OT: Former IU bball player trapped in Ukraine

"I need ammunition, not a ride" might the best war quote I've ever heard.

And Zelenski is definitely my favorite modern-day politician.  I don't care if your left or right, that dude has shown both brass balls and incredible leadership during a time of extreme crisis.

Fuck the Russians.

I am plugged into a substantial Ukrainian community up north, wonderful people who are devasted by Putin using Ukraine like Hitler used the Sudetenland.   Conceivably we really are on the cusp of WW III, though I hope that is a very remote possibility.  The history and context of the war that Putin just started are fairly stated here:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK-yJD_fAtk

It is a short, fact-filled background and context video made 6 days ago, on the cusp of the war.  Given that this war is already affecting us in small ways and may very well affect us in dramatic ways, it might be worth a few minutes of time to watch.  the video does not get into politics, particularly american politics, so i'm pretty sure it is safe for consumption on this site.  my ukrainian friends tell me it is accurate.  

Thanks for the video XM!

the madness will not automatically end unless sane people act together with bravery to stop the madman. 

Hey, has anyone heard from user BlueInKyiv? 

As for Maurice creek, really?

Creek also claims he wanted to leave the country weeks ago, but he didn’t have the money to pay for his own travel out of the country.

Between the income he has playing BB and his mother, father AND brothers, he couldn’t get money together for a one way ticket to anywhere else? Or a train ticket? Or a bus ticket?

When I was 12 I was picked on by this kid relentlessly. I'm crying to my father who told me that you punch a bully in the nose. I did. Dad was right. The bullying stopped. 

I'm a peaceable person. We should all respect and care for each other. But we can not be afraid to stand up to tyrants and aggressors or we return to survival of the fittest. 

My wife has family in Moldova and Ukraine. The Ukrainian side (about a dozen) are now staying with the Moldavians. A handful of my wife’s cousins and second cousins who are male made the decision to stay in Ukraine. Crazy times. Lots of FaceTime calls and crying. 

The war is not going so well for the Russians.

@sal, i doubt the ukraines can hold out for very long, though conceivably they could hold out long enough that putin agrees to some form of cease-fire and withdrawal.  either way, i hope it goes horribly wrong for putin/russia both in the war, and with the economic consequences of this naked aggression. 

Hope he can make it out okay.

Some other folks on here have already mentioned this, but you no matter what side of the aisle you are on, you can’t help but admire the Ukrainian president for not fleeing the country. He is standing by and with his people, and while the odds of Ukraine being able to repel the invasion is slim to nil, as long as their president is out there with them, people will line up to fight alongside him. 

Don’t know a thing about his policies, his social views, don’t know if I’d vote for him, but he’s certainly got my respect. Got a big set of balls on him, knowing full well that he could be dead any minute now, or if he falls into Russian hands, a likely worse fate than death awaits him. But he knows full well that if he dies, Russia will have made him into a martyr, and Ukraine’s people will only fight harder and longer. And a lot of Russian soldiers will be coming home in coffins. 

Guy has courage that I think very, VERY few politicians have these days. 

Can't say enough about the Ukrainian people. From the woman who offered Russian soldiers sunflower seeds saying, "Put sunflower seeds in your pockets so they grow on Ukraine soil when you die."  To the 12 brave souls on Snake Island who, when ordered to surrender or be bombed by a Russian Cruiser replied, "Russian Warship, Go F***yourself." Just before they were all killed. These are not isolated incidents. Ukrainians are fighting for every inch of ground, and inflicting heavy losses.

A few people like these are tough to deal with. However, a nation of people like these, are unconquerable. Ukraine will be worse than Afghanistan was for the Russians. They might take a city or two, but the rest of the country will still be in control by the Ukrainians. That's a hell of an insurgency problem.

God Bless the Ukrainian people.

I respectfully urge anyone who can spare any amount of money to donate to these two worthy organizations.  The Ukrainian people are showing great spirit and resilience resisting this unjust and unprovoked invasion, but they need our help.  We cannot allow dictators to overthrow democracies and take them by force.  Please do what you can.  "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

United Help Ukraine: They provide medical supplies, humanitarian aid, etc. You can donate on either page.

https://unitedhelpukraine.org/  OR

https://www.facebook.com/donate/337101825010055/

Ukrainian Red Cross: Self explanatory

https://donate.redcrossredcrescent.org/ua/donate/~my-donation?_cv=1

 

February 26th, 2022 at 9:54 AM ^

Hey, has anyone heard from user BlueInKyiv? 

1WhoStayed, I am a professor in Florida now as my kids wanted to graduate in the US, but my in-laws are still in Ukraine.  

I work with 14 universities in Ukraine and was going to have a cybersecurity student competition next month hosted at Kyiv Polytechnic.  Those students are now defending their city and have created a Molotov cocktail mass assembly operation in a lab.  This is  video of the Russian paratroopers trying to pass the university to get to the center of Kyiv last night: 

https://twitter.com/ZeroPark30/status/1497445963111280647

"the ghost of kyiv" coming to a theatre near you. What a bad ass

Amazing to me that this is even happening in this day and age....2022, not 1939. I'm usually a very positive person but I'm afraid that this is going to spiral out of control very quickly. Something tells me things are going to get much worse. Being a combat vet from Operation Iraqi freedom, I've seen wars ugly face. But nothing to this level. People really need to be prepared for things to get much worse quickly. Just have supplies (Cash, Water and Food) handy in case of a cyber attack.

One might wonder why Putin was the only head of state at the Beijing Olympics. And now the NYT has a piece on the two countries cementing economic ties ahead of the invasion. This is not a good thing, folks.

The population of South Vietnam in 1965 was 15 million, and North Vietnam was about 17 million. At the highest point of the conflict the US had almost 550,000 troops in S. Vietnam, and we still lost the war. The NVA and the VC were willing to outlast us in body count.

German forces overwhelmed the Soviet forces in the early stages of Operation Barbarossa, and they committed over 3 million men and 600,000 vehicles to the huge front. The extent of the horrors inflicted by the Germans on the various Soviet republics and their populations are without equal in WWII, but it still ended up going very badly for the Germans in the end.

Ukraine is approximately the size of Texas and has a population of around 44 million.

Estimates vary right now, but it appears as though Russia currently has from 150,000 to 200,000 troops immediately available to invade Ukraine, many if not most of them poorly trained conscripts; Ukraine's combined military forces (regular military, border soldiers, and national guard) are around 300,000, and this doesn't include the regular Ukraine citizens who have taken up arms.

Ultimately, the Russians have a much bigger war machine to call on than Ukraine does, but it's clear that Ukrainian citizens are going to fight to the death if necessary to defend their country, and Putin may be forced into a horrific, city-by-city war of attrition if he truly wants to grab hold of and subdue the country. Doing that will put a gigantic strain on the Russian economy at the same time countries all over the globe are in the early stages of imposing financial constraints on Russia that are designed to significantly restrict Russian access to outside capital. The ruble has already taken a pounding and the Russian stock market took an immediate and precipitous plunge when the invasion began.

So far, the lack of international support Putin has received from countries he probably thought of as allies has been remarkable—Viktor Orban in Hungary has come out in direct opposition to the war, as has the Czech Republic, and Kazakhstan rebuffed Putin's request for soldiers from the former Soviet republic. Poland and Rumania are openly aiding and admitting Ukrainian refugees at their borders. The days of the old Warsaw Pact aren't going to be revived, it appears.

Committing himself to the military subjugation of a country of 44 million people is going to require many more than 200,000 soldiers thrown into a potential meat grinder by Putin, and there are already sizable public demonstrations inside Russia against the invasion. Putin will eventually use draconian measures to crack down on open displays of dissent, but if enough Russians see their sons come home in a box from a war they didn't support themselves, discontent will grow.

The Russian defeat and withdrawal from its disastrous war in Afghanistan was a significant contributing factor in the breakup of the Soviet Union, and Putin has gambled that there won't be a similar blowback from a military adventure in Ukraine. We'll see.

February 26th, 2022 at 1:04 PM ^

Amazing to me that this is even happening in this day and age....2022, not 1939. 

Berger04, cannot agree more.  The Ukrainian always keep their humor so one guy wrote today: "when they had asked to be let into Europe, they did not mean 1939 Europe".

@don,

and with the time to prepare, you would hope that ukraine would have prepared for power outages, sabotage, communication disruptions, weapon distribution, intel gathering/sharing, etc.  if so, i hope that griff's post, above, is true in spades.  

and maybe NATO can do the old 'operation independence day'

My friend’s son, his wife, who is Ukrainian, and their 10 year old son are trying to get across the border to Poland. He is American and works for an American company. He says it’s chaos at the border. They had gotten on a train but got off because people were getting trampled. There are camps set up but they are dangerous and they’re afraid for their son. They will try again tomorrow. My friend has called our embassies in several nearby countries and they told her they don’t know anything so not helpful. She hasn’t slept in a few days, just plagued with worry. Her son’s in-laws stayed in Kyiv so there’s no telling what will happen to them. These are just regular people trying to get to safety. They have their pets with them but may need to abandon them. I can’t imagine the scars the children will have after going through this completely unprovoked horrifying invasion. 

So far, the lack of international support Putin has received from countries he probably thought of as allies has been remarkable—Viktor Orban in Hungary has come out in direct opposition to the war, as has the Czech Republic, and Kazakhstan rebuffed Putin's request for soldiers from the former Soviet republic. Poland and Rumania are openly aiding and admitting Ukrainian refugees at their borders. The days of the old Warsaw Pact aren't going to be revived, it appears.

Remember that time in 1956 when the Soviets crushed a rebellion in Hungary? Or in 1968 when they crushed the Prague Spring? I'm sure the Hungarians and Czechs still haven't forgotten.

There's no way that Putin was counting on the support (or even neutrality) of any of these countries, except maybe the Kazakhs:

• Victor Orban is a dick, but he's not going to jeopardize NATO membership.
• Poland has backslidden enough that it is no longer considered a full democracy by some sources, but they abso-fucking-lutely hate Russia. One thing to watch is how much Poland gets involved. If they go too far, NATO could have a big problem on their hands.
• the Czechs and Romanians? No way they would support Russia over NATO. 

In a perverse way, this is actually going to benefit some of these E. European countries because NATO is going to have to focus more on Russia now, which is what Poland and the Baltic states have been wanting all along. In the meantime, the US will have to shift its attention from the Pacific, which means that China will turn out to be the big winner, imo. 

I just hope this madness ends without too much additional unnecessary suffering. There's been enough already.

Destroy the Russian army

save Ukraine 

Reading this thread reminded me to donate to one of the many organizations doing relief efforts for the people of Ukraine, and I encourage all of you to donate what you can.   I’m usually a peace loving hippie type, but in this case, I hope the Ukrainian people make the Russian aggressors pay with blood and shrapnel for their hateful aggression.  Don’t leave a single Molotov cocktail unlit nor a single steak knife unbloodied.

I have good friends in Odesa. Heard from them a couple days ago, they’re doing alright.

Concur with others: Zelensky is a hero. The world sees it. The definition of someone rising to meet the moment. The quote, the “I am here” videos, the speech he gave just before the invasion, all of it.

Even his bitter political rival, Poroshenko, is on the ground in the city to fight. The Klitchkos (sp?) are fighting. It’s remarkable.

One video I saw that was great: a Ukrainian drove by a Russian column out of gas, cranked the window down, and asked “Do you guys need a tow back to Russia?”

Glad that blueinkyiv is safe and I admire and am deeply moved by the braveries displayed by ordinary Ukrainians in the last few days. One of my friends is from former Soviet Union. Last weekend, she picked up her cousin's wife from JFK who was heavily pregnant. Her cousin, a trauma surgeon, decided to stay in Kyiv and fight the invaders. 

Three days into the war, I do believe that Ukrainians had a chance to win, the longer they hold, the more international support will pour in, and the invaders will be rolled back. 

Another good organization for donations is World Central Kitchen. Run by chef Jose Andres, they’re now on the ground at the Ukraine border feeding people. They go all over the world, wherever there’s a need for food relief.