Very, VERY long rant on the war in Ukraine
Mar. 3rd, 2022 02:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneI need to write a lot about the shit going down in Ukraine. It has really been dragging me down for the last couple of days, and I'm hoping that by writing all this down that my mental/emotional health might improve once it's out of me.
Sorry for dumping it all out on you! Feel free to skip it if it's best for your mental hygiene. I completely understand!
And I'm putting it behind a cut in case it's best for your personal well-being.
All of this I've garnered from sources like BBC, The Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel, etc.
The worst part, of course, is that the madman perpetrating it all – Putin – has a nuclear arsenal at his command. We do not know what state it is in, nor do we know if those who have direct operational control of it will actually obey a launch order. We do know some things about the Russian military through direct observation of captured/abandoned/damaged and destroyed Russian military hardware, the most important being that it is no where nearly as good as Putin liked to claim it to be, no where as advanced as American hardware is. And most NATO hardware is close to as capable as American hardware.
This raises two points about Russia's nuclear missile arsenal. First, if their military hardware isn't as good as we've been lead to believe, then what of their nukes? We don't know. But their space hardware is pretty decent, albeit brute-force. The American space program, especially when you look at SpaceX, is infinitely better refined than the Russian program. But the Russian program is pretty darn good, even if they never sent a manned crew orbiting the moon – they still landed robotic rovers on it.
Which implies that their nuclear missiles should be fairly capable. In the past they have tested well. So their arsenal will remain a wild card. I believe it was Sunday that Putin ordered the nuclear forces to 'increased alert', some news agencies reported 'high alert', but I don't think those were accurate reports. Now I've read that U.S. intelligence has seen no difference in the Russian military's nuclear posture, so that's a relief. But that could easily change.
Probably 30 years ago, a pair of Russian MIG jets, I don't recall the model, made a screaming run across a Soviet country at – IIRC, mach 3. Faster than any American or NATO jet. Scared the crap out of the USA. It later turned out that the jets had been customized: stripped of everything not essential to speed and flight control, special fuel, and the engines were completely fried by the time they landed. It was all done as a propaganda stunt to rattle the West. No Russian jets could maintain that speed as a matter of course, much less in combat.
The Russians have always been great at playing mind games with the west, and at propaganda. And the thing that must always be remembered about Putin is that he was first and will always be a KGB agent. He was in charge of Dresden when the wall fell. After the KGB and the USSR fell apart, he even worked driving a cab to make ends meet. He is a murderer, ordering the death of people whom he remotely considers his political opponents.
He is not a master statesman, he is a thug spy and will use force to get what he wants. He wants two things, aside from money and the power that comes with it. He wants to prove that capitalism is a failed system, and to recreate the Russian Empire. He's 69 years old, and rumors are that he is in poor health, possibly with MS and/or cancer, and possibly neurological problems. It's impossible to get accurate health information so no one knows: he keeps his health a closely-guarded state secret as any show of weakness would be very dangerous to his position. Any of these problems could be causing him to act irrationally. And an irrational world leader – who will not hesitate to murder people – with a nuclear arsenal? Not a good thing.
Putin has been stripping his country for his personal wealth and that of his cronies, not that I would draw any analogies to any other recent heads of state. Ukraine, once the corruption is eliminated that is hung over from the old Soviet hangers-on, could be quite the strong economy with its agricultural and mineral resources along with its energy resources. Putin wants these for his pocketbook. That's all there is to this.
The big problem Putin has is that he thought he could knock Ukraine out in a blitzkrieg, a really rapid push. I don't know if he engineered his war's entire battle plan and was surrounded by yes men who approved it, but it was not a sound military plan. He made two big mistakes. The first was to split his forces into three invasion paths, which made him have to use three resupply/logistics chains, none of which are working well. That's also three medivac routes to take out the wounded, and reports are those aren't working too well.
So the three attack routes are not advancing fast. Because they didn't advance fast, they're running out of gas. They don't have enough night vision devices and can't advance at night. Which makes them sitting ducks for night attacks. Their wounded aren't getting evacuated promptly, which is a big hit to unit morale.
Speaking of morale: this army of almost 200,000 men? Conscripts. Who have been sitting out in the fields in winter, told they were doing war games. Now being used to invade a country that did not attack them, that speak their language. Not high morale to start with. Now getting shot at, wounded, limbs being blown off. Not getting evacuated promptly to better hospital treatment? Not good for unit morale.
Had Putin made one huge push instead of three, he would have had one resupply chain, one medivac route, and a much tougher force to stop on a march to Kyiv. Capture Kyiv, topple the government and maybe capture the President, then fork out for the smaller cities. He tried to topple the entire country at once, and that's not going to work. He thought his army was unstoppable, and the Ukrainians are stopping it.
There is one curious thing going on with Russia's military: they are not using their air force effectively. Russia has overwhelming air superiority versus Ukraine, as in 90% more of everything across the board. And the first rule of modern combat is to establish air superiority. And Russia didn't do that and hasn't shown an interest in doing so. This is baffling military experts around the world. Of course, if they were to forward-deploy air units, this would further complicate their supply chain, plus commit more army and air units to search and rescue when air units get shot down.
Now Putin's big column approaching Kyiv is stalled, miles from the city. I hope it's getting pounded. Out of fuel and pretty much out of food. And a lot of the troops wondering WTF are we doing here.
And the entire country is a problem. Ukraine: the home of the Cossacks. Let's talk about the National Anthem. One verse. One chorus. Here it is in English:
Ukraine is not yet dead, nor its glory and freedom,
Luck will still smile on us brother-Ukrainians.
Our enemies will die, as the dew does in the sunshine,
and we, too, brothers, we'll live happily in our land.
We’ll not spare either our souls or bodies to get freedom
and we’ll prove that we brothers are of Kozak kin.
The Ukrainian government issued assault rifles and ammunition to as many people who wanted them. A massively armed population who sings "Our enemies will die" and "We will not spare either our sould or bodies to get freedom". That is a highly motivated population.
There's a video of a Ukrainian woman walking up to a Russian soldier with a machine gun and shaming him to his face, saying "Why are you here?" "Here, all of you, put these sunflower seeds in your pockets so when you die here, at least flowers will grow." I'm paraphrasing slightly.
A Russian squad or platoon surrendered to a Ukrainian group, saying "We were lied to. We didn't come here to kill Ukranians." No bullets were fired.
And Putin sent in a hit squad of really nasty dudes to murder Zelarney. They were detected and eliminated.
Putin didn't want a unified opposition on his western border, well, he now has one. Of his own creation. President Zelarney signed the application to join the European Union today, it will take several years for them to complete the process, and especially clean up the corruption in his country, but I expect they'll get it done. A comedian turn statesman, rising to the occasion. Better than a clown pretending to be a statesman and not pretending very hard.
On top of that, Finland and Sweden are now seriously considering joining NATO, I'm not certain whether or not they're members of the EU. Big mistake there, Vladimir. But perhaps one of the most interesting unintended consequences: Germany is standing up their military posture. They are making their budgetary commitment to NATO a fixed item in their budget, and rather than just sending helmets and body armor to Ukraine, they're also going to be sending Javelin missiles and are discussing what else can be done. Perhaps a forward deployment of tanks to Poland?
Russia is coming under very heavy sports sanctions with lots of major organizations canceling events that were to be held in Russia, and organizations banning Russian and Belarusian teams from competition. I personally didn't think Putin was going to invade, but I knew he wouldn't do it before the Olympics were over, at least that part was bitterly accurate. The IOC is talking about banning Russian competitors from the Paralympics. The Russian Olympic team has been unable to compete as representing the Russian nation since the Sochi Olympics, they have to compete as Russian nationals, and now a number of them who held international titles are having them stripped. The Formula One race scheduled later this year in Sochi is gone.
In the last couple of days several Russian oligarchs have found their credit cards to no longer work and have had to get into their safes and pull out cash for transactions. But the best part: two or three have had their yachts seized! One in Spain, one in France!
That's when they haven't had them sank, or attempted to! One yacht had an attempt at scuttling by a Ukrainian engineer. He shut off the fuel and power and opened water valves, flooding the engine compartment. He was arrested, charged and released, and then left the country and headed to Ukraine to volunteer to fight. Seems the oligarch owner of the yacht is a major weapons manufacturer, including missiles of the type that might have been used to attack apartment towers.
Speaking of Belarus, they claimed to be neutral, even though Russia launched attacks through their territory. They also said all their armed forces are locked down. Yet rockets are being launched through their territory attacking Ukrainian civilian population. Everyone knows their "leader" is a Putin stooge.
Militarily, there's some interesting things going on. Ukraine's air defense has held up quite well (see the absence of the Russian AF above). The Javelin anti-tank weapons have done quite a number on Russia's vehicles. I saw a CNN clip with a retired U.S. General where he commented that tanks, and armored personnel carriers, frequently ignore their rear, and in a crowded urban environment like the cities of Ukraine, it makes it very easy for someone to pop out with a Javelin and pop a shot off and scamper away without consequence, leaving a smoking vehicle and dead Russians in their wake.
The Ukrainians are also recruiting foreign fighters left and right. I read about some U.S. and British former Special Forces that are going over to establish training cadres. Ukraine is also releasing some prisoners who are former military: they might be restricting it to certain classes of prisoners, I didn't read the article. Lots of ex-military from around the world are streaming to the area to join Ukraine's defenders to fight the Russians.
Foreign fighters are now arriving at Ukraine, and they're only accepting experienced fighters: no weekend warriors need apply. The reason for the selectivity is they only have so many weapons to issue.
The Russians have apparently used a thermobaric explosive against a city, which Ukraine has decried as a war crime. These are also known as a fuel-air explosive. To give you an idea as to what they do, here's a quote from a study by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency:
"The [blast] kill mechanism against living targets is unique—and unpleasant. ... What kills is the pressure wave, and more importantly, the subsequent rarefaction [vacuum], which ruptures the lungs. ... If the fuel deflagrates but does not detonate, victims will be severely burned and will probably also inhale the burning fuel. Since the most common FAE fuels, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, are highly toxic, undetonated FAE should prove as lethal to personnel caught within the cloud as with most chemical agents. "
Yeah. Crowded city. Civilians. Ideal place to use FAEs.
Third-party human rights watchers are all over the place throughout Ukraine looking for war crime evidence, including the use of cluster munitions and thermobaric weapons. I have heard they haven't found anything of absolute proof yet.
Both sides are conducting cyberwarfare operations against the other. I would have said that Russia holds the advantage, except there's LOTS of cyber gangs around the world, and they all are targeting Russia. The collective known as Anonymous is among those hammering the Russians. The Kremlin has been taken offline as have several other Russian operations and news orgs, many of the latter have been removed from streaming and satellite feeds.
In one very interesting turn of cyber events, there is a ransomware gang called Conti. They're one of the bigger ones. The leaders of the gang are Russian and decided they were pro-Putin. One of the members is Ukrainian. He captured and released a TERABYTE tranche of chat logs and other data that there's no way the gang would want leaked, including addresses of bitcoin wallets where ransoms were paid.
One hack that I found quite amusing was a bunch of electric vehicle charging stations – the controllers were subcontracted to a Ukranian provider who inserted a back door, and the contractor shut down the chargers and had the chargers display messages like "Putin is a dick head" and pro-Ukraine messages. The chargers are along the Moscow-St. Petersburg freeway, IIRC. There aren't a lot of EVs in Russia, I think the article said 11-17,000 total. Still, I was amused.
And interestingly, the Russian people have been protesting the war! Even they have been fed an endless stream of propaganda from Putin about the "denazification" operation being conducted, they're not buying it! I haven't seen new numbers, but over 4,000 people have been arrested in Moscow and St. Petersburg as of a few days ago! I expect that number is probably up by 50% by now (latest numbers I've seen is well over 6,000 arrested, including elderly and children). And Russian oligarchs aren't too happy with Putin either, but they have to be careful as previously at least one has been imprisoned and one has ended up dead.
Well, I think that's enough ranting. Time to see if I can buy any of the war bonds that the Ukranian government started issuing. If not, plenty of places to donate.
From the web comic Sandra and Woo, this particular comic that it won't let me directly link to:
http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2022/02/25/1318-thoughts-prayers-and-money/
From the page:
"I personally donated to the National Bank of Ukraine’s fundraising account to support the armed forces of Ukraine at https://ukraine.ua/news/donate-to-the-nbu-fund/
The web page contains the necessary info to make a money transfer in USD, GBP, EUR or UAH to bank accounts in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, or Ukraine.
An alternative bank account of the Ukrainian government is listed at https://ukraine.ua/news/support-the-armed-forces-of-ukraine/
COME BACK ALIVE is a charity that supports Ukraine’s armed forces and donations can be made at https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/
Donations for purely humanitarian aid can be given for example to Nova Ukraine at https://novaukraine.org/"
I would imagine that Red Cross probably has a dedicated fund set up by now.
And honestly, I felt a lot better after dumping all of this.
Sorry for dumping it all out on you! Feel free to skip it if it's best for your mental hygiene. I completely understand!
And I'm putting it behind a cut in case it's best for your personal well-being.
All of this I've garnered from sources like BBC, The Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel, etc.
The worst part, of course, is that the madman perpetrating it all – Putin – has a nuclear arsenal at his command. We do not know what state it is in, nor do we know if those who have direct operational control of it will actually obey a launch order. We do know some things about the Russian military through direct observation of captured/abandoned/damaged and destroyed Russian military hardware, the most important being that it is no where nearly as good as Putin liked to claim it to be, no where as advanced as American hardware is. And most NATO hardware is close to as capable as American hardware.
This raises two points about Russia's nuclear missile arsenal. First, if their military hardware isn't as good as we've been lead to believe, then what of their nukes? We don't know. But their space hardware is pretty decent, albeit brute-force. The American space program, especially when you look at SpaceX, is infinitely better refined than the Russian program. But the Russian program is pretty darn good, even if they never sent a manned crew orbiting the moon – they still landed robotic rovers on it.
Which implies that their nuclear missiles should be fairly capable. In the past they have tested well. So their arsenal will remain a wild card. I believe it was Sunday that Putin ordered the nuclear forces to 'increased alert', some news agencies reported 'high alert', but I don't think those were accurate reports. Now I've read that U.S. intelligence has seen no difference in the Russian military's nuclear posture, so that's a relief. But that could easily change.
Probably 30 years ago, a pair of Russian MIG jets, I don't recall the model, made a screaming run across a Soviet country at – IIRC, mach 3. Faster than any American or NATO jet. Scared the crap out of the USA. It later turned out that the jets had been customized: stripped of everything not essential to speed and flight control, special fuel, and the engines were completely fried by the time they landed. It was all done as a propaganda stunt to rattle the West. No Russian jets could maintain that speed as a matter of course, much less in combat.
The Russians have always been great at playing mind games with the west, and at propaganda. And the thing that must always be remembered about Putin is that he was first and will always be a KGB agent. He was in charge of Dresden when the wall fell. After the KGB and the USSR fell apart, he even worked driving a cab to make ends meet. He is a murderer, ordering the death of people whom he remotely considers his political opponents.
He is not a master statesman, he is a thug spy and will use force to get what he wants. He wants two things, aside from money and the power that comes with it. He wants to prove that capitalism is a failed system, and to recreate the Russian Empire. He's 69 years old, and rumors are that he is in poor health, possibly with MS and/or cancer, and possibly neurological problems. It's impossible to get accurate health information so no one knows: he keeps his health a closely-guarded state secret as any show of weakness would be very dangerous to his position. Any of these problems could be causing him to act irrationally. And an irrational world leader – who will not hesitate to murder people – with a nuclear arsenal? Not a good thing.
Putin has been stripping his country for his personal wealth and that of his cronies, not that I would draw any analogies to any other recent heads of state. Ukraine, once the corruption is eliminated that is hung over from the old Soviet hangers-on, could be quite the strong economy with its agricultural and mineral resources along with its energy resources. Putin wants these for his pocketbook. That's all there is to this.
The big problem Putin has is that he thought he could knock Ukraine out in a blitzkrieg, a really rapid push. I don't know if he engineered his war's entire battle plan and was surrounded by yes men who approved it, but it was not a sound military plan. He made two big mistakes. The first was to split his forces into three invasion paths, which made him have to use three resupply/logistics chains, none of which are working well. That's also three medivac routes to take out the wounded, and reports are those aren't working too well.
So the three attack routes are not advancing fast. Because they didn't advance fast, they're running out of gas. They don't have enough night vision devices and can't advance at night. Which makes them sitting ducks for night attacks. Their wounded aren't getting evacuated promptly, which is a big hit to unit morale.
Speaking of morale: this army of almost 200,000 men? Conscripts. Who have been sitting out in the fields in winter, told they were doing war games. Now being used to invade a country that did not attack them, that speak their language. Not high morale to start with. Now getting shot at, wounded, limbs being blown off. Not getting evacuated promptly to better hospital treatment? Not good for unit morale.
Had Putin made one huge push instead of three, he would have had one resupply chain, one medivac route, and a much tougher force to stop on a march to Kyiv. Capture Kyiv, topple the government and maybe capture the President, then fork out for the smaller cities. He tried to topple the entire country at once, and that's not going to work. He thought his army was unstoppable, and the Ukrainians are stopping it.
There is one curious thing going on with Russia's military: they are not using their air force effectively. Russia has overwhelming air superiority versus Ukraine, as in 90% more of everything across the board. And the first rule of modern combat is to establish air superiority. And Russia didn't do that and hasn't shown an interest in doing so. This is baffling military experts around the world. Of course, if they were to forward-deploy air units, this would further complicate their supply chain, plus commit more army and air units to search and rescue when air units get shot down.
Now Putin's big column approaching Kyiv is stalled, miles from the city. I hope it's getting pounded. Out of fuel and pretty much out of food. And a lot of the troops wondering WTF are we doing here.
And the entire country is a problem. Ukraine: the home of the Cossacks. Let's talk about the National Anthem. One verse. One chorus. Here it is in English:
Ukraine is not yet dead, nor its glory and freedom,
Luck will still smile on us brother-Ukrainians.
Our enemies will die, as the dew does in the sunshine,
and we, too, brothers, we'll live happily in our land.
We’ll not spare either our souls or bodies to get freedom
and we’ll prove that we brothers are of Kozak kin.
The Ukrainian government issued assault rifles and ammunition to as many people who wanted them. A massively armed population who sings "Our enemies will die" and "We will not spare either our sould or bodies to get freedom". That is a highly motivated population.
There's a video of a Ukrainian woman walking up to a Russian soldier with a machine gun and shaming him to his face, saying "Why are you here?" "Here, all of you, put these sunflower seeds in your pockets so when you die here, at least flowers will grow." I'm paraphrasing slightly.
A Russian squad or platoon surrendered to a Ukrainian group, saying "We were lied to. We didn't come here to kill Ukranians." No bullets were fired.
And Putin sent in a hit squad of really nasty dudes to murder Zelarney. They were detected and eliminated.
Putin didn't want a unified opposition on his western border, well, he now has one. Of his own creation. President Zelarney signed the application to join the European Union today, it will take several years for them to complete the process, and especially clean up the corruption in his country, but I expect they'll get it done. A comedian turn statesman, rising to the occasion. Better than a clown pretending to be a statesman and not pretending very hard.
On top of that, Finland and Sweden are now seriously considering joining NATO, I'm not certain whether or not they're members of the EU. Big mistake there, Vladimir. But perhaps one of the most interesting unintended consequences: Germany is standing up their military posture. They are making their budgetary commitment to NATO a fixed item in their budget, and rather than just sending helmets and body armor to Ukraine, they're also going to be sending Javelin missiles and are discussing what else can be done. Perhaps a forward deployment of tanks to Poland?
Russia is coming under very heavy sports sanctions with lots of major organizations canceling events that were to be held in Russia, and organizations banning Russian and Belarusian teams from competition. I personally didn't think Putin was going to invade, but I knew he wouldn't do it before the Olympics were over, at least that part was bitterly accurate. The IOC is talking about banning Russian competitors from the Paralympics. The Russian Olympic team has been unable to compete as representing the Russian nation since the Sochi Olympics, they have to compete as Russian nationals, and now a number of them who held international titles are having them stripped. The Formula One race scheduled later this year in Sochi is gone.
In the last couple of days several Russian oligarchs have found their credit cards to no longer work and have had to get into their safes and pull out cash for transactions. But the best part: two or three have had their yachts seized! One in Spain, one in France!
That's when they haven't had them sank, or attempted to! One yacht had an attempt at scuttling by a Ukrainian engineer. He shut off the fuel and power and opened water valves, flooding the engine compartment. He was arrested, charged and released, and then left the country and headed to Ukraine to volunteer to fight. Seems the oligarch owner of the yacht is a major weapons manufacturer, including missiles of the type that might have been used to attack apartment towers.
Speaking of Belarus, they claimed to be neutral, even though Russia launched attacks through their territory. They also said all their armed forces are locked down. Yet rockets are being launched through their territory attacking Ukrainian civilian population. Everyone knows their "leader" is a Putin stooge.
Militarily, there's some interesting things going on. Ukraine's air defense has held up quite well (see the absence of the Russian AF above). The Javelin anti-tank weapons have done quite a number on Russia's vehicles. I saw a CNN clip with a retired U.S. General where he commented that tanks, and armored personnel carriers, frequently ignore their rear, and in a crowded urban environment like the cities of Ukraine, it makes it very easy for someone to pop out with a Javelin and pop a shot off and scamper away without consequence, leaving a smoking vehicle and dead Russians in their wake.
The Ukrainians are also recruiting foreign fighters left and right. I read about some U.S. and British former Special Forces that are going over to establish training cadres. Ukraine is also releasing some prisoners who are former military: they might be restricting it to certain classes of prisoners, I didn't read the article. Lots of ex-military from around the world are streaming to the area to join Ukraine's defenders to fight the Russians.
Foreign fighters are now arriving at Ukraine, and they're only accepting experienced fighters: no weekend warriors need apply. The reason for the selectivity is they only have so many weapons to issue.
The Russians have apparently used a thermobaric explosive against a city, which Ukraine has decried as a war crime. These are also known as a fuel-air explosive. To give you an idea as to what they do, here's a quote from a study by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency:
"The [blast] kill mechanism against living targets is unique—and unpleasant. ... What kills is the pressure wave, and more importantly, the subsequent rarefaction [vacuum], which ruptures the lungs. ... If the fuel deflagrates but does not detonate, victims will be severely burned and will probably also inhale the burning fuel. Since the most common FAE fuels, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, are highly toxic, undetonated FAE should prove as lethal to personnel caught within the cloud as with most chemical agents. "
Yeah. Crowded city. Civilians. Ideal place to use FAEs.
Third-party human rights watchers are all over the place throughout Ukraine looking for war crime evidence, including the use of cluster munitions and thermobaric weapons. I have heard they haven't found anything of absolute proof yet.
Both sides are conducting cyberwarfare operations against the other. I would have said that Russia holds the advantage, except there's LOTS of cyber gangs around the world, and they all are targeting Russia. The collective known as Anonymous is among those hammering the Russians. The Kremlin has been taken offline as have several other Russian operations and news orgs, many of the latter have been removed from streaming and satellite feeds.
In one very interesting turn of cyber events, there is a ransomware gang called Conti. They're one of the bigger ones. The leaders of the gang are Russian and decided they were pro-Putin. One of the members is Ukrainian. He captured and released a TERABYTE tranche of chat logs and other data that there's no way the gang would want leaked, including addresses of bitcoin wallets where ransoms were paid.
One hack that I found quite amusing was a bunch of electric vehicle charging stations – the controllers were subcontracted to a Ukranian provider who inserted a back door, and the contractor shut down the chargers and had the chargers display messages like "Putin is a dick head" and pro-Ukraine messages. The chargers are along the Moscow-St. Petersburg freeway, IIRC. There aren't a lot of EVs in Russia, I think the article said 11-17,000 total. Still, I was amused.
And interestingly, the Russian people have been protesting the war! Even they have been fed an endless stream of propaganda from Putin about the "denazification" operation being conducted, they're not buying it! I haven't seen new numbers, but over 4,000 people have been arrested in Moscow and St. Petersburg as of a few days ago! I expect that number is probably up by 50% by now (latest numbers I've seen is well over 6,000 arrested, including elderly and children). And Russian oligarchs aren't too happy with Putin either, but they have to be careful as previously at least one has been imprisoned and one has ended up dead.
Well, I think that's enough ranting. Time to see if I can buy any of the war bonds that the Ukranian government started issuing. If not, plenty of places to donate.
From the web comic Sandra and Woo, this particular comic that it won't let me directly link to:
http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2022/02/25/1318-thoughts-prayers-and-money/
From the page:
"I personally donated to the National Bank of Ukraine’s fundraising account to support the armed forces of Ukraine at https://ukraine.ua/news/donate-to-the-nbu-fund/
The web page contains the necessary info to make a money transfer in USD, GBP, EUR or UAH to bank accounts in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, or Ukraine.
An alternative bank account of the Ukrainian government is listed at https://ukraine.ua/news/support-the-armed-forces-of-ukraine/
COME BACK ALIVE is a charity that supports Ukraine’s armed forces and donations can be made at https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/
Donations for purely humanitarian aid can be given for example to Nova Ukraine at https://novaukraine.org/"
I would imagine that Red Cross probably has a dedicated fund set up by now.
And honestly, I felt a lot better after dumping all of this.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-03 10:30 pm (UTC)Don't forget FIFA: the Russian national team is now out. Over the weekend, the other teams in their group said they wouldn't play the Russians in the upcoming World Cup qualifiers. After the weekend, FIFA decided to throw Russia out entirely.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-04 05:13 am (UTC)Additional Info from Canada:
Date: 2022-03-03 10:45 pm (UTC)https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/canada-volunteers-ukraine-1.6369840
https://globalnews.ca/news/8656153/canada-russia-belarus-tariffs-ukraine-war/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/joly-rzeszow-poland-ukraine-refugees-1.6370537
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/federal-government-warns-canadians-against-fighting-for-russia-in-ukraine-1.5804185
Re: Additional Info from Canada:
Date: 2022-03-04 04:04 am (UTC)Canada is definitely doing a good job. They're also looking at shutting down petrol trade.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-04 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-04 04:06 am (UTC)Their seasonal timing was definitely poorly choosen, and that would definitely be a large factor in their march route selection.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-04 04:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-04 05:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-04 07:12 am (UTC)The impact of the hackers might well be very interesting, very interesting indeed.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-04 03:24 pm (UTC)There have been Russian cyber attacks vs the Ukraine, but attacks vs Russia apparently have been more effective. For one thing, more targets of opportunity - bigger country!
no subject
Date: 2022-03-05 12:38 am (UTC)Here's hoping this overreach is what finally topples the dictator, and soon, so that someone with more sense and democratic desires can replace him.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-05 02:00 am (UTC)The best possible possible result is he is toppled and sent to the countryside for "rest and to take in fluids", i.e. to be embalmed, and that his successor withdraws all troops and starts negotiating reparations. Will it happen? Who knows. The alternatives are quite unthinkable and involve massive loss of life.