Russian Troops Traced To Ukrainian Battlefields Through Social Media 180
New submitter wienerschnizzel writes: Vice News has released a report on how they were able to trace a member of the regular Russian army from his base near the Ukrainian border toward the battlefields in the contested territory in eastern Ukraine, then back to his home in Siberia using the pictures he uploaded on his social media profile.
The methodology used is based on a report by the Atlantic Council think tank released earlier this year, which asserts that information on the movement and operations of the regular Russian troops can be easily gathered from publicly available sources (such as the social media). The Russian government still denies any involvement of Russian troops in the fights in Ukraine.
The methodology used is based on a report by the Atlantic Council think tank released earlier this year, which asserts that information on the movement and operations of the regular Russian troops can be easily gathered from publicly available sources (such as the social media). The Russian government still denies any involvement of Russian troops in the fights in Ukraine.
Wait a friggin minute... (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, opinions and feelings inside, the veteran in me demands to know: "WTF, have you idiots never heard of COMSEC/OPSEC?"
Re:Wait a friggin minute... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a veteran too. I'm coming to the conclusion that OPSEC is dead, because social media guarantees the loosest lips [wikipedia.org] in history.
The only way to "fix" this is either submitting social media participation of military personnel to military censorship, or a strongly enforced ban on military member participation in social media.
Which, I suspect, wouldn't work.
Re:Wait a friggin minute... (Score:5, Funny)
Loose tweets sink fleets?
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Ooh! I wish I had mod points for that. I like it!
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Bah ... loose tweets sheep bleats. ;-)
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You don't happen to work for the Public Affairs office at Patrick AFB [af.mil], do you?
Re:Wait a friggin minute... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Until Russia stops being nationalist idiots? I agree there. Unless you mean Ukraine is being nationalistic, which is sort of silly. Sure, there are a few hard right morons there but in the minority, except that this feeds into the Russian nationalist paranoia that the entire world is filled with reincarnated nazis out to get them. When Russia today calls others nationalist and fascist it's so ironic you could make hammers from it.
The "democratically" elected leader stole much of the country's money, eve
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Second, we all know the superpowers of the world have been doing this kind of garbage since the beginning of time. The simple existence of a terrible precedent does not make it OK to repeat it.
Third, your bottom line and its apparent definition of "west-backed" is a little flimsy.
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your bottom line and its apparent definition of "west-backed" is a little flimsy.
what are you smoking? western implication in the orange revolution, the euromaidan and the current civil war has been constant, obvious, even public and is well documented.
You're treading dangerously close to relegating your opinion to the scrap heap with all of the other harebrained conspiracy theories
gosh, sounds terrible. like being expelled from your sect or something ...
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Really lame western propaganda. The regions in contention were part of Russia and as to be expected many Russians lived there. In particular that region was part of the Don Cossack region of Russia. Now a large chunk of the Ukraine is substantively Zaporozhian Cossacks and the conflict is really between those two groups. Now as you can or at least should be able to imagine those Russians living in the area that used to be part of Russia have many, many relatives in the rest of Don Cossack Russia and oh yea
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Couldn't banning personal electronics capable of live network communication help and picture taking help?
We are unable to keep cellphones out of our prisons. It is unlikely we are going to keep them out of an operational area spread across a large geographic region.
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Soldiers are supposed to be trained to follow orders and that there are consequences for not following those orders.
it's easier than that: soldiers are not supposed to be carrying out covert operations in foreign countries the aren't officially at war with. just let them tweet, what's the problem?
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that's exactly what i mean, yes. the u.s., russia, israel, nato ... all of them are. people here seem to find this to be normal, even acceptable. they are actually worried about it not becoming public. like it's okay to kill and burn as long as you can't see it, and you keep the butchers out of harm. just ... wow!
how is this actually a problem? (Score:2)
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Re:Wait a friggin minute... (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly though ...
It's not your problem to deal with Russia's opsec. And if you're going to have a bunch of conscripts doing mandatory service ... well, don't expect them to give a damn.
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a strongly enforced ban on military member participation in social media.
Which, I suspect, wouldn't work.
I suspect that OPSEC leaks via social media will be easier to identify and deal with than through traditional means. The classic HUMINT methods involving buying a soldier a drink, hooker, or pile of blow were difficult to detect. Social media, by comparison, is easy to scan automatically. And mentions of Crimea or Ukraine (or Yemen and Iraq) are easily detectable and passed over to the security department.
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Yeah, the selfie is pretty easy to identify. The guy holding the camera? That's your damned security leak.
Plus you have to consider than many cell phones embed the GPS coordinates in EXIF tags in the picture ... which means if you can get it in real time, you know where to start shelling. ;-)
Re:Wait a friggin minute... (Score:4, Interesting)
See also: ISIS man posts selfie (or some other vapidity) to Twitter. Guy at US CentCom sees it, within 20 hours they match the background to where it was taken from, verify it, and drop a bomb on an ISIS command center.
There's always going to be SOME idiot who just can't resist posting a selfie of him in his T-72 cupola with something that's verifiably Ukraine in the background. Who remembers Ric Romero's brilliant "Draw a plot of where we're coming from in the sand on international TV" incident from 2003? Not that it mattered since we were converging on Baghdad from literally every direction - but suppose Ric's dad had been embedded with the 101 and radioed out "Now Wolf, here we are at Saint Marie-du-mont..." in the clear.
This is basically a human version of why the IoT terrifies me. Now when every stupid device that has no reason to contain so much as a transistor contains a processor, a writeable memory, and a wifi stack, there's always going to be SOME dee-dee-dee device that compromises the network and you'll (a) never figure out which one until it happens and (b) haha, the manufacturer wrote the 'blow jtag fuses' bits so good luck applying a patch
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Maybe it should be dead. Honestly, without this how would we, the people, ever know the truth?
The truth has been denied to the public for far too long. Its not like using lies to manufacture the public image of your war in one way or another, either to deny you were causing it, or when it really started, or what the real reasons are.... it wasn't even remotely new when the Gulf of Tonkin happened.
The lack of ability for large forces to maintain exactly this kind of secrecy is probably the best thing to ever
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I think Russia wants Ukraine to know they are there. Denying it is mostly just another way to thumb their noses.
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Hindering process of war can often lead to more death and suffering. Take for instance the estimated casualty rates and time an invasion of Japan was said to cost compared to dropping the A-bombs. Some estimates say it saved 35 million lives and we know the process of war is hell- not that nuking is much better.
Re:Wait a friggin minute... (Score:5, Interesting)
Mind you, I don't think that the US has very many instances of this happening, but it's not without precedent. I'd argue it's just another form of, "loose lips sink ships."
Re:Wait a friggin minute... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not an entirely new problem. During the Falklands war, the BBC reported that several British ships had been hit by bombs, but luckily casualties were minimal because the fuses on the bombs were defective and they didn't explode. The next day, Argentina swapped out the bad fuses, and had much better results.
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Their ships and exocets were effective, deadly, and few.
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Not to forget, they were fighting for a just cause, and you were not. Morale matters.
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Okay, opinions and feelings inside, the veteran in me demands to know: "WTF, have you idiots never heard of COMSEC/OPSEC?"
This is all part of Russian PSYOPS. You can practically hear Putin saying "Ya, we have soldiers there. So, whatcha gonna do about it? You don't have the balls to do what it takes and counter us Russians."
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You're talking about 18-20 year olds, many of whom are conscripts, and for whom the main attraction of going along with this is to show off just how badass they are. It's hard to get more anti-COMSEC than that short of intentional sabotage.
They are "volunteers" (Score:1)
Didn't you hear about it? Uncle Vlad knows what's best for you.
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In Soviet Russia, you pay to make favorable comments!
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Putin will still keep insisting that the soldiers are on their vacation or have been honourably discharged shortly before.
It is seriously not news, not since the photos of a disabled T72B3 have been published. Russia actively helps separatists in the region and will continue doing so in the foreseeable future.
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Putin will still keep insisting that the soldiers are on their vacation or have been honourably discharged shortly before.
It is seriously not news, not since the photos of a disabled T72B3 have been published. Russia actively helps separatists in the region and will continue doing so in the foreseeable future.
I'd also like to point out the Americal military "advisors" [dailymail.co.uk] helping the Ukrainian army. This conflict has long passed the threshold of regional proxy war.
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The American involvement might have something to do with the agreement NATO and the Russian signed to preserve Ukraine were they to give up the nukes they had after the Soviet Union collapsed. They dutifully gave up the nukes, Russian reneged, the U.S. attempted (weakly) to honor the agreement. They rest of NATO is AWOL, as they so frequently have been.
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There was no signed agreement, just a memorandum, which is neither binding nor really applicable in this case (it is about Ukraine being attacked with nuclear weapons).
The actual treaty that has been broken by the presence of Russian troops there is the Belavezha accord, which opens another can of worms entirely, but, frankly, American involvement in that matter is, indeed, very much questionable, as would be the involvement of the rest of NATO.
And as for your "as they so frequently have been" - so far a NA
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I don't see what's questionable about NATO involvement, so long as the legitimate government of the country has asked for that involvement - which it did. Last I checked, that's what sovereignty means, among other things.
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Overstepping the NATO mandate, obviously. Would not be the first time, though. The whole reason for the bloody mess there is because several parties have grossly overstepped their mandates. Continuing to do so will make it even worse.
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How is deploying NATO troops to NATO countries overstepping the NATO mandate?
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Sorry, that was my fault for confusing the threads. Obviously Ukraine is not a NATO country.
So far as I know, though, NATO is not involved there in any official way. All the "boots on the ground" are American, and represent US directly, sidestepping NATO.
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Western involvement in Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO. All Western support for Ukraine has been done by sovereign nations in an individual capacity.
Being a member of NATO does not remove Britain or America's sovereignty in the exact same way that Russia invading Ukraine does not remove Ukraine's sovereignty in being able to ask for the assistance of sovereign Western nations.
Unlike Russia, Western countries in Ukraine have been explicitly invited there as sovereign nations, by a sovereign nation.
The on
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When USA helped Albanians secede, said "democratic government" wasn't exactly democratic, and it was actively killing those very Albanians.
Meanwhile, nothing of a kind happened in Ukraine.
But, in any case, I think that the way Kosovo was handled was a mistake.
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But in reality, in Kosovo, NATO bombing, and KILLING ordinary Yugo citizens. They are not good either.
When KLA is in power, they suppressed Serbians community, to drag them out. The West was silent.
All the top official figures of Kosovo *ARE* crimes, but whitewashed by their master.
The same were/are happened with Lon Nol/Kherme Rough in Cambodia (e.g) in the past or Syria at the moment.
Yes, Assad is not a good guy, but definitely better than the "moderate" groups, which is actually terrorists.
All true, and I do not dispute that. NATO are not knights in shining armor. It's just sometimes they are a less bad option. And sometimes it's not clear which is which, at least not right away. E.g. Serbian government was deliberately massacring and driving out Albanians in Kosovo, and refused to back down despite repeated attempts to solve the problem diplomatically - I feel that armed involvement on humanitarian grounds was justified there.
But the way it was actually done, bombing civilian or dual use tar
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My parents taught me at a very early age that TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RIGHT.
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See, you know how we can tell you're a Russian hack? A REAL Slashdotter would have said "USian" out of disdain. You Russian astroturfers are pathetic. Get a real job.
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Rushing hands leave the Merkins askew.
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The problem with uninformed people is that they usually shout the loudest, especially chickenhawks like you.
First, Ukraine is not a part of NATO. Never has been. Second, it is very much a civil war where both sides get help from foreign powers. Except that the separatist side also gets heavy weapon support, but this is also not something that hasn't happened before. Here is a funny historical fact for you: during the American civil war, Russian Far East fleet was stationed in San Francisco and Russian Balti
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I'm pretty sure about the AH-64s. They can fly NOE and engage w
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I just knew you are from the 101st chairborne division.
1) Russians have a lot of things that can kill an Apache. Tunguska for example. And fixed wing aircraft.
2) Aircraft carriers can be destroyed by supersonic anti ship missiles - something Russians can and do build very well, making the carriers just huge targets. Even the Brits during the cold war were aware of this kind of an asymmetrical answer.
3) USA does not use stealth aircraft before achieving air superiority anymore because they are too afraid to
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Apparently you don't know what NOE means. Fixed wing aircraft and AAA's cannot engage an heli flying NOE because they cannot pick it up on radar. Because of the radar configuration on the AH-64D it can engage armor while NOE - that is unique to that heli and it was made to counter exactly the threats you listed. Also, AAA and SAMs are loath to turn on their radar because of F16s and F18s flying cons
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The F117 was taken down with a SAM. Someone had discovered its radar signature when it opened its bomb bay door.
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"The Russian government is responsible for shooting down a passenger jet and murdering hundreds of people."
Not only the Russian government [wikipedia.org]: "Iran Air Flight 655 was an Iran Air civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai. On 3 July 1988, the aircraft operating this route was shot down by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes. ... All 290 on board, including 66 children and 16 crew, died."
Yup, and the US admitted they did it.
The soviets are still lying about their little incident.
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Putin has invented a new military strategy: Implausible denyability.
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Putin has invented a new military strategy: Implausible denyability.
Not that new. It also happened in the cold war. Which is what Putin dreams of reigniting.
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I've also seen it described as 'ambiguous warfare.'
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Putin has invented a new military strategy: Implausible denyability.
Basically this. I feel like it's basically meant to help supporters when defending their positions. Putin's supporters basically claim a) Russia isn't really doing anything in Ukraine, b) even if they are it's justified since the West started it.
Instead of jumping right to "b" opponents need to get past "a" and actually get the Putin supporter to admit Russia is even involved. It just puts another layer of BS that needs to be dispelled before you can debate Russia's actions directly.
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According to Russia, the West helped stage an undemocratic coup there. And although there have been democratic elections since, this still has a ring of truth to it.
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It helps to have total and complete control over domestic news media.
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I think Putin is capable of being photographed climbing onto a T-72 flying the Russian flag, surrounded by Russian soldiers while standing in front of the sign that says "Welcome to Donetsk, Ukraine! Population 944,000" while explaining to a NY Times correspondent that no Russian troops are in Ukraine.
And do it all with a straight face.
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I think Putin is capable of being photographed climbing onto a T-72 flying the Russian flag, surrounded by Russian soldiers while standing in front of the sign that says "Welcome to Donetsk, Ukraine! Population 944,000" while explaining to a NY Times correspondent that no Russian troops are in Ukraine.
And do it all with a straight face.
You ever noticed you never see Vladimir Putin and the Iraqi Minister of Information [welovethei...nister.com] together at the same time? Hmmm....
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I think he should go to Vegas and play poker. My guess is he'd probably end up winning enough to offset the effect of sanctions.
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Oh, there are real separatists there. Ukraine has been running on separatism for centuries.
You can say that the conflict is between western and eastern Ukraine, but this oversimplifies things too much. Historically western Ukraine belonged to Poland, thus many in the west are catholic and speak a language that is more Polish than Ukrainian. Moreso, parts of western Ukraine used to belong to Poland before WW2. Then there is central Ukraine which is Ukraine proper and where people speak actual Ukrainian. Eas
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This is exactly my point of view about the Ukrainian conflict. The ethnic tensions in the Ukrainian politics have existed for two decades since the dissolution of USSR. One thing I don't understand is why can't West (and Central) Ukrainian nationalists admit and accept that Ukraine is a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual country. Why can't Ukraine be the Switzernland of the East Europe? The solution is simple, transfer as much political power as possible into the regions. Allow people to elect their provincial
Vacation (Score:2)
He was just going for a vacation.
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He was just going for a vacation.
I hear the battlefields of Ukraine are beautiful this time of year.
Absence of OPSEC is compensated by disinformation (Score:5, Informative)
Absence of OPSEC is counter-weighted with several hundred paid internet workers who do nothing else but work day and night to sway internet opinion.
As such, if there will be a report that there were dozens of Russians captured and hundreds of Russians killed, for each and every of the report there will be dozens of comment explaining that such findings are incorrect and fake. And that graves of the Russians are fake. And that Ukrainians are fascists and Nazis, from the failed state. Just read some of the comments for this article.
Regular reader of any news will be flooded with contradicting information and will choose to believe what he wanted to believe.
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You won't find many such comments here. Not that they don't exist - it's just that the Russian propaganda workers are focusing primarily on Russian-language media.
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You won't find many such comments here. Not that they don't exist - it's just that the Russian propaganda workers are focusing primarily on Russian-language media.
Here in Norway I can assure you we have plenty Putin shills commenting on news stories, I assume it's the same for most NATO countries. Putin got Russia in his back pocket, it's the public opinion in the west and all the sanctions they're looking to sway.
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You won't find many such comments here. Not that they don't exist - it's just that the Russian propaganda workers are focusing primarily on Russian-language media.
I think there are plenty of such comments here, however, they do not have karma and are ACs.
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Funny thing is, while you are completely right with what you write, these comments have indeed some truth in them.
There have been more than enough fake reports from Ukrainian government. For fuck's sake, they've once even claimed that they were attacked by Russian tactical nukes, which lead to facepalms even in their own parliament. I've been to Ukraine two months ago, their mass media really is crazy hysterical and lying. I thought that German mass media here is bad, but it is like BBC compared to Fox News
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He seems to be one of those people who cannot distinguish a plausible lie from a wild fary-tale.
It's not like we don't already know (Score:2)
Just because we can easily track individual troops on Social Media, doesn't mean we don't have other ways of knowing what's going on. Of course it's nice to get independent confirmation of troop movements from external sources, but if the Russians really thought there was an operational risk here, they'd fix it. It's not like it's a hard problem to fix, just make your troops leave their personal devices at home. Further, The Russians are NOT stupid and obviously recognize this problem and have taken steps
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"just make your troops leave their personal devices at home."
The impression I get is that it is exactly this that all armed forces all over the world are struggling with. A lot. Apparently, you can order a youngster these days to do a lot. But not that they leave their phone at home. Also, bear in mind that when soldiers get to take their own phones, then armies don't have to buy expensive welfare network capabilities.
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This is the military... IF the information leak is even slightly a problem, the cost of plugging the leak is about nothing. It may not be well tolerated by the troops, but it's not going to cost you much to put a standing order in place that says "When deployed or in transit to and from a deployment, you leave all personal electronic devices at home." Then you inspect the personal gear of any troops arriving to assure the order is being followed.
My point is that if this was a serious problem, any formal
Social media issues (Score:2)
Russia isn't the only one having issues with social media
ISIS had a little bit of kaboom [defensetech.org] come their way after an errant social-media posting as well.
Wonder if dude got a selfie of that?
They're working for Uber (Score:2)
The Russian Government is subcontracting many of it's army to Uber, on an hour by hour basis. Whenever they're in the Ukraine, they're actually touting for business to move Ukrainians westwards.
Their advertising tactics are a bit more dramatic than the average "chugger" though.
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And his last name is actually "Dracul", but don't say it out loud or he will hear and visit you at night.
Re:Volunteers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do Russian soldiers often take their tanks on vacation with them? How stupid do you have to be to believe this?
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Do Russian soldiers often take their tanks on vacation with them? How stupid do you have to be to believe this?
You would be surprised at the vehicles people drive around in: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... [dailymail.co.uk] British grant you but funny none the less. I specially like where he comments: "I don't like driving along in the tank with my head sticking out but the good thing about the tank is that you can always find a parking space" .. would you try to argue with him over a parking space?
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Oh man, if they can take their T-72B3 tanks on vacation, that's so great. Where can I sign up? (and yes, T-72B3 has been sighted in Ukraine a year ago).
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That's really good. Just enough "you could be right" sentiment to make us believe you're expressing a real, valid, independant opinion, and not a paid post from the kremlin's trolling factories. Very well played indeed.
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The neo-Nazi Ukraine government has joined up with Islamic militants.
The Tatars [wikipedia.org] of Ukraine are not particularly militant, and have good reasons to oppose Russia. Under Russian rule, more than 100k Tatars starved to death, and many more were deported to Siberia, where about half died.
Russia is on the right side of this conflict.
Partly. The people in Donbas speak Russian, and have closer economic and social ties to Russia than to Western Ukraine. It is reasonable to allow them to go their separate way. But that is not really Russia's objective, and they have sabotaged negotiations that could have led to that. Russia
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You should listen to more than one source. You might have then found out that Chechens and Dagestanis are among those fighting on the separatist side, too.
And yes, there are Chechens fighting on the Ukrainian side. Those are mostly Chechen nationalists from the 90s. They're Muslims (just as pro-separatist Chechens are), but they are not Islamists.
And then you have stuff like this [livejournal.com], which is pure trolling (this particular picture is of separatists, but it happens on both sides).
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I'm sure the US won't have a problem with Russian bases on Cuban soil. Or perhaps even Mexican soil.
What's that? It's been done? What was the US reaction? 50 years of petty isolationist aggression towards a state that didn't tow the line?
If the Russians want use the American model, embargo trade with Ukraine and be done with it. The rest of your post is histrionic babble.
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You have to try the Bay of Pigs first before the embargo, though. And a couple of failed assassination attempts on the head of state.
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I didn't say it would be good for Ukraine, did I?
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It's called a dictionary. Use it.