War Invasion of Ukraine News Megathread - Thread is only for articles and discussion of articles, general discussion thread is still in Happenings.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday said that the United States will impose sanctions “far beyond” the ones that the United States imposed in 2014 following the annexation of the Crimean peninsula.

“This is the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Biden said in a White House speech, signaling a shift in his administration’s position. “We will continue to escalate sanctions if Russia escalates,” he added.

Russian elites and their family members will also soon face sanctions, Biden said, adding that “Russia will pay an even steeper price” if Moscow decides to push forward into Ukraine. Two Russian banks and Russian sovereign debt will also be sanctioned, he said.

Also in his speech, Biden said he would send more U.S. troops to the Baltic states as a defensive measure to strengthen NATO’s position in the area.

Russia shares a border with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

A day earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops to go into the separatist Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine after a lengthy speech in which he recognized the two regions’ independence.

Western powers decried the move and began to slap sanctions on certain Russian individuals, while Germany announced it would halt plans to go ahead with the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

At home, Biden is facing bipartisan pressure to take more extensive actions against Russia following Putin’s decision. However, a recent poll showed that a majority of Americans believe that sending troops to Ukraine is a “bad idea,” and a slim minority believes it’s a good one.

All 27 European Union countries unanimously agreed on an initial list of sanctions targeting Russian authorities, said French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, and EU foreign affairs head Josep Borell claimed the package “will hurt Russia … a lot.”

Earlier Tuesday, Borell asserted that Russian troops have already entered the Donbas region, which comprises Donetsk and Lugansk, which are under the control of pro-Russia groups since 2014.

And on Tuesday, the Russian Parliament approved a Putin-back plan to use military force outside of Russia’s borders as Putin further said that Russia confirmed it would recognize the expanded borders of Lugansk and Donetsk.

“We recognized the states,” the Russian president said. “That means we recognized all of their fundamental documents, including the constitution, where it is written that their [borders] are the territories at the time the two regions were part of Ukraine.”

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Putin said that Ukraine is “not interested in peaceful solutions” and that “every day, they are amassing troops in the Donbas.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday morning again downplayed the prospect of a Russian invasion and proclaimed: “There will be no war.”

“There will not be an all-out war against Ukraine, and there will not be a broad escalation from Russia. If there is, then we will put Ukraine on a war footing,” he said in a televised address.

The White House began to signal that they would shift their own position on whether it’s the start of an invasion.

“We think this is, yes, the beginning of an invasion, Russia’s latest invasion into Ukraine,” said Jon Finer, the White House deputy national security adviser in public remarks. “An invasion is an invasion and that is what is underway.”

For weeks, Western governments have been claiming Moscow would invade its neighbor after Russia gathered some 150,000 troops along the countries’ borders. They alleged that the Kremlin would attempt to come up with a pretext to attack, while some officials on Monday said Putin’s speech recognizing the two regions was just that.

But Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Tuesday that Russia’s “latest invasion” of Ukraine is threatening stability in the region, but he asserted that Putin can “still avoid a full blown, tragic war of choice.”

Article

 

[Ponderous Pillock]

Russians are shooting anything that tries to move in and out of Mariupol, so there's no hope of evacuation. Ukrainian helicopter landed to exfiltrate wounded soldiers, and Russians blew it up.

Another ambush, there's been a lot of them. Here you can hear a short exchange between Ukrainian soldiers as they observed the convoy, where they decide to go for the second vehicle, which seems to be a troop carrier

You never go for the scout vehicle which is literal bait.

I still can't get over the Russians almost universally identifying their vehicles with fucking white spray paint.

I think they really did just drive that shit right out of some USSR bunker, slap some green paint over the old Soviet Union identifiers, and throw it on a train to Ukieland.

But once it got there, they realized they had no way to not friendly-fire each other, so they busted out the dollar store spraypaint cans.

The Russian Flag is literally 3 horizontal stripes. White-Blue-Red. But apparently that's too difficult for them to take 5 minutes to paint on.


These 'Z' tanks are seriously making them look like some sort of backwater militia group with salvaged tanks, not a "Modern Military Force"

I know right? What sort of backwards fuckers would just spray paint on white ID markers like a kid doing his first grafit-

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

I like how the Russian camp went from Kiev will fall in two weeks, then "Baghdad took three weeks to conquer" and now I've seen some trying to say that Kiev was never the target and the goal was always taking the south.
It's almost like Qanon all over again. Just trust the plan, bro.

"Here's how Putin can still win."

 

[ZeCommissar]

I never thought Putin was some benevolent upholder of traditional values, but at one point I really did believe he was a calculating chessmaster that actually did care about Russia in some way (that ended well before he launched Operation Bananarossa though). I agree that most of the rightoid Putin simps are mostly doing it out of pure tribalism; 'you're either against Ukraine, (or ''''neutral'''' with a decidedly pro-Russian slant because they can't bring themselves to openly support Putin) or you're with globohomo!' The more terminally online they are the more they just see the whole thing through an American culture war lens which is where you get the Qtard-adjacent thinking Russia invaded to destroy the Fauci biolabs and recover the secret hard drives full of Hunter Biden's dick pics. At the end of this spectrum you have the most demoralized terminally online actually believing the nonsense about him leading a crusade against globohomo (with the fucking Chinese, Saudis, Pakistanis, and a collection of obscure shitholes lmao). Same with the tankies and other dissident leftoids who never met a dictatorship they couldn't nuthug hard enough if they at least paid lip service to America hatred so this was a natural development.

I used to think Putin was far more cold, and calculating than most Western leaders that just want to see themselves win another election with no real longterm plan for their countrymen. Sure maybe that's because Putin doesn't really need to worry about elections, or whatever. I don't think Putin is stupid, but this war has certainly reminded me that no matter what type of persona a leader wants you to believe they are all just human and prone to human faults as the rest of us. Putin fucked up, and he fucked up bad.

Regardless of whether or not Russia "wins" this war it really doesn't matter. Russia has become the pariah of the world again in a way not seen since the days of the Cold War. At least in the Cold War the Soviets had a collection of puppet states, and sympathetic communist nations abroad that supported them. Now they either have a collection of shitholes that won't help them too much on the world stage, or nations that just want to take advantage of this situation in any way they can like China and India to the detriment of the Russian people.

What I found funny about people constantly talking about globalhomo is the fact it almost seems like they want anti-western nations to lead a "crusade" against the west. The very same nations that they themselves have said are full of subhumans, Muslims, or whatever. It's the equivalent of cutting off ones nose to spite the face. If these people honestly believe that a Russian/Chinese hegemony is going to "revive" the west and save us from our decadent politicians they will have a big surprise waiting for them.

 

[Tovarisz]

The longer this war goes on the more obvious it is how fucking hard russia is projecting all of it's own faults at everything around it. Calls it's enemies fascists and has it's own retarded soldats doing the same fucked up shit that they claim was done to them. Says NATO is a threat to it's existence when NATO barely ever even attempted openly threatening it and is at worst guilty of stealing it's people's republics with superior economy, actively threatens NATO's existence with the only thing it actually has that's threatening, nukes. Screams "Muh genocide" while actively having it's actual fucking army murdering and raping civilians on foreign soil and shelling apartment blocks.

What I found funny about people constantly talking about globalhomo is the fact it almost seems like they want anti-western nations to lead a "crusade" against the west. The very same nations that they themselves have said are full of subhumans, Muslims, or whatever. It's the equivalent of cutting off ones nose to spite the face. If these people honestly believe that a Russian/Chinese hegemony is going to "revive" the west and save us from our decadent politicians they will have a big surprise waiting for them.

I have no clue what the hell these people think, all those rightoid idiots spent two years bitching about mask mandates and yet you can catch them simping for China that still welds people inside their homes and offices if there's so much as a suspicion of covid. They bitch and moan about censorship while actively praising Russia that essentially blacked out everything that doesn't go along with Putin's view.

These people would be fucking murdered by OMON if they were Russians with similar attitudes towards their country they demonstrate towards the west.

There are now photos of civilians shot in the head with hands tied behind their back but some pages back, retards simping for daddy Putin wanted everyone to be outrage over "muh war crime" of kneecapping soldiers who at this point should be executed for the shit they're doing to Ukrainians, that video was likely staged by Russians anyway, pretty sure I read somewhere Russian Defense Ministry ordered production of such videos to stop Russian soldiers from surrendering to Ukrainians.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

Puppet no, useful idiot for fucking sure.

I have to ask, if this is really true, why didn't Putin attack Ukraine then instead of waiting until now? Your assertion doesn't make sense at all.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I never thought Putin was some benevolent upholder of traditional values, but at one point I really did believe he was a calculating chessmaster that actually did care about Russia in some way (that ended well before he launched Operation Bananarossa though). I agree that most of the rightoid Putin simps are mostly doing it out of pure tribalism; 'you're either against Ukraine, (or ''''neutral'''' with a decidedly pro-Russian slant because they can't bring themselves to openly support Putin) or you're with globohomo!' The more terminally online they are the more they just see the whole thing through an American culture war lens which is where you get the Qtard-adjacent thinking Russia invaded to destroy the Fauci biolabs and recover the secret hard drives full of Hunter Biden's dick pics. At the end of this spectrum you have the most demoralized terminally online actually believing the nonsense about him leading a crusade against globohomo (with the fucking Chinese, Saudis, Pakistanis, and a collection of obscure shitholes lmao). Same with the tankies and other dissident leftoids who never met a dictatorship they couldn't nuthug hard enough if they at least paid lip service to America hatred so this was a natural development.

Basically, this is why people who focus so much on the online culture war are falling into the trap set by the Left. They become unreasonable morons chimping about things that only online activists even know; your average person doesn't know jack shit about SJWs or GLOBOHOMO, they just want to enjoy things and be left alone. I pretty much noticed that many of these tankies would just hate something because it came from the West or the Left, while they endlessly shill for a system they didn't live under. You'd think that if these Russia-simps loved Russia so much, they'd move there and live under the reign of their beloved god-emperor, free from the reach of the GLOBOHOMO West.

I used to think Putin was far more cold, and calculating than most Western leaders that just want to see themselves win another election with no real longterm plan for their countrymen. Sure maybe that's because Putin doesn't really need to worry about elections, or whatever. I don't think Putin is stupid, but this war has certainly reminded me that no matter what type of persona a leader wants you to believe they are all just human and prone to human faults as the rest of us. Putin fucked up, and he fucked up bad.

Regardless of whether or not Russia "wins" this war it really doesn't matter. Russia has become the pariah of the world again in a way not seen since the days of the Cold War. At least in the Cold War the Soviets had a collection of puppet states, and sympathetic communist nations abroad that supported them. Now they either have a collection of shitholes that won't help them too much on the world stage, or nations that just want to take advantage of this situation in any way they can like China and India to the detriment of the Russian people.

It really goes to show that Putin isn't a logistics man. Anyone with a decent grasp of logistics would have laughed at Putin's plan to invade the west, but I suppose such persons either got deported to Siberia or mysteriously got themselves poisoned.

What I found funny about people constantly talking about globalhomo is the fact it almost seems like they want anti-western nations to lead a "crusade" against the west. The very same nations that they themselves have said are full of subhumans, Muslims, or whatever. It's the equivalent of cutting off ones nose to spite the face. If these people honestly believe that a Russian/Chinese hegemony is going to "revive" the west and save us from our decadent politicians they will have a big surprise waiting for them.

This whole "Putin good/America bad" bullshit reminds me so much of the Shoko Asahara case, minus the Sarin gas attacks and the kidnappings. Here you have a charismatic man who uses religion and his cult of personality as a way to build up power, while making those who question him or his methods "disappear" or "get poisoned". These people are just so mad at the system, they join with whomever is against the system, even if it's someone worse. And as with Shoko Asahara's cult many "distinguished" people joined Putin's cult of personality, mostly right-wingers who are all-in on the big war against the decadent west led by the modern USA.

The only thing missing is them making their own corny anime about how daddy Putin is going to save them from GLOBOHOMO.

I have to ask, if this is really true, why didn't Putin attack Ukraine then instead of waiting until now? Your assertion doesn't make sense at all.

1) Because Trump threatened to use nukes, and 2) it would make Trump look bad if Ukraine fell on his watch.

 

[Iceland Heavy]

I used to think Putin was far more cold, and calculating than most Western leaders that just want to see themselves win another election with no real longterm plan for their countrymen. Sure maybe that's because Putin doesn't really need to worry about elections, or whatever. I don't think Putin is stupid, but this war has certainly reminded me that no matter what type of persona a leader wants you to believe they are all just human and prone to human faults as the rest of us. Putin fucked up, and he fucked up bad.

Regardless of whether or not Russia "wins" this war it really doesn't matter. Russia has become the pariah of the world again in a way not seen since the days of the Cold War. At least in the Cold War the Soviets had a collection of puppet states, and sympathetic communist nations abroad that supported them. Now they either have a collection of shitholes that won't help them too much on the world stage, or nations that just want to take advantage of this situation in any way they can like China and India to the detriment of the Russian people.

What I found funny about people constantly talking about globalhomo is the fact it almost seems like they want anti-western nations to lead a "crusade" against the west. The very same nations that they themselves have said are full of subhumans, Muslims, or whatever. It's the equivalent of cutting off ones nose to spite the face. If these people honestly believe that a Russian/Chinese hegemony is going to "revive" the west and save us from our decadent politicians they will have a big surprise waiting for them.

I'm quite certain we're going to be seeing quite a few of the dissident rightoids and even a few of Populist, Inc. becoming open China/Xi simps over the next year or so, after all Soros doesn't like them anymore and you don't want to be on the side of globohomo do you?

 

[Uranus Pink]

I know right? What sort of backwards fuckers would just spray paint on white ID markers like a kid doing his first grafit-

Better examples would been from WWII where friendly-fire from ground and air units was a much bigger problem than in the succeeding wars.

 

[biscuitscilia]

All part of an elaborate plan mate. Putin really wasted those VDV men and T72/T80/T90s as fodder as a decoy. Honest. By the time the REAL attack happens Ukrainian defense forces will be so tired from pulling the triggers on their rifles they won't be able to take out the 24th wave of men.

The funny thing is the Germans took Kiev in a month and 3 day 81 years ago. The Russians couldn't take Kiev in a month and 8 days and ended up retreating.
Even the Americans took Baghdad by now. Russia couldn't even accomplish what America did with a country on the other side of the planet. And Kiev is only miles away from the Belarusian border while Baghdad was dead center in a desert.

 

[Niggernerd]

No, it's the Globohomo cabal that is the cancer, and Russia is fighting it.

Idk man Putin and the Russian military seem to be the only ones acting like cancerous faggots in the conflict and they're genuinely no better than a globohomo cabal.

 

[Vince McMahon]

Idk man Putin and the Russian military seem to be the only ones acting like cancerous faggots in the conflict and they're genuinely no better than a globohomo cabal.

Famous Soviet Army saying: There's no better vagina than a comrade's asshole.

Make that what you will.

 

[Plasmapheresis]

That would be the commies ie the Bolsheviks. Putin's stance (and that of many Russians) is that the Soviet Union was brought about by outside forces as a way to destroy the Russian Empire, which is technically true since the Bolsheviks were financed by the German High Command specifically to undercut the Russian Imperial forces from within.

France helped fund the American Revolution to undermine and spite Britain because of the Seven Years' War. Does that mean the American Revolution was not really "American"?
Russia had some sort of involvement in US politics around the 2016 election. Does that mean the various populist movements that sprouted up around that time were not genuine?

You don't do an analysis in a vacuum, devoid of any of the other surrounding context. The world is a complex place my friend.

 

[Ghostse]

I never thought Putin was some benevolent upholder of traditional values, but at one point I really did believe he was a calculating chessmaster that actually did care about Russia in some way (that ended well before he launched Operation Bananarossa though). I agree that most of the rightoid Putin simps are mostly doing it out of pure tribalism; 'you're either against Ukraine, (or ''''neutral'''' with a decidedly pro-Russian slant because they can't bring themselves to openly support Putin) or you're with globohomo!' The more terminally online they are the more they just see the whole thing through an American culture war lens which is where you get the Qtard-adjacent thinking Russia invaded to destroy the Fauci biolabs and recover the secret hard drives full of Hunter Biden's dick pics. At the end of this spectrum you have the most demoralized terminally online actually believing the nonsense about him leading a crusade against globohomo (with the fucking Chinese, Saudis, Pakistanis, and a collection of obscure shitholes lmao). Same with the tankies and other dissident leftoids who never met a dictatorship they couldn't nuthug hard enough if they at least paid lip service to America hatred so this was a natural development.

I don't get the Putinsimps. You can be both against Globohomo and think that invading a neighboring country that isn't doing anything worse to its people than normal Typical Slav Behavior is pretty fucked up.

This isn't Kosovo, this isn't muslims engaging in ethnic cleansing/counter ethnic cleansing where Russia stepping in to support Othodoxy is a defensible position. This is one of your satellite states slipping from your control and chimping out about it.

I used to think Putin was far more cold, and calculating than most Western leaders that just want to see themselves win another election with no real longterm plan for their countrymen. Sure maybe that's because Putin doesn't really need to worry about elections, or whatever. I don't think Putin is stupid, but this war has certainly reminded me that no matter what type of persona a leader wants you to believe they are all just human and prone to human faults as the rest of us. Putin fucked up, and he fucked up bad.

tl;dr: Putin cares about Russia as a place for him to have complete power. You'd rather rule a nice place than a shitpit.
Putin even 10 years ago had a cabinet with some people who would tell him "No". However he's been losing his edge and feels the reaper creeping up. This is causing him to make Stalin/Franco moves where the only people close to the throne are spineless yesmen. Hence a big operation to take over Ukraine, purge the army, and get public support back on his side.

He didn't fuck up - he made a move every single intelligence analyst said would result in the fall of Kiev in no more than two weeks based on how things went down in 2014 (and the assumptions the logistics fuck ups that marred the Belarus war games would be fixed, becasue that's why you have war games). He had a fuck up happen to him.
He is now in the process of fucking up by trying to double down but not having the chips.

 

[Snekposter]

If that has really happened, it's straight out war crime on a completely different scale from anything seen before in this war. It's one thing to shoot civilians who get caught in the crossfire between two forces, and one thing to intentionally bomb civilian buildings with artillery, but rounding up civilians from occupied territory and executing them is basically the text-book definition of genocide.

And if anyone out there helped write the book on genocide, its the Russians. Katyn was just the tip of the iceberg. There was a rather strange drop in the male populations in Eastern Europe starting around oh, late 1945.

Berlin and the revenge tour through Germany was understandable on a human level. The Germans had happily torched, raped, murdered, and demolished their way through Russia, executing tens of thousands of civilians. It was the revenge of a nation that had nearly been exterminated and suffered horrific losses. This? This is different. This is the Russians acting like the Nazis did, but even worse.

The Russians had their fun times with Eastern Europe. Poland got non-consensually fucked yet again by the Russians, in 1945 this time a rather literal non-consensual fucking. And you still need to eat the fucking hat.

What Russia did in WWII was wholly unjustifiable. They committed the worst acts of mass war rape in the history of war fare. They raped tens of millions. And it wasn't just Germans. They raped any woman they could get their hands on; Poles, Ukrainians, even Russian POWs. They raped every woman from 9 to 90, in many cases gang raping them, with 20 men or more. They were animals, and no amount of German atrocities could ever justify it. The French didn't rape every German they came across, despite having had their whole nation occupied by them. In many cases, the mass rape that's going on now just shows that the Russians haven't changed since WWII. They were animals then, and they are animals now, and wild animals that show themselves to be dangerous tend to get put down. I used to feel bad about the young guys conscripted in this war. Now? Fuck'em.

You drop a bunch of Guardian links and not the best one?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/01/news.features11

‘The Russian soldiers raped every German female from eight to 80’​

This article is more than 19 years old
Antony Beevor, author of the acclaimed new book about the fall of Berlin, on a massive war crime committed by the victorious Red Army


Antony Beevor
Wed 1 May 2002 06.47 EDT


"Red Army soldiers don't believe in 'individual liaisons' with German women," wrote the playwright Zakhar Agranenko in his diary when serving as an officer of marine infantry in East Prussia. "Nine, ten, twelve men at a time - they rape them on a collective basis."
The Soviet armies advancing into East Prussia in January 1945, in huge, long columns, were an extraordinary mixture of modern and medieval: tank troops in padded black helmets, Cossack cavalrymen on shaggy mounts with loot strapped to the saddle, lend-lease Studebakers and Dodges towing light field guns, and then a second echelon in horse-drawn carts. The variety of character among the soldiers was almost as great as that of their military equipment. There were freebooters who drank and raped quite shamelessly, and there were idealistic, austere communists and members of the intelligentsia appalled by such behaviour.

Beria and Stalin, back in Moscow, knew perfectly well what was going on from a number of detailed reports. One stated that "many Germans declare that all German women in East Prussia who stayed behind were raped by Red Army soldiers". Numerous examples of gang rape were given - "girls under 18 and old women included".
Marshal Rokossovsky issued order No 006 in an attempt to direct "the feelings of hatred at fighting the enemy on the battlefield." It appears to have had little effect. There were also a few arbitrary attempts to exert authority. The commander of one rifle division is said to have "personally shot a lieutenant who was lining up a group of his men before a German woman spreadeagled on the ground". But either officers were involved themselves, or the lack of discipline made it too dangerous to restore order over drunken soldiers armed with submachine guns.
Calls to avenge the Motherland, violated by the Wehrmacht's invasion, had given the idea that almost any cruelty would be allowed. Even many young women soldiers and medical staff in the Red Army did not appear to disapprove. "Our soldiers' behaviour towards Germans, particularly German women, is absolutely correct!" said a 21-year-old from Agranenko's reconnaissance detachment. A number seemed to find it amusing. Several German women recorded how Soviet servicewomen watched and laughed when they were raped. But some women were deeply shaken by what they witnessed in Germany. Natalya Gesse, a close friend of the scientist Andrei Sakharov, had observed the Red Army in action in 1945 as a Soviet war correspondent. "The Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to eighty," she recounted later. "It was an army of rapists."
Drink of every variety, including dangerous chemicals seized from laboratories and workshops, was a major factor in the violence. It seems as if Soviet soldiers needed alcoholic courage to attack a woman. But then, all too often, they drank too much and, unable to complete the act, used the bottle instead with appalling effect. A number of victims were mutilated obscenely.
The subject of the Red Army's mass rapes in Germany has been so repressed in Russia that even today veterans refuse to acknowledge what really happened. The handful prepared to speak openly, however, are totally unrepentant. "They all lifted their skirts for us and lay on the bed," said the leader of one tank company. He even went on to boast that "two million of our children were born" in Germany.
The capacity of Soviet officers to convince themselves that most of the victims were either happy with their fate, or at least accepted that it was their turn to suffer after what the Wehrmacht had done in Russia, is striking. "Our fellows were so sex-starved," a Soviet major told a British journalist at the time, "that they often raped old women of sixty, seventy or even eighty - much to these grandmothers' surprise, if not downright delight."
One can only scratch at the surface of the psychological contradictions. When gang-raped women in Königsberg begged their attackers afterwards to put them out of their misery, the Red Army men appear to have felt insulted. "Russian soldiers do not shoot women," they replied. "Only German soldiers do that." The Red Army had managed to convince itself that because it had assumed the moral mission to liberate Europe from fascism it could behave entirely as it liked, both personally and politically.
Domination and humiliation permeated most soldiers' treatment of women in East Prussia. The victims not only bore the brunt of revenge for Wehrmacht crimes, they also represented an atavistic target as old as war itself. Rape is the act of a conqueror, the feminist historian Susan Brownmiller observed, aimed at the "bodies of the defeated enemy's women" to emphasise his victory. Yet after the initial fury of January 1945 dissipated, the sadism became less marked. By the time the Red Army reached Berlin three months later, its soldiers tended to regard German women more as a casual right of conquest. The sense of domination certainly continued, but this was perhaps partly an indirect product of the humiliations which they themselves had suffered at the hands of their commanders and the Soviet authorities as a whole.
A number of other forces or influences were at work. Sexual freedom had been a subject for lively debate within Communist party circles during the 1920s, but during the following decade, Stalin ensured that Soviet society depicted itself as virtually asexual. This had nothing to do with genuine puritanism: it was because love and sex did not fit in with dogma designed to "deindividualise" the individual. Human urges and emotions had to be suppressed. Freud's work was banned, divorce and adultery were matters for strong party disapproval. Criminal sanctions against homosexuality were reintroduced. The new doctrine extended even to the complete suppression of sex education. In graphic art, the clothed outline of a woman's breasts was regarded as dangerously erotic. They had to be disguised under boiler suits. The regime clearly wanted any form of desire to be converted into love for the party and above all for Comrade Stalin.
Most ill-educated Red Army soldiers suffered from sexual ignorance and utterly unenlightened attitudes towards women. So the Soviet state's attempts to suppress the libido of its people created what one Russian writer described as a sort of "barracks eroticism" which was far more primitive and violent than "the most sordid foreign pornography". All this was combined with the dehumanising influence of modern propaganda and the atavistic, warring impulses of men marked by fear and suffering.
The novelist Vasily Grossman, a war correspondent attached to the invading Red Army, soon discovered that rape victims were not just Germans. Polish women also suffered. So did young Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian women who had been sent back to Germany by the Wehrmacht for slave labour. "Liberated Soviet girls quite often complain that our soldiers rape them," he noted. "One girl said to me in tears: 'He was an old man, older than my father'."
The rape of Soviet women and girls seriously undermines Russian attempts to justify Red Army behaviour on the grounds of revenge for German brutality in the Soviet Union. On March 29 1945 the central committee of the Komsomol (the youth organisation of the Soviet Union) informed Stalin's associate Malenkov of a report from the 1st Ukrainian Front. "On the night of 24 February," General Tsygankov recorded in the first of many examples, "a group of 35 provisional lieutenants on a course and their battalion commander entered the women's dormitory in the village of Grutenberg and raped them."
In Berlin, many women were simply not prepared for the shock of Russian revenge, however much horror propaganda they had heard from Goebbels. Many reassured themselves that, although the danger must be great out in the countryside, mass rapes could hardly take place in the city in front of everybody.
In Dahlem, Soviet officers visited Sister Kunigunde, the mother superior of Haus Dahlem, a maternity clinic and orphanage. The officers and their men behaved impeccably. In fact, the officers even warned Sister Kunigunde about the second-line troops following on behind. Their prediction proved entirely accurate. Nuns, young girls, old women, pregnant women and mothers who had just given birth were all raped without pity.
Yet within a couple of days, a pattern emerged of soldiers flashing torches in the faces of women huddled in the bunkers to choose their victims. This process of selection, as opposed to the indiscriminate violence shown earlier, indicates a definite change. By this stage Soviet soldiers started to treat German women more as sexual spoils of war than as substitutes for the Wehrmacht on which to vent their rage.
Rape has often been defined by writers on the subject as an act of violence which has little to do with sex. But that is a definition from the victim's perspective. To understand the crime, one needs to see things from the perpetrator's point of view, especially in the later stages when unaggravated rape had succeeded the extreme onslaught of January and February.
Many women found themselves forced to "concede" to one soldier in the hope that he would protect them from others. Magda Wieland, a 24-year-old actress, was dragged from a cupboard in her apartment just off the Kurfürstendamm. A very young soldier from central Asia hauled her out. He was so excited at the prospect of a beautiful young blonde that he ejaculated prematurely. By sign language, she offered herself to him as a girlfriend if he would protect her from other Russian soldiers, but he went off to boast to his comrades and another soldier raped her. Ellen Goetz, a Jewish friend of Magda's, was also raped. When other Germans tried to explain to the Russians that she was Jewish and had been persecuted, they received the retort: "Frau ist Frau."
Women soon learned to disappear during the "hunting hours" of the evening. Young daughters were hidden in storage lofts for days on end. Mothers emerged into the street to fetch water only in the early morning when Soviet soldiers were sleeping off the alcohol from the night before. Sometimes the greatest danger came from one mother giving away the hiding place of other girls in a desperate bid to save her own daughter. Older Berliners still remember the screams every night. It was impossible not to hear them because all the windows had been blown in.
Estimates of rape victims from the city's two main hospitals ranged from 95,000 to 130,000. One doctor deduced that out of approximately 100,000 women raped in the city, some 10,000 died as a result, mostly from suicide. The death rate was thought to have been much higher among the 1.4 million estimated victims in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. Altogether at least two million German women are thought to have been raped, and a substantial minority, if not a majority, appear to have suffered multiple rape.
If anyone attempted to defend a woman against a Soviet attacker it was either a father trying to defend a daughter or a young son trying to protect his mother. "The 13-year old Dieter Sahl," neighbours wrote in a letter shortly after the event, "threw himself with flailing fists at a Russian who was raping his mother in front of him. He did not succeed in anything except getting himself shot."
After the second stage of women offering themselves to one soldier to save themselves from others, came the post-battle need to survive starvation. Susan Brownmiller noted "the murky line that divides wartime rape from wartime prostitution". Soon after the surrender in Berlin, Ursula von Kardorff found all sorts of women prostituting themselves for food or the alternative currency of cigarettes. Helke Sander, a German film-maker who researched the subject in great detail, wrote of "the grey area of direct force, blackmail, calculation and real affection".
The fourth stage was a strange form of cohabitation in which Red Army officers settled in with German "occupation wives". The Soviet authorities were appalled and enraged when a number of Red Army officers, intent on staying with their German lovers, deserted when it was time to return to the Motherland.
Even if the feminist definition of rape purely as an act of violence proves to be simplistic, there is no justification for male complacency. If anything, the events of 1945 reveal how thin the veneer of civilisation can be when there is little fear of retribution. It also suggests a much darker side to male sexuality than we might care to admit.
© Antony Beevor.
www.antonybeevor.com
· Berlin: The Downfall 1945 is published by Viking Penguin.The BBC Timewatch film about researching the book will be shown on BBC2 at 9pm on May 10.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

It still brakes my head to understand how the fuck you'd take a child toy from the home you came with gun in your hands, to bring that toy to your own kid. That's just fucked up.

It's honestly one of the only things about the Russians so far that's recognizably human, they care enough about their own kids to think about getting them toys even in a situation where they're shooting handcuffed civilians in the back of their heads.

 

[Astro Galactic Megalul]

Got to talk with my brother in Ukraine, they're all really pissed. Said no more mercy, he's going to slit throats of every russian soldier he can get his hands on.
I wished them good hunt.

 

[Tovarisz]

Got to talk with my brother in Ukraine, they're all really pissed. Said no more mercy, he's going to slit throats of every russian soldier he can get his hands on.
I wished them good hunt.

Considering what they're uncovering in liberated areas it's hard to argue with that attitude.

Also soldats who didn't lay down arms up to this point would only do it as a last ditch attempt to save their skin, not because they recognize wtf they're fuckhead dictator got them into so they have it coming, they know what they're doing there and to whom, "I was sent for a training exercise, they lied to me, I'm sorry" is no longer a valid excuse.

 

[Ghostse]

Basically, yes.

The right wants a government that is strong against foreign threats but does little for welfare; Russia has that. The Russian government spends billions every day in its war against Ukraine, while the average Russian lives in abject poverty.

The right wants a country that strongly projects "Christian values". Russia has that with their Orthodox Church, which is supported by the State. Oh, and by the way, the Church has been thoroughly infiltrated by the KGB decades ago, and its higher-ups are basically Kremlin stooges who preach obedience to the law.

The right wants a government that doesn't butt in on economic matters like trust-busting, well, Russia has that: they have oligarchs who monopolized Russian businesses, which is what happens when robber barons and their monopolies aren't kept in check. This has led to a massive brain drain where industrious and intelligent Russians who can't make it big thanks to the monopolies, flee to America to start their business, instead of making money at home and paying taxes to the Kremlin.

The right wants a masculine, militaristic, and patriotic culture where real men give their lives for the nation. Russia has that; as you said, they created a death cult around WW2 where they make sure everyone never forgets their role in it. Not to mention that in this war against Ukraine, their war against "GLOBOHOMO", they've got no concerns for the lives of their soldiers. And of course, their definition of "real men" basically amounts to the old Roman way where the "real men" exert their dominance by sexually abusing younger boys.

The right wants a strong man to rally behind, decrying previous leaders like George W. Bush as too soft. Well, Russia has that strongman in Putin, but they're stuck with him and can't get rid of him, even as his tard-raging is destroying the country.

Basically, everything that the modern right wants, Russia has. And yet it's the country where the church is the puppet of the state, boys are conscripted into an army where they're sexually abused and treated like disposable pawns, the strongman of the country is ruining it just to propel his ambitions of power, monopolies have destroyed all economic competition, and the average Russian lives in squalor while their elites live like gods on Mount Olympus, with Putin as their Zeus/Jupiter.

Russia and the modern right is the biggest case of "be careful what you wish for".

Its at these times I like to tell a story called "The Preacher and the Bear".


There once was a preacher who was so gifted with the word of the Lord that it was said he convert anyone with a simple command. He'd show up in a town where the priest could barely fill a pew, and in a week, there would be people standing on the lawn because the sanctuary was filled. Well, one day this preacher was walking in the woods, and he came across a bear. The bear was hungry, and chased the preacher.

The preacher stumbled over a root and twisted his ankle. As the bear reared up over him, the preacher then raised his hand and said "LORD! Make this bear a good Christian!". The bear halted a moment, blinked its eyes. It then sank to its knees, clasped its front paws and began to pray.

"Heavenly Father, I thank you for this meal which I am about to receive..."


Much as you said, the right wants these thing and leadership that actually believes them. Ignoring that Left and Right politicians only care about their own power. There is no reason that Oligarchs couldn't be using their power and wealth to usher Russia into a new golden age of economic opportunity and capitalization except that they are slavs and only know how to steal and then waste what they steal on gaudy shit to try to one-up Vlad.

 

[Astro Galactic Megalul]

View attachment 3139126

Wife of a looter informed about her husbands whereabouts. Supposedly. Grabbed off of Ukraine News Youtube channel. Sorry if it was posted earlier, didn't notice it if so.

Heh, they told her that they can't return body because he was hit with Javelin, which isn't true, because we can see it.

Regarding friend or foe recognition, doesn't US use transponders for identification? These white markings russians are using is a nigger-tier solution for low-tech army.

 

[Ponderous Pillock]

Heh, they told her that they can't return body because he was hit with Javelin, which isn't true, because we can see it.

Regarding friend or foe recognition, doesn't US use transponders for identification? These white markings russians are using is a nigger-tier solution for low-tech army.

From what I understand its a mixture of both. IRR flags are used on uniforms for nightime movements, and there's been a development of IRR helmet tags and other things.

However if you have to explain to a congressional hearing a $1.50 rattle can could've stopped a friendly fire incident because your fancy transponder wasn't working...