Russian Invasion of Ukraine

[Forehead]

So I see there are "election" coming up to determine if Donbas (I think?  Maybe a different region) would rather be part of Russia...the Crimea playbook.  Once those happen and go the way I assume they will, does Putin then claim Ukraine is invading Russia and use that as a pretext to escalate to worse?  That's how I imagine it playing out.

[TheGreatBuzz]

10 minutes ago, Forehead said:

So I see there are "election" coming up to determine if Donbas (I think?  Maybe a different region) would rather be part of Russia...the Crimea playbook.  Once those happen and go the way I assume they will, does Putin then claim Ukraine is invading Russia and use that as a pretext to escalate to worse?  That's how I imagine it playing out.

 

I think Biden is about to tell him not to expect that to go the way he thinks it would.

[China]

Ex-Putin Ally Plunges to His Death ‘From a Great Height’ at Moscow Aviation Institute

 

An aviation expert has become the latest Russian official to fall to his death in mysterious circumstances.

 

Anatoly Gerashchenko, the former head of Moscow’s Aviation Institute (MAI), died in a mysterious fall inside the institute’s headquarters in the Russian capital on Tuesday.

 

The organization’s press office released a statement describing the 73-year-old’s death as “the result of an accident,” adding that his untimely demise was a “a colossal loss for the MAI and the scientific and pedagogical community.”

 

Russian news outlet Izvestia, citing an unnamed source, reported that Gerashchenko “fell from a great height” and careened down several flights of stairs. He was reportedly pronounced dead at the scene.

 

His death comes less than two weeks after an executive appointed to help oversee development in Russia’s Far East died in a strange fall from a moving boat just days after attending an economic forum with Putin. Theirs are just the latest in a string of odd deaths among officials and executives in Russia’s energy and technology industries.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Putin orders partial military call-up, risking protests

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilization of reservists Wednesday, taking a risky and deeply unpopular step that follows humiliating setbacks for his troops nearly seven months after invading Ukraine.

 

The first call-up in Russia since World War II is sure to further fuel tensions with the Western backers of Ukraine, who derided the move as an act of weakness and desperation. The move also sent Russians scrambling to buy plane tickets out of the country and reportedly sparked some demonstrations.

 

The Kremlin has struggled to replenish its troops in Ukraine, reaching out for volunteers to serve in battalions. There even have been reports of widespread recruitment in prisons.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

 

Russians google how to leave the country while waiting for Putins speech

 

Russians started googling how to defer military service. The peak was at 13:00, after the first posts about mobilisation came up.

 

On the afternoon of 20 September, the Russian State Duma introduced the concepts of "mobilisation" and "wartime" into the Criminal Code, and it also approved amendments on liability for desertion during mobilisation or wartime.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[TheGreatBuzz]

I just heard on the news that Putin is banning males 18-65 from leaving the country. 

[PleaseBlitz]

42 minutes ago, Forehead said:

So I see there are "election" coming up to determine if Donbas (I think?  Maybe a different region) would rather be part of Russia...the Crimea playbook.  Once those happen and go the way I assume they will, does Putin then claim Ukraine is invading Russia and use that as a pretext to escalate to worse?  That's how I imagine it playing out.

 

Putin wants to end this in a way that he can claim success, so I think he declares the Donbas part of Russia, entrenches all of his forces there so he can keep it, and stops further incursions into Ukraine.  He then claims to have liberated the territory that was already largely pro-Russia and will claim that this was his "real" objective all along, so, mission accomplished.  Ukraine might decide to let him have it in order to stop the war (which, despite their successes, is still a shooting war on their soil).  If Ukraine decides to keep fighting, then who knows.  Putin calling up 300k untrained people doesn't cause me much concern, they're just going to be cannon fodder for the Ukrainians. 

[DCSaints_fan]

5 minutes ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

Putin wants to end this in a way that he can claim success, so I think he declares the Donbas part of Russia, entrenches all of his forces there so he can keep it, and stops further incursions into Ukraine.  He then claims to have liberated the territory that was already largely pro-Russia and will claim that this was his "real" objective all along, so, mission accomplished.  Ukraine might decide to let him have it in order to stop the war (which, despite their successes, is still a shooting war on their soil).  If Ukraine decides to keep fighting, then who knows.  Putin calling up 300k untrained people doesn't cause me much concern, they're just going to be cannon fodder for the Ukrainians. 

Zelenskyy already stated the war aims were now the full liberation of Ukranian territory to 1991 borders.  its kind of hard to back down from that.  But they may be (privately) pressured to accepting a concession, at least wrt Crimea.  That will be very hard to retake, even with gross incompetence of the Russian army.  They would either have to invade across a narrow isthmus (about 5-7 km wide) that connects Crimea to Ukraine or do some type of amphibious assault.  In the first case I can see Russia being able to defend it because its a very small frontage and they don't need many troops.  And they don't have ships for an amphibious assault.

[PokerPacker]

41 minutes ago, China said:

Ex-Putin Ally Plunges to His Death ‘From a Great Height’ at Moscow Aviation Institute

 

An aviation expert has become the latest Russian official to fall to his death in mysterious circumstances.

 

Anatoly Gerashchenko, the former head of Moscow’s Aviation Institute (MAI), died in a mysterious fall inside the institute’s headquarters in the Russian capital on Tuesday.

 

The organization’s press office released a statement describing the 73-year-old’s death as “the result of an accident,” adding that his untimely demise was a “a colossal loss for the MAI and the scientific and pedagogical community.”

 

Russian news outlet Izvestia, citing an unnamed source, reported that Gerashchenko “fell from a great height” and careened down several flights of stairs. He was reportedly pronounced dead at the scene.

 

His death comes less than two weeks after an executive appointed to help oversee development in Russia’s Far East died in a strange fall from a moving boat just days after attending an economic forum with Putin. Theirs are just the latest in a string of odd deaths among officials and executives in Russia’s energy and technology industries.

 

Click on the link for the full article

I feel like people may not be appreciating the gravity of the situation.

[PleaseBlitz]

1 hour ago, DCSaints_fan said:

Zelenskyy already stated the war aims were now the full liberation of Ukranian territory to 1991 borders.  its kind of hard to back down from that.  But they may be (privately) pressured to accepting a concession, at least wrt Crimea.  That will be very hard to retake, even with gross incompetence of the Russian army.  They would either have to invade across a narrow isthmus (about 5-7 km wide) that connects Crimea to Ukraine or do some type of amphibious assault.  In the first case I can see Russia being able to defend it because its a very small frontage and they don't need many troops.  And they don't have ships for an amphibious assault.

 

I mean, sure, that's what he said the aims are, but your goals and what you are willing to accept might be different when (1) the war is happening on your soil and your people are dying every day, (2) you are extremely reliant on foreign assistance and therefore unable to guarantee your continued ability to wage war (and, as you alluded to, may be pressured to accept something less than everything you want), and (3) the other side has nukes and you don't. 

[Riggo-toni]

 

[Larry]

What Russia really needs, to improve the situation, is the arrival of a bunch of troops who have relatives back home, in a theater where the existing troops are out of equipment. 

[ixcuincle]

 

[China]

 

 

 

[TradeTheBeal!]

 

[DogofWar1]

Putin is getting dangerously close to breaking his "deal" with the population, that is, he gets to be Tsar and do Tsar-y stuff and the people will let him stay Tsar, so long as he leaves the people alone to live their lives otherwise.

 

If rumors of checkpoints being implemented where men of fighting age will be stopped and pressed into service are true, then that's gonna cause some friction.

 

But.....

 

I don't know what it will take for people to fight back against the security forces, but that's gonna need to be the first step.

[PokerPacker]

How many conscripts would it take to storm the Kremlin?

[DogofWar1]

37 minutes ago, PokerPacker said:

How many conscripts would it take to storm the Kremlin?

In 1918 there were about 460,000.

 

Probably took less than that but large numbers of people with guns in your capital angry about what their government is doing is a great strategy for stability.

[DCSaints_fan]

1 hour ago, PokerPacker said:

How many conscripts would it take to storm the Kremlin?

I'd say a highly motivated, well-equipped group of about a 100 with air-tight OPSEC and good intel would be able to do it.

But the OPSEC part is going to be hard to pull off ... the FSB is everywhere. 

Unless of course, its the FSB that tries to do it 😉

[Barry.Randolphe]

I could see Putin pulling an Erdogan and staging a 'coup attempt' that quickly gets shot down to show the population that wants to rise up what will happen to them.

 

I don't think the Russian population really cares enough though. The younger generation that knows how to use VPNs know what is happening, but the older generations seem like our older generation that eat up the FoxNews-like propaganda like borscht.

[China]

Russia Implodes After Putin Summons 300,000 to Die for Him

 

Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” against Ukraine hit a turning point Wednesday—but not the kind the Kremlin wanted.

 

Instead, the Russian leader may have inadvertently put the final nail in the coffin of his decades-long reign with his bombshell announcement that hundreds of thousands of citizens will be called up to face likely death in the war next door.

 

While Putin’s most loyal allies rallied around the leader with calls for unity and defense officials bent over backward to provide dubious assurances to the general public, ordinary Russians rushed for the exits and took to the streets.

 

Airline tickets out of the country sold out within a matter of hours. There were myriad reports of men of conscription age being barred from buying bus and airline tickets, and human rights groups reported that draft notices were already being handed out to people at bus stations and train stops in some areas.

 

Street cleaners and homeowners associations were reportedly tasked with delivering the notices in other areas.

 

Anton, a manager at a Moscow-based IT company, was nervous while waiting in line for passport control at Vnukovo Airport on Wednesday morning. He was fleeing to Armenia just hours after the mobilization announcement.

 

“Unfortunately, this is my war, although I never asked for it: victims of this war are my people, I have been helping suffering people; and the ****s who started this war are my enemies,” he told The Daily Beast after passing through border control.

 

He was constantly checking a “Border Control” group chat on Telegram, made up of about 15,000 Russian middle-class professionals making plans to escape Moscow following the announcement.

 

Anton’s friend, 35-year-old Alexander Koryakin, another Russian IT tech, had also left for Armenia earlier on Wednesday. Koryakin said he was now “breathing freely and thinking straight” in Yerevan.

 

“This war, this is definitely not my war, this conflict has been artificially blown up, Russia does not need it,” he said, adding a message for others still stuck in the country: “Run away, there will be nothing good in Russia for a long time. This is not a betrayal, this is your survival.”

 

Valentina Melnikova, the head of the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia, said the mobilization shows Putin only wants to escalate the war.

 

Dozens of demonstrators were detained in Moscow as well as cities as far-flung as Ulan Ude, Izhevsk, Irkutsk, Chelyabinsk, and Perm, among others, according to the monitoring site OVD.info. Protests continued to erupt across the country despite prosecutors in the capital warning demonstrators they could face up to 15 years in prison for speaking out against the war.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Edited September 22, 2022 by China

[DogofWar1]

What the people don't realize yet is that Putin has already broken his deal with the people that they will get left alone so long as they leave Putin alone.

 

The thing is Putin hopes to delay the masses realizing this until he's already got half a million people in Ukraine.

 

If people realize that now and start fighting back against the state police they might have a chance to save their lives.  Putin is super weak right now.  He has no military to spare for Marshal Law or police left over to quell rebellions.  1000 motivated people willing to fight these dudes would push them out of a city and Putin would have few options.

 

But the population is too passive.  They only see jail or dying in Ukraine as their 2 options.

[Wildbunny]

37 minutes ago, DogofWar1 said:

They only see jail or dying in Ukraine as their 2 options.

Since Wagner is recruiting in jail, that really makes it only one option...

[The Evil Genius]

 

[Switchgear]

 

6 mile backup at the Georgian border right now, around 10:15 PM in Russia

[Larry]

Wonder when the border guard simply start arresting every male trying to leave. Seems like they'd have a one-stop place to fill their recruiting quota.