares, "Ukraine is a crime scene."  Hope Russia decides not to trespass in the crime scene.
-- Russians very upset that Ukraine attacked inside of Russia.  Or did it?  Either way, it's definitely an excuse for more war crimes, if not a cromulent one.
-- Turkey trying to get the Presidents to negotiate in person
-- Russia says that Putin will come in person as soon as Ukraine is ready to sign the surrender
-- United States running low on Javelin missiles, enough to make defense peeps nervous.  It will take 3-4 years to replace what we just gave Ukraine for free.
-- US sending helicopters and howitzers to help fight in the Donbas steppes
-- 36th Marines link up with Azov Regiment in Mariupol, thanks to bravery, functional C&C
-- Roughly 180k citizens of Mariupol still in war zone without utilities


This is a real thing I saw on CNN.

[robkelk]

This is a real thing I saw on CNN.

First-day covers are available, too, according to ITV.



And, yes, one can use the stamps to mail letters to Russia. I doubt they'd get past the border, though.

[Norgarth]

Beau of the Fifth Column - Let's talk about the Moskva...

[Labster]

-- Russia demands surrender of Mariupol, for like the tenth time, by Sunday morning
-- Dawn passes with no surrender, for like the tenth time
-- Russian victory parade still planned for May 9.  Don't these people know about deadlines?
-- Speaking of dead, they're still finding dead bodies everywhere still
-- UN expects 5 million Ukranians are now homeless, due to sudden lack of house

'Fortress in a city': Ukrainians cling on at steel plant in MariupolThe 36th Ukranian Marines have managed to Azov Regiment, which are defending the fortress of Mariupol: Azovstal, the Azov Steel plant.  It really is a fortress, with square miles of heavy buildings, machinery, and of course kilometers of tunnels.  This is the single most valuable area on the Sea of Azov, and also the most defensible.  If any place gets hit by a tactical nuclear weapon in this war, it's here -- will Russian frustration outweigh Russian greed?

One thing I've been thinking about lately is the interactions behind the sinking of the Moksva.  First of all, It's also the first warship to sink in 40 years, since the General Belgrano sunk in the Falklands War. The Moskva sunk even despite carrying a piece of the True Cross.  Perhaps the flame of the Holy Spirit got too close to the ammunition?  But also, the Russian navy seems to want to blame everyone but Ukraine for sinking the ship.  A fire broke out, then it spread to ammunition placed in the wrong place, then the tug boats couldn't get it back in a stormy sea (fact check: calm sea).  So really it was the fault of those stupid conscripts.

This is really interesting to me sociologically.  Because in America, claiming that the enemy got us would be the gut reaction -- the safest, because it outsourced the harm to the enemy.  But somehow, Ukraine is full of big scary Nazis who also can't possibly sink a ship because they're weaklings.  And so it becomes safer to say that it was your own people's incompetence.  From our military perspective, the implications are profoundly worse, because it means your navy (and army) are simply not prepared for the war they're already in -- and preparation is entirely in your control in a war of choice.  Obviously Russian military culture assumes a level of incompetence that makes it, well, bad at being a modern army.

This preparation gap extends to the very basics: trucks. What images of Russian trucks say about its military's struggles in Ukraine.  Mainly, they say Russia is bad at logistics.  Tires have to be deflated to go over rough roads, but the tires are in such bad shape that deflating cause them to crack.  Probably from corruption.  Conscripts gather round to load the ammo into a truck, then another group gathers to unload the ammo.  No forklifts are used, and everything is arranged manually, so it takes forever.  Since the trucks keep breaking down, they're getting civilian trucks, which aren't built to handle rough roads at all.  Anyway I guess the conscripts can walk.

So why is Ukraine different?  The Secret of Ukraine’s Military Success: Years of NATO Training (WSJ).  So it turns out that we've spent the last eight years training the folks fighting Russians -- and getting intel back on what it is like to fight Russians.  In 2016, Ukraine and Russia had fundamentally the same army, basically a Stalin-era army.  Both Poroshenko and Zelensky supported the effort to reform the military, and reform it they did.  They introduced things like civilian oversight of the military, and apprently, NCOs.  Because no one ever thought to give any authority to someone who wasn't an officer in the Soviet days.  Fighting Russians with Western doctrine and weapons (some anyway) is enough to let a small force repel a much larger one.  Meanwhile the Russians are back in the 1800s with top down command, the classic raping & pillaging combo, and atrocities to suppress the locals.

I'm starting to feel like the protracted war predicted in the beginning is not going to unfold.  Europe and the US seem comfortable sending heavy weapons to Ukraine now, and it looks like Ukraine is going to hold a substantial portion of its land without problem.  Zelensky has been saying that the more atrocities he sees the other side committed, the less he wants to seek peace with Russia.  I'm starting to wonder if WWI style stalemate is still plausible.  Russian infantry is barely mechanized, and Ukraine can't really project power beyond its border.

[LynnInDenver]

Here you go, logistics aren't the only place corruption has impacted the Russian military... https://petapixel.com/2022/04/11/ukraine...lr-inside/

Yes, an old, discontinued "prosumer" grade camera being used for the main sensor on a drone costing $100,000 USD. And held in with a hook 'n' loop strap, which implies they can plug in whatever camera they could buy in cheap lots on eBay or seize as contraband from a would-be citizen journalist. Also, a water bottle for a fuel tank, which leads to serious questions about long-term tank integrity and what it means for the drone's long-term reliability. It's like the shell of the drone is the ONLY thing military grade on that thing, and even then likely only just enough to pass a surface inspection by purchasing brass. Very much feels like a "get the cost down as LOW as possible so I can line my pockets better" cost cutting.

[Dartz]

The DSLR is a fairly decent imaging system. The 50mm F1.8 STM lens is light and is a good optic. The battery life is tolerable. Consumer optics are available *everywhere* and you can pop a new one in, rather than waiting for specialist parts from Raytheon or shit like that. IT just needs the right carrier

It's basically a model aircraft hull with a DSLR in the front and a fancy paintjob. The only thing technically wrong with that is the price. If it wasn't 100k a pop, I'd call it fairly clever - especially if it's meant to be disposable

[hazard]

Re: Moskva. Russia cannot admit in public that the Ukrainians sank the ship without acknowledging that the Ukrainians remain a threat to Russia, and acknowledging the Ukrainians remain a threat to Russia when the Special Operation to Denazify Ukraine is going so excellently and well will cast doubt on the Russian central government and its policies, along with inflaming further anti special operation sentiment (because it can't be anti-war sentiment if it's not a war).

Re: Military organization. Russia has quite possibly never had an NCO corps in the first place. This is part of the reason why the Russian military and the Soviet military were so top heavy at all times, because what the West delegates to sergeants, specialists and corporals instead a warrant officer or commissioned officer has to deal with. There is also tremendous emphasis on following orders no matter what, which makes them slow and sluggish to respond to threats, especially if the local officer in charge gets knocked out. Yes, even if a major gets hit and his captains now have to figure out what to do, despite all of them having a degree of command authority over their own forces. There are no NCOs kicking men into positions and formation while the officers work out how to handle the situation.

[LynnInDenver]

The DSLR is a fairly decent imaging system. The 50mm F1.8 STM lens is light and is a good optic. The battery life is tolerable. Consumer optics are available *everywhere* and you can pop a new one in, rather than waiting for specialist parts from Raytheon or shit like that. IT just needs the right carrier

It's basically a model aircraft hull with a DSLR in the front and a fancy paintjob. The only thing technically wrong with that is the price. If it wasn't 100k a pop, I'd call it fairly clever - especially if it's meant to be disposable

Yeah, disposable maybe... but it's really expensive and looks much more like the sort of thing that you'd expect insurgents to cobble together. The "fuel tank" is probably the worst aspect... I know full well that the plastic used in water bottles is not Fuel Rated. As in, the range of fuel that the engine will happily drink that won't melt the bottle is very, very narrow, if non existent... and any that melt the bottle will A: contaminate the fuel going to the engine and B: will eventually cause it to leak, and the fuel is likely to wind up in the electronics and reduce the operational time considerably.

[robkelk]

Explosions in Lviv, confirmed by third parties.

Lviv is approximately 80km from the Polish border.

[robkelk]

AP: Putin calls off plans to storm the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol

Putin's still claiming victory, though.