Ukraine-Russia War Take 2
Here is what the preliminary take on the Ukraine thread disappearing is:
The site was hit with a massive spam attack where hundreds of spam threads were created. In the case where, for example, I see a single spam thread and delete it, that is called a soft delete, and mods can still see them but forum members cannot. Those deletion can be undone.
When a massive attack hits with hundreds of threads, an admin uses a different procedure where the hundreds of spam threads are merged and then hard deleted, where the threads are gone, and no note is left behind. As I have mentioned with my own experience of just soft deleting a large number of posts, sometimes a post or thread gets checked or merged accidentally and is deleted by mistake. Dealing with hundreds of spam threads takes a sledgehammer, not a scalpel.
It appears that our Ukraine thread may have gotten caught up in that recent net of spam threads. If so, it is likely gone for good. I cant say this for sure, and am awaiting comments from admins on this issue. Yes, this sucks. And hopefully there was some other software glitch that caused the disappearance, and we may recover it in the future.
But in the meantime, I have created this new Ukraine-Russia War thread to enable the conversation to continue. Obviously continuity with earlier discussions will be lost. There is no way around that. So as best as possible, let's pick up the conversation with recent events and go from there.
If you have any questions about this, please post them in the mod thread, not here. Let's keep this thread going with posts about the war, not the disappearance of the old thread.
Thanks.
Jbouton: No, none of what you just is said true.
He is not a "random". He is one of the top OSINT accounts with extensive contacts in the Ukrainian military and consistently reliable data.
Bolded are the relevant part of why you were asked to stop posting in the matter you kept posting in:
I am busy but will try to moderate this thread more closely for a while. Insinuating that BGP controls this thread in some way is false and not allowed. Saying that Russia was provoked into invading Ukraine is false and not allowed,
You keep focusing on the first part of one sentence and then ignoring the rest.
I thought you were ready to focus on the content? If not then can you answer my previous post where I pointed out the multiple times you said I was controlling the narrative in this thread after you said you never claimed that?
And now you're posting (convicted child sex offender) Scott Ritter and RT in another thread!
You are deeper into the Russian propaganda than you even realize.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ceqq2z...
"They are in every possible way provoking Ukraine to continue this senseless war."
Incredible
No it wasn't. Putin is a Soviet nostalgist and thinks he can do another Hungary (1956) or Czechoslovakia (1968) because he thinks Ukraine is part of his imperial domain. He literally does not know the world has changed, and he runs an imperial court based on fear where no one dares to tell him.
The loaf has become a big meme.
I want one
WAPO article "Basic training in Ukraine is barely covering the basics, commanders say"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/202...
https://archive.ph/ci6Lm#selection-447.0...
Good read on Ukraine's manpower issues.
Russia was provoked.
The West staged a coup and they were attacking ethnic Russians.
Ban me if you'd like.
Are you referring to the Maiden Revolution in 2014? How much do you actually know of what happened? I am only asking because you have a clear bias (we all have biases, nothing wrong with that per se) to lean into "conspiratorial" conclusions on events without actually knowing much about said events.
If you are familiar with what actually happened and still think it was a coup then that is fine. I am just curious if this is the case.
In fairness, isn't Israel doing similar modifications? I am sure like many Russian modifications, this one isn't particularly effective; but I dont really see anything wrong with modifying equipment to adapt to technological/tactical advances in real time.
"Loaf" refers to the van that is prominently used by Russia.
The anti-drone measures were originally called "cope cages" and were an insult, although largely due to the haphazard way that Russia instituted them. It was clear that the second strongest military in the world was looting farmers and welding whatever they could onto their tanks because Ukrainian drones (a new threat) were destroying massive amounts of tanks. "Cope cage" became the common term, lost the insult aspect, and is still used even today for professionally done anti drone measures.
The insult aspect of it is more similar to the current ways of making fun of Russia for their use of military golf carts, motorbikes, and tactical scooters. It's not so much whether or not they're effective, it's about the fact that when the second strongest military in the world embarked on a "3 day special operation" they were clearly unprepared and now it's practically Mad Max out there.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-...
U.S. lifts weapons ban on Ukrainian military unit
The decision was made following a State Department review of the Azov Brigade, a one-time militia now part of Ukraine’s National Guard.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-...
U.S. lifts weapons ban on Ukrainian military unit
They've been denazified in Mariupol I guess...
That's definitely a big part of it.
This would be enormous if true:
In regards to the moderation thread, seems pretty easy to argue Putin was provoked. Justified is another story.
When the US and other countries decided to support Ukraine shortly after 2014 they had to think beforehand what could be one of the worst outcomes for this? Putin not liking other countries messing around in his backyard which could escalate (or provoke) a full blown invasion by Russia. Start going down the CT path if you want to say this was the intent for giving Ukraine support but it had to be a consideration this was a possible outcome.
When discussing whether or not Russia was unprovoked, this is using the legal definition of the term:
In law, provocation is when a person is considered to have committed a criminal act partly because of a preceding set of events that might cause a reasonable individual to lose self control. This makes them less morally culpable than if the act was premeditated (pre-planned) and done out of pure malice (malice aforethought).
Russia has absolutely no legal justifications to invade Ukraine. Putin not liking the fact that his neighbors are seeking ways to prevent him from invading is in no way a legal justification (or even a mitigating circumstance) for Putin to invade his neighbors.
Provoke can be used in many different ways and I don't know if anyone is arguing Putin's invasion was legal as Ukraine has been a sovereign nation for 30+ years.
When it is described as "the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine" this is how the word is being used. In this phrase, in this context, the term "unprovoked" implies that there were no justifiable reasons or immediate threats that necessitated an invasion. If people are arguing against this phrase then they are arguing that Russia has mitigating circumstances which help to justify their invasion.
If you're saying that there were provocations in the sense that literally anything can be seen as a provocation then you are of course correct, but that also means that the word "unprovoked" has lost the vast majority of its meaning.
Yeah, when I hear unprovoked invasion I don't think of the legal definition you provided. Could just be me...
Regardless that is how the phrase is meant.
The reason Russia argues against this phrase in order to justify their invasion.
The reason their useful idiots argue against the phrase is to justify the invasion (as we have seen multiple times itt).
If you want to argue that they were provoked in a different way than the phrase implies then that is an important distinction that you should make, because the Russian propaganda narrative (which is the most common narrative) is that they were forced to invade Ukraine due to the West's provocations.
