teknohippi
Kenraali
Eipä noihin taida olla muuta kuin ytimiä tarjolla ja siihen noita ei enää käytetä. Joten kyseessä on periaatteessa käyttökelvoton romu ryssälle. Näin se sitten sai uuden elämän valemaalina.
tienvarsipummi
Kenraali
saftamil
Kenraali
Juu, tästähän oli jo useampi kk sitten juttua, että ovat ruvenneet noitakin jo käyttämään. En ollut ihan varma onko tässä kyse samasta tavarasta.
Ilmeisesti tuollasiin ei voi kärkeä vaihtaa, joten ammutaan sitten vaan hämäyksenä?
Pihkakoski
Kenraali
Putinxyjlo
Eversti
Ukraine matters youtube kanavan lyhyt postaus voi olla yltiöpositiivinen, mutta hänellä on paljolti tuttuja rintamalla ja saa uskottavasti aika opsec tietoja, joita ei toki kerro kuin kunnes tieto ei enää ole opsec.
Vaihtosuhde Vuhledarin ja Bahmutin rintamalla on täysin järjetön. Ukraina on saanut ryssän tykistön paikallisesti täysin mykäksi ja sitä myöden Ukrainan tappiot ovat minimalistia. Tästä johtuu hänen mukaansa myös nyt nähdyt lukemat yli tuhannesta kuolleesta örkistä vuorokaudessa.
Olis kyllä temppu, kun ryssän massa tuhottaisiin jo nyt ja keväällä poimittaisiin kypsä hedelmä. Kastehelmen "kamalan hankalaa on" jutut ei kyllä täsmää rintaman liikkeisiin, jotka on korkeintaan satoja metrejä edes ja takaisin. Tämä ralli sataa Ukrainan laariin, kunhan ammusta riittää. Uskomattoman hyvin Ukraina on kyllä sopeutunut länsivehkeisiin ja niittää rajua tulosta.
Vaihtosuhde Vuhledarin ja Bahmutin rintamalla on täysin järjetön. Ukraina on saanut ryssän tykistön paikallisesti täysin mykäksi ja sitä myöden Ukrainan tappiot ovat minimalistia. Tästä johtuu hänen mukaansa myös nyt nähdyt lukemat yli tuhannesta kuolleesta örkistä vuorokaudessa.
Olis kyllä temppu, kun ryssän massa tuhottaisiin jo nyt ja keväällä poimittaisiin kypsä hedelmä. Kastehelmen "kamalan hankalaa on" jutut ei kyllä täsmää rintaman liikkeisiin, jotka on korkeintaan satoja metrejä edes ja takaisin. Tämä ralli sataa Ukrainan laariin, kunhan ammusta riittää. Uskomattoman hyvin Ukraina on kyllä sopeutunut länsivehkeisiin ja niittää rajua tulosta.
Viimeksi muokattu:
Kumpujen yöstä
Kapteeni
Tässähän alkoi askarruttamaan josko pistäisi tilauksen menemään…
Onkohan noita Suomessa paljonkin käytössä? Aika kallis härpäke.
Tuo kumminkin toimisi jos kaikki datakaapelit ryssä sais poikki?
Näin paljon maksaa Elon Muskin Starlink Suomessa ja Ukrainassa nyt
Ukrainalaiset maksavat yhteyksistään enemmän kuin saksalaiset tai espanjalaiset.
www.is.fi
Pihkakoski
Kenraali
By
Matthew LuxmooreFollow
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Evan GershkovichFollow
Feb. 11, 2023 6:58 am ET
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152 RESPONSES
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KYIV, Ukraine—Ukraine said Russia was ready to launch a new mobilization but was struggling to integrate troops it had already drafted and was waiting to gauge the success of a stepped-up offensive ahead of the first anniversary of its invasion later this month.
“Everything is ready,” the deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Vadym Skibitsky, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “The personnel is in place, the lists are ready, the people tasked with carrying out recruitment and training are on standby.”
Russia in recent weeks has been intensifying its attacks on Ukrainian lines of defense in Donetsk and Luhansk, two regions of eastern Ukraine whose capture Russian President Vladimir Putin has set as a priority.
Bolstered by tens of thousands of mobilized troops and convicts recruited into paramilitary units fighting alongside the regular armed forces, Russia has made limited gains in recent weeks after months on the back foot. Russian forces have surrounded the city of Bakhmut in Donetsk from three sides, as Ukrainian troops continue to defend it at a significant cost to both armies.
Kyiv, meanwhile, has continued to call for greater Western support as it aims to repel the Russian push and succeed in its own offensives to retake land. In his nightly address on Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said his diplomatic tour of Europe this week had yielded pledges of further military aid from Ukraine’s key allies.
“It’s not correct to reveal details, but it seems we understood one another,” he said of his conversations with the leaders of France and Germany. “Our partners heard our positions and our arguments. There will be more support.”
A mobilization drive launched by Mr. Putin at the end of September added more than 300,000 soldiers to Russia’s fighting force and has allowed Russia to make its first gains in months, using a sheer advantage in numbers to send wave upon wave of troops on often near-suicidal offensives on Bakhmut and elsewhere, in a tactic that has baffled Ukrainian troops defending that city and seeking to minimize their own losses.
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Earlier this week, Wagner Group, a paramilitary force that has led the assault on Bakhmut, said it had stopped recruiting convicts from Russia’s prisons who had helped give Moscow a manpower advantage in the area. In a video interview released late Friday, the group’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said it could take up to another two years for Russia to capture the entirety of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and up to three if the Kremlin decides to seize territories east of the Dnipro River.
“The Russian leadership faces the difficult choice of either continuing to deplete its forces, scale back objectives, or conduct a further form of mobilization,” the U.K.’s Defense Ministry said Saturday. Russian officials have repeatedly denied a new mobilization is imminent.
Maj. Gen. Skibitsky said that even if Russia forges ahead with a new round of mobilization, it will likely suffer from the same issues the previous wave brought to light, including shortages of modern equipment in good working order and a sufficient number of officers capable of preparing the vast influx of untrained men.
“They’re preparing for a second wave of mobilization but our assessment is that they’ll hold off because they haven’t overcome all the difficulties they experienced during the first wave,” he said. “They were not ready for such a large-scale mobilization at the time, and they aren’t now.”
Russia has made some advances in recent days around Bakhmut and the western edge of Vuhledar to the south. Those gains have continued to come at a cost for Russia, however, with one failed assault near Vuhledar this week likely leading to heavy casualties and forcing Russia to abandon at least 30 armored vehicles, the U.K. said.
In a report published on Friday, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said the incident near Vuhledar testified to incompetence among Russian soldiers that were mobilized in the first wave. “The systemic poor training of Russian mobilized personnel will likely continue to result in similar tactical failures throughout Ukraine,” he concluded.
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Video: Zelensky Visits U.K., Gifts Pilot Helmet to Speaker in ParliamentPlay video: Video: Zelensky Visits U.K., Gifts Pilot Helmet to Speaker in Parliament
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London Wednesday, on his second known overseas trip since the start of the war. Zelensky is seeking to bolster support for more Western military aid and the U.K. has said it’s considering sending advanced jets to the war-torn country. Photo: Stefan Rousseau/Getty Images
In parallel to its attempts to break through Ukrainian lines in the east, Russia has continued to launch missile attacks on Ukrainian territory. The country’s air force said it had downed 20 Iranian-made drones launched by Russia on Friday evening from the eastern coast of the Azov Sea, following a nationwide rocket barrage on Friday. Residents of Kyiv could hear air defenses working late into the night.
Ukraine’s southern military command on Saturday said two Russian Su-24 jet fighters had dropped four bombs on Snake Island in the Black Sea, an outcrop of rock that has changed hands twice since the war started. Russian military bloggers expressed hope that could signal a renewed attempt by Moscow to set conditions for another attack on the major port city of Odessa.
Also on Saturday, the governor of Russia’s southern Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that drones struck a facility in the Yakovlevsky district, and that Ukraine’s armed forces shelled the village of Murom and the town of Shebekino near the border. The shelling damaged several buildings and injured three men, he said.
Russia regularly uses bases around the Belgorod border region to strike Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which Moscow tried and failed to seize last year.
Write to Matthew Luxmoore at [email protected] and Evan Gershkovich at [email protected]
Matthew LuxmooreFollow
and
Evan GershkovichFollow
Feb. 11, 2023 6:58 am ET
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TEXT
152 RESPONSES
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Length(6 minutes)
KYIV, Ukraine—Ukraine said Russia was ready to launch a new mobilization but was struggling to integrate troops it had already drafted and was waiting to gauge the success of a stepped-up offensive ahead of the first anniversary of its invasion later this month.
“Everything is ready,” the deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Vadym Skibitsky, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “The personnel is in place, the lists are ready, the people tasked with carrying out recruitment and training are on standby.”
Russia in recent weeks has been intensifying its attacks on Ukrainian lines of defense in Donetsk and Luhansk, two regions of eastern Ukraine whose capture Russian President Vladimir Putin has set as a priority.
Bolstered by tens of thousands of mobilized troops and convicts recruited into paramilitary units fighting alongside the regular armed forces, Russia has made limited gains in recent weeks after months on the back foot. Russian forces have surrounded the city of Bakhmut in Donetsk from three sides, as Ukrainian troops continue to defend it at a significant cost to both armies.
Local residents stock up on water in Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine.
PHOTO: LIBKOS/ASSOCIATED PRESSKyiv, meanwhile, has continued to call for greater Western support as it aims to repel the Russian push and succeed in its own offensives to retake land. In his nightly address on Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said his diplomatic tour of Europe this week had yielded pledges of further military aid from Ukraine’s key allies.
“It’s not correct to reveal details, but it seems we understood one another,” he said of his conversations with the leaders of France and Germany. “Our partners heard our positions and our arguments. There will be more support.”
A mobilization drive launched by Mr. Putin at the end of September added more than 300,000 soldiers to Russia’s fighting force and has allowed Russia to make its first gains in months, using a sheer advantage in numbers to send wave upon wave of troops on often near-suicidal offensives on Bakhmut and elsewhere, in a tactic that has baffled Ukrainian troops defending that city and seeking to minimize their own losses.
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Earlier this week, Wagner Group, a paramilitary force that has led the assault on Bakhmut, said it had stopped recruiting convicts from Russia’s prisons who had helped give Moscow a manpower advantage in the area. In a video interview released late Friday, the group’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said it could take up to another two years for Russia to capture the entirety of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and up to three if the Kremlin decides to seize territories east of the Dnipro River.
“The Russian leadership faces the difficult choice of either continuing to deplete its forces, scale back objectives, or conduct a further form of mobilization,” the U.K.’s Defense Ministry said Saturday. Russian officials have repeatedly denied a new mobilization is imminent.
Maj. Gen. Skibitsky said that even if Russia forges ahead with a new round of mobilization, it will likely suffer from the same issues the previous wave brought to light, including shortages of modern equipment in good working order and a sufficient number of officers capable of preparing the vast influx of untrained men.
Residents take shelter in a metro station during an air-raid alarm in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
PHOTO: DIMITAR DILKOFF/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES“They’re preparing for a second wave of mobilization but our assessment is that they’ll hold off because they haven’t overcome all the difficulties they experienced during the first wave,” he said. “They were not ready for such a large-scale mobilization at the time, and they aren’t now.”
Russia has made some advances in recent days around Bakhmut and the western edge of Vuhledar to the south. Those gains have continued to come at a cost for Russia, however, with one failed assault near Vuhledar this week likely leading to heavy casualties and forcing Russia to abandon at least 30 armored vehicles, the U.K. said.
In a report published on Friday, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said the incident near Vuhledar testified to incompetence among Russian soldiers that were mobilized in the first wave. “The systemic poor training of Russian mobilized personnel will likely continue to result in similar tactical failures throughout Ukraine,” he concluded.
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Video: Zelensky Visits U.K., Gifts Pilot Helmet to Speaker in ParliamentPlay video: Video: Zelensky Visits U.K., Gifts Pilot Helmet to Speaker in Parliament
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London Wednesday, on his second known overseas trip since the start of the war. Zelensky is seeking to bolster support for more Western military aid and the U.K. has said it’s considering sending advanced jets to the war-torn country. Photo: Stefan Rousseau/Getty Images
In parallel to its attempts to break through Ukrainian lines in the east, Russia has continued to launch missile attacks on Ukrainian territory. The country’s air force said it had downed 20 Iranian-made drones launched by Russia on Friday evening from the eastern coast of the Azov Sea, following a nationwide rocket barrage on Friday. Residents of Kyiv could hear air defenses working late into the night.
Ukraine’s southern military command on Saturday said two Russian Su-24 jet fighters had dropped four bombs on Snake Island in the Black Sea, an outcrop of rock that has changed hands twice since the war started. Russian military bloggers expressed hope that could signal a renewed attempt by Moscow to set conditions for another attack on the major port city of Odessa.
Also on Saturday, the governor of Russia’s southern Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that drones struck a facility in the Yakovlevsky district, and that Ukraine’s armed forces shelled the village of Murom and the town of Shebekino near the border. The shelling damaged several buildings and injured three men, he said.
Russia regularly uses bases around the Belgorod border region to strike Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which Moscow tried and failed to seize last year.
Family members visit a grave in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
PHOTO: JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGESWrite to Matthew Luxmoore at [email protected] and Evan Gershkovich at [email protected]
Pihkakoski
Kenraali
Ecfr:n skenaarioita tälle vuodelle...
ecfr.eu
The second year of Russia’s war: Scenarios for the Ukraine conflict in 2023
Russia is likely to make some progress in the first half of 2023, but it may lack the capability to hold on to its gains
ecfr.eu
Pihkakoski
Kenraali
Politico:n näkemyksiä mobilisaatioon:
www.politico.eu
Edit; kirjoitusvirhe
As second mobilization looms, Russian men are staying put (for now)
Russians have various views on an impending new draft — along with strategies to evade it.
Edit; kirjoitusvirhe
Pihkakoski
Kenraali
Pihkakoski
Kenraali
Ukraine prepared to use British missiles to strike Crimea
Sidharth Kaushal of the Royal United Services Institute, a defence think tank, said the West needed to give Ukraine longer-range weapons to continue hitting Russian ammunition depots. In recent months, President Putin’s generals have begun withdrawing their command centres and weapons stores...
rusi.org
Kyllä, niin kauan kuin tulee signaaliin häirintää tai terminaalin käyttö estetään Starlinkin päästä.Tuo kumminkin toimisi jos kaikki datakaapelit ryssä sais poikki?
Näin paljon maksaa Elon Muskin Starlink Suomessa ja Ukrainassa nyt
Ukrainalaiset maksavat yhteyksistään enemmän kuin saksalaiset tai espanjalaiset.
Putinxyjlo
Eversti
Luulisi, että häiritsisivät jo, jos osaisivat. En pidä todennäköisenä, että satelliittisignaalia saataisiin häirittyä, eiköhän sitä jo hiekkamaissa tehtäisi vähän koko ajan, siellä kun ei muut yhteydet yleensä toimi..
missileman
Kenraali
No näitä dronepätkiä, eihän nämä inhimillisiä ole, mutta mitäs läksivät...
teknohippi
Kenraali
Starlinkin hinta täälläkin on suhteellista. Jossain maaseudulla jossa on lähinnä 4G tai 5G tyrkyllä huonolla kentällä vaatii sen 600eur modeemin, nipun suunta-antenneja ja pari liittymää fail-overilla jos meinaa tehdä etätöitä. Viimeksi kun juttelin kotipuolessa tutun kanssa niin totesi siirtyneensä 5G kauteen ja pelkät antennit maksoi torpalle 400eur. Ruuhka-aikaan saa sitten sen 5megaa.Tässähän alkoi askarruttamaan josko pistäisi tilauksen menemään…
Onkohan noita Suomessa paljonkin käytössä? Aika kallis härpäke.
Tuo kumminkin toimisi jos kaikki datakaapelit ryssä sais poikki?
Näin paljon maksaa Elon Muskin Starlink Suomessa ja Ukrainassa nyt
Ukrainalaiset maksavat yhteyksistään enemmän kuin saksalaiset tai espanjalaiset.
Eli on tuo täysin kilpailukykyinen jos ei nauti kaupungin keskustaosakkeen vastike-netistä. Varsinkin jos on paikka missä on olematon kännykkäverkko.
Ukrainassa tilanne on tosiaan se että siellä Starlink on Starlink ja käyttäjät ei erottele oliko se Ukrainaan myyty, Puolan kautta muilutettu, USA:n militarykäyttöön antama vai EU:n maksama. Siviiliversio taatusti mykistyy jos se löytyy lentokoneesta tms, pääte kun tietää paikkansa hyvin tarkasti. Ukrainan oma vaatimuskin voi olla että "lentävä" siviili Starlinkki pitää mykistää heti, mistäs sen tietää onko se jossain isommassa ryssän ohjuksessa/dronessa ohjauksen datalinkkinä vai missä käytössä. Armeijan luulisi sitten pitävän päätteistään kirjaa että ne ei päädy minne sattuu ja tiedetään missä käytössä se on. 100% varmasti toimiva nettiliittymä kun on turhan pätevä kommunikaatiokanava ryssällekkin.
Onkohan noita Suomessa paljonkin käytössä? Aika kallis härpäke.
Tuo kumminkin toimisi jos kaikki datakaapelit ryssä sais poikki?
Näin paljon maksaa Elon Muskin Starlink Suomessa ja Ukrainassa nyt
Ukrainalaiset maksavat yhteyksistään enemmän kuin saksalaiset tai espanjalaiset.
Jos mannertenvälisiin datakaapeleihin tulee häiriötä, niin aika nihkeää saattaa olla eurooppalaisten palvelujen käyttö Starlinkillä, koska oletettavasti Starlinkin maa-asemat on Yhdysvalloissa ja se on siis kytketty Nettiin siellä päässä.
Tuossa tapauksessa siis jenkkipalvelut toimisi joten kuten, mutta eurooppalaiset huonommin. (Ellei niillä ole maa-asemia myös Euroopassa, who knows.)
Toisaalta pitää muistaa, että netti on hyvin globaali juttu ja eri palvelut saattaa linkittyä toisiinsa monin tavoin yli maarajojen, jolloin ongelmia voi tulla joka tapauksessa.
Tuossa tapauksessa siis jenkkipalvelut toimisi joten kuten, mutta eurooppalaiset huonommin. (Ellei niillä ole maa-asemia myös Euroopassa, who knows.)
Toisaalta pitää muistaa, että netti on hyvin globaali juttu ja eri palvelut saattaa linkittyä toisiinsa monin tavoin yli maarajojen, jolloin ongelmia voi tulla joka tapauksessa.
missileman
Kenraali
Tässä on se saftamilin Z uutinen. N kirjainhan tuo selvästi on ja viittaa venäjän natseihin...
FinnNSF
Ylipäällikkö
No, palstan pari tuomiopäivän odottajaa saivat unelmansa toteen. venäjä käyttää taktisia
Pihkakoski
Kenraali
Väitteitä Venäjän toteuttamasta systemaattisesta dehumanisaatiosta, ukrainalaisia kohtaan. On esitetty evidenssiä sodan alusta lähtien.
Ehkä vakuuttavin materiaali systemaattisuudesta dehumanisaatiossa, löytyy Venäjän valtiojohdon retoriikasta koskien ukrainalaisia.
www.justsecurity.org
www.atlanticcouncil.org
www.theatlantic.com
ukraineworld.org
www.reuters.com
Ehkä vakuuttavin materiaali systemaattisuudesta dehumanisaatiossa, löytyy Venäjän valtiojohdon retoriikasta koskien ukrainalaisia.
GLOBAL OPINIONS
By Michael Gerson
Opinions columnist, 2007-2022
April 22, 2022 at 4:46 p.m. EDT
Bodies are exhumed from a mass grave in Bucha, Ukraine, on April 8.(Heidi Levine for The Washington Post).
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It is an obscene irony of the war in Ukraine that Russian leaders use the charge that Ukrainians are “Nazis” to dehumanize them, just as the Nazis used dehumanizing accusations against their own enemies. While ostensibly attacking fascists, Russian propagandists use methods that pay tribute to German fascism. In the process, Russian officials have become the spitting image of what they pretend to condemn.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is among the most prolific practitioners of this strategy. The Ukrainian government, he has said, is “pro-Nazi” and controlled by “little Nazis.” The stated goal of his “special operation” is to “denazify” Ukraine. Inspired by Putin, one state television host identifies Ukrainians as “satanic Nazis” and denies that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is really a Jew.
This is not merely an exercise in denigration. It has guided Russian conduct during its brutal but pathetically dysfunctional invasion of Ukraine. There are recent reports of mass civilian graves — numbering in the hundreds — in Manhush near Mariupol. Bucha’s streets were left covered with executed and mutilated bodies. More than 100 bodies have been found in Makariv. “They laid them on the ground face down,” one resident said, “and shot them in the back of the head.”
Returning to Bucha to search for loved ones in a mass grave
2:39
Investigators exhumed 21 of at least 67 bodies suspected to be lying in a mass grave in Bucha, Ukraine, April 8. (Video: Joyce Koh/The Washington Post)
This method for the mass killing of civilians was one way the Nazis disabled the normal revulsion that most people would feel for civilian executions. “The human face,” David Livingstone Smith wrote in “Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization,” “is by far the richest source of social information and the most intimate channel of connection between people. … When we gaze into a person’s eyes, we cannot help responding to that person as a human being. We cannot help but see them as human — to automatically regard the face’s bearer as one of our own kind.”
This is what led to the blindfolding of victims of mass shootings by the German Einsatzgruppen and police battalions during the World War II years. Otherwise, the killing experience for many was psychologically devastating. The same, it seems, was true in Manhush.
The purposeful murder of civilians (as opposed to unintended casualties) is also made easier for members of the military by the use of long-range weapons — a Russian military specialty. Putin’s army has attacked hospitals and other buildings where civilians take shelter. It has besieged and blasted a whole city (Mariupol) to ruins. It has prevented refugees from leaving war zones and relief supplies from reaching injured and starving people.
For some extreme Russian nationalists — now given wide access to state media — the call to dehumanize Ukrainians is explicit. “We are fighting not against people but against enemies,” said the representative of one Russian neofascist party, “not against people but against Ukrainians.”
Such rhetoric takes on a genocidal flavor when combined with the complete denial of Ukrainian identity, described by one right-wing radical as “an artificial anti-Russian construct that has no civilizational content of its own” and the “subordinate element of a foreign and alien civilization.” Defending and strengthening Russia, in this ideological fantasy, requires the complete destruction of Ukrainian nationhood.
When reading Putin’s idealization of cultural ties between Russia and Ukraine, the question naturally arises: How is it possible to assert Slavic brotherhood while murdering tens of thousands of your Slavic neighbors?
This is actually typical of dehumanization. White supremacists in the American South often described Black people as subhuman beasts. But at other times they treated them as morally responsible — attributing to them a distinctly human form of agency. And close contact with Black people provided White people constant evidence of shared humanity.
“Dehumanizers implicitly or explicitly regard those whom they dehumanize as human beings,” Smith argues, “because it is impossible for them to shake that belief, which sits side by side with their belief that these others are subhuman creatures.” Smith denies that the logical inconsistency of such views is relevant. Why should we expect bigots to be consistent or coherent? But he continues that only one of these views “can be salient at any given time. And when one is in the mental foreground, the other retreats into the background.”
Putin, his military and his propaganda apparatus have put dehumanization in the foreground. They have woven the idea that Ukrainians are Nazis who are committing “genocide” against Russian speakers into their most basic case for the war. (The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has dismissed Russia’s use of “genocide” as a casus belli as “groundless and egregious.”)
Russian leaders are conducting a historical spectacle of brutality and lies. But their atrocities arose from refusing to look Ukrainians fully in the face and from denying the reflected image of their own humanity.
Opinion
There’s a reason Russian soldiers can’t look their victims in the face
By Michael Gerson
Opinions columnist, 2007-2022
April 22, 2022 at 4:46 p.m. EDT
Bodies are exhumed from a mass grave in Bucha, Ukraine, on April 8.(Heidi Levine for The Washington Post).
Listen
5 min
Comment
873
Gift Article
Share
It is an obscene irony of the war in Ukraine that Russian leaders use the charge that Ukrainians are “Nazis” to dehumanize them, just as the Nazis used dehumanizing accusations against their own enemies. While ostensibly attacking fascists, Russian propagandists use methods that pay tribute to German fascism. In the process, Russian officials have become the spitting image of what they pretend to condemn.
Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
Russian President Vladimir Putin is among the most prolific practitioners of this strategy. The Ukrainian government, he has said, is “pro-Nazi” and controlled by “little Nazis.” The stated goal of his “special operation” is to “denazify” Ukraine. Inspired by Putin, one state television host identifies Ukrainians as “satanic Nazis” and denies that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is really a Jew.
This is not merely an exercise in denigration. It has guided Russian conduct during its brutal but pathetically dysfunctional invasion of Ukraine. There are recent reports of mass civilian graves — numbering in the hundreds — in Manhush near Mariupol. Bucha’s streets were left covered with executed and mutilated bodies. More than 100 bodies have been found in Makariv. “They laid them on the ground face down,” one resident said, “and shot them in the back of the head.”
Returning to Bucha to search for loved ones in a mass grave
2:39
Investigators exhumed 21 of at least 67 bodies suspected to be lying in a mass grave in Bucha, Ukraine, April 8. (Video: Joyce Koh/The Washington Post)
This method for the mass killing of civilians was one way the Nazis disabled the normal revulsion that most people would feel for civilian executions. “The human face,” David Livingstone Smith wrote in “Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization,” “is by far the richest source of social information and the most intimate channel of connection between people. … When we gaze into a person’s eyes, we cannot help responding to that person as a human being. We cannot help but see them as human — to automatically regard the face’s bearer as one of our own kind.”
This is what led to the blindfolding of victims of mass shootings by the German Einsatzgruppen and police battalions during the World War II years. Otherwise, the killing experience for many was psychologically devastating. The same, it seems, was true in Manhush.
The purposeful murder of civilians (as opposed to unintended casualties) is also made easier for members of the military by the use of long-range weapons — a Russian military specialty. Putin’s army has attacked hospitals and other buildings where civilians take shelter. It has besieged and blasted a whole city (Mariupol) to ruins. It has prevented refugees from leaving war zones and relief supplies from reaching injured and starving people.
For some extreme Russian nationalists — now given wide access to state media — the call to dehumanize Ukrainians is explicit. “We are fighting not against people but against enemies,” said the representative of one Russian neofascist party, “not against people but against Ukrainians.”
Such rhetoric takes on a genocidal flavor when combined with the complete denial of Ukrainian identity, described by one right-wing radical as “an artificial anti-Russian construct that has no civilizational content of its own” and the “subordinate element of a foreign and alien civilization.” Defending and strengthening Russia, in this ideological fantasy, requires the complete destruction of Ukrainian nationhood.
When reading Putin’s idealization of cultural ties between Russia and Ukraine, the question naturally arises: How is it possible to assert Slavic brotherhood while murdering tens of thousands of your Slavic neighbors?
This is actually typical of dehumanization. White supremacists in the American South often described Black people as subhuman beasts. But at other times they treated them as morally responsible — attributing to them a distinctly human form of agency. And close contact with Black people provided White people constant evidence of shared humanity.
“Dehumanizers implicitly or explicitly regard those whom they dehumanize as human beings,” Smith argues, “because it is impossible for them to shake that belief, which sits side by side with their belief that these others are subhuman creatures.” Smith denies that the logical inconsistency of such views is relevant. Why should we expect bigots to be consistent or coherent? But he continues that only one of these views “can be salient at any given time. And when one is in the mental foreground, the other retreats into the background.”
Putin, his military and his propaganda apparatus have put dehumanization in the foreground. They have woven the idea that Ukrainians are Nazis who are committing “genocide” against Russian speakers into their most basic case for the war. (The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has dismissed Russia’s use of “genocide” as a casus belli as “groundless and egregious.”)
Russian leaders are conducting a historical spectacle of brutality and lies. But their atrocities arose from refusing to look Ukrainians fully in the face and from denying the reflected image of their own humanity.
Russia's Eliminationist Rhetoric Against Ukraine: A Collection
Updated: Key words, phrases, and themes appear to express intent to eliminate Ukraine or Ukrainians as a nation-state, people, or culture.
www.justsecurity.org
Vladimir Putin’s Ukrainian Genocide: Nobody can claim they did not know
The overwhelming evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine together with the openly genocidal intent on display in Moscow mean nobody claim they did not know about Putin's Ukrainian Genocide, writes Peter Dickinson.
www.atlanticcouncil.org
Ukraine and the Words That Lead to Mass Murder
First comes the dehumanization. Then comes the killing.
How Russian Cinema Dehumanized Ukrainians and Laid the Ground for Today's War Crimes
Over the past decades, Russian cinema has served not only as “art,” but as a tool of propaganda which dehumanized Ukraine and the West, preparing Russian citizens for the current war.
ukraineworld.org
Extracts from Putin's speech on Ukraine
Following are extracts from a televised speech on Monday by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine:
www.reuters.com
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