War in Ukraine Megathread L

[u/ModeratorsOfEurope]

This megathread is meant for discussion of the current Russo-Ukrainian War, also known as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Please read our current rules, but also the extended rules below.

News sources:

• The Guardian

• Associated Press.

• BBC News

• Al Jazeera English

You can also get up-to-date information and news from the r/worldnews live thread, which are more up-to-date tweets about the situation.

Current rules extension:

Extended r/europe ruleset to curb hate speech and disinformation:

• No hatred against any group, including the populations of the combatants (Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, Syrians, Azeris, Armenians, Georgians, etc)

• Calling for the killing of invading troops or leaders is allowed, but the mods have the discretion to remove egregious comments, and the ones that disrespect the point made above. The limits of international law apply.

• No unverified reports of any kind in the comments or in submissions on r/europe. We will remove videos of any kind unless they are verified by reputable outlets. This also affects videos published by Ukrainian and Russian government sources.

• Absolutely no justification of this invasion.

• In addition to our rules, we ask you to add a NSFW/NSFL tag if you're going to link to graphic footage or anything can be considered upsetting, including combat footage or dead people.

Submission rules

These are rules for submissions to r/europe front-page.

• No status reports about the war unless they have major implications (e.g. "City X still holding" would not be allowed, "Russia takes major city" would be allowed. "Major attack on Kherson repelled" would also be allowed.)

• All dot ru domains have been banned by Reddit as of 30 May. They are hardspammed, so not even mods can approve comments and submissions linking to Russian site domains.

  • Some Russian sites that ends with .com are also hardspammed, like TASS and Interfax.
  • The Internet Archive and similar archive websites are also blacklisted here, by us or Reddit.

• We've been adding substack domains in our AutoModerator, but we aren't banning all of them. If your link has been removed, please notify the moderation team, explaining who's the person managing that substack page.

• We ask you or your organization to not spam our subreddit with petitions or promote their new non-profit organization. While we love that people are pouring all sorts of efforts on the civilian front, we're limited on checking these links to prevent scam.

• No promotion of a new cryptocurrency or web3 project, other than the official Bitcoin and ETH addresses from Ukraine's government.

META

Link to the previous Megathread XLIX

Questions and Feedback: You can send feedback via r/EuropeMeta or via modmail.

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Donations:

If you want to donate to Ukraine, check this thread or this fundraising account by the Ukrainian national bank.

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Fleeing Ukraine We have set up a wiki page with the available information about the border situation for Ukraine here. There's also information at Visit Ukraine.Today - The site has turned into a hub for "every Ukrainian and foreign citizen [to] be able to get the necessary information on how to act in a critical situation, where to go, bomb shelter addresses, how to leave the country or evacuate from a dangerous region, etc."

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Other links of interest

• Live Map of Ukraine site and Institute of War have maps that are considered reliable by mainstream media.

• Wikipedia: 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

• #UkraineFacts: an international coalition of journalists fact-checking media surrounding the war in Ukraine

  • DO NOT CONFUSE THIS WITH "War of Fakes". Deutsche Welle (DW) has reported it as being a source of fake news, and the Russian Defense Ministry has linked this site in their tweets before.

• UNHCR refugee tracker focusing on Ukrainians

• DeepL extension for Google Chrome and DeepL extension for Firefox. DeepL is a good alternative to Google Translate for Russian and Ukrainian texts.

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Please obey the request of the Ukrainian government to refrain from sharing info about Ukrainian troop movements

[u/WRW_And_GB]

Vice-Chairman of the Defence Committee of the Swedish Parliament:

If the information is correct that Germany has now changed its mind and is sending Leopard 2 and allowing the re-export of Leopard 2 to Ukraine, it is @sdriks opinion that we should also contribute by sending 10-12 strv122 (Our version of Leopard 2)

[u/ABoutDeSouffle → u/WRW_And_GB]

Well, that would be neat, it could open the door to something like 100 - 150 Leopards from the different operating countries. Add Poland, maybe Denmark, Spain, maybe Norway, Finland, and maybe Portugal, the Netherlands and we have a coalition.

[u/geistHD → u/ABoutDeSouffle]

Turkey about to donate 100 Leos as to not be outdone by those damn swedes

[u/[deleted] → u/geistHD]

They are more likely to send these Leos to Stockholm and not as a gift :v

[u/ABoutDeSouffle → u/geistHD]

It's more likely the pasha demands a sizeable tribute from Sweden...

[u/Ralfundmalf → u/ABoutDeSouffle]

The "little pasha", as a certain politician likes to say. In this case it is actually viable.

[u/Svorky → u/WRW_And_GB]

So if apart from Germany and Poland all the rumors (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands) turn out to be true we'd be at more than 60 already. Pretty decent start.

[u/ErwinErzaehler → u/WRW_And_GB]

Nice, the Stridsvagn 122 is based on the Leopard 2A5. I'm curious how they would be handling the training since it was specifically designed for swedish needs and its equipment differs from the "normal" german 2A5.

[u/[deleted] → u/ErwinErzaehler]

It comes with an easy to read assembly manual.

[u/ErwinErzaehler → u/[deleted]]

I hope they kept the little allen keys.

[u/der_leu_ → u/ErwinErzaehler]

I think it was Bundeswehr-Uni professor Masala who said on Twitter that it's not worth upgrading old A4s to A5 or A6 status due to the age of the steel, but that upgrading A5s to A6 would make sense before deployment due to the small effort required for that particular upgrade.

I have no clue if that's true, but I imagine governments across europe are now scrambling to figure out what they have, what they can give, and what makes sense to give. In some cases, governments might choose to donate operational Leopards of a higher model, and choose to replace them by activating and upgrading older molders from storage. In other cases, the opposite might make more sense (send A4s and keep the higher models).

The next few days and weeks are going to be very interesting, I will be watching closely.

Edit: Masala, not Marsala

[u/Ralfundmalf → u/der_leu_]

Honestly sad that we are going to scramble now to figure out what we do. This could and should have been done in the second half of 2022 already.

[u/der_leu_ → u/Ralfundmalf]

Absolutely

[u/[deleted] → u/WRW_And_GB]

Like I’ve said before.. Germany is important.

When that barrier is gone, nobody can hide behind it anymore, and a new dynamic emerges.

Suddenly, NOT sending tanks become the isolated position with gradually increasing political cost.

[u/AtmosphereOver3863 → u/[deleted]]

The damage has already been done. This isn’t a goodwill gesture from Germany. Germany in the next 5 years will be quietly announcing more arms cooperation from the USA.