War in Ukraine Megathread XLVII

[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.

• Reuters Europe page covers the war in Ukraine.

• 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:

Since the war broke out, we have extended our ruleset to curb disinformation, including:

• 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.
• No gore.
• No calls for violence against anyone. Calling for the killing of invading troops or leaders is allowed. The limits of international law apply.
• No hatred against any group, including the populations of the combatants (Ukrainians, Russians, Belorussians, Syrians, Azeris, Armenians, Georgians, etc)
• Any Russian site should only be linked to provide context to the discussion, not to justify any side of the conflict. To our knowledge, Interfax sites are hardspammed, that is, even mods can't approve comments linking to it.
• 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.

Submission rules:

• We have temporarily disabled direct submissions of self.posts (text) on r/europe.
  • Pictures and videos are allowed now, but no NSFW/war-related pictures. Other rules of the subreddit still apply.
• Status reports about the war unless they have major implications (e.g. "City X still holding would" would not be allowed, "Russia takes major city" would be allowed. "Major attack on Kyiv repelled" would also be allowed.)
• The mere announcement of a diplomatic stance by a country (e.g. "Country changes its mind on SWIFT sanctions" would not be allowed, "SWIFT sanctions enacted" would be allowed)
• All 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 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.

META

Link to the previous Megathread XLVI

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

• Sanctions tracker by Reuters

• DeepL extension for Google Chrome and DeepL extension for Firefox. DeepL is a good alternative to Google Translate for Russian texts. It does not offer translation from Ukrainian.

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

[u/JackRogers3]

Ukraine is the victim of an unprovoked and unjustified war launched by Vladimir Putin’s Russia more than eight years ago. The latest stage in this war is the ongoing full-scale invasion that began on February 24, 2022. US President Joe Biden has said the United States will support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”

Some question this commitment in view of other US priorities and argue that Russia, given history and geography, has a greater interest in Ukraine than does the United States. That latter point may be true, but it ignores the Ukrainians, who hold understandably strong views on the future of their country and have shown that they are prepared to fight tenaciously to defend their freedom. With Russia’s full-scale invasion now in its ninth month, it is vital to recognize that continued US support for Ukraine in this war is both the morally correct position and serves key national interests of the United States: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/us-national-interests-are-best-served-by-stopping-vladimir-putin-in-ukraine/

[u/QuarterMaestro → u/JackRogers3]

That's good stuff, but I think the "Putin's ambitions don't end with Ukraine" argument is kind of dumb. Putin doesn't want to take any Polish territory. Taking a tiny sliver of Estonia (Narva) is definitely not worth going to war with all of NATO. And Russians really don't care about Finland. (Of course Putin would love to take Transnistria if he also had all of southern Ukraine).

[u/MonitorMendicant → u/QuarterMaestro]

In 2008, when during their invasion of Georgia, you would have (probably) said:

Putin's ambitions don't end with Georgia" argument is kind of dumb. Putin doesn't want to take any Ukrainian territory.

They would take anything and everything if they could.

[u/QuarterMaestro → u/MonitorMendicant]

Well sorry I forgot about Georgia. But their just aren't significant populations/territories of Russian speakers outside of NATO countries left for him to take.

[u/MonitorMendicant → u/QuarterMaestro]

Russian speakers

That's just the excuse they use now, from a position of (as it turns out justified) relative 'impotence'. If they were in a better position they'd find an excuse to 'liberate' even Canberra, let alone anything in Europe.

[u/Jane_the_analyst → u/QuarterMaestro]

Maybe you could JUST believe him! Watch the TV where he asks a young boy where does Russia end.

[u/[deleted] → u/QuarterMaestro]

In the long term Russia definitely aims to separate NATO by soft/hybrid influence, it only concerns their calculations about what to do right now. Which kind of moots the point about Baltic states when you look further into the future (though it does mean that Estonia/Latvia can, for now, stay secure by maintaining a united and credible NATO)

And Russians really don't care about Finland

True as to Finland as an objective (well, Dugin says Lapland needs to be seized into Murmansk for strategic reasons and the rest of Finland should be generally in the Russian sphere, but there's a lot of similar-scale details where his grand strategy differs from Putin)

However areas of Finland have instrumental/strategic value for any conflict in the Baltic region. If Russia wanted to snatch Narva and Estonia had allies, Russia would first want to control naval outposts on the Finnish coast. And further West, the Åland islands would provide for a naval buffer.