Russia/Ukraine

[Mori Chu]

By the way, one thing I've seen people reminding about online is, in a time like this there will be lots of info floating about, lots of people claiming to have brand new footage of some kind of attack or something in UKR. We should be wary of re-sharing stuff that we haven't verified or aren't sure if it's true. Nobody's perfect, but we should all try our best to share info we have verified or that comes from reputable sources.

[Mori Chu]

Statement from former President George W Bush:

[Mori Chu]

The Russian attacks on Ukraine have ramped up overnight. They seem to be attacking several major cities and airports. Here's some CNN coverage:

[In2ition]

I saw some incredible and terrifying video of the airborne drops, the aircraft coming over the skies and the explosions of military assets in Ukraine.

Apparently, Results of the first four hours of the operation against Ukraine:

Air Defence destroyed
Air Force destroyed
Navy destroyed
There are no more Ukrainian drones.

[In2ition]

Looks like the Kremlin.ru website is down and now there are reports of banks and several sites are down in Russia.

Does that mean that countries are now attacking Russia?

[In2ition]

[Nodack]

It’s officially on. A complete invasion now with Putin demanding Kiev surrender. Putin promises to destroy any country who interferes with his invasion. The West freaks out on how to deal with his aggression while Trump and his supporters praise Putin.

[In2ition]

[Nodack]

Ukraine attack leaves Baltics wondering: Are we next?
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukrai ... 238865b526

[Nodack]

Live updates: US official: UN to vote on Russia resolution
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukrai ... 0ca78142fd
UNITED NATIONS -- A senior U.S. official says the U.N. Security Council is expected to vote Friday on a resolution condemning Russia in the strongest terms possible for attacking Ukraine and demanding the immediate withdrawal of all its forces — knowing that Russia will veto the legally binding measure.

The United States believes it is very important to put the resolution to a vote to underscore Russia’s international isolation, and emphasizes that the veto will be followed quickly by a resolution in the 193-member U.N. General Assembly where there are no vetoes, the official said Thursday. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

“This is a first step in how the U.N. responds to this premeditated war of choice that Russia has chosen to take, and we will see action in the General Assembly in the coming days,” he said, adding that it is part of a much broader, coordinated response that includes steps the Biden administration and its allies are taking.

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin says he was “forced” to order a military action in Ukraine because of the Western refusal to heed Russian security demands.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensnkyy has urged Moscow to end hostilities, adding that Russian airborne troops have been checked outside Kyiv.

The Ukrainian leader said many Russian warplanes and armored vehicles were destroyed but didn’t give numbers. He also said an unspecified number of Russian troops was captured.

He appealed to global leaders, saying that “if you don’t help us now, if you fail to offer strong assistance to Ukraine, tomorrow the war will knock on your door.”

MOSCOW — Russia’s Defense Ministry says the Russian military has destroyed 74 Ukrainian military facilities, including 11 air bases.

BRUSSELS — A top European Union official is pledging to make Russia suffer with “massive and targeted sanctions” that will particularly hit the country’s elite.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the package of EU measures will include financial sanctions that will severely limit Russia’s access to the capital markets and have a severe impact on all sectors of its economy.

She said ahead of an EU summit Thursday that “these sanctions will suppress Russia’s economic growth, increase the borrowing costs, raise inflations, intensify capital outflow and gradually erode its industrial basis.”

[Nodack]

EXPLAINER: Just how hard could US sanctions hit Russia?
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukrai ... d002959e87
Biden administration officials have described measures that would send Russia’s ruble crashing, isolate Moscow from the world financial system and possibly drive the country into recession. They also have said minimizing the damage to European economies is a primary concern.

World leaders move to slap sanctions on the Kremlin
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukrai ... cae5acbe34
BRUSSELS (AP) — World leaders Thursday condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “barbaric” and moved to slap unprecedented economic sanctions on Moscow and those close to President Vladimir Putin.

The West and its allies showed no inclination to send troops into Ukraine — a non-member of NATO — and risk a wider European war. But NATO reinforced its member states in Eastern Europe as a precaution against an attack on them, too.

“Make no mistake: We will defend every ally against any attack on every inch of NATO territory,” said NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.

In the meantime, the allies began to take steps aimed at isolating Moscow and forcing it to pay so high a price that it changes course.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the attack “hideous and barbaric” and said of Putin: “Now we see him for what he is — a bloodstained aggressor who believes in imperial conquest.”

[Nodack]

Sanders: Trump's praise of Putin 'outrageous'
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/595 ... outrageous
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Thursday blasted former President Trump, saying it was "unsurprising" that he would praise Russian President Vladimir Putin and his "murderous invasion of Ukraine as an act of 'genius.'"

"It should concern us all that Putin is exactly the kind of leader Trump would like to be, and that so few Republicans have the courage to say this out loud," the Vermont senator said in a post on Twitter.

"I said, 'How smart is that? He's going to go in and be a peacekeeper,'" Trump said. "That's the strongest peace force. We could use that on our southern border. That's the strongest peace force I've ever seen. There were more army tanks than I've ever seen. They're going to keep peace, all right."


Why Donald Trump can't stop praising Vladimir Putin
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/24/politics ... index.html
"I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, 'This is genius.' Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent," Trump said. "Oh, that's wonderful."

Trump's response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine reveals divisions among Republicans
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-puti ... -response/
Republican lawmakers and candidates are largely united in their belief that President Biden's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine has fallen short

The varied and at times conflicting Republican reactions, both on the campaign trail and on Capitol Hill, underscore how the party remains deeply influenced by Trump, who praised Vladimir Putin as "savvy" after the Russian president recognized the independence of two Russian separatist-controlled areas in eastern Ukraine.

As Russia began its full scale invasion later Wednesday, Trump told Fox News that "This all happened because of a rigged election." At a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser Wednesday evening, he continued his praise of Putin, calling him "pretty smart" in "taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions."

https://news.yahoo.com/white-house-trum ... 36813.html

“Two nauseating, fearful pigs who hate what America stands for and whose every action is driven by their their own weakness and insecurity, rubbing their snouts together and celebrating as innocent people lose their lives,” Bates tweeted.

While most Republicans have balked at Putin's moves in Ukraine and called for swift and steep sanctions, others aligned with Trump have echoed the former president and adopted a far less hostile view of the Russian leader and been more circumspect about any U.S. military action in Europe.

Way to take both sides Republicans. Biden isn’t doing enough to stop Putin and at the same time he shouldn’t be doing anything because Putin invading Ukraine a good thing and is Obama’s fault and Biden’s fault because of the rigged election and his fault for not doing enough of something.

[Mori Chu]

[Mori Chu]

A good reminder: There are definitely images and videos floating around that people claim are from Ukraine that aren't. Be careful.

[Mori Chu]

Oh, okay.

[Mori Chu]

Oh.

[In2ition]

U.S. Officials Repeatedly Urged China to Help Avert War in Ukraine
Americans presented Chinese officials with intelligence on Russia’s troop buildup in hopes that President Xi Jinping would step in, but were repeatedly rebuffed.
By Edward Wong
Feb. 25, 2022
Updated 10:06 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/us/p ... raine.html

WASHINGTON — Over three months, senior Biden administration officials held half a dozen urgent meetings with top Chinese officials in which the Americans presented intelligence showing Russia’s troop buildup around Ukraine and beseeched the Chinese to tell Russia not to invade, according to U.S. officials.

Each time, the Chinese officials, including the foreign minister and the ambassador to the United States, rebuffed the Americans, saying they did not think an invasion was in the works. After one diplomatic exchange in December, U.S. officials got intelligence showing Beijing had shared the information with Moscow, telling the Russians that the United States was trying to sow discord — and that China would not try to impede Russian plans and actions, the officials said.

The previously unreported talks between American and Chinese officials show how the Biden administration tried to use intelligence findings and diplomacy to persuade a superpower it views as a growing adversary to stop the invasion of Ukraine, and how that nation, led by President Xi Jinping, persistently sided with Russia even as the evidence of Moscow’s plans for a military offensive grew over the winter.

This account is based on interviews with senior administration officials with knowledge of the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the diplomacy. The Chinese Embassy did not return requests for comment.

Spoiler: show/hide

China is Russia’s most powerful partner, and the two nations have been strengthening their bond for many years across diplomatic, economic and military realms. Mr. Xi and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, two autocrats with some shared ideas about global power, had met 37 times as national leaders before this year. If any world leader could make Mr. Putin think twice about invading Ukraine, it was Mr. Xi, went the thinking of some U.S. officials.

But the diplomatic efforts failed, and Mr. Putin began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Thursday morning after recognizing two Russia-backed insurgent enclaves in the country’s east as independent states.

In a call on Friday, Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that the United States and NATO had ignored Russia’s “reasonable” security concerns and had reneged on their commitments, according to a readout of the call released by the Chinese state news media. Mr. Xi reiterated China’s public position that it was important to respect the “legitimate security concerns” as well as the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of all countries. Mr. Putin told Mr. Xi that Russia was willing to negotiate with Ukraine, and Mr. Xi said China supported any such move.

Some American officials say the ties between China and Russia appear stronger than at any time since the Cold War. The two now present themselves as an ideological front against the United States and its European and Asian allies, even as Mr. Putin carries out the invasion of Ukraine, whose sovereignty China has recognized for decades.

The growing alarm among American and European officials at the alignment between China and Russia has reached a new peak with the Ukraine crisis, exactly 50 years to the week after President Richard M. Nixon made a historic trip to China to restart diplomatic relations to make common cause in counterbalancing the Soviet Union. For 40 years after that, the relationship between the United States and China grew stronger, especially as lucrative trade ties developed, but then frayed due to mutual suspicions, intensifying strategic competition and antithetical ideas about power and governance.

In the recent private talks on Ukraine, American officials heard language from their Chinese counterparts that was consistent with harder lines the Chinese had been voicing in public, which showed that a more hostile attitude had become entrenched, according to the American accounts.

On Wednesday, after Mr. Putin ordered troops into eastern Ukraine but before its full invasion, Hua Chunying, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said at a news conference in Beijing that the United States was “the culprit of current tensions surrounding Ukraine.”

“On the Ukraine issue, lately the U.S. has been sending weapons to Ukraine, heightening tensions, creating panic and even hyping up the possibility of warfare,” she said. “If someone keeps pouring oil on the flame while accusing others of not doing their best to put out the fire, such kind of behavior is clearly irresponsible and immoral.”

She added: “When the U.S. drove five waves of NATO expansion eastward all the way to Russia’s doorstep and deployed advanced offensive strategic weapons in breach of its assurances to Russia, did it ever think about the consequences of pushing a big country to the wall?” She has refused to call Russia’s assault an “invasion” when pressed by foreign journalists.

Ms. Hua’s fiery anti-American remarks as Russia was moving to attack its neighbor stunned some current and former U.S. officials and China analysts in the United States. But the verbal grenades echo major points in the 5,000-word joint statement that China and Russia issued on Feb. 4 when Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin met at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. In that document, the two countries declared their partnership had “no limits” and that they intended to stand together against American-led democratic nations. China also explicitly sided with Russia in the text to denounce enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Last Saturday, Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, criticized NATO in a video talk at the Munich Security Conference. European leaders in turn accused China of working with Russia to overturn what they and the Americans say is a “rules-based international order.” Mr. Wang did say that Ukraine’s sovereignty should be “respected and safeguarded” — a reference to a foreign policy principle that Beijing often cites — but no Chinese officials have mentioned Ukraine in those terms since Russia’s full invasion began.

“They claim neutrality, they claim they stand on principle, but everything they say about the causes is anti-U.S., blaming NATO and adopting the Russian line,” said Evan Medeiros, a Georgetown University professor who was senior Asia director at the White House National Security Council in the Obama administration. “The question is: How sustainable is that as a posture? How much damage does it do to their ties with the U.S. and their ties with Europe?”

The Biden administration’s diplomatic outreach to China to try to avert war began after President Biden and Mr. Xi held a video summit on Nov. 15. In the talk, the two leaders acknowledged challenges in the relationship between their nations, which is at its lowest point in decades, but agreed to try to cooperate on issues of common interest, including health security, climate change and nuclear weapons proliferation, White House officials said at the time.

After the meeting, American officials decided that the Russian troop buildup around Ukraine presented the most immediate problem that China and the United States could try to defuse together. Some officials thought the outcome of the video summit indicated there was potential for an improvement in U.S.-China relations. Others were more skeptical, but thought it was important to leave no stone unturned in efforts to prevent Russia from attacking, one official said.

Days later, White House officials met with the ambassador, Qin Gang, at the Chinese Embassy. They told the ambassador what U.S. intelligence agencies had detected: a gradual encirclement of Ukraine by Russian forces, including armored units. William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, had flown to Moscow on Nov. 2 to confront the Russians with the same information, and on Nov. 17, American intelligence officials shared their findings with NATO.

At the Chinese Embassy, Russia’s aggression was the first topic in a discussion that ran more than one and a half hours. In addition to laying out the intelligence, the White House officials told the ambassador that the United States would impose tough sanctions on Russian companies, officials and businesspeople in the event of an invasion, going far beyond those announced by the Obama administration after Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

The U.S. officials said the sanctions would also hurt China over time because of its commercial ties.

They also pointed out they knew how China had helped Russia evade some of the 2014 sanctions, and warned Beijing against any such future aid. And they argued that because China was widely seen as a partner of Russia, its global image could suffer if Mr. Putin invaded.

The message was clear: It would be in China’s interests to persuade Mr. Putin to stand down. But their entreaties went nowhere. Mr. Qin was skeptical and suspicious, an American official said.

American officials spoke with the ambassador about Russia at least three more times, both in the embassy and on the phone. Wendy R. Sherman, the deputy secretary of state, had a call with him. Mr. Qin continued to express skepticism and said Russia had legitimate security concerns in Europe.

The Americans also went higher on the diplomatic ladder: Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke to Mr. Wang about the problem in late January and again on Monday, the same day Mr. Putin ordered the new troops into Russia-backed enclaves of Ukraine.

“The secretary underscored the need to preserve Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said a State Department summary of the call that used the phrase that Chinese diplomats like to employ in signaling to other nations not to get involved in matters involving Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong, all considered separatist problems by Beijing.

American officials met with Mr. Qin in Washington again on Wednesday and heard the same rebuttals. Hours later, Mr. Putin declared war on Ukraine on television, and his military began pummeling the country with ballistic missiles as tanks rolled across the border.

[Indy]

Of course China knew. There was talk before the olympic games that Xi asked Putin to wait to start the war until after games so they didn't take any of China's spotlight.

[virtual9mm]

I actually don't think that China's all that happy about it. They've been buying a lot of Ukrainian military hardware and tech at bargain basement prices.

[virtual9mm]

Now that I'm on this thread...why the heck didn't Biden simply put a token American military presence in Kiev? It wouldn't take much, like an airborne battalion. Just a signal to let Putin know that we wouldn't roll over.

Come to think about it, it's the same mistake Joe made in Afghanistan, isn't it.