“Sonja, if your Twitter logo suddenly changed into a NAFO dog you were hacked! Shut down your computer and report to HQ immediately.”

While half of the internet was giggling over a delayed April fools of sorts that had Twitter’s logo replaced with doge, a far darker dummer corner was in utter panic.

The above HQ order was by Jan de Draver with the Facebook handle of de_draver. Whether it means anything more, and what it actually suggests – that there’s admittedly paid shills running amok on Facebook with propaganda – is unclear.

Yet a self proclaimed historian, citing Oxford and even Princeton degrees while describing himself as “Real Left (Corbyn etc.),” continues to maintain on his timeline now a week on this Tweet:

“My account may have been hacked. A bizarre Shiba Inu dog face icon has appeared in a weird place. NAFO… F off.”

Tankies, a term that arose to describe those that supported the put down of democracy movements by Russian tanks in Czechoslovakia in 1968, is now finding renewed use to describe western supporters of Russian tanks in Ukraine.

While NAFO stands for the North Atlantic Fellas Organization. It’s not a real organization, more an umbrella term – like Anonymous – for people that meme online in Defense of Ukraine and it’s a play on NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Their memes are weaponized through the use of a shiba inu character that looks like doge, but is a bit different.

On first appearance, it is easy to mistake the Nafo dog for doge, and clearly vice versa, but it is distinct so we can say for sure that Twitter temporarily changed their logo to doge, not Nafo.

That had the effect of increasing dogecoin’s price by 30% and… thinking NAFO had hacked accounts, apparently ‘millions’ of people had “emergency VPN shutdowns, air gapped procedures enacted, no lie.”

So doge keeps giving, outing tankies by just being doge, with a Twitter account documenting the fun and panic caused by a seemingly harmless logo change.

That makes it a decisive win for NAFO, but on the ground in Ukraine such decisiveness appears to be more eluding.

A much talked of Russian offensive back in February amounted to little more than the decimation of an elite squadron, and some Russian tanks going straight to mines.

Talk has now moved on to more optimistic speculative considerations of what Ukraine would do in regards to Crimea if it came in control of it.

Right now they’re somewhat far from there, but some expect a pincer movement to cut off the occupying Russians from the north to the south.

While Russians are bogged down in Bakhmut, a Ukrainian offensive is expected, though naturally no one knows where or when.

Armed with fresh new tanks – German, British, American and all the rest – and with Polish MiGs that move the line to outright jets being given to Ukraine, whether Europe’s youngest democracy will be able to move decisively, remains to be seen.

Where the wider public is concerned, this is now more a sort of ‘just reality.’ Another endless war for the plays and games of the old and dying generation that doesn’t quite have a rational aim beyond pure selfishness for the aggressors.

Thankfully however the war seems to have become largely localized with Kyiv no longer under the indiscriminate and ineffective shelling.

Yet there is that question of whether this generation is willing to tolerate another endless war, and the even more difficult question of just how on earth to end it.

Thankfully, this is not an intractable conflict. It is not something like Israel and Palestine concerning tradeoffs that neither side can make, as shown by the fact they haven’t with that decades long conflict so continuing.

Russia-Ukraine is more an adventure on the part of Russia with primarily selfish Russian aims to try and elevate themselves as the ‘boss’ at the expense of others. Imperialism and Colonialism dressed in nationalism basically.

There are no vital Russian interests in play, no identity questions, no ethnicity matters in the usual terms, and there is no question as to whom the land rightfully belongs.

Instead, if we can put it this way, this war is a bit like a teenager first realizing that if there is no god they can do whatever they want – in this case why not take some land for ‘free’ – to only find out there are reactions and consequences, which is why you don’t, and then to later realize there is a god, just not of the simplistic books sort.

When Nazi Germany tried to invade Moscow, Russia came all the way back to East Berlin, where they stayed for four decades. When the French Napoleon tried a century prior, Russia came all the way to Paris.

Belgorod, by the usual rules as history tells them, would be fair game to occupy and annex if Ukraine is able to.

That is not under serious consideration, or any consideration as far as we are aware, yet that used to be the cost of such adventures, and even more, in times gone.

In our times, where national borders are fairly well established, the discussion is instead whether Russia gets to keep some, like Crimea, rather than whether Ukraine gets to take some if it wins.

That is an unstated recognition that this isn’t a war in the proper sense, for Russia, and that no one wants to turn it into a proper war.

It is instead a game, the devil’s game, and we have been forced to play it out of no choice, though we hate it very much.

The outcome of this game for Russia is in many ways a no-lose situation. Even if they lose, the worst of it is that they didn’t gain, rather than losing any land. That they aren’t bigger than their boots. And like the teenager they can learn why you don’t just do this stuff.

For Ukraine it is very different of course, it is existential, and for Europe too as though not existential in itself, the overthrowing of a democracy by gun by a foreign power is not too far off from existential for democracies.

So if Ukraine loses, they do actually lose, rather than it being more a meh, as it probably is for Russians, like Afghanistan was for USA.

All to point and argue that Russia has no vital interest in Ukraine – despite what the devil’s counsels say in regards to access to the Black Sea when Russia has plenty of access to the Black Sea without Ukraine, as does US or NATO looked from the other side as there is Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey – that the conflict is not intractable, that Russia losing is not a big deal where the nation itself is concerned, and therefore to get to the question:

So how to end it? One answer can come from Russia itself and its president, Vladimir Putin. Specifically, whether he and the Russians considers it appropriate to run for a 500th term.

If he doesn’t, then there might be room to look at things anew. If he does then we’ll just have to wait for time to do its thing.

The main part of the answer however comes from Ukraine. If they can win, then that’s how to end it. If they can’t, then just localize it as much as possible.

So the spring offensive probably won’t provide a full answer considering just how much land needs to be liberated, but may provide an indication of just how much it can be localized.

Not least because if Russians keep giving back occupied land in spring, summer and autumn, while gaining a bit in winter, then you’d think the pen will regain more and more voice over the gun in Russia, which may at some point decide it an unworthy adventure.

They can end this at any time, we can’t because a democracy is being aggressed. And if they don’t end it, then winning is the only way to end this war. So good luck to the boys once they head off with their SUVs and tanks and jets.

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• Source: https://www.trustnodes.com/2023/04/10/tankies-panic-over-musks-doge