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Now the bad news...

Russia publishes list of 'unfriendly countries' after invasion of Ukraine

From link.

Oh no! Not the island of Jersey (located in the English Channel) and Liechtenstein (a 25km-long principality between Austria and Switzerland).

The list includes;

  • United States
  • Canada
  • the EU states
  • UK (including Jersey)
  • Anguilla
  • British Virgin Islands
  • Gibraltar
  • Ukraine
  • Montenegro
  • Switzerland
  • Albania
  • Andorra
  • Iceland
  • Liechtenstein
  • Monaco
  • Norway
  • San Marino
  • North Macedonia
  • Japan
  • South Korea
  • Australia
  • Micronesia
  • New Zealand
  • Singapore
  • Taiwan (considered a territory of China, but ruled by its own administration since 1949)
They should've just said half the world or the west 🤷‍♂️

I love how Russia is included as well lol. Once sanctions really start biting he's going to have some big internal problems to deal with. How long before Putin declares martial law I wonder...
 
He's killing, maiming, and displacing a shit ton of his "one people".
Yes he is, and we can all see it in heart breaking and shocking detail on the news.

The question that is or should be concentrating the minds of our leaders is what will be his next move. Because they are the ones with responsibility to ensure that pre-emptive measures or policies are in place to ensure that he does no more "killing, maiming and displacing a shit ton" on another people.
 
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A couple points:

Firstly I think it is much more likely Ukraine would declare neutrality than give up Crimea, the DPR and the LPR. Ukraine knows they're nowhere close to joining NATO anyway, and if neutrality means security guarantees, why would you not agree to that at this point? Crimea, LPR and DPR are a matter of Ukrainian sovereignty however, I see no room to cave on that.

Secondly, I would not trust Putin's words at all. Ukraine was given security guarantees for denuclearization, look where that got them. Likewise, Russia decided, on their own accord, to tear up the Minsk agreement under completely false pretexts. What's to prevent them from doing that again. Additionally, Russia can't even adhere to humanitarian corridors and is bombing apartments, nuclear power plants, and assaulting hospitals. I would not for a minute trust this mans word, not to mention his clear desire for regime change, and his failure to acknowledge Ukraine as a country, nothing stops him from slowly chipping away again and again.


Disagree. This goes back to 2007 where Putin basically put NATO on watch. Since then he's invaded Georgia, the Crimean Peninsula, and also turned Belarus into a Russian vassal state while also propping up the DPR, LPR and Kazakhstan (which he also recently declared didn't deserve statehood very similar to Ukraine)

He's also publicly stated he wants NATO to roll the clock back to 1997, this was literally one of his demands in negotiations with the West leading up to the invasion. This, among other things, means no baltics or Poland in NATO. Additionally he's talked about how the fall of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire are among the world's greatest tragedies. So to suggest his conquest ends at Ukraine is folly in my opinion.

Just look to his recent summit with Xi and Putin, where they outlined their partnership for what they called a "new era" and their desire to create a more democratic globe, respect for human rights etc. China and Russia have incredible ambition, and want to topple western hegemony. At the very least if Putin is going down, there's no reason for him to not try and drag the West down with him.
Putin has complained about former Warsaw Pact nations joining NATO yet that is the basis of international self-determination. A number of ex-Soviet states are in the SCO or CSTO and the West accepts that. Belarus was de facto satellite long before 2007.

Ukraine somewhat unique in that it had significant Russian naval and military facilities on its territory (Crimea) as a result of post-1991 agreements. Consesquently, it could never join NATO with large Russian forces on its soil.

However, the claims he makes on Ukraine due to the bonds of its people and the delegitimisation of Ukraine's history is unique from other former Soviet states. Crucially - and this was my point - he makes no such similar claims elsewhere.

Now the cultural and society bonds between Ukraine and Russia are close, nothwithstanding that is absolutely no basis for the current war. University of Rochester has an interesting analysis of this:
 
Here's a video from Wendover Productions regarding the very weak Russian military logistics:


The Russian military relies on having strong firepower at the expense of logistics.
Hugely important area to military capability, or a lack of. Recent photos and video showing Russian trains bringing reinforcements or replacements to their motorised transport. Scraping the bottom of the barrel?

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Russian train.jpg
 
The Russian alphabet...
1.jpg
From link.
There is no "Z".

How the Letter Z Became a Pro-War Symbol in Russia

From link.

568273aa39762762fc4ca4b6a2db446a3c-russia-z.rhorizontal.w700.jpg

A protester paints a Z on a street, in reference to Russian tanks marked with the letter, during a rally in Belgrade organized by Serbian right-wing organizations in support of invasion in Ukraine on March 4. Photo: Andrej Isakovic/AFP via Getty Images
As Russia massed its military forces along the Ukrainian border in preparation to invade, close observers of the buildup noticed that the letter Z had been painted on many of the Russian military vehicles. While the marking was most likely used as a simple way to visually differentiate groups of Russian forces, the letter Z has since become a symbol of support in Russia for both the “special operation” — which is the term Russians are now required by law use for the invasion — and for Russian president Vladimir Putin. These displays of Z, which is a letter in the Latin, not Russian, alphabet, have been heavily promoted by Russian state media, used in propaganda videos, and spotted everywhere from Moscow Metro billboards to the windows of Russians’ cars to a Russian gymnast’s uniform. Below is a primer on the pro-war meme, where it’s been seen, and what it has come to mean.

What does the Z stand for?​

The Russian military has never confirmed why the Z appeared on the vehicles of its invasion force. But according to military analysts, the most likely explanation is that the Z, along with several other symbols incorporating letters in use among Russian ground forces, is meant to identify which group of the invasion force the vehicles were from, as well as to prevent friendly fire, since the Ukrainian military uses some of the same military hardware.

Rob Lee, a Ph.D. candidate at the department of war studies at King’s College, London, who has been documenting the invasion, proposed that different variations of the symbol suggest “different task forces” within the Russian army. Other experts propose that the letter may stand for the word zapad, which means “west.”
The letter was eventually adopted by supporters of the Russian invasion, even if they didn’t know exactly what it meant. “I don’t know where this symbol came from,” nationalist activist Anton Demidov told The Wall Street Journal. “The symbol is not important. What’s important is what position it represents, and that is that we understand we need to back our president and our army in their difficult task.”

Where has the symbol spread?​

As the colors of Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flag have been taken up as an antiwar stance throughout the world, the letter Z has emerged in the former Soviet bloc as a sign of nationalist fervor and militancy. Russian-media analyst Vasily Gatov told the New York Times that the symbol “is definitely a state-induced meme” that has been artificially cultivated by state-sponsored propagandists. The Russian state-media organization RT has even gone so far as to market merchandise emblazoned with the letter.
The symbol has spread rapidly on social media as well, with some Russian companies subbing out their own logos for the Cyrillic version of the letter for their avatar. The Defense Ministry has posted the letter repeatedly on Instagram in support of Russian troops, and an image has been proliferating of the blue-and-yellow badges of dead Ukrainian soldiers placed together to make a Z.
Meanwhile, longtime Russia observers such as the New Yorker’s Masha Gessen have noted that the Z has quickly come to symbolize Russian hyperaggression, if not outright fascism. “Over the course of a few days, it had come to stand for loyalty, devotion to the state, murderous rage, and unchecked power,” writes Gessen.
The governor of the Western Siberian region of Kuzbass, Sergei Tsivilyov, announced that he was changing the spelling of the name of his region, to incorporate a capital Latin “Z” in the middle. In Yalta, which is in Russian-occupied Crimea, and in the Siberian city of Surgut, cars were photographed lining up to form the letter “Z.” In Crimea, a poster picturing a soldier in full combat gear, captioned with “The Russian soldier is a liberator” and the letter “Z,” went up. The letter “Z” and the tagline “#WeDontAbandonOurOwn” were seen on a multimedia display in the St. Petersburg metro. A Twitter user photographed a placard with the letter “Z” nailed to a post outside what he said was the Russian consulate in Sydney. At a children’s hospice in Kazan, the capital of the republic of Tatarstan, the patients and staff lined up in the shape of a “Z” in the snowy courtyard; they held flags of Russia, Tatarstan, and the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic in their left hands, and raised their right hands in a fist. … Someone spray-painted the “Z” on the apartment door of Rita Flores, a member of the protest art group Pussy Riot. On March 4th, police raided the offices of Memorial, a human-rights organization that the state has ordered to close. After eleven hours, they left the place in shambles—and with the letter “Z” scrawled in various places, including a flip chart on which someone had written, “Z. Memorial is over.”
 
...

What is the scandal involving the Russian gymnast?​


At the FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Cup in Qatar on Saturday, Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak wore a white Z made from tape on his white uniform during the medal ceremony for the parallel-bars event. As the bronze winner, the 20-year-old stood with this symbol of aggression next to gold medalist and Ukrainian athlete Illia Kovtun. The pair did not shake hands.
Following the incident, the International Gymnastics Federation announced an investigation into what it described as “shocking behaviour” from the Russian gymnast. As of Monday, all Russian and Belarusian gymnasts have been banned from its competitions, and Kuliak could face a personal ban as well.

The "new" Nazi swastika for right-wingers around the world?
ce2.jfif
From link.
 
The Russian alphabet...
1.jpg
From link.
There is no "Z".

How the Letter Z Became a Pro-War Symbol in Russia

From link.

568273aa39762762fc4ca4b6a2db446a3c-russia-z.rhorizontal.w700.jpg

A protester paints a Z on a street, in reference to Russian tanks marked with the letter, during a rally in Belgrade organized by Serbian right-wing organizations in support of invasion in Ukraine on March 4. Photo: Andrej Isakovic/AFP via Getty Images







It would be interesting to know the real background for selecting this letter. Distinctive operational field markings are nothing new. It could be something as simple landing on a symbol that is very simple to make. Not a lot of the Cyrillic alphabet or numerology are similarly simple. The fact that it is not a Cyrillic letter but is a Latin/English letter might have something to do with it in their Machiavellian thinking.

I wonder how long before we see it tagged on a building around here.
 
It would be interesting to know the real background for selecting this letter. Distinctive operational field markings are nothing new. It could be something as simple landing on a symbol that is very simple to make. Not a lot of the Cyrillic alphabet or numerology are similarly simple. The fact that it is not a Cyrillic letter but is a Latin/English letter might have something to do with it in their Machiavellian thinking.

I wonder how long before we see it tagged on a building around here.

I am all for adversaries making themselves easy to identify.

AoD
 

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