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Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

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UPDATED: Saturday, November 23, 2024 10:01
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Monday, September 16, 2024 6:12 AM

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


'Punishing Putin' Review: A Masterful Glimpse Into the World of Economic Sanctions

By Keith Johnson | September 13, 2024, 3:00 PM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/09/13/punishing-putin-review-us-economi
c-sanctions-russia-war-ukraine/

In the summer of 1941, the United States sought to leverage its economic dominance over Japan by imposing a full oil embargo on its increasingly threatening rival. The idea was to use overwhelming economic might to avoid a shooting war; in the end, of course, U.S. economic sanctions backed Tokyo into a corner whose only apparent escape was the attack on Pearl Harbor. Boomerangs aren’t the only weapons that can rebound.

Stephanie Baker, a veteran Bloomberg reporter who has spent decades covering Russia, has written a masterful account of recent U.S. and Western efforts to leverage their financial and technological dominance to bend a revanchist Russia to their will. It has not gone entirely to plan. Two and a half years into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, Russia’s energy revenues are still humming along, feeding a war machine that finds access to high-tech war materiel, including from the United States. Efforts to pry Putin’s oligarchs away from him have driven them closer. Moscow has faced plenty of setbacks, most recently by losing control of a chunk of its own territory near Kursk, but devastating sanctions have not been one of them.

Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia is first and foremost a flat-out rollicking read, the kind of book you press on friends and family with proselytizing zeal. Baker draws on decades of experience and shoe-leather reporting to craft the best account of the Western sanctions campaign yet. Her book is chock-full of larger-than-life characters, sanctioned superyachts, dodgy Cypriot enablers, shadow fleets, and pre-dawn raids.

More than a good tale, it is a clinical analysis of the very tricky balancing acts that lie behind deploying what has become Washington’s go-to weapon. The risky decision just after the invasion to freeze over $300 billion in central bank holdings and cut off the Russian banking system hurt Moscow, sure. But even Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh, one of the architects of the Biden administration’s response, told National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that he feared the sanctions’ “catastrophic success” could blow up global financial markets. And that was before the West decided to take aim at Russia’s massive oil and gas exports, which it did with a series of half-hearted measures beginning later that year.

The bigger reason to cherish Punishing Putin is that it offers a glimpse into the world to come as great-power competition resurges with a vengeance. The U.S. rivalry with China plays out, for now, in fights over duties, semiconductors, and antimony. As Singh tells Baker, “We don’t want that conflict to play out through military channels, so it’s more likely to play out through the weaponization of economic tools—sanctions, export controls, tariffs, price caps, investment restrictions.”

The weaponization of economic tools, as Baker writes, may have started more than a millennium ago when another economic empire was faced with problematic upstarts. In 432 B.C., Athens, the Greek power and trading state supreme, levied a strict trade embargo on the city-state of Megara, an ally of Sparta—a move that, according to some scholars, sparked the Peloponnesian War. (Athens couldn’t break the habit: Not long after, it again bigfooted a neighbor, telling Melos that the “strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”) The irony of course is that Athens, the naval superpower, eventually lost the war to its main rival thanks to a maritime embargo.

It can be tempting to leverage economic tools, but it is difficult to turn them into a precision weapon, or even avoid them becoming counterproductive. The British empire’s 19th-century naval stranglehold and love of blockades helped bring down Napoleon but started a small war with the United States in the process.

Britain was never shy about using its naval and financial might to throw its weight around, but even the pound sterling never acquired the centrality that the U.S. dollar has today in a much bigger, much more integrated system of global trade and finance. That “exorbitant privilege,” in the words of French statesman Giscard D’Estaing, enabled the post-World War II United States to take both charitable (the Marshall Plan, for starters) and punitive economic statecraft to new heights.

The embargoes on Communist Cuba or revolutionary Iran were just opening acts, it turned out, for a turbocharged U.S. approach to leveraging its financial hegemony that finally flourished with the so-called war on terror and rogue states, a story well-told in books such as Juan Zarate’s Treasury Goes to War or Richard Nephew’s The Art of Sanctions.

Osama bin Laden is dead, Kabul is lost, Cuba’s still communist, and a Kim still runs North Korea, but the love of sanctions has never waned in Washington. If anything, given an aversion to casualties and a perennial quest for low-cost ways to impose its will, Washington has grown even fonder of using economic sticks with abandon. The use of sanctions rose under President Barack Obama, and again under Donald Trump; the Biden administration has not only orchestrated the unprecedented suite of sanctions on Putin’s Russia, but also taken Trump’s trade war with China even further.

Despite U.S. sanctions’ mixed record, the almighty dollar can certainly strike fear in countries that are forced to toe a punitive line they might otherwise try to skirt. Banks in third countries—say, a big French lender—could be forced to uphold Washington’s sanctions on Iran regardless of what French policy might dictate. Those so-called secondary sanctions raise hackles at times in places such as Paris and Berlin, prompting periodic calls for “financial sovereignty” from the tyranny of the greenback. But little has changed. Countries that want to continue having functioning banks have little choice but to act as the enforcers of Washington’s will.

What is genuinely surprising, as Baker chronicles, is that the growth of sanctions as the premier tool of U.S. foreign policy has not been matched by a commensurate growth in the corps of people charged with drafting and enforcing them. The Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Treasury Department’s main sanctions arm, is overworked and understaffed. A lesser-known but equally important branch, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, struggles to vet a vast array of export controls and restrictions with a stagnant staff and stillborn budget. Post-Brexit Britain has faced even steeper challenges in leaping onto the Western sanctions bandwagon, having to recreate in the past few years a new body almost from scratch to enforce novel economic punishments.

Punishing Putin is not, despite the book’s subtitle, about an effort to “bring down” Russia. The sanctions—ranging from individual travel and financial bans on Kremlin oligarchs to asset forfeiture to sweeping measures intended to kneecap the ruble and drain Moscow’s coffers—are ultimately meant to weaken Putin’s ability to continue terrorizing his neighbor. In that sense, they are not working.

One of the strengths of Punishing Putin is Baker’s seeming ability to have spoken with nearly everybody important on those economic frontlines. She details the spadework that took place in Washington, London, and Brussels even before Russian tanks and missiles flew across Ukraine’s borders in February 2022, and especially in the fraught days and weeks afterward. It takes a special gift to make technocrats into action heroes.

The bulk of Baker’s wonderful book centers on the fight to sanction and undermine the oligarchs loyal to Putin who have helped prop up his kleptocracy. Perhaps, as Baker suggests, Western thinking was that whacking the oligarchs would lead to a palace coup against Putin. There was a coup, but not from the oligarchs—and it ended first with a whimper and then a mid-air bang.

There are a couple of problems with that approach, as Baker lays out in entertaining chronicles of hunts for superyachts and Jersey Island holding companies. First, it’s tricky to actually seize much of the ill-gotten billions in oligarch hands; the U.S. government is spending millions of dollars on upkeep for frozen superyachts, for example, but can’t yet turn them into money for Ukraine. And second, the offensive has not split the oligarchs from Putin: To the contrary, a Kremlin source tells Baker, “his power is much stronger because now they’re in his hands.”

At any rate, while the hunt for $60 billion or so in gaudy loot is fun to read about, the real sanctions fight is over Russia’s frozen central bank reserves—two-thirds of which are in the European Union—and the ongoing efforts to strangle its energy revenues without killing the global economy. Baker is outstanding on these big issues, whether that’s with a Present at the Creation-esque story of the fight over Russia’s reserves and the ensuing battle to seize them, or an explanation of the fiendishly complicated details of the “oil price cap” that hasn’t managed to cap Russian oil revenues much at all. More on those bigger fights would have made a remarkable book a downright stunner.

The Western sanctions on Russia, as sweeping and unprecedented as they are, have not ended Putin’s ability to prosecute the war. They have made life more difficult for ordinary Russians and brought down Russia’s energy export revenues, but they have not yet severed the sinews of war. “But, in fact, the West didn’t hit Russia with the kitchen sink,” Baker writes. Greater enforcement of sanctions, especially on energy, will be crucial to ratchet up the pressure and start to actually punish Putin, she argues. The one thing that is unlikely is that the sanctions battle will end anytime soon—not with Putin’s Russia, and not with other revisionist great powers such as China, whose one potential weakness is the asymmetric might of U.S. money.

“As long as Putin is sitting in the Kremlin,” Baker concludes, “the economic war will continue.”

Download Stephanie Baker’s Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia from https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Punishing+Putin

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

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Monday, September 16, 2024 7:06 AM

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


Ukraine has both the highest mortality rate and the lowest birth rate in the world

By Ben Aris in Berlin September 15, 2024

https://www.intellinews.com/ukraine-has-both-the-highest-mortality-rat
e-and-the-lowest-birth-rate-in-the-world-says-cia-343382/

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

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Tuesday, September 17, 2024 6:22 AM

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


Ukraine has taken steps to address its manpower shortages, but delays and insufficiencies in Western military aid to Ukraine continue to limit its ability to generate effective combat units that can defend critical areas and contest the theater-wide initiative. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated in an interview with CNN on September 13 that Ukraine "needs 14 brigades to be ready" for an unspecified requirement and that Ukraine has not been able to equip "even four" of these brigades with slowly arriving Western aid.[1] Zelensky noted that Ukraine has been increasing its domestic production of drones and transferring equipment from warehouses or reserve brigades to attempt to offset insufficient Western military assistance to Ukraine. Zelensky stated that these insufficient provisions, particularly of armored vehicles and artillery ammunition, have led to Ukrainian personnel losses. Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada Defense Committee Chairperson Oleksandr Zavitnevych told the Financial Times on September 16 that Ukrainian mobilization is "on track" and that newly trained forces could "impact" the battlefield likely in three months.[2] Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Lieutenant General Oleksandr Pavlyuk stated in May 2024 that Ukraine was working to stand up 10 new Ukrainian brigades but that equipment, not manpower, was the main bottleneck in Ukraine's defensive operations.[3] ISW has long assessed that Ukraine's ability to defend against Russian offensive operations and challenge the theater-wide initiative heavily depends on both the Western provision of miliary aid and Ukraine's efforts to reconstitute existing units and create new ones — the latter of which Ukraine has taken significant steps to resolve.[4] Ukrainian forces have partially mitigated the artillery ammunition shortages that resulted from delays in Western aid provisions by using first-person view (FPV) drones to blunt Russian infantry and armored vehicle assaults, but current FPV drones are unable to offset the tactical requirements of traditional field artillery.[5] Ukraine has taken steps to boost its domestic production of 155mm artillery ammunition, but Ukraine has had to build these industries largely from scratch during wartime.[6] Ukraine has also been working to increase its production of armored vehicles, including armored personnel carriers (APCs), since 2022, but Ukraine cannot manufacture complete tanks.[7] The US and other foreign allies likely can greatly increase the effectiveness of Ukrainian force-generation and force-reconstitution efforts by providing Ukrainian forces with more mechanized equipment, such as M113 armored personnel carriers, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, and main battle tanks. Ukraine’s 155th Infantry Brigade was recently upgraded to a mechanized infantry brigade after the brigade was equipped with Leopard tanks, for example.[8] The generation of more Ukrainian infantry without a commensurate increase in mechanized equipment will not substantially increase Ukraine’s combat power or increase Ukraine’s warfighting capabilities.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-september-16-2024

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

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Tuesday, September 17, 2024 8:40 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 risk of Ukraine losing the war this winter has pushed Washington and London to reconsider how Kyiv uses Western-supplied long-range missiles, but Biden remains fearful of escalation.

Currently, 55 percent of Ukraine’s energy is generated by its three operating nuclear power stations. Russian missile and drone strikes have destroyed 9 gigawatts of the country’s electrical generating capacity — that’s half of the peak winter consumption — with 80 percent of thermal generation from coal- and gas-fired power plants and a third of hydroelectric production capacity wiped out by bombing.

Paralyze the three nuclear power stations and it’s game over for Ukraine in the energy war, diminishing its war-fighting capacity, crashing the economy and weakening its position if peace negotiations do ever commence.

And according to officials in Kyiv, it’s the fear of this happening that’s been one of the factors driving the Biden administration to reconsider the restrictions Washington set up when Russian airstrikes started targeting the main substations feeding operational electricity to the nuclear power plants in late August. “That concentrated minds,” said one Ukrainian official.

https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-ukraine-nuclear-plants-energy-w
ar-joe-biden-united-states-nato/

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

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Wednesday, September 18, 2024 6:25 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 Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office opened an investigation into another case of apparent Russian abuse and execution of a Ukrainian prisoner of war (POW). Graphic social media images circulated on September 16 shows the body of a Ukrainian servicemember whom Russian forces evidently executed with a sword bearing the inscription "for Kursk."[1] X (formerly Twitter) users geolocated the images to Novohrodivka, Donetsk Oblast.[2] Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov recently confirmed that elements of the Russian 30th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Combined Arms Army, Central Military District) and 1435th Motorized Rifle Regiment (likely a mobilized regiment) seized Novohrodivka in early September — potentially implicating members and command of these two formations with the execution.[3] The footage shows the Ukrainian servicemember clearly disarmed, wearing no protective equipment, and with remnants of duct tape around his wrists, suggesting that Russian forces captured, disarmed, and forcibly detained the servicemember.[4] The Geneva Convention on POWs prohibits the "mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture" of POWs, as well as the execution of POWs or persons who are clearly hors de combat.[5] The apparent circumstances of this particular execution, particularly the use of a sword with an inscription that implies that Russian forces executed the POW in some sort of retaliation for Ukraine's Kursk operation, likely fall firmly into the category of mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture of an unarmed POW. This most recent report of Russia's abuse of Ukrainian POWs is consistent with the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU)'s March 2024 report, which documented and verified widespread abuse and executions of Ukrainian POWs at the hands of Russian forces.[6] The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office announced that it started an investigation into violation of the laws and customs of war and intentional murder in regard to the apparent execution of the servicemember.[7] Ukrainian law enforcement is also currently investigating 84 cases of potential Russian execution of Ukrainian POWs.[8] ISW has reported on apparent Russian executions of Ukrainian POWs in August 2024, July 2024, June 2024, May 2024, and several different incidents in February 2024 alone and has routinely assessed that Russian commanders are either complacent or enabling their subordinates to engage in such atrocities in clear violation of international law.[9]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-september-17-2024

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

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Thursday, September 19, 2024 5:22 AM

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


US Says Zelensky's Victory Plan 'Can Work'

Updated Sep 18, 2024 at 1:01 PM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/us-says-ukraine-peace-plan-can-work-1955639

U.S. officials have been briefed on Ukraine's "Victory Plan" and are confident that the proposal could bring an end to the yearslong conflict.

"We have seen President Zelensky's peace plan. We think it lays out a strategy and a plan that can work," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said during a press briefing on Tuesday.

Newsweek has contacted the Ukrainian government for further information on the Victory Plan.

On Monday, Zelensky said that the "military, political, diplomatic and economic" aspects of his Victory Plan had been ironed out, and that the strategy would be presented to Ukraine's allies next week.

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

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Thursday, September 19, 2024 5:27 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 Russian State Duma announced on September 18 that it approved a bill in its first reading that proposes releasing Russian servicemembers serving in Ukraine from criminal punishment associated with cases actively being tried in Russian courts.[79] The bill would allow Russian courts, prosecutors, or investigators to suspend criminal cases against Russian servicemembers serving in Ukraine. Russian authorities have previously adopted legislation allowing Russian courts and officials to dismiss criminal cases against active and prospective Russian servicemembers during pre-trial investigations and forgive criminal charges following sentencing, and this new bill would essentially empower Russian authorities to dismiss a criminal case against Russian servicemembers at will.[80]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-september-18-2024

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

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Thursday, September 19, 2024 5:28 AM

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


Ukraine war analyst says Russia keeps surprising him with just how bad its soldiers are: 'The bar is very, very low'

By Sinéad Baker | Sept 18, 2024

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-keeps-surprising-with-how-bad-i
ts-soldiers-are-expert-2024-9

A Ukraine war analyst told Business Insider that while watching this conflict, he's been continually surprised by how poorly trained Russia's soldiers are. Even when he thinks they can't get any worse, they somehow find a way.

"I find myself being surprised with the new depths of how poor the Russian individual soldier quality is," George Barros, a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, said.

Each batch of new recruits gets progressively worse as Russia rushes them off to battle, he said. "It's becoming really difficult for me to see what other additional shortcuts they could take, other than maybe deploying just people unfit for service," such as people with disabilities or who are too old.

"But the bar is very, very low at this point," Barros said.

Captured Russian soldiers, war experts, Ukrainian troops, and Western intelligence have all pointed to Russian troops being poorly trained and treated as disposable throughout the war.

The poor training, coupled with the intensity of the war, has resulted in quick deaths: In October 2022, only one month after Russia announced a mobilization of 300,000 Russian citizens, some of those new soldiers were already dead, having only received days of training before being sent to Ukraine.

Russia's losses have risen recently as Russian troops continue to suffer from deficiencies in training.

US intelligence estimated in December that Russia had lost 87% of the troops it had before the start of its full-scale invasion, meaning it started the new year without the vast majority of its professional army, which had its own problems. It is now largely fighting with a replacement force that's been hastily thrown together.

Russia's losses, while they have been high since the start of its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, appear to have soared in recent months.

The UK Ministry of Defence said in July that more than 70,000 Russian troops were likely killed or wounded between May and June. It blamed "an effective Ukrainian defense and a lack of Russian training" as Russia fought in multiple sectors.

That rate — more than 1,100 casualties a day — appears to have continued, with Ukraine regularly reporting similar Russian losses every day, including 1,140 casualties reported in 24 hours last Wednesday. Business Insider could not independently verify the reported Ukrainian figures.

In addition to the poor training Russian troops receive, Barros also said Russia has been running operations at a fast tempo across multiple sectors of the front for almost a year now. It "has been just sort of sprinting for a very long time," he said.

Quantity, not quality

In some ways, Russia's high losses have been part of its strategy: Russia has a much larger population and military than Ukraine, and it can use those soldiers to try and overwhelm Ukraine's forces.

Barros said that Russia's "whole theory of victory is based on mass, not individual excellence."

He said Russia was inspired by the Soviet army victories in World War II. "They won their wars not because of the individual excellence of soldiers or units," Barros said. "It's because the Soviet Union found a way to be able to wage effective operational war with large masses of essentially uneducated, individually ineffective soldiers, but together with mass, were able to achieve what they needed."

(Absolutely predictable that Russia would have tens of millions of dead during WWII versus Germany’s few million dead versus America’s 418,500 dead. The Russian leadership did not and still does not place a high value on lives other than their own.)

In its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has repeatedly used "meat wave" tactics rooted, in some ways, in the Soviet "Not a step back!" doctrine. These brutal Russian tactics have involved sending waves of untrained, poorly equipped soldiers forward to overwhelm Ukrainian positions before sending more skilled soldiers forward.

Russia has been able to reconstitute and sustain losses, replacing killed or wounded troops with new recruits, but there are challenges. Russia can't take severe losses indefinitely.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not made any attempt to launch a mass mobilization since 2022. Russia experts and Western intelligence have said the move is a politically risky one that he appears unwilling to take.

That limits its pool of new soldiers. Instead, Russia has recruited prisoners, used citizens of allies and partner countries like Cuba, and used men already in military service in a reserve capacity.

Matthew Savill, a military-strategy expert at the Royal United Services Institute think tank and a former intelligence analyst at the UK Ministry of Defence, told BI that Russia's weak response to Ukraine's attack on its Kursk region, which started last month, may partly be because "Russian reserves aren't as extensive as we think they are."

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

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Friday, September 20, 2024 7:34 AM

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


Mobilization in Russia remains unlikely in the near to medium term due to Putin’s personal fear that mobilization is a direct threat to his regime’s stability. ISW observed reports speculating about the possibility of Russia declaring another mobilization wave prior to Putin’s inauguration and following the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast in August 2024, but Putin has not yet authorized such mobilization.[4] Russian opposition outlet Meduza reported that sources close to the Russian government claimed that the Kremlin entertained the idea of mobilization immediately after Ukraine's incursion, but that the Russian Cabinet of Ministers and Kremlin-affiliated businessmen opposed these considerations.[5] Putin has also been consistently signaling throughout the incursion his commitment to recruiting volunteers by boasting about the number of volunteers interested in fighting in Ukraine and meeting with Russian volunteers in response to the incursion.[6] Putin notably did not seize on the incursion as an opportunity to condition Russian society for mobilization in the immediate to medium term, instead choosing to form new irregular formations and expand Russian volunteer recruitment efforts.[7] The Kremlin and the Russian MoD notably shocked Russian society with the declaration of partial mobilization in late September 2022, and Putin likely seeks to avoid societal backlash in response to a new mobilization wave at this time.[8]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-september-19-2024

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

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Saturday, September 21, 2024 5:11 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 state media is increasingly emphasizing the participation of foreign nationals in the Russian war effort in Ukraine, likely to reassure domestic audiences that Russia continues to recruit sufficient manpower and will not need to declare another mobilization wave. Kremlin newswire TASS published footage showing Chinese and Sri Lankan volunteers operating in Kursk Oblast as part of the "Pyatnashka" International Volunteer Brigade.[76] Russian opposition outlet Astra, citing Ghanaian media, reported that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) misled 14 Ghanaian nationals into signing military service contracts and fighting in Donetsk Oblast and that 11 of the Ghanaian nationals are missing.[77] TASS’s reporting likely targets domestic Russian audiences and appears to be part of the Kremlin’s ongoing effort to downplay Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk Oblast and avoid declaring mobilization. ISW assessed on September 19 that the Kremlin remains committed to its crypto-mobilization campaign likely out of fear of societal backlash, and that such an approach is constraining Russia’s mobilization potential.[78]

The Russian government continues to publicly double down on its decision to increasingly recruit criminals and prisoners to fight in Ukraine, likely to sustain the Kremlin’s crypto-mobilization campaign. Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairman Andrei Kartapolov publicly dismissed a concern from Russian Communist Party Deputy Renat Suleymanov on September 19 that the Russian Armed Forces are becoming a criminal “gang.”[79] Suleymanov complained that Russia is increasingly creating conditions in which individuals can escape criminal prosecution by signing a military service contract and asked Kartapolov why Russia is forming its military from criminals and prisoners. Kartapolov responded to the complaint by reiterating that Russian criminals have a right to make mistakes, signaling that the Russian government remains committed to the crypto-mobilization campaign even if this campaign continues to deteriorate the scarce remnants of Russian military professionalism.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-september-20-2024

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

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Saturday, September 21, 2024 9:58 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Zelenskiy's "peace plan": make NATO fight for them.

1) Have Americans and Brits perform unrestricted missiles strikes into "old Russia" using longer range western missiles.

(Note: the concept of "allowing" Ukrainians to do this is Kabuki theater. Ukrainians don't know how, don't have the satellite data, and don't have access to American proprietary surface mapping software. If this happens, it's on us, the USA. Russia knows the truth. Now you do, too.)

2) Thus provoking Russia into attacking NATO directly.

3) Bring Ukraine into NATO post haste

4) Have NATO fight Russia directly, since Ukraine is on the ropes.

Et Voila!
Peace!!



Recent strikes on Russian munitions dumps makes me wonder if step 1 already happened. The explosions don't seem to be the result of drone strikes, with drones and secondary explosions popping off at random, more like an "all at once" explosion.

Waiting for more info, but they may have been a demo. Both Russia and NATO/ Ukraine have an interest in obscuring a NATO strike on old Russia, but both Russia and NATO know the truth.

And if you pay attention, you will too.

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

Americans support America


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Sunday, September 22, 2024 7:21 AM

SECOND

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


Russian officials have designated 47 countries as having opposing and dangerous moral attitudes to Russia, highlighting that the Kremlin is reviving a Soviet era tactic and mindset that defines a clear ideological division in the world. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin approved the list of 47 countries deemed to have “destructive attitudes” that clash with “Russian spiritual and moral” values on September 20 following a recent presidential decree facilitating immigration to Russia for individuals who reject “destructive neoliberal values” in their home countries.[36] The list includes Western and other allied countries that have largely supported Ukraine, but notably does not include Slovakia, Hungary, Turkey, Moldova, and Georgia.[37] This move underscores a pattern in which Russian officials accuse the West and the US of creating ideological divides supposedly aimed at isolating Russia, while engaging in this Cold War-style behavior, promoting global ideological camps and separation themselves.[38] Russia has recently enhanced efforts at establishing Eurasian security forums and mechanisms such as the Russian-proposed “Eurasian security architecture” that aim to exclude the West and enhance divides based on these alleged ideological lines.[39] ISW has also observed that the Kremlin recently intensified efforts to codify a state ideology based on vague Russian "traditional values" while bypassing the Russian Constitution, which notably forbids such endeavors.[40]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-september-21-2024

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

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Sunday, September 22, 2024 7:32 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:

Recent strikes on Russian munitions dumps makes me wonder if step 1 already happened. The explosions don't seem to be the result of drone strikes, with drones and secondary explosions popping off at random, more like an "all at once" explosion.

Waiting for more info, but they may have been a demo. Both Russia and NATO/ Ukraine have an interest in obscuring a NATO strike on old Russia, but both Russia and NATO know the truth.

And if you pay attention, you will too.
Pay attention, Signym:

Sep 21, 2024, 04:00pm EDT

It’s increasingly evident, though not yet confirmed, that the Ukrainians are using their latest explosive unmanned aerial vehicle—the jet-propelled Palianytsia “missile drone”—for these devastating raids.

For many months, officials in Kyiv have pleaded with their European and American counterparts for permission to use donated long-range munitions.

But the Europeans and Americans have consistently withheld that permission. Clearly running out of patience, the Ukrainians have doubled down on the production of locally-developed weapons—drones and missiles—that they can fire at targets inside Russia without asking anyone’s permission first.

Previous raids, some hitting targets as far as 1,100 miles inside Russia, have been logistically impressive but small in size—often involving just a handful of slow, propeller-driven drones.

By contrast, the recent raids have been much more destructive, seemingly pointing to a drone type that might not fly as far, but packs more destructive power—and is available in large numbers.

That might mean Ukraine’s new jet-powered Palianytsia, which is a cruise missile in all but name. Russians on the ground in Toropets reported hearing jet engines overhead before the local munitions stockpile exploded.

The winged, turbojet-propelled Palianytsia has been in development for more than a year but only recently made its combat debut. On Aug. 24, at least one Palianytsia struck a target in Russian-occupied Crimea, Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky announced.

The Palianytsia boasts a AI-PBS-350 turbojet engine, jointly developed by PBS in the Czech Republic and Ukrainian firm Ivchenko-Progress. The 220-pound AI-PBS-350 produces 3,400 newtons of thrust—enough to propel a one-ton missile several hundred miles.

That makes the Palianytsia roughly similar to Ukraine’s turbofan-powered Neptune cruise missile, at least in terms of size, speed and range.

Where the Neptune and the Palianytsia substantially differ is in their engines. The Neptune boasts an efficient but expensive turbofan. The Palianytsia’s simpler turbojet is probably less efficient, but also cheaper—meaning Ukraine could afford to build more Palianytsias than Neptunes. Potentially a lot more.

Firing more missiles results in more destruction. Where Neptune attacks have usually involved just a handful of missiles, the first Toropets may have involved a hundred missiles.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/09/21/ukrainian-drones-just
-blew-up-2000-tons-of-ammo-in-southern-russia/

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

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Sunday, September 22, 2024 11:38 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I'm always astonished how you manage to misrepresent what I post, SECOND.

I wasn't leading to any particular conclusion about what was used to strike Russian munitions. I wasn't being coy with the words IF and MAY. I honestly didn't know what was used. Looking at the flight range, resulting explosion, lack of air defense, it didn't look like a swarm of small drones. I even considered sabotage.

And TBH I still don't know. I'm going to look up the technical specs of this drone, as much as is known about it.

And, finally ... drones don't preclude direct western help. I believe it's the DIRECT WESTERN INVOLVEMENT that's the red line, not any particular vehicle or weapon.

So.

How is this drone guided?

If it requires satellite data and terrain mapping, like a cruise missile would, then the USA is a still direct participant, even if the vehicle is different

Like I said: pay attention.

Our CIA knows the truth. And if Russians don't know now, by the time they analyze the data, they will too.

Despite all the kabuki theater that our neocons put on for us, and despite all the chaff they throw into our eyes, knowing the truth ... that's the important part.



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

Americans support America


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Sunday, September 22, 2024 12:54 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:

I'm always astonished how you manage to misrepresent what I post, SECOND.
Signym, I am never astonished when you misunderstand everything all the time. Here is a long interview for you to distort and twist into strange shapes that resemble nothing like what is being presented to you:

The New Yorker Interview

Volodymyr Zelensky Has a Plan for Ukraine’s Victory

The Ukrainian President on how to end the war with Russia, the empty rhetoric of Vladimir Putin, and what the U.S. election could mean for the fate of his country.

By Joshua Yaffa | September 22, 2024

Joshua Yaffa is the author of “Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia,” which won the Orwell Prize in 2021.
Download the free book from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Joshua+Yaffa

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/volodymyr-zele
nsky-has-a-plan-for-ukraines-victory

Volodymyr Zelensky’s situation room, where the Ukrainian President monitors developments in his country’s war with Russia, is a windowless chamber, largely taken up by a rectangular conference table and ringed by blackened screens, deep inside the Presidential Administration Building, in central Kyiv. On a recent afternoon, as I sat inside, waiting for Zelensky, I heard his voice—a syrupy baritone, speckled with gravel—before he entered, dressed in his signature military-adjacent style: black T-shirt, olive-drab pants, brown boots. He was in the midst of preparations for a trip to the U.S., where he is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly and, crucially, meet with Joe Biden at the White House, to present what Zelensky has taken to calling Ukraine’s “victory plan.”

Zelensky is saving the details for his meeting with Biden, but he has said that the plan contains a number of elements related to Ukraine’s long-term security and geopolitical position, which presumably includes joining NATO on an accelerated schedule, and the provision of Western military aid with fewer restrictions. (In the run-up to the trip, Zelensky has been lobbying his allies in the West to allow Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russia with long-range missiles supplied by the U.S. and other Western countries.) Ukraine’s incursion last month into Kursk, a border region in western Russia—where Ukrainian forces currently occupy around four hundred square miles of Russian territory—is also part of this plan, according to Zelensky, in that it provides Kyiv with leverage against the Kremlin, while also demonstrating that its military is capable of going on the offensive.

Zelensky still presents as the person we have come to know from television screens and social media: an impassioned communicator, confident and unrelenting to the point of stubbornness, an entertainer turned statesman who has weaponized the force of his personality in a thoroughly modern form of warfare. But it is also abundantly clear that the war, now in its third year, cannot be won on Zelensky’s talents alone. A long-awaited Ukrainian counter-offensive fizzled out without much result last year. Russian forces have since steadily increased their foothold in the Donbas, in Ukraine’s east—a grinding campaign in which Russia suffers enormous losses yet manages to march forward, inch by bloody inch. The city of Pokrovsk, a logistics and transport hub in the Donbas, is Russia’s latest target. It is being systematically destroyed by artillery shelling and “glide bombs”—Soviet-era munitions, retrofitted with wings and G.P.S. navigation.

Zelensky has pleaded for more Western military aid, which would certainly help but would not solve Ukraine’s other problems: an inability to sufficiently mobilize and train new soldiers, and ongoing struggles to maintain effective communication and coördination on the front. Meanwhile, across the country, a lack of air defenses has allowed Russia to strike power plants and other energy infrastructure; a recent U.N. report predicted that, come winter, power outages may last up to eighteen hours a day. Polls show increasing levels of fatigue for the war in Ukrainian society, an uptick in those willing to consider peace without a total victory, and an erosion in public trust in Zelensky himself.

Zelensky speaks with the urgency of a leader who knows that he may be facing his last best chance for substantial foreign assistance. Biden is nearing the end of his Presidency, and may be wary of dramatically increasing U.S. involvement, lest he create political headwinds for Kamala Harris in the weeks before November’s election. Donald Trump, meanwhile, has been vague on his policy toward Ukraine. During this month’s debate with Harris, he conspicuously declined to speak of a Ukrainian victory, saying only “I want the war to stop.” In the U.S., Zelensky will discuss his victory plan not only with Biden but also with Harris and Trump. He is clearly aware that the results of the U.S. election hold potentially decisive implications for his country, but he maintains the pose of a man who believes he can still bend history in his favor. “The most important thing now is determination,” Zelensky said in a Presidential address in the days before we met.

During our interview in the situation room, which has been edited for length and clarity, Zelensky skipped between history and political philosophy, military strategy and the mechanisms of international diplomacy. He is a discursive speaker, sometimes hard to pin down, but unfailingly focussed on one overarching message: Ukraine is fighting a war not only with Western backing but on behalf of the West. Ukraine’s sacrifices, Zelensky argues, have kept the U.S. and European nations from having to make more personally painful ones. The argument is clear, even if the response is sometimes disappointing. “If he doesn’t want to support it, I cannot force him,” Zelensky told me, of his upcoming meeting at the White House to discuss his victory plan with Biden. “I can only keep on explaining.”

Q: For some time, when you talked about the end of the war, you talked about a total victory for Ukraine: Ukraine would return to its 1991 borders, affirm its sovereignty in Crimea, and retake all of its territory from Russia. But in recent months, you have become more open to the idea of negotiations—through peace summits, for example, the first of which was conducted this summer, in Switzerland. What has changed in your thinking, and your country’s thinking, about how this war might end?

When I’m asked, “How do you define victory,” my response is entirely sincere. There’s been no change in my mind-set. That’s because victory is about justice. A just victory is one whose outcome satisfies all—those who respect international law, those who live in Ukraine, those who lost their loved ones and relatives. For them the price is high. For them there will never be an excuse for what Putin and his Army have done. You can’t simply sew this wound up like a surgeon because it’s in your heart, in your soul. And that is why the crucial nuance is that, although justice does not close our wounds, it affords the possibility of a world that we all recognize as fair. It is not fair that someone’s son or daughter was taken from them, but, unfortunately, there is a finality to this injustice and it is impossible to bring them back. But justice at least provides some closure.

The fact that Ukraine desires a just victory is not the issue; the issue is that Putin has zero desire to end the war on any reasonable terms at all. If the world is united against him, he feigns an interest in dialogue—“I’m ready to negotiate, let’s do it, let’s sit down together”—but this is just talk. It’s empty rhetoric, a fiction, that keeps the world from standing together with Ukraine and isolating Putin. He pretends to open the door to dialogue, and those countries that seek a geopolitical balance—China, for one, but also some other Asian and African states—say, “Ah, see, he hears us and he’s ready to negotiate.” But it is all just appearance. From our side, we see the game he is playing and we amend our approaches to ending the war. Where he offers empty rhetoric, we offer a real formula for bringing peace, a concrete plan for how we can end the war.

Q: And yet, in 2022 and 2023, your words and actions signalled a categorical refusal to negotiate with the enemy, whereas now you seem to have opened a window to the idea of negotiating, a willingness to ask if negotiations are worth pursuing.

If we go back two years, to the G-20 summit, in Indonesia, in my video appearance, I presented our formula for peace. Since then, I’ve been quite consistent in saying that the Russians have blocked all our initiatives from the very beginning, and that they continue to do so. And I said that any negotiation process would be unsuccessful if it’s with Putin or with his entourage, who are all just his puppets.

Everyone said that we have to allow the possibility of some kind of dialogue. And I told them, “Look, your impression that Putin wants to end the war is misguided. That’s a potentially fatal mistake you are making, I’m telling you.” But, on our end, we have to demonstrate that we do have this desire for dialogue—and ours is a genuine one. Our partners think we should be at the negotiating table? Then let’s be constructive. Let’s have a first summit where we all get together. We shall write up a plan and give it to the Russians. They might say, “We are ready to talk,” and then we’d have a second summit where they say, “This formula of yours, we agree with it.” Or, alternatively, “We disagree. We think that it should be like this and like that.” This is called dialogue. But to make it happen, you have to prepare a plan without the Russians, because, unfortunately, they seem to think that they have a kind of red card, as in soccer, that they can hold up and block everything. Our plan, however—it is being prepared.

Q: I understand that you are going to present this plan to Biden?

The victory plan is a bridge. After the first peace summit, our partners saw that Russia was not prepared for any talks at all—which confirmed my message to them and my insistence that without making Ukraine strong, they will never force Putin to negotiate fairly and on equal terms. No one believed me. They said, We’ll invite them to the second summit and they’ll come running. Well, now we have the second summit planned and they don’t look like they’ll come running.

And so the victory plan is a plan that swiftly strengthens Ukraine. A strong Ukraine will force Putin to the negotiating table. I’m convinced of that. It’s just that, before, I was only saying it and now I’ve put it all on paper, with specific arguments and specific steps to strengthen Ukraine during the months of October, November, and December, and to enable a diplomatic end of the war. The difference this time will be that Putin will have grasped the depth of this plan and of our partners’ commitment to strengthening us, and he will realize an important fact: that if he is not ready to end this war in a way that is fair and just, and instead wishes to continue to try to destroy us, then a strengthened Ukraine will not let him do so. Not only that but continuing to pursue that goal would also considerably weaken Russia, which would threaten Putin’s own position.

Q: What happens if Biden says, “With all due respect, this is a difficult time, the election’s coming up, I’m having enough trouble with Congress without trying to increase aid packages for you,” and he rejects your request—do you have a Plan B?

We have been living in Plan B for years. Plan A was proposed before the full-scale war, when we called for two things: preventive sanctions and preventive reinforcement of Ukraine with various weapons. I told our partners, If Ukraine is very strong, nothing will happen. They didn’t listen. Since then, they have all recognized I was right. Strengthening Ukraine would have significantly lowered the probability of Putin invading.

I’m now proposing a new Plan A. This plan means we change the current course, where it’s only thanks to the strength of our military, the heroic devotion to the European values of our people and our fighters, that we have stood our ground. If you don’t want this war to drag on, if you do not want Putin to bury us under the corpses of his people, taking more Ukrainian lives in the process, we offer you a plan to strengthen Ukraine. It is not a fantasy and not science fiction, and, importantly, it does not require the Russians to coöperate to succeed. Rather, the plan spells out what our partners can do without Russia’s participation. If diplomacy is the desire of both sides, then, before diplomacy can be effective, our plan’s implementation depends only on us and on our partners.

You were right, this plan is designed, first and foremost, with Biden’s support in mind. If he doesn’t want to support it, I cannot force him. If he refuses—well, then we must continue to live inside Plan B. And that’s unfortunate.

Q: What would that look like? I mean, if Biden says no?

That’s a horrible thought. It would mean that Biden doesn’t want to end the war in any way that denies Russia a victory. And we would end up with a very long war—an impossible, exhausting situation that would kill a tremendous number of people. Having said that, I can’t blame Biden for anything. At the end of the day, he took a powerful, historic step when he chose to support us at the start of the war, an action that pushed our other partners to do the same. We recognize Biden’s great achievement in this respect. That step of his already constituted a historic victory.

Q: And what would you say, maybe not even to Biden but to the American public, many of whom feel that we cannot raise our engagement and support for Ukraine any further than we already have?

I would tell them that Ukraine has done everything possible to keep America out of this war, actually. Putin counted on defeating Ukraine in a quick campaign and, had Ukraine not stood its ground, Putin would have marched on. Let’s consider what the consequences would have been. Number one, you would have some forty million immigrants coming to Europe, America, and Canada. Second, you would lose the largest country in Europe—a huge blow to America’s influence on the Continent. Russia would now have total influence there. You would lose everyone—Poland, Germany—and your influence would be zero.

The American public should realize that the fact of Ukraine still standing is not the problem. Yes, war brings difficulties, but Ukraine’s resilience has allowed America to solve many other challenges. Let’s say Russia attacked Poland next—what then? In Ukraine, Russia has found fake legal ground for its actions, saying that it’s protecting Russian-speaking people, but it could have been Poland or it could have been the Baltic states, which are all NATO members. This would have been a disaster, a gut punch for the United States, because then you’re definitely involved full scale—with troops on the ground, funding, investment, and with the American economy going to a wartime footing. So saying that you have been in this war for a long time is just not true. Quite the contrary: I believe that we have shielded America from total war.

Here’s another crucial element: this is a war of postponement for the United States. It’s a way to buy time. As far as Russia is concerned, Ukraine does not even need to lose outright for Russia to win. Russia understands that Ukraine is struggling as it is; it already stands excluded from the European Union and NATO, with nearly a third of its territory occupied. Russia might decide that’s enough, so it might strike Poland just the same—in response to some provocation from Belarus, for example. And so, after two and a half years of your support and investment—for which we are very grateful—you can multiply them all by zero. America would have to start investing from scratch, and in a war of a totally different calibre. American soldiers would fight in it. Which would all benefit Russia tremendously, I should add.

Q: During the Presidential debate, moderators asked Trump whether he wanted Ukraine to win against Russia, and he sidestepped the question. He just said, “I want the war to stop.” It must have troubled you to hear his answer and to consider the prospect of his winning.

Trump makes political statements in his election campaign. He says he wants the war to stop. Well, we do, too. This phrase and desire, they unite the world; everyone shares them. But here’s the scary question: Who will shoulder the costs of stopping the war? Some might say that the Minsk Agreements either stopped or froze the fighting at some point. But they also gave the Russians a chance to arm themselves even better, and to strengthen their fake claim over our territories they occupied.

Q: But isn’t that yet more cause for alarm?

My feeling is that Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how. With this war, oftentimes, the deeper you look at it the less you understand. I’ve seen many leaders who were convinced they knew how to end it tomorrow, and as they waded deeper into it, they realized it’s not that simple.

Q: Apart from Trump’s own reluctance to talk about Ukrainian victory, he has chosen J. D. Vance as his Vice-Presidential candidate.

He is too radical.

Q: Vance has come out with a more precise plan to—

To give up our territories.

Q: Your words, not mine. But, yes, that’s the gist of it.

His message seems to be that Ukraine must make a sacrifice. This brings us back to the question of the cost and who shoulders it. The idea that the world should end this war at Ukraine’s expense is unacceptable. But I do not consider this concept of his a plan, in any formal sense. This would be an awful idea, if a person were actually going to carry it out, to make Ukraine shoulder the costs of stopping the war by giving up its territories. But there’s certainly no way this could ever happen. This kind of scenario would have no basis in international norms, in U.N. statute, in justice. And it wouldn’t necessarily end the war, either. It’s just sloganeering.

Q: What does it mean for Ukraine that people with such ideas and slogans are rising to power?

For us, these are dangerous signals, coming as they do from a potential Vice-President. I should say that it hasn’t been like this with Trump. He and I talked on the phone, and his message was as positive as it could be, from my point of view. “I understand,” “I will lend support,” and so on.

[Vance and others who share his views] should clearly understand that the moment they start trading on our territory is the moment they start pawning America’s interests elsewhere: the Middle East, for example, as well as Taiwan and the U.S. relations with China. Whichever President or Vice-President raises this prospect—that ending the war hinges on cementing the status quo, with Ukraine simply giving up its land—should be held responsible for potentially starting a global war. Because such a person would be implying that this kind of behavior is acceptable.

I don’t take Vance’s words seriously, because, if this were a plan, then America is headed for global conflict. It will involve Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Taiwan, China, as well as many African countries. That approach would broadcast to the world the following implicit rule: I came, I conquered, now this is mine. It will apply everywhere: land claims and mineral rights and borders between nations. It would imply that whoever asserts control over territory—not the rightful owner but whoever came in a month or a week ago, with a machine gun in hand—is the one who’s in charge. We’ll end up in a world where might is right. And it will be a completely different world, a global showdown.

Let Mr. Vance read up on the history of the Second World War, when a country was forced to give part of its territory to one particular person. What did that man do? Was he appeased or did he deal a devastating blow to the continent of Europe—to many nations, broadly, and to the Jewish nation in particular? Let him do some reading. The Jewish people are a strong power base in the United States, so let them conduct a public-education campaign and explain why millions perished thanks to the fact that someone offered to give up a sliver of territory.

Q: When we last spoke, in 2019, Ukraine was caught in the middle of an American political scandal. There was the question of your phone call with Trump, an implicit threat to curtail U.S. aid, and the subsequent impeachment hearings against a U.S. President. I recently reread our interview, and you told me at the time, “In this political chess match, I will not let Ukraine be a pawn.” Do you worry that Ukraine has now ended up in a similar situation, used by various political actors to push their own agenda or advantage in the U.S. political context?

To be honest, the incident you mention no longer feels as relevant. That was a long time ago. And since then, many things have changed.

Q: Nonetheless, you must have drawn some conclusions from this experience.

I think Ukraine has demonstrated the wisdom of not becoming captured by American domestic politics. We have always tried to avoid influencing the choices of the American people—that would simply be wrong. But, in that incident and elsewhere, I believe we have always demonstrated that Ukraine is definitely not a pawn, and that our interests have to be taken into account.

You have to work to maintain that every day, though. Because the second you relax, that’s exactly what will happen. A lot of world leaders want to have some sort of dealings with Putin, to reach agreements, to conduct some business with him. I look at such leaders and realize that they are very interested in playing this game—and for them, unfortunately, it really is a game. But what makes a real leader? A leader is someone whom Putin needs for something, not a person who needs Putin. Flirting with him is not a sign of strength. Sitting across the table from him might make you believe you’re making important decisions about the world. But what are those decisions really about? Has the war ended? No. Has it produced the outcome you wanted? Not yet. Is Putin still in power? Yes.

Ukraine is a very painful topic for Putin—he wanted to defeat us and couldn’t—which means that it offers a way to build a bond with him. But the truth is that you can only develop relations with Putin on his terms. That means, for instance, proposing that Ukraine should give up some of its territory. This, in a way, is the easiest thing to call for. It is very concrete. And for Putin, it’s a morsel that he doesn’t even have to cut in order to eat—you have already chewed it for him and placed it right in his mouth. When you give it to him, you think you’re so smart and cunning, that after such a gesture Putin will listen to you and support your positions. Well, tell me, when did Putin respect those who come to him from a position of weakness?

Q: After Russia invaded, many people were inclined to compare you to Winston Churchill, Britain’s leader during the Second World War, but you’ve said in interviews that you prefer the example of Charlie Chaplin, who waged a struggle against fascism through appealing to his audience, the public. How do you regard your role as a communicator?

People are always more comfortable relying not on abstract ideas but on some specific historical examples. But it feels immodest to compare myself with the people you mentioned. That said, Chaplin had an unquestionable talent for telling a story, for finding a way to get through to people. He didn’t merely broadcast some facts and numbers—he used the language of cinema to craft an emotional narrative. He used that talent to fight fascism. As for Churchill, he was the leader of a country that found itself in very difficult circumstances, but still managed to be the only country in Europe that firmly said no to fascism. It’s not that other countries necessarily said yes—some were invaded, lost battles, or were subdued in other ways. Hitler occupied much of Europe. But from Churchill and the U.K., there was a firm no. And this no convinced America that it should become a serious ally in the war.

Q: Let’s talk about the Kursk operation. What is its motive? And who is the intended audience: Putin, to show him that Ukraine, too, can go on the offensive, or Ukraine’s Western partners, to demonstrate to them what Ukraine can achieve if given the proper resources?

Both these motives are important, but there is more at stake here. First, it was clear to us that Russia is pressing us in the east. No matter how the Kursk operation ends, military analysts will someday calculate the speed of Russia’s progress and ask, What prevented us from stopping them earlier? How fast were they moving in the east before the Kursk operation began, and why? Ukraine had trouble mobilizing people, they might say, and didn’t have enough strength to stop them, but that is diverting the focus from the more pertinent point—namely, the fact that we should receive what we’ve been promised. I say, first give it to us, and then analyze if the root of the problem is with Ukraine or with you.

Imagine: you’re struggling in a tough war, you’re not receiving aid, you strain to maintain morale. And the Russians have the initiative in the east, they have taken parts of the Kharkiv region, and they’re about to attack Sumy. You have to do something—something other than endlessly asking your partners for help. So what do you do? Do you tell your people, “Dear Ukrainians, in two weeks, eastern Ukraine will cease to exist”? Sure, you can do that, throw up your hands, but you can also try taking a bold step.

Of course, you’re right to wonder if this action will go down in history as a success or a failure. It’s too early to judge. But I am not preoccupied with historic successes. I’m focussed on the here and now. What we can say, however, is that it has already shown some results. It has slowed down the Russians and forced them to move some of their forces to Kursk, on the order of forty thousand troops. Already, our fighters in the east say that they are being battered less frequently.

I’m not saying it’s a resounding success, or will bring about the end of the war, or the end of Putin. What it has done is show our partners what we’re capable of. We have also shown the Global South that Putin, who claims to have everything under control, in fact does not. And we have shown a very important truth to the Russians. Unfortunately, many of them have their eyes closed, they don’t want to see or hear anything. But some Russian people could not help but notice how Putin did not run to defend his own land. No, instead he wants to first and foremost look after himself, and to finish off Ukraine. His people are not a priority for him.

It has been more than a month since the start of the Kursk operation. We continue to provide food and water to the people in territories we control. These people are free to leave: all the necessary corridors are open, and they could go elsewhere in Russia—but they do not. They don’t understand why Russia didn’t come to help, and left them to survive on their own. And people in Moscow and St. Petersburg—far from Kursk—saw that, if one day the Ukrainian Army showed up there, too, it’s far from certain they would be saved. That’s important. That’s also a part of this operation: long before the war gets to these places, or there’s some other crisis, Russian people should know who they have placed in power for a quarter century, with whom they have thrown in their lot.

Q: This war is being fought not just over territory but over values. But during war, in the name of victory, it may not always be possible to maintain these values as one might in peacetime. Do you feel that there are occasions when these two interests—democratic values and the reality of wartime—can clash, or end up in conflict? The United News TV Marathon, for example, which has been on air since the beginning of the invasion, pulls together multiple television channels to broadcast news about the war and other events in a highly coördinated way.

The truth is that journalists came together because, in the early days of the war, when people feared a total occupation of the country, no one knew what to do. Some people took off in one direction, law enforcement in another. There were even stories about how the President had run off somewhere. It was chaos. The fact is that I was among those who stayed and put an end to that chaos, and I don’t think that has led to anything so terrible. Many would say it’s one of the factors that gave people the strength to fight for their country.

Q: But the centralization of power has a downside.

I want to finish. Journalists in Ukraine decided to join forces in order to combat Russian disinformation. I want to make it clear that simply because the news departments of these [six] TV channels have come together it does not mean the channels themselves are destroyed. They exist as they did before. They have kept their own places in the broadcast lineup. They are free to show what they want. But this telemarathon has become a resource for people who, say, have no electricity or see drones flying overhead. There have been lots of periods when there were all kinds of misinformation going around, and the telemarathon provides the truth. And you’re saying this is a bad thing. O.K., if that’s the case, I’m not insisting.

Q: A last question about how war changes a person. It’s hard to imagine an experience with a more profound effect on the human psyche.

I’m still holding it together, if it’s me you’re talking about.

Q: But I wonder if there are moments when you catch yourself reacting to things differently than you might have before. Do you notice you’ve changed at all?

Perhaps I’ve become less emotional. There’s simply no time for that. Just like there’s no time for reasoned discourse and arguments. I only have the opportunity to think aloud in that way during interviews. I don’t do this with my subordinates and colleagues in the government. If I were to sit down and ruminate on every decision for an hour, I would be able to make only two or three decisions a day. But I have to make twenty or thirty.

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

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Sunday, September 22, 2024 2:04 PM

SECOND

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


As Russia’s war escalates, will Ukraine down the Kerch Bridge in Crimea?

Russia is already unable to use Crimea as a military staging ground, and Ukraine will soon destroy it as a supply line, top US general predicts.

By John T Psaropoulos | 20 Sep 2024

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/9/20/as-russias-war-escalates-
will-ukraine-down-the-kerch-bridge-in-crimea

Russia’s war with Ukraine started when it seized Crimea in February 2014, and who ends up in possession of Crimea remains one of the biggest sticking points in ending the war.

So far, Ukraine has been unable to take Crimea back by force, and Russia has been unable to defend it effectively as a base of operations.

A United States general told Al Jazeera that Ukraine is likely to launch a major new campaign to win back Crimea this year and says Washington should fully support it.

“We could be 100 percent clear to the Ukrainians and the Russians that we are 100 percent in favour of them retaking Crimea however they do it,” General Ben Hodges said.

He added: “Crimea … is sovereign Ukraine, and there will be no US tapping the brakes if they take down that Kerch Bridge – which I do predict is going to happen this year.”

Hodges commanded US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and was head of US forces in Europe before retiring.

This year, Ukraine destroyed all three of the large ferries Russia was using, leaving the bridge as Russia’s only logistics option.

Much more at https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/9/20/as-russias-war-escalates-
will-ukraine-down-the-kerch-bridge-in-crimea

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

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Sunday, September 22, 2024 2:27 PM

SECOND

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


Russian soldiers fight for money rather than patriotism since Putin is unconvincing about losing the War being an existential threat to Russia:

$21,300 Incentives for Soldiers Spark Concern Over Russia’s Social Divide

By Kathrine Frich | Sep.22 - 2024 4:33 PM CET

https://www.dagens.com/war/21-300-incentives-for-soldiers-spark-concer
n-over-russias-social-divide

The new bonuses can go up to 2 million rubles (approximately $21,300) for those heading to the front lines, in addition to a monthly salary of about 200,000 rubles (around $1,900).

This substantial financial incentive comes amid concerns about its impact on the Russian economy. Maxim Blant, a Russian economic analyst now residing in Latvia, explains that these payments represent about one-fifth of Russia's budget, contributing to rising inflation and further straining the economy.

The recent increase in military payments is reported to be nearly 25%.

In the context of mounting casualties, this decision aims to encourage enlistment amid indications that the military is struggling to maintain its personnel levels.

Skepticism About Timely Payment

Discussions among Russian citizens on social media platforms, such as Telegram and VKontakte, reveal mixed feelings about these incentives.

While some believe that the bonuses will help soldiers purchase essential equipment, others express skepticism regarding timely payments and the overall management of funds.

Blant points out that this financial strategy deepens societal divisions between those benefiting from the war and those engaged in producing consumer goods and services.

As military contracts draw resources away from the civilian economy, the result may lead to higher inflation rates and a growing gap between different sectors of society.

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

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Sunday, September 22, 2024 4:20 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM: I'm always astonished how you manage to misrepresent what I post, SECOND.

SECOND: Signym, I am never astonished when you misunderstand everything all the time. Here is a long interview for you to distort and twist into strange shapes that resemble nothing like what is being presented to you:


Wow, I'm gonna waste my time reading a long string of cokehead confabulations, posted by a liar?

HAHAHA!

No matter how much bullshit you try to bury the truth with, SECOND, reality prevails.


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

Americans support America


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Monday, September 23, 2024 5:49 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:

No matter how much bullshit you try to bury the truth with, SECOND, reality prevails.
The reality is that during WWII only a few million Germans died and it was because of crazy leadership at the top civilian levels. Russians died by the tens of millions because of both crazy leadership and Russians being retards as far as battlefield tactics. Being crazy and stupid tends to shorten life at war or in peace. And 418,500 Americans died because they were far smarter than Russians and Democratic leadership wasn't crazy and stupid, unlike in Russia and Germany. All of Russian history since WWII shows Democrats maintained superiority over the Russians both intellectually and morally. The Republicans? Not so much with Trump being the latest example of moral inferiority and disordered thinking about government's purpose.

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

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Monday, September 23, 2024 5:50 AM

SECOND

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


Putin regime will collapse without warning, says freed gulag dissident

Vladimir Kara-Murza and his wife, Evgenia, speak of his time in a Siberian jail and why the truth about Russia will come out

By Carole Cadwalladr | Sun 22 Sep 2024 00.00 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/22/putin-regime-will-collap
se-without-warning-says-freed-gulag-dissident

He talks about how, as he was taxiing down the runway of Vnukovo airport, the FSB agent sitting next to him told him to look out of the window because it would be the last time he’d see his country. “I just laughed in his face and said, ‘Look man, I’m a historian. I don’t only think, I don’t only believe, I know I will be back home and it’s going to be much quicker than you imagine.’”

Most people he met in the Russian prison system, “the police officers, prison officials, judges, prosecutors, they don’t believe in anything”. Most are not pathological sadists, he says, they were just doing a job. “But the Alpha Group, the FSB special unit that was escorting us, I saw ideological hatred. They believe in this stuff and that’s even scarier.”

Kara-Murza’s grasp of history underpins his certainty that Putin’s regime will collapse – quickly and without warning. “That’s how things happen in Russia. Both the Romanov empire in the early 20th century, and the Soviet regime at the end of the 20th century collapsed in three days. That’s not a metaphor, it was literally three days in both cases.” He believes passionately that the best chance of a free and democratic Russia and peace in Europe rests on Russia’s defeat in Ukraine.

“A lost war of aggression” has been the country’s greatest driver of political change, he says. Though it’s not just the Russian people, in his view, who need to take collective responsibility but western leaders too, who “for all these years were buying gas from Putin, inviting him to international summits, rolling out red carpets”.

He tells me he thinks the truth will out. “These guys keep meticulous records. When the end comes – and it will – the archives will open, we will find out about Trump and Marine Le Pen and your British guys too.”

Sitting in London, the money and reputation-laundering centre of Putin’s empire, he laughs when I mention one of the more notorious figures of British political patronage, Evgeny Lebedev, the proprietor of the Independent and Evening Standard, son of KGB lieutenant colonel Alexander Lebedev.

“Is that the guy who’s Baron of Siberia?” he says. “I should meet him. I guess he represents me?”

Siberia, the land of Soviet-style gulags and British lords and one delighted former political prisoner walking out into the London sunshine with his wife and son, a small flickering light from the heart of Putin’s darkness.

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

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Monday, September 23, 2024 6:18 AM

SECOND

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


The Kremlin is reportedly reconsidering the effectiveness of nuclear saber-rattling as part of its efforts to influence the ongoing Western policy debate about supporting Ukraine and specifically permitting Ukraine to use Western-provided weapons against military objects in Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin may be realizing that Russian nuclear threats are starting to lose their power over Western officials and that Putin may be developing an unspecified more nuanced and limited informational response to future Western approval of long-range strikes into Russia.[4]

Russian officials have realized that nuclear threats "don't frighten anyone," and a Russian academic with close ties to senior Russian diplomats claimed that Russia's partners in the "Global South" are dissatisfied with Russia's nuclear threats.

The Kremlin uses nuclear saber-rattling to promote Western self-deterrence and that such statements are not an indication of Russia's willingness to use nuclear weapons.[5]

The Kremlin's thinly veiled threats of nuclear confrontation are aimed at disrupting and delaying key decision points in Western political discussions about further military assistance to Ukraine.[6]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-september-22-2024

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

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Monday, September 23, 2024 6:22 AM

SECOND

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


The Kremlin Pulled Sailors Off ‘Admiral Kuznetsov’ And Sent Them To Die In Ukraine

The ‘Kuznetsov’ is unlikely to deploy ever again because its engines were built by Ukraine

By David Axe | Sep 22, 2024, 05:03pm EDT

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/09/22/the-kremlin-pulled-sa
ilors-off-the-decrepit-aircraft-carrier-admiral-kuznetsov-and-sent-them-to-fight-and-die-in-ukraine/

Admiral Kuznetsov, the Russian navy’s only aircraft carrier, hasn’t deployed in eight years—and it’s increasingly unlikely it will ever deploy again. That helps explain why, in recent months, the Kremlin reportedly reassigned the aging ship’s sailors to the army—and sent them into battle in Ukraine.

It’s a startling revelation that underscores the Russian army’s manpower crisis as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds toward its 31st month—and also underlines the decrepit state of the Russian navy’s biggest warships, most of which are Cold War leftovers.

Open-source analyst Moklasen first reported the reassignment of some of the 58,000-ton Kuznetsov’s approximately 1,500-person crew. The sailors formed a so-called “frigate” mechanized battalion within the 1st Guards Tank Army, Moklasen concluded after scouring Russian social media for clues.

The frigate battalion fought around Kharkiv in northern Ukraine before shifting to the Pokrovsk axis in the east. Moklasen surmised that at least one former carrier crewman, Oleg Sosedov, went missing during a Russian attack in Kharkiv on July 23.

That the Russians are apparently pulling people from Kuznetsov isn’t surprising. The Kremlin is taking extreme measures to mobilize the 30,000 fresh troops it needs every month just to replace battlefield losses—killed, wounded and captured—in Ukraine.

The alternative to, say, stripping away ship’s crews might be a nationwide draft, which would be politically risky for the regime of Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin.

And besides, the rickety Kuznetsov isn’t about to return to sea. The 39-year-old flattop was supposed to leave the port of Murmansk, in northern Russia, back in the spring for the first time in eight years. Instead, the carrier remains pierside in Murmansk, in northern Russia.

Kuznetsov has completed just seven patrols since launching in 1985 and commissioning into the Soviet navy six years later. During the flattop’s most recent deployment, off the coast of Syria in 2016, the air wing lost two of its 24 jets to accidents in the span of just three weeks.

The crashes were the first in a long series of recent mishaps. Two years later in October 2018, Kuznetsov suffered serious damage when the drydock PD-50 sank while the carrier was aboard for repairs. Then, in December 2019, a fire broke out on Kuznetsov itself.

Fleet leaders considered decommissioning the damaged ship. Incredibly, the Kremlin opted to repair and modernize Kuznetsov, instead. The plan, at the time, was for Kuznetsov to return to sea in 2022. But another fire broke out in December 2022. Nearly two years later, the carrier is still stuck in port.

Any other navy might just cut its losses, decommission the scorched flattop and build a new carrier to replace it. But Russian industry probably isn’t capable of building a direct replacement for Kuznetsov or any other big warship—which is why so many of the Russian fleet’s bigger vessels are former Soviet ships with decades of wear and tear on their hulls and machinery.

“The main issue is engines,” said Pavel Luzin, a military expert at Russia’s Perm University. Ukrainian factories built most of the Soviet navy’s big marine engines. Needless to say, the Ukrainians no longer export these engines to Russia. And the Russians have struggled to set up local production of similar equipment.

So Kuznetsov molders, increasingly bereft of crew and likelier by the day to become a permanent resident of the Murmansk shoreline. And her sailors are fighting, and apparently dying, in Ukraine—victims of the same war of aggression that has deprived Kuznetsov of the heavy machinery it would need to continue sailing.

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

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Monday, September 23, 2024 7:50 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


#Rootin4Putin!

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Monday, September 23, 2024 8:14 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 6ixStringJack:
#Rootin4Putin!

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.
I am rooting for Putin, too! Speculation is that he won't be replaced by somebody better than him, someone like Alexei Navalny. What is expected is that Putin's replacement will be less mentally stable than Putin such as a new Boris Yeltsin, except more inclined than Boris to threaten nuking the West. Long may Putin reign in Russia, making it poorer and weaker and scaring smart Russians into leaving.

I'm rooting for Trump, too! Trump is perfect for destroying the GOP. I want him losing in 2024 and running again in 2028. I don't want somebody who can pass as sane as head of the Republican Party. Trump certainly can't fake sanity (except he fools Trumptards who are just as nutty as he is) but there are others who are almost as crazy but can pass as semi-normal and reasonable even if they are foaming at the mouth crazy in private, people such as a new Nixon.

Putin foe Alexei Navalny dies in jail, West holds Russia responsible
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/jailed-russian-opposition-leader-
navalny-dead-prison-service-2024-02-16/

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

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Monday, September 23, 2024 11:49 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
SECOND: The reality is that during WWII ....


The reality is that this is 2024, not 1935.

Do try to keep up.




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

Americans support America


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Monday, September 23, 2024 12:48 PM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Zelenskiy's "peace plan": make NATO fight for them.

1) Have Americans and Brits perform unrestricted missiles strikes into "old Russia" using longer range western missiles.

(Note: the concept of "allowing" Ukrainians to do this is Kabuki theater. Ukrainians don't know how, don't have the satellite data, and don't have access to American proprietary surface mapping software. If this happens, it's on us, the USA. Russia knows the truth. Now you do, too.)

2) Thus provoking Russia into attacking NATO directly.

3) Bring Ukraine into NATO post haste

4) Have NATO fight Russia directly, since Ukraine is on the ropes.

Et Voila!
Peace!!



Recent strikes on Russian munitions dumps makes me wonder if step 1 already happened. The explosions don't seem to be the result of drone strikes, with drones and secondary explosions popping off at random, more like an "all at once" explosion.

Waiting for more info, but they may have been a demo. Both Russia and NATO/ Ukraine have an interest in obscuring a NATO strike on old Russia, but both Russia and NATO know the truth.

And if you pay attention, you will too.

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


New Ukrainian Weapons Hit Russia Where It Hurts




T

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Tuesday, September 24, 2024 12:03 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Intersting if true

Some of it depends on "if". The biggest "if" is IF the Ukrainians are able to tap into Russia's railway schedule.

But otherwise it's the same approach that Russia took to Ukraine: Disable the (electric) power grid to disable the (electric) railways to bollux military logistics.

The problem with that plan is that Russia is huge. It took Russia hundreds of missiles and thousands of drones, and Ukraine's grid and electric railways still aren't fully disabled. At this late stage of the war, I don't think Ukraine can achieve much more than a minor inconvenience for Russia.

AFA the Pokrovsk area of the front... Ukraine has heavily reinforced Pokrovsk, so Russia is turning its attention elsewhere. Ugladar is being surrounded. Advances are being made up and down the line, so overall the pace of the war hasn't slowed down AFAIK.

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

Americans support America


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Tuesday, September 24, 2024 1:17 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Looking forward to the current leadership in Ukraine being skewered on pikes so the Ukrainian men can stop dying and go back home to their families where they belong.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Tuesday, September 24, 2024 2:53 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Whoever said that we're willing to fight to the last Ukrainian got it right.

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

Americans support America


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Tuesday, September 24, 2024 6:56 AM

SECOND

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


Russia's chances against NATO are zero, military expert admits on Russian television

September 23, 2024, 05:17 AM

https://english.nv.ua/nation/russian-military-analyst-admits-russia-ca
nnot-possibly-compete-with-nato-50452997.html

In a surprising admission on Russian television, a military expert acknowledged that Russia's chances of winning a real conflict with NATO are virtually zero. The discussion took place on the show hosted by Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov.

Military expert Mikhail Khodaryonok expressed his opinion that NATO's military and economic capabilities far outstrip those of Russia, making any conventional war against the alliance futile without the use of nuclear weapons, according to an extract from the program shared on X on Sept. 22.

"From our side, any course of military action would be extremely disadvantageous given NATO's superiority in all areas by several times," said Khodaryonok.

"Therefore, it seems to me that any confrontation with the NATO bloc is only possible with the use of nuclear weapons. There is simply no other option. There is a concept known as the 'fundamental law of war.' This law states that the course and outcome of armed conflict are determined by the sum of the military-economic potentials of the sides. But if NATO's military organization surpasses ours by an order of magnitude, or even two or three times, then entering into such an armed conflict with only conventional weapons is absolutely hopeless for us."

This admission comes amid Russia's ongoing “special military operation” in Ukraine, where the Kremlin has repeatedly claimed to be fighting against NATO influence.

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

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Tuesday, September 24, 2024 7:46 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 6ixStringJack:
Looking forward to the current leadership in Ukraine being skewered on pikes so the Ukrainian men can stop dying and go back home to their families where they belong.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.
6ix, do you remember your philosophy of life? I will remind you:
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=65372&mid=12020
47#1202047
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Because they're just one part of my life of Freedom where I get to do whatever the fuck I want, whenever I want, without the need of ever having to answer to anybody.
6ix, your philosophy is well known and widely practiced all around the world. How can an observer know who follows this philosophy? Several things make it readily apparent:

1) Avoid military service any way you can (if you can't avoid, at least be cowardly)
2) Get drunk or high or stoned when possible
3) Break promises to or in marriage, business, society
4) Cheat on taxes, defraud, steal when the opportunities are available
5) Lie constantly

6ix, the hypothetical Ukrainian that you are giving advice to ("skewer Ukraine leadership on pikes") would be living #1 on the list of telltale signs they believe in your philosophy of life. Trump hits all 5 all the time. (#1 Trump faked bone spurs to avoid Vietnam and his contempt for soldiers) (#2: Trump obviously gets high when he is blathering to an audience) (#3 Trump and prostitutes/divorce) (#4 Trump never pays all he owes) (#5 Wow. Trump is relentlessly dishonest)

It is easy to see the attraction between Trumptards and Trump since he is a prime example of 6ix's particularly common and ordinary philosophy of life.

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

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Tuesday, September 24, 2024 8:44 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


Ukraine war will end faster than we think – and Putin is afraid, says Zelensky as he prepares ‘victory plan’ to US

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/30625499/zelensky-victory-plan-us-russia
-ukraine-war/

Putin humiliated as Russia 'knew about Ukraine Kursk attack for months' and did nothing

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1951001/putin-humiliated-russia-u
kraine-kursk-attack

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Tuesday, September 24, 2024 10:58 AM

SECOND

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


Opinion | Putin Is Hunting Down Ordinary People All Over the World

Putin Is Doing Something Almost Nobody Is Noticing

By Lilia Yapparova | Sept. 23, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/opinion/russia-putin-kremlin.html

Ms. Yapparova is an investigative reporter at Meduza, an independent Russian news outlet. She wrote from Riga, Latvia.

In November 2022, my editors asked me to be careful about what I ate and stop ordering takeout. Initially, I didn’t think much of it. But I soon realized the importance of their advice when, just one month later, my colleague Elena Kostyuchenko discovered she had been poisoned in Germany, in a probable assassination attempt by the Russian state.

Such stories have become routine. Last year, an investigative journalist, Alesya Marokhovskaya, was harassed in the Czech Republic; in February, the bullet-riddled body of a Russian defector, Maxim Kuzminov, was found in Spain. In both cases, the Kremlin was assumed to be involved. Russian opposition figures know well that even in exile they remain targets of Russia’s intelligence services.

But it’s not just them who are in danger. There are also the hundreds of thousands of Russians who left home because they did not want to have anything to do with Vladimir Putin’s war — or were forced out, accused of not embracing it enough. These low-profile dissenters are subjected to surveillance and kidnappings, too. Yet their repression happens in silence — away from the spotlight and often with the tacit consent, or inadequate prevention, of the countries to which they have fled.

It’s a terrifying thing: The Kremlin is hunting down ordinary people across the world, and nobody seems to care.

I’ve been gathering information about Russia’s targeting of exiles since the start of the war in Ukraine. My sources range from people who themselves survived abductions and surveillance to the leaders of Russian diasporas around the world — and the few human rights activists helping them. Many spoke to me on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss Russian repression without fear of reprisal. The Kremlin, of course, denies any involvement — mostly saying that it cannot comment on what is happening to people in other countries. But the evidence is piling up.

There’s a vocal coach arrested in Kazakhstan at Moscow’s request who went mad in a local jail. A caregiver for the elderly detained in Montenegro on Russian orders, carried out by Interpol. A schoolteacher detained by Armenian border guards after telling her students about Russia’s crimes in Bucha. A toy shop owner, an industrial climber, a punk rocker: These are some of the people caught in the Kremlin dragnet, all over the world.

And it is a truly global operation. In Britain, exiles are being followed and London opposition events are crawling with agents “who stick out like a sore thumb,” Ksenia Maximova, an anti-Kremlin activist there, told me. Russian intelligence officers have been sent to monitor the diasporas in Germany, Poland and Lithuania, according to Evgeny Smirnov, a lawyer who specializes in treason and espionage cases. Other emigrants have been stalked and threatened in Rome, Paris, Prague and Istanbul. The list goes on.

Some of the methods are especially insidious. Lev Gyammer, an exiled activist in Poland, has been receiving texts for two years, supposedly from his mother. “Levushka, son, I miss you so, when will you visit me?” Another reads, “Son, I’m waiting for you. Come back soon.” He ignores them: His mother, Olga, died five years ago. Another Russian expatriate — whose elderly parents are still alive and very sick — chose to believe it when his parents’ nurse of many years told him, over the phone, of a fire in their apartment. He rushed home from Finland and was immediately taken to prison and tortured, according to Mr. Smirnov. Of course, there never was a fire.

Those who cannot be tricked back to Russia are subjected to surveillance. An employee of an organization that supports L.G.B.T.Q. people was walking her dog around the neighborhood in Tbilisi, Georgia, when she noticed that she was being followed by a drone. It was an evening in early May — two years since she’d fled Russia with the rest of her colleagues. She hurried back to hide at her apartment but could still hear the buzzing. She followed the noise to the balcony and came face to face with the device, hanging there within arm’s reach.

Host countries are often complicit. In some places, local police officers even conduct surveillance on behalf of their Russian colleagues. In Kazakhstan, local special services are helping Russia catch draft dodgers. In Kyrgyzstan, the police are using facial recognition technology to search for those wanted by the Kremlin, forcing people to leave cities for the mountains, according to a host of advocacy groups. When not actively assisting Russian surveillance, the local authorities are sometimes slow to stop it.

This was the case with Sergei Podsytnik, a journalist investigating military links between Russia and Iran. In March of this year, still elated by the news that a drone factory he’d uncovered was getting sanctioned, he was returning to his room in Duisburg, Germany. Before going into exile, Mr. Podsytnik was part of Alexei Navalny’s opposition network and picked up the habit of making sure he wasn’t being followed. Outside his door, he casually glanced over his shoulder — and saw, peeking out from around the corner, a stranger following his every move.

Mr. Podsytnik’s colleague also noticed that he was being watched by the same man, but it took them two appeals to secure an investigation from the local authorities. The police in Duisburg simply could not comprehend that it was possible for Russia-sponsored surveillance to be happening in their town, it seemed. The case was soon closed without finding the offender, which might’ve been a mistake. Duisburg is one of the places, according to the Dossier Center, a London-based research organization, from which agents of the Russian military intelligence unit have carried out sabotage abroad.

Mr. Podsytnik is safe now, but not everyone has been so lucky. Exiles who’ve experienced similar surveillance sometimes end up disappearing without a trace — be it from the doorstep of an embassy in Armenia or a rural church in Georgia — only to turn up in Russian detention centers. It is impossible to gauge how often this is happening. Yet we can assume, my sources say, that there are many more cases like that of Lev Skoryakin, who was taken from his hostel in Kyrgyzstan last October, shoved into a car and deported back to Russia. We just don’t know about them.

Many Russians abroad are vulnerable and lack protection. In the summer of 2023, civil society groups petitioned the European Parliament to help with the legalization of people who refused to fight in Mr. Putin’s army; there was no meaningful response. Political asylum is routinely denied not only to draft dodgers but also to activists — sometimes “with monstrous arguments that ‘the situation in Russia is normal and you can count on a fair trial,’” Margarita Kuchusheva, an immigration lawyer in Cyprus, told me.

Antiwar exiles are supported by a handful of human rights organizations, perennially on the brink of closing because of lack of funds. Russia, by contrast, lavishes a great deal of resources on the exiles — as it accuses them of treason and terrorism and, driven by paranoia, pursues them all over the world. They are at immediate risk. But the greater danger is that the world forgets altogether about these people — and why they left their country in the first place.

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

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Tuesday, September 24, 2024 12:36 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Ukraine war will end faster than we think – and Putin is afraid, says Zelensky as he prepares ‘victory plan’ to US
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/30625499/zelensky-victory-plan-us-russia
-ukraine-war/

Putin humiliated as Russia 'knew about Ukraine Kursk attack for months' and did nothing
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1951001/putin-humiliated-russia-u
kraine-kursk-attack


Quote:
SECOND

Opinion : Putin Is Hunting Down Ordinary People All Over the World
Putin Is Doing Something Almost Nobody Is Noticing


You do realize how hysterical you sound, right?

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

Americans support America


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Tuesday, September 24, 2024 12:53 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.




Quote:
The Madness of Antony Blinken


https://consortiumnews.com/2024/09/20/the-madness-of-antony-blinken/


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

Americans support America



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Wednesday, September 25, 2024 6:59 AM

SECOND

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


Putin's Nightmare: Ukraine’s Kursk Operation Shows that Russia Can Be Defeated

By Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Ilona Sologoub | September 24, 2024

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/putins-nightmare-ukraine%E2%80%
99s-kursk-operation-shows-russia-can-be-defeated-212904

When Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, many observers and policymakers in the West gave Ukraine three days. After surviving the initial onslaught, Ukraine defeated the Russian army near Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson in 2022. These successes showed that the aggressor does not have enough resources to subdue Ukraine, and in fact, may be beaten back.

On August 6, 2024, the Ukrainian army started an operation in Kursk Oblast in Russia. The rout of the Russian army exposed again the glaring weaknesses of the Putin system.

Ukraine did not inform its allies about the operation to prevent leaks and, more importantly, to avoid a situation where Ukraine would not be allowed to proceed. Indeed, Ukraine’s partners chose the strategy of managed escalation which provides them with the illusion of control. Weapons have been delivered to Ukraine with significant delays and in quantities that never allowed the Ukrainian army to have an advantage over the Russian forces.

For example, only recently Ukraine received about a dozen F-16 jets while sixty-one were promised, and a half-year delay in providing tanks and other equipment to Ukraine allowed Russians to build minefields and other fortifications which was one of the major factors behind Ukraine’s unsuccessful counteroffensive in 2023.

Moreover, even when provided with modern weapons, Ukraine is consistently restricted in its ability to use them to strike Russian forces. For instance, the U.S. government did not allow Ukraine to use American systems to strike any military target inside Russia until the late spring of 2024 when Russia amassed significant forces near the border with Ukraine and started an offensive toward Kharkiv.

This timid response is consistent with the notion that Ukraine or its allies should not cross a red line because Russia could respond with something terrible. From Ukraine’s perspective, it is hard to imagine what else Russia can do after ruining Ukrainian cities, destroying energy infrastructure, blowing up a major dam, or torturing Ukrainians.

Thus, the true fear of Western governments is perhaps that a Russian nuclear strike could force them to respond and directly involve themselves in the war. Therefore, they prefer to let “invincible” Russia bleed Ukraine or force Ukraine to sacrifice its territories and people in the futile hope of appeasing the aggressor.

Ukraine’s Kursk offensive blew a giant hole in this thinking.

First, Russian red lines again proved to be a bluff. Just like attacking Russian forces in Crimea, which is a part of Russia according to Russian laws, did not lead to any kind of discernible escalation, the Kursk offensive resulted in silence in the Kremlin. If anything, nuclear threats subsided because promises to use nuclear weapons in response to an attack on Russian soil are patently empty now.

Second, the offensive exposed the utter unpreparedness of Russia. How could Ukraine get control of 1,200 square kilometers of Russia in less than a month?

One explanation is offered by the Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, who observed that "Russian planes are better protected by the Western guarantees than Ukrainians." In other words, Russia is so successful in blackmailing the West that the Kremlin does not even prepare for any kind of incursion.

We noted long ago that yielding to blackmail would lead to escalation.

Third, the operation demonstrated that Russia is running out of people and equipment. It took Russia more than a month to mount a counteroffensive, which has been unsuccessful so far.

Fourth, Russian society is atomized to a point where rallying around the flag does not occur even when enemy tanks arrive at the doorstep.

In short, the Kursk offensive showed again that Russia is a colossus with feet of clay. Policies that give Ukraine more resources, both military and economic, and a free hand in using them will help to end the war sooner on terms that give durable peace in Europe and beyond.

Similarly, policies that exhaust the Russian economy and army will accelerate the end of the war. On the other hand, the policy of “managed escalation” will prolong the war and increase the chances of large conflicts in the future.

About the Authors

Yuriy Gorodnichenko is a native of Ukraine and Quantedge Presidential professor at the Department of Economics, University of California–Berkeley. He received his B.A. and MA at EERC/Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Kyiv, Ukraine) and his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. A significant part of his research has been on monetary policy, fiscal policy, inequality, economic growth, and business cycles.

Ilona Sologoub is a researcher and editor of VoxUkraine, a Ukrainian economic think tank. She received an MA degree in Economics from the Kyiv School of Economics, where she worked as a researcher in 2011-2019. Ilona is a co-author and editor of several books on Ukraine's economic history and reconstruction and many policy research publications.

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

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Wednesday, September 25, 2024 1:20 PM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Looking forward to the current leadership in Ukraine being skewered on pikes so the Ukrainian men can stop dying and go back home to their families where they belong.




Russia invades Ukraine. They are still trying to advance further into Ukraine. Your posts speak to your stupidity.

T

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Wednesday, September 25, 2024 1:49 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Looking forward to the current leadership in Ukraine being skewered on pikes so the Ukrainian men can stop dying and go back home to their families where they belong.


THUGR: Russia invades Ukraine. They are still trying to advance further into Ukraine. Your posts speak to your stupidity.

Yeah. Too bad for them they were stupid enough to become our proxy against Russia, and too bad for them we torpedoed the peace deal that was initialed in Turkey in 2022.

Yanno, if we hadn't regime changed their elected government in 2014. If the Nazi groups hadn't attacked Russian speaking Ukrainians and provoked a civil war. If Kiev had only stuck with Minsk I agreement. Or Minsk II agreement, signed and adopted by the UN. If we hadn't committed to Ukraine in NATO. If Kiev had stuck with the negotiated agreement on 2022. If we had paid attention to Russia's red line about NATO...

None of this would have happened. But we provoked it in purpose bc we were sure we could destroy Russia, and Ukraine agreed to be our proxy, and now they're getting ground down

They 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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Wednesday, September 25, 2024 1:52 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Key Ukrainian Stronghold About To Fall To Russia As Zelensky Touts 'Victory Plan' In D.C.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/key-ukrainian-stronghold-about-
fall-russia-zelensky-touts-victory-plan-dc

Quote:
Russian forces storming east Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, bloggers and media say

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-forces-storming-ukrainian
-town-vuhledar-bloggers-media-say-2024-09-24/


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

Americans support America



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Wednesday, September 25, 2024 5:01 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:

Yeah. Too bad for them they were stupid enough to become our proxy against Russia, and too bad for them we torpedoed the peace deal that was initialed in Turkey in 2022.
Face reality, Signym. Even the Russians know you are fucked up in the head:

State TV pundits are fretting about imminent strikes on Russian soil and a never-ending conflict.

By Julia Davis | Sep. 25, 2024 3:21PM EDT

https://www.thedailybeast.com/putins-pals-realize-how-much-theyve-scre
wed-up-with-the-ukraine-war

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the United States notably darkened the mood in Russia.

In the run-up to the high-profile journey that clearly irked the Kremlin, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed that America is just like the Third Reich. Other commentators apparently received the same set of talking points and started to describe the U.S. as a Nazi nation.

In anticipation of the visit, most state TV pundits and experts warned viewers that a decision to allow Ukraine to strike deep within Russian territory is all but imminent. To address these fears, some of the most prominent talking heads are being sent out to convince the population that even long-range strikes are not that big of a deal.

Tigran Keosayan, husband of Margarita Simonyan—the notorious editor-in-chief of the state-controlled RT network—caused quite a stir when he showed up on Vladimir Solovyov’s show earlier in September and tacitly criticized people who demand nuclear strikes in response to Ukraine’s counter-attacks into Russian territory. Keosayan argued that these kinds of strikes would not imperil Russia’s existence and therefore would not warrant a nuclear response.

Solovyov, who is a known proponent of preemptively nuking Western capitals, seemed to be in shock when he was contradicted on his own show. Since Simonyan is well-connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin circles, the talking points her husband was sent to deliver were most likely pre-approved.

For his part, during Solovyov’s state TV program Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, the host insisted that Russia should deprive Ukraine of any means of generating electricity, including nuclear power plants.

Solovyov even argued that nurseries and kindergartens should be forced to rely solely on gasoline generators. This callous suggestion once again revealed that the Kremlin is giving up on the idea of controlling Ukrainian territories, and thus would rather destroy any modern conveniences than to allow their neighbors to live free of their former Moscow overlords.

After the debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, most of Russian state TV’s talking heads and experts grimly concluded that their favored candidate, Trump, will most likely fail in his presidential bid, which means that America can’t be expected to abandon Ukraine and simply hand it over into Moscow’s clutches. However, if Trump was to prevail and Russia was able to defeat Ukraine, according to military expert Alexey Anpilogov, “a Russian steamroller” would keep moving throughout Europe and Poland would be next on the Kremlin’s target list.

Before Putin’s troops invaded Ukraine in 2022, Natalia Makeeva, a forecaster from the Center for Geopolitical Expertise, appeared on a show called The Meeting Place and assured viewers that “the absolute majority of the people in Ukraine are pro-Russian” and would meet the invading Russian troops “with sweet bread and flowers.”

During Monday’s broadcast of The Meeting Place, by contrast, political scientist Alexander Sytin addressed the glaring misconception that spurred the Kremlin’s ill-fated invasion. He asked: “Are you still certain, nearly three years later, that they’re waiting for you there, that they love you and are ready to submit to you?”

Host Andrey Norkin bluntly admitted: “It’s not about whether they’re waiting for us or love us, we just have to bring some kind of order there—otherwise they will keep jumping at us.”

“Hold on a second, who jumped on whom?” Sytin replied, amazed by the attempt to blame Ukraine for the war.

On an earlier September broadcast, Sytin threw caution to the wind as he pondered why Russia even launched the invasion given that it isn’t able to gain control of Ukraine by the means of conventional warfare and is most likely unwilling to use nuclear weapons. Putin himself said in 2022 “there can be no winners in a nuclear war” and it “should never be unleashed.”

During Monday’s broadcast of The Meeting Place, journalist Maxim Yusin urged pundits and viewers not to delude themselves and to face reality.

“Let’s come down to earth,” he said, later adding: “This conflict is forever, your grandchildren will still be fighting in it.”

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

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Wednesday, September 25, 2024 5:42 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Yanno, when you post bullshit like this..

Quote:
the Kremlin is giving up on the idea of controlling Ukrainian territories,

immediately contradicted by
Quote:
[rather] than to allow their neighbors to live free of their former Moscow overlords


... you only discredit yourself.



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

Americans support America



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Wednesday, September 25, 2024 7:57 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:
Yanno, when you post bullshit like this..
Quote:
the Kremlin is giving up on the idea of controlling Ukrainian territories,
immediately contradicted by
Quote:
[rather] than to allow their neighbors to live free of their former Moscow overlords
... you only discredit yourself.
Signym, the whole paragraph reads as follows:
Solovyov even argued that nurseries and kindergartens should be forced to rely solely on gasoline generators. This callous suggestion once again revealed that the Kremlin is giving up on the idea of controlling Ukrainian territories, and thus would rather destroy any modern conveniences than to allow their neighbors to live free of their former Moscow overlords.

Signym, you love to break things into little pieces to show that you are a complete shithead who understands nothing.

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

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Wednesday, September 25, 2024 10:26 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Signym, you love to break things into little pieces to show that you are a complete shithead who understands nothing.


Nope. That kind of behavior is what white college "educated" 20-somethings that have been programmed to hate themselves do when they're not voting straight Democrat down ticket, against their own best interests.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Thursday, September 26, 2024 2:49 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yanno, when you post bullshit like this..
Quote:
the Kremlin is giving up on the idea of controlling Ukrainian territories,
immediately contradicted by
Quote:
[rather] than to allow their neighbors to live free of their former Moscow overlords
... you only discredit yourself.

SECOND: Signym, the whole paragraph reads as follows....
When someone writes something that stupid, they don't deserve to be read.

And when someone reposts something so stupid without stumbling over that big gaping hole, they don't deserve to be paid attention to.





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

Americans support America



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Thursday, September 26, 2024 5:26 AM

SECOND

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


Putin claimed during the first public meeting of the Russian Security Council's standing conference on nuclear deterrence on September 25 that Russia is adjusting its nuclear doctrine to introduce "clarifications" regarding necessary preconditions for Russia to use a nuclear weapon.[1] Putin shared two "clarifications" to the nuclear doctrine: that the Kremlin will consider using nuclear weapons in the case of "aggression against Russia by a non-nuclear state with support or participation from a nuclear state" or in the case of "the receipt of reliable information about the massive launch of air and space weapons" against Russia and these weapons crossing Russia's borders. Putin specified that these "air and space weapons" that could justify Russian nuclear weapons use include strategic and tactical aviation, cruise missiles, drones, and/or hypersonic missiles. Putin likely intends for the hyper-specificity of his nuclear threats to breathe new life into the Kremlin's tired nuclear saber-rattling information operation and generate a new wave of panic among Western policymakers.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-september-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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Thursday, September 26, 2024 8:23 AM

SECOND

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


Trump gives strongest signal yet he won’t back Ukraine and Zelenskyy against Putin

Republican candidate launches stunning tirade against Kyiv for not making “any deal, even the worst deal” with Russia.

September 26, 2024 1:30 pm CET
By Seb Starcevic and Csongor Körömi

https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-signal-us-stop-ukraine-el
ection-russia-volodymyr-zelenskyy-vladimir-putin/

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

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Thursday, September 26, 2024 9:06 AM

SECOND

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


Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree increasing the size of the Russian Armed Forces by 180,000 soldiers. This suggests that Moscow is operating on the assumption that the conflict will persevere beyond the next few months. In parallel, the Russian government has introduced a three-year budget that will increase its military spending to historic highs from 2025-2027.

The Kremlin has determined that defense spending must overshadow funding to civic programs. On the educational front, Vladimir Medinsky, assistant to the president of the Russian Federation, recently called the eleven years that Russian students spend in secondary school an “unaffordable luxury” harkening back to the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, the Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education is adding entrance exams to make it more difficult for students to attend universities. The 2025-2027 budget outlines $1 trillion for the modernization of Russia’s healthcare system over the next six years, a number which loses its shine when placed beside the $1.7 trillion allocated from 2019-2024.

However, cuts in the new budget go beyond the civil sector. Calculating that the price of an oil barrel will decrease from $69.70 in 2025 to $65.50 in 2027, the Russian government is predicting 27 percent less revenue from its oil and gas reserves. It also anticipates that the ruble will weaken compared to the dollar. Tax hikes and inflation will accompany cuts in most sectors, excluding defense, to ensure that the budget deficit does not exceed 1 percent of GDP.

More at https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russia%E2%80%99s-military-what-
comes-after-ukraine-war-212952

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

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Thursday, September 26, 2024 1:01 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Why did the Kremlin lower Russia's nuclear threshold to include air or space attack by a neighboring state (e.g. Ukraine, Poland) with the participation and help from a nuclear state (e.g. USA)?

Quote:
Putin laid out, according to a translation: "The updated version of the document proposes that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear-weapon state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear-weapon state, should be considered as a joint attack on the Russian Federation."

While not stating that this would automatically greenlight the ability of Russia to respond with nuclear weapons, he did assert that the threshold for their use would be met based on "reliable information about a massive launch of aerospace attack means and their crossing of our State border."

He then included defense of Belarus as being part of the change: "We reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression against Russia and Belarus as a member of the Union State," Putin said.

The below is a paraphrase of Putin's words and some further details of the changes by state-run RT:

Moscow would also “consider” resorting to a nuclear response if it gets “reliable information” about a “massive” missile or air strike launched by another state against Russia, or its closest ally, Belarus, according to Putin. The weapons used in an enemy’s potential strike could include anything from ballistic or cruise missiles to strategic aircraft and drones, he stated.


Because such an attack (from Ukraine) could be a prelude to a nuclear first strike (from the USA).

An example of what could happen was when Ukrainian drones hit and damaged two of Russia's early warning radars. In that case, it was only two drones, and they did little damage.

However, a massive cross border attack from Ukraine (Poland, Latvia, fill in the blank) by swarms of drones and/or missiles PROGRAMMED BY A THE USA OR BRITAIN could be aimed at Russia's strategic (i.e. nuclear) early warning systems and second strike capability, which would be the first step in a first strike on Russia.

So this isn't just Russia saber rattling and bluffing, it's a legitimate response to a potential nuclear threat

By changing their nuclear doctrine, they not only address Ukraine as a potential launch point for the opening salvo of a first strike on Russia, they also cover our missiles in Poland, Romania, or wherever we decide to put them on Russia's border.

The way to eliminate potential accidental nuclear strikes on the USA would be to negotiate nuclear treaties with Russia, on the same "trust but verify" basis as before. But our neocons won't let us.

We are being held hostage by crazies in the State Dept.


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

Americans support America



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Thursday, September 26, 2024 2:03 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Oh, BTW, THUGR, the reason why I'm posting pix of American flags is bc the only flags that YOU post are Ukrainian.

Seems like you have a case of confused loyalties, if you ask me.

I'm trying to make the point that we should be supporting America, not Ukraine. You seem to think that's objectionable.

*****
In fact, when I criticize American actions or American policies, you react like I'm criticizing YOU, or like I'm trying to tear down America.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I want America to be free and prosperous, now and in the future.

So I criticize some of our politicians and bureaucrats who seem to be betraying America, and Americans, in favor of some other agenda.

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

Americans support America



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