By my reckoning there must be about 30 million grandmas in Russia, so that’s quite a significant sea-change!
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
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I know that the Russians aren't renowned for their safety standards, but this seems insane. There's no way the bridge could be adequately inspected within 10 hours to reopen to traffic. If it collapses under load from traffic, that will save the Ukrainians needing to try to blow it up.
Does that mean the controlled opposition is being able to criticise the war now then? Can you tell us what the criticism is in the Russian media? Cheers
Putin going after everyone and anyone that's a threat*?
*none of them are actually a threat
No one has jumped on this yet except for some Ukrainians. I wouldn't put too much stock into this.
No, not even a chance. It’s the internal criticism from other pro-Putin powers that try to explain Ukrainian advances that at this point are too significant to ignore. Hence the constant search for scapegoats (that ends up one step too short from reaching the culprit) — mostly it’s the military; Simonyan & the likes calls to “stop lying” referencing not their own lies but those of the Ministry of Defense that tries to hide what’s happening on the ground, the number of casualties & as a bonus apparently made a mess of Putin’s “partial” mobilization, sending the entire country to panic (because Putin couldn’t have wanted THAT, it’s “peregiby na mestah”, overenthusiasm of the executors, the concept from Stalin’s era where the will of the leader was never in question and every bad thing was the fault of those who followed orders too eagerly).
Anyway, all this forces them to fight each other as the scope of the failure that this war was from the very beginning finally gets into the public view. And when the Russian pro-government, let’s call them opinion-makers, accuse Ministry of Defense of lying while there’s a literal law that forbids you to use any information other than that given to us by the MoD… and people have been imprisoned for 7 years for simply using other sources, “spreading the disinformation”… the doubt starts to creep in even into the most straight-shooting minds.
Especially since all the sanctions & other struggles that people have been carrying themselves through were supposed to be compensated with that great win that would put Russia back on the map as a global superpower, but now you see that you’ve struggled so much for a win that isn’t coming — in fact, a catastrophic loss has appeared on the horizon.
From what I've seen, there is clearly more openness right now in Russian media about the war, and how it's not going well for Russia right now (or ever, really). I've been wondering what's behind this. Have the negative events become too big to ignore, or is the openness strategic? In case of the latter, what's the objective? Readying the minds for a declaration of war and a bigger attack on Ukraine? Or rather setting the stage for a big purge of the Russian leaders Putin chooses to blame?
My worry is that Russia is talking about its losses more because they now occur in Russian territory (in their eyes the annexation is real), and now same for the explosion on the bridge - which means that they can start saying that Ukraine is attacking Russia and needs heavy punishment. Any chance that's the plan? What do you think?
I doubt that it's a well-thought strategy and they certainly wouldn't turn to it if they weren't completely desperate. The military failures have become too big to ignore plus there's mobilization that scares the shit out of people with hundreds of thousands of men leaving the country in the space of what, two weeks? Someone needs to be held accountable, so they are clearly eyeing the military higher ups, possibly even Shoigu himself.
It doesn't mean that the devastating reaction (be it another set of bombardments of Ukrainian cities, strikes on their critical infrastructure or even a tactical nuclear weapon) wouldn't follow, but it's certainly not how they wanted to proceed. The "hawks" are asking for blood though.
I guess that's a little comforting - that things are getting too big to hide and it will start hurting (some) Russian leaders.
What do you mean by 'asking for blood'? Ukrainian blood?
A YouTube guy I watch, Joe Blogs, says the call up is actually a million, not 300,000, and that it's not restricted by age and military experience. This seems to be a cover to keep people from freaking out even more, so they can say there are "errors" being made to call up these other people, like the elderly, and say it should be fixed.
Both Russian (responsible for the failures) and Ukrainian, sadly, but I was talking about the latter. I've already quoted Krasovsky who quite clearly asked for bombardments of main Ukrainian cities as a retaliation and he's not alone in this.
Yeah, the original leaks about the real number that was supposedly mentioned in the 7th paragraph of the decree (the classified one) got out as soon as it was out — with the number being between 1 million and 1,2 million. It's clear that this mobilization is partial only in its name and they certainly don't respect any rules that they themselves openly stated.
I've seen a report that after 2 weeks of mobilization journalists counted around 210k of newly mobilized soldiers — going only by the open sourced information posted by different government bodies. And only 2/3 of the regions had published that info in any way, so the projected number of already conscripted has likely crossed that 300k mark already.
And they haven't stopped.
So kinda what I'm fearing, but not as bad (I'm worried about WMDs and a nuclear attack), and not for the same reason... Anyway, thanks for explaining!
The constant talk of nuclear war is fecking really unsettling.
OSRS?
Certainly creeping towards the potential for Putin to use a nuclear weapon. Probably a way off but I don’t see anybody who has a solution at the moment that avoids it. There’s seemingly isn’t any basis for a peaceful resolution here.
There also isn't any path for Putin to get the upper hand after using a nuclear weapon. Ukraine won't stop the fight, NATO won't help them any less (and could potentially retaliate) and Russia would lose its main deterrent, allies, and any good will they could have left.
Good point. He's basically fecked no matter what he does. The only conceivable way out would be to withdraw from Ukraine immediately and attempt to steady the ship back home (whatever that means), but in reality, the Ukrainians, having gained the upper hand, are likely to not stop until they get all of Donbas and Crimea back, which would be suicide for Putin back home.
I don't expect Russia to stop when they're pushed out of Ukraine, but holding the border will be easier than pushing the Russian army back. I think Putin can retain power in that situation.
It boggles the mind, really. That kind of partial collapse of a sea bridge (salt, hello!) should make it unsafe enough to prevent vehicles from rolling. I don't think we should expect a military convoy to ride on that anytime soon, but it is insane to even think about vehicles riding on that even if it's just one lane kept open.
I guess the question is what is Putins state of mind? His next roll of the dice is mobilisation - if this doesn’t work he really is fecked and what then? He won’t back down I don’t imagine.
His state of mind is ultimately self-preservation imo. If he can be given an offramp that guarantees his own security, I think he would take it immediately, especially given that every other option would almost certainly result in his own death.
Coincidence or change of plan? Channel 5 in the uk are just showing the classic wwii movie ‘a bridge too far’
OldSchool Runescape, said here plenty of times
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Thanks bud. I had googled it but I was expecting it to be a term for Russians in Estonia.OldSchool Runescape, said here plenty of times
Classy Brit move. Well played.
It’s a Saturday, they were always going to have one of their 8 war films on channel 5
This... this isn't it.
Twitter war smack talk is certainly a development the world needed
I can't decide if this is better or worse than when companies pretend to be people on Twitter. I guess this is coming from a better place, so definitely not as bad then.
Yeah we definitely needs AS Roma's and Zenit's view on things here
I blame Roma for this.
true
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Looking forward to KaZantip next summer. Although they may need to change their nickname.
Will be interesting to see who gets arrested - whether hardliners or anti-Putin types
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