Russian lawmakers authorize Putin to use military force outside the country

[Dartz]

Video of Russian General before getting pwned.


They've now lost eleven of them too....


All the competents are gone. It's all just meat for the guns now. Being given bandages manufactured in 1957 either tells you something about how Russia sees its soldiers -- or how little equipment they have left. They've also been obviously re-issuing 'used' body armour --- that obviously didn't help it's previous owner and was still covered in their 'stains'.

Given you can still buy Ratnik shit on eBay new in box....


T-62's have entered the field. The ammunition for the guns is unique -- and hasn't been made since the mid 80's.

[Labster]

First, let's see the very moment that Zelensky found out Ukraine was given candidate status to the European Union:



For quick updates, because I haven't been watching the war so closely:


-- Ukraine has lost and fully withdrawn from Sieverodonetsk, after inflicting a lot of damage along the way
-- I still feel like the offensive culminated there, because Russians had to invest so much of their forces to take one city.
-- Sieverodonetsk had the most political importance to Russia, being the last major city in the Donetsk province.
-- Ukraine still advancing on Kherson, which has more military and economic importance.
-- Kherson will "vote" to join Russia sometime in the next six months
-- Mostly the war is turning into a heavy artillery fight with trenches and high attrition. Lots of comparisons are being made to both of the World Wars.
-- Russia strikes shopping mall with a missile, 18 dead. War on Christmas has come early this year.
-- If Ukraine attempts to take Crimea, Russia will interpret it as a declaration of war. No, really, someone said that.
-- Turkey agrees to NATO accession for Sweden and Finland
-- Turkey asks for about 30 Kurdish "terrorists" to be deported back to Turkey from Sweden and Finland
-- Everyone gets what they want (except Kurdish self-rule)
-- The real prize here is Gotland, with its central position, turns the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.
-- Syria recognizes the legitimacy and freedom of the new republics of Luhansk and Donetsk. I'd love to have a map or a globe with those countries printed on it, just as a collectable.
-- If there are shortages in gas, Britain is planning to shut off the gas pipelines to Europe. <Insert historical reference here>
-- You can recognize the Russians fighting for Ukraine by the variant Russian flag they wear. One blue stripe on a white field -- removing the blood red that needs to be removed from their country.

[hazard]

Ukraine has not lost the battle for Sieverodonetsk. Ukraine's strategy for Sieverodonetsk was the same as it has been in Kyiv and Kharkiv; force Russia to invest heavily in taking the city, trade manpower and materials as favourably to Ukraine as possible, and let the Russians extent their supply lines in the process until the attacking force is worn down, and their supply lines exposed. Everything is about buying time, slowing the Russian advance, and ceding territory to maintain their own manpower.

Sieverodonetsk is a city in the Luhansk province, actually.

It looks like the Russians were trying to strike a factory with a pair of missiles, which produced war relevant materials. In the Soviet days. It hasn't done so since the 90's, and is currently producing road building equipment.

[Norgarth]

Beau of the Fifth Column - let's talk about an update on Ukraine and Russia...

[robkelk]

Earlier this week, Canada approved the export of six gas turbines to Germany in order to have them installed in a Russian pipeline.

Today, Conservative and NDP members of the Commons standing foreign affairs committee have already called Cabinet ministers to appear before the committee to explain why Canada is breaching the sanctions against Russia.

For our American readers, this is the equivalent of Mitch McConnell and Bernie Sanders agreeing on something political in public.

This is how politics is supposed to work, folks - set aside partisan differences to serve the public interest.

[Dartz]

Germany can't function without gas. They basically built their entire economy on cheap gas. And now they're kinda fucked.

And while they were quite happy to fucking pontificate about how the PIGs had to take the financial pain for 'their actions' a decade ago, they're singing a different tune now the shoes on the other foot and Dieter might have to risk his second fucking Porsche. They can fuck right off.


Someone needs to drop a rocket on the gaslines and force them to rip the plaster off before winter arrives.

[Labster]

There are really four problems in Germany:

1. Gas in electrical generation.  This one's easy, as the electrons are fungible and they have already been working towards green power.
2. Gas in heating.  This one needs infrastructure changes, but can make cheap incremental progress with heat pumps and the like.
3. Petrol in cars.  Same as above, but progress is more expensive, though smaller volume is easier to make up with tankers.
4. Gas in industrial processes.  Would take infrastructure changes that take sections of the economy offline.

Even a climatologist like me worries about the idea of ripping the bandage off.  I like the idea of hard date targets for abandoning fossil fuel use in specific industries.  But that doesn't change the fact that Germany is paying for a genocide this time around.  But most Germans would rather support Ukraine than see energy prices drop.  Except AfD, naturally.

In other news, the European Space Agency has kicked Roscosmos out of the club, and is no longer using a Russian launch vehicle for the ExoMars rover.  This will cause them to completely miss the next launch window.  Russia retaliated by saying they will not use the European robot arm on the space station.  Since this is the only arm to service the Russian modules, it's more of a foot-gun.  Still, we should expect Russian soldiers to know how to load vehicles by hand, since the Russian army seems to like to load artillery shells one at a time into trucks rented from U-Haul.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has no problem with rockets going to Russia to say "Hi, Mars!"  Oh wait, that's HIMARS.  Well, close enough.  I'm not sure how well they're working, but HIMARS has already been beatified, and is looking to join Saint Javelin soon.

Russia seems to be using its missiles to attack mostly civilian targets, while Ukraine uses its to attack ammunition depots and kill more Orcish generals.  I guess if the V1 rockets worked well enough for Germany to end the war, maybe a rocket terror strategy will work well here too?  Russia hasn't been designated a terrorist state, but the US State Department has issued a travel advisory to avoid all events where large numbers of people gather in all parts of Ukraine, as they may be targeted by rockets.  So, you know, not a terrorist state but just needing the exact same warning as we give countries with terrorists.  Got it.

Russia seems most likely to be out of the Paris 2024 Olympics.  This isn't really from the top -- almost all of the international athletic federations have prohibited Russians and Belarusians from from participating.  But they could still qualify in tennis, judo, and cycling!  Not sure why those three.  But they'd still need to win enough competitions to qualify.  For a country that has twice started a war during the Olympic truce in the past decade, and has a repeated, endemic, state-sponsored doping problem, it's not hard to understand why we ended up here.

-- Estonia also buying HIMARS missile system
-- Video of Ukrainian fighter shooting down a cruise missile.  Fighter jets doing a lot of air defense these days
-- Russian denazification effort continues to concentrate on areas of Ukraine rich in natural gas resources
-- EU orders Lithuania  to allow transport of goods to Kaliningrad enclave
-- Eiffel Tower lit up in Ukrainian colors for Bastille Day
-- Ukrainians the only ones sad that Boris Johnson is leaving office
-- Russia seems to like making large, inflammable ammunition depots near rail
-- HIMARS also likes large, inflammable ammunition depots
-- Russia in an "operational pause" after generals, supply depots explode
-- NASA fire detection satellites show a lot less pixels emitting a lot of infrared light after HIMARS arrived
-- Ukraine still advancing in Kherson
-- Russian(Soviet) military doctrine includes lots and lots of artillery.  But NATO artillery arriving in Ukraine has 10km more range than Russian artillery. (ignore the putin-bot in the comments section) Soviet era guns also don't come equipped with GPS.
-- But Russia can just take out the guns with its air superi... never mind.
-- Patron still extremely cute

[Labster]

--  Russia’s Invasion Is Making Ukraine More Democratic
-- Russia Says It’s Losing Because Ukraine Has Experimental Mutant Troops Created in Secret Biolabs
-- Ukrainian Parliament to vote on recognizing the independence of Chechnya, because turnabout is fair play
-- The US House of Representatives voted for NATO accession for the Norsemen, but this is purely advisory because treaty ratification belongs to the Senate.  But it was useful, because these traitors voted no; a list of usual suspects if I ever saw one:

    Andy Biggs (AZ)
    Dan Bishop (NC)
    Lauren Boebert (CO)
    Madison Cawthorn (NC)
    Ben Cline (VA)
    Michael Cloud (TX)
    Warren Davidson (OH)
    Matt Gaetz (FL)
    Bob Good (OH)
    Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA)
    H. Morgan Griffith (VA)
    Thomas Massie (KY)
    Tom McClintock (CA)
    Mary E. Miller (IL)
    Ralph Norman (SC)
    Matthew M. Rosendale Sr. (MT)
    Chip Roy (TX)
    Jefferson Van Drew (NJ)

-- Several countries have already ratified the accession, though.  Turkey still whining about freedom fighters they want to have killed in exchange for joining NATO.
-- Ukrainian morale remains high.  A video of soldiers having fun.
-- Russian ambassador invites North Koreans to help rebuild the Donbass
-- Because Ukraine keeps bombing Russian ammo dumps, Russians decide to store ammo in a nuclear power plant for safety.

[Bob Schroeck]

-- Russia Says It’s Losing Because Ukraine Has Experimental Mutant Troops Created in Secret Biolabs

Kind of shows how distant the Russian government is from the real world. Nobody ever believed this kind of crap from the old Soviet Union -- do they really believe anyone will believe it today? Or that if it were true, they wouldn't be rushing to secretly create their own "super soldiers" instead of whining publicly about Ukraine's unfair advantage?

[hazard]

The Russian government wants to maintain the obedience of the population, and it's important to remember that the point isn't that it is believed.

The point is that people say they believe it. Forcing people to admit that they believe something they know is untrue is as much another way to enforce the government's control of the population as anything else.

[Labster]

I don't know.  What you're saying sounds right, but then I think about how they've gotten us liberals mostly convinced that somehow a lab leak didn't happen and is totally unscientific as a theory, and it's just coincidental that a novel coronavirus from 500 miles south just happened to appear in the same city as a coronavirus research institute with furin cleavages just right to infect humans. People actually start to believe the bullshit.

Though this kind of thing has been done for thousands of years: portraying the enemy as monstrously strong means more glory if you win, gives you an excuse if you lose, and dehumanizes the enemy in the meantime.

---

Anyway, it does rather feel like it's the turning point in the war.  I'm not sure how logical it is, but it feels to me like Ukraine is going to start winning the war soon.  As an armchair general, it looks to me like Russia did not execute its military doctrine, and in the cases where it managed to apply its own doctrine, it was only ever marginally effective at high cost.  As a On-my-rear Admiral, it does look like their naval doctrine of "run away when people start shooting at us" is working, though.

-- US intelligence estimates 85% of Russia's forces have been committed to Ukraine.  Even if it's an overestimate, they do not seem to have sufficient reserves to launch new offensives.
-- It appears the Russian offensive did culminate in Seiverodonetsk
-- Russia is having major supplies problems after HIMARS blew up a lot of large ammunition depots.
-- Why so large?  Well, Russian supplies are still highly dependent on rail -- for one, their military trucks hardly work.
-- Why so easy to find these ammo dumps?  Free NATO intelligence and satellites.
-- HIMARS, a system designed to bypass Russian anti-air/missile-defense capabilities, seems to do really well at bypassing defense.  Thing is so damn fast you might have a minute or two total flight time
-- Russian logistics appear on the edge of collapse.  This article has lots of gems, like
---- the fact that the artillery barrels are wearing out because they used low-grade steel, because after the Crimea sanctions they couldn't import good steel.
---- armor arriving at the front doesn't actually work, because of maintenance issues
---- ammo dumps being destroyed has doubled the convoy time by trucks
---- Ukranian army believes mid-August will be the middle of Ukraine's counter-offensive
---- tank factories in Russia are concentrating on deliveries to foreign countries, because Russia is not "at war" and because parts are so scarce they need to fulfill the contracts first.
-- Supposedly Russia is losing soldiers to death and desertion faster than they are recruiting.
-- The pipeline to get new soldiers is pretty fast too!  Aftenposten published a story (in Norwegian) on one mans' journey
---- Recently divorced guy thinks his ex will take him back if he joins the army and kills "fascists"
---- On May 12, he went to the registration office in St. Petersburg. That same evening, he and his fellow soldiers were flown to Belgorod.
---- On May 13, he received a weapon. "Mom I'm busy, I got a gun," he told his mother in their last phone call.
---- On May 14, he sent pictures of himself and his fellow soldiers from a military base in Valuyki. They were sent straight to the front in Ukraine. Without training. With old equipment.
---- On May 16, Yevgenij was killed at the front by artillery fire - just four days after he volunteered.
---- They have some other examples -- men being sent to the front lines 2-3 days after volunteering is SOP
-- Russia signs deal allow safe export of Ukrainian grain, sends rockets to Odesa the next day just to show dickishness
-- A muslim and a jew hiding in the same foxhole.  Neither are atheists. 
-- Ukrainian army casualties have dropped by two-thirds in the past couple weeks
-- Actually, the Russian Economy Is Imploding.  It's more illustrative to look at the economic data Russia is no longer publishing regularly, than the stuff that comes out now.
-- Chinese are buying Russian oil at $35/barrel discount.  Oil is expensive right now, except for Russian oil with a one-third discount.
-- US Speaker of the House says she wants Biden to declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism (which it is), or Congress is going to do it for him.  Functionally what that would mean is that businesses that haven't left Russia already could lose a lot of their investments.
-- Some dudes declared a jihad on Russia in Chechnya.  Unclear if this is a real thing or just some dudes making a Youtube video. 
-- Russia wants an humanitarian corridor to evacuate troops from Kherson, lol.
-- The Ukrainian army is making real progress towards Kherson right now.  They have encircled and captured a couple hundred orcs, and are closing in on Kherson itself.
-- Once Kherson falls, Ukraine would be in range of attacking Crimea. Russia would likely pull forces from the Donbas to reinforce the peninsula.

[Norgarth]

-- Russia wants an humanitarian corridor to evacuate troops from Kherson, lol.

heh, maybe Ukraine can open a 'humanitarian corridor' deeper into Ukranian territory, like the 'humanitarian corridors' Russia was offering to civilians in Mariupol.

[hazard]

*snip*

Would you believe me if I said I feel for Yevgenij? It's clear that he and people like him are just gunfodder, bodies to send to the front to take the shots. It also shows Russia's desperation, and why Russia has send the training officers to the front as well.

Russia needs bodies so much, that even a week long delay for training is too much, never mind the 3 months that is the absolute minimum to drum the needed military skills and discipline into a soldier.

Also, apparently Russia's economy is in dire straits indeed.

Also also, sure, give the Russians that corridor. It'll go straight past Odessa. I'm sure there's a POW camp they can be safely stashed. They'll even be taken better care of than the Ukrainians that were abducted.

[Labster]

I believe you. I feel sorry for them. Sorry that they need to be killed, but what else are you supposed to do when orcs invade your land? They’ve been lied to in order to get them to take up arms, which is a tale as old as civilization. Yevgeny is still an invader but his death is just so stupid and needless from every point of view.

Here’s an article which should be totally unrelated, but actually has the exact same causes: A chess robot in Moscow has broken the finger of its 7-year-old human opponent. Obvious jokes about Azimov’s laws or Andy Weir aside, we see the chess federation blaming the kid for his injury. In a cultured environment in Russia’s capital, an entirely avoidable injury to a child is dismissed.

It’s simply a culture that does not care about others. And you see this in lots of other places: the rampant corruption, to the extent the army has sold the materiel it needs to carry out this war. The stacks of soldiers bodies abandoned in a rail car. The use of food as a weapon, both in this war and the Holodomor. The rampant looting of appliances from Ukrainian houses. There is a sickness in Russian culture, which is a reason to be enraged at them, but it’s also a reason to be sad because it doesn’t have to be this way.

On another note, you wonder why the big counter-offensive is planned for July? It’s almost like Ukraine took four months to train its recruits. Logistics and arms deliveries and climate too, but a NATO-trained army like Ukraine’s has to have a lot of training in its doctrine. Soldiers are much harder to replace than even the expensive equipment.

[hazard]

To be honest, I consider the July offensive to be relatively early. Not impossibly early, but relatively early. I think the only reason they are pushing now is because the HIMARS are proving as effective as they are and they're seeing an opportunity to exploit before the Russians can adjust. I think that, originally, they were expecting to perform this offensive in August or September and use the fall rasputitsa as the end point and set the lines for winter. It'll be interesting if Ukraine manages to retake Crimea by that time, something that would've sounded utterly mad prior to the culmination of Russia's offensive in the Donbass region, but now has the faint tinge of possibility. Especially if they manage it before they dislodge Russia from the eastern regions of Ukraine.

As for Yevgenij and others like him. He didn't need to die. He probably didn't deserve to die either. But there is a war on, 'need' or 'deserve' have nothing to do with it. It's a dangerous business, and when your bosses are as neglectful and callous as Russia's high command, you are going to die.

[Labster]

Earlier this week, Canada approved the export of six gas turbines to Germany in order to have them installed in a Russian pipeline.

Today, Conservative and NDP members of the Commons standing foreign affairs committee have already called Cabinet ministers to appear before the committee to explain why Canada is breaching the sanctions against Russia.

For our American readers, this is the equivalent of Mitch McConnell and Bernie Sanders agreeing on something political in public.

This is how politics is supposed to work, folks - set aside partisan differences to serve the public interest.

Because Canada shipped it back, Germany had to be the one to not return The Turbine to Russia.  Which means Russia said "oh no, we can't send more gas without The Turbine" and cut deliveries over the Nord Stream 1 pipeline from 40% down to 20% of normal.  Living in California, I'm quite familiar with how these "maintenance issues" always seem to occur when prices are rising so the oil company adds a supply squeeze to their profits.  There were EU proposals to conserve gas, but for some reason, all of the countries in the south were wondering why they had to pay for bad economic decisions by northern countries.  It's almost as if people are mad about 2009 still.  Eventually they passed a more toothless version of the bill to conserve gas.  And all because Trudeau couldn't hold onto The Turbine for a couple more months.

Which all might make you wonder, why doesn't Russia make its own turbine?  Well, let's take a look at Russian engineering.  Here's a barrel from a Russian APC, somewhat less than centered.  Or what artillery barrels look like after firing a few hundred rounds.  Things seem to have gotten worse since the communists left, or at least differently worse, as corruption meant that military hardware never has quality.  The other point here is that sanctions work: Russia has not been able to buy high grade steel from the West since they invaded Crimea.

-- Ukrainian women fighting for their country, with flowers in their uniform
-- Inside Ukraine’s covert operation to take out elite Wagner Group mercenaries in Donbas  These "orchestra musicians" set up shop in a stadium, while a local spy living in occupied Luhansk oblast for eight years was more than happy to share their location.
-- US Congresscritters Rand Paul and Tulsi Gabbard placed on Ukrainian government's list of Russian propagandists, joining Glenn Greenwald.  Note that I identified her as a Russian asset in a forum post two and a half years ago so it's no surprise.
-- Speaking of bipartisanship, an op-ed by Sens. Graham and Blumenthal: US must designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism
-- Russia to withdraw from International Space Station in 2024, says it will build its own much better space station, presumably with turbines from Canada.
-- Ukraine to file war crimes case against executives of Citi, Chase, HSBC
-- Antonovsky Bridge crossing the Dnipro river outside of Kherson gets a bunch of small holes put in it by Ukranian rockets.  Not enough to close the bridge, but enough to prevent heavy armored vehicles from using it.
-- Please leave your armor and stolen household appliances behind as you exit the country
-- Russians repair the bridge, and start shipping the tanks across the river over night (a couple hours ago).  This ends predictably badly as the missiles rain down and people start dying.  We're not yet sure if the bridge is destroyed, or just the stuff on top of the bridge.
-- To be fair, the Russian military did intercept the missiles, just with tanks instead of rockets
-- Midnight train to Kaliningrad arrives, after EU caves to Russia on export rules
-- Gerhard Schroeder is in Moscow, just taking in the vibes and shit

EDIT: Because this happens so rarely in politics, I need to take my victory lap. I was right, and Rajvik was wrong, and the war proved it. Tulsi is a Russian agent who spreads Russian propaganda enough to get a country at war with Russia to notice her antics, while Bernie votes to give weapons to the Ukrainians.

[Labster]

This is a pretty good summary of the overall position of the war over at The Drive: Ukraine Situation Report: Russians Cede Bridgehead Into Occupied Kherson.  In general, the Russian offensive has run out of steam, and Russian forces in Kherson are cut off from supply lines.  They are building a pontoon bridge to replace the damaged rail and vehicle bridges -- but they haven't been great at this, and the Dnipro river is a whole kilometer across this close to the Black Sea.

-- Video shows a Ukrainian POW being castrated by a Russian.  It's making the rounds online, but doesn't seem to have much "traditional" media coverage.  I haven't watched.
-- Internet has already tracked the perp down by his other propaganda and are preparing a special place for him at The Hague.
-- Speaking of balls, Russians are balls deep in Kherson, with no pull-out plan.
-- Kadyrovites are in the rear guard, allegedly shooting fellow orcs who try to retreat across the river.
-- For those who don't know who the Kadryovites are, just imagine a combination of the worst aspects of the Nazi SS and TikTok, and you're most of the way there.
-- Speaking of 1938, Russians have been putting up these charming billboards around Nova Kakhovka.  "Russians and Ukrainians are one people, one whole!" (pronounced Ein Volk) "Russia is here, forever!" (millennial Reich or something, but the Aryan girl is adorbs).
-- In bad news for the Anschluss, the United Russia Party politicians working on the vote for Kherson to join Russia have all fled Kherson.  It will be easier to conduct the vote back in Moscow, anyway, where you don't need to bother with all the Ukranians and the voting.
-- Ukrainian soldiers find an owlet for their affection
-- Ukraine turns down an offer for A-10 Warthogs from the US.  They want F-15s and F-16s instead.
-- When no one has air superiority, close air support is far less useful -- and more vulnerable to anti-air.  Things that can shoot down missiles and drones are more useful than air bombardment.
-- Baykar gives another free Bayraktar to Ukraine instead of taking crowdfunding -- which can now go to charity in Ukraine.  The free advertising alone, right?
-- Mouthbreather Victor Orbán says Moscow will be victorious
-- Montenegro Foreign Minister (ethnic Montenegrin) says they will begin seizing assets of Russians under EU sanctions.  The Economy Minister (ethnic Serb) says that will take a really long time to actually implement tho cuz banks are hard and stuff.
-- EU court upholds ban on all RT networks
-- Russian economy continues its long slide into oblivion.  The stats their economy ministry are still releasing still look really bad.  (Cars: -89%, Trucks: -40%, Washing machines: -58.4%, Fridges/freezers: -52.3%)
-- You probably all know about Russia cutting gas deliveries to Europe, because slowly easing people off is how you keep people addicted.  Wait, that's wrong, wtf is he doing?  Anyway, Gazprom is also in default on delivery of gas to neutral India.  They're five tanker ships behind.

I have just become aware of /r/RussianCircus, which collects comedy about the war. For instance:
-- Russian soldier demonstrates ability to not break bricks with martial arts
-- Belarusian Special Forces doing a recruitment video slash cheerleading routine
-- Russians patriotically attack crosswalk signs because they are blue and yellow.  One guy is in sandals, lol.
-- A Russian priest smacks a Ukrainian priest with a wooden cross

[Labster]

By the way, don't watch that video of the castration.  There's actually more than one video, and apparently it keeps getting worse.  I should have tagged it NSFL.  People have been getting really angry, but I want people to keep in mind that stuff like this happens in a lot of wars -- the psychopaths decide they can get away with it, so they do.

-- 50+ Ukrainian POWs die in an explosion at a Russian POW camp. This twitter thread has a good take on it.  The summary:
---- "Russia used a thermobaric weapon to burn the POWs in their sleep. The fire damage to building and victims, and the missing impact crater and the lack of blast damage proves this. This was premeditated murder, just like at Katyn."
---- Also the POW camp itself is a war crime because it's only a few miles from the front lines.
-- Russian ambassador to the UK tweets that Azov Battalion should be hanged humiliatingly instead of executed like real soldiers.  They like war crimes over there.
-- A lot of Western people online call for retributory war crimes against Russia.  Don't be like that, because Sailor Says.
-- Meanwhile Ambassador Filatov in Ireland gave an interview to the Irish Times where he's not calling for war crimes, just being normally infuriating.
-- Russian press gangs find 30k new volunteers for the special military operation.
-- Map of Russia showing per capita deaths in war special military operation.  There's more than one ethnic cleansing going on in this war.
-- Also keep in mind that Russia is drafting soldiers from places as far away from Ukraine as the US east coast -- while keeping ethnic Muscovites out of the fight.
-- Zelensky orders a full evacuation of civilians from Donetsk.  A prelude to intense fighting, I fear.
-- Lots of videos online of helicopters flying at the tree line.  The air is pretty dangerous, as always.
-- /r/Moscow has fallen to pro-Ukrainian forces.  IRL Kherson still occupied.
-- Russia bans Kiwi mayors of Auckland and Wellington from entering Russia, because that was definitely a thing that was going to happen
-- Russia cuts all gas exports to Latvia.  Not sure what this is going to accomplish, Latvia will suddenly want to rejoin Russia to get gas?  Cut funding to the Hanseaten?  Maybe they really can't produce as much gas as they used to?
-- Latvian response: EU should declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism
-- UK, as runner-up, gets to host Eurovision instead of Ukraine.
-- Last time, I posted a video of Russians attacking a yellow-and-blue crosswalk sign.  Well, have another video of a Nazi crosswalk sign being liberated by Russians!  (ignore the NSFW tag, it's just people being dumb)

As we talk about the atrocities, I think it's important to remember that these things feel all very exceptionally bad -- but historically these things were common.  Stealing all the food and valuables from villages, raping the women, and burning the buildings were a strategy in pre-modern war.  Russia, while it still clings to an eighteenth century mentality, still feels it needs to make excuses for all of these things.  Because it seems so dark to us -- so exceptional -- it means the world is really a better place than it was.

[Labster]

Russia recently celebrated Navy Day! It's a lot like Fleet Week, except it's less gay in both senses. So how did that go? Well, the celebrations in Sebastopol had to be canceled due to a drone attack that injured 5 people. Ukraine denies the attack, because their drones don't have the range. It could be partisans. Or it could be a fabrication by Russia as an excuse to not show off their shrinking fleet.

But they made a cool poster!. Pictured on that is recently self-fucked russian warship Moskva, along with the carrier USS George HW Bush. It's pretty obviously not the Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov, Russia's only aircraft carrier, because that ship has a "ski ramp" for takeoff. Don't expect to see the Admiral Kuznetsov in action in this war -- her refit is expected to take until 2024. The refit started in 2017 near Murmansk, where they put her in a floating drydock. The drydock sank, and as it did a crane fell onto the deck and caused a lot of damage. Then a couple years later, a major fire broke out on the ship. Is it really a "fleet in being" if it isn't? It's hard to take pictures of an aircraft carrier you don't really have.

Incidentally, the carrier was built in Mykolaiv, Ukraine. On Ukraine's independence, they claimed ownership of the ship built by Ukrainians at a Ukrainian shipyard a couple years back. Russia took that as a sign to leave port and sail to the Arctic. If you think about it, a warship is just a large appliance, so it makes sense that Russians would steal it.

-- Speaking of Mykolaiv, Russia bombed a hospital there, as well as killing Ukraine's richest farmer in his bedroom.
-- First grain ship departs Odesa.
-- Another story of that famous Russian morale: Russian general beats up Russian general who called him a coward
-- Russians get tired of Ukrainians blowing up their bases, so they decide to put a base at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
-- Piers Morgan banned from entering Russia. Can our country also do this?
-- US sending still more arms to Ukraine. Four more HIMARS have already arrived.
-- QAnon and antivax accounts on Twitter switching to spreading pro-Russian disinformation on the war
-- In general, Russia is advancing slowly in the Donetsk oblast, while Ukraine advances slowly in the Kherson oblast. Skirmishes but little movement near Kharkiv.

[Labster]

Warfare
-------
Russia puts up triangular floating mirrors near the bridge in Kherson to confuse the radar on HIMARS.  Now, if only HIMARS had radar navigation and not GPS it would be a great idea.  It does cause satellite distortion, I guess, but why not put them on the bridge itself then?  Also, it's not like we don't have photos of the things from the ground, so who cares if the satellites are fooled?
-- The first set of recruits in Ukraine finish advanced training and NCO training this week.  Roughly 240k recruits will have been trained by the end of the month.
-- Meanwhile, Photo of Russian recruits marching to war
-- Russian ammunition train fucked itself.  The Russians set up a smoke screen to stop HIMARS (which, again, uses GPS), and then something to set the ammunition ablaze.  Which, with their handling techniques and low visibility, could be practically anything.  Ukrainians have said it's definitely not UA.
-- Video after Russians fight gentrification in Mariupol
-- Russia is sending more artillery west towards Kherson.  Some of it works, even.
-- They're also sending more vehicles into Kherson via ferry.  Looks like they're digging in.


Economy
-------

-- Huawei has closed its online store in Russia.  Yes, that Huawei, the technology company sanctioned by the US, thinks selling stuff in Russia is bad for business.
-- The saga of the Kaliningrad embargo continues.  After the EU ordered the Lithuanians to reopen freight rail to Kaliningrad, the bank that handles all of the business for the rail company no longer wants Russian money.  Sorry, Russia, I guess you can't pay us for rail service now, no freight for you (P.S. we fucking hate you).
-- Finland is starting to step up enforcement of customs, both intercepting electronics at the border, and in asking merchants to not sell to Russians if they're claiming the VAT exemption.
-- Liberal economics processor Paul Krugman says Russian sanctions haven't done much to stop exports, but have surprisingly cut imports into Russia by half, which has pummeled the domestic economy.
-- Ukraine is working to join SEPA, an EU banking union.  One more step towards joining the EU.



Diplomacy
---------

-- Russia says US is approving targets for HIMARS, something something direct involvement in a proxy war.
-- Former Russian Federation (proxy) President Dmitry Medvedev wrote online:
----- Russia will retake Ukraine
----- Ukraine is "a fake nation"
----- Russia will recreate the USSR
----- Russia will retake Georgia after Ukraine
----- Russia will retake Kazakhstan
----- Kazakhstan is currently executing a genocide against Russians.

-- US approves NATO accession for Sweden and Finland.  As a nearly unanimous vote -- why would a senator vote against his country's hegemony? -- we find out which senators are actually Russian agents.
----- The only "no" vote was from Senator and occasional sprinter Josh Hawley, who incidentally did more than anyone else in Congress to cheer on the January 6 coup attempt.  (Finnish media is confused by this, because he voted for N. Macedonia's accession)  Hawley claims that this weakens America, because America's real enemy is China, not Russia, and it sends the signal that we're ignoring China.  You know, a day after the flight to Taiwan.  Anyway this dude is a Russian agent.
----- Voting "present" was Senator and libtard Rand Paul, who thought that we really shouldn't be in entangling alliances, and we should at least talk about it some more.  By the way, Finland joined the NATO Partnership for Peace in 1994.  This dude is just a useful idiot.
-- Jeremy Corbyn comes out against arming Ukraine, in an apparent attempt to insure the Labour Party never reinstates him.  But of course, we all know that this Corbynite Manoever is a false narrative.
-- German Ex-Chancellor and Gazprom board member Gerhard Schröder calls for peace with Russia, self rule for Eastern "Swiss cantons" of Ukraine, and also suggests that Gazprom suddenly won't need the turbine if Nord Stream 2 starts up.  Was that the plan all along?  Make gas reserves tight so they're forced to use the second pipeline in winter?  He's also at risk of getting kicked out of his party.
-- Marine Le Pen comes out against Russian sanctions, because they hurt France more than Russia.  "The Russian economy is not on its knees. They are not on the brink of bankruptcy."
-- The timing of all these suggest the sanctions are absolutely working, and that Russia is trying a diplomatic approach now because they are losing.
-- Meanwhile, we get a look at the rogues gallery of Russia apologists.  There are two types: the old communist sympathizer (Corbyn, Schroeder), and the far-right nationalist (Le Pen, Trump).  This has been a long term strategy of Russia to weaken the west, by infiltrating and funding the political extremes.  I remember back when the lefties loved RT on cable TV, because it made them angry at conservatives, before the coverage switched to 90% pro-Trump (and 10% pro Putin).  They funded the Catalan sepratists and the French yellow jackets -- any division was good.
-- Just a reminder, here's what a real American said about the war in Ukraine and sanctions, back when he was alive:

Look, Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country. It's kleptocracy. It's corruption. It's a nation that's really only dependent upon oil and gas for their economy, and so economic sanctions are important.

Other
------

-- Actor (and also President of Ukraine) announces support for civil unions.  Soon the orcs will face the wrath of married gay jew nazis!  Assuming a law passes.
-- Spain has decided not to send its tanks to Russia, due to their "lamentable condition"
-- Photo: Russian bot farm captured by Ukraine.  One million bots captured.  Elon still wants out of his deal.
-- Red Cross continues to be even more powerless than the UN.

[Labster]

Honestly the last couple of days in Ukraine news has been really weird.  And no, not because a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile totally liberated the shit out of a Toyota Camry.  Nor is it Aeroflot pilots being told to go light on the brakes to preserve parts.  Or even that Bulgaria has denied sending military aid to Ukraine that has already been delivered to Ukraine.

No, the real topic has been the Amnesty International report on Ukrainian war crimes.  Let's get a hot take on it from Russia 1 channel, Russia's news leader:

Even the international crooks and scoundrels of the so-called human rights organization Amnesty International have accused Ukraine of violating the laws of war by placing military equipment in educational and medical facilities, thus endangering civilians.  If even they say that the rules of warfare have been violated, then Ukrainians should reflect on it.  Western analysts have started to suspect that hospitals and schools in Ukraine are not being used for their intended purpose.

This is an accurate summary of the report!  Amnesty decided to just hand a propaganda win to Russia because they "started to suspect" Ukrainian soldiers are around schools, without much evidence.  You know what else are around schools?  Russian invaders.  If you've been following the war with more than a passing interest, you've definitely seen photos of UXO in playgrounds, craters in schoolyards, and hospitals struck by missiles.  Amnesty International put a passing mention in the report that Russians are also doing war crimes, maybe.

The internet has not been happy about this, to put it mildly.  There are people that are talking about how many more people would be killed or tortured because of AI's report -- which is probably overblown but not completely implausible -- and that's certainly not the kind of thing a human rights organization would want people to be saying about it.  The US Ambassador felt she had to (indirectly) deny the claims in the report.  The Ukrainian branch of AI had been fighting the release of the report -- and even after the release, they hoped it would be retracted.  It was not.  So yesterday, the head of Amnesty's Ukraine branch resigned in protest after seven year's service, because the report was so one-sided -- her resignation letter is pretty good.

So why is it that Amnesty International has produced whataboutist propaganda that protects the invaders?  It might just be that they don't understand the necessities of war, and don't want to understand it because they don't like war.  Ukraine needs to be in the cities for two important reasons: to protect civilians, and to protect themselves.  There's no fortifications, and no air superiority that would cover them elsewhere.  It's apparently AI's policy not to investigate crimes of states that ignore their work, so they just didn't investigate Russia as a matter of corporate policy, not realizing the political implications.  But on the other hand, AI is a political organization, full of a lot of socialists and far leftists.  As I said one post back, both the far left and far right seem especially vulnerable to Russian manipulation. 

Not sure how related it is, but it lines up with the Russian diplomatic effort that has been going around in the past week.

[robkelk]

CBC tells us that Safety at Ukraine nuclear plant not designed with 'full-scale war in mind'

Who needed to be told that?

[Labster]

CBC tells us that Safety at Ukraine nuclear plant not designed with 'full-scale war in mind'

Who needed to be told that?

Of course not.  She's just an apprentice angel, after all.

[classicdrogn]

At least she can dance? Well, if she wants to. Oddly enough I can't seem to find any AMVs as evidence.

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, since the war planned for six days has lasted for six months now, and this thread has hit 300 replies, it's time for a new thread.