[HN Gopher] China asked Russia to delay Ukraine war until after ...
___________________________________________________________________
China asked Russia to delay Ukraine war until after Beijing
Olympics
Author : neverminder
Score : 214 points
Date : 2022-03-02 20:51 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| xbar wrote:
| "The claims mentioned in the relevant reports are speculations
| without any basis, and are intended to blame-shift and smear
| China," said Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in
| Washington.
|
| Blame-shift from whom? Who else was telling Russia not to invade
| until after the Olympics that should shoulder this blame?
| munk-a wrote:
| Blame shift from nobody. I am of the opinion that this leak is
| _probably_ true, but absent this leak Russia just determined
| when to begin their assault unilaterally. China isn 't an
| active participant in this conflict from what we've seen - if
| this story is false then they're (sorta) an uninterested party
| - this story would paint them as someone who had political
| leverage who could have possibly defused the situation and
| instead used that political leverage to score a prestige hit
| before issuing tacit allowance for the attacks.
| newsclues wrote:
| Which is interesting because it's getting warmer and the
| conditions have proven muddy so roads are being used more which
| is a choke point.
|
| China is the leading superpower I guess.
| ProAm wrote:
| China has been the world's superpower for the last 12 years.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Why 12 years? By superpower what are you measuring to
| determine this?
| ProAm wrote:
| They are the most powerful and influential country on earth
| currently. America has economic inertia, but cannot win
| wars anymore with the most well funded and technically
| advanced military, and they no longer make things
| (largely). They had a good run but this is sunset for USA
| and sunrise for China (which started decades ago but I feel
| matured after the last fiscal crisis the US had in the late
| 2000's. America won't be over tomorrow, just like the
| Britain wasn't forgotten overnight after they lost their
| global superpower status 100 years ago.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Are they the most influential country? Their media
| exports are extremely small and their cultural influence
| doesn't extend globally. They don't gather respect by
| creating peace, they don't gather respect through
| charity.
|
| Militarily they are not the most advance or spend to that
| level.
|
| China isn't the largest economy yet. They say they could
| overtake the US by 2030
| pixl97 wrote:
| US can win 'wars' just fine. In mere days we wipe every
| piece of hardware a country has off the map. We cannot
| win occupations and the police actions we commit to
| because the win condition is not a military one.
| csours wrote:
| China is the superpower they share a land border with, and are
| least ideologically distant compared to other powers.
| newsclues wrote:
| I think it's interesting that China could dictate the timing
| to Russia.
| edgyquant wrote:
| China isn't a superpower
| munk-a wrote:
| Are you arguing that super powers don't exist in the modern
| world or just that China doesn't qualify as one?
| soneil wrote:
| I don't think we really have a good definition of a
| superpower that fits the modern world. But I think it's a
| fair claim that China currently lacks (or appears to lack)
| the force projection required to fit the traditional
| description.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think it's unreasonable to argue that China isn't a
| regional power since it's bullying its way through the
| South China Sea without any local resistance - I think
| the fact that the US isn't opposing China in this in any
| sort of meaningful way sort of reinforces the argument
| that they may be a super power. However, I find the
| strongest argument as to their super-power-ness to be
| their extreme infrastructure investments in south asia
| (Gwadar Port in particular but also their various
| investments in Ceylon and the Red Sea) and Africa. China
| is working hard to establish a monopoly on rare earth
| mineral extraction.
|
| However, due to the astronomical amount of military
| spending the US continues to commit to I think it's fair
| to argue the point. China might have been a super power
| in the 80 with this level of global investment - but the
| US is just going into orbit.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I think the poster means China doesn't qualify as one.
|
| I'll take that position. China hasn't achieved superpower
| status. It hasn't chosen to take the necessary risks.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| China is at least an unequaled regional power. If one relies
| out-of-region projection of power, it may not be a
| superpower. (By that standard Russia isn't either.)
| InitialLastName wrote:
| It would be wild if that delay was what turned this war from a
| route into a quagmire for Russia by delaying them into the thaw
| season. They already appear to be having issues with mud, and
| weather forecasts in Kyiv appear to be mostly above freezing for
| the rest of the week.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| When you're talking about military operations of this scope
| unexpected but familiar (this happens every year) weather
| conditions is practically rounding error compared to the
| unanticipated level of resistance from the people you are
| fighting.
| weatherlight wrote:
| Yes and no. 1) Slava Ukraini 2) Muddy fields/roads means that
| Russian armor has to stick to hard ball roads which in turn
| means longer and stretched out convoys which in turn means
| harder to defend supply lines, etc.
|
| Tanks and such are maintenance nightmares, and need a lot of
| material support in order to be effective.
| cutenewt wrote:
| Probably the last time Putin is going to grant any wishes to Xi
| kryptiskt wrote:
| Russia is very much the junior partner in the relationship
| with China, and now that they have burned their bridges to
| the West they lack any leverage against China. They are going
| to have to defer a lot more going forwards.
| newuser94303 wrote:
| Russia may become like a bigger North Korea. North Korea
| doesn't listen to China but it doesn't go out of it's way
| to piss China off. China props it up because it doesn't
| want a bigger humanitarian crisis on it's borders.
|
| China will probably prop Russia up 1) It will get Oil and
| Gas cheaper 2) A mean Russia keeps the West from picking on
| China. 3) Russia has a lot of nukes and making it crazy
| helps nobody.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Russia is very much the junior partner in the relationship
| with China"
|
| Exactly, Putin is not the grand strategist the world thinks
| he is
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Anyone that can make Switzerland and Sweden take sides
| against you isn't a grand strategist.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Putin just was, and remains, in a desperate place.
| Strategy is fine at leisure. He had no choice but to do
| something to seem strong, to remain in power. If this
| doesn't work, he may move on to something desperate.
| celticninja wrote:
| Yup, as sole buyer China are going to set the price of
| Russia's oil and gas.
| romwell wrote:
| Probably the last time Putin is going to grant anyone's
| wishes.
|
| There's only one way for him out now, and it doesn't involve
| him being alive. It's only a matter of time at this point.
| vkou wrote:
| > There's only one way for him out now,
|
| What way is that? Because I think the one he's banking on
| is victory in the war over the next four weeks.
|
| Russia will suffer greatly under sanctions, but that itself
| is unlikely to bring him under.
| [deleted]
| sharikous wrote:
| He is a resourceful survivor. Don't eulogize him before his
| time
| datavirtue wrote:
| These guys are tight. China has been migrating into Siberia
| for years.
| geoka9 wrote:
| "Digesting" Siberia.
| duxup wrote:
| He might not have many friends to grant wishes for anymore.
| throwoutway wrote:
| Above freezing? Read some news this morning that lots of snow
| is expected across eastern Ukraine. Maybe the weather shifted..
| cryptoz wrote:
| Both can be true. Temps don't need to be below freezing for
| lots of snow to fall.
| stormbrew wrote:
| Yep, snow happens when the temperature at the cloud layer
| is low enough. Ground temp can be higher and the snow will
| still make it to the ground. Might melt immediately, or if
| it's snowing enough it could form an insulating layer that
| keeps snow on the ground a bit longer.
|
| Honestly, snow and air temperature have a bit of a
| counterintuitive relationship. It can also be too cold to
| snow, so a lot of really cold places are actually really
| dry and get very little precipitation because of that.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Eastern Ukraine is also not where Kyiv is, or where the
| swamp I wouldn't want to drive a tank across outside of
| winter [0] is.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinsk_Marshes
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Fwiw I've seen a lot of pictures of tanks and other heavy
| vehicles stranded in muddy fields (presumably wheat or
| sunflower).
| Y-bar wrote:
| In addition to what you say: A snow cover will act as
| insulation and prevent ground frost from penetrating deep
| compared to bare ground (something small winter-active
| mammal can attest to).
| falcolas wrote:
| Can confirm, with much grumbling to boot...
| bamboozled wrote:
| If there's a lot of snow and temps at the ground are above
| zero, it's a worse situation for the Russian barbarians.
|
| It will become even more wet and muddy.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| When would be a good time for an invasion? Not when the snow
| thaws. Ok. How about when its ice cold? That option sounds even
| harder, though I guess the vehicles don't get stuck as badly.
| How about waiting until summer? That sounds like a more
| conventional military strategy, though I don't know enough
| Ukrainian geography to tell if its a sound option. Is there
| ever a "good" time for an invasion? If so, why did Putin jump
| the gun? If not, the current situation was inevitable in some
| form or other.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Europe's dependence on Russian gas is a gun to their head
| that only exists in winter. It took some deliberation to get
| Germany to accept strong sanctions. That might not have
| happened a month ago.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Weather: An invasion that begins in January or February would
| have the advantage of frozen ground to support the cross-
| country movement of a large mechanized force. It would also
| mean operating in conditions of freezing cold and limited
| visibility. January is usually the coldest and snowiest month
| of the year in Ukraine, averaging 8.5 hours of daylight
| during the month and increasing to 10 hours by February.8
| This would put a premium on night fighting capabilities to
| keep an advance moving forward. Should fighting continue into
| March, mechanized forces would have to deal with the infamous
| Rasputitsa, or thaw. In October, Rasputitsa turns firm ground
| into mud. In March, the frozen steppes thaw, and the land
| again becomes at best a bog, and at worst a sea of mud.
| Winter weather is also less than optimal for reliable close
| air support operations. From:
| https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-possible-invasion-
| ukra...
| jacquesm wrote:
| In the heart of winter the whole country is a road, right now
| it is very narrow strips that are easily passable and it is
| getting worse by the day.
| rightbyte wrote:
| That applies to UA armor too.
|
| Way harder to do hit and runs on road columns when you
| can't fall back to where ever but have to follow roads your
| self.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Defender advantage is substantial in situations like
| that. Moving targets are a lot harder than stationary
| ones. Ukraine armor is concentrated around the main
| cities instead of strung out in long vulnerable
| stationary lines.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Ukraine also has javelins and other shoulder fired anti
| tank weapons
| withinboredom wrote:
| Anything you hit with those is pure luck.
|
| Source: experience.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| I too sucked at CoD.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Anything you hit with those is pure luck.
|
| I've never seen a Javelin miss in my entire life. They've
| got like 5,000 recorded successful engagements.
|
| > Source: experience.
|
| Are you firing them before they've got a chance to get
| the sensor down to temperature?
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Er, no. Javelin is guided. They are videos of them doing
| some really amazing long-range shots.
| tome wrote:
| For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sah9nbGQLFY
| tablespoon wrote:
| > For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sah9nbGQLFY
|
| I guess you posted that for the compiled footage, but
| Lord do I hate voice synthesized narration.
|
| From my armchair, it seems totally practical to hit-and-
| run attack the convoy on foot using fire-and-forget
| Javelins from 1.5-2 miles away. If the terrain is
| impassible to vehicles, the attacker can just shoot from
| the top of a hill and run away down the other side (maybe
| without even being seen).
| tome wrote:
| That's interesting. I didn't even notice that! I suppose
| I found the footage sufficiently compelling to distract
| me.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| We aren't talking about RPG-7 here, but ATGM (which, as
| the name imply, are _guided_ missiles).
| na85 wrote:
| Saint Javelin never misses.
| newuser94303 wrote:
| In close quarters and urban environments, I would think
| that it would be hard to miss
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Part of the supposed strategy also involved hitting Ukraine
| when Europe is reliant upon Russian gas for heating. I was a
| bit surprised how late into winter they invaded given this
| goal.
| _3u10 wrote:
| Travel across anything not paved during spring break up is
| near impossible.
|
| I don't think it's break up, I think it's resistance, they
| are getting stalled in the cities.
|
| Ukraine has paved highways moving tanks isn't an issue,
| except that the highways run through cities.
|
| The problem is fundamentally that for every soldier and
| civilian they kill they are creating 5 to 10 freedom
| fighters. The more people are killed the greater the
| resistance. The less likely they can hold the country without
| reprisals from the people. If they have to resort to
| barbarism to subdue the people then the sanctions will never
| end.
|
| Putin needs to establish a govt quickly that doesn't have to
| resort to atrocities to govern. If he fails to do that he
| loses the greater overall war.
| munk-a wrote:
| I don't know how accomplishable that really is at this
| point - it's looking like Russian troop cohesion is
| insanely low[1] and Putin may just need to withdraw forces
| to keep the domestic situation under wraps. I'm pretty sure
| if Putin started peace talks he'd be ousted at this point,
| so he just has to sorta pray that western powers don't
| stall out the annexation - otherwise I think he's pretty
| hooped domestically.
|
| 1.
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/01/russia-
| lo...
| [deleted]
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure if Putin started peace talks
|
| Didn't this happen two days ago?
| brimble wrote:
| There's still plenty of room for them to convert this
| apparent impending loss into a partial success by gaining
| control of the territory they care most about, which is
| (likely) the South (to relieve Crimea's currently tenuous
| & expensive situation) and South East (to take full
| control of the fossil fuel resources there and bridge
| their territory over to Crimea), which also happen to be
| the areas they're having the most success in, judging by
| the various maps of territory they're semi-successfully
| occupying.
| pphysch wrote:
| ...according to anonymous intelligence officials.
| stabbles wrote:
| > The intelligence on the exchange between the Chinese and
| Russian officials was collected by a Western intelligence
| service and is considered credible by officials reviewing it,
| the Times reported.
| adamrezich wrote:
| ...familiar with the thinking of those involved
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| This idea that's going around that all sources need to be cited
| is ridiculous. I is mostly promoted by folks who desire to shut
| down free media. A good journalist works hard to ensure their
| source is reliable. If journalists couldn't use anonymous
| sources all that would be left is govt appointed propagandists.
| Also, knowing who a source is wouldn't help you evaluate the
| statement because it would be someone you don't know anyway.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| There has been a lot of that on this site. Implicitly sowing
| distrust in free press (such as in this instance) or flat out
| shitting on the free press with insults.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Nothing in what you said backs the claim that anonymous
| sources from the government can be reasonably trusted in the
| click-bait post Iraq War era.
|
| You simply made accusations and statements about "good
| journalists".
| erklik wrote:
| I think the problem is that people don't "know" the
| journalists largely anymore. I don't know how people trusted
| these journalists in the past, perhaps it was by following
| their work throughout ears and seeing repeated truths.
| However, largely no-one is following a journalist today. How
| can I trust some random person? There are news sources, with
| seemingly qualified journalists that genuinely just "make up"
| news. If journalists are able to do that, who knows this
| wasn't the same?
|
| If it's a valid, public source, well, even if you don't know
| the source, if someone is willing to put their name to the
| news, maybe it's more valid.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Intelligence officials is just a different word for
| propaganda
| mastazi wrote:
| The problem is that due to the gigantic shift that happened
| in news/journalism in the last 20 years, due to the
| introduction of new technology, the consequent disruption of
| traditional markets and all the changes that came from that,
| it is now hard for an average person to determine whether
| what they are reading is coming from a trusted source. Even
| within well known news outlets, blunders and retractions are
| relatively common, while 20/30 years ago they would have been
| the exception. I share your sentiment that anonymous sources
| are vital but it seems we don't have a very good way to
| convince people to trust what they say, unfortunately. Before
| going into tech about 12 years ago, I used to be a young
| journalist, I could see the start of that implosion from the
| inside. Nowadays I practice extreme "news minimalism" because
| I consider 95% of what's out there either unreliable or
| "noise". It's sad.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > Even within well known news outlets, blunders and
| retractions are relatively common
|
| Are they really though? NYT for example must write
| thousands of articles a year and they're human. What's the
| alternative?
| xeromal wrote:
| This post is reuters though.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Oh my sweet summer child. The _anonymous intelligence
| officials_ are the govt appointed propagandists! NYT is full
| of them parroting the government line. None of these people
| on a cushy job are risking their freedom leaking anything
| that they weren 't literally tasked with leaking to their
| media contacts; the ones that did are in prison.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Exactly! We only need sources cited for things we _don 't_
| like.
| waffleiron wrote:
| So how do we know the anonymous source (such as in this case)
| isn't a government appointed propagandist?
| nkrisc wrote:
| You don't. So you decide whether to believe it and always
| keep in your mind the possibility the other version of what
| you believe is true.
| munk-a wrote:
| Even if you know the source it's pretty difficult to rule
| out that the information isn't ultimately coming from a
| propaganda dump.
| adamrezich wrote:
| nobody does this. they should, but they don't. nobody
| keeps the wavefunction of their views on a topic
| uncollapsed. this takes incredible mental fortitude and
| immunity to emotional resonance, which increasingly few
| people have.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Oh c'mon, this is really overbaked phrasing
| ('wavefunction...uncollapsed' lol). Every single person
| in the world knows how to deal with uncertain information
| from dubious sources: The weatherman says it won't rain,
| but the sky looks dark and I'm going to carry an umbrella
| anyway.
| adamrezich wrote:
| did you try to see what I was getting at before
| dismissing my statement?
|
| when's the last time you successfully maintained
| something resembling internal undecided neutrality on a
| given topic, instead of resolving your views into a
| concrete position? it seems to be human nature to _know_
| that [something] _is_ [true /false/some other quality],
| instead of maintaining an ambiguous perspective--even for
| complex issues, we seem to want to boil them down into
| something like a polarizing binary choice of belief,
| rather than allowing ourselves to remain uncertain, as
| soon as possible, to avoid the mental burden of not
| having come to a decision yet.
|
| always-online smartphones in everyone's pockets and
| social media have made the world increasingly polarizing.
| fence-sitters are not tolerated: pick a side, you're
| either with me, or against me, and everything I stand
| for! which is to say, you're emotionally compelled to
| choose one end of the binary spectrum over the other--
| when the reality of the situation might not even be a
| binary choice to begin with!
|
| if human beings were better at remaining "undecided until
| further evidence" on issues, and if it was more
| societally-permitted, the world would undoubtedly be a
| better place.
|
| (is this phrasing less "overbaked"? I still don't see
| what's wrong with the wavefunction collapse analogy.)
|
| > Every single person in the world knows how to deal with
| uncertain information from dubious sources: The
| weatherman says it won't rain [...]
|
| I completely and wholeheartedly disagree with this
| statement. everyone knows that weather prediction is
| uncertain, and takes such predictions with a grain of
| salt accordingly. this is not the case for news media.
| historically it has been mostly trusted implicitly, and
| this is largely still the case, but now there's people
| who don't trust any news media at all (or perhaps only
| their preferred, alternative sources). regardless, "every
| single person in the world" does NOT "know how to deal
| with uncertain information from dubious sources" in the
| smartphone/social media age. it is delusional to believe
| otherwise.
| Koshkin wrote:
| "Increasingly few," too, has kept my mind in an
| uncollapsed state for a short while.
| threeseed wrote:
| You trust the journalist.
|
| It's not a perfect system obviously but yet to see an
| alternative.
| babelfish wrote:
| Okay. I do not trust this journalist.
| mastazi wrote:
| It is currently a broken system. I don't think there has
| ever been a time in which trust in news sources has been
| lower that it is right now, and this is having all sorts
| of negative impacts in society. One of the problems is
| that news outlets don't have the right incentives; back
| in the time of printed paper you would spend your dollar
| on what you would consider a "trusted" news source,
| nowadays much of "news" is clickbait. The majority of
| what I see in online news aggregators today, would have
| been considered unacceptably low quality back when I was
| still in the field of journalism (2005-ish)
| Mirioron wrote:
| But over the last decade journalists, as a group, have
| taught me not to trust them.
| Leary wrote:
| What incentive does a journalist have? Do they have an
| incentive to publish a story that is sensational when the
| story could be either true or false?
| adamrezich wrote:
| because it lines up with what I have already determined to
| be the truth, therefore it too must be the truth. who needs
| trust or verification when you have emotional resonance?
| ipaddr wrote:
| You trust the vetting rep of the newspaper.
|
| NYT in this case which seems to have one of the best
| processes.
| rectang wrote:
| You're probably right that the Times has "one of the best
| processes".
|
| However, the Times also employed Judith Miller, which
| goes to show how little such processes are worth.
| threeseed wrote:
| I never understand this criticism.
|
| Do people actually expect intelligence sources to go publicly
| on the record ?
| monocasa wrote:
| It's more that intelligence sources know better than to talk
| to the press unless told to, so it's nearly always for
| propaganda purposes. My experience is that the veracity of
| these claims are at best a coin flip.
| threeseed wrote:
| There is a wide variety of intelligence sources.
|
| Marco Rubio is privy to classified material and doesn't
| answer to the Biden administration.
| monocasa wrote:
| And? He has his own propaganda he's trying to push and
| probably wouldn't be against outright lying either if it
| wouldn't be publicly traced back to him.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| No, but you have no idea what game the anonymous source is
| playing. Maybe they're telling the truth. Maybe they're
| telling a lie that will help them in some manner. Maybe
| they're just misinformed and think they're telling the truth.
| remarkEon wrote:
| I think the point is that the public should take what
| "anonymous intelligence officials" say with enough salt to
| put the Dead Sea to shame. They might be right, they might be
| wrong, and they're probably lying.
| fswd wrote:
| Reuter's isn't a very reliable source of information given they
| fell for another Sam Hyde hoax Feb 28th, and it's still up..
|
| /s Hyde
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/americans-canadians-answer-ukr...
| [deleted]
| filoleg wrote:
| I know that some important journalist/publication fell for the
| Sam Hyde hoax a couple of days ago, and I've seen the original
| tweet, but the hoax part of it wasn't in the article you
| linked, so imo it is a bad example.
|
| The article just talks about foreigners enlisting to assist
| Ukrainian military, and it lists a few personal stories of
| those. The only potential reference to Sam Hyde is this
| sentence: "Hyde, a 28-year-old from the U.S. Midwest, said he
| was already in Kyiv and expected to start military training on
| Tuesday." This is a wild stretch to use this as an example of
| Reuters being hoaxed in this article. For all we know, it could
| have been a different person with the last name Hyde, it isn't
| exactly uncommon. There are no references in the article to the
| details that could definitely identify it with the Sam Hyde
| hoax that we saw on Twitter.
| planck01 wrote:
| As in: an organization who makes a mistake once is unreliable
| for everything they say no matter how trustworthy everything
| else they put out is? And the alternative is what? Something
| like: let's start believing random facebook posts, or some
| other systematic biased site?
| programmarchy wrote:
| Reuters is obviously systematically biased toward the
| consensus of Western elites.
| [deleted]
| fortuna86 wrote:
| That link is dead for me.
| filoleg wrote:
| Try different browser or a VPN. I just checked, and it was
| alive for me.
| baybal2 wrote:
| The plans for the war were drafted likely in 2021, and maps
| printed in Jan 2022.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t55fov/anonymous_c...
| zthrowaway wrote:
| Came here to say this. It seems likely that China would've
| known about the plans around this, and delaying this to post
| olympics is in China's best interest. I don't see how people
| are finding this claim to be far-fetched.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Yea, it seems obvious that Russia would be extremely
| dependent on China with their plan. Even if China didn't
| explicitly ask them to hold off until afterwards, I would
| assume that putin would have been smart enough to wait for
| the end of the olympics to avoid stomping on their prestige.
| [deleted]
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I'm not sure why I'm not seeing more of this sort of thing:
|
| https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/...
|
| There are plenty of trees to create abatis, log obstacles, post
| formations, etc. Even civilians could do a lot of it. Get ahead
| of the curve, and you can do a lot to slow the advance of armored
| vehicles.
|
| Similarly, for cities...
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/SpencerGuard/status/1497583307504...
|
| Of course, I'm not there, nor privy to everything that is going
| on.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > BRIDGE DEMOLITIONS
|
| There were a few well-publicized incidents of this outside of
| Kiev, very early in the conflict:
| https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/25/world/russia-ukraine...
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Those, yes.
| dotdi wrote:
| This is the NY Times article that Reuters cites:
| https://archive.ph/LOMqw
| [deleted]
| fortuna86 wrote:
| Of course they did, these are two authoritarian nations only
| concerned with their own image.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| There was also unrest in Kazakhstan early in the year that Russia
| intervened in; very shortly after the start of the war they
| publicly called on Kazakhstan for troops and were declined. I
| wonder if diversion of Russian resources to Kazakhstan and/or
| Kazakhstan forces that were planned on being available being held
| back played a role in timing, too. (And if so, of then those
| Kazakhstan forces not coming through once the invasion was
| underway caused additional problems.)
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Putin just wanted to throw some Kazakh bodies in front of his
| Russian troops. They are much more expendable to him.
| ssijak wrote:
| Russia has literally 0% dependency on Kazakhstan army.
| T-zex wrote:
| Militarily, yes, but politically it would have looked a bit
| better if there was someone else apart from Lukashenko to
| support them.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Like Chechens, they might be useful for various operations
| that the kinship bonds between Russians and Ukrainians may
| have complicated.
|
| OTOH, the Chechens reportedly ended up not working out as
| well as they were planned to, either.
| romwell wrote:
| ...had.
|
| With each day, Putin is scrambling to find all the help there
| is.
|
| The only people fighting for him now are psychopaths and
| conscripts. The latter don't want to be there, and Russia is
| running out of the former.
| glfharris wrote:
| Russia does not need allies to defeat the Ukrainian army.
| Given enough time they will win, even if sanctions/aid to
| Ukraine make it a pyhrric victory.
|
| Part of the sluggishness has been the desire for the
| "targeted strike", something that appears to have been
| reversed with the less discriminate bombing of the last 24
| hours.
| aiven wrote:
| Russia is big country and it needs lots of men to defend
| it on all its borders, which means that the forces they
| can use for invasion are limited. RN it looks like that
| they run out of soldiers, and Ukraine already started
| counter attacks on some fronts, so I guess "they will
| win" will not happen any time soon.
| dathinab wrote:
| Though most of it's borders need very little defending.
| duxup wrote:
| "It would be embarrassing if you killed people during our show.
| Please kill people later."
| dathinab wrote:
| Also: "We are your best friend, you surly wouldn't ruin our
| very important show, right?"
|
| And with "best friend" I mean only friend they couldn't afford
| to offend given that they already had been in a tensed
| situation with "the west".
|
| Like in "the only nation which can still ship you chips and
| similar if you really mess with the West and the bite back".
| jdrc wrote:
| there is this idea of a ceasefire during the olympics , which i
| guess shows some kind of respect for the olympic idea or
| something.
|
| Over the decades i ve grown to hate the olympics and other
| international sports competitions as they are important
| instruments of nationalism
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