Russian Invasion of Ukraine

[Manetho]

Do you believe the resistance is worth it?

Only the Ukrainians can really decide that. But at this point, odds are that Ukrainians would be massacred in large numbers even if the government surrendered. I think if there was ever a point where they could save lives by submitting, it has already passed.

[Gadianton]

DT, how can anybody but those doing the resisting say whether it's worth it or not? I've had my moments where I wonder if an alternative timeline where Ukraine hands the keys over with minimal resistance and then bring the fight in terms of civil unrest and hope that sanctions and Russia's declining economy brings it down in a few years. But to take Ukraine with no losses and then take their military, and now turn to the next territory?

Someone unfortunately is going to have to fight.

[MeDotOrg]

Today on a Brooklyn subway, a man strapped on a gas mask before seting off a smoke bomb, and proceeded to fire 33 bullets at blinded unarmed panicked passengers...

killing no one.

If they catch the guy, they should send him to Russia to train their sharpshooters.

[Chap]

Do you believe the resistance is worth it?

Worth what? Making you a bit nervous?

For the record, I believe the death and terror sustained by the British population during the time when they were the only advanced nation opposing Hitler's apparently invincible forces was 'worth it'. The Ukrainians seem to feel the same way. It's their call.

[Moksha]

Today on a Brooklyn subway, a man strapped on a gas mask before seting off a smoke bomb, and proceeded to fire 33 bullets at blinded unarmed panicked passengers...

killing no one.

If they catch the guy, they should send him to Russia to train their sharpshooters.

SUNSET PARK, Brooklyn (WABC) -- At least seven people remain hospitalized Wednesday morning after the terrifying shooting aboard a subway train in Brooklyn. Of those still hospitalized, five are listed in critical condition.

Tuesday evening, the authorities identified 62-year-old Frank R. James as a person of interest in the investigation and released a photo at an NYPD briefing led by Commissioner Keechant Sewell.

[Gunnar]

Things wouldn't be good, but thousands of Ukrainian citizens wouldn't be dying.

That's far from certain. Russian rhetoric around the invasion sounds increasingly like advocacy for genocide. Timothy Snyder, a historian specializing in Eastern Europe and the Holocaust, says this:

Russia has just issued a genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine. The Russian official press agency "RIA Novosti" published last Sunday an explicit program for the complete elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such. It is still available for viewing, and has now been translated several times into English.

As I have been saying since the war began, "denazification" in official Russian usage just means the destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation. A "Nazi," as the genocide manual explains, is simply a human being who self-identifies as Ukrainian. According to the handbook, the establishment of a Ukrainian state thirty years ago was the "nazification of Ukraine." Indeed "any attempt to build such a state" has to be a "Nazi" act. Ukrainians are "Nazis" because they fail to accept "the necessity that the people support Russia." Ukrainians should suffer for believing that they exist as a separate people; only this can lead to the "redemption of guilt"…

Russia's genocide handbook was published on April 3, two days after the first revelation that Russian servicemen in Ukraine had murdered hundreds of people in Bucha, and just as the story was reaching major newspapers. The Bucha massacre was one of several cases of mass killing that emerged as Russian troops withdrew from the Kyiv region. This means that the genocide program was knowingly published even as the physical evidence of genocide was emerging. The writer and the editors chose this particular moment to make public a program for the elimination of the Ukrainian nation as such.

As a historian of mass killing, I am hard pressed to think of many examples where states explicitly advertise the genocidal character of their own actions right at at the moment those actions become public knowledge. From a legal perspective, the existence of such a text (in the larger context of similar statements and Vladimir Putin's repeated denial that Ukraine exists) makes the charge of genocide far easier to make. Legally, genocide means both actions that destroy a group in whole or in part, combined with some intention to do so. Russia has done the deed and confessed to the intention.

Putin's policy and attitude concerning Ukraine seems just as abominable as the Nazis' infamous "final solution" regarding the Jews. It also seems like Putin has broadened the definition of "Nazism" to include anyone or anything that opposes or conflicts with anything whatsoever that Putin claims or wants to do.

[K Graham]

Ukraine is reporting that one of their cruise missiles struck Russia's flagship Navy vessel. Russia is claiming the men are evacuating the ship due to a fire unrelated to any attack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdHH71JtUMw

[Chap]

Ukraine is reporting that one of their cruise missiles struck Russia's flagship Navy vessel. Russia is claiming the men are evacuating the ship due to a fire unrelated to any attack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdHH71JtUMw

Reports I have seen suggest that the Russians are following the line that the cause of the explosion is 'under investigation'. One does hope, however, that Russian naval architects can design warships that don't just blow up spontaneously ...

[Kukulkan]

One does hope, however, that Russian naval architects can design warships that don't just blow up spontaneously ...

Chernobyl is calling...

[Physics Guy]

I'd be inclined to believe the Russians' story just because it's more embarrassing to their navy than damage from enemy action would be, except that I can't put it past the ineptness of Russian propaganda to fail to realize this.