Russian ships, tanks and troops on the move to Ukraine as peace talks stall

> A channel run by Belarusian rail workers says that 33 military echelons have arrived in Belarus from Russia with an average of 50 cars per train over the past 7 days compared to 29 over an entire month for the Zapad 2021 exercise. They claim 200 echelons are scheduled to arrive.

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1485109839550423041

> We’ll jam Nato radars in Baltics, install SAM and anti-naval missiles on Gotland isle, proclaim Baltic sea a non-flying zone, and occupy Baltic states with our little green men”: on main Russian state TV channel

https://twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1468273403685707783

There aren’t any peace talks. Putin thinks the world can’t see right through his text book expansionism strategies but they are calling his bluff. Part of the strategy is playing the victim, pretending NATO are the ones being hyper agressive and he’s just moving his troops poised for invasion to “defend” Russia from a threat that doesn’t exist. Peace talks are just another example of Russia trying to leverage the fear of war into getting what they want. This type of posturing is classic Putin, his master skill is convincing that he has more power and strength than he does to manipulate others. Yet the problem is this time is that nobody’s falling for it.

“I’ll do it! I will! I really will do it I promise you! I’m not joking! I’m really really serious this time!”

Let nobody be mistaken that if war should accidentally break out it will be because Putin decided to play war games and gamble with lives.

Putting all of humanity on edge, threatening WW3, for what exactly? What on earth is so damned important it’s worth risking millions of lives?

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Putin probably has a terminal disease. he’s going out with a bang. peace was never on the table.

Ubisoft: write this shit down!

If Putin thinks he can rebuild a Stalin style empire and sustain it, he’s completely wrong . These idiots just don’t learn from history

“I swear we’re not invading” – Putin as he moves additional forces to the border of a country that isn’t capable of attacking them.

there’s going to be a false flag just wait for it

Kinda nice to see the comment section United against Putin lol

I wonder what the Russian troops on the front lines think about all this?

There’s a phrase more people should be familiar with, to understand what’s happening a little:

” War is the continuation of politics by other means ”

It’s the basic premise that dictates military interventionism anywhere in the world, by anyone. It may seem obvious (and already was considered so when this was written some 200 years ago), but there’s a specific context to consider. At the core of what Russia is doing are specific political objectives and also political conflicts it wants to control. It appears that Putin believes these cannot be resolved or achieved without the use of military violence.

I see that many in the comments are approaching this from a western perspective. That it’s ridiculous a country would still think this way in the 21st century, that we should’ve evolved beyond this, or that it’s unlikely that Putin will follow through because he doesn have enough ‘public support’.

First, it’s important to remind yourself that contemporary global governance is still almost entirely built on a foundation of euro-atlantic & western values. Supported by institutions mostly shaped and built by western powers after WW2, reinforced after the fall of the Soviet Union (the UN, NATO, the WTO etc.), and that it’s the west that is prosperous and peaceful beyond anywhere else in the world. Simply put, for us the international order makes sense. Importantly, the west being the powers that occupy the top of the global totem pole, we also rarely if ever feel a pressing *need* to use offensive violence to achieve our aims. For the most part, things are as we want them to be. And if they are not, we’ll play the competition game mostly through the international institutions and all sorts of non-military means to isolate and neuter opposition.

Over the last decade especially there’s been a rising challenge to that global system and our assumptions and logic. Prominently by China and Russia. China for its part forwarding an alternative to western ideals of democratic governance, individual rights and free-market capitalism, positing that its political and economic systems are better. Russia in rejecting western internationalism and framing the world as a place of competition between states in the same way that it was pre-WW2, in which it’s either win or lose. And if we’re to believe Putin, Russia has lost far too much in the last 30 years. Economically and geopolitically.

To get to the point of public support – an important realisation is that it’s not necessary for Putin to have more than 50% of the popular vote to execute his vision. Russia is a democracy in name only, and there is no real threat to Putin’s power. Opposition has never really been allowed to manifest, and whatever opposition remains is ensured to always be the worse choice. The man has been in power for almost 25 years now, and he’ll probably remain in power for some time to come.

Hi – can someone ELI5 what’s going on here, why Russia want to invade? Or give me some links to read about the history?

The Russian Navy is planning to do exercises 240km off the Irish coast at the start of the month. Obviously these are aimed at intimidating Britain not Ireland but the fact they don’t care that we are in the way isn’t exactly comforting.