Ukraine Conflict Live Map

[1]:

https://www.iau.org/public/themes/satellite-constellations/,

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4615-0431-3_...

I'm having a really hard time calling 2 servers in the DC a cluster. Does 1+ servers equate to a cluster in server owner/operator parlance?

In a simplistic view they don’t save lives, but without them what do you fight with? What keeps Russia from thinking they can just easily take over a country?

Yeah, it feels strange to have these images. There are already discussions to change them in Ukrainian community because it's not really connected to what organization do.

People from Ukraine IT community don't care because they got all the information about the organization without language barriers, but this images seems to be a problem from the outside perspective as this is the first thing that people would notice.

Anyway, thank you for your feedback (I'm not from the organization, I know a few people who help there)

I wish there was a better way of scaling trust online right now and I hope this war ends soon.

Edit: But I'm happy to believe I'm really supporting Ukraine with this donation.

Has there ever been a protest movement that was big enough to gain attention but didn't have some small minority in it that went too far? Sadly nowadays there are probably people who just want to watch the world burn and will turn out to commit crimes under the cover of any protest, no matter the politics of the protest itself.

When politics (and the media) are so polarised, it's easy to highlight the worst examples of "the other side" while ignoring any inconvenient examples of one's own side, if necessary by erroneously attributing those examples to false flags.

The right to protest cannot meaningfully exist in a society where the powerful get to write the narratives about who the protesters are and what they are doing.

> But the recollections of those involved aren’t always consistent. Roland Dumas, who served as the French foreign minister in 1990, would later say that a pledge was made that NATO troops would not advance closer to the territory of the former Soviet Union. But the U.S. secretary of state at the time, James Baker, has denied that any such promise was ever made – a claim that some of his own diplomats, however, have contradicted. Jack Matlock, who was the U.S. ambassador to Moscow at the time, has said that "categorical assurances" were given to the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand eastward.

Even if you deny that such a promise was made (and broken), you should be able to understand how having a hostile military alliance literally on your border is unacceptable and the US would never accept it were the tables turned. That's the point.

There are no good guys here. Go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. There's a popular narrative of the US being provoked. But the truth is, the US instigated the Cuban Missile Crisis by deploying strategic nuclear weapons to Turkey (interestingly under the auspices of NATO, a "defensive" pact). Cuba was reciprocity. Those missiles in Turkey were quietly removed.

It's a very well known non-agreement.

> James Baker agreeing to Gorbachev that NATO would expand "not another inch" eastward

That's...not how binding international agreements are formed.

NATO's raison d'être evaporated? Pretty sure Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland (at a minimum) don't agree with that. It's the same it's always been - keep Russia from marching west across Europe. A bunch of countries in Europe still think that's important, and that it needs a credible military force to accomplish it. Russia's actions in Georgia and Ukraine do not give warm feelings of security to small countries on Russia's periphery.

>When the Budapest memorandum was signed in 1994 there was no plan to expand NATO to the east and Gorbachev had been assured in 1990 that the alliance would not expand. When in fact it did expand right up to Russia’s borders, Russia was confronted with a radically different strategic situation than existed when the Budapest agreement was signed."

And this gives Russia permission to invade a sovereign nation? Ukraine's independence is not just a matter of the Budapest Memorandum, it's a matter of the wishes of the Ukrainian people who have wanted independence from Russia for centuries, something many Russians don't want to acknowledge.

So far, NATO has not invaded Russia or violated its territorial sovereignty but Russia has violated the borders of multiple boarder states, so it's a bit rich for Putin to complain about NATO when he's clearly just trying to reincorporate border states that were conquered by the Tzars.

How can you even say this with a straight face as Russia invades neighboring countries? You know why Russia doesn't attempt this land grab with NATO countries? NATO.

NATO raison d’être was providing a shared framework for European security and preventing another general war in Europe, largely by tying West Germany into a durable common framework with other European powers.

It would be rendered redundant if replaced with a common EU security framework, but not by the collapse of Soviet bloc.

> How in the world is that question "moot" if it's the driving reason behind Russia's perspective in this? You can disagree with Russia's security perspective, and that's fine. But to just toss out the NATO expansion as "moot" is both historically inaccurate, and borders on deliberately ignorant as if Russia is not allowed its own security concerns in the first place.

This has nothing to do with Russia security, or would you think that the UN would attack Russia? Its a defense organization.

The mistake people make is thinking its a country like France or Germany, but just a bit different. You need to understand that Russia is ruled by a gang of oligarchs and has nothing that functionally resembles the institutions we take for granted. Putin gets what he wants from the parliament, even unanymously when he wants that. There are no laws for Putin and his crownies, the law applies only to his enemies. The Russia state is a strange amalgamation of intelligence (Puting rose to power from the KGB) and a small group of extremely powerful oligarchs. Then there are layers of smaller oligarchs below that one that run deeper layers of corrupt officials. Its bribery and theft all over the place, its a hugely dysfunctional state. Independent/foreign media outlets have been expelled or terminated, many Russians don´t consume the news anymore. Trust has been lost.

That something horrible would rise from the ashes of Stalins dystopia is not entirely unexpected, but still there are aspects that are really unnerving, like the fact that organised crime runs through all the state affairs, and some oligarchs run even private armies (read up on Wagner for instance). The state kills, tortures and poisons anyone that stands in its way.

Putin needs to feed this whole gang, and the oligarchs take the majority of the economic output for themselves. The economy is segregated. Russians are poor. Russia (like any autocratic state) is severely lacking development, it main income is the export of raw materials like gas and oil. Its BNP is the same as that of the Benelux countries. Mind boggling poverty. The trouble with this system is the same, it eats everything at home and it needs to find food outside of its door. Thats why you see Russia taking control of neighboring countries, appointing pro-russia puppets to scavenge them. You see the same with Belarus, its president lost control as the people revolted, ran to Putin to keep him in power and thus handing Putin the keys. It is a total surrender. Now that Russia has an even firmer grip, this country will soon be sliced up among the oligarchs.

The people of Ukrain voted to join the EU, it has been doing the needed reforms for a functional democratic country with rule of law. It has been weighting down on Ukrain oligarchs. The economic ties with the Kremlin were weakening and trade started to shift to the EU. Ukrain was making real progress, and the people turned out to be not wanting in the Russian influence.

That is the moment Putin annexed Crimea and started a war that is taking 8 years already. And is not enough. And if you listened closely yesterday, it will never be enough.

The majority of the proxy states around Russia would rather join the West. Putin cant handle a democratic success scenario in one of the former Soviet occupied territories, it has already to handle enough civil unrest in its proxy states.

The whole NATO argument is bullshit, the buffer idea doesn't even make sense in modern militarily reality. Its PR from the Kremlin and its highly effective. Unfortunately.

This system needs to grab economic output from other nations, and will keep doing so. There is only hope for Russian people if the Kremlin is going down, its getting worse there as it always does for autocracy in the end. This never ends well.

Technically, Ukraine’s entire population being whisked into another dimension and its borders being impassable walls of force would also put Russia at the border of NATO countries (as would, for that matter, NATO not expanding after 1949), because Norway (1949), Lithuania (2004), Latvia (2004), Estonia (2004), and Poland (1999) all exist (and Lithuania and Poland surround a non-contiguous piece of Russia, even.)

And that's just counting land borders, otherwise you have to also consider the USA (1949), Turkey (1952), and Bulgaria and Romania (2004).

It does make me wonder what the NGA does with a ~5 billion dollar budget then, in my head most it was allocated to new sats. Other than buy approximately 10 3080s I mean ;)

In his strategic interest he would let the West to continue throwing finances here.

He justifies Luhansk, Donbass and Crimea because of the 2014 revolution and they fact they were always culturally Russian.

Edit - I should also add that it's in Ukraine's interest to simply let these regions go. Prior to 2014, Ukrainian elections always flip-flopped between pro-Russian and pro-Western factions... Now that most of the pro-Russian support no longer votes in Ukrainian elections (due to being part of Russian or breakaway), Ukrainian politics are almost entire pro-Western.

Reading the GP's other comments they're either a "useful idiot" (in KGB parlance) or a Russian-supporting astroturfer. There has been a lot of coverage of Russia's actions in Ukraine in "the West" for the past 8 years.

Tbh, I bet the Russian generals would dearly like to reach the Dnieper.

History would show you otherwise.

Well, a couple hours later and this part is outdated, as the US has now announced the first set of general sanctions on Russia and described existing Russian actions as the beginning of the invasion that was always described as the triggering condition for such sanctions.

One fact which people forget: Ukraine decided to end support to minorities, as such there is no longer possible to study in native language. This type of nationalism should not be supported at all. Ukraine is no saint.

I'm going to show my left-wing bias but Bill Maher and Jimmy Dore both called Trudeau Hitler. They are objectively right, but what happened?

Canada had some ineffectual blockades, but at the time of the emergency being invoked. Those were gone. So the emergency was ONLY the protest in Ottawa.

The justification for the emergency is the military occupation and they used the givesendgo hacked data to analyze that around 50% of the raised money was from the USA. The allegation is that the USA is somehow doing this? This is absurd but why is Trudeau overreacting to all this? What did he fear?

I think I might know why he fears the USA.

That's a great question, but I don't know if I know the answer. Overall, the US as world police, Obama and his nobel peace prize and 7 wars, and virtually entire existence of the USA they have been at war. It's kind of easy to see this point of view.

However, I would generally say our media was saying the invasion wasn't imminent. Largely reporting the Ukraine government denied any invasion was coming.

This I would say as well was the story across political lines.

The only thing really covered was how Trudeau was being actively excluded from diplomacy by Biden.

https://twitter.com/annmarie/status/1485652537105600516/phot...

Though not about Ukraine... our media covered how we got excluded from the security alliance as well: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

I dont think I ever read anyone in our media suggesting Biden lost respect or trust in Trudeau but now in hindsight...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poroshenko-ukraine-russia-c...

Ukraine is on the other side of the planet and they are singling us out to ask for aid that we aren't giving?

>and the idea that Canada has aligned itself with Russia)?

Well as I said, a week ago I didn't believe in this at all. In my mind, it was a wackadoodle conspiracy theory.

Here's a 5 minute video from Jimmy Dore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJdHF7J_ZZM

It is public knowledge that the liberal party are members of the WEF. So is Putin. Both Putin and Trudeau have done keynotes. They are publicly linked.

It's a whole different thing to say this is some evil cabal or some diplomatic war-supporting effort. For all I know Trudeau is a mole and we are still complete allies to the USA, if not protectorate.

But frankly, I look at the last week. Russia invaded and Canadians are under an unjustified national emergency with the government seizing bank accounts with no due process or redress. We do have political prisoners and global celebrities from across the political spectrum are calling out Trudeau as Hitler.

Note I'm not expecting Putin to stop playing chess, he will never stop with his political power moves, he might blockade Odessa, but there will be no bloodshed. Mark my words. I look forward to peace in Ukraine, for the first time in 8 years.

My email is in my profile.

It's how empires operate. It's not fair, but it is what it is. For an example of how this turned out when the shoe was on the other foot, look at Cuba. The world nearly ended in '63, because the American empire needed a 'buffer colony'.

It's been a lifetime since the revolution, communism as a world ideology has been dead for a generation, but Cuba's still paying for the consequences of flipping allegiances. (The western world, sans the United States has normalized relations with it a very long time ago - so it's not an ongoing ideological problem...)

That’s a descriptive opinion on the matter. Not a normative one.

No. Nations don't throw national resources away, especially in modern times. If they're spending money, their lives, political capital on this they're profiting from it in some way.

Russia has to control the black sea and they have to control territory all the way to the Dneiper river. If Ukraine realigns to Europe and NATO they have to at a minimum have control over that territory to have a defensible position. This has been true since the days of the Russian empire, and this is one of the historical reasons for a Russian ethnic majority east of it.

The fact that he did it means that either he really believes that NATO is scheming on invading Russia proper, in which case he's just gone mad, or all this pseudo-historical pretext is just a bunch of crap he feeds the world to legitimize his personal quest for glory and give his worldwide supporters ("useful idiots" as they call them in KGB) a reason to let him off the hook for that.

Most western members did. Eastern ones, meanwhile, ramped it up very significantly. Which is the only reason Western countries could get away with it, really - NATO is supposed to feed the American defense industry.

> NATO only expanded east because of Russia's posturing

More like because of the bordering countries clamoured for protection, even when there was no threat whatsoever (since the Russian military was in utter disarray). In a way, they were right: the ones who didn't manage to escape Moscow's orbit back then (Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus stans...), are now enduring dictatorship or war. In another way, they fuelled the Russian paranoia that fed Putin's nationalism, eventually ensuring that the doomsday scenarios did, in fact, materialize.

> The most baffling part is literally no one wants to invade Russia.

It's not just about immediate military occupation. Gazprom is an important piece of Putin's kleptocratic powerbase, and Gazprom needs to be free of Ukrainian control of their pipelines. If NordStream2 can't happen, because the Germans have to obey their American lord-protectors, then Putin must establish an alternative to the South - which doesn't need to be entirely in Russian hands, but rather in a position where Russian troops can secure it in a matter of days if necessary. In my view this is the real endgame.

This, obviously, on top of putting the strategic Crimean ports in a safer position; because NATO might not want to invade Russia, but Erdogan's Turkish troops are not shy about "securing" stuff (any sanctions against them carving up Syria? Not that I'm aware of...).

> it was happy to be part of Russia/USSR

It was so happy in Imperial Russia that the authorities saw it fit to severely censor publications in Ukrainian:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ems_Ukaz

It can also be instructive to look at this list and see how many of those were against Russia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossack_uprisings

As for the USSR, well, there was that whole Holodomor thing.

Culture is really hard to pin down, and there are examples of distinct national identities that are really hard to differentiate in ethnographic terms--the US and Canada are the example that comes readily to mind here.

As for the "Ukrainians happily being part of Russia/USSR" bit, I think the sibling comment does it more justice than I can.

All of the Ukrainian imigrants in North America would dispute that. See also, Holodomor.

Shortly after, Germans rolled in and devastated the country. Then, the Russians came back through, treating everyone still alive as a Nazi collaborator (because "how could they still be alive, if not?"). Ukrainians who had been drafted by the Nazis and forced to serve as cannon fodder, but survived, were shot or deported to the GULag as traitors (because "how could they still be alive, if not?").

Ukrainians do not think of themselves as Russian even so much as Irishmen consider themselves English.

Inside the main part of Bangladesh, there were 111 Indian enclaves (17,160.63 acres), while inside the main part of India, there were 51 Bangladeshi enclaves (7,110.02 acres). Under the Land Boundary Agreement, the enclave residents could continue to reside at their present location or move to the country of their choice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh%E2%80%93India_borde...

“Until then, Ukraine had the world's third-largest nuclear weapons stockpile, of which Ukraine had physical, but not operational, control. Russia alone controlled the codes needed to operate. Their use was dependent on Russian-controlled electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...

I agree with some of what you say, but "the Soviet Union ceased to exist" is too simplistic. The codes necessary for firing the weapons (without modification) were controlled by military leaders largely in Russia.

Either you brick a nuke in which case your boss bricks you, or the nuke bricks you and your local region.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_ma...

Your body is correct though: Now why the US follows a counter-pattern and why Ukraine did not ask for ratification is another discussion, that I consider to be long term harmful.

From the Ukraine's side/pov: it will be politically not wise for the U.S.A. to back out of the protection treaty. There is good will capital that is lost, just for allowing this 8 year situation to occur.

Nobody in this thread claimed it was. A signed memorandum is still a promise and an agreement, even if not ratified as a treaty. We broke an agreement with Ukraine, letting her get sacked. We didn’t breach a treaty.

Lies on a handshake may not get far in court. They’re still lies.

But because Biden something something something, when he removed sanctions that somehow doesn't count either?

Since when do actions not speak louder than words?

(Not to mention these tell all Trump books are unlikely to be reliable sources.)

As said by the grandparent.

Having an opinion about brilliance of someone's strategy is not a value judgement. There were plenty of brilliant strategists who were awful people and fought for awful ideas.

I remember how western media attacked Trump after he praised Lee as a great general, making it look as if he supported confederacy — which in context of his speech was clear he did not. In both cases, it's either a gross logical fallacy or a weak manipulation, and just as I can't take the media that reported it seriously after that, I can't take your arguments seriously after this either.

According to Ukraine, Russia invented the pretexts it has already cited for the “need” to intervene in those two regions, so from Ukraine's perspective, avoiding given Russia a “genuine” (given Russia’s nakedly illegal claims) pretext has zero marginal cost, since the absence of a “genuine” (even given Russia’s preexisting propaganda position) pretext has no evident impact on Russia’s willingness to act.

Given that, Ukraine has little rational reason to consider providing a pretext under Russia’s propaganda framework to be a significant factor.

Put another way, when someone has broken into your house at night when it is obviously occupied, you do not hand over your wife or children in hopes your own life may be spared. You respond with an escalation of force.

And includes the capital of Ukraine.

Yeah, if you were advising the government of Ukraine, you could make that argument in 2014 about why yielding in practice without formally giving up Crimea made sense.

But, given Crimea, if you were Ukraine in 2022, you’d have to consider the balance to have shifted back to the Munich/Danegeld position.

On the other hand, if this stirs up nationalistic sentiment, his support will go up.

I am not sure how these net off.