Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Monday, November 4, 2024 16:54
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PAGE 149 of 149

Monday, October 28, 2024 5:07 AM

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Russia works around international sanctions designed to cripple the economy amid war with Ukraine

60-minutes By Sharyn Alfonsi

October 27, 2024 / 7:45 PM EDT / CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-works-around-international-sanctio
ns-amid-war-with-ukraine-60-minutes-transcript/

When Russia invaded Ukraine it sparked international outrage. It also triggered a wave of international sanctions designed to cripple Russia's economy so badly...it couldn't fight the war.

And yet…two-and-a-half years later, the fighting continues and the International Monetary Fund predicts, this year, Russia's economy will grow over 3%. More than the U.S. and Europe.

The architect behind the United States sanction strategy is Daleep Singh - the deputy national security advisor for international economics at the White House.

We first interviewed him in the weeks after the 2022 invasion…when he told us he expected a barrage of sanctions to bring Russia's economy to its knees.

Earlier this month, we went to Washington to ask Daleep Singh about those early predictions of a nosedive.…and he told us something we don't hear very often on 60 Minutes.

Daleep Singh: So let's be-- let's be honest. This is not the nosedive that I predicted two years ago.

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

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Tuesday, October 29, 2024 5:36 AM

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The Kremlin had dismissed the allegations as "fake news," while a North Korean representative to the United Nations called the reports "groundless." What allegations?

On Monday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said he could confirm that North Korean troops have been sent to Russia, and that North Korean military units have been deployed to the Kursk region.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/kursk-videos-show-ukrainian-bradl
ey-abrams-engage-russian-tanks/ar-AA1t4Ah2

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Tuesday, October 29, 2024 6:30 AM

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Ukrainians are scamming Russians out of their life savings in an underground operation that steals money from Moscow’s citizens and donates it directly to Kyiv’s military.

In call centers throughout Ukraine, the operation, known as “the Office,” equips workers with a headset, computer program, and the phone numbers of Russians.

Until Feb. 24, 2022, in Ukraine, the Office focused its scam on targets in Western countries like the U.S. as well as various European Union-based companies. In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion, it shifted all of its work onto Russian civilians. The fraud begins with the victim receiving a call purportedly from a phone company seeking a payment, and ends with all of the money in their victims’ bank accounts being drained.

According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime (GI-TOC), there may be thousands of scam call centers throughout Ukraine as examples of “patriotic criminals” — pro-Ukrainian criminals that are working to support Kyiv’s war efforts — which have proliferated since the invasion.

More at https://www.thedailybeast.com/ukrainian-criminal-network-takes-vengean
ce-on-putins-people/

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Tuesday, October 29, 2024 3:17 PM

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The US Army may have the answer to the bogged-down bloodbath warfare of Ukraine
A way of striking deep past enemy front lines which might just work

David Axe | 29 October 2024 2:19pm GMT

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/29/ukraine-war-positional-att
ritional-airborne-tiltrotor-101st/

Photo of Soldiers of the US Army's 101st Airborne Division carrying out a helicopter-borne assault in Afghanistan, 2008. Such operations would be suicide in a war like that in Ukraine today

The US Army won’t take delivery of its first new tiltrotor assault craft until 2030. But it’s already writing new doctrine for the speedy, far-flying Bell V-280 Valor. If it works in practice, this doctrine could solve one of the Army’s most serious battlefield problems: how to break through stiff enemy defences. Both Russia and Ukraine have struggled to do this in their ongoing war, and while many Western soldiers have argued that’s because they’re doing it wrong, it seems at least possible that traditional Blitzkrieg style land assaults have become less effective in the age of the drone and the “cautious tank”.

With the V-280, which takes off and lands like a helicopter but cruises like an aeroplane thanks to its pivoting rotors, the Army could simply bypass the defences – and land thousands of troops hundreds of miles away in the span of one night.

Major General Brett Sylvia is commander of the 101st Airborne Division. This was once a force of paratroopers but today it is the US Army’s specialist helicopter-borne assault formation. The general revealed the new doctrine at an industry event in Washington DC earlier this month.

“We can’t actually do the large-scale, long-range air assault today,” Sylvia said, “because the platforms that we have organic to the 101st are not enough in order for us to be able to do that in one period of darkness.”

Today, the 101st Airborne Division has around 50 UH-60 Black Hawk assault helicopters and 30 CH-47 Chinook heavy lift helicopters. A UH-60 can haul a squad of 11 infantry 300 miles. A CH-47 can move a platoon of 40 nearly the same distance. But both helicopters are slow, with a cruising speed no faster than 180 miles per hour.

That weighs on the 101st Airborne Division’s reach. In one recent war game, the division moved one of its three brigades – around 3,000 troops – more than 500 miles. But the simulated operation required nearly a thousand support troops to set up refuelling points, and took three nights.

Sylvia wants to do better. He wants to move a brigade the same distance, but in one night. And once V-280s start arriving, it should be possible. Sylvia said he’s “incredibly optimistic.” After all, a V-280 can carry 14 troops nearly a thousand miles at a cruising speed faster than 300 miles per hour.

As a bonus, the 101st is set to replace all its UH-60s with V-280s – and then some. Where today’s 101st has just 30 or so rotorcraft that qualify as “heavy lift,” with V-280s it’ll have four times that number, Sylvia said. The basic idea, it seems, is for each V-280 in the division’s future inventory to make at least two round-trips in one night in order to transport a whole brigade.

There’s another key advantage for the V-280. Fully loaded normal helicopters generally can’t fly very high. They are within reach of even light shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles all the time, and in some cases they have also been brought down by drones: for this reason, helicopters of both sides generally avoid going anywhere near the front line in Ukraine. Chinooks can get high enough to be out of reach of many missiles, but only at the cost of reducing their load.

The V-280, however, when flying in aeroplane mode, will be able to get a lot higher. It still won’t be able to fly near heavy, long-ranging missile launchers in any safety, but it will be safe from lighter types.

To take advantage of the new tiltrotor, the air assault division is rewriting its logistics plans. If it went to war today, the 101st would try to capture an enemy airfield and use that as its main base for an assault deep behind enemy lines. But that base would be vulnerable to enemy counterattack. So Sylvia’s staff has been hashing out new schemes that spread support troops across a larger number of small refueling points that should be harder for the enemy to detect.

Flying farther and faster with more troops compared to a UH-60, the V-280 could take some of the pressure off the spread-out support troops. If the 101st Airborne Division can match equipment with doctrine and training, it should be able to move thousands of troops hundreds of miles between sunset and sunrise, combining mass, mobility and surprise in a way that could throw an entrenched enemy off-balance. US Army tank brigades could attack from the near side at the same time 101st Division troops attack from the far side.

That should help the Army solve the dilemma currently plaguing Ukrainian forces. Lacking a major air-assault capability, the Ukrainians have just one way of breaking through Russian defences: a frontal ground assault.

But mines, artillery and all-seeing, ever-present drones have made these assaults practically suicidal. It’s not for no reason that Ukrainian commanders measure their biggest battlefield advances in single miles. And those are rare. Most battles in Russia’s 32-month wider war on Ukraine are “attritional” and “positional.” That is, the front line barely budges. The winner is the side that loses the fewest troops and vehicles.

The US Army hasn’t fought that way in many decades – and has no appetite to. It craves mobility. The V-280 could be just the thing to keep the Army’s main air assault formation moving.

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

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 6:44 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 rate of Russian advances in Ukraine has increased in recent weeks but remains slow and consistent with positional warfare rather than with rapid mechanized maneuver—emphasizing how generally stagnant Russian advances have been after over two and half years of war. Recent Western reporting linking the Russian rate of advance in September 2024 with Russian advances at the start of the war is highly misleading.[1] ISW assesses that Russian forces advanced at an average rate of 1,265 square kilometers per day in March 2022—roughly 90 times the roughly 14 square kilometers that ISW calculates that Russian forces have taken per day in September 2024. Rapid Russian advances deep into Ukrainian territory, including the temporary seizure of large portions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv oblasts characterized the first month of the Russian full-scale invasion, whereas more recent Russian advances have been characterized by small-scale, localized, tactical advances.[2] Russian forces have been making gains in eastern Ukraine recently, but comparing those gains to the initial deep Russian penetration into Ukraine at the start of the war misleadingly frames these most recent advances. For example, Russian forces seized the settlement of Vuhledar as of October 1, 2024, have continued to advance north and northwest of Vuhledar, and have made significant tactical gains in and near Selydove (southeast of Pokrovsk) over the course of the past week.[3] These respective advances are tactically significant but do not represent a general increase in the pace of Russian advances across the frontline, much of which remains relatively stagnant, nor are they within two orders of magnitude of the rate of Russian advance in the first stage of the war.[4] The current rate of Russian advances is consistent, rather, with ISW's recent assessment that the Russian command has likely ordered Russian forces to significantly increase their tempo of mechanized attacks throughout the theater before the full onset of muddy ground conditions in the fall months.[5]

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

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

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024 7:04 AM

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In Toretsk, Ukrainian Engineers Are Demolishing Entire Buildings Filled With Russian Troops

The strategy is brutal but effective: wreck the city in order to save it.

David Axe | Oct 29, 2024, 06:10pm EDT

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/10/29/in-toretsk-ukrainian-
engineers-are-demolishing-entire-buildings-filled-with-russian-troops/

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

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Thursday, October 31, 2024 8:05 AM

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The Kremlin is reportedly struggling to prepare for the September 2026 Russian State Duma elections campaign due to uncertainty about the course of the war in Ukraine, suggesting that the Kremlin is not confident that Russia will be able to win the war over the next two years. Russian opposition outlet Meduza reported on October 30 that Presidential Administration First Deputy Head Sergei Kiriyenko has not started to plan the "contours" of the 2026 Duma elections even though the Kremlin usually does so two years in advance of the elections.[8] A source close to the Presidential Administration told Meduza that the Duma elections’ policy framing depends on whether the war in Ukraine will continue in 2026. Meduza reported that a source within United Russia's leadership stated that it is unclear if United Russia's 2026 campaign should feature military personnel or a person who "symbolizes a return to peaceful life," such as Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. A political strategist who works with the Kremlin and several regional governments reportedly stated that if the war continues during the 2026 election campaign season, then the Kremlin will need "a force that leans on ultra-patriotism," such as an entirely new political party or a "slightly updated" A Just Russia party. The source stated that if the war ends, then the Kremlin will need "moderate forces." A Just Russia notably held a congress on October 26 and announced that its new political course will be "patriotic socialism," which the party described as necessary during Russia's war in Ukraine and "firmly based on the great achievements of Russian civilization and the most important condition for [Russia's] further development."[9]

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

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

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Thursday, October 31, 2024 1:46 PM

THG

Russians, Russians Everywhere

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Friday, November 1, 2024 7:28 AM

SECOND

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

The Moldovan Constitutional Court confirmed on October 31 the passing of the October 20 European Union (EU) referendum with a 50.72 percent turnout rate.

https://www.ipn.md/en/constitutional-court-confirms-results-of-october
-20-referendum-8013_1108601.html

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

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Saturday, November 2, 2024 4:02 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

-----------
"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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Saturday, November 2, 2024 6:39 AM

SECOND

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

It makes perfect sense that North Korea would send troops to fight Ukrainians. North Korea has an enemy, South Korea, a nation controlled by evil Nazis, the same accusation Russia uses against Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with his North Korean counterpart Choe Son-hui in Moscow on November 1, securing strong affirmations of North Korea's support for Russia amid updated Western reports on the number of North Korean troops deployed to Russia.[10] Lavrov emphasized that Russia and North Korea share "respect and reverence" for their common history and claimed that Russian-North Korean relations are developing "at an accelerated pace in terms of the qualitative level of interaction in all areas."[11] Choe claimed that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un instructed North Korea to support Russia's "holy war" against Ukraine until Russia's victory.[12] Choe's invocation of the concept of a "holy war" against Ukraine is notable, as the Russian Orthodox Church has used parallel language to rhetorically justify Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine as an existential and civilizational struggle—a struggle into which North Korea has now willingly entered.[13]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-november-1-2024

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

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Sunday, November 3, 2024 8:08 AM

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Russia has struggled to source the microelectronic components necessary to produce complex weapons and air defense systems due to Western sanctions, and Russia may not be able to produce or repair a sufficient number of air defense systems to maintain the current density of Russia's air defense coverage over occupied Ukraine if Ukraine destroys a significant number of Russian systems.[6] Further degradation of Russia's air defense umbrella, particularly over occupied Ukraine, may impact how close to the frontline Russian pilots are willing to operate and could limit Russia's ability to effectively use glide bombs against both frontline areas and rear Ukrainian cities.

Ukrainian forces have reportedly struck seven Russian radars and air defense systems since the night of October 20 to 21.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-november-2-2024

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Sunday, November 3, 2024 8:14 AM

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Russian Troops' Most Common Cause of Death Revealed in Report

74.5 percent of deaths had been due to explosions.

14.7 percent were fatalities due to gunshot injuries from small arms, with the vast majority of incidents (83.7 percent) from single wounds.

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-war-explosions-1970605

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Sunday, November 3, 2024 10:39 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

If they are using Russian equipment, the language barrier alone would keep N Koreans from fighting effectively.

Just imagine facing a complex instrument panel with everything labelled in a foreign language. Then imagine you have to "do something" ... or, rather, a complex set of somethings ... while being shot at.

And we're supposed to take this seriously?

Even if you imagine this as a live- fire, real- world training exercise, where N Korean troops with N Korean weapons and N Korean local commanders are inserted into a Russian battlefield, with the Russian tactics of using small probing groups (6-7) to find resistance and call down bombs or artillery, each small group would need a translator.

Nah.

I just can't see it happening. Inserting foreign troops into an active battle is just asking to muck things up, as many former American military, from colonels to tech specialists, have said.

This is just more fabricated nonsense, for those lacking critical thinking.

-----------
"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, November 4, 2024 6:03 AM

SECOND

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Moldova is on the western border of Ukraine.

Incumbent Moldova President Maia Sandu has claimed victory in the Moldovan presidential runoff election held on November 3, 2024.[1] Preliminary results reported by the Moldovan Central Election Commission (CEC) show that Maia Sandu has won around 55 percent of the vote, defeating Kremlin-friendly presidential candidate Alexandr Stoianoglo.[2]

Moldovan authorities reported extensive Russian interference and sabotage efforts during the runoff presidential elections held on November 3, 2024, in a likely effort to favor pro-Kremlin Stoianoglo. Sandu’s National Security Advisor Stanislav Secrieru warned on November 3 of significant Russian interference in the runoff election, noting the organization of voter transport in Transnistria (which is illegal under Moldovan law); the organization of buses and charter flights from Russia to polling stations in Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Belarus; the distribution of vouchers to Moldovan voters in Moscow; and cyberattacks against the Moldova CEC's voter education site.[4]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-november-3-2024

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

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Monday, November 4, 2024 6:43 AM

SECOND

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Ukraine’s AI drones are now actively deployed in combat. And they hit targets.

Rolled out to combat Russian signal jamming, Ukraine is deploying new AI systems to drive its drone warfare. Early tests find the automated pilots are far more likely to hit targets, though only a small proportion of Ukraine’s fleet uses the new technology.

By Max Hunder | Nov. 01, 2024, 11:39 a.m. ET

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2024/1101/drone-Ukraine-Russia-
war-AI-combat

Ukraine is using dozens of domestically made AI-augmented systems for its drones to reach targets on the battlefield without being piloted, a senior official said, disclosing new details about the race against Russia to harness automation.

Systems that use artificial intelligence allow cheap drones carrying explosives to spot or fly to their targets in areas protected by extensive signal jamming, which has reduced the effectiveness of manually piloted drones.

The shift towards the use of AI, particularly in drone target finding and flight control, is an important emerging front in the technology race that has unfolded since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

“There are currently several dozen solutions on the market from Ukrainian manufacturers ... they are being purchased and delivered into the armed forces and other defense forces,” Ukraine’s deputy defense minister Kateryna Chernohorenko said of drone AI systems.

She said they were currently being used in a targeted way in special operations.

Automated drone systems are in high demand among soldiers searching for ways to beat the rapidly increasing use of electronic warfare on the battlefield.

Electronic warfare systems create a protective dome around their location by sending out powerful signals that disrupt communication between drones and their pilots, causing them to lose control of the craft and miss their target.

These systems, once only used to protect the highest-value pieces of equipment, have become a common feature in trenches and on regular vehicles used by soldiers as they seek to protect themselves from the threat of first person view (FPV) drones.

These small and cheap drones, originally built for civilian enthusiasts to race, have since become the most commonly used strike drone on the battlefield, with both countries ramping up their production into the millions per year.

Next phase of the war

A Ukrainian official told Reuters in July that most first-person view units’ target strike rate had fallen to 30%-50%, while for new pilots that can be as low as 10%, and that signal jamming was the main problem.

The official predicted that AI-operated first-person view drones could achieve hit rates of around 80%.

Samuel Bendett, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think-tank, said statements from officials on both sides showed automation would likely play an important role in the next phase of the war, but that it was currently not widespread.

“At this point in the conflict, we’re seeing small scale application of these technologies as multiple developers are trying to position themselves and their drones as the go to solution,” he said.

“Right now, the solutions are relatively simple and often based on commercial technologies that have been available even before the war, but more complicated features can also become available.”

Ukraine is also using interceptor drones to down the vast numbers of Russian camera reconnaissance drones helping target artillery and missile strikes on Ukrainian targets behind the lines.

Ms. Chernohorenko, the defense official, said that these also needed to be equipped with AI targeting.

“Russian reconnaissance drones are causing huge problems on the frontlines [but] they are now being shot down rather effectively by our interceptors.”
Computer vision

Dmytro Vovchuk, the chief operating officer of NORDA Dynamics, a Ukrainian company which makes software for drones, told Reuters they had been making a product which used computer vision, a type of AI technology, to guide strike drones towards their target.

The software allows a pilot to select a target via the drone’s camera, at which point the craft completes the rest of the flight autonomously.

The company has sold over 15,000 units of its automated targeting software to drone manufacturers, with over 10,000 of those already delivered.

Although in raw terms that is a large number, it is still a tiny proportion of the 4 million drones Ukraine says it is now capable of producing annually.

Mr. Vovchuk said strikes could not always be visually confirmed due to the heavy presence of electronic warfare systems around high-value targets.

“From what we have seen, three tanks were definitely destroyed with our systems, as well as a lot [of strikes] on logistics targets,” he said, adding that it had also been used to hit field headquarters.

“Those things which are defended by electronic warfare ... this system has enabled strikes on targets which previously it was not cost-effective to hit.”

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

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Monday, November 4, 2024 7:15 AM

SECOND

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Putin never got over Russia’s defeat in the Cold War, and his ambition is to make Russia a true superpower once again. That means that the reconquest of former Soviet republics like Belarus, Georgia, and Ukraine is just the first part of his long-term plan. Putin also wants to regain control over the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, which were once part of the Soviet Union, and ultimately, he wants to expand Moscow’s sphere of influence over the old Warsaw Pact satellite countries in Eastern Europe: Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. If he stays in power long enough, he may even go for the grand prize: retaking that portion of Germany that was once East Germany. All of that may sound far-fetched, but it has only been 35 years since the Berlin Wall fell, a time when Putin was a young KGB officer stationed in East Germany and was forced to watch the Soviet empire dissolve around him.

https://theintercept.com/2024/11/02/trump-russia-putin-election/

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Monday, November 4, 2024 8:04 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Moldova is on the western border of Ukraine.

Incumbent Moldova President Maia Sandu has claimed victory in the Moldovan presidential runoff election held on November 3, 2024.[1] Preliminary results reported by the Moldovan Central Election Commission (CEC) show that Maia Sandu has won around 55 percent of the vote, defeating Kremlin-friendly presidential candidate Alexandr Stoianoglo.[2]

Moldovan authorities reported extensive Russian interference and sabotage efforts during the runoff presidential elections held on November 3, 2024, in a likely effort to favor pro-Kremlin Stoianoglo. Sandu’s National Security Advisor Stanislav Secrieru warned on November 3 of significant Russian interference in the runoff election, noting the organization of voter transport in Transnistria (which is illegal under Moldovan law); the organization of buses and charter flights from Russia to polling stations in Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Belarus; the distribution of vouchers to Moldovan voters in Moscow; and cyberattacks against the Moldova CEC's voter education site.[4]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-november-3-2024

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

I guess the way this was supposed to work is that the vote would apply to Transnistrians,but that Transnistrians weren't allowed to vote.

-----------
"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, November 4, 2024 9:24 AM

SECOND

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

I guess the way this was supposed to work is that the vote would apply to Transnistrians but that Transnistrians weren't allowed to vote.

You are mistaken:

At a polling station for residents of the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria - which is economically, politically and militarily supported by Russia - the BBC stumbled upon evidence of vote-buying.

A BBC producer heard a woman who had just dropped her ballot in the transparent box ask an election monitor where she would get paid.

Outside, we asked directly whether she had been offered cash to vote and she admitted it without qualms. She was angry that a man who had sent her to the polling station was no longer answering her calls. “He tricked me!” she said.

She would not reply when asked who she had voted for.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wnr5qdxe7o

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

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Monday, November 4, 2024 4:44 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Voting from Transnistria was difficult, as no polling stations were opened there.
People had to cross from Transnistria into Moldova proper in order to vote.

https://gov.md/en/content/addresses-polling-stations-destined-voters-t
ransnistrian-region

In addition, altho the Moldovan govt allowed diaspora voting from western foreign nations without restriction, (where the majority of the Moldovan diaspora resides https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/moldovas-diaspor
a-flexes-its-political-muscles/) it made voting in Russia difficult, with only two polling stations, both in Moscow. Since both polling stations clocked exactly 4999 ballots each, it looks as if the number of ballots was deliberately limited.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/moldovan-diaspora-in-moscow-shows
-tremendous-activity-in-election-in-moldova/ar-AA1ttBur

So overall it appears that the Moldovan government was doing its level best to suppress the anti-Sandu vote.

Inside Moldova itself, Sandu's opponent, Stoianoglo, won handily.

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Monday, November 4, 2024 4:54 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I guess there are no more stories about Ukraine "winning"?

Tass supposedly ran a story about those North Koreans. They are not involved in fighting, which they shouldn't be, seeing as integrating them into ongoing battles woild be ridiculously counterproductive.

They are there as "observers" as part of "training".

Which tells me they're tripwires. Especially since, as non- combatants, any attack on them would explode the situation. This also tells me that Moscow is/ was anticipating a possible long range missile attack by NATO, and is attempting to forestall it.

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