REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Saturday, November 23, 2024 10:01
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Friday, August 23, 2024 8:19 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Putin on Kursk failure: Not my fault

Russian leader says Ukraine’s gains sound like a you problem.

President Vladimir Putin has a message for the Russian region where Ukraine has seized more than 1,000 square kilometers of territory: Don’t blame me.

https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-kursk-russia-invasion-w
ar-in-ukraine
/

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Saturday, August 24, 2024 6:37 AM

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US President Joe Biden announced a new military assistance package for Ukraine following a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on August 23.[18] The package is valued at $125 million and includes: Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (c-UAS) equipment and munitions; ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS); 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition and additional ammunition for small arms and demolitions; Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided (TOW) missiles; Javelin and AT-4 anti-armor systems; medical and mine-clearing equipment; and additional materiel and training services.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-august-23-2024


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, August 24, 2024 7:37 AM

THG


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Wow.

You're gonna face such a ginormous climb down, you'll never manage.

Only way for you to not break, mentally, is to stay in your fantasy world.








T

Putin’s warlords and oligarchs threaten coup as Ruble craters |




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Saturday, August 24, 2024 8:24 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:

Russia’s Capture Of Pokrovsk Could Reshape The Conflict’s Dynamics
Andrew Korybko
Aug 23, 2024

Beyond it are just a few lightly defended towns and then vast expanses of grassland that could become the scene of maneuver warfare until Russia reaches the next heavily defended localities further afield.

Ukrainian officials have urged locals in and around the town of Pokrovsk to evacuate within the next two weeks as Russian forces rapidly approach this pivotal military logistics hub. The head of neighboring Mirnograd’s military administration bluntly said “Don’t wait. It will not get better, it will only get worse. Leave”, and then admitted that “The enemy is advancing faster than expected.” The Associated Press cited local commanders who blamed Russia’s swift gains on their side’s poorly trained conscripts.

One of them claimed that “Some people don’t want to shoot. They see the enemy in the firing position in trenches but don’t open fire. ... That is why our men are dying…They don’t receive even the lowest standard of training required for our (combat) actions.” An unnamed soldier also lamented that “The main problem is the survival instinct of newcomers. Before, people could stand until the last moment to hold the position. Now, even when there is light shelling of firing positions, they are retreating.”

The poor quality of Ukraine’s recruits casts doubt on whether the whopping 120,000 [Ukrainian] troops that Belarusian President Lukashenko claimed had been deployed along his border could make much of a difference if some of them are sent to Donbass out of desperation to halt Russia’s advance. They’d more than likely participate in “meat waves” like those before them did in Artyomovsk/Bakhmut and Avdeevka, and just like their predecessors, they’re also destined to sacrifice themselves in vain.

Russia’s capture of Pokrovsk, however long it might take, could reshape the conflict’s dynamics due to this town’s strategic significance for Ukraine’s military logistics. Beyond it are just a few lightly defended towns and then vast expanses of grassland that could become the scene of maneuver warfare. Ukraine’s US-backed invasion of Kursk reminded observers that maneuver warfare isn’t dead like some had earlier claimed, and it might soon make a major comeback in the fields past Pokrovsk.

Ukraine’s successes in Kharkov, Kherson, and most recently Kursk over the past two and a half years were the result of missteps on Russia’s part, not examples of Ukrainian “military genius” like its supporters in the media misportrayed them as. It either exploited overstretched and undermanned supply chains in the first two cases or took advantage of a poorly defended border in the second. None of these three precedents suggests that Ukraine is capable of beating Russia head-to-head at maneuver warfare.

It’s therefore possible that Russia could quickly capture broad swaths of Donbass once maneuver warfare begins to be fought along that front upon its capture of Pokrovsk, which could then improve its position for assaulting the heavily defended Kramatorsk-Slavyansk agglomeration in northern Donbass. In that event, Russia might also take advantage of its post-Pokrovsk maneuver warfare successes (assuming that they’re achieved as expected) to branch out in other directions.

Capturing Pokrovsk would enable Russia to move north into southern Kharkov, west into eastern Dnipro (neither of which it has any territorial claims to), and southwest into Zaporozhye (all of which it claims). Opening up a third front in Kharkov to complement the northern and eastern ones from Belgorod and Lugansk could be seen as revenge for Kursk as could opening one in Dnipro. The Kharkov vector could also help cut off supply lines to Kramatorsk-Slavyansk and thus facilitate the full capture of Donbass.

Moving into southeastern Dnipro could be a shortcut for launching operations in northern Zaporozhye so it also can’t be discounted due to the possibility that this could lead to a siege of the latter’s namesake administrative center. Observers can only speculate which vector(s) Russia would move into after Pokrovsk and when that might be, but the point is that maneuver warfare might play a large role in its forthcoming operations after that tow is captured.

Ukraine’s poorly trained conscripts and its lightly defended towns beyond Pokrovsk increase the odds of a partial Russian military breakthrough up to the next heavily defended localities further afield, and this could result in serious changes to the way in which Ukraine fights this conflict. It could either stay the course by doubling down on Kursk (and potentially opening new fronts in Belarus and/or Russia’s other border regions) at the expense of Donbass or decisively shift back to the latter at the former’s expense.

Either way, it’ll be forced into a dilemma, especially if Russia opens up new fronts in Kharkov and/or Dnipro in parallel with putting maximum pressure upon Donbass’ Kramatorsk-Slovyansk. Ukraine thus stands to lose more ground, or it could explore whether Russia would be willing to swap whatever Kiev controls in Kursk for whatever Moscow controls in Kharkov (and possibly also Dnipro by then). The possibility also exists that Ukraine could become hellbent on crossing Russia’s non-negotiable red lines.

About that, this could take the form of a nuclear provocation (such as that which could be caused by a crippling attack against its nuclear power plants or spent nuclear fuel storage sites there), a high-level assassination, or a terrorist attack even worse than the recent Crocus one. The purpose would be to provoke Russia into using nuclear weapons just like Lukashenko warned last week that Kiev wants to do, which could then serve as the tripwire for a conventional NATO intervention in Ukraine’s support.

All told, Russia’s capture of Pokrovsk might still take a while since Kiev could decide to turn this town into the next Artyomovsk, but the conflict’s dynamics will likely be reshaped once that happens if Russia can employ maneuver warfare against the lightly defended towns in the fields beyond. Any subsequent breakthrough would force Ukraine into the dilemma of prioritizing some fronts and the expense of others, but it might try to cut the Gordian knot through a series of swaps or escalations instead.

It's anyone’s guess what it would do in that scenario, but those are the three most likely options: sacrifice one front to save another; swap land with Russia; or try crossing Russia’s non-negotiable red lines as part of a dangerous gamble to “escalate to de-escalate” up to the brink of provoking World War III. In any case, all eyes will be on Pokrovsk as Russia inches towards this pivotal military logistics hub and inevitably begins battling for control of it, so everyone will eventually see what Kiev ultimately does.





-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
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Saturday, August 24, 2024 10:30 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Russian media turn on Putin: Doubts grow over Ukraine war

5:56 AM EDT, August 24, 2024

https://essanews.com/russian-media-turn-on-putin-doubts-grow-over-ukra
ine-war,7063466966845057a


The radio hosts doubt Russia:

"We always say that soon we will use something that will make the enemy tremble. However, I have the impression that if we had such an option, we would have already used it. I simply don't think we have it. Apparently, we don't have the tools to instill terror in the enemy."

On television, they began to doubt whether what is happening in Ukraine could be called a special military operation since Putin couldn't order it to end. Instead, it is a war where Ukraine decides when it ends, not when Putin decides.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, August 25, 2024 6:50 AM

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Ukraine keeps crossing Russia’s red lines. Putin keeps blinking.

By Robyn Dixon, Catherine Belton | August 24, 2024

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-keeps-crossing-russia-s-r
ed-lines-putin-keeps-blinking/ar-AA1pmunw


Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion keeps crossing President Vladimir Putin’s red lines.

Kyiv’s lightning incursion into Kursk in western Russia this month slashed through the reddest line of all — a direct ground assault on Russia — yet Putin’s response has so far been strikingly passive and muted, in sharp contrast to his rhetoric earlier in the war.

On day one of the invasion in February 2022, Putin warned that any country that stood in Russia’s way would face consequences “such as you have never seen in your entire history,” a threat that seemed directed at countries that might arm Ukraine.

If Russia’s territorial integrity were threatened, “we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. It’s not a bluff,” he said a few months later in September. “The citizens of Russia can be sure that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence and freedom will be ensured — I emphasize this again — with all the means at our disposal,” making a clear reference to Russia’s nuclear weapons.

But Ukraine’s punch through Russian defenses in the first foreign invasion since World War II exposed Russia’s military flaws and laid bare Moscow’s apparently illusory red lines.

Now some are again questioning the centerpiece of Washington’s Ukraine strategy: a slow, calibrated supply of weapons to Ukraine to avoid escalating tensions with Russia that critics argue has dashed Kyiv’s chances of driving Russia out and resulted in a grinding war of attrition with massive casualties.

Ukraine’s Kursk incursion “proved the Russians are bluffing,” said Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former Ukrainian intelligence and defense official, now an associate fellow with the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank in London. “It shuts down all of the voices of the pseudo experts … the anti-escalation guys.”

The attack was “risky,” he continued, “but it sent a very powerful signal and helped us change the narrative about Ukraine — that it is not able to win — and on the Russian red lines. Both narratives have been destroyed.”

Ukraine’s attacks have repeatedly crossed ostensible red lines: sinking Russia’s Black Sea flagship, Moskva; the 2022 Crimea Bridge blast; Storm Shadow missile attacks on the fleet headquarters in Sevastopol; the 2023 drone attacks on the Kremlin and Moscow; the assassinations of propagandists on Russian territory; and attacks on strategic air bases hundreds of miles from Ukraine.

The Western hardware being used by Ukrainian forces, HIMARS, tanks, ATACMS and F-16s, were all once red lines, too.

When Ukrainian drones struck Moscow in May 2023, hitting a Kremlin dome and closing major airports, Putin downplayed the problem, analyst Tatiana Stanovaya wrote at the time in an analysis for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Within a few months, it seemed that the Kremlin’s red lines had either never existed or had become extremely mobile.” The Kremlin claimed to be unperturbed, she wrote, “even if it flies in the face of common sense.”

It was to become a striking pattern, yet the U.S.-led policy on military aid to Ukraine has remained timid, according to many analysts.

Boris Bondarev, a Geneva-based former Russian diplomat who resigned in 2022 to protest the war, said in an interview that Washington’s fear of triggering a direct military conflict with Russia had crippled the U.S. response, leaving its goals in the war unclear and projecting American weakness to Putin and other global adversaries.

“When you put your enemy’s red lines, so to speak, as the crucial factor of your own strategy, you will always be on the losing side,” he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, on Tuesday used the Kursk incursion to argue against Washington’s restrictions that bar Kyiv’s use of Western weapons to strike deeper at military targets in Russia — such as the air bases Russia uses for its devastating glide bomb attacks.

“We are witnessing a significant ideological shift — the naive, illusory concept of so-called red lines regarding Russia, which dominated the assessment of the war by some partners, has crumbled apart these days,” Zelensky said.

While Ukraine’s Kursk incursion has changed calculations, it has not shifted the fundamental balance in the war, with Moscow continuing its focus on eastern Ukraine, closing in on the city of Pokrovsk in Donetsk region, a key logistical hub that could pave the way for further Russian advances if it falls.

If Washington did allow Ukraine to strike military targets deeper within Russia with U.S. weapons, it would dash yet one more taboo, but Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst, suggested that Moscow had already factored this in.

“In Russia, there is no doubt that such permission will be given,” he said. “Russia already considers that the decision has been taken by the U.S.”

“Russia tried to clearly draw these red lines, but the U.S., which is a participant in the conflict, decided that ‘We’re not going to cross any big red lines but only small ones,'” he said “They decided we are going to cut these red lines into dozens of small thin red threads, to cross them bit by bit so that there was no big event which could become a” cause of war.

A Russian academic with close ties to senior Moscow diplomats said the Russian leadership was taking the use of U.S. and Western weapons deeper in Russia “very seriously” but said it wasn’t clear whether a decision had been made on how to respond. He spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss deliberations in Moscow frankly.

Russian authorities have been seeking to downplay the significance of the Ukrainian incursion and failure of its military leadership.

The presence of Ukrainian troops in 15 to 20 “little known” villages in the Kursk region was of “little significance” compared to Russian advances in Donetsk, Markov said. But if Ukraine occupied all of Glushkovsky district in Kursk or took the regional capital, Kursk city, “this would be a very big loss” that could force Putin to change his approach, he added.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, August 25, 2024 10:29 AM

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Russian propaganda falters as Ukrainians advance in the Kursk region

7:33 PM EDT, August 24, 2024

https://essanews.com/russian-propaganda-falters-as-ukrainians-advance-
in-the-kursk-region,7063629721409665a


It didn't take long for Russian society to start positioning their country as a victim. The actions of the Ukrainian army in the Kursk region provided this opportunity.

Two years earlier, when Russia was invading Ukrainian territories, none of the Russians sympathized with the residents of the occupied areas. On the contrary, they deemed the invasion of Ukraine as entirely justified.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, August 26, 2024 6:35 AM

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• French authorities arrested Telegram founder Pavel Durov on August 24, prompting concern among Russian ultranationalist milbloggers about their ability to report freely on the war in Ukraine. ISW has not observed any direct evidence indicating that Durov’s arrest will affect Telegram operations in the near term, however.

• Russian milbloggers reacted to Durov’s arrest by focusing on how Russian soldiers rely on ad-hoc communications, including Telegram, for organizing operations in Ukraine and called on the Russian military command to establish an adequate official communication system.

• Milbloggers widely characterized Telegram as the main alternative to official communications for Russian military personnel in Ukraine and argued that it is now vital for the Russian military command to establish an official communications system.[26] The Russian milbloggers could not agree, however, whether the Russian military command has already created such a centralized communications system and that it is just poorly implemented or if there is no such system.[27]

• Russian forces have broadly struggled with effective communications throughout the war. Russian milbloggers have previously described official communications systems as overcentralized to the point of inhibiting Russian indirect fire operations, and more recently Russian forces have failed to establish adequate command and control (C2) structures to support their offensive in northern Kharkiv Oblast and defense in Kursk Oblast.[28]

• Russian forces have largely compensated for this lack of adequate official communications by relying on their insecure personal devices to organize frontline C2, logistics, and combat operations, and the Kremlin has recently temporarily sought to criminalize Russian forces' use of these devices without offering a meaningful alternative.[29]

• The sudden uncertainty around Telegram's continued ability to operate within Russia and any falter in Telegram operations will likely impact Russian frontline operations, and if blocked completely, degrade these operations in the near term. Russian military Telegram users may start migrating from Telegram, anyway, out of fear of the system being compromised while Durov is under arrest, and Russian forces may start decoupling from Telegram communications even if Telegram’s operations are not ostensibly or actually impacted by Durov’s arrest.[30]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-august-25-2024


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, August 26, 2024 6:50 AM

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“Putin is in big trouble”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-is-in-big-trouble/ar-AA1pon
bE


The French writer, who has written extensively on military operations outside France (in Bosnia, Cambodia and Rwanda), claims that the Ukrainian drones sent to Moscow are “a fairly logical extension of the Ukrainian offensive against the Kursk region… In Kursk, they show Russia that the Russians can invade Ukraine, but that the opposite is also true, on a reduced scale, of course. Regarding the drone attack in Moscow specifically, I think it will be very difficult to know whether it caused damage or not. On another hand, what we do know is that when the Ukrainians hit energy infrastructures such as oil depots, they do very serious damage.”

As a result? “It puts Russia in much more difficulty than it makes people believe. Because there is an immediate impact on people’s lives, for example with the increase in the price of fuel. People see it and feel the consequences, it’s a major change. It also means that the war is also among Muscovites. This attack, by a dozen drones, means that it is becoming dangerous to live in Moscow.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, August 26, 2024 8:36 AM

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Videos of Russian soldiers appearing to surrender en masse suggest inexperience and desperation, experts say

By Sinéad Baker | Aug 26, 2024, 7:12 AM CDT

https://www.businessinsider.com/apparent-russia-soldier-surrender-vide
os-kursk-show-no-experience-expert-2024-8


Mathieu Boulègue, another Russian military expert, told the Post that the apparent number of surrendering Russian troops was surprisingly high: "I was not expecting so many easy surrenders."

"But it also shows how fragile the war narrative is in Russia, and it also shows how desperate probably these soldiers are who would much rather be with Ukraine in Ukrainian prisons or cells than fighting for Russia," Boulègue, a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said.

Rainer Saks, an Estonian security expert, told ERR that the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk had been successful "mainly due to the fact that the Russian military command and political leadership were completely unprepared for this kind of event."

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, August 27, 2024 6:16 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Russian Presidential Administration Deputy Head Sergei Kiriyenko was reportedly in charge of a Kremlin think tank that tried and failed to establish rhetorical justifications for Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine after the fact, underscoring the Kremlin's rhetorical failures in the first months of the war and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s continued prioritization of loyalty over competency in officials.

Russian-language opposition outlet Meduza reported on August 26 that Kiriyenko established and appointed political strategists to the Expert Institute for Social Research (EISI), a think tank that was supposed to take responsibility for the Kremlin's informational justifications for the Kremlin’s political decisions and establish the "image of the future" of Russia, in 2017 but that EISI has largely failed in this mission.[39] Meduza assessed that EISI instead managed to eliminate challengers to Putin's regime, monitor alleged "stability" amid regional elections, and praise Putin.[40] Meduza cited several sources affiliated with the Russian presidential administration and noted that creating EISI was not Kiriyenko's "idea" but a precedent set by then-Presidential Administration first deputy heads Vladislav Surkov and Vyacheslav Volodin, who each established separate think tanks responsible for the Kremlin's "public and private" political "steps."[41] Meduza noted that the EISI did not have advance notice for Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and had to develop informational justifications for the invasion after the Kremlin realized it could not rapidly conquer Ukraine.[42] Meduza's sources claimed that Russians failed to understand Russian President Vladimir Putin's concepts of "denazification" and "demilitarization."[43] Meduza reported that the EISI did develop rhetorical lines to justify the war, including portraying the war as Russia's struggle against Western colonialism, framing Russia as "fated" to lead a coalition of several "friendly" states, and Russia as the "guardian" of "correct" European culture and values – but Meduza's sources stated that the EISI realized it was "impossible" to completely justify the war, much less incorporate the war into EISI's vision for Russia's future.[44] ISW is unable to confirm this report, but if true, this Kremlin messaging failure coheres with ISW's observations about Russian information operations and Kremlin information space incompetence throughout the war. The Kremlin largely failed to establish coherent messaging about the war in Ukraine in 2022 and throughout much of 2023, and Putin has prioritized leaders who are personally loyal to Putin over those who are competent.[45] Kiriyenko has a prominent role in Kremlin information operations and oversees Kremlin information operations to undermine support for Ukraine and NATO outside of EISI, so it is feasible that Kiriyenko has prioritized these other efforts over rehabilitating EISI following the onset of the full-scale invasion.[46]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-august-26-2024


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, August 27, 2024 8:26 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


According to John Helmer ("Dances with Bears") Russias failure to take Ukraine militarily, and its failure to anticipate Ukraine's Kursk invasion is Putin's fault: he is preventing the MOD from taking the gloves off and waging full scale war, and always too ready to give up military gains in the hopes of negotiating what Helmer sees as a temporary cease fire. He blames Putin for giving up on "demilitarization" and "denazification" and limiting Russia to four oblasts instaed of taking the entire country. https://johnhelmer.net/kursk-belgorod-bryansk-is-president-putin-prepa
ring-for-istanbul-ii
/

It occured to me that if Russia would have taken all of Ukraine militarily before the Kursk invasion, it would have presented Russia with two political problems

The BRICS nations were, according to some, pressing Russia to negotiate with Ukraine. So Russia, some say, engaged in "negotiations" Kabuki theater with Ukraine, (and Ukraine did the same Kabuki theater while it was preparing to invade Kursk) and now that Ukraine invaded Kursk (with only civilian targets) Putin no longer feels compelled to negotiate.

He can tell BRICS, Orban and other interested parties "See? I told you so."

The second problem is that of westeran Ukraine, which is politically and linguistically different from eastern and southern Ukraine. A military takeover woudld mean controlling a restive population.

Which brings me to WHY IS RUSSIA DESTROYING UKRAINE'S ENERGY SYSTEM?

I could understand bombing the railways' electrical infrastructure, which is how Ukraine moves men and materiel to the front, but this is beyond that.

If I had to guess a purpose, the goal is the same as Ukraine's when it launches drone and missile attacks into Russia: to defeat western Ukrainian PEOPLE, set them against the Nazi, anti -Russian cause. In other words, to cause regime change from the bottom up. Repeat the success of WWII - creating a DEFEATED PEOPLE- without having to bomb Ukraine to smithereens all the way to Lvov, the way Germany and Berlin was ruined.

What better and less destructive way to do that than destoying the electrical grid? 'Bring the war to the people " as Zelensky says. Nothing brings the war home better than a frig full of spoiled food, having to walk up 17 floors to your apartment, living in the dark, and facing a cold winter.

Putin may be holding the military back in order to bring foreign support and Ukrainian defeatism to crest at the same time as military success. Once popular support for Zelensky withers, Russia can negotiate with whoever they please, and install a friendly government.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Tuesday, August 27, 2024 9:55 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

I think that Putin may be holding the military back . . .

Putin has not yet nuked the West, as he has threatened many times, proving that he is holding the military back.

Putin nuke West =
https://www.google.com/search?q=Putin+nuke+West

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, August 27, 2024 2:07 PM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Ukraine just called Putin’s nuclear bluff

By invading Russia, Ukraine was also sending a message to America.

Leaders in Kyiv sent a message to their friends in the United States and Europe that their approach to the war has been overly cautious — that fears about “escalation,” “red lines,” and Russian nuclear use — a threat that Putin himself has voiced repeatedly — have been overblown.

Ukraine had not informed its Western partners about the operation ahead of time, anticipating that they would be told “it was impossible and that it would cross the strictest of all the red lines that Russia has.” According to press reports, the Ukrainians predicted — correctly, as it turned out — that the West would not object too strongly once presented with a fait accompli.

“They were trying to push a boundary with their Western partners and what we’ve seen is that these partners have quietly accepted the new boundary,” said Liana Fix, fellow for Europe and the Council on Foreign Relations. In particular, they’re hoping the US will lift restrictions on using American-provided long-range missiles to strike deep into Russia, a step Washington has so far avoided.

In his speech, Zelenskyy was arguing, in effect, that he had called Putin’s bluff and that it’s time for Ukraine’s allies to become much more aggressive in giving Ukraine the kind of support it needs to win the war.

Are Russia’s threats still working?

The Russian government has certainly done everything in its power to add nuclear uncertainty to Western leaders’ calculations. From the very first day of the invasion, Putin has made repeated references to his country’s nuclear arsenal — the largest in the world — and warned countries that get in Russia’s way of “consequences that you have never faced in your history.”

Over the course of the war, Putin and other Russian officials have made repeated references to “red lines” that should not be crossed if Western governments don’t want to face a catastrophic response. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has been particularly active in threatening foreign powers with “nuclear apocalypse” via his social media accounts.

“Beyond North Korea, the Russians have been the country that has used nuclear threats most vigorously,” said Nicole Grajewski, a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The threats work — but only to a certain extent and only for a time. Escalation fears were the reason Western countries ruled out taking actions like imposing a no-fly zone in Ukraine or sending NATO troops into the country.

Escalation fears have also made them reluctant to provide certain weapons systems to Ukraine, though system-by-system, that reluctance has faded over time. There was a time when even shoulder-mounted stinger missiles were viewed as too provocative. Now, the Ukrainians are using US-provided long-range missiles and recently received their first batch of F-16 fighter jets.

That these capabilities have often been provided only after months of contentious political debate has been an endless source of frustration to Ukrainians.

“I’ve been hearing about nuclear escalation since the first day,” Oleksandra Ustinova, a Ukrainian member of parliament who chairs a committee monitoring arms supplies, told Vox last June. “First it was, it was ‘if Ukraine gets MIGs from Poland, he’s going to use nukes.’ Then it was the HIMARS, then Patriots, then tanks.”

She added: “It’s like we’re running behind the train. Every time we ask for something, we get it months or a year later when it won’t make as much of a difference as it would have before.”

The fact that none of the steps Western countries have taken so far have resulted in Russia using a nuclear weapon or directly attacking a NATO country is taken by many Ukrainians and their international supporters as evidence that these threats were never real to begin with.

More at https://www.vox.com/politics/369035/kursk-nuclear-escalation-zelenskyy
-putin


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, August 27, 2024 2:31 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Ukraine could not have invaded Kursk without western ISR and planning

This whole "We didn't know what Ukraine was doing" is just implausible deniability.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Tuesday, August 27, 2024 3:15 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Ukraine could not have invaded Kursk without western ISR and planning

This whole "We didn't know what Ukraine was doing" is just implausible deniability.

Do you have a point other than the Russians' points: "We are perfectly justified in nuking the West and you can't stop us if we want to. Ha! Ha! Ha! We Russians are mighty! Fear us and live. Defy us and die. The West is controlled by Satan and Nazis. We Russians have proof, PROOF we tell you! of our moral, mental and military superiority!"

West controlled by Satan and Nazis according to Putin
https://www.google.com/search?q=West+controlled+by+Satan+and+Nazis+acc
ording+to+Putin


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, August 27, 2024 3:27 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


The west - us included- are hiding behind the implausible fig leaf that we aren't directly involved in the fight against Russia.

We are, and we're not fooling Russia. Or anyone else, except useless droids like you.

*****

Oh, BTW ... have you found ANY instances where I posted "Fuck Ukraine"?
No, you haven't.
You're seriously confused.
Try to keep that in mind before you accuse me ... AGAIN.


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Tuesday, August 27, 2024 4:21 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


So, extending that thought that the Kremlin is trying to get certain processes to get to tipping points more or less at the same time

Military. I think Russia could have rolled over Ukraine a year ago. The Kremlin is holding the military back. Tick... Tick ... Tick...

De-Nazification. Requires that Ukrainian pro-Nazis leave, and that the people mostly reject their cause bc life has become too difficult. Tick... Tick ... Tick

De-militarization. What needs to be demilitarized is NATO. Bleeding NATO of spare munitions and weapons. Tick ... Tick ... Tick...

Non-aligned nations "on side" or at least shutting up about negotiations. Tick ... Tick ... Tick

Western populations and (ultimately) western politicians abandoning Project Ukraine. Tick ... Tick ... Tick.

I wonder when this will all come together.

Have I forgotten anything?

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Tuesday, August 27, 2024 4:37 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

We are, and we're not fooling Russia. Or anyone else, except useless droids like you.

Droid? Not droid! Terminator. If Terminators existed I would send the robots to clear all Russians closer than 50 miles to the border with Ukraine to make a demilitarized zone on Russian land. The Russians won't leave voluntarily? Then they leave like cattle being hauled away to Moscow in 18-wheelers driven by Terminators. There will be rest stops where the Russians are fed, watered and allowed to use toilets. Cattle aren't treated that well. The Russians treated Ukrainians murderously during Holodomor, killing millions of them. Even the Terminators, programmed to follow humanitarian rules, will treat Russians far better than the Russians treated Ukrainians. The Hollywood movie will be called Evicted (by Terminators). I'd buy a ticket!

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, August 27, 2024 5:45 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Oh yeah: Killing Ukrainian soldiers. Tick ... Tick... Tick.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Tuesday, August 27, 2024 5:50 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

We are, and we're not fooling Russia. Or anyone else, except useless droids like you.

Droid? Not droid! Terminator. If Terminators existed I would send the robots to clear all Russians closer than 50 miles to the border with Ukraine to make a demilitarized zone on Russian land. The Russians won't leave voluntarily? Then they leave like cattle being hauled away to Moscow in 18-wheelers driven by Terminators. There will be rest stops where the Russians are fed, watered and allowed to use toilets. Cattle aren't treated that well. The Russians treated Ukrainians murderously during Holodomor, killing millions of them. Even the Terminators, programmed to follow humanitarian rules, will treat Russians far better than the Russians treated Ukrainians. The Hollywood movie will be called Evicted (by Terminators). I'd buy a ticket!

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two



Whatever.

We get it: you hate Russia for any number of rationalizations. Any way to keep the hate alive.


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Wednesday, August 28, 2024 6:03 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Whatever.

We get it: you hate Russia for any number of rationalizations. Any way to keep the hate alive.

Signym, you forgot what the Russians did after WWII in Eastern Europe: kill the conquered people who had surrendered. It was very logical for Russia since the Russians assumed they would never be leaving and they wanted to feel safe as they forever occupied Europe.

It was very logical for Eastern Europe to join NATO since the Europeans assumed Russia would try again to kill conquered people who had surrendered so that Russians felt safe.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, August 28, 2024 6:04 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Interactive Map: Hundreds of Known Russian Military Objects are in Range of ATACMS

By George Barros | August 27, 2024

Ukrainian officials are reportedly preparing to present senior US officials a list of objects in Russia that officials believe Kyiv could strike if Washington lifted its restrictions on US weapons.[7]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/interactive-map-hundreds
-known-russian-military-objects-are-range-atacms


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, August 28, 2024 6:29 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


How the Russian Establishment Really Sees the War Ending

An inside look at what Russia expects—and doesn’t—in a cease-fire with Ukraine.

By Anatol Lieven, the director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft | August 27, 2024, 3:14 PM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/27/russia-establishment-ukraine-war-
end-ceasefire
/

Discussions have been happening for some time among Western policymakers, experts, and the wider public about how the war in Ukraine ought to end. I can confirm that the same type of conversations are happening in Russia.

I recently had the opportunity to speak, on the basis of confidentiality, to a wide range of members of the Russian establishment, including former diplomats, members of think tanks, academics, and businesspeople, as well as a few members of the wider public. Their ideas about the war, and the shape of its eventual ending, deserve to be better understood in the West and in Ukraine itself.

Only a small minority believed that Russia should fight for complete victory in Ukraine, including the annexation of large new areas of Ukrainian territory or the creation of a client regime in Kyiv. A large majority wanted an early cease-fire roughly along the existing battle lines. There is high confidence that the Ukrainian military will never be able to break through and reconquer significant amounts of Ukraine’s lost territories.

Most of my conversations took place before the Ukrainian invasion of the Russian province of Kursk. As far as I can make out, however, this Ukrainian success has not changed basic Russian calculations and views—not least because, at the same time, the Russian army has continued to make significant progress farther east, in the Donbas, where the Russians are closing in on the key town of Pokrovsk. “The attack on Kursk may help Ukraine eventually to get rather better terms, but nothing like a real victory,” in the words of one Russian security expert. “They will sooner or later have to withdraw from Kursk, but we will never withdraw from Crimea and the Donbas.”

The Ukrainian incursion into Kursk has undoubtedly been a serious embarrassment to the Putin administration. It comes on top of a long row of other embarrassing failures, beginning with the appallingly bad planning of the initial invasion. And among the informed Russian elites, I get very little sense of genuine respect for Russian President Vladimir Putin as a military leader—though by contrast, there is much more widespread approval of the government’s economic record in resisting Western sanctions and rebuilding Russian industry for war.

Yet a key reason for my contacts’ desires for compromise was that they believed that Russia should not, and probably could not, attempt to capture major Ukrainian cities like Kharkiv by force of arms. They pointed to the length of time, the high casualties, and the huge destruction that have been involved in taking even small cities like Bakhmut in the face of strong Ukrainian resistance. Any areas of the countryside in Kharkiv province that can be taken should therefore be regarded not as prizes but as bargaining counters in future negotiations.

Underlying this attitude is the belief that to create a Russian army large enough to attempt such a complete victory would require a massive new round of conscription and mobilization—perhaps leading to the kind of popular resistance now seen in Ukraine. The government has been careful to avoid conscripting people from Moscow and St. Petersburg, and to pay large salaries to soldiers conscripted from poorer areas. Neither of these limits could be maintained in the context of full mobilization.

Partly for the same reason, the idea of going beyond Ukraine to launch a future attack on NATO was dismissed by everyone with derision. As I was told, “Look, the whole point of all these warnings to NATO has been to stop NATO from joining the fight against us in Ukraine, because of the horrible dangers involved. Why in the name of God would we ourselves attack NATO and bring these dangers on ourselves? What could we hope to gain? That’s absurd!”

On the other hand, every single person with whom I spoke stated that there could be no withdrawal from territory held by Russia in the four Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims to have annexed. A majority suggested that any territory in other provinces like Kharkiv could be returned to Ukraine in return for them being demilitarized. This would help guarantee a cease-fire and would also allow Putin to claim that he had ensured the safety of adjacent Russian provinces, which in recent months have been subject to Ukrainian bombardment. Some more optimistic Russians thought that it might be possible to exchange territory in Kharkiv for territory in the four provinces, none of which is currently fully occupied by Russia.

I found this balance of opinion among the people with whom I spoke to be fairly plausible as a wider picture, because on the whole it corresponds closely to the views of the wider Russian public, as expressed in opinion polls conducted by organizations that in the past have been found reliable. Thus in a poll last year by the Levada Center, sponsored by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, respondents were exactly equal (62 percent) in their desire for immediate peace talks and in their refusal to return the annexed territories to Ukraine.

Among my contacts, there were no differences on the subject of Ukrainian neutrality, which everyone declared essential. However, it would seem that serious thought is being given by sections of the Russian establishment to the vexed question of how a peace settlement could be secured without formal Western military guarantees and supplies to Ukraine. Hence the widely discussed ideas of a peace treaty ratified by the U.N. Security Council and the BRICS, and of broad demilitarized zones secured by a U.N. force.

As a leading Russian foreign-policy analyst told me, “In the West, you seem to think that only military guarantees are any good. But political factors are also critical. We have invested enormous diplomatic effort in building up our relations with the global south, which certainly would not want a new war. Do you think that if we could get a peace deal that met our basic requirements, we would throw all that away by starting one?”

Most said that if in negotiations the West agreed with key Russian demands, Russia would scale down others. Thus on the Russian demand for the “denazification” of Ukraine, a few said that Russia should still aim for a “friendly” government in Kyiv. This seems to be code for regime change, since it is very hard to imagine any freely elected Ukrainian government being friendly to Russia for a very long time to come.

A large majority, however, said that if Russian conditions in other areas were met, Russia should content itself with the passage of a law banning neo-Nazi parties and symbols, modeled on a clause of the Austrian State Treaty of 1955. My Russian interlocutors referred here to the treaty’s provisions for restrictions on certain categories of Austrian arms and for minority rights—in the case of Ukraine, the linguistic and cultural rights of the Russian-speaking population.

On one important point, opinion was unanimous: that there is no chance whatsoever of any international formal and legal recognition of the Russian annexations of Ukrainian territory, and that Russia would not press for this. It was recognized that this would be rejected not just by Ukraine and the West, but by China, India, and South Africa, none of which recognized Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The hope is therefore that as part of a peace settlement, the issue of these territories’ status will be deferred for endless future negotiation (as the Ukrainian government proposed with regard to Crimea in March 2022), until eventually everyone forgets about it. The example of the (unrecognized but practically uncontested) Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was mentioned. This means that Ukraine would not be asked publicly to “give up” these territories; only to recognize the impossibility of reconquering them by force.

In the end, of course, Russia’s negotiating position will be decided by Putin—with whom I did not speak. His public position was set out in his “peace proposal” on the eve of the West’s “peace summit” in Switzerland in June. In this, he offered an immediate cease-fire if Ukraine withdrew its forces from the remainder of the Ukrainian provinces claimed by Russia and promised not to seek admission to NATO.

On the face of it, this is ridiculous. Ukraine is never going to voluntarily abandon the cities of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. However, Putin did not say that Russia will then occupy these territories. This leaves open the possibility that Putin would accept a deal in which these areas would be demilitarized but under Ukrainian administration and that—like the Russian-occupied parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces—their status would be subject to future negotiation.

Nobody I spoke to in Moscow claimed to know for sure what Putin is thinking. However, the consensus was that while he made terrible mistakes at the start of the war, he is a pragmatist capable of taking military advice and recognizing military reality. Thus when in November 2022 Russian generals advised him that to attempt to hold Kherson city risked military disaster, he ordered withdrawal —even though Kherson was in territory that Russia claimed to have annexed and was also Russia’s only bridgehead west of the Dnipro River. Its loss has vastly reduced Russian hopes of being able to capture Odessa and the rest of Ukraine’s coast.

But while Putin might accept what he would regard as a compromise now, everyone with whom I spoke in Moscow said that Russian demands will be determined by what happens on the battlefield. If the Ukrainians can hold roughly their existing line, then it will be along this line that an eventual cease-fire will run. But if the Ukrainians collapse, then in the words of one Russian ex-soldier, “Peter and Catherine are still waiting”; and Peter the Great and Catherine the Great between them conquered the whole of what is now eastern and southern Ukraine for Russia.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, August 28, 2024 8:43 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The Russians are backing off, fearing one American weapon. Those fears should become reality

By David Axe | 28 August 2024 • 12:23pm

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/28/ukraine-atacms-missile-str
ikes-biden-permission-russian-air
/

Steel and fire rained on Ukraine early on Monday. Hundreds of Russian missiles and drones, launched from the air, ground and sea, struck cities across Ukraine, badly damaging the power grid and killing four people.

It was the biggest air raid yet seen in Russia’s 29-month wider war on Ukraine – and revenge, it seems, for Ukraine’s surprise invasion of Russia’s Kursk Oblast beginning in early August.

For thousands of everyday Ukrainians who lived through a long and terrifying night, the Monday attacks were a tragedy. For Ukraine’s leaders, they were yet another argument for greater authority to strike back.

While Ukraine possesses an array of locally-developed deep-strike capabilities and can strike – indeed, has struck – targets farther than a thousand miles inside Russia, its best long-range weapons are made in America. And America has forbidden Ukraine to use these weapons on targets deep inside Russia.

That must change. And it can change without risking runaway escalation.

The dust was still settling from the Monday raids when Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky took to social media to beg for greater leeway to hit Russian air bases. “Each of these strikes repeatedly reminds us of the critical need for long-range capabilities – to give our defense forces sufficient long-range weapons to destroy the terrorists precisely at the locations from which they launch their attacks,” Zelensky said.

“This is the optimal anti-terrorist tactic,” he stressed.

But the administration of US president Joe Biden didn’t budge. And it’s obvious why. From the administration’s perspective, it is balancing two priorities: aiding Ukraine in defeating Russia, but without provoking Russia to the point where the Kremlin might seriously consider the unthinkable – a nuclear strike.

Even a small-scale “tactical” atomic strike could trigger a wider nuclear exchange that could end human civilization as we know it – an outcome Biden is rightly desperate to avoid. “I worry about Putin using tactical nuclear weapons,” Biden said last year. “It’s real.”

The problem is the ambiguity. No one knows for sure whether, and under what circumstances, Russian president Vladimir Putin would nuke Ukraine and risk global annihilation. It doesn’t help that Russian officials frequently threaten to use atomic weapons in Ukraine. It’s hard to distinguish bluster from credible nuclear threats. Biden has tended to err on the side of caution.

Which is not to say the Americans haven’t given the Ukrainians greater leeway to strike inside Russia with US-donated weaponry. In June, the White House tweaked its policy to allow Ukrainian forces to conduct “counterbattery” attacks on Russian artillery firing on Ukraine from positions just inside Russian territory.

The counterbattery concession has freed the Ukrainian army’s American-made High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems vehicles – the well-known Himars, mostly armed with Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) missiles – to blast Russian forces in and around Kursk, clearing a path for invading Russian troops.

But the Americans still keep another key weapon – the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS – on a short leash. ATACMS is a two-ton, precision-guided ballistic missile that ranges as far as 190 miles with a payload of hundreds of lethal submunitions. A single ATACMS goes in the same Himars-carried box that holds six GMLRS.

ATACMS are highly accurate and travel at speeds in excess of Mach 3, making them very difficult to intercept. The Ukrainian army has used ATACMS to devastating effect against Russian airfields inside Russian-occupied Ukraine. It hasn’t used them against Russian airfields in Russia, from where Russian warplanes stage for attacks on Ukrainian cities.

Which isn’t to say Ukraine is powerless to strike Russian airfields. The Ukrainian intelligence directorate has developed a dizzying array of long-range strike drones and routinely launches them at targets inside Russia. The deepest of these raids may have struck a Russian bomber base in northern Russian a staggering 1,100 miles from Ukraine.

But these drones are slow, relatively easy to intercept and carry fairly small explosive payloads. They travel farther than even the longest-range ATACMS, but they’re much less powerful.

The Russian air force fears ATACMS more than any other weapon. We know this because, this spring and summer, the air force read the tea leaves, wrongly concluded Biden was about to relax restrictions on Ukraine’s ATACMS – and ordered a partial retreat.

In a sort of technological mass migration, dozens of Russian jets and helicopters fled air bases within range of ATACMS and relocated to bases deeper inside Russia – and beyond the rockets’ reach. “Russia is now acting more pre-emptively rather than reactively,” concluded Frontelligence Insight, a Ukrainian analysis group.

Notably, this perceived ATACMS threat didn’t trigger any nuclear escalation. In other words, Russian officials predicted ATACMS raids on Russian territory – and didn’t respond by threatening an atomic apocalypse.

The Biden administration should understand the summer redeployment of Russian jets and helicopters as an indication it can relax its tight leash on Ukraine’s best rockets. Granted, the departure of so many aircraft from vulnerable bases means there are fewer targets for ATACMS to strike.

Fewer, but still plenty. The Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies tracked a wave of evacuating Russian warplanes back in May and, afterward, counted around 280 planes remaining at bases near the Russia-Ukraine border – and within range of ATACMS.

Successive retreats may have further reduced the number of targets, but there will still be some. It’s not too late for Ukraine to strike back at some of the warplanes that are making life in Ukraine a waking nightmare for millions of Ukrainians. It’s not too late to let loose the ATACMS.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, August 28, 2024 12:03 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Whatever.
We get it: you hate Russia for any number of rationalizations. Any way to keep the hate alive.


SECOND: Signym, you forgot what the Russians did after WWII in Eastern Europe: kill the conquered people who had surrendered.blah bkah blah...



That was then. This is now.

You have posted DOZENS of 'reasons' to hate Russia, from something the tsars did hundreds of years ago to an inherent genetic flaw to Stalin to ...

Should we punish Germany for what they did in WWII? How about Cambodia for Pol Pot? China, because of Mao? Britain, for its horrific empire?

Oh, I know! We should punish our own south, for slavery!



Like I said: You'll whip up anything, just to keep your hate alive. If you weren't hating SOMEBODY, what would you do with all the nastiness you have inside?


AFA Eastern Europe ... yanno, some BRITS have a gibbering fear of Russia too. It's just as propaganda based as Eastern Europe. There is no reason why they can't live in peace with Russia, as long as THEY don't threaten Russia with armies and - especially - missiles.

Longer range, and especially nuclear capable longer range missiles like the Tomahawk, aren't defensive weapons. They're offensive. There's nothing about those missile installations that we put in that isn't a direct threat to Russia.

One of the stupidest things that Trump did was drop out of INF treaty. (Well, that, and support Israel) I think he thought he could renegotiate and add China to the package. He just didn't anticipate that neocon pushback would bog him down exactly where neocons wanted us.

If we renegotiated INF everyone would breathe easier.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Wednesday, August 28, 2024 12:41 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Here is a sampling of British paranoia

Quote:

One of the battles I had with the national security establishment in the years up to February 2022 was to persuade them that, despite the intelligence reports and the “wise heads”, Putin was not driven by logic, nor a passion to turn his country into a modern, outward-looking power. He was motivated by revenge, legacy and romance.

...

In Putin’s warped worldview, we were behind the Crimean war and defeat of the Czars, we were behind the rise of Hitler, we were behind the counter-revolution and our espionage was behind the end of the Soviet Union. Britain is in Putin’s crosshairs. One of the most senior members of the Russian Siloviki recently commented: “We know Britain is behind the invasion of Kursk”. We weren’t.

Make no mistake, Putin is coming for us. We must be prepared for the inevitable.



Well. he sounds like a guilty conscience to me. But aside that ... why would Russia be "coming for" Britain? Ben Wallace is inflating both his and Britain's importance in the grand scheme of things. Britain is a bit like Israel: starting a ruckus and expecting us to finish it for them.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Wednesday, August 28, 2024 2:35 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

That was then. This is now.

You have posted DOZENS of 'reasons' to hate Russia, from something the tsars did hundreds of years ago to an inherent genetic flaw to Stalin to ...

Should we punish Germany for what they did in WWII? How about Cambodia for Pol Pot? China, because of Mao? Britain, for its horrific empire?

Oh, I know! We should punish our own south, for slavery!


Signym, did this happen too far into the past to count in your particular scheme of history? 30 Sep 2022 - Putin announces Russian annexation of four Ukrainian regions

The move has been condemned by Ukraine and Western countries and represents a major escalation in the seven-month war.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/30/putin-announces-russian-annex
ation-of-four-ukrainian-regions


At the ceremony on Friday, Putin said Russia has “four new regions”, calling the residents of Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions “our citizens forever”.

“This is the will of millions of people,” he said in the speech before hundreds of dignitaries at the St George’s Hall of the Kremlin.

“We will defend our land with all our strength and all our means,” he added, calling on “the Kyiv regime to immediately cease hostilities and return to the negotiation table”.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, August 28, 2024 3:13 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Signym, did this happen too far into the past to count in your particular scheme of history? 30 Sep 2022 - Putin announces Russian annexation of four Ukrainian regions

The move has been condemned by Ukraine and Western countries and represents a major escalation in the seven-month war.



If Ukraine and the West honored the Minsk agreement... or for that matter, any of their other agreements... instead of diddling Russia for years, decades ... none of this would have happened.

Yes, it was an invasion, but it was hardly "unprovoked". That's what neocons had been aiming at all along, bc they thought we would “win".

NOW they're crying foul bc they're losing? After violating international law for decades?

Pobrecito!

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

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Wednesday, August 28, 2024 3:20 PM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Russians are waking up to Putin’s Ukraine folly

By Ilan Berman | 08/28/24 11:30 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4850053-russian-public-senti
ment-war-ukraine
/

Since the start of its war of aggression against Ukraine some two-and-a-half years ago, the Kremlin has worked diligently to shape the domestic narrative surrounding the conflict. Among other things, it has done so by promoting a vision of a patriotic struggle against fascism, deploying extensive domestic censorship measures, obscuring damning figures about battlefield casualties and passing new laws that effectively criminalize any critical coverage of the conflict.

Cumulatively, this campaign has succeeded in maintaining a comparatively high level of support from ordinary Russians for a fight that has lasted much longer and exacted a much heavier toll than authorities in Moscow originally advertised. But since mid-July, Ukraine’s unexpected incursion into Russia’s Kursk region — and Moscow’s inability to marshal a serious response to it — has shaken public sentiment within Russia.

By just how much? This is documented in a new study by OpenMinds, a Ukrainian data analytics and communications firm. By extensively parsing Russian social media and news outlets, it chronicles that the events in Kursk have impacted popular support for the war among ordinary Russians, as well as increased their dissatisfaction with the Kremlin.
https://www.openminds.ltd/reports/how-the-kursk-region-incursion-shift
ed-russians-attitudes-towards-the-war


Specifically, it notes a surge of content relating to the war as a result of Ukraine’s raid, as well as a significant decline in positive sentiment in posts, broadcasts and messages regarding the broader conflict. This, the study attributes to two causes.

First, it notes, “there have been fewer cheerful publications about the war” by Russia’s extensive state propaganda organs. Second, “there were more grievances compared to the previous two months … [both] blaming the Russian authorities and general panic regarding the incursion.”

Local fears are indeed rising. Russia’s September 2022 “partial mobilization,” as Vladimir Putin’s domestic conscription effort was euphemistically known, proved to be profoundly unpopular at home, sparking a mass exodus of citizens eager to avoid the draft. Now, worries are rising anew that Moscow’s ongoing struggles on the Ukrainian front could prompt the Kremlin to launch a new effort to beef up its military ranks.

The study documents “a growing concern” for renewed mobilization to respond to Ukraine’s incursion. During the first week of Ukraine’s offensive, it notes, “approximately 39 percent of the publications about mobilization mentioned the Kursk incursion” as a potential precipitating factor. So significant was the furor that Russian lawmakers were forced to speak out publicly to refute rumors that plans for a new conscription drive were in the works.

All this has profoundly constrained the Kremlin’s options. Ordinarily, Moscow would be quick to rally the country around Kyiv’s incursion, which it would invariably depict as an “existential threat” to its sovereignty. However, it hasn’t yet done so — something the OpenMinds study suggests is because “the Russian government understands the sociopolitical risks of a new wave of mobilization and fears the potential consequences related to it.”

What all this might mean for Russia is still too early to tell. Policymakers in Moscow have initiated an array of measures in response to the Ukrainian incursion, ranging from declaring a state of emergency in Kursk as well as the neighboring Belgorod region, surging troops into the area, and creating new administrative units to manage the crisis). Still, as NATO officials have noted, Russia’s official response has been “slow and scattered” — at least so far.

Whether it stays that way is still an open question. It’s already clear, however, that Ukraine has accomplished one of the principal aims of its daring military raid: to bring the conflict home to ordinary Russians and underscore that the war of choice embarked upon by their president carries potentially dire consequences for them personally.

Ilan Berman is senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, August 28, 2024 4:19 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Signym, did this happen too far into the past to count in your particular scheme of history? 30 Sep 2022 - Putin announces Russian annexation of four Ukrainian regions

The move has been condemned by Ukraine and Western countries and represents a major escalation in the seven-month war.



If Ukraine and the West honored the Minsk agreement... or for that matter, any of their other agreements... instead of diddling Russia for years, decades ... none of this would have happened.

Yes, it was an invasion, but it was hardly "unprovoked". That's what neocons had been aiming at all along, bc they thought we would “win".

NOW they're crying foul bc they're losing? After violating international law for decades?

Pobrecito!

Signym, do you really believe what the Russians say? I don't believe anything they say. For example: The Russians, once again, threatened to nuke America only yesterday. Russia is like North Korea and its never-ending threats to nuke America. Russians and N Koreans run their mouths about nukes without engaging their brains because it makes them feel powerful, but it is foolish to believe either of them. Russia warns US risks WW3
https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-warns-united-states-risks-world-w
ar-three-2024-08-27
/

I don't believe Russians when they make threats to nuke America or when they "explain" their motivations for invading Ukraine. Russians are constantly talking and all of it is bullshit. The Russians' real motivation to invade Ukraine was to steal land and slaves. Everything else was lies to camouflage their simplistic motives.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, August 29, 2024 5:47 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Multiple reports from Western media indicate that the US government is prohibiting the United Kingdom (UK) from allowing Ukraine to use Storm Shadow missiles to strike military targets in Russia. The Financial Times (FT) reported on August 27 that a source familiar with the matter stated that Ukraine's use of British and French Storm Shadows may require access to American intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in areas where Russian forces are jamming the GPS signals that the missiles use for targeting.[1]

FT reported that "well-placed" sources stated that the UK government sent a request to both the US and France earlier in summer 2024 to grant Ukraine permission to use Western-provided weapons to strike military targets in Russia, and French President Emmanuel Macron stated in May 2024 that Ukraine should be allowed to strike military sites in Russia from which Russian forces attack Ukraine. The Telegraph reported on August 27 that the UK government supports Ukraine's ability to strike military targets in Russia with Storm Shadow missiles but that the missiles also use unspecified, classified American systems, whose use requires US permission.[2] The Telegraph stated in a since-deleted section of its original web article that the UK has not formally asked the US to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadows to strike military targets within Russia, and that a White House source stated that the US is concerned about how the use of the missiles — even without US approval — could escalate the situation and draw the US into the war in Ukraine. The Telegraph reported that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is taking a "consultative approach" to negotiations with the US and does not want to spark a disagreement over the issue.

A source in the UK government reportedly stated that Russia is aware that Ukraine is asking for permission to strike military targets in Russia, so Russia has moved its "most critical assets" out of range of long-range missile systems. ISW continues to assess that although Russian forces have moved aircraft out of range of Western-provided Storm Shadow and ATACMS missiles, a significant number of Russian military objects remain within striking distance of Western weapons, restrictions on which are allowing Russian forces to leverage sanctuary space in deep rear areas within Russia to support military operations against Ukraine.[3]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-august-28-2024


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, August 29, 2024 6:23 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


28 Aug. 2024 16:55

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said: “Ukraine continues to intercept Russian missiles on a daily basis, saving countless lives. But Ukraine’s ability to maintain their defences requires increased supply and more support. In the wake of the latest Russian assault, Allies today reaffirmed they are stepping up their military aid to Ukraine. We must continue to provide Ukraine with the equipment and munitions it needs to defend itself against Russia’s invasion. This is vital for Ukraine’s ability to stay in the fight.”

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_228398.htm

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, August 29, 2024 9:47 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The headless West may be about to save Putin’s neck

Prime Minister Keir Starmer publicly pledges unstinting support for Kyiv. But the reality falls dangerously short

By Con Coughlin • Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor | 29 August 2024 6:45am

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/29/headless-west-save-putin-n
eck
/

If Starmer were really serious about allowing Ukraine to use Storm Shadow properly, he and his ministers would be lobbying Washington to lift its restrictions on their use.

Instead, the uncertainty over whether Ukraine can, or cannot, use the weapons to achieve their military goals against the Russians adds to the impression that providing effective leadership on the Ukraine issue is no longer one of our Government’s major priorities.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, August 29, 2024 1:13 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

SECOND: Signym, do you really believe what the Russians say?


That's a stupid question.


Clearly, you haven't taken to heart what I say about ALL media.

If you can remember that, you'll have your answer.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
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Thursday, August 29, 2024 1:34 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


PS:

Russia is winning.

And

Russia will win.

******

From pro-Russian source
Quote:

SITREP 8/28/24: Tangible Panic Grows in Ukraine Amid Donbass-front Collapse

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-82824-tangible-panic-grows


From pro- Ukrainian source
Quote:

Stelmakhivka And Synkivka Have Fallen Russians Are Storming Selydove Military Summary 2024.08.29



From Ukrainian Tatarigami
Quote:

... if we examine the war theater solely from a tactical standpoint – focusing on individual tree lines or single settlements – we may miss the broader operational objectives of the enemy and the potential consequences for Ukraine if these objectives are achieved.

The backbone of Ukraine’s logistics in Donetsk Oblast is under threat

Pokrovsk, a town with a pre-war population of 60,000, is situated west of Avdiivka at a crucial crossroads of multiple railroad lines. It has become a key delivery and railroad distribution hub, facilitating the supply of Ukrainian forces across a broad frontline, from Vuhledar to the north of Donetsk and beyond.

Currently, only two places in the Donbas serve this vital function – Pokrovsk and Kramatorsk. The significance of the location and length of the supply line becomes clear when viewed on a map:

Pokrovsk, a key road and rail hub in Donbas, on a map



...

If Pokrovsk falls, Russian forces would face minimal obstacles in advancing toward Dnipro, potentially extending their control into another administrative region of Ukraine and broadening the list of occupied oblasts.

Russia’s rapid advance in Donbas undeterred by Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk Oblast


https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/08/28/what-the-fall-of-pokrovsk-could
-mean-for-ukraine
/
https://euromaidanpress.com/author/tatarigami/

Wow. Ukraine really should have paid attention to Kissinger....

-----------

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

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Thursday, August 29, 2024 5:39 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Ukrayinska Pravda
"Friendly fire" by Ukrainian air defence among lines of inquiry into F-16 fighter jet crash – Voice of America
Ukraine's military command is considering different lines of inquiry into the F-16 fighter jet crash, including pilot error and friendly fire from Ukrainian air defences.[specifically a Patriot AD]




https://www.yahoo.com/news/friendly-fire-ukrainian-air-defence-1833544
83.html


-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

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Thursday, August 29, 2024 8:48 PM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The EU's Head of Diplomacy, Josep Borrell, announced on Thursday that he would seek a way to bypass the veto of "one country," referring to the 6 billion euros blocked by Hungary for Ukraine.

Ukraine's Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, emphasized that, given the current situation where Europe's future is in jeopardy, financial support for Ukraine should not be up for financial debate. He stated that he doesn't want to bring up the amount of money that has been used to address other crises in Europe, but noted that these amounts are far greater than what has been allocated to Ukraine.

Borrell and Kuleba emphasized that in light of the recent massive Russian airstrikes, it is crucial to deliver the promised air defense support to Ukraine.

Borrell agreed with Kuleba, emphasizing that well-armed Ukrainian forces have the potential to alter the trajectory of the war. He highlighted that it's not just about Ukraine's ability to defend itself, but also about utilizing the supplied equipment to strike military targets within Russian territory.

https://essanews.com/eu-vows-to-bypass-hungarys-veto-blocking-aid-to-u
kraine,7065274806703745a


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, August 29, 2024 11:59 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Borrell isn't a diplomat. He insulted most of the world by saying the EU is a "garden" and the rest of the world is a "jungle".



**********

PS: Russia is winning. Your bullshit doesn't change that.



-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

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Friday, August 30, 2024 6:55 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The Terrifying Reality of Drone Warfare in Ukraine | Frontline Marathon | Daily Mail
Aug 13, 2024 | 51 minutes 21 seconds



The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, August 30, 2024 7:09 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Borrell isn't a diplomat. He insulted most of the world by saying the EU is a "garden" and the rest of the world is a "jungle".



**********

PS: Russia is winning. Your bullshit doesn't change that.


Signym, you and the Russians have always had peculiar ideas about the meaning of "diplomacy" and "winning". Like "winning" WWII meant tens of millions of dead Russians compared to a few million dead Germans compared to a few hundred thousand dead Americans. Russians are slowly coming to a new understanding of what "winning" means and more and more of them understand that "winning" means not fighting for either a Stalin or a Putin:

Russian authorities are creating new volunteer territorial defense units in response to the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast, highlighting Russian President Vladimir Putin's unwillingness to counter the incursion more seriously with a mobilization due to the risks of societal discontent or with large-scale redeployments due to possible disruptions to Russia's ongoing offensive operations in eastern Ukraine. Acting Kursk Oblast Governor Alexei Smirnov publicly announced on August 29 the creation of the "BARS-Kursk" volunteer detachment and stated that the detachment's main function will be to "ensure security" in Kursk Oblast during the incursion and the re-settlement of border settlements in Kursk Oblast at an unspecified later date.[12] Smirnov stated that the detachment will cooperate with the Russian military and the counterterrorism operational headquarters — which are overseeing the ongoing Russian response in Kursk Oblast — and will also provide humanitarian support for residents of border settlements. Smirnov stated that volunteers will sign six-month contracts, undergo training, and receive any "necessary" weapons to perform their duties. Kursk Oblast officials published a recruitment ad for the detachment on August 24.[13] Ukrainian Kharkiv Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Vitaly Sarantsev reported that Russian authorities are also forming "BARS-Bryansk" and "BARS-Belgorod" detachments and that the three detachments will support the Russian Northern Grouping of Forces.[14] Sarantsev estimated that the three detachments will be comprised of 4,921 volunteers in total.

The formation of these new BARS (Russian Army Combat Reserve) volunteer detachments is consistent with the Kremlin's apparent strategy to avoid re-deploying experienced or combat effective units engaged in fighting in the Pokrovsk or Toretsk directions to Kursk Oblast due to concerns about slowing the tempo of Russian offensive operations in these higher priority directions. ISW previously noted that the Kremlin appears to be largely relying on conscripts and irregular forces redeployed from lower-priority directions in Ukraine to defend against the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast.[15] Putin indicated a possible desire to continue relying on Russian volunteer servicemembers (dobrovoltsy) to address the Ukrainian incursion during his August 12 meeting with Russian military, security, and civilian officials by alluding to increased willingness to sign military service contracts among prospective dobrovoltsy.[16] Putin has consistently relied on volunteer and irregular formations to alleviate Russia's manpower constraints during the war and has avoided declaring general mobilization or another round of partial mobilization, both of which would be incredibly unpopular among Russian society.[17] Putin almost certainly remains extremely averse to declaring general mobilization and will likely continue to rely on irregular formations to address the ongoing Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast until Russian offensive operations culminate in eastern Ukraine — at which point Putin may consider re-deploying more combat effective Russian forces from these directions to push Ukrainian units back across the border.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-august-29-2024


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, August 30, 2024 9:34 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Russian Spy Chief Issues Nuclear Warning About US

By Mandy Taheri | Aug 30, 2024 at 8:49 AM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/russian-spy-chief-issues-nuclear-warning-abou
t-us-1946138


The director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) warned Thursday that the United States is "trying to bring imbalance to the system of international security" in the nuclear sphere, according to state news agency Tass.

Speaking at a conference commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Union's first nuclear bomb test, Sergey Naryshkin described the United States as a "Western totalitarian-liberal regime" that believes in its "impunity" while imposing its will on other countries and the nuclear sphere, Tass said.

Naryshkin, who has served as the SVR's head since 2016, called out Washington's withdrawal from nuclear agreements, including the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action restricting Iran's nuclear program to peaceful purposes. President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the JCPA agreement in 2018.

Naryshkin said that the U.S. "subcritical experiment" on May 14 "is a cause for concern." The U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration said in May that the experiment was executed within the limits of nuclear explosive testing 1,000 feet below the ground at a facility in Nevada.

Naryshkin said, "The experiment wasn't a full-fledged nuclear test and formally, it violates neither the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty nor the U.S. moratorium on nuclear tests," which bans nuclear explosive testing.

"However, it clearly indicates that the U.S. wants to show off that very 'nuclear sledgehammer' that U.S. President Harry Truman had sought to intimidate the Soviet Union with in 1945," he said.
Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Chief Sergei Naryshkin

The U.S. is the only nation to have used such weapons in warfare, when President Truman ordered the dropping of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, which ended World War II. During the Cold War, the U.S. and Russia engaged in a fierce nuclear arms race.

In his speech, Naryshkin said that U.S. nuclear policy and intimidation "didn't work back then and it won't work now," adding that the lessons of World War II and the Cold War "are quickly forgotten by those who find it beneficial."

Newsweek reached out via email to the Russian government and the U.S. State Department for comment on Thursday.

Since Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which brought a war that has lasted over two and a half years, global tensions and threats of nuclear warfare have escalated.

It is difficult to specify the number of global nuclear arsenals. A 2024 report by the Federation of American Scientists estimates that Russia has 5,580 nuclear warheads, the U.S. has 5,044, and China has 500. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute says Russia and the U.S. possess 4,380 and 3,708, respectively. The U.S. government said in September 2023 that the nation had 3,748 nuclear warheads.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, August 30, 2024 1:17 PM

THG


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Ukraine could not have invaded Kursk without western ISR and planning

This whole "We didn't know what Ukraine was doing" is just implausible deniability.







So what, what are you going to do about it you Russia loser? Truth be known, if you do live in America then your tax dollars are funding the war against Putin. The Ukranian people thank you.

Too funny...

T


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Friday, August 30, 2024 4:47 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Over 70% of Ukrainians believe that all Russians are responsible for war against Ukraine

By Valentyna Romanenko | Thursday, 29 August 2024, 15:51

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/08/29/7472509/

The vast majority of Ukrainians hold all Russians accountable for the aggression against Ukraine; additionally, 64.5% believe that the Russian population is pressuring their country's leadership to continue the war.

Source: the results of a nationwide survey conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the Razumkov Centre Sociological Service from 8 to 15 August 2024

Quote: "76% of Ukrainians believe that all Russians are responsible for the aggression against Ukraine, while 20% disagree. This issue is dominated by certainty in society, with only 4% not having a clear position on the subject. And, regardless of age, most respondents agree that Russians bear collective responsibility."

At the same time, 64.5% of respondents believe that the Russian population is pressuring the Russian leadership to continue the war against Ukraine.

Furthermore, sociologists say this applies to both the youngest and oldest generations of Ukrainians (66% among young people aged 18 to 29 and 60% among those aged 60 and up).

Reference: The face-to-face survey was conducted in Vinnytsia, Volyn, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Zakarpattia, Zaporizhzhia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Rivne, Sumy, Ternopil, Kharkiv, Kherson, Khmelnytskyi, Cherkasy and Chernihiv oblasts, as well as the city of Kyiv (in Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson oblasts—only in those territories controlled by Ukraine and in which no hostilities are being conducted.).

Sociologists interviewed 2,017 respondents aged 18 and up. The theoretical sampling error does not exceed 2.3%. At the same time, additional systematic sample deviations could be attributed to the consequences of Russian aggression, specifically the forced evacuation of millions of citizens.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, August 30, 2024 6:36 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Ukraine could not have invaded Kursk without western ISR and planning
This whole "We didn't know what Ukraine was doing" is just implausible deniability.

THUGR: So what, what are you going to do about it you Russia loser? Truth be known, if you do live in America then your tax dollars are funding the war against Putin. The Ukranian people thank you.

Too funny...


Me?
Nothing.
This is for Russia to handle, stupid.
And they did.

Here's what's happened so far:

Ukraine spent a couple of months diddling the BRICS and Russia with talks of negotiation while they collected their forces. Their primary objective was the Kursk NPP. But given all the time and effort Ukraine spent whining for "deep strike" missiles during their Kurk operation, it seems that was their secondary objective.

So, how many ways did Ukraine shoot itself in the foot by invading Kursk?

First of all, they failed to reach the Kursk NPP. At this point Ukrainian forces are at a dead standstill in Kursk, after taking HEAVY losses.

Second, they lost all credibility with the BRICS nations by invading, after claiming they were up for negotiations. Not that it means anything to Ukraine, but the BRICS nations have STFU and stopped pressuring Russia to negotiate. However much the BRICS states inhibited Russia's military, that's been removed.

Third, by withdrawing forces from the strategic Donbas front (in favor of a front that has no military targets) they've opened the way for Russia's fast- paced push to Pekrovsk, which IS militarily strategic.

Fourth, they have apparently failed to wring approval from the EU (and most likely Biden*) for firing Storm Shadows (and ATACMS) into Kursk or elsewhere into Russia proper. Most people think that the EU and USA have already crossed multiple Russian "red lines". But as The Duran's Mercouris has been pointing out over and over for (literally) months, Russia's ACTUAL red line had to do with USA's ATACMS, UK's Storm Shadows, or the German Taurus missiles being fired into pre-2014 Russia. Not tanks, not HIMARS, etc. The reason is simple: those missiles REQUIRE PROGRAMMING BY WESTERN TECHNICIANS. That means that western forces would be directly and officially engaged in acts of war with Russia. And Russia has since made very clear that their nuclear doctrine is being "adjusted" to take "current realities" into consideration. Lavrov, Russia's Foreign Minister, pointedly said that America feels itself safe on the other side of the ocean but doesn't mind sacrificing European countries.

So Ukraine achieved none of its goals, but instead made a giant, most likely fatal, military and political blunder.

Now they're going to have to shuffle their soldiers back to Pakrovsk, bc if they lose that city they've lost a critical rail and road hub for transferring men and materiel along the front line.

In addition, everyone seems to agree that beyond Pakrovsk there are no natural or manmade defense barriers all the way to the Dnieper, and we might see an actual thunder run into Ukraine.

Timing is important. If Ukraine manages to hold onto Pakrovsk into the mud season, I don't think we'll see tanks charging across the steppes (prairies) of Ukraine. That would have to wait until winter, when the ground freezes. It's also possible that Russia is planning no such thing.

So far, Russia has managed the financial, economic, military production, internal support, foreign relations, and military tactics and strategy quite well in this WAR WITH NATO. They've made mistakes, most notably in the beginning when they tried to bluff Zelenskiy into negotiating. In fact, entering into negotiations with the west so far has ALWAYS been a mistake, since the west isn't capable of sticking to its agreements.




-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Friday, August 30, 2024 6:55 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Scott, of Kalibrated, seems to offer a balanced analysis. He starts with the DeepState mapping project, from Ukrainian sources.

Quote:




-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Saturday, August 31, 2024 3:42 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

US to give Zelensky ‘free hand’ on strikes deep inside Russia – Moscow
Washington has effectively become a party to the Ukraine conflict, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova has said.

Washington is prepared to lift its ban on Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia’s territory with the use of US-supplied weapons, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

Last week, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said that US “policy does allow for Ukraine to conduct counter fires to defend itself from Russian attacks coming over that border region,” including Kursk Region, where an incursion by Kiev’s forces has been ongoing since early August.

On Monday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Washington was aware of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s “desire” to be allowed to fire US weapons such as ATACMS missiles, which have a range of up to 300km (186 miles), deep into Russia. “We will keep the conversations with the Ukrainians going [on the issue], but we are going to keep them private,” he said.

“Extremely serious conclusions” can be drawn from the latest statements coming from Washington, Zakharova said on Friday. “Ukraine has been given a carte blanche for operations in Russian regions,” she added.

“Furthermore, the administration of [US President] Joe Biden is obviously getting ready to make new concessions to Zelensky and give him a free hand to use virtually any type of American weapons, including [for attacks] deep into Russian territory,” the spokeswoman stressed, as cited by RIA Novosti.

Through its continued support for Kiev, Washington “has effectively become a party to the armed conflict over Ukraine,” she insisted.

“The US course towards escalation is becoming increasingly outrageous. It seems that the American elites have cast aside the last vestiges of common sense and believe that anything is allowed to them,” Zakharova said.

Earlier this week, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov compared the US and their allies to “children playing with matches” over their continued speculations about greenlighting Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russian territory. “It is a very dangerous thing to do for grown-ups, who are entrusted with nuclear weapons in one or another Western country,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned earlier that Moscow might engage in an asymmetrical response to the US supply of long-range systems to Ukraine, by arming groups or countries hostile to Washington – such as North Korea – with advanced weaponry.



Well, Mercouris may be right after all. He's been predicting for weeks that Biden* will give in to Zekenskiy demands, since Biden* has given in to every other demand.

I can't imagine what these neocons think they're doing. The only thing I can think of is that they're counting on the Kremlin's rationality not to escalate to nuclesr weapons or a direct strike on the USA, and hope that this will dent Putin's popularity before November. It's like a last gamble/ game of chicken with these guys.

I suppose if Russia wanted to reply somewhat symmetrically, it could give advan ed weapons to a proxy to fire on American troops somewhere.

Oy vey.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Saturday, August 31, 2024 6:56 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


European Union (EU) member state officials continue to express divergent views about Ukraine's ability to use European-provided weapons to strike military targets in Russia. EU High Commissioner Josep Borrell stated on August 30 that the decision to lift such restrictions is up to each EU member state individually, as not all EU states have provided Ukraine with long-range weapons.[1]

Czech President Petr Pavel stated on August 30 that Ukraine should decide how to use its Western-provided weapons in accordance with the United Nations (UN) Charter.[2]

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur urged Western partners to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to use Western-provided weapons to strike military targets in Russia.[3]

Polish Deputy Defense Minister Pawel Zalewski stated on August 30 that Poland supports lifting restrictions on Ukraine's ability to conduct long-range strikes against military targets in Russia using Polish-provided weapons.[4]

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani stated on August 29 that Italy will not allow Ukraine to use Italian-provided weapons for strikes against military targets on Russian territory as neither NATO nor Italy are at war with Russia.[5] Italy has reportedly supplied Ukraine with Storm Shadow missiles.[6]

The United Kingdom reportedly seeks to allow Ukrainian forces to use UK-provided Storm Shadows for strikes into Russia, but US prohibitions are preventing the United Kingdom from unilaterally doing so.[7]

Italy's refusal to allow Ukraine to use Italian-provided Storm Shadows for such strikes suggests that Ukrainian forces may have to abide by different rules for the use of the same missile type depending on the country of origin.

ISW has previously assessed that Western allies' divergent policies on weapons use complicate logistics for Ukrainian forces, who must carefully navigate the origins and guidelines of the weapons to abide by specific regulations.[8]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-august-30-2024


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, August 31, 2024 6:59 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


'Would you blame Hungarians for Soviet invasion?' - Von der Leyen criticizes those who 'muddy the waters' on Ukraine

By Martin Fornusek | August 30, 2024 2:48 PM

https://kyivindependent.com/would-you-blame-hungarians-for-1956-von-de
r-leyen-blasts-those-who-muddy-waters-on-ukraine
/

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Aug. 30 criticized certain EU politicians for "muddying the waters" and shifting the blame for Russia's war on Ukraine, drawing historical comparisons to Soviet aggression in Central Europe.

"They blame the war not on the invader but on the invaded. Not on (Vladimir) Putin's lust for power, but on Ukraine's thirst for freedom," von der Leyen said at the Globsec conference in Prague, attended by the Kyiv Independent.

"So I want to ask them: would you ever blame the Hungarians for the Soviet invasion of 1956? Would you ever blame the Czechs for the Soviet oppression of 1968?"

Von der Leyen, recently re-elected as head of the EU's executive arm, did not name these politicians, but insinuated they hail from Central Europe.

The Hungarian and Slovak governments have been vocal critics of the EU's support for Ukraine, opposing military aid while continuing to strengthen economic ties with Russia.

"The Kremlin's behavior was evil and atrocious back then, and it is evil and atrocious today," the EU official said.

Von der Leyen also criticized Europe's pre-2022 "illusion" that greater economic integration with Russia would lead to more stability.

"What was supposed to be the source of security, because the source of vulnerability," von der Leyen said, adding that Putin's attempts at energy blackmail has failed as Europe has developed its own capacities.

She emphasized that Europe has begun taking its defense seriously, but warned that significant work and investment are needed.

To that end, she announced plans to introduce the first-ever EU Defense Commissioner. Currently, security and defense issues are handled by various officials, such as the Market Commissioner and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs.

Earlier at the Globsec conference, Czech President Petr Pavel noted that Ukraine and its allies are facing "a long conflict with an uncertain outcome."

"The time can, however, work in Ukraine's and our favor, but only if we pull ourselves together and learn lessons of the past 2.5 years," Pavel said.

"At this point, we are dealing with Russia that still believes it has no reason to change its course of action."

Pavel called for long-term, predictable support, stronger sanctions enforcement, and outreach to third countries to prevent them from helping Moscow evade sanctions.

"Russia must grow to an understanding that persisting in this misguided war will no longer be in their interest," Pavel said.

"The Ukrainians are doing more than their part to drive this message home. They pay the highest price – their lives. Whatever we do to support them will never bear the same price tag."

Government officials, experts, and journalists from Europe and beyond have gathered in Prague for the three-day conference, which is addressing today's main security challenges, with Russia's war as a key focus.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, August 31, 2024 7:03 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Russia jails journalist for spreading ‘fake news’ about army in Ukraine war

Sergei Mikhailov was arrested in 2022 after publishing reports about Ukrainian civilian deaths in Bucha and Mariupol. (Reports since confirmed by heaps of tortured bodies left by the Russians)

30 Aug 2024

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/30/russia-jails-journalist-for-s
preading-fake-news-about-army-in-ukraine-war


A court in Russia has sentenced journalist Sergei Mikhailov to eight years in prison for “intentionally spreading false information” about the Russian army, a human rights group confirmed.

Prosecutors in Gorno-Altaysk, a city in the southern Altay region that lies in the foothills of the Altai Mountains, said the 48-year-old was motivated by “political hatred,” Net Freedoms Project said on Friday on its Telegram channel.

The court also imposed a four-year ban on the reporter’s journalistic and publishing activities, it added.

Mikhailov, a journalist and editor at Listok, was arrested in 2022 near Moscow for posting on the publication’s Telegram channel and website about the murder of civilians in Bucha, northwest of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, and about Russian shelling and killings in the southeastern city of Mariupol.

The events in both Ukrainian cities came to represent the worst of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rights groups have said.

The journalist denies any wrongdoing and his defence is expected to take the stand next week, according to Net Freedoms Project.

Earlier this week, Mikhailov told the court that he stood by his reporting and harshly criticised the Kremlin for sending troops to Ukraine.

He said the Russian state narrative of calling the Ukrainian leadership “fascist” had “created a whole virtual universe in the information space, and this fog became stronger and stronger”.

“My publications were aimed against this fog, so that my readers were not seduced by lies, so that they do not take part in armed conflicts, do not become murderers and victims and so that they do not harm the brotherly Ukrainian people,” Mikhailov said, in an audio of the speech published by Listok on social media.

Mikhailov was arrested started soon after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

While President Vladimir Putin has been tightening Russia’s grip on media freedoms and freedom of expression over the past decade, repression and a crackdown on dissent have intensified dramatically since the start of the war, watchdogs say.

Three months after the invasion, Putin expanded laws against “foreign agents” to include nonprofit organisations, media outlets, journalists and activists. This meant that organisations receiving any foreign support – including any donations or other funding – could be designated as foreign agents.

In 2023, Putin pushed for war censorship laws criminalising anyone who could be accused of discrediting the Russian armed forces or sharing information about their conduct that doesn’t subscribe to the government line. Those accused of breaching these laws could be jailed for up to 15 years.

With state censorship resulting in the closure of several independent media outlets and the persecution of prominent journalists, hundreds of reporters have fled into exile. Others have remained in Russia at great cost.

According to human rights group OVD-Info, more than 1,000 people are now defending themselves in criminal cases initiated because of their criticism of the Ukraine war.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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