My understanding from what I've read is that Putin won't agree to a ceasefire until he's negotiating from a position of strength, which he hasn't yet achieved. One metric for achieving that would be to cut the Ukranian forces off from the sea. Another, would be to take some of the major cities. If that is true and the Ukranians are provided with more weapons and encouraged not to back down to Russian demands where does that leave us?

It seems to me the worst case scenario for Ukraine is a continued war of attrition that they're not losing quickly but can't win either and lose slowly until Putin achieves his military position of strength. And so they continue fighting while their cities are reduced to rubble; their citizens lose access to food, water and electricity; civilian casualties mount; and the cost of reconstruction both in terms of time and money skyrockets. And seeing as NATO has explicitly ruled out intervening militarily, which of the following do you think is the more likely outcome? — Baden

I don't see Ukrainians needing encouragement or persuasion - they are the ones doing all the persuading. And they are the ones doing all the fighting. So it is not for you to decide what is best for them, as if they were children who can't make responsible decisions about their own well-being. If they ask for help, you either give it to them or fuck off.

Obviously Putin does have his supporters, no doubt.

But one should notice that Putin's Russia is authoritarian, and spontaneity is usually controlled "spontaneity". Letting people to be spontaneous is not the correct way in Russia. — ssu

https://t.me/insiderUKR/26783

Here you can see a selection of announcements sent out to employees and college students, as well as calls for paid "extras".

On Friday there will be a rally in Luzhniki to celebrate an anniversary of the integration of Crimea into RF. Attendance is STRICTLY MANDATORY

Attention! Urgent update! We just received a direction that only persons of Slavic appearance are requested for the demonstration - no migrants.

(This is how "non-Slavic" people are often referred to in Russia, regardless of where they are actually from.)

Need extras for a concert on 18.03 at 14:00, 2 hours, Luzhniki Stadium (...) 300 rubles
Payment transferred next day to your bank card

This is a typical thing that happens before every government-organized "Puting" (as people call them - a play on "meeting," or rally).

What likely isn't fake news is that Russia has lost many generals (perhaps four or five) and high ranking commanders in the war. This does tell about that the operation hasn't gone well and that in a hierarchial organization like the Russian army, lower commanders taking initiative isn't supported, hence the generals have to come and lead from the front. It also tells about a highly working SIGINT of the Ukrainians that they can find the location of the generals and then use artillery at them. That the West has it's finger on this, can be likely.

In a documentary of the Russo-Georgian war these's footage of the 58th Army commander doing exactly this: before the drive to South Ossetia, a the general spoke a huge crowd of various officers and soldiers just how the lead formations will move Tskhinvali. — ssu

Today the head of Ukrainian border guards issued a mock thank you to a Russian TV propagandist who unwittingly helped Ukrainian military locate and sink a Russian warship in the port of Berdyansk.

With that as a given, I think I can also understand Isaac's disgust for one great power encouraging some relatively powerless nation or people to take on some other great power, and offering them support to do so, in essence convincing them to be complicit in their own inevitable or continued pummeling. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, I mean, those primitive people over there have no agency of their own, do they? They are nothing but pawns of the powerful. They couldn't have risen up against a corrupt and oppressive regime without Nulland engineering the whole thing. They wouldn't even dream of resisting an invasion by a force that threatens their existence as a people without great powers "convincing" them to fight.

I haven't heard that proverb before:
"Do what you ought, come what may".

I think it is ambiguous. What does it mean, to and for you?
Does it reflect a particular philosopher's theory/practice? — Amity

I have seen this saying variously attributed to Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and Leo Tolstoy. It was also adopted as a favorite motto by the Soviet physicist and human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov. It means (for me) that you should do what your conscience tells you to do, even when you have little knowledge and control over the outcome.

Sorry, I don't have anything to contribute to this discussion. To be honest, I am skeptical of such advises: Putin/Russia/Europe/etc. ought to do this or that. OK, how do you imagine this is going to happen? Will Putin listen to your advice? Will Russia or Europe (what could that even mean?) Are you just advising the universe on how it should proceed going forward? (You may as well, for all the good it will do...) Or is this more like a prayer? But then why get into such specifics? Keep it simple: "Thy will be done..."

For personal advice, I like this proverb best: do what you ought, come what may. That's all that any one of us can aspire to.

Oh, how interesting.
I have only just met him as the 5th contributor to the Guardian article:
How to Solve a Problem: Like Putin
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/670017 — Amity

Thanks, I'll have a look.

Here is a NYT podcast with a transcript relevant to the topic: Jane Coaston and Peter Pomerantsev, who both know a good deal about propaganda, discuss propaganda in the context of Russia's war with Ukraine. At the beginning they try to define propaganda in general, and I think they do a decent job.

Propaganda is manipulative and aggressive. It does not respect its audience; it doesn't want people to think, evaluate and come to their own conclusions freely; it aims to instill a particular set of beliefs by any means necessary. It could be objected that the same characteristics can apply to other communication. This is true, but the difference here is in standards and expectations. When a conversation starts to resemble propaganda on one or both sides, we see that as a failing. But whatever your attitude towards propaganda (whether you think there can be good propaganda, as well as bad), this is no more and no less than what we expect of it.

(Personal anecdote: I briefly met Peter Pomerantsev in Prague when he was a still boy living there with his parents. I haven't had contact with him since then, though I've met his dad in London, a Russian-speaking poet and writer, originally from West Ukraine.)

Don't feed the trolls.

Here is an interview with a woman who got out of the besieged Mariupol two days ago. You can listen to it if you understand Russian, or read a translation of a partial transcript.

"I thought that life couldn't get any worse. But every day I discovered that it could get worse... When I left, there wasn't a single intact building left. Not a single undamaged road without bomb craters. Not a single unbroken window in the entire city of Mariupol... People carry out the dead and bury them close to home, because you have to stay close to the bomb shelter... Early on there were volunteers who collected corpses left outside at bus stops and benches and drove them to the morgue. But there is no more room in the morgue... The last four days it seemed like not five minutes would go by without sounds of bomb blasts... "

Nuland — boethius

Oh for fuck's sake :roll:

Don't bother tagging me, I am not reading your ignorant bullshit.

Russian state-controlled media is still pushing the "biolabs" story. I would be worried if it was about chemical weapons, because that could mean that they are preparing the ground for using such weapons themselves. But the bioweapons story that they are telling is so fantastical and ridiculous that I just can't see how it could segue into something more realistic, like sarin or even anthrax. It looks more like they are indulging Putin's old paranoid fantasy about diseases genetically engineered to target Russians.

https://t.me/zvezdanews/73170


Let's just hope that propaganda is all there is to this story. There are more than enough things to worry about already.

I am not actually sure what is going on in Ukraine. — Book273

Yeah, this seems to be a common theme here. I don't know anything, I don't believe anyone, I don't give a fuck, but I am going to bloviate at length anyway...

Russian army reserve is not like US army reserve - it is not just a branch of the military that you can join for a few years of service. In Russia every man who is qualified for military service is either on active duty or in reserve - up to the age of about 50. So imagine all those men with families, jobs and beer bellies being called up to fight in the "brotherly" nation of Ukraine!

They haven't called in reservists yet (by law, that can only be done in wartime, but then again, "law" is a very flexible thing in Russia), but they are actively recruiting. People are being called up under any pretext and asked to sign a contract. And of course, the infamous Wagner, a mercenary company with close ties to Russian military, are recruiting. They sent messages to all those who had previously applied but were rejected due to a criminal record or for other reasons, telling them that now there is no filter - anyone willing can go and taste salo in Ukraine (salt pork, colloquially known as a staple Ukrainian delicacy).

Russian Ground Forces consist of only 280 000 troops. — ssu

That's the number of active duty troops as of 2020 per Wikipedia, but that would include both conscripts and professionals (Russia has both). By law, conscripts are not supposed to be deployed abroad, although there is evidence that the military are getting around this rule by any means possible. Still, there's been an outcry in Russia, and even an official acknowledgement that conscripts have been sent to Ukraine "by mistake." Some of these 18-19-year boys have only had a few months of basic training before being sent into battle!

Don’t know whether to put this here or in the Trump thread but oh well.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/03/exclusive-kremlin-putin-russia-ukraine-war-memo-tucker-carlson-fox/

Treasonous c***t. — Wayfarer

Fox and Tucker Carlson are well loved by Russian propaganda.

On Wednesday, Carlson claimed that the “Russian disinformation they’ve been telling us for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory and crazy and immoral to believe is, in fact, totally and completely true.”

https://russian.rt.com/ussr/news/974175-nuland-karlson-biolaboratorii-ukraina

"Fox host Carlson: Nulland in effect confirmed the existence of secret labs in Ukraine"

There is a whole crackpot conspiracy subgenre of "perpetrator spilling the beans in public for no reason." Government officials supposedly confessing to blowing up WTC buildings, climate scientists admitting forging data, etc.

This bioweapons story is Pizzagate-level insanity. And yet adult people of adequate intelligence take it seriously, pour over Nulland Q&A for vague hints of confirmation... The mind boggles. But then we've seen it before: QAnon, 9/11 conspiracies, etc.

US's atrocious history of deception and subterfuge

This pretty much sums up the useful idiot position. US - bad. Therefore, any anti-US propaganda should be given extra credence, any US ally should be viewed with extra suspicion, and any US adversary - with extra deference.

So when Russian MOD claims that American biolabs in Ukraine have been developing bioweapons capable of selectively targeting Slavic ethnic groups, and that they have been studying bats, tics and birds as possible vectors of transmission of lethal diseases across the border, such claims ought to be taken very seriously indeed, and at the highest level.

Although I don't read most posts on this thread, I see that our useful idiot support group, having exhausted the neo-Nazi theme for now, has jumped onto the latest Russian propaganda talking point: Ukrainian bioweapons.

Perhaps not everyone realizes just how fantastical this conspiracy theory is (unsurprisingly, QAnon is all over it). One of the more specific claims from the Russian Ministry of Defense is that US biolabs in Ukraine are developing weapons that are capable of selectively targeting certain ethnic groups. And this story has a history.

A few years back people were scratching their heads and wondering about Putin's mental health when, out of the blue, he expressed his concerns about "someone" collecting "biological matter" of various ethnic groups in Russia. Gradually it emerged that Putin was heading into Dr. Strangelove territory with this theory: he believed that Americans were collecting Russians' precious bodily fluids in order to develop bioweapons for ethnic cleansing. No one knows where he picked up this nonsense, but it cropped up regularly over the years, and apparently this is what the propaganda decided to go with this time.

I think many understand what is happening, but then there are of course those who believe what is said. I think here the issue is that Putin is still holding to the idea of "special military operation" and the Russian media is showing Russian troops handing out food and blaming the Ukrainians (neo-nazis) to be shelling the civilians. That can sink in for a while. But too big casualty figures you cannot hide, it simply goes by word of mouth. If Americans don't trust their media, Russians don't trust it on a larger scale. At least those that can use their brains. — ssu

Among Russian elite and media personalities there was evident confusion and even dismay initially, but most regrouped and closed ranks, or else are keeping quiet. Some cautiously dissenting voices can occasionally be heard even in the official media. Karen Shakhnazarov is a director of a large film studio and an accomplished filmmaker. He's been a staunch Putin loyalist and a media fixture all these years. But the other day in a TV panel discussion he was heard saying: "We must admit that over the last 30 years they (Ukrainians) apparently managed to come together as a nation." (He blamed the traditionally more independent and nationalistic West Ukraine and their "Western curators" for that.) He admitted that not only Ukrainians are not welcoming Russian soldiers, but are fighting back, and that they are determined and united. He even called the war a "war" - a taboo word in Russian official discourse. (Of course, Shakhnazarov hastened to make clear that he fully supports the "special operation.")

More worrying is the recently intensified propaganda claiming that biological weapons were being developed in US-sponsored labs in Ukraine. Such claims have a history going back to before the war, but back then it was just one strain in a flood of fantastical and outrageous anti-Ukraine propaganda. Now it is being repeated so insistently - and amplified by the Chinese - that it looks very likely that Russia is preparing the ground for using chemical or biological weapons, like it did in Syria.

Russian combat effectiveness seems to have plunged. They're using reconstituted regiments now, forming new units out of ones cut down far from dull strength. Conservative US estimates are 5-6,000 KIA, which would mean an additional 10,000-15,000+ wounded.

This is borne out by the recruitment drive in Syria, consideration of using unreliable Belarusian forces, and use of Chechen irregulars and mercenaries like the Wagner Group as frontal assault units for their main effort on Kyiv. Also the abandonment of Kharkiv. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Speaking at a meeting of Russia's security council, Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu claimed that some 16,000 fighters from the Middle East were ready to join the battle. President Vladimir V. Putin ordered the Russian Defense Ministry to help thousands of volunteers from the Middle East join the war in Ukraine.

(Officially, they are volunteering to "defend" the separatist Donbass.)

Well Putin expressly talked about antisemitism too in denouncing the Ukrainian government. — neomac

Which is another sign of how hypocritical and divorced from reality this Nazi rhetoric is. Just before the invasion, Dmitry Medvedev (former PM and the chairman of Putin's Security Council) gave a speech in which he disparagingly referred to Zelensky's "particular nationality." The expression doesn't translate well from the Russian, but to any Russian, particularly one who've lived in the Soviet Union, that is an immediately recognizable antisemitic dog-whistle.

But yes, let's spend 30 more pages discussing whether Putin's war propaganda has a grain of truth in it. That is obviously the most important question now.

Do you know how genocidal the war in Checnya was? — ssu

Yes. And tragically, after some initial restraint, that is the tactic to which he has defaulted in Ukraine: heavy bombardment of cities intended to break the morale of the resistance and drive out the civilian population that might lend support to them.

But here I was thinking about Putin's domestic concerns. The real threat to his power comes not from NATO, but from his own surrounding. However cracked he might be at the moment, anyone who clawed his way to the top of the power hierarchy in Russia and stayed there for 22 years has this knowledge in his bones.

Many in Russia still don't believe what's going on and believe instead the propaganda on TV. But that can't last forever. A North Korea-like isolation cannot be instituted in days or weeks (although the authorities are taking steps in that direction). Information will filter in eventually. Perhaps more importantly, people will feel the full brunt of the sanctions within the next months (not soon enough for Ukraine though).

Putin's social contract was to deliver stability, relative prosperity, and a sense of national pride (at the expense of freedom and much else). He has tried to compensate for the gradual loss of the former by doubling down on the latter. Crimea was a major coup for him, but that has since evaporated, partly due to the sanctions. And now, in the space of just a couple of weeks, he has ruined it all. Lies about the NATO threat and the dastardly Neo-Nazis can only go so far, and the economy will soon be in ruins. So what does he have left? He will have to reformat the arrangement. His only chance to stay in power and secure a lasting legacy is to fashion himself into a new Stalin, if he can. Which is to say, terrorize the population into awe and submission. And that will go double for the occupied Ukraine. Soviet-era persecutions of "Ukrainian nationalists" come to mind...

Many Russians fear that marshal law will be implemented, which Putin has denied. Just like he denied that he had any intention to attack. — ssu

Don't believe a rumor until it has been officially denied.

Joking aside, I fear that Putin, cornered and desperate, will turn to the tried and true solution - perhaps the only one that he has left: terror, the likes of which we haven't seen since Stalin.

I doubt that he is suicidal enough to go nuclear, as some suggest, but then after so many unthinkable things have come to pass recently, nothing is out of the question.

Putin is a Stalinist not a Nazi. They are different but still forms of fascism.

Nazi is more or less distinguished by the idea of a superior race.

The term ‘Neo Nazi’ is often used are a pejorative term to smear fervent patriots and more right leaning policies. — I like sushi

Putin clearly favours the opposite extreme rather than holding a far right nazi view. It is no secret that the Russian’s HATE Nazis due to the conflict in WW2 with Germany. — I like sushi

This is true, as far as it goes. Soviet victory in The Great Patriotic War (WWII) was of great importance to Soviet ideology, and in Putin's Russia it has been amplified into a veritable cult. So of course, anything "Nazi" is taboo in Russia. This is why Russian propaganda loves to smear their opponents as Nazis. And this is why they came up with this ridiculous lie that Ukraine is being run by Neo-Nazis.

However, don't confuse an attitude towards words and symbols with a genuine, deep-seated ideological stance. (Russians also HATE war... so the government forbids calling the war in Ukraine a "war," and instead refers to it as a "special operation." Problem solved!) As @ssu has pointed out, Putin's government and pro-Kremlin elites have enjoyed a very warm relationship with European far right. As long as they don't literally call themselves "Nazis" and don't wear swastikas on their sleeves, they are kosher, as it were. As you acknowledge, under their uniforms, Stalinists and Neo-Nazis aren't that different.

The exceptions to this ideological camaraderie are Ukrainian and Polish far right. Not because they explicitly associate themselves with Nazism or employ Nazi symbols, but for historical reasons.

Indeed, we are seeing the consolidation of authoritarianism and the retreat and retrenchment of "Western values" ... not some sort of pyrrhic victory for those values.

For example, what did the West do for the rest of the world, in particularly economically, during the pandemic? Basically nada, and it's a fools errand to expect loyalty and honour in return for none. — boethius

Belarus's handling of the pandemic was disastrous, but that had nothing to do with what the West did or didn't do. Lukashenko's "solution" for the problem was to deny it.

The events of the past two years to which I was referring were the violent crackdown on the opposition and the hijacking of a Ryanair plane, which led to an irreparable break with the West. The sanctions and ostracism that followed were like a rehearsal of what's happening now.

As I said, war seems entirely justifiable if the neo-Nazi element is above some critical threshold. It is definitely, from my point of view, uncomfortable amount of neo-Nazi elements to easily argue against his justification. So, that doesn't make me happy, nor the EU doing absolutely nothing about it. — boethius

Ukrainian "neo-Nazi elements" are not much different from European far-right parties and movements, and they arguably have less power and influence there. Yes, they are nasty, but I don't know what you think the EU could and should have been doing about them.

What does Belarus have against Ukraine anyway?
At least I'm not aware of any threats or some such (except maybe Putin has threatened Lukashenko). — jorndoe

Lukashenko is holding on to Putin for dear life. Until recently he was eking out a living by skillfully maneuvering between Russia and Europe, keeping both at arm's length while feeding off handouts intended to buy his loyalty. But due to the events of the past two years, that racket is history. Putin owns him now.

It won't interest anyone outside of the small circle of opera lovers, but... Never mind nukes. Anna Netrebko, very big-name Russian diva, just got kicked out of the Metropolitan Opera in New York for her continuing loyalty to Putin--probably permanently. A joint project with the Bolshoi was also dropped. — Bitter Crank

And Valery Gergiev has been kicked out of everywhere. Two of the greatest musicians of our time. Sad. (Although, truth be told, they sold their souls to the devil a long time ago, and I've been avoiding them ever since - not that it mattered to anyone but myself.)

Incidentally ssu, in previous episodes Aimen Dean dismisses the inside job conspiracy theory about the Russian apartment bombings, and he's a person who knows a lot about the North Caucasian jihad. — jamalrob

I listened to that podcast earlier, and I don't know what to think of it. Not that I was fully on board with the "conspiracy theory," but the way they presented the story was just bizarre. They were talking about a bombing in Moscow as if it was the only one. In fact, there were a total of four apartment bombings in ten days, two of them in Moscow. But the incidents that are thought to provide the strongest evidence for the conspiracy theory were the bombings that didn't happen. You can read more about them in the Wiki article and elsewhere. Yet somehow Thomas and Aimen appear to be completely unaware of any of this context.

I did listen to the latest Russia episode. It's interesting, but again, there are these superficial glosses on the US role in supposedly instigating "color revolutions" in the former Soviet sphere. Seeing this complex and varied dynamics as a game between Russia and the big Western powers is the exact reflection of Russian establishment's thinking, and I think it's delusional. Supporting NGO's and such may have had some influence on events, but it wouldn't have been decisive.

With Russia, the levels are the following:

1. CONSTANT
2. ELEVATED
3. MILITARY DANGER
4. FULL

Now Putin is at 2. Or something like that. — ssu

A Russian military expert commenting on Putin's statement said that he couldn't parse it: the term that he used, though it sounded official, wouldn't actually mean anything to the military. So either Putin was bluffing, or he did issue some kind of an order, but we have no idea what it really was.

President Putin continues to escalate – putting Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert, threatening to invade Finland and Sweden.

I haven't heard that from the Russians. That I would put in the "hyping fear" category. — ssu

I think this was in reference to this:

Oh, and when exactly did Russia start "bombing and annexing their country"? Was is before or after the government was overthrown by a US backed coup? — Isaac

US-backed... — Isaac

...put Neo-Nazis... — Isaac

...in power in Ukraine — Isaac

I'll do it just once, not to convince Isaac, but to counter the misinformation. Anyone interested can read more about those events online.

What happened in 2013-2014 was confusing and messy, but calling it a "coup" is tendentious and misleading. In the end, right after signing an accord with opposition representatives, for reasons that to this day are not entirely clear, Yanukovych and key members of his administration fled the capital and soon fetched up in Russia. (Yanukovych fled on the day when Russia initiated its "special operation" in Crimea.) In the ensuing constitutional crisis, the parliament, where Yanukovych had lost support, appointed a transitional administration and scheduled early elections.

The US had rather little to do with all this. The talks between Yanukovych and the opposition were brokered by EU members - and Russia (although the Russian representative refused to sign the final declaration). But that was the culmination of months of protests and violence, leading to a massacre of some 100 people by unidentified snipers (which I believe was the point of no return.) Contrary to how Russian propaganda likes to present it, the West had little to do with how mass protests started, spread and escalated. I know this, because I was following those events; I had traveled to Ukraine before and after those events; I have Ukrainian friends, some of whom took part in the protests or supported them from abroad.

What did the US do? As that leaked phone call between the US ambassador and Nuland shows (which Isaac is holding up as evidence), they followed the events, they fretted over who would take power after Yanukovych, they jockeyed for influence - because of course they would. None of that amounts to a "US backed coup." Although I can see how that fits in with the popular narrative: US had backed coups and toppled regimes elsewhere, so the same must have happened in Ukraine. And look - here is something that sort of confirms this story (conveniently supplied by Russian intelligence).

The similarities between the way Russian authorities and people like Isaac think are striking. Both think that nothing happens but for the will of agents of great powers, such as US. A pro-Russian government fell in Ukraine? Surely, it must have been a US backed coup. There is no way that ordinary people could have accomplished something like that. Putin and other autocrats like him think that they know their people, and they despise them. They refuse them any agency of their own. The masses can be led by a strong hand (theirs, of course), or else they can be manipulated by malign foreign powers. For all their nationalistic and xenophobic rhetoric, they actually hold foreigners in much higher regard than their own people.


@ssu has addressed the neo-Nazi canard, but I'll just add that I am generally not a fan of Ukrainian politics (neither the present administration, nor the ones before it), and I am well aware of far-right nationalists and their involvement in it. (Although, considering that the country has been at war for its independence with a regime that refuses to recognize it as an nation, I am surprised at how limited that involvement has been.) But to casually smear all people defending their country against an invasion as "neo-Nazis" is really low.

And lastly, that part of history really hasn't anything to do with the current government of Ukraine, so what is the connection to this thread? Or is it just a side mention? — ssu

The connection to this thread:

Brave citizens fighting for their lives. — Amity

Yes. Brave, brave neo-nazis... — Isaac

Fucking disgusting.

Why do you think US is interested in back a few Neo-Nazis of Ukraine? — javi2541997

I don't know, ask @Isaac. He is saying that 2014 Revolution of Dignity was a US-backed coup that put Neo-Nazis in power in Ukraine. (Coincidentally, that is what Putin and Russian propaganda say as well.)

Now it seems taking Kiev may require door to door fighting. The whole argument of being liberators from Western oppression goes to shit when you are facing a strong insurgency as you try to move in, and it is unclear at this point if taking Kiev would even get them the capitulation they want. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The reality isn't hard to find here. Ukrainian people are united and putting up a brave defence against an aggressor. The Hungarian Uprising comes to my mind. — ssu

Russian propaganda is referring to all Ukrainian fighters (including, apparently, the regular army) as "nationalists." Even official statements invariably use this term. So they have their explanation for the resistance: "the virus of nationalism," as Putin put it in his war speech. Whether the Russian people will buy it, and for how long is another matter...

(Also, they are not calling it a "war," but a "special operation" - that makes all the difference, you see. The authorities actually forbid Russian media to use the words "war" and "invasion" or to mention civilian casualties.)

One wonders if this kind of issue could cause the Russian army to become more aggressive. There's still no clear goal set for this war, that I've heard. Some say that they want to overthrow Ukraine's president.

Maybe. — Manuel

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday called on the Ukrainian army to overthrow the government whose leaders he described as "terrorists" and "a gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis." — The Moscow Times

One wonders if this kind of issue could cause the Russian army to become more aggressive. — Manuel

So far they have been acting with relative restraint, i.e. they have not employed the kind of heavy bombardment that characterized their tactics in Chechnya and Syria. They have used cluster munitions in urban areas though (as they did in engagements elsewhere), which is widely considered to be a war crime.

Residents of a village in northern Ukraine (sorry, US-backed neo-Nazis) trying to stop Russian tanks with their bare hands:

One way to guarantee you don't understand what's going on is to dismiss the protagonist as "mad". — Baden

I agree that just saying "he's mad" is intellectually lazy and boring. — ssu

Then again, a common mistake is to regard Putin as an (evil) mastermind who has it all perfectly planned, calculated and under control. That is hardly ever the case if we look at other rulers at other times and places, and Putin is no exception. He is just a man. He makes mistakes, he can be deluded, angry, impatient, scared - and yes, even mad. In democratic countries with strong institutions that may not make much difference in the long run, especially since rulers relinquish power on a regular basis. But in a country like Russia with largely decorative democratic institutions, ruled by the same strongman for 22 years, the mental state of the man at the top can matter a great deal.

And indeed some veteran Putin watchers have noted a change in his behavior over the past few years:

During the pandemic, analysts had noticed a change in Mr. Putin — a man who isolated himself in a bubble of social distancing without parallel among Western leaders. In isolation, he appeared to become more aggrieved and more emotional, and increasingly spoke about his mission in stark historical terms. His public remarks descended ever deeper into distorted historiography as he spoke of the need to right perceived historical wrongs suffered by Russia over the centuries at the hands of the West.

NOS4A2 shows up with the sole aim of spreading an utterly baseless "genocide" narrative. Show one iota of evidence for this or we can just presume you're up to your old tricks of spreading Russian propaganda again. — Baden

Isaac is here to back him up:

For any that don't know, that's Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the anti-Semitic Svoboda party, later installed into power by the US. — Isaac

That's a lie.

In the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election he received 1.16% of the vote. In the October 2014 parliamentary election Tyahnybok was again first on the election list of his party; since the party came 0,29% short to overcome the 5% threshold to win seats on the nationwide list he was not re-elected into parliament. — Wikipedia

And no one was "installed": here Isaac is parroting Putin.

Well, not to worry: soon Ukraine will be denazified and liberated from the clutches of Western imperialism.

Well, as I discussed with StreetlightX earlier, there indeed still is this neonazi party in the Ukrainian Parliament. With ONE SEAT. And it is NOT IN THE GOVERNMENT. Zelenskyi's party was formed in 2018 and he was elected President of Ukraine in 2019, beating incumbent president Petro Poroshenko with nearly 73% of the vote to Poroshenko's 25%. So I guess Ukrainians weren't so enthuastic about Poroshenko. — ssu

Poroshenko was many things, but "neo-Nazi" he was not. The fact is that no far-right presidential candidate or party got ahead in national elections since 2014. UKIP did better in its heyday than Svoboda did at any time in its history. Perhaps Putin should liberate UK next?

(Don't bother digging up links, Isaac. I've taken your measure. You know fuck-all about what's going on and care even less, but once you publicly commit to a position you will stick to your guns no matter what.)

this is my mood today...

Yeah, Zelensky's administration is so unconcerned about a possible Russian invasion that, after all their resolute posturing, they now seem to be backpedaling on Ukraine's NATO aspirations.

Scholz, Zelenskiy play down talk of NATO membership for Ukraine

Zelenskiy said NATO membership was a remote “dream.”

Ukrainian government floats prospect of holding referendum on NATO membership.

A possible diplomatic path out of the Ukraine crisis came into sharper focus on Wednesday when a minister in the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine floated the possibility of a referendum that could keep his country from joining NATO.

This, of course, has nothing to do with the totally made up threat promulgated by Western imperialists.

(It should be noted that Zelensky is treading a very fine line with these overtures. The actual prospects of a Russian invasion are debatable, but he faces a very real threat from within if he is seen to be giving in to Russian demands.)