If Russia enters the Ukraine

@QuixoticSoul That is one of the reasons I find the very premise that Russia invaded Ukraine laughable. Any idiot who can do basic research knows that would last a week at most before Kiev fell. It is like suggesting Panama could fend of the US military.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Russia did invade Ukraine - repeatedly. Their operations were limited in tactical scope - but they definitely happened. From Ilovaisk to sending the Buryats to Debaltseve - they weren’t even hiding it.

@QuixoticSoul Right... that is why Kiev had to photoshop (badly) AP photos from Georgia.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow InformNapalm, etc, are complete clowns and things get confusing in the middle of a full blown info war- but all that stuff really did happen - it is unequivocal.

‘14-‘15 was such an amazing soap opera, we might never see its like again.

@QuixoticSoul Right....that is why years later there is still no evidence that is not very amateurishly manufactured.


And just because Russia might have had special forces in Ukraine doesn't equate an invasion.

Canada has special forces in Iraq but claiming we invaded Bagdad is a stretch.


The US tried to put a hostile nation on the Russia border and steal Crimea.

If Russia or China supported Hawaiian independence fighters to seize Pearl Harbour see how that would go...oh wait, we know since the US had the Saudis invade Bahrain on the off chance they might evict the 5th Fleet.

@QuixoticSoul I am a photographer, so when the US shows "proof" with supposedly high res sattelite photos that are more pixelated and garbled than the photos from the Cuban Missile Crisis something is definitely suspect.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow There’s [i]so[/i] much more evidence than US sat photos, it’s hard to even begin. And it’s not just SF either.

Seriously, the Russians just put a thin layer of obfuscation on it - you’re not really supposed to doubt their involvement. They wouldn’t have sent a detachment of Buddhist Asians during one of the active phases if they didn’t want you to know.

@QuixoticSoul This is the first I have heard of it and again this all happened in 2014 or 2015 and I still have not seen any evidence that was not of the calibre of a Q Anon post on 4chan.

@QuixoticSoul And in an era where everyone has an HD camera in their pocket I find it hard to believe the only photo evidence has to be photoshopped or looks like it was taken in the 1940s on a camera with lens fungus and the negatives fried in developer.

Or shit from "bellingcat" who we are supposed to believe is just some random unemployed software engineer who somehow gets top secret and classified info...because reasons.



As for your point about this unit even if that is true as I mentioned neighbouring nations have had troops officially and unofficially running operations in every civil war in human history. That doesn't add up to an invasion. Or if you are NATO you go half way around the globe to meddle.

I doubt most people in NATO countries still have any idea what a Serb is.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow There's tons of evidence dude, it was incredibly obvious even at the time. It's been buried under an avalanche of the info war - remarkably hard to find things from back then now, but there was no shortage of it if you were marinating in the conflict at the time. Dedicated conflict watchers could likely point to the first day they could tell the 'Northern Wind' started blowing, when Girkin's little ad-hoc rebellion was taken under wing. Separatist opsec was remarkably poor at the time, and separatists were such clowns back then that professionals really stood out when they showed up.

Regarding the Buryats, or the "Donbas Indians", that was just one particularly colorful episode. Russians sent in elements of the 5th guard tank army from Ulan Ude. Lots of various exposes have come out since, but dedicated watchers knew about it just about in real time. Ironically, Vice was still a real investigative outfit at the time, which made this story famous in the West.


As for whether sending regular units to Ukraine constitutes an invasion or not, well, that seems like splitting hairs to me.

@QuixoticSoul There was plenty of crap flying around at the time but again most of it was of the calibre of Q anon. Vice News is a great example. Their so called "Russian Roulette" series should be taught as a course on how not to do journalism where you have very very blatant examples of commentators (I won't call them journalists" very obviously leading conversations with people to the conclusions they had already invented in advance.

Heck years later Vice even did a few follow ups that barely got any coverage at all about how they basically lied about denying the existence of neo nazi battalions in Ukraine and basically quietly issued sheepish half assed retractions. After they spent over a year pretending these idiots never existed.



And an invasion has a definition. It is not splitting hairs. Operation Barbarossa was an invasion.

And you reference a tank army that magically nobody has ever photographed. It got so silly the cut scenes from Westwood's Command an Conquer Red Alert series became a meme over that point.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Vice ended up tracking that fellow to his home in Ulan Ude, it was one of the more hilarious media episodes of the war. And they weren’t the first - if you were paying attention to the right corners of the internet, the Buryat story was common knowledge among Russians long before Vice got a hold of it.

The neo-nazi stuff is also true, but that doesn’t make Russian intervention in Ukraine a figment of everyone’s imagination. There are photos of the 5th guard tanks too - and Graham even managed to accidentally catch a line of T-72B3s at Debaltseve.

I don’t know why you’re denying it, Russian involvement is what made all that such great viewing.

@QuixoticSoul The entire series was an expose on how not to do journalism and was a 101 course on how to lead interviews to the conclusions you want.

And again, we are supposed to believe in the era of smartphones every claim of photos of Russian regular troops have been "I know a guy, who knows a guy who saw them."



Why I found it good viewing was the absolutely comical fails at the west trying to manufacture a narrative out if it with their molotovs and SKS rifles of peace and love or how burning people alive and shooting survivors in Odessa was "peaceful protest."


This is right up there about how two "Russian agents" supposedly tried to poison Scripal with one of the most lethal toxins on earth in jeans and a tshirt while the clean up crews were in full MazMat suits.


So far everything I have seen is about as convincing as this.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TR96ZAZFDk]

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow An active duty soldier posted pics of himself participating in hostilities on his VK, and you’re talking about interviews 🤷‍♂️

There are plenty of photos - if you were an active participant on mp.net, you were practically awash with them - with enough BTDTs floating around to help you make sense of the context. This was the golden age of conflict spectating, especially if you knew the right people, and understood the right languages.

Western foolishness, pretending the Odessa incident was something else, etc - all super stupid. But you don’t have to go in the other direction on this, especially as Russians were extremely obvious about what they were doing. My relatives in the FSB barely bothered to deny it in our family chats.

Here’s that British weirdo driving past a line of B3s - second hand source that I googled for just now, bu the original vid is longer and probably off the net.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRmu3CjXOwU]

@QuixoticSoul Like I said. I would be surprised if there was not some military involvement but that is a big stretch to claim an invasion when you have more photographic evidence from Czechoslovakia in 68 than you do from the era of smartphones. And are we supposed to believe the Ukrainian military fought the Russian military to a stalemate? That seems a stretch. Again a few isolated operations versus an invasion are very different things. Even a small scale invasion would have looked like Georgia circa 2008.

And I will admit I am more of an expert on American and other NATO made equipment but every army east of Berlin has nearly identical military vehicles all based on the same designs. Heck even the Polish Air Force still flies MiG 29s from the 80s. 25000 T-72s have been built since the late 60s and I am guessing that doesn't include the unofficial off brand copies like in Iraq. That is double the number of M1s. And the only resource I could find claiming those were Russian variants is a UK think tank. Not exactly a neutral source.



I doubt most people could tell the difference between a Canadian C-2 Leopard or a German or a Dutch one for that matter.

Again I am not suggesting Russian involvement on some level didn't happen. Frankly with a civil war on your doorstep, not getting involved would be dereliction of duty as a leader but this is not an invasion.




As for interviews you were the one who referenced Vice.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Ukrainian military was comprehensively routed every time Russian regulars made an appearance - who is talking about a stalemate?

T72B3s only exist in the Russian arsenal, it’s a post-Soviet modification. And you don’t need a think tank, the evidence is right in front of your eyes.

@QuixoticSoul Ok. So if it was an invasion why is the Russian tri colour not flying over Kiev? Why did we not see the Russian army destroying the entire Ukrainian military just because they could like with Georgia? An invasion is what happens when you intend to seize control of a country, not mess around in a single isolated region with no strategic value unless coal is still very valuable in modern day Russia.

Might be obvious if you know what to look for. You might be more of an expert on that then I am.

I think the main point of disagreement here is the a matter of scale.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow They could have easily done those things, had it suited their interests. Especially after Ilovaisk, the Ukrainian military was on its knees. It simply didn’t fit Russian policy goals at the time - or now.

A limited invasion is still an invasion.

@QuixoticSoul I think the last point is mostly where we disagree.

I mean by that logic the Fenian raids were a US invasion of Canada and even our historians don't go that far.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow I suspect that if they were carried out by US regular military the definition might be applied.

Russians annexed a province, and created an independent enclave by force - both proxy and covert, but also by operating battalion-sized formations on Ukrainian soil. I think that if Ukrainians want to define that as an invasion, they certainly can, and they don’t even look silly doing it.

@QuixoticSoul Actually, there were serving US military involved in the command of the raid. Of course the US government officially had no idea and officially reprimanded them...after they failed of course.

They also turned a blind eye when an army of over 1000 formed on the border.


As far as I can tell the only major distinction is one failed and one succeeded.